What's Alan Watching?

Getting caught up

2009-11-20T08:40:00.003-05:00

Yesterday from around 4:30 on was a particularly busy time on the blog. Not only did I have all four NBC comedies to watch and review, plus a "Fringe" I'd seen in advance, but ABC and NBC announced the respective premiere dates and timeslots for "Lost" and "Chuck" right as I was getting ready to leave the office.

In case you missed any or all of what went down, here's a quick list of all the recent posts:

• "Lost" gets a premiere date (and a new timeslot)

• "Chuck" gets a premiere date, and Chris Fedak explains (sort of) how they'll incorporate the extra six episodes into the 13 they already wrote. (Also, I neglected in either post to link to this video that's both a teaser trailer for the new season and a message to the audience from Zachary Levi.)

• Reviewing "Fringe"

• Reviewing "Community"

• Reviewing "Parks & Recreation" (plus, Amy Poehler's favorite moments so far, from earlier in the day)

• Reviewing "The Office"

• Reviewing "30 Rock"

30 Rock, "Sun Tea": That's a Cosby sweater!!!!

2009-11-20T08:35:00.003-05:00

Quick thoughts on last night's "30 Rock" coming up just as soon as I take a low-volume shower with Ed Begley Jr...

This was the strongest overall Thursday this season for NBC's comedies, and "Sun Tea" brought the evening to a fine close. Not all of it worked, but enough of it did (in that usual "30 Rock" power hitter way) that I was left happy.

Hell, if the episode had been 21 minutes of dead air and just the 10 seconds of Kathy Geiss using Teddy Ruxpin in a suit as her lawyer, I would have given "Sun Tea" my stamp of approval. (I'm easy that way. And note that a more casually-dressed Ruxpin was also in the photo of the Geiss family in happier times.)

But Liz's apartment story felt like a throwback to the sort of thing the show might have done a couple of years ago when the scale was slightly smaller, and it was a nice showcase for Dotcom's alleged improv skills. (I particularly liked, in his list of stereotypical Angry Black Man threats, that he was going to "take things out of context" all the time.) The environment story tied in nicely with both Frank's disgusting jars and the apartment plot, and if the show recycled Al Gore's whale joke from "Greenzo" (while acknowledging they were doing it), it also came up with a funny new joke about the pointlessness of the whole Green Week stunt, with Kenneth nervously eyeing the all-green peacock logo to his right.

Dr. Spaceman's first appearance of the season (if you don't count his cigarette diet book being shelved near "Dealbreakers") wasn't as deranged and brilliant as some past Chris Parnell guest spots, and I'm wondering if Tracy and Jack's desire for children will last any longer than Liz's baby needs did. But Tracy Jr. was on fire, as usual, and they told us just enough of the Charles Barkley/strip club story to make me, like Frank, really want to know the whole thing. And the increasingly strained nature of the tabloid headlines about the Geiss case was a nice background running gag, until finally the last one had to be explained in print ("a pun on disgrace").

What did everybody else think?

The Office, "Shareholders Meeting": Now we're up in the big leagues

2009-11-20T07:35:00.001-05:00

Spoilers for last night's "The Office" coming up just as soon as I feel lachrymose...

Michael Scott believes he is a performer at heart, and "Shareholders Meeting" put him - and the show - on the biggest stage to date. It's one thing for Michael to make a fool of himself in front of the branch staff, or even at a company picnic, but the scale of the shareholders meeting was much larger, both in terms of the number of people present and the potential impact of Michael's blunder.

So while I cringed as he kept talking and talking and talking about all the money the company had spent on him that day, I got an enormous kick out of seeing Michael turn the crowd in his favor by throwing out the kind of meaningless promises and gestures that he assumes you're supposed to use on a crowd this size(*). The DM Scranton people all told him not to do the twirl, but those people in the ballroom ate up that damn twirl.

(*) Michael's performance on stage reminded me very much of David Brent's turn as a motivational speaker on the British show. In both cases, we have men who understand human interaction largely through their consumption of pop culture, and who assume that if they just do it like they've seen in the movies, their audience will love them. The outcomes are different, as befits the two series' worldviews - the bleak British show has David perform to stony silence, while Michael is cheered - but neither gives their crowd anything of value.

Michael's speech also typified his blind faith in Dunder Mifflin - the only real family he has - in that he assumed these people had to either have a plan or have the ability to come up with a plan once they were sufficiently inspired by him. But they had nothing, and for a brief moment it looked like Oscar was really going to help save the day. But it felt funnier, and truer to life, that Oscar would be terrified of offending the corporate elite, leaving Michael there to face angry comments from the top brass(**). And then all that's left for Michael to salvage the day is to get back to the limo before anyone can cancel it on him.

(**) Once again, I blame David Wallace, who is clearly not remotely as smart as he and the other characters want to think he is. Not only has he (as chief financial officer) allowed the company to get into this mess, but time and again, the man places Michael Scott in situations where Michael Scott simply does not belong, and he should know better by now. Michael has a very valuable skill set, but it's a limited one, and every time David tries to stretch Michael beyond it, he gets burned.

With Michael, Andy, Dwight and Oscar dealing with the angry horde in New York, Jim got placed into a more Scranton-sized subplot, as Ryan's d-baggery finally came to a head and required dealing with. Interesting that Jim's solution to the problem - move him to an undesirable new location in the building - was similar to what Michael did to Ryan at the end of "Business School," but even rougher, because Ryan had clearly grown to enjoy and take advantage of being Kelly's cubicle-mate. Ryan's continued employment at the branch - assuming the company stays in business - should be a good source of tension between Michael (who has an unrelenting crush on him) and Jim (who hasn't liked the guy since Ryan's corporate wunderkind phase).

The one part of it that felt odd was Pam suggesting that Jim's incapable of yelling. We saw him yell at Michael in "The Lover," and I have to assume if he can lose his temper there, he's done it at some point in Pam's presence in all the years they've known each other. Jim's laid-back, but he's not that laid-back.

Still, a very strong episode, and I'm curious to see how the company - and/or the show - gets out of this mess.

Some other thoughts:

• Because the show so often does teasers that have nothing to do with the main story, Recyclops was a painless and funny way for the writers to meet the demands of NBC's Green Week stunt.

• Is it me, or was Andy's fake PA announcer voice supposed to be Ed Helms doing an impression of Ray Clay, the guy who introduced the Michael Jordan championship Bulls teams?

• Loved Erin's line about the limo: "It's like what high school kids take to prom on TV shows."

• Of course Dwight has a shirt guy in the Garment District. Of course he does.

What did everybody else think?

Parks and Recreation, "Hunting Trip": The good wound

2009-11-20T00:24:00.000-05:00

Spoilers for "Parks and Recreation" - and if you missed it earlier, go check out Amy Poehler's favorite moments so far (complete with clips) - coming up just as soon as I peg you as a user of mouth tobacco...

"Guys love it when you can show them you're better than they are at something they love." -Leslie

In this very good LA Times story, Mike Schur and Greg Daniels talk at length about the series' growing pains, and the ways in which they feel "Parks and Rec" is different from "The Office." Watching the very entertaining "Hunting Trip," another difference came to mind:

Leslie is very good at what she does.

