The Office

CHICAGO – The biggest column yet on What to Watch on DVD, Blu-ray, Netflix, Amazon, On Demand, and more is another seemingly random hodge-podge of offerings that you can use to guide your way through the new releases shelf at Best Buy, the On Demand section on Vudu, the store on iTunes, and maybe even Netflix and Hulu. Pick your favorites. This is the way we’d rank these new releases if you have a free night this weekend or money to burn next week.

CHICAGO – Craig Robinson is in the swirl of two media events in the next two weeks. His latest film “Peeples” – in which he plays the romantic comedy lead – opens on Friday. The famous TV series he has been featured in, “The Office,” has its final episode after nine seasons on Thursday, May 16th.

CHICAGO – Two of our most promising new shows of 2012 were respectably sampled last night on the first Thursday of the Fall season as viewers turned “Elementary” into a solid first-week hit and enough people checked out “Last Resort” opposite the #1 show of the evening to call that a success as well. CBS won the night easily while ABC has plenty to be happy about. FOX should be more concerned and NBC may just want to go dark on the night that they used to own in the ratings.

CHICAGO – NBC/Universal released a wave of Blu-ray and DVD releases last week as four of their comedies came home with “30 Rock: Season 6,” “The Office: Season Eight,” “Parks and Recreation: Season Four,” and “Up All Night: Season One.” For some reason, “The Office” is the only NBC comedy available in HD (with an UltraViolet copy to boot) but all four sets are well-transferred and three of them feature impressive bonus material. Get your laugh on.

CHICAGO – NBC revealed their Fall schedule today and there were multiple surprises including comedies moving to Tuesday and Friday nights (we were wondering where all of the sitcoms would go) and a Fall cycle of the hit singing show “The Voice.”

CHICAGO – Now this is getting interesting. NBC has officially renewed three comedies — “Parks & Recreation,” “The Office,” and the very on-the-bubble “Up All Night.” Rumors of “Parks” only getting a 13-episode commitment have proven to be true but there has been no official confirmation that this means that the fifth season will be the program’s last.

CHICAGO – Brian Tallerico appears twice on Bill Moller’s program to take listener calls and discuss television programs including Smash, Being Human, Psych, Awake, Harry’s Law, The Good Wife, Parenthood, Pan Am, GCB, The Office, Franklin & Bash, Suits, Blue Bloods, and more!

CHICAGO – NBC gave us the news we’d all been hoping for since one of the best comedies on television was unceremoniously pulled from the air — “Community” will return to Thursday nights on March 15th, 2012. Of course, with good news comes bad news as “Parks and Recreation” goes on hiatus until April 19th. At that point “Up All Night” will have ended its 24-episode run and “Parks” can return. Confusing enough for you?

CHICAGO – Thursday nights looked radically different last night with changes on three major networks, including a new line-up on NBC and premieres on CBS and FOX. How’d they do? Well, CBS may have finally found a hit in the post-“The Big Bang Theory” slot, but NBC and FOX are going to have to go back to the drawing board.

CHICAGO – I can still vividly remember when it was announced that NBC was to air a remake of the incredible British series “The Office.” Those of us familiar with the original thought it was a VERY bad idea. A guy from “The Daily Show” filling the shoes of Ricky Gervais? Now it’s safe to say, the current season excepted, that the remake has eclipsed the original. It leads me to wonder if there isn’t a whole generation now that doesn’t even know the NBC version is a remake. School them with “The Office: Special Edition,” now available for discerning Black Friday shoppers everywhere.