On the one hand, painstakingly compiling a list of those television characters who perished during the 2005-06 season shows that America is still the home of ingenuity and hard work. On the other hand, it also shows that we watch waaayyy too much television and should really be using that ingenuity and work ethic to develop alternate fuels and build cities under the sea.

What would the end of a television season be without a list of the dearly departed (Well, it would just be the end of a season. But that's besides the point)? Thanks to the wonderful Internet, we now have such a list, and it looks like the body count was pretty high this past year. Leading the pack with ten dead was 24, with Alias slightly behind at seven. In a tie with six dead each were Prison Break and, surprisingly, Veronica Mars. The Sopranos, who you'd think would have been swimming in dead bodies, only had five deaths in the season-to-date.

The complete list, including deaths in shows such as Scrubs, CSI: NY, and The Shield (poor Lem) can be found at MagnetMediaFed. The list creators welcome any additional deaths that they missed. Perhaps you should add the death of Joey Tribbiani from Joey . . . no, wait, that was just the death of Matt LeBlanc's career. Never mind.

[A hearty thanks to Rick for the tip. Tombstone courtesy of Tombstone Generator ]

The CW (formerly known as UPN and The WB, its official logo to the right) officially announces its 2006-07 prime-time schedule today, though there was a preview given last night. Some favorites from both old networks have made the cut, while there are some fans of old shows who will likely feel disappointed. The changes in brief:

Returning: 7th Heaven; Gilmore Girls; Smallville; Beauty and the Geek; Supernatural; One Tree Hill; All of Us; Girlfriends; Veronica Mars; WWE Smackdown; America's Next Top Model; Everybody Hates Chris.

Out: The Bedford Diaries; Blue Collar TV; Everwood; Living With Fran; Modern Men; Pepper Dennis; Reba; Related; Survival of the Richest; Twins; Cuts; Eve; Get This Party Started; Half & Half; Love, Inc.; One on One; South Beach; What I Like About You; Charmed.

New: Runaway; The Game; Palm Springs.

Moving: Everbody Hates Chris (to Sundays at 8); All Of Me (to Sundays); Girlfriends (to Sundays); The Game (Sundays); One Tree Hill (Wednesdays at 9).

Check back here later in the day for any updates that may come from the official Upfront presentation. Detailed descriptions of the new shows are after the jump below.

[Thanks to The Futon Critic for the info.]

(S01E22) The season finale of Everybody Hates Chris wasn't exactly a laugh riot, and it may have even relied on a few sitcom cliches, but nevertheless I thought it was a good way to end the season. A nice and poignant tribute to fathers and Father's Day.

All Chris' father Julius wants is to be left alone for Father's Day. As the elder Rock explains in the beginning, Mother's Day has always outranked Father's Day in order of importance. Of course, most dads really don't mind that at all. If they can have one day when they're not being asked for money or to fix things around the house, they're content. In fact, that's exactly what Julius wants, to have the house all to himself for one day.

(S02E22) Aren't great finales so bittersweet? I'd been excited to see this episode all day, though at the same time I was sad that the season would be over, and we'd have to A) wait until next Thursday to find out if this show is indeed making it to the CW network, and B) wait for the new season to start.

Though I thoroughly enjoyed this season, I have to admit that most of the reveal of this episode was a tad disappointing. Why? Because a bunch of us guessed this would happen long ago. Well, not all of it, but the "big bad" of the season.

Right before Everybody Hates Chris hit the airwaves, the show was hyped like crazy. Eventually, the hype settled down, so if the show has slipped off your radar, no one can really blame you. However, if you haven't been tuning in on Thursday nights, you're missing one of the best new shows of the season, a perfect balance of real heart and gut-busting comedy. The show is also incredibly well-cast, especially Chris' mother, Rochelle, played by Tichina Arnold (she was "Pamela" on Martin and was also one of the three singers who popped up throughout Frank Oz's 1986 film version of Little Shop of Horrors). She did an interview with TV Filter recently where she confirmed that, yes, Everybody Hates Chris will be one of the shows to survive the move when UPN and the WB merge into The CW. I expected as much, but it was nice to hear it, nonetheless.

(S01E22) This is interesting. The title of this episode is either "Everybody Hates Dreamgirls" or "Everybody Hates Jail," I've seen it listed as both. Odd.

Anyway, last night's episode focused on Chris having to sell thirty boxes of cookies to pay for a field trip to Washington DC. Of course, his teacher informs him that if "his people" can't pay money for the cookies, they can always use food stamps. Meanwhile, both his younger siblings get chicken pox, and their father offers to stay home while Rochelle goes to see Dreamgirls with a friend, rather than going with Julius for their anniversary as they originally planned.

It's that time of year again, folks! Yep, some of your favorite shows are on the cancellation bubble and you can vote on which ones you'd like to see next fall and ones that should go far, far away. It's an annual tradition that sometimes predicts what shows will be renewed and which shows won't. So far you want your Scrubs.

In fact, according to the ninth annual USA Today 'Save Our Shows' survey (say that five times fast) a whopping 61 percent of you would like to see the NBC comedy renewed for a sixth season. Only fourteen percent of you want to see the show die a quick death. Scrubs is a good bet to be renewed for the fall, as long as the network is willing to pony up the increased dough to the show's production company,  Touchstone Television. If NBC doesn't renew the program there is an equally good chance that Touchstone's sibling ABC (both are owned by Disney) would pick up the show.

