What kind of day has it been?

Blogging's been pretty light the last couple of days, in part due to a lack of interesting primetime stuff to write about, in part due to me having some odd deadline issues, and in large part today due to this happening. A few people have e-mailed to ask what this means for the future of the paper in general and for me in particular, and the answer right now is that I have no idea. But it's been a brutal couple of years in the newspaper business, and I guess we were about due to take a turn in the abbattoir.

Back tonight or tomorrow morning with "My Boys" and "Burn Notice," plus new "Wire" reviews and all the other usual weekend fun.

Sepinwall on TV: The re-freshman class of '08

Today's column looks at how the five freshman shows from last season -- "Dirty Sexy Money," "Life," "Pushing Daisies," "Private Practice" and "Chuck" -- that didn't come back after the strike are planning to relaunch in the fall.

Money can be exchanged for goods, services, or higher ratings

Well, it looks like AMC's $25 million ad campaign for "Mad Men" season two actually worked. The season premiere drew an average of 1.9 million viewers, more than double the season one average of 950,000, and it nearly tripled the season one average in the 18-49 demo. That's still a pretty small number compared to basic cable hits like "The Closer" or timeslot rivals "In Plain Sight" and "Army Wives," let alone broadcast network stuff, but for AMC, it's not too shabby.

Middleman, "The Cursed Tuba Contingency": Randolph Scott!

Spoilers for "The Middleman" coming up just as soon as I enjoy a lobster dinner...

When you do a show as strange and eclectic as "The Middleman," there are going to be episodes where some elements work and others don't. With "The Cursed Tuba Contingency," I really enjoyed the chaste courtship of Middleman and Lacey, which seemed styled less after a Randolph Scott picture (especially a latter-career one like "Ride Lonesome") than to a movie from the '30s, or even the silent movie era. I remain impressed by how Matt Keeslar is able to play this impossibly straight, retro, decent guy without a trace of irony and make him as appealing as he is.

The comedy portions of the episode, on the other hand, didn't quite work. Some jokes felt rushed, like Wendy's cries for help constantly being interrupted by the foghorn, or Wendy dispatching the bad guy before the final commercial break. Others just didn't seem well-conceived, like the villainous Titanic obsessive (played by Jim Piddock from the Christopher Guest movies).

One thing I raised an eyebrow at: there were some complaints in the early episodes that, because the show was on ABC Family, the stories had to be a little too chaste, but there was an extended gag involving Middleman and Dubby listening to one of the thieves have sex. Do you think that joke would have been allowed when the show was still on at 8, or is this yet another sign that ABC Family doesn't care anymore because the show isn't part of their future plans?

(Speaking of which, TV Squad has an account of the show's Comic-Con appearance. Tell your friends to watch, boys and girls!)

Overall, not one of the show's best efforts, but still fun. What did everybody else think?

Pucker up, Buttercup!

So after reading yesterday's Ben Stein-related thread over at Throwing Things, I noticed that one of the HBO multiplex channels was showing "Ferris Bueller's Day Off." This is a movie I need far less of an excuse to watch than coincidence, so of course I dove right in, watching from around Ferris making barfing sounds with his synthesizer until just after they stole Mr. Bueller's cab outside Chez Luis.

Three thoughts consumed me as I watched: 1)I still am amazed that the Matthew Broderick who played Ferris Bueller has been unable to play anything but tightly-pinched, Cameron-esque dweebs for most of his adult film career, 2)I continue to wonder whether, if I first encountered this movie as a 34-year-old instead of as a 14-year-old, I would have rooted for Ferris or for Rooney, and 3)I can't believe that this viewing -- at least the 50th time I've seen this movie, and that's probably a conservative estimate -- is the first time I've ever noticed that Rooney, while standing on the Bueller porch after first hearing Ferris' recorded message, starts to hum "Danke Schoen," which will of course be such a memorable part of Ferris' parade appearance.

So, today's summertime open thread: what is a telling/funny/surprising detail that you never noticed until your umpteenth viewing of a beloved film or TV show?

All TV mailbag: Emmy snubs, background music and more

Today's column has me answering reader questions about people and shows snubbed by the Emmys (including Vincent D'Onofrio, pictured above), plus the return of possibly the most frequent mailbag question I've gotten in all my years as a TV critic.

The Wire, Season 1, Episode 8: "Lessons" (Veterans edition)

Okay, in an attempt to get these season one review of "The Wire" back on schedule and hopefully finished before Labor Day, I'm going to try to double up here and there. So we'll get one review today, and another one in the regularly-scheduled Friday morning timeslot. Not sure yet if I'll double up again next week or a little down the road, as I also intend to take a vacation at some point in August, but we'll get this done close to on time or your money back.

As usual, we're going to do this in two versions: one for people who are new to the series, one for folks who have seen every episode from first to last. This is the latter; scroll down for a version where you can safely read about and discuss only these early episodes.

Spoilers for episode eight, "Lessons," coming up just as soon as I teach my daughter how to front-and-follow...

One of the dominant themes of "The Wire" is the tremendous waste that the drug culture has created in inner-city America. Men and women who might have otherwise gone on to great things -- or, at least, to something resembling the middle-class lifestyle familiar to the majority of the show's audience -- are either deprived of opportunity, or else seduced away from those opportunities, by life on the corner.

Look at the moment where one of the abandoned kids in Wallace and Poot's care asks Wallace for help with his math homework. It's a fairly simple, culturally-relevant word problem about the number of passengers on a city bus, and yet the kid has no idea in how to solve it, or much interest in trying. Yet when Wallace translates the problem in terms of keeping the count on the stash, the kid gets it quickly. Math as a concept is an abstraction that has no real place in his world, but getting the count right? Do it or risk a beating.

And in this episode, Simon and Burns establish Stringer Bell as either the greatest example of this wasted potential, or perhaps the greatest counter-example. Maybe both.

Where Wallace's young charge can only relate to the world at large when it's placed in a drug context, we discover in "Lessons" that Stringer is trying to master the drug world by using knowledge gleaned from the real world. We already had a sense from earlier chapters (notably when Stringer and Avon discussed their plans to take over the Edmonson corner, where Omar kills Stinkum near the end of this episode) that Stringer had more business savvy than your average TV druglord. But the idea that he takes macroeconomics courses at the local community college, or that he insists on running his copy business as a real business and not simply as a front? That's the genius of Stringer Bell, and of the show. In another life, Stringer could have gotten a job on Wall Street, but in this one, he applies principles like elastic vs. inelastic products to catering to West Baltimore's dope fiend population.

There's a very interesting moment late in the episode, after Stinkum's death, where Stringer tries to caution Avon about seeking immediate retribution on Omar. Avon's head is in The Game, where you don't let something like this slide, or even appear to slide, or risk losing face. Stringer's approaching the problem from a more calculated point of view -- his plan still ends with Omar being killed -- but you can also see on his face that he's done a mental cost-benefit analysis of the entire Omar affair and is starting to wonder whether the stick-up man is worth all the trouble.

"Lessons" also establishes that there's more of a connection between the real world and the drug world than Stringer's college classes, as the detail picks up Day-Day Price -- driver for state senator Clay Davis -- with a trash bag full of cash handed to him by one of Avon's soldiers. We don't know yet why a state senator is accepting cash from a local drug lord, and thanks to Deputy Ops Burrell, we may never know. It's worth noting that Burrell's reaction to this development in the case doesn't automatically suggest that Burrell himself is corrupt, just that he's politically astute enough to know that no good can likely come to the department from messing with the business of an influential politician. Regardless of his motivation, Daniels appears to be just as screwed with Burrell as McNulty is with Rawls; if the two of them could stand each other's company, maybe they could hoist a beer over the irony of that.

