What's Alan Watching?

You can find me at HitFix

2010-06-05T07:00:00.000-04:00

As mentioned here and here, I've accepted a new job at HitFix.com, and will be covering TV there for the forseeable future. The new blog URL is:

http://hitfix.com/whatsalanwatching

See you there.

Where you can go to find my Wire season 3 reviews

2010-06-04T09:00:00.007-04:00

Updating an old post for completeness' sake. For a variety of reasons too dull to repeat again, season 3 of "The Wire" is the only year of that show I never covered on this blog, but I'm covering it in my new home at Hitfix. So each week I'll come into this post to add links to find both versions of each reviews, so you'll still be able to find links to every one of my "Wire" reviews in one place. (You can find all the previous reviews along this blog's siderail.) Links coming up after the jump...

• Episode 1, "Time After Time": Newbie version & Veteran version
• Episode 2, "All Due Respect": Newbie version & Veteran version
• Episode 3, "Dead Soldiers": Newbie version & Veteran version
• Episode 4, "Hamsterdam": Newbie version & Veteran version
• Episode 5, "Straight and True": Newbie version & Veteran version
• Episode 6, "Homecoming": Newbie version & Veteran version
• Episode 7, "Back Burners": Newbie version & Veteran version
• Episode 8, "Moral Midgetry": Newbie version & Veteran version
• Episode 9, "Slapstick": Newbie version & Veteran version
• Episode 10, "Reformation": Newbie version & Veteran version
• Episode 11, "Middle Ground": Newbie version & Veteran version & George Pelecanos interview
• Episode 12, "Mission Accomplished": Newbie version & Veteran version

Chuck, "Chuck vs. the Role Models": Lady or the tiger?

2010-05-03T21:00:00.008-04:00

A review of tonight's "Chuck" coming up just as soon as I loosely translate your nickname from Bantu...

"Dear God, it's us 30 years ago." -Turner
"Sarah, that's us in 30 years!" -Chuck

In recent years, cable dramas like "The Shield" and "Breaking Bad" have suggested that the 13-episode model of a cable season makes better creative sense than the traditional 22-episode broadcast model. When you have only 13 hours to play with, the argument goes, everything is plotted more tightly, there's no filler, and the cast and crew don't burn themselves out two-thirds of the way through each season.

The odd construction of this season of "Chuck," though, is suggesting that tighter isn't always better.

Going into the year, Schwartz, Fedak and company thought they only had 13 episodes to work with, and nearly all of that was devoted to telling the story of Chuck becoming a real spy, the arrival of Shaw and the war with The Ring. There simply wasn't room for goofy, largely standalone episodes like last season's "Chuck vs. Tom Sawyer" or "Chuck vs. the Best Friend." So if you were on board with the Shaw/Ring story, you were okay, but if you weren't, it was largely that week after week. Now, I liked the Shaw stuff a lot more than some of you, but I was worried about the lack of one-offs even before the season began, and there absence was noticeable as the original 13 went along.

With this bonus mini-season, we're sort of getting those little palate cleansers we otherwise might have gotten earlier in a regularly-planned season, just at the end. Until Ellie's friendly Doctors Without Borders pal was revealed to be a Ring operative in the episode's closing moments, this was the second "Chuck" in a row whose only ongoing elements were largely internal (Chuck and Sarah's relationship, Morgan's assimilation into Team Bartowski).

That's been a nice change of pace, as has the lighter tone of these two, and I suspect the creative team recognized how much better the show is when there's more balance between silly and serious, and between arcs and episodics. And if the show comes back next season, for however many installments, I would hope we see more of that give and take, because I have been having a lot of fun watching these last two.

As I had suspected, Sarah and Chuck as a couple have so far provided plenty of story fodder, as well as plenty of humor. I had long ago accepted that Yvonne Strahovski brought so much else to the table that it didn't matter that Sarah rarely seemed to be funny, but for the second week in a row, Strahovski was bringing the laughs. Sometimes, it was more about the characters around Sarah (Morgan and Sarah living under the same roof already is and should continue to be splendid), but other moments like her withering delivery of "You're not asking me to move in with you again, are you?" were all her.

Beyond Sarah being funny - and in a less blissful situation than we got last week on the train - the episode also gave us a tiger (which Chuck refused to kill because "They are endangered, and majestic!"), plus Casey reluctantly teaching spycraft to Morgan, plus Fred Willard(*) and Swoosie Kurtz as the bickering Turners.

(*) I watched a screener of this episode back-to-back with last week's "Modern Family," also guest-starring Fred Willard. The man is everywhere, and his ubiquity gives me an excuse to once again link to "Wha happen?"

Sometimes, "Chuck" casts guest stars for the iconography of them. Sometimes, with John Larroquette last season and Willard and Kurtz here, it casts them because they're funny. I don't know that I look at those two and automatically think Levi+Strahovski+(30 years x 2), but the two old pros played off each other, and off our regulars, quite nicely. And whether writer Phil Klemmer intended it or not, I like how the Turners' staged bickering tied into the fear some had that Chuck and Sarah together would eventually become a bickering couple with no obvious chemistry. Assuming "Chuck" is still somehow on the air 30 years from now (and we'd have to get some really big flash mobs today for that long an extension, methinks), we can worry about them down the road. Right now, they're doing fine, and "Chuck" is doing fine with them together.