Six more shows on the USA Today survey have more supporters than detractors: Veronica Mars (UPN), Commander in Chief (ABC), Everwood (WB), Invasion (ABC), Reba (WB) and The King of Queens (CBS). After ABC shelved Commander in Chief this week, there is a good chance that it will not be renewed; Kevin James, the star of The King of Queens, wants a bigger paycheck for the new season; and Veronica Mars and Reba are vying for spots on the new CW network, which will be a combination of the WB and UPN.

What shows have the least amount of supporters? FOX's one-camera comedies The Loop and Free Ride and UPN's Half and Half  and One on One.

 

(S02E21) Can you feel it? That tension in the air like we felt last season, right before the final episode? Everything's coming together, and still we doubt our assumptions. Do we really know who's behind the bus crash? Were we really right in our guesses about Woody and his pervy ways?

While I'm clearly excited to know how everything goes down next week, this is also when I'm sad to realize that everything's about to end, and we'll have another summer to wait through to see what happens next.

Ah, spring! Warm days and cool nights, the sounds of children playing. Short pants and short dresses as the first wisps of summer arrive. It is a time of renewal; except, of course, for the television networks. For them, spring, and particularly the month of May, represents one thing only: season and series finales.

Yep, after a long, hard year it's time to say good-bye to some of your favorite characters and shows as they leave for the summer, or perhaps for good if they are not renewed or are ending their series runs. In place of them will be endless reruns, summer replacements, and Big Brother. May the Lord help us all!

Being the networks, who want to maximize the most viewership and advertising dollars, these finales are not just during one week in May, but are staggered throughout the whole month. Some even leak into the first week of June. This can be very confusing to keep track of and may cause your DVR to have a meltdown. However, fear not true TV Squad readers, because we are here to list the finales of the shows you watch the most. I mean, gosh, we would be remiss if we didn't provide information on the last episode of Lost for the year (May 24th) or the series finale of Alias (May 22nd). It would be just scandalous.

Oh, one more thing before you make the jump . . . if you don't see your favorite show on this list, or want to see when some of the famous May special events are being broadcast (such as The 41st Annual Academy of Country Music Awards) click on this link for a full listing from AOL Television. Okay, all ready? Then, let's get this show on the road.

The May ratings period started last Thursday and, so far, CBS is in the lead. The network is a ratings powerhouse on Thursdays with Survivor, CSI, and Without a Trace. Numb3rs is keeping it on top on Fridays. Of course, FOX is going to take over the lead early this week with 24, American Idol, and House.

Of all the networks, I think I watch CBS the least (okay, if we're including all the networks, I watch The Home Shopping Network the least). I still find myself watching a lot of NBC (Scrubs, Earl, The Office). Because of all those years of great programming in the 1990s, I think I may subconsciously be loyal to the NBC brand.

What do you think is the best network (cable included)? Why?

From the many e-mails and comments we've gotten here at TV Squad, we know that you really want to see Veronica Mars be one of the shows that survives the merger of UPN and the WB into the CW. Many are worried, the show won't be renewed, but not star Kristen Bell:

"We've gotten phone calls and optimism from the people that we need to get it from [CW President of Enertainment] Dawn Ostroff and Les Moonves have been very involved, saying 'don't worry.' They have never hidden their support."

(S01E20) In this age where depictions of sexual fantasies which cover the entire spectrum from mildly titillating to mind-bogglingly depraved are available to anyone with an internet connection, a television episode about a kid swiping his dad's Playboy almost seems like something Norman Rockwell would have painted.

Those of us who grew up before the advent of the internet each have our own story about the time we first discovered our dad's hidden treasure of skin mags. I grew up on a farm and discovered my father's collection of Playboys from the '70s and '80s in an old wooden shed, resting inside a stack of dresser drawers. Like any boy who was too young to really be interested in sex yet, I found the magazines to be equal parts fascinating and repulsive. As much as our parents would try to protect us from such things, discovering those magazines was a kind of rite of passage for many young boys. You didn't know what you had found exactly, but it opened a window into the grown-up world you never knew existed. These days, that window no longer exists. In fact, the whole damn wall has been removed and replaced by an endless digital conduit of smut pouring out of the computer monitor of anyone with the ability to type the word "boobs" into Google's search field. An old copy of Playboy with nothing more than a nude female lounging next to a fireplace seems downright quaint.

Nikki Finke at the L.A. Weekly investigates the new CW Network and the control that CBS President and CEO Les Moonves has over the new combo of UPN and the WB.

Supposedly, every single programming decision and every single business decision has to go through Moonves first, as if he has "sole custody" of the network, according to Finke. She says that under Moonves, Charmed will be gone, 7th Heaven will be back, and shows like Pepper Dennis, Everwood, One Tree Hill, and The Bedford Diaries are on the fence.

A television writer is suing Jennifer Lopez and UPN, claiming they stole his idea for a television show. Jack Bunick claims that South Beach was his idea and it was based on his real-life move from Brooklyn to Miami and his involvement in the modeling scene. Bunick says the season premiere on January 11th was a copy of the script he wrote for a show he called South Beach Miami. Bunick says his show idea was about two men who move from Brooklyn, get involved in modeling and clubs, but struggle fit in to Miami. That's pretty much the current show. UPN reportedly received a copy of that script from his agent, but the network never contacted him about the program. Jennifer Lopez is entangled in this mess because she is an executive producer of South Beach.

(S02E20) Earlier today I put out the call for new viewers to this show that this was their last chance to catch a plot-ruining-free episode this season. For the most part I was right, though I'm not sure this was the best episode for a newcomer to see. There were a lot of inside jokes that might have gotten lost on someone not familiar with past episodes. With that said though, we were thrown so many new pieces of the big puzzle this week to make even fans' heads spin.