Inside Pulse Best TV Show Couple March Madness Bracket Tournament 2013 – ABC Region First Round Voting Begins with Top Couples from Castle, Pretty Little Liars, Breaking Bad, Glee, Parenthood, The Vampire Diaries, Boardwalk Empire, Sons of Anarchy, and More

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It’s that time again! It’s the month of March and it’s time once again for the annual Inside Pulse TV Tournament! The biggest and most talked about tournament during “March Madness” season is still the NCAA Basketball championship tournament, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t any room for other tournaments out there. More importantly, there will always be room and time in your life to fill out more brackets that everyone loves. Do you really have anything else better to do today? I doubt it.

Everyone loves brackets and television. We proved that the last three years when we got hundreds of thousands of votes every week in our “Best Show on Television Tournament” in 2010 and 2012, and “Best Television Character Tournament” in 2011. Back in 2010, Chuck was the ultimate winner over Burn Notice. In 2012, The Walking Dead ended up walking over Modern Family for the Best TV Show crown. In 2011, Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory barely defeated Barson Stinson from How I Met Your Mother to win the first TV character tournament. This year we are changing things up a little bit.

Not one successful television show has lived on star power alone. There might have been one name that stuck when a show first started, but if a show is going to survive more than one season, it has to have an ensemble of actors and characters. Every great show has had that in common. More importantly, there is usually a “couple” or a team of characters that are the heart of every show. Without these characters, the show wouldn’t be the same. So this year we are going to crown the “Best Television Show Couple”!

When you think of television couples, you usually think of a great romantic couple. Most shows have a couple of characters that start out as friends or just acquaintances, and they tease viewers with the “will they or won’t they” storyline. As in will they get together or not. But there have been other great “couples” that have been just friends or simple related to each other in one way or another. In fact, you could have hated enemies that would be considered a “great couple”. So in this tournament, you will find all kinds of couples, from romantic couples to family members, just friends and even hated enemies. There are even a pair of identical twins.

It should be noted how these characters were able to qualify for this tournament. First, the show that these characters were on had to have aired a new episode since June 2012. Characters from shows that aired new episodes earlier in 2012 would only be eligible, if that show was going have new episodes in 2013. So some cable and premium channel shows that finished a season before June 2012, but were coming back this year with new episodes, would be eligible. So basically to qualify for this tournament, characters must be from a TV show that has aired a new episode since June 2012, and is either airing right now or will air new episodes later this year.

Now here is how the qualifying characters were selected. First, we looked at all of the shows that were eligible and came up with one or more “couples” that make that show work. It should be noted that in some cases we couldn’t single out just 2 people. So from certain shows there will be 3 or 4 characters grouped together. We felt the relationship between those people were what made the show. So before you ask, in this tournament a “couple” can mean more than 2 people. That means is room in this tournament for “love triangles” and even “love quads” that haven’t been resolved yet. But for the most part, it is just two people. We finally narrowed down the list of couples to 128. Yes, that is a lot, but there are a lot of shows on TV and a lot of couples out there. We eventually picked out the top 32 couples. Those couples were the ONLY ones to actually be seeded. They each get one of the top 8 seeds in the 4 different regions. The other couples were basically placed in the bracket in random order. Some couples had more “weight” than others, but depending on how you look at it, there might be few upsets in this tournament. The only time you could truly call it an upset is if one of the top 32 seeds loses in the early rounds of the tournament.

A few more things before we get to the bracket. Just like the real NCAA Tournament, there were some couples from automatic qualifying shows. They might have been in lesser conferences i.e. networks, but they each won their network tournament to earn a spot in the championship tournament. So you will see a few shows from each of the “lesser” cable networks with a few more from the “upper” cable and premium networks. But the majority of shows come from ABC, FOX, NBC, and CBS. Even with 128 couples, I’m sure there are still some of your favorites that didn’t make it into the field. But the majority of your favorites should be there. Take a look at the bracket by going here:

2013 Inside Pulse Best Television Show Couple Tournament Bracket

Remember, when you do place your votes in this tournament, you should always vote on who is the best TV couple RIGHT NOW. Some of these couples have been around for years, but some are brand new. This is not an All-Time tournament. This is as of right now, who is the best. And remember, what you are really voting on is which relationship is the best for that show? If you took out these characters from a show, would it be the same? If it wouldn’t, that is who you would vote for.

As you can see there are four different regions with 8 top seeds each, and 24 other couples. There are no byes this year, so that means there are 64 matchups in the first round that need YOUR votes! The first 16 polls are below. MAKE SURE TO CLICK THE LINKS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE TO GO TO THE REST OF THE FIRST ROUND MATCHUPS. So the time is now. Tell all your friends. It’s up to YOU to VOTE for which couple you think is the best on TV. Make sure to vote for all the matchups as every vote counts.


ABC Region – First Round Matchups

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Don’t forget to VOTE in the other First Round Matchups:

FOX REGION FIRST ROUND MATCH UPS – VOTE HERE NOW

CBS REGION FIRST ROUND MATCH UPS – VOTE HERE NOW

NBC REGION FIRST ROUND MATCH UPS – VOTE HERE NOW

Each of these polls will stay open for one week. Next week the next round begins and we will
continue until the final TV couple is crowed as the best some time around the middle of April. Remember
to tell all of your friends to vote as well and double check to make sure you voted in all of the polls!

I'm not embarrassed to say that my favorite television show of all-time is The O.C. I live by the motto "you can't fight fate!" More importantly, I watch WAY too much television, but I do so for the benefit of everyone reading this now. So to my mom and my wife, I say thanks for reading! To everyone else that might stumble across this, remember TiVo should be your best friend!