Since there were so many television centric questions in last week's "Ask Nathaniel" insert, I figured we'd have to give them their own Q&A post. We'll get to the movie questions on Tuesday. But for now let's handle all these questions involving smaller screens than we usually go for.
BENSUNCE: Like George Clooney, which current television actors would you see having a successful career on the big screen?
Expecting anyone to have Clooney-sized silver screen success after switching from the small screen is, well, a recipe for disappointment if not disaster. He's a 1%er. Most of the people I enjoy on TV now already had their movie shot and have gone small screen for better / bigger roles than they were getting at the movies. But the current small screen actors I think absolutely deserve and would ace major big screen opportunities are Christina Hendricks and Jon Hamm (Mad Men). On a riskier pipe dream note I hope Harry Shum Jr (Glee) gets at least one romantic comedy opportunity both because he's adorable and because Hollywood really needs to end their strange delusion that Asian men can't be romantic leads... or leads at all.
SEAN D: If you were in charge of the Emmy awards how many nominations/wins would Buffy the Vampire Slayer have received?
I knew talking about Buffy earlier this month would get send us all spinning back in time to Sunnydale. It's always difficult to answer questions like this because so much of what should have been nominated and won in any given year in any given artform is contingent upon the competition that year. But I will say that I think Buffy's second, third and sixth seasons had no business whatsoever not being nominated for Best Drama Series and I think they should have won the Best Series Emmy at least once for Season 3. I'd probably have nominated the show itself for seasons 2 through 6 consecutively though I get why people have issues with seasons 4 through 6. But the standard lines of complaining about those seasons are wrongheaded ("it should have stayed in High School") and short sighted ("it got too depressing!"). In the first short season Buffy The Vampire Slayer was merely finding its footing and establishing its identity and the last season was a badly paced mess with a couple of wonderful moments but the rest is gold. As for writing Emmys, it's inexcusable that "The Body" and "Once More With Feeling" didn't have writing and directing nominations and in both cases you could make strong arguments for actual winged statues, too.
Shouldn't "Doppelgangland" have secured Alyson Hannigan an Emmy nod?For acting the show deserved the following nominations at least (Season #)
Actress, Drama
Sarah Michelle Gellar (2, 4, 6)
Supporting Actor, Drama
James Marsters (2), Anthony Stewart Head (6)
Supporting Actress, Drama
Allyson Hannigan (3,4), Emma Caulfield (5, 6)
Guest Actress, Drama
Juliet Landau (2), Eliza Dushku (3)
Guest Actor, Drama
Harry Groener (3)
TOM M: Which recent film would make the leap to television and prove a MASH-ing success? And which television series has the bones to make a great film?
Crazy difficult question. The mediums are so different despite all the crossover these days. I don't know about M*A*S*H* level success ratios for anything but I would love love love or should I say I would ♥ a series based on I ♥ Huckabees that focused on the existential detectives Vivian (Lily Tomlin) and Bernard (Dustin Hoffman). I would fill my DVR with that nonsense and delete every other show taking up too much room. I could see a series based on Inception working fairly well and I think Scott Pilgrim vs. The World should have been a TV series to begin with.
Nathaniel's dream television series
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Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 1:00PM 