Now, obviously, Michael Scott is a brilliant salesman, and can occasionally back his way into some clever managerial strategy, but for the most part, he's all hat and no cattle. He talks about being great at things that he's absolutely awful at (comedy, most notably), and the difference between his perceptions and the reality of the situation drives a lot of that show's humor.

Leslie has her own moments of self-deception (the quote above, to name one), but at the same time, she doesn't mess around. She says she's a good hunter, and she is. She can out-shoot, out-drink and out-anecdote any man on that trip - so much so that it starts to become annoying to Ron. And when Tom the unlicensed hunter turns out to be the one who shot Ron, Leslie immediately knows she has to take all the blame, and manages to play into the park ranger's sexism (in one of the better Let's Watch Amy Improvise For Multiple Takes sequences they've done) until the guy buys her story and goes away. And in doing so, she again wins Ron Effing Swanson's respect.

That's another key "Office"/"P&R" split. Ron could very easily be the Dwight stand-in, as they share a knack for saying insane things with conviction, but he's also sensible, and popular, and a good judge of character. He's his own man, incredibly funny at times - as we see when Ron is loopy on a scotch/painkiller combo and refusing to let Leslie and Ann make him puke - but also very likable.

Ron's hallucinatory freak-out was one of several bits of great physical comedy in "Hunting Trip," an episode that also saw Donna tackling Leslie for allegedly wounding her beloved Mercedes, Andy giving piggyback rides around City Hall, and Andy stumbling around the office while playing Marco Polo with April. (And kudos to whoever came up with the inspired idea of making April interested in Andy.)

There was nothing this week quite as hiccup-inducing as Ron's shoeshine or Ron talking of his love of pretty dark-haired women with breakfast food, but overall "Hunting Trip" was another strong entry in this great second season of "Parks and Rec."

What did everybody else think?

Community, "Environmental Science": Tigre, tigre, burning bright

2009-11-19T23:58:00.000-05:00

Spoilers for "Community" coming up just as soon as I rest gently on your pecs...

This was a really strong night for all four of NBC's comedies, and this week I think "Community" was my favorite of the bunch. I'm always more kindly disposed to comedies with multiple storylines if they find a way to tie them all together (see the best episodes of both "Seinfeld" and "30 Rock"), and the climactic sequence here - with Abed and Troy's duet of "Somewhere Out There"(*) accompanying both Shirley's presentation and the Senor/Senora Chang dance reunion - was both hilarious and oddly touching.

(*) In case you didn't get the reference, or why Abed called his rat "Fyvel," go watch the original performance from "An American Tail."

Beyond that, "Environmental Science" was just a nice showcase for virtually everyone in the cast, including Ken Jeong. Jeong was added after the pilot (no doubt due to his performance in "The Hangover"), and there have been times where he's either felt shoehorned into episodes, or else working in a style that's just a little too broad for the room. But he melded very well with Joel McHale, and the opening classroom scene - from pulling Annie, desk and all, out into the hall to lengthening the paper in response to Britta's ass-kissing - was the best of those since Chang's debut scene in episode two.

Pierce got to be right several times (and briefly usurp Jeff's role in the group), Shirley got to give everyone a sandwich, Abed got to question other people's level of reality, and Troy got to squeal like a little girl - a lot.

Strong, funny, very satisfying episode.

What did everybody else think?

Fringe, "August": I drink your cough syrup milkshake

2009-11-19T22:00:00.007-05:00

Spoilers for tonight's "Fringe" coming up just as soon as I add "messy" to the APB...

I've been waiting half the day to write this review, frequently procrastinating on other projects (like the return of "Lost"), even though I watched a screener of "August" yesterday and could have banged it out right away.

Usually, when I struggle with writer's block on a column or blog post, it's because I don't feel passionately one way or the other about something - where I'm writing something because I feel like I should, and not because I really care. (This week's Heather Locklear column was another one that took forever to finish.) And unfortunately, I think that's where I stand on "Fringe."

I want to like "Fringe" more than I do. John Noble is wonderful, Joshua Jackson plays off him well, and the mix of obsolete technology and 21st century filmmaking techniques has led to a lot of memorably creepy images. But I never quite feel as attached to the show as I want to. When the standalone episodes air, I think, "that was okay, but let's get back to the mythology." Yet when the mythology episodes air, I'm still sometimes underwhelmed.

An entire episode about The Observers should have been a lot of fun. And certainly, parts of it were, like the opening sequence with August catching bullets and shooting a raygun, or Olivia and Peter getting a quick-and-dirty lesson about Observer history from the guy at Massive Dynamic.

And there were also some fine emotional moments, both between August and the kidnapped girl he had come to love, and as Walter thought back to how he came into custody of the Peter of Earth-WTC, and as he feared that The Observers intended to take this Peter away from him.

But something still feels oddly lacking from the show, beyond my ongoing issues with Anna Torv's intermittent charisma. "August" told us quite a bit about The Observers, and again hinted at the looming inter-dimensional apocalypse. But at this stage of the series, with an episode like this, I expected to be blown away by this one and it was... okay. Entertaining enough in spots, but still not a sign that the show is taking The Leap anytime soon.

Also, for a race of superhuman time-travelers, The Observers have very poor taste in henchmen. Donald the assassin was meant to be some terrifying killing machine, I think, and yet he lets Peter Bishop get away from him despite having a gun to his head. I know Peter's not exactly a wimp and has an odd skill set, but still.

What did everybody else think?

Chuck returns Jan. 10, take two: Chris Fedak speaks

2009-11-19T18:21:00.004-05:00

Just got off the phone with "Chuck" co-creator Chris Fedak, who was very pumped about the early premiere date, and the fact that they'll get to produce six additional episodes, bringing season 3's total up to 19.

If you've read any of my previous conversations with Chris, you'll also know that the man is incredibly, intentionally vague about anything that's upcoming on the series - at one point in the conversation, I think he started pulling the Chevy Chase microphone trick from "Spies Like Us" - so the following transcript will only be somewhat illuminating about how Fedak, Josh Schwartz and company will be using these six extra episodes on top of the 13-episode story they had already planned, but here we go...

How do you feel?

I'm fantastic. I'm so excited.

Happy to be back in the same timeslot?

It feels like Monday nights at 8 o'clock is the "Chuck" hour. We know that real estate.

And I'm assuming you're pleased to be coming back sooner than originally planned, right?

I am glad to be coming back sooner than March. It's kind of strange to be making a television show and not having anybody watching it. We're doing lots of crazy stuff.

So how are you going to work these extra six episodes into the season? Will you be inserting them into the middle of the 13 you had already planned, tacking them onto the end, telling a whole new story or what?

Right now, we're going to stick with the 13 that we had planned. When we got the order for six more episodes, we restructured the story somewhat, but we're still operating along the lines that the six additional episodes will be "Chuck" season 3.2. We're not going to pad the original story out. We're going to tell more story.

So will episode 13 still end more or less where it was going to when it was going to be the season finale?