Of course, Jimmy gets plenty of drinking in with The Bunk in this episode, and Bunk sums up his partner and friend in one devastating sentence: "You're no good for people, man." McNulty has been set up as our protagonist, and is played by the exceedingly likable Dominic West, but by the end of this episode -- by the end of this run of episodes -- it's obvious that The Bunk ain't wrong. Jimmy asking his sons to tail Stringer is the sort of thing that seems practical and amusing to him but is an even bigger parental breach than bringing the boys with Omar to the morgue a few episodes back. And he screws over Ray Cole in order to protect both the wire and Bunk's own murder case, big picture decisions that might be more palatable if he had the guts to be honest with Cole about it. I know Jimmy's afraid of the wrath of Rawls, but own your actions, man. Please.

I'll give Jimmy credit for this, at least: when Omar leaves the detail office free and clear, having made it quite obvious (without ever coming out and saying it) that he killed Stinkum and intends to keep hunting Barksdale people, Jimmy at least has the awareness to ask Lester if they're still cops at this point. It's a mark of the series' measured pace that we're eight episodes in, and the detail only has significant charges against two mid-level Barksdale people -- one of which gets taken away when Omar kills Stinkum. Omar is, like McNulty, a tremendously colorful and charming figure -- and a hell of an investigator, to boot -- but an episode like this, with the murder of Stinkum and Kima's realization that Omar probably didn't directly witness the Gant killing, is a reminder of the shady moral territory the cops enter when they deal with someone like him. Omar puts his life in simple terms for the cops -- "The Game is out there, and it's either play or get played." -- and how are upholders of a strict legal code supposed to operate around that?

Some other thoughts on "Lessons"

-Again illustrating the depth that the show tries to give all its characters, this episode shows two very different sides to Wee-Bey. Early on, we get him out with D'Angelo and the guys at the crab shack, having a good time, cracking jokes and getting made fun of for his affection for the too-hot hot sauce. It's a very humanizing scene -- and then we see him drunk (or high, or both) at Stinkum's party, dragging the barely-conscious Keisha into a bedroom and not even noticing that she died later in the evening.

-Earlier in this season, while discussing the opening titles, I pointed you towards Andrew Dignan's essay at The House Next Door about the series' various credit sequences. Andrew, Matt Seitz and Kevin B. Lee have now turned the idea into a five-part (one for each season) video essay for the Museum of the Moving Image, and you can see it at the Museum's website. As I write this, entries for season one and two are up. The season one entry is fairly newbie-safe, but I would avoid anything after that; the season two entry gives away major developments for both that season and season three.

-At one point in the episode, you can see Bunk reading a mystery novel by Laura Lippman, a Baltimore fixture who also happens to be Mrs. David Simon. This will become a running inside joke on the series, as later seasons will show characters perusing books by members of the extended "Wire" family, whether it's a George Pelecanos thriller or a first edition of "Generation Kill."

-If you haven't made the name connection by now, Det. Ray Cole is played by the late Bob Colesberry, executive producer of the show and the man responsible for much of the series' visual style. Though Jimmy notes hear that Ray's clearance rate this year is good enough that he can absorb the Stinkum whodunnit, for much of the series he's treated like just as much of a clown as Santangelo. In one of the prequel short films that were produced to tease the final season, we see McNulty, new to Homicide, explaining to Bunk that he got assigned to this elite unit, despite minimal training and service time, because he solved a case that a Homicide veteran was screwing up. That Homicide detective? Ray Cole.

-By this point, I probably should be keeping my copy of "Homicide" the book handy for reference. I can't swear that a drunken, guilt-ridden Bunk burning his clothes to get rid of the trace evidence is an incident from the book, but I feel reasonably confident that the book is the first place I encountered the idea.

And now let's talk about how some developments in this episode that will play out over the run of the series:

-Stringer and Avon's debate about Omar is far from the last time we'll see these two friends get into it over watching the bottom line vs. maintaining your rep. Stringer is a criminal who wants to be a businessman, while Avon is a good businessman who knows he's just a criminal, and it's that fundamental divide that will destroy them both by the end of season three.

-I love comparing McNulty's relationship with his sons here versus the last time we see them in season five. Here, pre-adolescence, they revere their old man, even though he's rarely around, and think doing surveillance on some scary criminal type is an exciting adventure. By season five, they're old enough to recognize that all the cool things he does are far, far outweighed by all the ordinary things he fails to do.

-Oddly, I remembered this episode's epigraph -- Omar saying, "Come at the king, best not miss" -- as being not from this episode, but the next one, and Omar recognizing that he screwed up his best chance at killing Avon. I guess over the years, the image of two different sequences with Omar shooting while Barksdale people crouched behind the safety of nearby cars blended together.

Coming up on Friday: "Game Day," in which the detail finally gets a good look at Avon (sort of), while the audience gets its first look, period, at a fella by the name of Proposition Joe.

What did everybody else think?

The Wire, Season 1, Episode 8: "Lessons" (Newbies edition)

Okay, in an attempt to get these season one review of "The Wire" back on schedule and hopefully finished before Labor Day, I'm going to try to double up here and there. So we'll get one review today, and another one in the regularly-scheduled Friday morning timeslot. Not sure yet if I'll double up again next week or a little down the road, as I also intend to take a vacation at some point in August, but we'll get this done close to on time or your money back.

As usual, we're going to do this in two versions: one for people who are new to the series, one for folks who have seen every episode from first to last. This is the former; scroll up for a version where you can talk about everything that's coming in the future.

Spoilers for episode eight, "Lessons," coming up just as soon as I teach my daughter how to front-and-follow...

One of the dominant themes of "The Wire" is the tremendous waste that the drug culture has created in inner-city America. Men and women who might have otherwise gone on to great things -- or, at least, to something resembling the middle-class lifestyle familiar to the majority of the show's audience -- are either deprived of opportunity, or else seduced away from those opportunities, by life on the corner.

Look at the moment where one of the abandoned kids in Wallace and Poot's care asks Wallace for help with his math homework. It's a fairly simple, culturally-relevant word problem about the number of passengers on a city bus, and yet the kid has no idea in how to solve it, or much interest in trying. Yet when Wallace translates the problem in terms of keeping the count on the stash, the kid gets it quickly. Math as a concept is an abstraction that has no real place in his world, but getting the count right? Do it or risk a beating.

And in this episode, Simon and Burns establish Stringer Bell as either the greatest example of this wasted potential, or perhaps the greatest counter-example. Maybe both.

Where Wallace's young charge can only relate to the world at large when it's placed in a drug context, we discover in "Lessons" that Stringer is trying to master the drug world by using knowledge gleaned from the real world. We already had a sense from earlier chapters (notably when Stringer and Avon discussed their plans to take over the Edmonson corner, where Omar kills Stinkum near the end of this episode) that Stringer had more business savvy than your average TV druglord. But the idea that he takes macroeconomics courses at the local community college, or that he insists on running his copy business as a real business and not simply as a front? That's the genius of Stringer Bell, and of the show. In another life, Stringer could have gotten a job on Wall Street, but in this one, he applies principles like elastic vs. inelastic products to catering to West Baltimore's dope fiend population.

There's a very interesting moment late in the episode, after Stinkum's death, where Stringer tries to caution Avon about seeking immediate retribution on Omar. Avon's head is in The Game, where you don't let something like this slide, or even appear to slide, or risk losing face. Stringer's approaching the problem from a more calculated point of view -- his plan still ends with Omar being killed -- but you can also see on his face that he's done a mental cost-benefit analysis of the entire Omar affair and is starting to wonder whether the stick-up man is worth all the trouble.

"Lessons" also establishes that there's more of a connection between the real world and the drug world than Stringer's college classes, as the detail picks up Day-Day Price -- driver for state senator Clay Davis -- with a trash bag full of cash handed to him by one of Avon's soldiers. We don't know yet why a state senator is accepting cash from a local drug lord, and thanks to Deputy Ops Burrell, we may never know. It's worth noting that Burrell's reaction to this development in the case doesn't automatically suggest that Burrell himself is corrupt, just that he's politically astute enough to know that no good can likely come to the department from messing with the business of an influential politician. Regardless of his motivation, Daniels appears to be just as screwed with Burrell as McNulty is with Rawls; if the two of them could stand each other's company, maybe they could hoist a beer over the irony of that.