For the second week in a row, we got a lot of Chuck and Sarah in one group of scenes and a lot of Morgan and Casey in another. I don't want this to be a permanent state of affairs - Casey needs to be more present in future missions to show his disgust with Chuck and Sarah's new schmoopiness, and, again, Morgan and Sarah look like a comic combo with a lot of possibilities - but right now it's entertaining to see them have to work together. In the silly world of "Chuck," the idea that neither Chuck nor Morgan would ever have to undergo any kind of real spy/combat training is about middle of the pack on the implausibility meter. But in watching the scenes with General Beckman, I get the sense that she has no expectations of Morgan ever amounting to anything; she's just making Casey suffer for forcing her to ever have to deal with the little bearded one. And that's amusing to me - as is Casey's attempt to balance his growing respect for Morgan ("Semper Fi-Dizzle!") with his public persona and usual hatred of nerds, dorks and geeks.

With Awesome again crossing paths with someone from The Ring (is this the third time this season? fifth?), it looks like we're heading back to both more serialized and more serious storytelling in the weeks to come. And that's okay, as I've loved a lot of the darker moments of seasons two and three. I just want there to be a balance, which we're finally getting during this little victory lap of season three.

Some other thoughts:

• This week in "Chuck" pop culture references: Morgan's dream sequence at the beginning was a riff on the opening credits to "Hart to Hart," a late '70s/early '80s detective show about a super-suave married couple who were still sexy and sleuthy in middle age. (Chuck should aspire to be more like Robert Wagner and less like Fred Willard.) Morgan once again talks about learning about guns through "Call of Duty" (then turns out to be inept with the real thing), and I suppose you could call the bad guy (played by Hey, It's That Creep! Udo Kier) keeping a tiger with a fancy collar a riff on Blofeld (who had a much smaller cat) from the James Bond movies.

• This week in "Chuck" music: songs tonight included Mel Torme's "Comin' Home Baby," Barry White's "I'm Gonna Love You Just a Little More Baby" and Miike Snow's "Sans Soleil."

• Unexpected quasi-trend: last week's "Cougar Town" had a running gag about Courteney Cox and her friends gathering to watch her son sleep, and here Big Mike complains to Morgan that he doesn't like anyone watching him sleep. We need one more for a full trend, people!

• With Morgan essentially filling the role Chuck had two seasons ago, I liked seeing Morgan and Chuck's collar-stealing attempts intercut with one another.

• Awesome and Ellie's story in the Congo was largely about setting up whatever's coming next with The Ring, but I thought Ryan McPartlin did a great job of showing Devon being so charming and reassuring with Ellie as he promised her a date night under the stars. Truly, he is Dr. Super Fantastic White Person.

Finally, as mentioned several times (including this morning), this is the last review that's going to be posted to this site before I move to HitFix.com tomorrow. I'll be blogging about the rest of season 3, and a lot of other shows, and hopefully "Chuck" season 4, so please come early and come often. Though the timing was largely accidental, it feels kind of right to say goodbye to this home with "Chuck," doesn't it?

What did everybody else think?

Only the beginning

2010-05-03T07:00:00.001-04:00

Today's the last day at these old digs. Tomorrow, I move to HitFix, and with that comes one final blog logo featuring the four shows that largely defined my time here with the Blogger site. I kept trying to find a way to squeeze in Tony reading The Star-Ledger, but since "The Sopranos" was in its final days when the blog began, I decided to give him the big picture here and go with "The Wire," "Chuck," "Lost" and "Mad Men" for the last logo.

Still a full day to go here, including whatever news happened, plus tonight's "Chuck" as the final review of this iteration of the blog. Then we move in the morning to HitFix. But before I go, I wanted to look back over the last 4 and a half years at the blog, as well as looking ahead a bit to the new place...

As I've said before, I started out writing about TV online with the "NYPD Blue" website, and nearly a decade into my time at The Star-Ledger, I missed the immediacy of that interaction, as well as the ability to write about shows after they'd aired (when I could discuss all the juicy stuff) rather than before (when I'd have to be wary of spoiling anything). NJ.com was still experiencing a lot of growing pains at the time, and I wasn't sure I wanted to commit to the idea long-term, so on October 7, 2005, so I started the site here on Blogger as an experiment. I figured I'd try it out, see if I liked the process, and also see if anyone but the friends I'd e-mailed the link to might ever find me and care to keep reading.

If you go back and look at those early posts from 2005, the blog then bore little resemblance to what it became. No pictures, no spoiler protection after the jump (and therefore no "just as soon as"), nearly everything done in a grab-bag format where I talked about multiple shows at once, and very few comments - and all of those from my friends.

The outside world began to discover the place on a fluke: while looking over NBC's schedule for the January 2006 TCA press tour, I noticed Aaron Sorkin and Tommy Schlamme were listed as panelists for the "West Wing" farewell session, and I threw up a quick post noting this. It turned out to be an error - someone told me later that no one at NBC had even asked Sorkin or Schlamme about it at that point - but somehow, that story got picked up, the link spread around, and suddenly the blog had a small but growing - and smart - audience.

As you guys began to find me, I in turn began to find my way in blogging, and the site slowly but surely evolved into what you see today. People complained about being spoiled on the main page, and I figured out how to hide the bulk of each post on the jump. I noticed that posts dealing with one show at a time tended to get far more comments than the grab bags, and so I began doing more and more of those. And beyond that, I saw that the deeper I went into discussing episodes - moving past the simple "I liked this"/"I didn't like this" of the blog's early days into discussing not only why I liked things, but what I thought they meant - the deeper in turn your comments got, and I started trying to apply the depth and breadth of my "Sopranos" Rewind columns to lots of other shows. When I got bored with summer TV one year and suggested that instead we all watch and discuss "Freaks and Geeks" on DVD, a lot of you went along with me, paving the way for later summer DVD projects, including the early seasons of "The Wire" (with Season 3 coming up in June on HitFix).