Mostly, yes. When you watch 13, you'll get a feel for the big, epic things we're doing. We're telling a lot of story this season. It's all going to be one season. Essentially, it's our ability to tell more story. But it'll still feel like one season. It won't feel like we're going into another season of the show. It's one consistent thing.

How far along in the process are you? Were you ready for this possibility?

Right now, we're in the process of working on the additional six episodes. The good thing is we started (production) early. We're currently shooting episode 11. So we had to be ahead of the curve in the story-breaking process. When we got word, we still had enough time to do what we do at the beginning of the season, which was to ask, "What story do we want to tell?"

And the way you planned 13 to end wasn't going to put you in a place where it would have been hard to tell more stories immediately afterwards, correct?

It was a super-exciting episode, but it's not as if we have to reinvent the show.

I imagine that if NBC had somehow tacked an extra six episodes onto season two at a late hour, it would have been tough to suddenly do extra episodes where Chuck knows kung fu.

That would have been very difficult to do.

So you hadn't planned to do something that extreme at the end of 13?

Hmm... That's a good question. Hmm... I don't agree with the presupposition of the question. So I can't answer that question. But you can quote me saying I can't answer. Hmm...

I think I've already forgotten what my presupposition was.

Your presupposition that 13 could not have been that cataclysmic because we don't have to reinvent the show.

Oh, right.

It's so tightly wound, there's a lot of epic things that happen throughout the season. The six episodes after 13 are very much a continuation, building upon the stories that we're telling.

Now, I haven't done the math yet, but you should have aired around eight episodes before the Winter Olympics begin and take you off the air for a few weeks.

Seven episodes, I believe.

So how do you think episode seven works as the last one people will be seeing until the Olympics are over?

Episode seven is kind of a good stopping point. It's a good place to break for the mid-point of the season. It's kind of cool, I think.

Well, congratulations on coming back early, and the extra episodes. I'm pumped.

We're stoked as well. It's great to be coming back, it's great to be coming back early.

And hopefully there won't be any Obama primetime press conferences on Monday this time around.

Hopefully, not, but you know, we do understand that the President needs to talk to the country from time to time. So does Chuck, though.

Put that video game away! Chuck is coming back in January!

2009-11-19T17:55:00.003-05:00

Still more awesome premiere date news: "Chuck" will be coming back ahead of schedule, debuting with back to back episodes on Sunday, January 10 from 9-11, then airing a third episode in its new/old regular timeslot, Mondays at 8, on Jan. 11.

Still no word on whether there will be additional episodes beyond the 13 ordered, as has been rumored (rumors are floating that NBC may be ordering additional eps of "Trauma," which may complicate things), and obviously the season will be disrupted by the Winter Olympics. But Operation Bartowski is about to resume. Enjoy.

UPDATE: Was just told by NBC that they did, in fact, order six episodes past the initial 13. So we'll get 19 episodes total. Nice!

Put that book away! Lost is coming back on Feb. 2!

2009-11-19T16:52:00.000-05:00

As first reported by Daily Variety's Michael Schneider, then confirmed by ABC, "Lost" will be back on Tuesday, Feb. 2 at 9 p.m. with a two-hour premiere for the sixth and final season. The regular timeslot will be Tuesdays from 9-10.

Several reasons to applaud this move:

1)There is nothing on Tuesdays at 9 that I care about (though "Scrubs" and "Better Off Ted" will be airing there in between the end of "Dancing with the Stars" and the return of "Lost").

2)It means ABC didn't feel the need to hold the return until after the Winter Olympics (which run from Feb. 12-28), or, worse, to air the season in two chunks, one before the Vancouver Games, one after. Not everybody wants to watch bobsledding, but network executives seem to live in fear of the Olympics, even now that they're less popular than they used to be.

3)This is more a personal interest, but it means the episodes (other than the two-hour premiere and finale) will be done airing at 10. The periods when "Lost" has aired from 10-11 have been a killer for me in terms of staying up to write about it. Plus, it means you'll get to read said reviews earlier.

Finally, a reminder about the No Spoilers portion of the commenting rules. Cuse and Lindelof have been pretty stringent about protecting info for this final season, not even letting ABC show any footage of the season before it airs, and I don't want to see any discussion in the comments about spoilers you've read on message boards, or things you've heard from your cousin's best friend who just came back from a Hawaiian vacation, or whatever messages have been transmitted directly into your brain via Walt Lloyd. Got it?

Cougar Town, "Two Gunslingers": Uncomfortable in his sexuality

2009-11-19T12:49:00.001-05:00

Some quick thoughts on last night's "Cougar Town" coming up just as soon as I grow a weird mustache...

After the last episode brought all the characters together for Jules' backyard BBQ, "Two Gunslingers"(*) goes back to segregating the men into one plot and the women in the other. And it therefore consigned the bigger laughs to the Travis/Grayson/Andy story(**).

(*) "Two Gunslingers" is one of the more apt Tom Petty song titles they've used so far, given what initially caused the friction between Jules and her old friends at the beach.

(**) Bobby's off on a "hunting trip," alas, as the show works around the usual budgetary issues that face most shows these days, where only a handful of actors are signed to appear in every episode of their shows.

But the ladies on a road trip to Siesta Key wasn't exactly wasted time. The Christa Miller/Busy Philipps combination is paying real dividends, and I like that the writers allowed the two to find common ground (a desire to protect Jules) without wimping out and turning them into BFFs. And Jules' fake date with Straight Trent was a nice capper to an episode where Jules spent so much time trying to pretend to be something (in this case, 34) that she's not.

Rachael Harris (almost unrecognizable without her glasses) and Alan Ruck (contractually obligated to appear in every post-"Spin City" show Bill Lawrence does, I believe) didn't get as much to do as I hoped, but since these characters live in a small town, I imagine we'll be seeing them again.

What did everybody else think?

Parks and Recreation: Amy Poehler's 10 favorite moments (and one of mine)

2009-11-19T12:06:00.003-05:00

Over at NJ.com, Amy Poehler picks her favorite "Parks and Recreation" moments to date, and I offer up one of my own (you can probably guess what it is), all with accompanying video.

Modern Family, "Great Expectations": Nobody gets off The Rock

2009-11-19T08:50:00.001-05:00

Spoilers for last night's "Modern Family" coming up just as soon as I slut it up with Driving Miss Daisy...

The concept of sweeps months (using November, February and May to help set ad rates for the next year) is outdated and silly, but the networks still pay attention to them because their affiliates do, and that means we get a certain amount of traditional sweeps stunt programming, like bringing in guest stars like Elizabeth Banks and Edward Norton to hang with the "Modern Family" regulars.

Now, I'm always happy to see either of them. Though "Scrubs" never knew quite what to do with her, Banks always brings a spark to the stereotypical girlfriend roles she has to play in the movies, and any chance to see Norton display a lighter side (ala "Keeping the Faith") is welcome.