Of course, Jimmy gets plenty of drinking in with The Bunk in this episode, and Bunk sums up his partner and friend in one devastating sentence: "You're no good for people, man." McNulty has been set up as our protagonist, and is played by the exceedingly likable Dominic West, but by the end of this episode -- by the end of this run of episodes -- it's obvious that The Bunk ain't wrong. Jimmy asking his sons to tail Stringer is the sort of thing that seems practical and amusing to him but is an even bigger parental breach than bringing the boys with Omar to the morgue a few episodes back. And he screws over Ray Cole in order to protect both the wire and Bunk's own murder case, big picture decisions that might be more palatable if he had the guts to be honest with Cole about it. I know Jimmy's afraid of the wrath of Rawls, but own your actions, man. Please.

I'll give Jimmy credit for this, at least: when Omar leaves the detail office free and clear, having made it quite obvious (without ever coming out and saying it) that he killed Stinkum and intends to keep hunting Barksdale people, Jimmy at least has the awareness to ask Lester if they're still cops at this point. It's a mark of the series' measured pace that we're eight episodes in, and the detail only has significant charges against two mid-level Barksdale people -- one of which gets taken away when Omar kills Stinkum. Omar is, like McNulty, a tremendously colorful and charming figure -- and a hell of an investigator, to boot -- but an episode like this, with the murder of Stinkum and Kima's realization that Omar probably didn't directly witness the Gant killing, is a reminder of the shady moral territory the cops enter when they deal with someone like him. Omar puts his life in simple terms for the cops -- "The Game is out there, and it's either play or get played." -- and how are upholders of a strict legal code supposed to operate around that?

Some other thoughts on "Lessons"

-Again illustrating the depth that the show tries to give all its characters, this episode shows two very different sides to Wee-Bey. Early on, we get him out with D'Angelo and the guys at the crab shack, having a good time, cracking jokes and getting made fun of for his affection for the too-hot hot sauce. It's a very humanizing scene -- and then we see him drunk (or high, or both) at Stinkum's party, dragging the barely-conscious Keisha into a bedroom and not even noticing that she died later in the evening.

-Earlier in this season, while discussing the opening titles, I pointed you towards Andrew Dignan's essay at The House Next Door about the series' various credit sequences. Andrew, Matt Seitz and Kevin B. Lee have now turned the idea into a five-part (one for each season) video essay for the Museum of the Moving Image, and you can see it at the Museum's website. As I write this, entries for season one and two are up. The season one entry is fairly newbie-safe, but I would avoid anything after that; the season two entry gives away major developments for both that season and season three.

-At one point in the episode, you can see Bunk reading a mystery novel by Laura Lippman, a Baltimore fixture who also happens to be Mrs. David Simon. This will become a running inside joke on the series, as later seasons will show characters perusing books by members of the extended "Wire" family, whether it's a George Pelecanos thriller or a first edition of "Generation Kill."

-If you haven't made the name connection by now, Det. Ray Cole is played by the late Bob Colesberry, executive producer of the show and the man responsible for much of the series' visual style. Though Jimmy notes hear that Ray's clearance rate this year is good enough that he can absorb the Stinkum whodunnit, for much of the series he's treated like just as much of a clown as Santangelo. In one of the prequel short films that were produced to tease the final season, we see McNulty, new to Homicide, explaining to Bunk that he got assigned to this elite unit, despite minimal training and service time, because he solved a case that a Homicide veteran was screwing up. That Homicide detective? Ray Cole.

-By this point, I probably should be keeping my copy of "Homicide" the book handy for reference. I can't swear that a drunken, guilt-ridden Bunk burning his clothes to get rid of the trace evidence is an incident from the book, but I feel reasonably confident that the book is the first place I encountered the idea.

Coming up on Friday: "Game Day," in which the detail finally gets a good look at Avon (sort of), while the audience gets its first look, period, at a fella by the name of Proposition Joe.

What did everybody else think?

Mad Men, "For Those Who Think Young": Get off my lawn!

Spoilers for the "Mad Men" season two premiere, "For Those Who Think Young," coming up just as soon as I take off my hat...

"Young people don't know anything -- especially that they're young." -Don Draper

Among the many subjects of "Mad Men" is the great generational divide of the 1960s, as seen through the eyes of a company about to end up on the wrong side of it. But what I've always found fascinating is that the show's hero (of sorts) isn't presented as the lone voice trying to convince his colleagues that a change is gonna come, but one of the guys trying to hold back the tide. Sure, Don's more enlightened about women (to an extent; Peggy or Midge might agree with that notion, but Betty wouldn't if she were self-aware enough to understand it) and minorities. But he wants no part of this new cultural shift. During the presidential election last season, he (and the show) identified himself with Nixon, while the loathsome Pete -- who also happens to have a better handle on these new trends than any other character -- was held up as the Kennedy analogue.

Even if Don hadn't just had a physical where the doctor, in Don's eyes, all but handed him a walker and told him to get ready for the retirement home, I imagine he would have resisted Duck Phillips' request to hire on some younger copywriters. Don has always resisted the flash of the new. His entire career is built on older values. Again and again, he's given chances with his ad campaigns to look forward, and again and again he chooses to look back. That's what "The Wheel" was about: rather than play up the technological aspect that the Kodak people wanted, Don went for an old-school -- and, I should say, brilliant -- tug for the heartstrings.

What I love about "Mad Men" is the double-edged nature of its take on the period. On the one hand, the series takes great delight in highlighting all the behavior of the time that would and should be unacceptable today -- as John Slattery put it at the TCA Awards, "the show's message of drinking and smoking and whoring." On the other, the nostalgia that Don talked about in "The Wheel" is very real. The series has a very classical storytelling style, eschewing quick cuts and busy plots in favor of a leisurely pace that wouldn't seem inappropriate in a film from 1962, and you can tell that Weiner is no fan of today's youth-driven culture, where every movie is targeted at 14-year-old boys, and where every piece of entertainment has to be as loud and obvious as possible.

And even within that subject, there's a grey area. Yes, it's wonderful that Don can come up with a campaign like the Carousel, or even the "What did you bring me, Daddy?" ad he inspires Peggy to write. But the future isn't all bad, and Don's resistance to it -- not just to youth and technology, but to irony ("There has to be advertising for people who don't have a sense of humor") -- is going to bite him sooner or later, if it hasn't already.

Don's mid-life crisis -- and in 1962, 36 was considered middle-aged -- takes up a good amount of the season two premiere, but there's also plenty of time to catch up with the characters -- to a point. I love the use of "Let's Twist Again" for the opening montage, not just because it evokes Peggy dancing for Pete to the original "Let's Do the Twist" in season one's "The Hobo Code," or because the "like we did last summer" is a meta comment about how much we all enjoyed season one, but because it's a reminder that 1962 is still just as much a part of the '50s as it is the '60s. The jump ahead 15 months from "The Wheel" brings some changes, but they're still subtle. The '60s as we know them won't be arriving for several years yet.

We get hints of what happened during that 15-month gap: Peggy disappeared for three months after giving birth, and no one knows why; Roger and Joan have stayed broken up and she's getting serious with a doctor; Harry patched things up with his wife somehow and now they're expecting a baby, to the chagrin of Pete's wife, who still can't conceive after all this time (and who doesn't know that her husband is more than capable of getting a woman pregnant); Salvatore has gotten married (that's his wife; check the credits) in his quest to run away from who he really is; and Don and Betty have reached some kind of understanding where he makes more of an effort, even if the sight of January Jones in that underwear still doesn't do it for him

Don's equipment failure on Valentine's Day frustrates and confuses Betty, and so she decides to imitate her roommate-turned-hooker pal Juanita and see if she can't use her sexuality to get things from other men. Betty being Betty, she does it in the most childlike way possible, not thinking through the implications or dangers, and there's a moment as she stands on that dark and empty road with the mechanic and he realizes he's not actually going to get lucky in exchange for a fan belt where I began to fear for her safety. Just as Don walking with the briefcase toward his brother's room in "5G" briefly made us wonder if he had a gun in there, I worried for a moment or three if the mechanic might forcibly make Betty honor their unspoken agreement.