Along the way there have been some great highs (the David Chase interview, Ben Silverman telling me I saved "Chuck") and some weird lows (the "Chuck"pocalypse, overwrought discussion of "SNL" in the fall of 2008 leading to the No Politics rule), but the good has vastly outweighed the bad. This blog rekindled my interest in a job I'd been doing for a very long time, and it taught me how to do it in a new way. And I thank all of you for helping me figure that out.

As I said last week, the goal is for as little to change as possible at HitFix, with shows moving in and out of the rotation based on my level of interest (and time). The blog URL, once again, is http://hitfix.com/whatsalanwatching, while the new RSS feed will be at http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/whats-alan-watching.rss. As before, I'll also be using my Twitter account to tweet links to new posts as they go up.

I know some of you in the last week have expressed concern about the design and functionality of HitFix versus this place. Just know that every issue you've raised is one that I'd already thought of, and in turn most of those were ones that Team HitFix was already aware of and working on when I asked about them. (And a few of them may be addressed/solved by the time I put my first real post up there tomorrow.) Because you guys are so valuable to the experience of both reading and writing What's Alan Watching?, I want the new site to be as user-friendly as this one was. I would just ask for your patience, and if you have a specific concern, feel free to e-mail me at sepinwall@hitfix.com.

End of one era today, start of what I hope will be an awesome new one tomorrow. Hope you can come along with me.

Treme, "At the Foot of Canal Street": The out-of-towners

2010-05-02T23:05:00.003-04:00

A review of tonight's "Treme" coming up just as soon as my coffee drink is comped on behalf of my overwhelming righteousness...

"But New Orleans is still my home!" -Antoine

On "The Wire," David Simon was fond of illustrating a thematic point by having characters in very different social circles experience the same kind of event: McNulty and D'Angelo getting chewed out by middle management in the series pilot, or Namond and Clay Davis espousing the same philosophy about free money. With "At the Foot of Canal Street," Simon and company - here with "Wire" alum George Pelecanos scripting a story he wrote with Eric Overmyer - are doing parallel play again, as we see Antoine, Sonny and Delmond all traveling out of town for different reasons.

Antoine is a son of New Orleans, through and through. Born there, raised there, with no interest in going anywhere else (though perhaps he'd feel differently had his musical career gone differently), he has to be goaded repeatedly by Ladonna just to take the bus to Baton Rouge to see their sons, and even then he mainly goes for the promise of free dentistry from Larry.

Delmond is a son of the city, too, but a prodigal one. Never invested in his father's Indian traditions, or the city's music, he got out as quick as he could, and as he tells his manager, while he's from New Orleans, he doesn't play New Orleans. He has a girlfriend in New York (one of several, it would appear), and would be happy to never go back were it not for family or professional obligations.

Sonny's no son of New Orleans, but he wishes he was. He tells everyone, including Annie, that he dreamed his whole life of living there and playing that music. But a year and a half into living his dream, he's still basically on the outside looking in: a street musician always playing in the shadow of his more talented partner. So he journeys to Houston, hoping to be more accepted in the world of New Orleans expatriates than he's been in the city itself.

Ultimately, each man's trip away from New Orleans is only so satisfying. Antoine's time in Baton Rouge prepares him for a permanent solution to his embouchure problem, but the bridge he builds with his sons is only temporary at best; even he can recognize how guarded they are around him after so many years of disappointment. Sonny's fantasy of acceptance only lasts as long as it takes the band leader to spot another, more accomplished keyboard player in the crowd. And while Delmond has access to the finest in New York culture, he finds that professionally, he has to tie himself back to his home city to succeed.

Antoine happily returns to New Orleans. Sonny's trip back is more mixed - Houston didn't quite work out, and he returns to see Annie thriving without him - but at least he takes pleasure in bringing the Houston bouncer along with him, and introducing another outsider to the city he loves. And Delmond isn't going back yet, nor does he seem particularly eager to go.

In the wake of the storm, many natives had to leave the city, and many of them never returned. "Treme" is focusing on either the ones who never left or the ones who found a way back, but "At the Foot of Canal Street" provides a brief glimpse of three worlds that many New Orleanians found themselves in after Katrina.

Speaking of leaving town, Delmond's scenes in New York had to be filmed out of production order, which means I got this episode very late in the process. In the interest of getting the review done in time for posting after it airs, let's deal with everything else bullet point-style:

• I'm sure Baton Rouge has many fine independent restaurants, but of course Antoine's kids would have fallen in love with Friday's and The Olive Garden, wouldn't they?

• Ladonna does Antoine a good turn, largely for the sake of those boys, but you see in the trip back to the jail to confront her brother's impersonator that she is not to be messed with. Khandi Alexander beautifully portrays the character's soft and harsh sides, doesn't she?

• Once again, please go read Dave Walker at the Times-Picayune for his weekly explanations of all things New Orleans on "Treme." I'm sure he will have much to say on the notion of the lagniappe.

• As Dave has written about in the past, many of the characters on "Treme" are based on real-life New Orleanians. Much of Creighton's character in general and his YouTube rant in particular come from the late blogger Ashley Morris, for instance. Delmond, meanwhile, owes quite a bit to Donald Harrison Jr., who was also the son of a Mardi Gras Indian chief and left the city to play jazz from a different school. What's interesting, though, is that it appears Delmond will be touring with Harrison (who already played alongside Delmond in the pilot episode); I'll be curious to see if the two characters bond over their shared past, or if Harrison will mainly be there to play music while Delmond lives out a fictionalized version of his story.