That said, I thought Banks fit in much better last night. Norton got to wear the floppy '80s haircut and speak in a (mostly consistent) silly accent, but his storyline was pretty clearly an excuse to bring in a name guest star and let him be goofy. Phil and Claire had a moment at the end - and it was a rare Phil story that gave some hints as to why Claire would want to be with him - but it was mainly about the spectacle of Norton doing a private bass concert of Spandau Ballet tunes.

Banks' plot, on the other hand, felt more organic, and the sort of thing the show could and would have done even with a lesser-known guest star. Every new parent, gay or straight, struggles with maintaining a good relationship with their friends who are single and/or don't have kids. It was nice to see glimpses of a less responsible Mitchell and Cam - when Sal asks Mitchell if he wants to feel her new breasts, the usually uptight Mitchell says, "I'm gay, not dead!" - before their paternal instincts kicked in. And Cam's First Child Syndrome theory put a nice bow on the whole thing - Sal's not (that) bad, just understandably jealous.

Frankly, though, my favorite subplot of the whole episode was Jay's Night, which just had a bunch of our regular characters bouncing off each other: Gloria sounding like she's being strangled (and, briefly, sounding like she's about to sing the theme to "The Great White North") as she sings to the baby, Manny crushing on his cousin (and Jay calling him "Jethro" in response), and, especially, Jay's superhuman ability to stay one step ahead of Haley.

They've done such a good job in short order of establishing this ensemble and showing how different configurations of it work that guest stars often seem besides the point. I'm not saying the show shouldn't have them. The Shelley Long episode was one of the best so far, and both Banks and Norton were funny last night. I just want it to be an occasional thing, that's all.

What did everybody else think?

Friday Night Lights, "A Sort of Homecoming": Father of the pride

2009-11-18T22:00:00.008-05:00

Spoilers for tonight's "Friday Night Lights" coming up just as soon as I weed out the serial killers...

"You can't fake boosterism, Eric. Comes from the heart. That's the beauty of it." -Buddy Garrity

I spent a lot of "Some Kind of Homecoming" trying to suss out the timeline. As the show's title tells us, high school football is played on a Friday night, so when Principal Burnwell, at the start of a school day, congratulates Eric on having finished a game "last night," I began to wonder if the East Dillon High schedule is designed to disprove Russell Cosby's old taunt that someone can be "like school on Saturday... no class!" (UPDATE: Several DirecTV viewers told me that the line was changed in post-production to "last Friday," so at least that's one inconsistency fixed.) And all through the episode, I found myself wondering what day certain events were supposed to be taking place on. Why was Devin taking Julie to the area's only gay bar on a school night? Why were Riggins going hunting on a Thursday? Hadn't enough days passed over the course of the episode that we should be close to the next game?

I'm not saying that all those questions can't be satisfactorily answered (some kids do go out on weeknights, for instance), nor that they ruined my enjoyment of the episode. But the weird timeline was emblematic of a sloppiness that "Friday Night Lights" occasionally falls prey to, and that was there in abundance throughout "Some Kind of Homecoming." It wasn't a bad episode, but it was one that felt more necessary (in that it moved a lot of pieces in place) than it was satisfying (because those movements weren't particularly graceful).

I didn't like, for instance, that Matt's motivation for staying in Dillon has now been rewritten to center on his relationship with Julie. When he decided to stay halfway through Mindy and Billy's wedding last season, it was a sad moment, because Matt deserved to get the hell out of this town, but also a sweet one, because it was obvious how much his grandma meant to him. Having him now say (and appear to mean) that he stayed for Julie makes the decision seem both more foolish (because she's going to college in a year herself) and less noble.

Now, Zach Gilford's no longer a regular castmember, and will be getting the Smash/Street Farewell Tour treatment later this season - presumably set up by the death of Matt's dad (who, don't forget, only went back to Iraq because Matt told him to, which will be yet another burden for the poor kid) - so shifting Matt's motivation may make it easier to write him out. But it didn't sit well with me.

Neither did a lot of the Vince/Luke interaction. When "Friday Night Lights" is at its best, it transcends the usual cliches of high school movies and TV shows, but here both their fighting and their detente felt exactly like the sort of thing I've seen a million times before, and not just in Riggins and Smash's arguments in the first two seasons. I know it's hard to introduce two new characters and so quickly have to put them at odds with each other and have it feel real and not trite, but "Friday Night Lights" has proven itself up to that task in the past. Just not here. I appreciate that neither Luke (still hanging out with JD and his punk friends, and quick to judge Vince) nor Vince (more in his interactions with Jess and Landry than in this story) were allowed to show ugly sides this week, but I'd rather the tension between the two of them be more natural.

Unsurprisingly, the best, most natural parts of the episode involved Coach and Mrs. Coach, with Tami continuing to suffer the fallout for sending Luke to East Dillon, and Eric scrambling to create a new booster club out of the alums from the 1983 Lions state championship team. Their combined fatigue led to a couple of hilarious moments - first an exhausted Tami realizing she had just volunteered to cook dinner for the potential boosters (Connie Britton's high-pitched delivery of "Perhaps, I am" killed), then Eric going from terrified to relieved when good ol' boy Buddy showed up at the booster dinner and turned out to be able to connect to his old opponents - but it also led to a nice moment where the alums, and the team, and some of the student body, all came together for the pep rally(*), and we saw that Eric's on the right track in trying to build a community to go along with his team.

Though even there, a detail bugged. Earlier, Principal Burnwell was giving Eric the okay to do a pep rally at the school since it doesn't cost money, so who exactly paid for Virgil to host and cater a gathering this big? Or did Jess convince him to not only loan out the space, but donate all that food?

Again, I'm not saying that the plotting in "Friday Night Lights" needs to be airtight all the time. It's a show about character, and place. It's just that the characters and their world felt as fuzzy as the storytelling for a lot of "Some Kind of Homecoming."

Some other thoughts:

• I'm glad to see that Landry has learned a lot from his time with Tyra about what not to do - and what to do - around a girl he likes. The awkward Landry of season one wouldn't have been able to so confidently plant a kiss on Jess and then walk away like that. (The Landry of season two just would have killed her and tried to hide the body.)

• Speaking of old relationships, Tim and Matt's hunting trip not only provided an opportunity for comedy, with Tim taking away Matt's gun, but also for as much of an explanation as the series is going to give us about Tim and Lyla, as Tim says, "I think we had different paths."

• And as we learn that Becky doesn't have her license yet - which, in Texas, would put her at 15, and therefore helps to explain Riggins' mortal terror at the idea that he might somehow fall into bed with her - we do see that Tim feels bad for his new neighbor, who's been abandoned by her parents just as much as Tim and Billy were by theirs. Becky's mom (and it took me until this episode, when we got to see her in the daylight, to fully accept that it was Alicia Witt playing her) is present some of the time, but clearly not enough. Riggins confessing his heartbreak over never making Miss Texas was another funny, and sweet moment.

• Still more detail oddness: we find the Panthers, due to the Luke Cafferty forfeit, are now at risk of missing the playoffs if they lose one more game, even though the season two team made the playoffs with more than two losses, I believe. Clearly, this is setting the stage for the eason to climax with the Lions facing the Panthers with a chance to knock Wade, JD and the rest of them out of the playoffs, gaining their dignity, if not a winning record, in the process.