Peggy's situation is more of a mystery. We know she disappeared for three months and came back much skinnier, and we know that none of the junior-level guys know what happened. (Pete's "Fat farm! I thought we had verification!" was priceless.) But whatever happened to the baby, somebody high up at Sterling-Cooper -- most likely Don, with a very outside chance of Joan -- has to know in order to cover for her. No secretary-turned-copywriter gets to vanish for three months the Monday after getting the promotion and still keep her job without help from above.

Regardless of what happened after the birth, Peggy has thrown herself full-bore into her new role. She views herself as equal with the other junior execs, even though they don't. She and Don work well together creatively, and you can tell he clicks more with her than he ever has with Paul or Freddy Rumsen. She tries to separate herself from secretarial duties (when Ken asks Peggy about the glasses in the conference room, she avoids answering him) and makes Don's new secretary cry over what was probably an innocent remark.

The premiere closes with yet another mystery, as Don reads some of the poetry from "Meditations in an Emergency" -- his one attempt to connect with the future, though it may have just started as his attempt to prove the beatnik wrong when he told Don he wouldn't like it -- and then marks a particular passage "Made me think of you," puts it in an envelope and mails it to a person unknown. Is he back in touch with Midge? I can't imagine Rachel Mencken giving him the time of day after she got a look at the face of Dick Whitman, though I suppose this could be Don trying to make a peace offering. Or has yet another bold and clever brunette appeared on his radar during the time that we were away?

Matt Weiner has said that we're going to find out everything in due time; I'm more than willing to wait when the episodes are this strong.

Some other thoughts on "For Those Who Think Young":

-I like that, once again, we're reminded that age is a relative thing. Paul isn't that much older than the two guys Don brings in to interview, but he's always strived to look and act older than he is, as he grew up in a time just before youth became the be-all and end-all of the culture. (I also loved his dismissive "You don't count" when Peggy pointed out that she's only 22.)

-As soon as the doctor mentioned Don's age, I started wondering whether Don was actually 36, or if that was the age of the real Don Draper, who was presented as being a bit older than Dick Whitman. Matt Weiner says that this is how old our Don is; in the less bureaucratic period, I imagine fake Don would have an easier time using some of his own statistics instead of having to stick closely to the real Don's life story.

-Even before the boys start chattering about Peggy's miraculous weight loss, the entire scene with everybody waiting for Don was hilarious, particularly Freddy Rumsen hollaring about the "unspoken agreement" that he be allowed to be at the bar by noon. An awful lot of things are assumed but never said on this show.

-The arrival of the Xerox is yet another harbinger of the future, but here it was mostly used as a punchline for the ongoing war between Joan and Peggy, as Joan sticks the enormous thing in Peggy's office as punishment for making Lois cry. I like that Joan can herself get annoyed with Lois for crying in the break room ("which I have specifically forbidden") and yet use her as an excuse to go after the annoying Peggy. Nobody makes fun of my sister but me, right?

-Getting back to the Kennedys, we spend an interlude in the middle of the episode with the characters watching Jackie give a televised tour of the White House, with the characters all projecting their own anxieties onto her. These are the Kennedys before Dallas, before JFK and Jackie both became universally revered, and it's nice to see how people actually reacted to them in those early days of Camelot.

-Good to have Anne Dudek back as Francine, who obviously had her baby during the break and, like Harry's wife, reluctantly agreed to go on with her marriage even in the face of her husband's infidelity. Amber/CTB may be gone from "House," but Dudek's still around.

-Nice little moment where the Draper nanny declines a ride to the train station from Don after seeing him with a glass in his hand. Not everyone in the period was okay with the level of drinking.

-When the chipmunks were all discussing the Don vs. Duck feud and Pete said, "No one makes Don Draper do anything," there was equal parts frustration and awe in his voice. As bad as it had to hurt to fail in his blackmail attempt, and to suffer Don's obvious contempt for him, there's a part of Pete that still really admires the guy and desperately seeks his approval. Of course, compared to his father, Don's treatment of Pete is almost friendly.

-Interesting that Roger is back to something resembling full duty -- and John Slattery is no longer being billed as a Special Guest Star, but as a member of the regular cast -- and yet Duck remains. I'm glad, though, as I think Mark Moses adds a different color to the show; I quite liked his frustrated delivery of "You know, there's other ways to think of things than the way you think of them" to Don.

What did everybody else think?

Generation Kill, "Screwby": Camel killer

Spoilers for episode 3 of "Generation Kill" coming up just as soon as I track down a photo I loaned out...

I'm running out of things to discuss in these weekly reviews, not because I'm losing interest in "Generation Kill," but because each episode is very much of a piece with the whole miniseries, and there are only so many ways I can analyze the dysfunctional relationship between command and the troops.

That said, there are two events in "Screwby" worth discussing.

The first is the decision to abandon the town where the locals claimed to be ready, willing and able to lead Fick and the others to hidden weapons and members of the Republican Guard. For all we know -- and Fick freely acknowledges this -- the informant could have been a liar just looking to get revenge on some local rivals. (He does, after all, promise to lead Fick to a chemical weapons cache.) But by rolling out quickly and leaving the guy with nothing but chem lights, they'll never know, will they? One of the fundamental complaints critics of the war have had with our invasion strategy was that we were in such a tearing hurry to knock over Saddam's army and get to Baghdad that we didn't properly ferret out all the bad actors who would wind up in the insurgency. In the book, Godfather talks to Evan Wright for a while about how he didn't understand why they weren't taking their time in each town to separate enemies from allies and do a better job at winning hearts and minds. The quick-strike invasion itself was a huge success, but it was like digging a tunnel without pausing to erect supports along the way: you'll get to the other side, but everything's going to collapse behind you.

(Though Godfather was obviously wise about what we should have been doing along the way, he makes one of the most bone-headed decisions of the story when he orders the abandonment of the company's supply truck just because he was in such a hurry to go capture the airfield and impress General Mattis.)

The other notable event is Trombley shooting the kid and the aftermath. Trombley is, in some ways, the most important character in the book. More than anybody else, he symbolizes Wright's definition of what Generation Kill is all about: a young man weened on video games, excited to go out and get some regardless of the target or the value of the mission. In the book, he often comes across like a sociopath, and you can tell that's the reason, and not his relative lack of training, that makes the other Marines dislike him so much. Even in an alpha male group like this, Trombley was too gung ho, you know?

The way Billy Lush plays Trombley doesn't really invalidate that interpretation, but he deepens the character as written on the page. Lush's Trombley still isn't someone I would likely want to spend time with, but there's this odd sweetness to the performance that I wasn't expecting, that humanizes Trombley without betraying Wright's portrait of him. That moment where he asks Colbert if he -- Colbert, not himself -- is going to be okay because of the shooting incident showed tremendous self-awareness at the same time it showed that Trombley wasn't remotely as troubled by what happened as Colbert was.

Feel free to talk about any or all of the other incidents in "Screwby" -- Fick risking his career to prevent the idiotic Encino Man from dropping a bomb on his own troops, or the village getting destroyed entirely because two different units didn't have the same comms, or Captain America's latest idiocy -- but even though I continue to enjoy "Generation Kill," I find myself at a loss for things to write about it each week.

What did everybody else think?

Sepinwall on TV: 'Mad Men' season two preview

Today's column looks at season two of "Mad Men" through the eyes of the production team responsible for the look of Don, Betty, Peggy, Joan and company:

LOS ANGELES - The ashtrays at Sterling-Cooper are full.

This should come as no surprise to anyone who watched the first season of AMC's "Mad Men," in which the executives who work at this fictional early '60s ad agency drink, eat, have sex and, especially, smoke to excess. But it's still startling, in 2008, to witness the mountain of half-smoked cigarette butts in one of the many ashtrays that ring the set in the show's studio.