• Anwan Glover returns as the fake Daymo, and we get two other "Wire" alums in small guest roles: Jim True-Frost (aka Prez) as Delmond's manager, and Steve Earle (aka Bubbs' sponsor Walon, and also the singer of the season 5 theme song) as one of Annie's musician friends (the other was played by Earle's son, Justin Townes Earle). And unlike most of the other famous musicians who wander through this show, Earle isn't playing himself.

• Darius and his aunt Lula return, and things seem to be setting up nicely for Albert to take the kid under his wing to teach him some combination about life, contracting work, and Indian tribes. With Lorenzo leaving town and Delmond never showing an interest, Albert's got to have someone to pass this stuff on to - just as the writers need a novice character for him to explain the culture to, the way Lester had Prez on "The Wire." (Also nice to see that Albert is just as gracious with the ladies as Cool Lester Smooth.)

• I thought it was a nice touch that the insurance salesman understood what a horrible thing he was doing to Albert and so many customers like him, and that he acknowledged it a bit by explaining that he sleeps at night by drinking.

• I was waiting to see if or when the show would address Michiel Husiman's slight Dutch accent, and here Sonny talks about growing up in Amsterdam. (And his friends, in turn, allow Pelecanos to throw in a joking nod to the Hamsterdam story from "Wire" season 3.)

• Though Creighton has plenty of venom for the rest of America, he seems to be softening just a bit towards Davis, doesn't he? He gives him a ride back to his busted car, empathizes with him about the stolen instruments - and the diminished nature of lagniappe - and looks like he can relate as Davis goes to town on the inflatable lawn display.

• Janette, on the other hand, has far less patience for Davis as things go from bad to worse at the restaurant, and then as he turns his attention from her troubles to appearing to flirt with Annie at the bar. And as with McNulty poring over tidal charts on "The Wire," this show isn't afraid to spend long portions of episodes just watching characters work in (near) silence, here with Davis composing his political "pot for potholes" song.

• Very funny reaction from Rob Brown after Delmond's girlfriend pretends to spot Janet at the party.

Finally, in case you've missed the news, this is the last "Treme" review I'll be doing before I relocate to HitFix.com. I'll still be reviewing every episode there the exact way I did here, so just change your bookmarks accordingly.

What did everybody else think?

Breaking Bad, "One Minute": The magic bullet

2010-05-02T23:00:00.000-04:00

A review of tonight's insanely great "Breaking Bad" (aka The Best Show on TV Right Now) coming up just as soon as I look like a TV weatherman...

"I'm just not the man I thought I was." -Hank

Um...

uh...

um...

WOW.

Sorry, just need another minute to pick my jaw up off the floor after that.

What an incredible, bananas finish to the strongest episode yet of this third season. As written by "Breaking Bad" newcomer Thomas Schnauz (another of many "X-Files" vets Vince Gilligan has brought in) and directed by Michelle MacLaren (who joined the staff full-time after last season's gorgeous "4 Days Out"), the parking lot climax was a perfect model of suspense filmmaking. We'd already been primed all episode to fear that the Cousins could hit Hank at any moment (every time the elevator doors opened, I know I gripped my armrest), but then to have someone(*) warn Hank ahead of time kicked things up several levels. Suddenly, we and Hank were in the same mindset, looking around every corner, jumping at shadows (and/or men with squeegees), waiting for the two men to come and wondering if an unarmed Hank possibly had a chance against those two unrelenting figures of death.

(*) So, is there anyone it could have been other than Gus? Gus clearly wanted the Cousins the hell out of his territory, and I can see him warning Hank in the hopes that he might be lucky enough to take them out - or, at least, to bloody them enough that they'd have to re-cross the border in a hurry rather than hanging around in the hopes of also killing Walt. Other than Mike making the call on Gus's behalf, there doesn't seem to be a character in a position to know or do anything about the planned hit. For that matter, I'm not sure how even Gus would have known that Hank had roughly a minute to act, but I'll accept that he could for the sake of what that call added to the scene.

In many ways, the parking lot shootout evoked the failed hit on Tony Soprano from the end of "Sopranos" season one, down to the use of an SUV as a weapon. But I'd argue this scene one-upped that. Violence on "The Sopranos" always had something of a black comic tinge to it (the lead-up to the hit is Tony wandering around in a depressed stupor, and the hitmen were introduced in a scene played for laughs because of Uncle Junior hiding in the back of a car), and these guys didn't have the kind of mythical build-up the Cousins got. And on top of that, Tony Soprano was the star of the show, and it wouldn't work with him dead, whereas "Breaking Bad" would miss Hank but could easily continue without him. So the danger was far more real even without the Cousin factor.

In the end, though Hank is tough and resourceful, he won the only way anyone could against these two: through luck. He was warned in advance and was still in his car. Leonel's(**) gun also happened to fall right where Hank could reach it, and Marco conveniently had an extra, special bullet in his jacket pocket courtesy of the friendly gun dealer, and the duo's flair for the dramatic gave Hank just enough time to find the bullet on the ground and load it and shoot out the back of Marco's skull before the shiny ax could finish its backswing.

(**) Nice of the show to finally give the Cousins names - and a backstory - right before Hank killed one and either crippled or killed the other. The flashback with a middle-aged Tio at the height of his powers was chilling in its portrait of the culture those two grew up in. With Don Salamanca as the dominant male in their lives, and giving them "lessons" like that one, is there any wonder how they grew up to be these two unflappable killing machines? Note also that Leonel, the one who as a boy cries over Marco's destruction of his toy, is the one who's now hardcore enough to tell the other to finish the job rather than staying to help him. Tio made him that way.

