Nerds love nerds.  Even the candy.

But nerds also hate nerds, and no one more nerdy than a nerd can properly slam another nerd.  You know the old nerd adage:

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.

There’s one exception to that:

Nerds’ words hurt nerds worst.

What I plan to examine here is a gaggle of famous nerd TV (and film) producers (and writers), and do what every nerd dares to do to others, but fears to have done to them — rank them as TV producers… from The Shit To Just Shitty.

THE SHIT (EXPECTED)

WHAT HE’S DONE: Firefly… plus Dollhouse, Buffy, and Angel if you’re into those as well

WHAT HE HASN’T DONE: Screwed over his fans.  Whedon is such a fanboy nerd, he took his box office failure of a movie, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and created two long-running shows from that; he also took a failed TV show, Firefly, and wrapped up its story in a movie (Serenity)!  BONUS: Fans have a lot of faith in his upcoming film, The Avengers, because of his previous writing credits in comics (The Astonishing X-Men) and earlier screenplay efforts (in whole or in part) for Toy Story, Speed, and one of my favorites, Waterworld.

THE SHIT (UNEXPECTED)

WHAT HE’S DONE: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Wonderfalls, Dead Like Me, Pushing Daisies

WHAT HE HASN’T DONE: Stayed with Heroes.  He wrote the series best episode, Company Man, which fleshed-out Horned Rim Glasses in a fantastic way that the show could never replicate, and in many ways, would even abandon.  Having characters that make sense?  Heroes would never stoop so low.

KINDA THE SHIT

WHAT HE’S DONE: Veronica Mars and Party Down

WHAT HE HASN’T DONE: Enough.  More please!

USED TO BE THE SHIT

WHAT HE’S DONE: Amazing Stories, Tiny Toons, Animaniacs, ER, and later, Band of Brothers

WHAT HE HASN’T DONE: Lived up to producing anything up to the caliber those shows: Pinky and the Brain, Freakazoid, Toonsylvania, Falling Skies, and Terra Nova?  Smash and The River sound no better…

JUST SHITTY

WHAT HE’S DONE: Felicity, LOST, What About Brian, Six Degrees, Undercovers, Person of Interest, and the upcoming Alcatraz

WHAT HE HASN’T DONE: Shit on me.  LOST might not have been all his fault, but the supernatural element was his suggestion.  I didn’t include Alias or Fringe because I haven’t seen them… but if you read this blog regularly (I doubt it) or know me (know one I know reads this), click here to see how I feel about LOST…