It even troubles the "Mad Men" production team, albeit for different reasons.

"Sometimes they kind of bug me because they're messy," says the show's set decorator, Amy Wells. "We have these long discussions about how many cigarettes they would really allow to be left, and they go, 'Well, if you're smoking so many packs a day, and if you have this many people smoking...' and I go, 'Yeah, but they would clean out the ashtray!'"

That kind of argument isn't uncommon on the "Mad Men" set, where the production team sweats every detail in order to create the world of Sterling-Cooper and its people.

To read the full thing, click here. I have an episode one review ready to go for 11 o'clock, so check back then to talk about the premiere.

What's happening in the world?

Okay, I'm starting to feel adjusted to the old time zone, as I was able to get to sleep at a normal time without pharmaceutical aid and was able to wake up at a normal time without feeling like it was the middle of the night. And as I get back into the swing of things, it's time to catch up on some interesting TV news and links from the last few days, including the end of "Tell Me You Love Me," the re-casting of Gene Hunt on "Life on Mars," some "Dr. Horrible"-related goodness, and more, after the jump...

• When HBO renewed "Tell Me You Love Me" in spite of low ratings and predominantly savage reviews (even people like me who really dug the Ally Walker/Tim DeKay storyline hated the rest of it), it seemed an odd move by a channel still searching for a post-"Sopranos" direction. Even as recently as two weeks ago, the heads of HBO were defending the renewal on the basis of the show being cost-effective and attractive to an upscale, albeit small, audience. And now they've pulled the plug, because creator Cynthia Mort and her team were "unable to find the direction of the show for the second season." If we take the decision at face value -- as opposed to, say, new exec Sue Naegle convincing her new bosses that they had made a mistake with the renewal -- I can see where Mort is coming from. The Walker/DeKay story, the one that got the show most of its praise, had reached something of a conclusion, and all three storylines (Sonya Walger/Adam Scott in particular) were in danger of just repeating the same arguments over and over.
  
• At the press tour session for "Life on Mars," I noted that Colm Meaney as Gene Hunt -- the racist, sexist, brutal 1973 lead detective -- was one of the few bits of casting of the original version of the pilot that seemed to match the original, and asked the producers what they were looking for. Andre Nemec said they wanted somebody with the same qualities as original actor Philip Glenister -- "He had a charm, and he had a passion, and he had a strength, and he had an animal quality to him -- he was a bit of a bear" -- and they may have actually gotten their man with the casting of Harvey Keitel in the role. Assuming Keitel takes the part seriously -- I can think of plenty of movie actors who treated their first regular TV job as little more than a paid vacation -- he could bring all the Glenister qualities without just seeming like a copy. I still don't think this works as an ongoing American-length series, but the casting of Keitel (and before him, Michael Imperioli as Ray) is at least interesting.
• There was a "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog" panel at Comic-Con, but if you, like me, weren't in San Diego, you can read EW's oral history of the project.
• Nikki Finke says that this year's Emmys will be hosted by all five nominees in the best reality host category: Ryan Seacrest, Tom Bergeron, Heidi Klum, Jeff Probst and Howie Madel. If true, it shows that the Emmy producers didn't actually watch last year's Seacrest-hosted ceremony, which was unwatchable. I said it back then and I'll repeat it now: the qualities that make someone a good reality show host (and Seacrest is actually really good at it) do not translate into being a good host of an awards show, where most of all you need somebody who is going to be funny and liven things up in the middle of all the "And now I'd like to thank my 17 attorneys" acceptance speeches. (Somebody like, say, "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" co-star Russell Brand, a not-so-big name who I suspect will do very well as host of the VMAs on MTV.) Are they also planning to repeat last year's disastrous Emmys-in-the-round format?

Doctor Who, "The Stolen Earth": Rose has got a gun

Brief spoilers for "Doctor Who" coming up just as soon as I find out why the Shadow Proclamation is so poorly-lit...

It's been a hallmark of -- and a source of criticism for -- the Russell T. Davies era of "Doctor Who" that each season ends with an apocalyptic showdown between The Doctor and one of his classic villains, with the fate of the Earth in the balance, and the threat level rising each year. So for his final finale, Davies ups the stakes yet again, with the Daleks (and their creator, Davros, last seen in the original series) relocate not only the Earth, but a couple dozen other planets from across time and space, and the threat is so big that all of The Doctor's allies from past seasons and present spin-offs -- Rose, Martha, Captain Jack and the Torchwood team, Sarah Jane and Luke, and even Harriet Jones (RIP) -- have to show up to help out.

And, as if that wasn't enough, Davies has to go and freak the whole world out by ending the episode with The Doctor getting shot only seconds before having a huggy reunion with Rose and starting to regenerate.

(And because of that cliffhanger, I'm going to put the usual warning about not discussing, or even hinting at, episodes that haven't aired in America yet, way up high. Do not, under any circumstances, make any reference to what happens in the season finale. I'm just going to delete any comments that are remotely suspect, and all you'll accomplish is annoying me.)

But what does all this noise, all these characters, all this danger really accomplish? Cool as it was to see Captain Jack hit on Sarah Jane, or Rose meeting Donna's parents, or The Doctor and Rose finally getting a good look at each other, this episode didn't have half the emotional impact for me of the stand-alone, FX-minimal, narratively-spare "Midnight" from a couple of weeks back. I know Davies loves these over-the-top finales, but I really don't think that's where his strengths lie.

I would ask for guesses on what's going to happen next, but I wonder if at this point there's anybody out there reading a blog entry about "Doctor Who" who hasn't already cheated and watched "Journey's End." If you exist, fire away, as there's an awful lot to speculate about.

One additional reminder: because the finale is extra-long, Sci Fi will start airing it at 8:30 Eastern next week, not 9. If you don't DVR it and intend to watch it live, plan accordingly.

What did everybody else think?

Burn Notice, "Trust Me": Never con a con man?

Spoilers for "Burn Notice" coming up just as soon as I renew my "Cat Fancy" subscription...

Got this e-mail from a reader a few minutes after the episode ended:

I read your review of Burn Notice- just wondering- do you not detect that season 2 has lost it’s “snap”? Your review suggested that you saw season 1. With season two, it drags in places, the lines are not crisp, stories have been hokey, not nearly as much of the “how-to” overlays, and there’s more silliness, and now even gory violent deaths. It seems to me, just an average joe (or joe ann, as the case may be) viewer, that there has been a loss of someone key from last year. Some part of the show’s essence is gone.

This isn't the first complaint I've seen that season two is in some way a disappointment compared to season one, but I'm not seeing it. Not yet, anyway.

In some ways, in fact, I'd call this year an improvement. Now that the characters and premise are firmly established, the writers have dropped the idea that Sam can't stand Fiona and vice versa, and it's been fun watching the two of them and Michael work so well together -- and take such pleasure in their work. (Dig the smile on Bruce Campbell in that picture above.) And letting Michael's mom in on his work life -- or, at least, acknowledging that she knew about it -- has made that character much more palatable and interesting.

As for "Trust Me" in particular, I don't know that I loved the way the counter-con worked out -- given all the set-up about how Michael would have a five-minute window for the money to remain in the account, I expected the scam to depend on that window -- but overall, I enjoyed the story, and particularly Michael getting the loanshark the lifetime magazine subscription to remind him not to mess with somebody's mom.

And I really enjoyed all the steps in using the Pakistani spy to get some dirt on Carla. At first, I questioned why Michael, impersonating a newspaper reporter, would be using an actual newspaper as a prop (I don't tote copies of The Star-Ledger with me to interviews in lieu of a business card), but then realized it was there to hide the stolen documents. Carla's not going to be back until later this season, but it's important that her presence hangs over Michael even when she's not there.

So, for now, I'm satisfied. What does everybody else think?

My Boys, "Opportunity Knocks": I can't believe it's not margarine!

Brief "My Boys" spoilers coming up just as soon as I smash a guitar...