But here's the thing: even without those crazy final minutes, "One Minute" still would have been one of the best "Breaking Bad"s to date.

What an amazing showcase for both Aaron Paul (who seems a lock to repeat his Emmy nomination next year, and possibly to win it if he submits this episode) and Dean Norris (who sure deserves to join Paul, but may not in what's always a crowded category).

Hank's beatdown of Jesse brings both men to a crossroads. Having lost his girlfriend, his partner, and now his source of income in the RV, Jesse finally tumbles over the abyss after Hank puts him in the hospital. Acting with half his face hidden by some really convincing prosthetics, Paul showed us a Jesse even colder and angrier than he was in his "I'm the bad guy" phase earlier this season, giving a riveting monologue(***) about all the ways he intended to punish Hank - and the way he'd drag Walt down with him if the DEA came after him.

(***) If the parking lot scene reminded me of "The Sopranos," Jesse's speech was like a more controlled version of Al Capone's speech from "The Untouchables" about what he wanted done to Elliott Ness.

But when Walt returns to Jesse's hospital room later in the episode to try to save his former brother-in-law, Jesse's evil calm is replaced by raw, unbridled pain, as he unloads on Walt with the laundry list of all the ways his life has gotten worse since Mr. White came back into his life. These are words Walt has needed to hear for a long time now - to have someone he can't tune out explain how toxic he's become to everyone in his life - and it's to Walt's credit that he already seemed aware of this after first seeing Jesse's ruined face. When he chews out Gale for screwing up the temperature, it comes in part from his need to feel superior to others (he does this shortly after Gale starts working two steps ahead of him), but also clearly out of guilt for what he saw happen to his previous lab assistant. Walt is a monster, but there's enough humanity left in him to recognize the pain he's caused, and the debts he owes, and so he manages to talk Gus(****) into letting him fire Gale and bring Jesse into the Walt-cave.

(****) And Gus's willingness to go along with that plan torpedoes my theory that he was using Gale to appropriate Walt's methods and then say goodbye to the loose cannon. It's entirely possible he still has that in mind (maybe the Walt-cave is tricked out with surveillance gear?), but could Gus have far grander plans for Walt that extend past the initial three month agreement?

And in the wake of putting Jesse in the hospital and his own career on life-support, Hank finally lets himself open up to Marie. Getting back to my fear of the elevator doors, when Hank got on the elevator the first time with Marie, I was expecting Cousins and was then floored to see husband and wife sobbing in each other's arms (and amused to see them completely composed by the time the doors opened on the ground floor, because there are some things Hank Schrader will not show the world). Even better than that scene, though, was Hank getting ready for his hearing with OPR, where he talked about his PTSD (in terms he could use), and about how much he's been struggling since he killed Tuco.

So here's what I wonder: the shootout with Tuco is what started Hank down this mentally unhealthy road, and the exploding turtle made things worse, but he finally seemed to be at peace by the time he left the DEA field office, knowing he'd probably lost his job but wouldn't go to jail. Now that he's barely survived a horrific ordeal, seen more people killed in front of him (and because of him) and killed one or two more himself, what happens? Does Hank's psyche shut down on him again, or does knowing he overcame two unbelievable bad-asses give him a new sense of invulnerability? And will this give him a road back into the DEA? Surely, the Cousins are in a law-enforcement database somewhere, and the man who took them out is about to become a legend - and someone who perhaps might be put back on the trail of Heisenberg.

It certainly makes sense for the show to have Walt being pursued by a (former) family member, but how will Hank (and Marie) cope with being thrust back into this violent world right when it looked like he was out for good? And now that Hank has taken out three members of the Salamanca family, will the cartel be even hotter for his blood, or might they want to stay far away from the brewer of Schraderbrau?

Damn, damn, damn that was good.

Some other thoughts:

• Of course the only thing Walt could tell Jesse to heal their rift was that his meth was good. That was all Jesse wanted to hear when he showed the stuff to Walt in the high school parking lot - really, it's all he's wanted to hear from the guy since the partnership began. Jesse (whose parents have cast him out) needs a surrogate father even more than Walt (who has a good relationship with Walter Jr.) needs a surrogate son.

• As Hank beat on Jesse and asked how Jesse knew his cell phone number and wife's name, I began to worry that Walt took things too far with that gambit. I understand why Hank has blinders on about Walt, but sooner or later, he has to make the math work, doesn't he?

• Note that the Tio/Cousins flashback also included Tio on the phone discussing the start of the cartel's business relationship with Gus, whom Tio dismissively refers to as "The Chicken Man."

• Saul had a few good funny lines at Jesse's expense (comparing him to Rocky, then Ringo), but the scene in the hallway - shot, appropriately, in half-darkness - where he started preparing Walt for the idea of killing Jesse was a reminder that this guy is not a joke.

• Hands up: who would be happy to go to their local supermarket and buy a "Breaking Bad" brand pre-made PB&J sandwich, cut up Walt-style?

• A few years back I was in a car accident where I broke several ribs, and I am very familiar with that pain assessment chart. After Jesse's half-face stared at it, I may never think of that thing the same way again.

Finally, in case you've missed the news, this is the last "Breaking Bad" review I'll be doing before I relocate to HitFix.com. I'll still be reviewing every episode here the exact way I did here, so just change your bookmarks accordingly.

What did everybody else think?