• Did we have any evidence last season that Devin (who, as I recall, was a freshman at the time) and Julie are friends? They have a Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon thing from Devin being in a band with Landry and Landry being best friends with Julie's boyfriend, but it still seemed out of the blue for Devin to ask Julie to take her to the area's only gay bar.

• Their trip to said bar did allow Julie to discover that Stan is gay and in the closet. I really hope that this isn't used as the explanation for all of Stan's eccentricities - that he's overcompensating for his secret shame by being so loud and enthusiastic about football - because I think he's a much more interesting character if he's just this weird, gay or straight.

• Vince silently handing Luke back his wallet was funny, but wouldn't the cops have made Vince empty his pockets before they tossed him in a cell?

• JD remains an evil cartoon, but it's interesting to see that Luke continues to hang out with them - and that JD allows this to happen now that Luke plays for the hated Coach Taylor. Obviously, there's going to be more tension to come between Luke's old teammates and his new ones.

• I'm putting aside the "When will Angry Necklace Guy ask to rejoin the team?" question aside for one week, to instead wonder if the point of Jess's love of football will be to have her join the team as a much more gifted punter and placekicker than Landry could ever hope to be. If Kathy Ireland could kick for the Texas State fightin' Armadillos, surely Eric Taylor can find a spot on his squad for the offspring of a former state champion QB.

• A couple of good song choices, as per usual: "White Knuckles" by OK Go over one of the early practice montages, and "Teardrop" by Jose Gonzales over the soldiers arriving at Grandma Saracen's house to stun Shelby and Lorraine with the tragic news.

What did everybody else think?

'The Prisoner' review - Sepinwall on TV

2009-11-18T12:23:00.000-05:00

In today's column, I review "The Prisoner" remake on AMC:

I thought the fact that I had never seen the original version of "The Prisoner" would make me an ideal viewer for AMC's 21st-century remake. Because I had violated TV critic code and never saw more than a few minutes of the trippy '60s series about an ex-spy trapped in a bizarre, isolated community called The Village, I would have nothing to compare the new version to, and no outraged reactions of "That's not how Patrick McGoohan did it!"

And watching the original is far from a prerequisite for the new one. There are nods to the old show (most of which I recognized from having seen a "Simpsons" episode that sent Homer to The Village), but the miniseries stands on its own, and whatever sense it makes — which, at times, isn't much — in no way depends on knowing what McGoohan was up to.

But at the end of the miniseries' six hours, I realized that the reason I had never watched the original "Prisoner" made me anything but an ideal audience for the remake.

Simply put, it's incredibly weird, and I don't do weird if I can help it.

You can read the full review here.

I don't think I'll be doing episode or night-specific blog reviews. As you can see, it's not really my thing.

UPDATE: Bumping this up in case you want to discuss the premiere, at least.

UPDATE #2: Bumping this up one last time in case anyone wants to now discuss the thing as a whole entity, including whether the ending satisfactorily answered the questions. (It explained the wraps, at least.)

Best of the best of the best?

2009-11-18T11:39:00.000-05:00

As we get close to the the post-Thanksgiving, pre-New Year's rerun dead zone, I'm starting to do work on both my Best of 2009 list (which will be a bear, because so many good new shows debuted this year, at the same time that a lot of veteran contenders were still great), and also on a Best of the Decade package that I'm guessing will comprise multiple lists, spanning not only genre (drama/comedy/reality/etc), but also covering things like Best Season, Best Episode, possibly Best One-Season Wonder, maybe Best Import, etc. Some more thoughts on that - and my request for input - coming up after the jump...

Not sure yet. Still trying to suss it all out. But the goal is to spread the wealth as much as I can, because the '00s were a great decade for TV, so no show will appear on more than one list.

I more or less know what most of the series contenders are - and if you've been reading me for a while, you can figure some obvious ones out, like "The Wire," "The Sopranos," "Freaks & Geeks," "Arrested Development," etc. - and just have to figure out how to divvy them up. But the lists for best season (of a show that overall isn't great enough to qualify for a best series list) or best episode (ibid) may require more thought. The best seasons of "Buffy," for instance, were in the '90s, but "Once More With Feeling" (pictured above) or "The Body" might earn a spot on the episodes list. ("Hush," alas, was the final episode aired in 1999, or it would be the pick.)

So I'm curious: if you leave out the obvious contenders listed above (and shows like "The Office" and "BSG"), what are either some great episodes or great seasons from shows that you think merit end-of-decade recognition?

HBO's 'Boardwalk Empire' sets Jersey scene - in Brooklyn

2009-11-18T07:00:00.004-05:00

In today's column, I write about my visit Monday to the set of "Boardwalk Empire," HBO's upcoming drama - produced by Martin Scorsese and Terence Winter, who was one of David Chase's right-hand men on "The Sopranos" - about gangsters in Atlantic City at the dawn of Prohibition. The outdoor boardwalk set (which the story features several photos of, as well as shots of Steve Buscemi and Michael K. Williams) looks sweet.

Sons of Anarchy, "Service": Meet your unmaker

2009-11-17T23:07:00.002-05:00

Spoilers for tonight's "Sons of Anarchy" coming up just as soon as I say things in smaller doses...

"The outlaw had mercy." -Opie

One of the trademarks of "The Shield" was watching Vic and the strike team dig themselves a deep hole and somehow find a way to climb out. Most of the time, though - the final few seasons obviously excepted - the escapes were external and plot-based. Vic would find a patsy, or figure out a way to blackmail someone with influence, and the problem would go away (sometimes permanently, sometimes not).

It's not surprising, then, that Kurt Sutter would spend a lot of time on "Sons of Anarchy" on the SAMCRO members painting themselves into corners, then searching for an escape route. But what's been so remarkable about the episodes this season, particularly last week's and tonight's, is that the escapes (and in some cases, the additional jeopardy) are coming internally, out of character rather than plot.

Gemma heals the Jax/Clay rift by finding the courage to speak up about her rape. Opie finds out Tig killed Donna only because Tig was finally so consumed with guilt that he had to tell. And the inevitable Opie/Clay/Tig confrontation, which we all assumed would end with at least one fatality ever since Donna died, instead leads (for now) to a detente, as Opie comes to realize that he needs the club - and needs to find some inner peace - more than he needs vengeance on Clay, or Tig, or even Stahl. And that decision, in turn, helps save the lives of both Chibs and Piney, under circumstances where Clay might once have shot first and asked questions later.

Before watching "Service," I never would have imagined a circumstance under which Opie, Clay and Tig would all be living and riding together over whatever long term this series has. But because the solution came from the characters first, I completely buy that this could happen - that Jax and Opie, now teamed up again, may find a way to save the club without drenching it in even more blood, and have for now decided that's the best tribute they can give to Donna's memory.

(Or, conversely, Opie may just bide his time for a season and a half, then drop a car on Tig after he, like his old man, gets impatient with the pace of Jax's plan.)