Not crazy about this one, other than the writing of Mike, and some of Bobby's panic about the seating chart. This was the first episode all season where Mike didn't seem mentally-challenged, or so obnoxious that the gang should have performed some kind of intervention, and the "profit margarine" joke" was both really funny and the kind of natural-sounding banter the show hasn't used as much lately. And Bobby's whole "There's a system!" mantra and insistence on getting the RSVP cards by mail rang very true.

But the rest of it? Meh, at best.

Martin Mull was sort of amusing as the self-involved therapist, but that storyline completely glossed over the suggestion that Andy was on the verge of an affair with Jo, or that his marital problems were in any way Jo-related. The punchline to the Mafia/ticket story felt cheap and sitcommy, and I got tired of the parallels between PJ and Brendan's situation about five minutes in.

They've done better, and hopefully they will again. What did everybody else think?

Welcome to *&^%'in' press tour! It can get combative.

Taking a few days off to recover from press tour (among other things, every item of clothing that I regularly wear needs to be washed), but enough people have requested details of the Ian McShane incident I alluded to a couple of days ago. I would write it up myself, but Joel Keller at TV Squad did such a fine job of capturing the spirit of the thing that I can just link to his account. Between McShane and Selma Blair, it was that rare final full day of press tour where the stars were more hostile than the overtired reporters.

Possibly back tomorrow night with a "Doctor Who" review and definitely back Sunday morning with the big "Mad Men" feature I've been working on, folowed that night by a review of the season premiere.

Press tour bonus: Joss Whedon talks 'Dollhouse'

Okay, I lied. One final press tour-related blog entry. (Yeah, like you can sleep easily the night before a big trip.)

One of today's set visits was to "Dollhouse," and last night, one of the Fox publicists sent us a link to a Joss Whedon-written blog entry explaining that -- as happened with "Firefly," also by Whedon, also for Fox -- the original "Dollhouse" pilot was going to air later in the season rather than as the first episode. It's a very funny, very thorough explanation -- Joss is both very funny and very thorough in general -- and I strongly suggest you go take a gander at it, and then after the jump I'll add some additional information and some excerpts from the one-on-one interview I did with Joss after the set visit.

Again, I remember the scheduling idiocy with "Firefly," but the two situations don't sound the same. They sound almost opposite, in fact, as the episode switcheroo on "Firefly" made the show almost incompreshensible, where this one is designed to make the strange world make more sense. So I'm willing to trust Joss on this one and see what happens.

The set for "Dollhouse" -- and, in cse you didn't know, the show stars Eliza Dushku as a woman employed by an underground, highly illegal group that wipes her memory and personality and routinely replaces it with other personas so she can perform various services for extremely wealthy clients -- was just as amazing at first glance as the "Serenity" set was when we toured it back in summer of '02.

After Joss and Eliza showed the place off, they sat down for a brief press conference. Joss explained that the show was inspired by a career pep talk he gave her last summer where he tried to tell her all the different kinds of parts she could play, and she talked about how directors and producers usually think they know what's best for her and try to impose their idea of her screen persona onto her. And Joss insisted, again, that the new pilot situation isn't really analagous to "Firefly."

When that was done, I stuck around to do a quick solo interview. I'll be saving a good chunk of it for much closer to when the show debuts in January, but here are the timeliest excerpts, about both the scheduling situation and some of the broad strokes of what we can expect from the series:

It was funny reading your blog entry -- not just because the jokes were good, but because you were basically able to predict every single reaction the fans were going to have, we were going to have, to this. You really don't need any of us anymore, do you? You can do this on your own.

And I really asked myself the tough questions.

I knew that if this came out without me explaining it, that it would cause panic in certain circles or just give the show this air of, (whiny Gilbert Gottfried voice), 'Oh, it's not doing well. It's not so good. They're not behind it!' Everyone would turn into Gilbert Gottfried, I don't know why. When the fact is, this is the same process every show I've done has gone through. This one's just under a microscope. If some people were like, 'Joss is trying to comfort us but I'm not that comforted,' then my response is, 'That's okay. I'm not saying everything is perfect. If everything was perfect, this wouldn't happen.' But even if eerything is perfect, that doesn't mean the show's going to go. Doesn't mean America's going to tune in. You can't predict that. What you can do is work with your partners, and I have the same partners on the production end, very different partners on the network end. But the same network, and you have to find the middle ground.

I had to let people know so it didn't become this... scandale!

It sounds like this is the opposite of what happened with "Firefly," where they wanted to get rid of the episode that would explain what the hell was going on.

It's, I think, only similar in that they wanted an episode that would show what people are going to get every week. That's a similar mandate to what happened with "The Train Job." (the episode that ran first instead of the pilot) But the problem with "The Train Job" was that it was coming off a two-hour episode where nine people had just met for the first time. So it had more exposition than it had shots. I still think it's a good episode, dammit!

Whereas with this, they're already in the process. Nobody saw this coming except me. I'm the one who said, 'If you try to force what you have into what they want and it pleases neither of you, then it will not please America.' Just doesn't happen. So rather than shift all that, I thought if we put all the introduction before this one, that'll work better. And then a lot of what I put into this episode (the pilot) will have more resonance because we'll have spent an episode with the characters, who are interacting pretty intensely in that episode. It's a boon for the audience.

Stylistically, tonally, visually, how will this compare to your previous shows?

I've got the same crew I had on "Angel," and this shares some of the noir elements that Angel had. There's a dark suspsnese element to it. At the same time, we want to use LA, and I'm pleased to say she can go out during the day, unlike the guy on "Angel." I want it to have a very sort of lovely, glamorous, kind of exciting, lush feel to it.

I'm curious about the extent the imprint -- the means by which Dushku's handlers give her these new personas -- can change her. Can it give her abilities, or is it just her personality?

It can give you abilities. Not superhuman abilities, but muscle memory is part of a package. You could be conditioned to be a pianist, an assassin, to be great at anything. Just not inhuman.

And you could do anything to Eliza's personality that you wanted, right? You could make her think she was a guy if you wanted -- not that, even as I ask that, I could imagine anybody wanting to make that request.

I suppose. Nobody has come in to request or pitched that story yet. She might be a guy jumping over a shark, I'm not sure.

You know why I'm really bummed? They canceled "Shark," so I never had a chance to use the phrase, "Man, that show really swam under the Fonz."

(We then talk for a while about some of the familiar tropes of the Whedon-verse, and in discussing one meta gag from the "Serenity" movie, he says it would be "too broad for 'Dollhouse," which leads to...)

So how would you describe the humor on this new show? I can't imagine you doing one without any humor at all.

It's just person humor. It's the reality of people interacting. It's less, 'Let's make fun of the structure of a scene' than just 'We are real people in a somewhat fantastical situation, and we're going to crack a few.' Cause we're never not. Humor keeps us alive. Humor and food. Don't forget food. You can go a week without laughing.

At the movies: The Dark Knight

Got to do one semi-extra-curricular thing before I got to go home: I went to the local multiplex last night to take in "The Dark Knight," which I loved. I don't know that I have a lot to add to the discussion, plus I'm a little too fried to write coherently, but after the jump I'll throw in a few spoiler-y thoughts on Bats, Joker and company.

It was the damndest thing watching this movie. Here's a big-budget summer thrill ride filled with amazing stunts and visuals, playing before a packed house, and after the first 30 minutes or so, you could have heard a pin drop in the theater. No big laughs for any of Heath Ledger's dialogue, no whoops and cheers during the big chase scene with the Bat-Cycle, nothing. Just silence and, when the movie ended, polite applause.

And yet, I never felt like the audience was unhappy with the product. It just wasn't what they were expecting. "Dark Knight" offers up all the expected elements of a blockbuster superhero flick, yet it does so in the most unsettling way possible. It's hard to get into gung-ho, hells-yeah! mode when you're watching a movie about the random ease with which people can do evil things. When the Joker's plans were foiled, or at least delayed, I never felt thrilled -- just relieved. (The Prisoner's Dilemma scene on the boat was particularly stomach-churning.)