The Pacific, "Part Eight": Jarhead in love

2010-05-02T22:00:00.011-04:00

A review of tonight's "The Pacific" coming up just as soon as I make a table appear out of thin air...

After three harrowing episodes focusing on Sledge's time on Peleliu, "The Pacific" takes a sharp right turn, leaving Sledge and Snafu behind for a bit (other than a brief cameo at the top of the episode) to spend the hour on John Basilone, who hasn't been a major part of the miniseries for a month.

I can see how that would be jarring to some. "The Pacific" has been a more sprawling, less tightly-focused miniseries than "Band of Brothers" was, but that's been by design, as the creative team has tried to show a broader picture of the Pacific theater than they did of the Atlantic. So that means not only bouncing from character to character as we cover different island conflicts - here with Basilone being killed during the early hours of the Iwo Jima invasion - but also showing how different kinds of characters were affected by the war.

Where Sledge was a naive kid emotionally unprepared for what he saw on Peleliu, and where Leckie was a cynic and iconoclast, Basilone was a career military man (first in the Army, then the Marines) who knew what he was getting into when he went to war, and had no regrets about the fighting, the command structure, or any other part of being in the Corps. Given the man that we saw in the early episodes, and the brief, frustrated glimpses we got of him on his war bond tour, it's not a surprise that Basilone would have declined promotion, a cushy detail or an outright discharge in favor of going back into action. But it was still moving to watch his journey, from bored and out-of-shape celebrity to misunderstood drill sergeant to inspiring leader of men, and to see that even though he didn't survive Iwo Jima, he was every bit as brave and resourceful there as he was on Guadalcanal.

But this hour is as much the story of Lena Riggi as it is of Basilone.

Unlike Stella, Leckie's Australian girlfriend Stella from the third episode, Riggi was entirely real: the woman Basilone fell for, courted and married before shipping back out to the Pacific. So where Stella ultimately was more symbol than character, Riggi gets to be both a stand-in for the many women who lost loved ones in the war as well as her own person, well-played by Annie Parisse in a nice romantic duet with Jon Seda. While the story hit some familiar war movie beats (Basilone and Riggi even huddle up on a wave-swept beach in a scene evoking the iconic kiss in "From Here to Eternity"), the idea of them as kindred spirits - fellow non-coms who feel most at home in the military, and who fully understand the dangers and responsibilities that come with the uniform and the stripes - made it feel unique to them, and compelling.

Now, by the time Basilone pushed his superiors to let him be a regular Marine again, a lot of time had passed since Guadalcanal. Other famous heroes of the war had emerged, and while Basilone still didn't have to buy himself a drink anywhere he went, it's understandable that one of the two young men who form the foundation of Basilone's new squad wouldn't have heard of him, and that both might at first think the hero of Guadalcanal was overdoing it in training them.

But as we see when everyone lands on Iwo Jima (in another Hell-on-earth sequence to rival the airfield crossing on Peleliu), Basilone knew what he was doing, both in terms of training the men and in terms of what he'd need to do to survive. That he died doesn't mean he was wrong - as he told JP back in the second episode, life and death in battle is often a matter of luck and inches - and even in the moments leading to his death, he was still thinking clearly, helping others and not blinking in the face of an unbelievable onslaught.

And for all his heroism and celebrity, the final shot of the Iwo Jima sequence - with the camera pulling up to show Basilone lying among so many other dead men - was a potent reminder of the hundreds upon thousands of less famous Americans died under similar circumstances to the great John Basilone, and how many of them left their own version of Lena behind.

Some other thoughts:

• When Google is not your friend: after Anna Torv turned up in the fifth episode as Virginia Grey, I decided to do some web-searching to find out more about the real Grey. One of my first stops was her IMDb biography, which told me, "During her participation in WWII bond drives, she developed a close relationship with John Basilone, US Marine Medal of Honor winner, who was later killed on Iwo Jima." Whoops. And that, boys and girls, is one of the reasons I've been so strict about trying to avoid spoiling the fates of Basilone, Sledge and Leckie.

• There are, of course, many books about John Basilone. The one I've been perusing for background detail has been James Brady's new one.

• I liked how the gravel falling on Basilone's face after he was shot resembled the pencil shavings that go flying throughout the miniseries' opening credits sequence.

What did everybody else think?

Doctor Who, "Victory of the Daleks": Cookie, monster

2010-05-01T22:30:00.002-04:00

A quick review of tonight's "Doctor Who" coming up just as soon as I enjoy a nice biscuit...

Perhaps because I came to the series with the Russell Davies reboot, I've never much cared for the Daleks, and in particular have grown frustrated in how frequently the series appears to kill the entire race off, only to bring them back almost immediately. So I was especially disappointed that Steven Moffat felt compelled to do this again, only three episodes into his tenure.

There were some fun things on the side of "Victory of the Daleks" - The Doctor's friendship with Winston Churchill, British Spitfires turned into space ships(*), The Doctor and Amy helping Bracewell embrace his programmed humanity - but the only portion of the episode tied directly to the Daleks that I found myself interested in was Amy not remembering the events of "The Stolen Earth." I'm assuming that will be part of the season-long arc with the cracks in the universe (which once again appeared as the TARDIS was leaving, making me wonder if The Doctor is somehow causing the cracks).

(*) Last week, there was some discussion of Moffat starting to incorporate a lot of specifically American references into this most British of shows, and here I saw a couple more of those: the Spitfire assault on the Dalek ship looked very much like the climax of "Independence Day," and of course the Union Jack gets raised like the American flag at Iwo Jima. Hmmm... On the other hand, Moffat's understandable Scottish pride continues, not just with Karen Gillan's awesome pronunciation of "Dalek," but the casting of Bracewell as a Scotsman.