It's pretty ballsy what Sutter (co-writing the script with Jack LoGiudice, based on a story by Brady Dahl and Cori Uchida) does here. "Balm" ends with Jax and Clay making peace, and "Service" opens with the two of them seeming to unite all of SAMCRO to avenge the attack. And just as we're all feeling somewhat complacent and ready to watch the club whup white supremacist ass, Tig has to continue his doom spiral by making out with Gemma, and chooses to punish himself further by spilling the beans to Opie (and then in front of Bobby). The episode still ends with SAMCRO united to go after Zobelle - and to get Chibs out from between the rock (Stahl) and the hard place (Jimmy O) - but it's a much shakier union now, one that no one feels very good about.

One of the episode's quietest scenes is also its most important. As Gemma sits with the priest, he tells her about the value of helping others to help assuage guilt over your own transgressions. Over and over, characters choose to live up to the episode's title at the expense of their own desires. Even before she met the priest, Gemma knew that she had to let go of her pride and fear to tell her men the truth. Tara downplays her career trainwreck because she knows Jax needs her to be strong now. Opie swallows his desire for vengeance to help the club, in the short-term trading his right to be aggrieved for the lives of Chibs and Piney. Clay lets Chibs and Piney walk because he owes that - and so, so much more - to Opie.

But if everybody makes the somewhat noble, community-minded decision in the end, they struggle on the way to those decisions, and the actors - directed by "Mad Men" veteran Phil Abraham - play the hell out of those journeys. I could spend paragraph after paragraph on the way Kim Coates shows how much this has been eating Tig up inside, or how Maggie Siff plays Tara's freak out about the life she envisions with Jax, or how Tommy Flanagan plays Chibs' despair with Gemma, or how Katey Sagal plays Gemma's fear for Chibs (Gemma knows Clay and what he's capable of), or how Ryan Hurst plays Opie's stoic anger, or how Ally Walker handles Stahl's shift from feigning control to realizing she's about to die, or... but in the interest of time and equality, I will just say this: everyone in the cast (everyone) was at the top of their games this week.

And for the second week in a row, this show about these tough men and their violent worlds ends on a scene of heartbreaking tenderness. Tig - who really, really wants to be something other than Clay's blunt instrument, and who has obviously nursed a thing for Gemma forever - points out to Clay that the best thing he can do for Gemma, even more than killing Zobelle and Weston, is to show her that he still desires her. And Clay - who has been shaken to his core by the developments of the last two episodes, and who seems to finally realize he needs to step back and think about things, rather than simply acting on his gut - hears him, and goes to his wife and sweeps all of her fears away as easily as he sweeps all the papers off her desk.

And it's great.

As Dan Dority once told Al Swearengen, we're fixing for a bloody outcome, but what "Sons of Anarchy" has shown us lately is that the show can be just as powerful when restraint is being shown: when it's just a woman telling a painful story, or a grieving man showing mercy, or a husband making sweet, necessary love to his wife.

Only two episodes left in this season. Based on the two we've just seen, they have a lot to live up to.

Some other thoughts:

• I want to see how the Jimmy O and Zobelle stories intertwine over these last two. Jax seeing Zobelle with the Mayans paints such an obvious picture of how SAMCRO is going to take down his operation that I have to assume there will be some more twists along the way.

• It's been implied that Unser feels more than just big brother affection for Gemma, and Tig's aborted makeout session with her only crystallized the idea that all the men of a certain age in SAMCRO's sphere of influence would have some kind of crush on her. Like, of course they would. Hell, even Half-Sack once called her a MILF (much to Clay's displeasure).

• Speaking of Unser, I wonder how big a deal it is that he's unofficially made Hale the acting chief. What exactly is Wayne planning that requires him to surrender the responsibilities of the top job?

• More idle speculation: what are the odds that the clip Opie handed Stahl had any of the homemade bullets in it? I'm guessing not - and I'm also guessing that June Stahl will never, ever tell anyone she knows (let alone any fellow ATF agents) about what happened in that parking lot.

• Interesting to see Tara and Lyla hanging out without incident, or even any real tension. I guess things have now gotten so bad for Jax and Opie that they, like the men, have to put that junk aside.

• Though it sounds exactly like The Rolling Stones doing a country song, the closing tune is actually "Can't Make It Through The Night" by Deadstring Brothers.

As we head into the home stretch, let me remind you about the commenting rules - specifically, the No Spoilers passage, which includes the part about not discussing anything in the previews. Period. Any comment in violation of that will be deleted.

What did everybody else think?

You want some mystery with your logo?

2009-11-17T11:08:00.003-05:00

Ever since I unveiled the blog logo (designed, again, by blog reader/commenter David Loehr), I frequently get questions from people (either on the blog or on Twitter) asking me to either explain the theme, or to identify one or more of the four people (the worst was when a bunch of you didn't recognize Mickey from "Rocky" and I briefly felt older than Methuselah), or about where you can look back at the old ones.

This week's theme was, I thought, fairly self-explanatory (see the photo accompanying this post), but some people didn't recognize one or more of the "Sex and the City" actresses sporting their atypical looks. (If you're curious, here are some brief YouTube clips of Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte rocking said looks.)

After the jump, I have a question about the logos, as well as links and a key to all the logos I've used so far.

So here's what I'm curious about: when, if at all, do you want me to explain who and what each logo is about? Right away, with a post you can click on as soon as you get frustrated? Wait a few days? Right when I'm about to shift over to the next one? Or would you prefer I keep it mysterious for a while, and then occasionally do a post like this one?

Talk amongst yourselves, and here are all the oldies (in most cases, I'm referring to character names, rather than actors):

• The original logo (three summer rewinds, plus Tony) - Dick Winters (Band of Brothers), Ziggy Sobotka (The Wire), Dana Whitaker (Sports Night), Tony Soprano reading The Star-Ledger

• Badass men - Al Swearengen (Deadwood), Sayid Jarrah (Lost), Michael Westen (Burn Notice), Omar Little (The Wire)

• "Mad Men" - Pete, Betty, Don, Joan

• Badass women - Sarah Walker (Chuck), Sydney Bristow (Alias), Emma Peel (The Avengers), Zoe Washburne (Firefly)

• Bald cops - Theo Kojak (Kojak), Andy Sipowicz (NYPD Blue), Frank Pembleton (Homicide), Vic Mackey (The Shield)

• Eccentric rich dudes - Jimmy James (NewsRadio), Bruce Wayne (Batman), Charlie Crews (Life), Montgomery Burns (The Simpsons)

• NERDS! - Doogie Howser, Sam Weir (Freaks and Geeks), Chloe O'Brian (24), Chuck Bartowski (Chuck)

• "EZ Streets" - Jimmy Murtha, Theresa Conners, Cameron Quinn, Danny Rooney

• TCA Award winners John Carter (ER), Saul Mother-Frakking Tigh (Battlestar Galactica), Sheldon Cooper (Big Bang Theory), Betty Draper (Mad Men)