But I'm not complaining. Christopher and Jonathan Nolan, more than any other "Batman" movie-writing team, and more than almost any actual writer of the Batman comic book, were able to capture the insanity and dread that would come from a world that featured both Batman and the Joker. The Joker's not harmless, not charming, not a wacky goof in clown makeup; he's a mass murderer who kills people for the fun of it, often at complete random.

(This has become something of a problem in the comics, where Joker has racked up such a body count over the last couple of decades, always escaping from Arkham about five seconds after Batman puts him there, that there is simply no reasonable justification, even with Batman's moral code, for Bats or someone else to not have put Joker down like a mad dog.)

And every bit of hype about Heath Ledger's final completed performance is deserved. I have nothing to add to all the previous praise, save that I can't imagine any actor stepping into the role for a long, long time, so magnificent and indelible is Ledger's work here. (That, of course, raises the problem of who'll be the bad guy in the inevitable third Nolan/Christian Bale film. Joker and Two-Face, the two most compelling Bat-villains, are out of the picture for one reason or another, and many of the rest would need a major reinvention to fit into the world Nolan has created. And Catwoman only works if there's a much worse villain working alongside her.)

So, to sum up, it didn't get my fists pumping, but "Dark Knight" may very well live up to Fienberg's claim that it's the best superhero movie ever. Much as I love "Superman," "Superman II," "Spider-Man 2" and "X-Men 2," I'm not sure they're even in the ballpark in terms of pure balls-out, riveting filmmaking that still managed to work within the conventions of the genre.

What did everybody else think?

Middleman: Threat or menace?

So late Monday, I start hearing rumblings that ABC Family has canceled "The Middleman" due to low ratings, and that the cast and crew were told late that day that the 13th and final episode of season one wouldn't be filmed. I was out on set visits all day Tuesday, but put in a call to someone at ABC Family, who promptly called me back the next morning to say that, yes, production had been trimmed from 13 to 12 episodes, but that, no, the show wasn't canceled, ABC Family was thrilled with the show, was bringing it to Comic-Con this weekend, etc., etc., etc. And when I got home from all my set visits, I saw a post from creator Javier Grillo-Marxuach on his blog in which he concurred that the show wasn't dead yet, and that trimming the episode order was a concession to the show's lousy ratings. (Put it this way: when ABC Family came to press tour last week, "Middleman" was just about the only show on the network that the execs didn't mention at any point.) Sayeth Grillo-Marxuach:

and about those ratings? well...while improving incrementally, they have not been stellar, so we - and by "we," i mean the network and myself - have made the decision to make and air a twelve episode first season of "the middleman."

it is a decision that allows us to conclude our first season on a great creative note, and to pool our resources to make our season finale the best and biggest it can be.

in short: we are doing everything we can to delive "the middleman" to whatever the future holds for us: and a crucial part of that future hinges on your continued support.

so, the bottom line - the middleman ain't dead.

I've braced myself for the probability that this very smart, very funny, very weird, very memorable show will be a one-summer-only treat, but you never know.

Feel free to discuss this week's episode here if you want. I had it on while I was packing for my return fight but was understandably distracted.

Press tour: That's it for me! You've been great!

The last press conference of press tour was this afternoon, but I don't fly back to Jersey until Wednesday morning because Tuesday's a day of TCA-organized set visits, making this a weird ending to a weird press tour. As I'll be away from the hotel for much of Tuesday and spending the rest of the time writing a "Mad Men" feature for Sunday's paper, this will almost certainly be the last press tour dispatch from me. I have some good stuff saved up that I intend to run later this summer, but I'm pretty fried right now and not sure I'll even be coherent (or upright) when we stop by the sets of "Chuck" and "Dollhouse."

Ordinarily, I'd do my traditional tour summary, where I rattle off the best and worst shows I saw, funniest sessions, dumbest moments, etc., but due to time constraints -- and the fact that we saw very few new shows, good or bad (which was one of the reasons the tour had such an odd feeling) -- I'm going to pass for now. Maybe once I'm back in Jersey and reoriented, I can pass along a few more stories, like Ian McShane delivering a verbal smackdown to a reporter who got hung up on semantics during the last session of the tour.

I may post some review-y stuff over the next day or two, if I have time to watch and write about different things (how's that for clarity?), but right now I'm really looking forward to landing at Newark Liberty, you know?

Dispatch from NBC: Freak-foot monkey-foot!

"Monkey, monkey, rat, rat... no, you're kind of monkey-rat."

This was the quote of the day, and possibly the quote of the tour, courtesy of "Kath & Kim" star Selma Blair. Part of me almost doesn't want to explain it, because the magic of "no, you're kind of monkey-rat" is almost greater when it's context-independent. But after the jump, I'll give it a shot...

Blair seemed in a particularly snarky mood today. There are lots of dumb questions that get asked in TCA sessions -- "Your sons, are they both boys?" was a classic -- but usually the panelists have been coached not to show their displeasure with them. (Jonny Lee Miller was exceedingly polite when somebody asked him if he could get Angelina Jolie to guest star on "Eli Stone" last week.) Selma either didn't get the memo or didn't care, and our world is the funnier for it.

First, somebody noted that she and Molly Shannon, who plays her mom on the show, aren't that far apart in age (IMDb has Shannon only 8 years older than Blair), and asked how hard it was for one of them to play the other's parent or child.

"Actresses play different people all the time," Blaire replied. "It's weird. It's this thing called acting, and so you just, like, play different characters that aren't your age or anything. I mean, I think. I don't know."

She later added, "If (you) squint your eyes when you're watching it and you don't put it on hi-def, if you're, like, squinting and put some Vaseline on your eyeballs, I look so young."

After another reporter noted that Ben Silverman is both an executive at NBC and a producer on the show (as he is with a whole lot of the NBC line-up, and there's no conflict of interest whatsoever!), Blair quipped, "Quite a catch. Yup. My eyes on the prize!"

Then, at the end of the session, we got "monkey, monkey, rat, rat," courtesy of somebody asking Blair -- whose hair doesn't resemble her character on the show, or her role in "Hellboy" -- whether she wears wigs for the series. She went on a long rambling answer -- "This is probably the most boring answer to a question you've ever had," she said in the middle -- but as she kept going, she began to realize that she could just keep going, and going, and going, on the subject of wigs and extensions, and it seemed to amuse her.

"Hopefully they will be done correctly. I think I'll be getting Russian hair instead of the Indonesian done last time," she said, then explained that her wigs have to be "a three-quarter wig because apparently I have a very low forehead line, which a lot of people comment on all the time. I am apparently from the monkey family. I hear that all the time. People are either rats or monkeys. I'm a monkey. I know. Look at your friends. You're all either a rat or a monkey. It's true."

She then looked at her co-stars and producer Michelle Nader and declared "monkey" (Mikey Day), "monkey" (John Michael Higgins), "rat" (Molly Shannon) and "rat" (Nader) before changing her mind and dubbing Nader "kind of monkey-rat."

This then inspired Higgins (one of the Christopher Guest players) to travel down the rabbit hole with Blair, leading to the following exchange between the two of them:

JOHN MICHAEL HIGGINS: I broke my toe yesterday. I'm in excruciating pain. This guy at a party is an orthopedic surgeon. Said you have -- there's two feet. That's the Grecian foot and whatever the other foot is. The Grecian foot is when your biggest toe is the biggest toe and then you go down. The other foot -- and you know who you are -- is the one with the second toe either the same length or a little longer --

SELMA BLAIR: That's me.

JOHN MICHAEL HIGGINS: -- than the first toe. You're a freak. The freak foot.

SELMA BLAIR: I'm a monkey freak.

JOHN MICHAEL HIGGINS: Freak foot monkey foot. And apparently they can't -- you don't tie the toes together if you have a Grecian foot. So did you get all that?

Afterwards, we all agreed that "Freak-Foot and Monkey-Rat" would be an awesome title for a superhero show starring Higgins and Blair (or vice versa), and that many of us would probably rather watch it than what we could make of "Kath and Kim," based on the clips we saw.