Hopefully, the stupid pepperpots - now in their United Colors of Benetton look - will go away for quite a while so Moffat can focus on other things.

Keeping in mind that we are NOT going to discuss episodes that have yet to air here in America, what did everybody else think?

Party Down, "Precious Lights Pre-School Auction": Rumpled Stiltskin

2010-04-30T22:30:00.010-04:00

A review of tonight's "Party Down" coming up just as soon as you know the difference between you and James Van Der Beek's parrot...

"You'll never work in this town again!" -Leonard Stiltskin
"I know." -Henry

Rob Thomas(*) has told the story many times of how he, John Enbom, Dan Etheridge and Paul Rudd pitched "Party Down" to HBO, only for the HBO execs at the time to decide that they had conflicting visions of what a Hollywood comedy should be. And so HBO ultimately gave us "Entourage" (about Hollywood insiders who get everything handed to them on a silver platter) and Thomas and company eventually found a home for "Party Down" (about Hollywood outsiders who struggle for everything and fail far more often than they succeed) at Starz. And an episode like "Precious Lights Pre-School Auction" - which namechecks "Entourage"(**) while featuring the return of JK Simmons as foul-mouthed movie mogul Leonard Stiltskin - is a reminder of why the outsiders' perspective is so much more fun.

(*) Rob, by the way, spent a year at the start of his career writing for "Dawson's Creek" and has taken opportunities in the past to have fun at the expense of The Beek, here with the phrase "James Van Der Beek's parrot."

(**) Love that Roman is a phony who will say "F--k 'Entourage'" while at the same time knowing and caring about the show enough to be indignant at Kyle's suggestion that Roman would be Turtle, when Roman clearly knows, "I'd be E, and you'd be Turtle."

So here we have the members of Party Down once again attending a function they'd never be allowed into as guests in a million years, though Casey comes closest by running into a comedian-turned-mom who's basically Casey a few years down the road. (***) Stiltskin and his wife are there to taunt them about how far all the characters haven't progressed in the last year: Henry never got to play Young Abe Lincoln, Kyle is still nowhere (and, unsurprisingly, Mrs. Stiltskin has chosen to forget their time together), Roman is at best proprietor of a a prestigious blog, etc.

(***) And in a meta touch, the character was played by Andrea Savage, who played Casey in the original homemade pilot shot in Thomas's backyard. Savage couldn't do the series because, appropriately enough for this character, she got pregnant.

Kyle's still trying, and still believes in himself enough as an actor to enjoy gaming Roman, while Henry is slipping so deeply into his new manager job - with the Taco Bell view that accompanies it - that he tears into Ron with the kind of speech he'd have laughed at a year earlier. (He tries to play it off as acting, but you can see the self-loathing on his face afterward.) But they're all running in place, and Ron, with his disgusting 'pit stains and loss of his barely-legal girlfriend, is actually going backwards.

But for once we get a small victory, as Casey nails her audition for a small role in a Judd Apatow movie(****), dissuading her from following Savage's path for at least a little while.

(****) Between Lizzy Caplan's early role on "Freaks and Geeks" and the amount of crossover between the Thomas and Apatow repertory companies, what other director could it be?

Structurally, "Precious Lights" didn't have the comic build that the best "Party Down" episodes do, but it still had plenty of great one-liners, whether it was Stiltskin explaining that he once drank ape sperm to get a game with Tiger Woods, or Roman's line about The Beek's parrot, or Casey lamenting all her bad auditions, including the time she was told she was "'too Jew-y'... and I was reading for 'The Diary of Anne Frank.'" And the tip jar gag was a nice role reversal from the episode last year where team leader Ron insisted on putting out the tip jar over everyone's objections, only for the partygoers to cheap out on them.

What did everybody else think?

The Office, "Body Language": Kiss me, stupid

2010-04-30T10:53:00.001-04:00

A review of last night's "The Office" - and this week's bit of potentially huge "Office" news - coming up just as soon as I reanimate a bull...

The internet briefly freaked out earlier this week when a radio clip turned up of Steve Carell saying he intends to leave "The Office" when his contract ends. Everyone calmed down quickly once they realized two things: Carell's contract runs through next season, so we still have a while to go; and chances are high that over the next year, NBC will find a way to keep Carell around, whether that requires more money, a more flexible schedule that would have Michael largely absent from some episodes, or what have you.

Now, I think most of us are in agreement that this hasn't been a particularly strong season for "The Office," and that's led many of you to declare that the show needs to end soon. Even with the Carell situation, that ain't happening. "The Office" is one of NBC's few success stories, and its only real comedy hit (the other three Thursday sitcoms are largely being buoyed by its wake), and while a network's fortunes can change in a year, I have to believe the show is too valuable to let go. And I do think, as I've said before, that whatever problems there have been this year, the show can rebound, because I've seen it happen to great sitcoms that have had off years.

And in watching an underwhelming, Michael Scott-centric episode like "Body Language," I almost wonder if an arrangement where Carell isn't around as much might be beneficial.

Look, I love Steve Carell. Funny man, talented man, kind man, and the show would not exist without him. He's been at the center of most of the funniest moments and episodes of this show's history, as you'd expect from the leading man. But despite being at the center of the show, Michael has always been the character the writers have had the most trouble getting a handle on. Some weeks, he's the 8-year-old who never grew up. Some, he's got Asperger's. Some, he's just a normal guy who isn't as funny as he thinks he is.