• "Mad Men," take two (complete with "Mad Men" font) - Roger, Peggy, Don, Joan

• Classic sitcom straight men (and woman) - Mary Richards (The Mary Tyler Moore Show), Michael Bluth (Arrested Development), Alex Rieger (Taxi), Dave Nelson (NewsRadio)

• Gender benders Max Q. Klinger (MASH), Jacqueline "Jake" Pratt (Young Americans), Kip "Buffy" Wilson (Bosom Buddies), Tara "Buck" Gregson (United States of Tara)

• Four faces of Ted Danson - Cheers, Becker, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Damages

• Police those moostashes! - Peter Benton (ER), Norman Buntz (Hill Street Blues), Thomas Magnum (Magnum, PI), Sarah Silverman (2009 Emmys)

• Great coaches - Eric Taylor (Friday Night Lights), Mickey (Rocky), Herb Brooks (Miracle), Norman Dale (Hoosiers)

• Mad scientists - Professor Frink (Simpsons), Walter Bishop (Fringe), Dr. Bunsen Honeydew (The Muppet Show), Walter White (Breaking Bad)

• Grown-up girls of "Freaks and Geeks" - Busy Philipps (Cougar Town), Joanna Garcia (Privileged), Lizzy Caplan (Party Down), Linda Cardellini (ER)

• Movie-to-TV adaptations that didn't suck - Oscar Madison (The Odd Couple), Buffy Summers (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Tim Riggins (Friday Night Lights), Karen Sisco (Karen Sisco)

• Canadians - Doug McKenzie (SCTV), young Alanis Morissette (You Can't Do That On Television), Constable Benton Fraser (Due South), Robin Scherbatzky (How I Met Your Mother)

• Aliens - Mr. Spock (Star Trek), Mork from Ork (Mork and Mindy), George Francisco (Alien Nation), Anna (V)

• Military heroes - Carwood "Lip" Lipton (Band of Brothers), Jonas "Snake Doctor" Blane (The Unit), Brad "Iceman" Colbert (Generation Kill), Kara "Starbuck" Thrace (Battlestar Galactica)

• Bizarro "Sex and the City" Sarah Jessica Parker as a nerd (Square Pegs), Kim Cattrall as a Vulcan (Star Trek VI), Cynthia Nixon as Eleanor Roosevelt (Warm Springs), Kristin Davis as Charlotte as a dude (the episode "Boy, Girl, Boy, Girl")

How I Met Your Mother, "The Playbook": Smeet Sme at SmacLaren's

2009-11-17T09:46:00.002-05:00

Spoilers for last night's "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as I focus on my "Star Trek" fanfiction...

"You're a real boy now. You can't go back to these cheap tricks." -Lily

I will say this upfront: "The Playbook" was very funny, as you would expect any episode with this many Barney Stinson scams, flim-flams and bamboozles to be. And it helped that the subplot gave Marshall a chance to be smug for an entire episode, because that's a note Jason Segel plays well.

That being said, at times the episode felt like Carter Bays and Craig Thomas were overcompensating for the return of Barney Stinson: Single Guy as Barney himself was. It was as if they were so frustrated at the challenge of writing Barney as one half of a couple, and/or they wanted to make it clear to the audience why they had broken up Robin and Barney so quickly, that they gave us an episode that was just wall-to-wall jokes about Barney's evil genius at tricking women into having sex with him.

And I have a few problems with that. One, it did feel a little forced, particularly in the payoff with the explanation for The SCUBA Diver. Two, as both Lily and James Poniewozik have pointed out, the show has established that Barney is a real boy with real emotions, who's capable of being in something vaguely resembling a healthy adult relationship, and that's a bell that can't be so easily unrung (or unrung at all).

And three, as I wrote last week, I liked the idea of Robin and Barney as a couple, if not all of the execution of it. I recognize that not everyone shared that opinion, and plenty of people last week said they were relieved Bays and Thomas had brought that storyline to a close. But for me, an episode whose subtext is, "See? This is why we bailed on that couple so quickly!" was as troubling in its own way as all the contrived shenanigans on last night's "House" that allowed the writers to reconfigure the team in the way that they wanted.

Again, it's not that my love of the show is based on whether or not any one couple gets together or stays together. But I thought that pairing had a lot of potential, both comic and emotional, and unless the break-up (and the introduction of future Robin boyfriend Don at the end) is only a temporary stumbling block towards Barney/Robin 2.0, then that potential feels squandered.

Now, maybe the match worked better on paper than it did in practice, and maybe it hamstrung Bays, Thomas and the other writers from making the best show that they could, and perhaps they were right to bail on a fundamentally flawed storyline as quickly as they could. But, like Robin, the abrupt end of that plot feels a little too close for me to have enjoyed Barney's gamesmanship as much as I might have had we gotten an episode like this much earlier (or much later) in the series.

What did everybody else think?

Can Heather Locklear save 'Melrose Place'? - Sepinwall on TV

2009-11-17T07:00:00.000-05:00

In today's column, I speculate about the chances that Heather Locklear can bail out the new "Melrose Place" the same way she did the '90s version.

Lie to Me, "Black Friday": Buyers remorse

2009-11-16T22:00:00.002-05:00

As mentioned previously, "Lie to Me" is a show that, due to its nature, I'm not going to blog about every week, but tonight's episode was a pretty strong one, and I want to talk briefly about why. Spoilers coming up just as soon as I run away to that place where all the cool teenagers hide out...

"Lie to Me" showrunner Shawn Ryan told me at the start of the season that he wanted to focus on character first and the science second, and that he felt the stories would have more impact if there weren't always so many of them per episode. "Black Friday," though, managed to spend roughly equal time on two stories without one diminishing the other, and it managed to work in a fair bit of the science without it feeling like it came at the expense of the characters.

Tim Roth is still reasons #1-17 for watching this show, but it's important to develop the other characters, both as foils for Lightman and so the B-stories are interesting even when they're Lightman-lite. The Black Friday story did a good job of setting up Loker and Torres on opposite sides of the issue, and having Loker do the right thing not because he's necessarily a good guy, but because of the (mostly) inflexible moral code he's set up for himself.

The highlight, though, was Lightman taking the kidnapped boy through the looking glass, and the problem getting increasingly messy as it went along. In that way, it felt like one of the better episodes of "House," only instead of one misdiagnosis after another, we got one incorrect set of parents after another, and the final one was so damaged that the kid started to regret looking at all.

"Lie to Me" isn't a straight crime procedural, but it can be close enough that I appreciate episodes like this one that deny you the pat ending. The electronics store will still make a payout, but people are still dead and they probably should be paying more. And the kid finds his biological father, but all four living parties are all so damaged by the experience that they may never put themselves back together again - or maybe they will. (All of this, of course, depends on what kind of time, if any, the adoptive parents have to serve.)

Strong outing. Again, I don't have a lot of room in my life for standalone dramas, but episodes like this remind me why I make an exception for "Lie to Me."

What did everybody else think?

House, "Teamwork": How to drink supplied worms

2009-11-16T21:34:00.000-05:00

Some quick thoughts on tonight's "House" coming up just as soon as you get rid of my crow's feet...

Wow, that one angered me.