Sepinwall on TV: Leno undercover, 'Office' non-spin-off

That man, boys and girls, is Jay Leno, who tried to one-up Jimmy Kimmel's undercover reporter gag from last week by badgering Ben Silverman and Marc Graboff about it during their press tour session. You can read all about it over at NJ.com.

There's also some stuff in there with Silverman talking about the Amy Poehler show, which will not be an "Office" spin-off, at the same time he was talking about how he plans to still do an "Office" spin-off, and the words come out of his mouth with such rapidity that I have no idea whether any of it is true or if it's just the first thought to come into his head at that moment.

A day in the life of press tour: NBC

The above picture was from NBC's party last night, and where else could you find three of the women from "Friday Night Lights" hanging with Christian Slater, Selma Blair, Benjie Silverman (as Tina Fey likes to call him) and Stanley from "The Office"? (This was Leslie David Baker's second or third appearance of the tour; he must like us.)

Yesterday was technically NBC's first day, but virtually all of it was devoted to cable channels in the NBC/Uni/GE/Sheinhardt family. Today, for the most part, is for NBC proper. (It's also the last real day of the tour. Tomorrow we do a bunch of set visits, but a lot of people will have already gone home by then, and as we'll be out and about, nobody's going to be blogging.) After the jump, a rundown of the schedule...

9-9:45 a.m.: An Olympics panel, with Dick Ebersol, Bob Costas and company appearing via satellite.

9:45-10:15 a.m.: A panel devoted to sophomore dramas, with Zachary Levi and Josh Schwartz from "Chuck," Damian Lewis and Rand Ravich from "Life" and Brooke Shields and Oliver Goldstick from "Lipstick Jungle." These multi-show jam panels have been really hit-or-miss so far. The ABC showrunner panel was awesome, while a Showtime panel featuring the stars and showrunners of "Dexter," "Weeds," "Californication" and "Brotherhood" sucked all the life out of the room. If all goes badly, we'll see if we can bait Schwartz into discussing his favorite Brooke Shields films of the 1980s.

10:30-11 a.m.: NBC News -- represented by, among others, NBC News president Steve Capus, Andrea Mitchell, Chris Matthews, Joe Scarborough, David Gregory, Chuck Todd and Keith Olbermann -- take their turn discussing the run-up to Obama vs. McCain. Ya think Olbermann might say something quotable?

11:15-11:45 a.m.: Executive session, where I imagine far too much time will be devoted to parsing the exact nature of the "The Office" spin-off/non-spin-off with Amy Poehler.

12-1:15 p.m.: Lunch, which will include a session for "Deal or No Deal."

1:30-2 p.m.: An informal session with NBC research president Alan Wurtzel, in which we discuss how to measure audiences in this new age of DVRs, Hulu, iTunes, etc.

2:15-2:45 p.m.: "Kath & Kim," which none of us have seen yet, so I suspect there may be an undertone of "How dare you?" to a lot of the questions, and a lot of "Didn't you see how good 'The Office' remake was?" to the answers.

3-3:30 p.m.: "Knight Rider," a shadowy flight into the world of a man... who does not exist.

3:30-4 p.m.: Kate Flannery and Oscar Nunez from "The Office" host a combination smoothie break and demonstration of the new "Office" trivia game.

4-4:30 p.m.: "My Own Worst Enemy," which we also haven't seen. My goal is to measure the percentage of Jack Nicholson that creeps into Christian Slater's mannerisms. If it dips anywhere below 50 percent, the show is doomed, as it became clear a while ago that the Jack impression is really all he has going for him.

4:45-5:15 p.m.: Our second does of Olbermann, this time for a panel featuring the entire, ginormous Sunday night football crew. Be interesting to see how much Olbermann and Dan Patrick will dominate this one.

5:30-6 p.m.: "Kings," in which Ian McShane will become the latest "Deadwood" castmember to explain to us that he wasn't surprised at all to learn the movies would never happen, what with the cast's contracts lapsing, the sets being dismantled, etc.

While you were out

Busy weekend here at press tour, so I figured I'd do a quick run-down of all the posts from the last three days:

• Reviews of "The Wire" episode 7 for both the veterans and newbies;
• Reviews of the latest episodes of "Burn Notice" and "My Boys"
• A rundown of the CBS/Showtime schedule (which in turn led to a very impressive comment run over at NJ.com)
• "CSI" has plans to replace William Petersen that may or may not involve frog DNA
• Hot at press tour: thick-framed glasses
• A review of the latest episode of "Doctor Who"
• "The Ex-List" creator Diane Ruggiero charms the pants off the critics
• A review of the "Dr. Horrible" finale, plus an interview with Neil Patrick Harris
• An interview with "How I Met Your Mother" creator Craig Thomas
• More details on the new "90210"
• Tom Hanks, Tina Fey, and the gang from "Mad Men" all made impressions at the TCA Awards
• An interview with "Friday Night Lights" creator Jason Katims
• A review of the latest episode of "Generation Kill"

Generation Kill, "Cradle of Civilization": Everything turns to poo

Briefer than I'd like (hey, it's press tour, and Coolio is being really loud outside my window) spoilers for episode two of "Generation Kill" coming up just as soon as I earn my stories...

As First Recon really pushes into Iraq, at one point becoming the northernmost-unit of the invasion, we begin to get a sense of just how FUBAR the entire operation is. Or maybe that's just the way it seems from ground level.

The mission they've been training for gets scrubbed, with no real explanation. Godfather and Sgt. Major Sixta continue to push for the shaving of the moostashes -- and Sixta finds a way to do it that completely kills all the buzz from second platoon surviving the ambush -- and we start to see just how much Godfather is motivated by a desire to do something glamorous and exciting to impress General Matis (played by Hey! It's That Guy! Robert John Burke), regardless of whether it makes sense for his men. They're still inadequately supplied, and after Fick is assured that they'll enter a town under cover of night, we immediately cut to the Marines entering in the daytime. Captain America gets hold of an enemy AK-47 and begins firing it indiscriminately -- never a good idea in a combat zone, given how the Marines are trained to differentiate the sound of their own weapons from those of the enemy, right?

And yet, within that, we begin to get a sense of just how good and smart the Recon Marines themselves are. One of my favorite moments in the episodes I've seen comes the bit where they're rolling through the town, and Colbert reassures Trombley not to panic, without even needing to turn around to see either Trombley or whatever it was that Trombley was apparently scared of. This is a man who pays such close attention to detail that he judges the quality of his bowel movements to help assess his combat readiness; this is a man you do not want to mess with, I think.

(This episode had going number two on its mind quite a bit -- albeit all of it drawn from the book -- as we also got the whole bit about leaving toilet paper and other detritus around versus the neatness of the Afghanistan mission, as well as the Iraqi woman watching a Marine casually take a dump in her yard.)

I'm not sure, to be honest, how much I care for the scenes that are just of Godfather, or Godfather with Mattis, etc. Evan Wright's explanation for why the miniseries is more opaque than the book is that Simon wanted to put us into the heads of the Marines on the ground, and/or Wright himself, and that all the explanatory details about the mission and what's happening away from Colbert's Humvee is stuff that Wright found out way after the fact. And if that's the case, then that makes thematic sense. But then throwing in material about the higher-ups, stuff that the Recon Marines aren't privy to (as opposed to a briefing that Fick might attend) seems to go against the spirit of that. I'd rather the storytelling either adopted an entirely Colbert-centric point of view or else became omniscient enough that some of the chain of command stuff helped to clarify exactly what was going on.

Getting back to Colbert, it's really interesting to observe the dynamic inside the Humvee. Because he's so good at what he does, and because he carries himself in a certain way, his humor sneaks up on you. When he busts on Trombley for knocking up his girlfriend, it sounds at first almost like he's taunting him, but after a while it becomes clear that, no, that's just how Colbert sounds when he's cracking a joke. James Ransone as Person is the obvious standout performance in the mini, but I'm really enjoying watching Alexander Skarsgard work.

What did everybody else think?