I will say upfront that I don't give a toss about Cameron. Didn't care about her attraction to House in the early years, nor her relationship with Chase. Wasn't trouble by her two years wandering in the Sinai while House assembled his new team. Wasn't ecstatic when Cuddy reassembled the original team early this season. Nor am I that bothered that Jennifer Morrison is leaving the show for a while, possibly forever.

My issues with "Teamwork" are entirely about how awkwardly the show strained to achieve the outcome, and how many characters had to act out of character in the process.

The House of this episode bares zero resemblance to the guy we've been watching this season. It was like "Broken" never happened. He had something he wanted - in this case, keeping as many past/present team members close to the vest as possible - and even if you can ascribe that to his newfound need to make emotional connections, what we've seen this season is a House who's (slightly) less ruthless, (a little) less obnoxious, and (a whole lot) more compassionate as he's tried to do that. This was just House being a jackass, all so the writers could punt Cameron and bring back 13 and Taub.

For that matter, I don't buy Chase choosing the team over his marriage, no matter what kind of psych-ops House ran on him. I don't buy 13 going back to work for House, and/or with Foreman, under any circumstances. Nor do I buy that House would let Cameron rip into him about him having "ruined" Chase when Chase was a spoiled brown-nosing rich kid when the series began, and whatever growth he had as a man came as a result of working for House.

Couple that with Lucas mostly being a pod person since he returned last week, and what you have are a whole lot of creaky machinations by the "House" writing staff. n the best drama writing, the plot should be dictated by what the characters might d; here, the characters were doing things in order to support the plot.

And while I don't really care that Cameron is gone, there's a certain chemistry to the original recipe team that she's taken with her, and in her place are 13, who's still boring, and Taub, whose relationship with House overlaps too much with Chase's.

One bad episode isn't enough to overturn the goodwill created earlier this season, but I'm not feeling very kindly disposed towards the show right at this moment.

What did everybody else think?

Curb Your Enthusiasm, "The Table Read": The Duberstein doppleganger

2009-11-16T06:25:00.001-05:00

Some thoughts on last night's "Curb Your Enthusiasm" coming up just as soon as I recharge the mitzvah...

There may have been funnier episodes of "Curb" this season ("Vehicular Fellatio" comes to mind), but none have felt as satisfying on so many levels as "The Table Read." It worked as an episode of "Curb." It worked as a quasi-"Seinfeld" reunion, and as a kind of DVD bonus feature about what life on the "Seinfeld" set was like(*). It mixed the two worlds expertly, with Marty Funkhouser making an ass of himself in front of Jerry and Jerry letting him do it, and with Leon finally, inevitably, crossing paths with Michael Richards. And it all left a big smile on my face.

(*) The interaction between Julia, Jerry and Wayne Knight in particular seemed exactly like how I imagine rehearsal on that show went.

I loved seeing Julia and Jason both start to realize that there's something fishy about the casting of Cheryl to play George's wife, and the ongoing smug hatred between Larry and Jason remains a delight. And I love that what little we heard of the reunion script feels like actual "Seinfeld" writing. A character getting mixed up with Bernie Madoff is exactly the sort of thing a 2009 "Seinfeld" episode might feature, the dialogue had all the right rhythms, and there were nice little moments like Jerry being surprised that Elaine knows about the Fortress of Solitude crystals. Plus, we got both Newman and Banya! It's clear that Larry (and probably Jerry) put a lot of time and effort into getting the one scripted part of the show right.

I mean, I don't think I would actually want to see this script produced as a real reunion special, but I'm much less confident about that than I would have been before I watched this episode. Where the script for "Jerry!" (the show-within-the-show from "Seinfeld" season four) was deliberately awful, this felt like it had potential. (Though, of course, the fact that we only got snippets, and not the whole thing, no doubt made the material seem better than it would on its own at full length.)

But taken as an episode of "Curb," it also worked. Funkhouser again overstepped his boundaries, as he so often does. The maitre d' gag tied in nicely with the little girl texting story(**), and that in turn paid off beautifully with an oblivious Larry at the doctor's office.

(***) Given that "NewsRadio" briefly aired alongside "Seinfeld" on NBC's Thursday lineup, it was a little odd to see Vicki Lewis not playing herself. But overall, she's definitely lower on the fame threshold than someone like Elisabeth Shue or John Schneider, and if they could play characters last week, then I guess she can, too.

I was a little disappointed in the references to Michael's infamous racist tirade, but more in that it's something I think I'd built up in my head ever since this season's story was announced, and so nothing could live up to that. And I think that Michael Richards as himself is more introverted and less inherently funny than Jerry or Jason are. But Leon doing his best impersonation of a white Jewish man, telling Kramer all sorts of lies about Groats disease(***), was yet another example of the genius that JB Smoove has brought to the series.

(***) Groats is fictional, and a callback to season two's "The Thong."

I have high hopes for next week's finale, but in a way, I feel like I've already gotten the "Seinfeld" reunion (or a facsimile of it) that I wanted.

What did everybody else think?

Fringe, "Of Human Action": Drive, he said

2009-11-15T09:16:00.000-05:00

Speaking of shows that it sometimes takes me days to get to, I only got to watch the latest "Fringe" this morning, and I'm not going to have time to really write about it for a couple of days. So in the interest of letting those who care talk about it, I'll just say that I thought it was a solid episode with some good (but not sledgehammer-y) parallels to Walter and Peter's situation.

What did everybody else think?

SNL: A new Slate?

2009-11-15T08:55:00.001-05:00

I haven't written about "Saturday Night Live" this season because I tend not to get to the show for a day or two, and very little of it is good enough to be worth writing about. ("SNL" can be funny during non-election seasons; this one just hasn't been.)

I did watch a little of the January Jones episode last night, though, and other than noticing how much trouble she was having in the early sketches both reading the cue cards and keeping a straight face, the thing that struck me the most was that they did another Kathie Lee/Hoda "Today" sketch, with Jenny Slate replacing the fired Michaela Watkins as Hoda.

Now, I didn't like this particular recurring sketch - like much of the show these days, it leans too heavily on Kristen Wiig, who more and more seems like she's a perfect second banana being asked to carry a cast with no real alpha dog - nor was I incredibly broken up when Watkins got fired, but it seems like a major party foul to keep doing it without her. Actors leave the show and then other people succeed them as certain celebrity characters that the show has to do (presidents, movie stars), and sometimes we'll see a recurring sketch modified if somebody leaves (Rachel Dratch replaced Molly Shannon on "Delicious Dish," but playing a different character), but this is different. Hoda Kotb is too D-list for the show to need someone to play her; the point was that Wiig and Watkins had started doing this together, as these two women. Just plugging Slate into the same role Watkins used to play both says that the show felt the fourth hour of "Today" was important enough to keep doing, and that Watkins' contribution to the sketch was so minor that anyone could play the part.

"SNL" has been on so long, and replaced so many actors, that I'm sure there's been a similar circumstance to this over the years. But none are coming to mind at the moment, and I feel oddly put out by what they did here.

What do you think? Fair or foul? And has anyone been enjoying the show this season more than I have?