The inconsistency, and the writers' tendency to fall into the trap of highlighting Michael's worst qualities (writers on "The Simpsons" fall prey to the same thing with Homer), can make me really dread Michael-centric episodes sometimes. "Body Language" wasn't nearly as bad as this season's "Mafia" - nor was Michael as idiotic in this one as he was there - but it was still a fairly uncomfortable, airless outing, one where nearly all the laughs could be found in the Dwight/Daryl/Kelly subplot.

Given the choice between more episodes like this or occasional episodes where Michael's on the road and Dunder-Mifflin has to get by without him, I think I might take the latter. That way, perhaps the Michael-heavy episodes might be more focused.

I know there can be a danger in trying to elevate supporting characters above the lead, but "The Office" has always been structured in an odd way, where Michael is the main character in terms of screen time and his importance to the plot, but where he's otherwise written like a supporting character while Jim and/or Pam are written as more traditional leads. So I think an "Office" with Carell's reduced participation might actually work, and perhaps work better than what we've gotten this season.

But again, that's a year away, at a minimum, and hopefully the series can rediscover some of its juice before then.

What did everybody else think?

Parks and Recreation, "94 Meetings": But a rich ain't one

2010-04-30T10:21:00.001-04:00

A review of "Parks and Recreation" coming up just as soon as I alter a gazebo...

Ron Effing Swanson hates meetings. I know that. You know that. April Ludgate certainly knows that. But you can only put off the thing you hate for so long, and "94 Meetings" had a lot of fun with the idea of Ron trapped in a hellish day of meetings (and dragging April, Andy and Ann along with him), while at the same time doing some nice character work on both the budding April/Andy romance and the sweet, paternal relationship developing between Ron and April.

The meetings were a nice mix of the absolutely ridiculous (the purple bikini man, the guy who yells at 5-year-olds for lack of talent), eminently reasonable ones made absurd (Andy being unable to say yes to the woman) and unlikely left turns (Ann spending her day diagnosing moles). And perhaps the funniest part of all was Ron describing the situation as "a blood-saked, nightmarish hellscape. However, to Leslie Knope...," followed by the abrupt cut to a giddy Leslie declaring, "Oh, how fun!"

Leslie's own plot, however, didn't quite click for me, in part because they didn't tie the gazebo situation strongly enough to Leslie's fear of Mark and Ann getting married, in part because the show has been a little vague about where Leslie stands on that relationship, anyway. We've mostly moved past the idea that Leslie is crushing on Mark, but when she claimed to feel nauseous over news of a possible engagement, I began to wonder if she still had feelings for the guy that she's suppressed all this time for the sake of her friendship with Ann. Instead, it turned into a commentary on Leslie's fear of being a single person in a world of couples, but the idea was introduced too late in the episode, I think, for it to have worked.

On the other hand, Leslie chained to the swinging gate? Oh, how fun!

And any episode that can give us both Ron whittling a duck and an introduction to April's parents (who couldn't be less like her) and sister (who couldn't be more like her) is an overall winner.

What did everybody else think?

Community, "The Art of Discourse": See if you can guess what I am now

2010-04-30T10:04:00.001-04:00

A review of last night's "Community" coming up just as soon as I meet Sting at a Cracker Barrel...

"Ridiculous situation descending into heavy-handed drama for the illusion of story... check." -Abed

After last week's all-out "Goodfellas" parody, "The Art of Discourse" confines most of the meta/pop culture humor to the Abed and Troy subplot, while going more straightforward in showing Jeff and Britta, and also Pierce and Shirley, dealing with being the old men (and women) out on campus.

Jeff and Britta's conflict with the high school kids was played entirely for laughs, as we once again see that those two are more entertaining when they join forces for some ridiculous goal than when we're supposed to care about the simmering sexual tension between them. This was a really strong episode for Gillian Jacobs as Britta let herself get sucked into trying to pwn the three Schmitty kids, whether pathetically trying to defend her life choices (invoking Winona Ryder and wearing a Discman) or going pure evil in that moment when she had the brainstorm to send Jeff to have sex with Lisa Rinna.

The Pierce and Shirley plot, meanwhile, did a nice job of balancing laughs (Pierce being oblivious to his racism, the gang all turning on each other in the search for New Pierce) and some more genuine character moments about Shirley and Pierce's feelings about each other and their respective places in the group. Unlike the scenario Abed described in the quote above, this felt like actual story, and like something the show's been building to for a while. If the series wants us to care about this community and its characters beyond their role as avatars of pop culture gags - and it clearly does - then sooner or later Pierce's treatment of Shirley in particular and the group in general had to be addressed, and in a mostly heartfelt, sincere manner. Some very nice work by Chevy Chase and Yvette Nicole Brown in this one, and ultimately their moment of bonding climaxed with a nice callback to the pantsing joke that started the whole mess - and by the time we got to the food fight and the extended riff on the end of "Animal House," it felt okay to go whole-hog on the parody, and I look forward to seeing Troy and Abed in "College Cut-Ups 2: Panty Raid Academy."

What did everybody else think?

Cougar Town, "Letting You Go": Sail away

2010-04-29T13:43:00.001-04:00

A quick review of last night's "Cougar Town" (which, if I haven't said it enough lately, has been vastly improved since the start of the season) coming up just as soon as I use my mouth vacuum...

I haven't written much about "Cougar Town" lately, but it hasn't been for lack of watching/enjoying. It's just that between vacation time and the crunch of Wednesday programming, something's had to give, and this show has settled into a nice, strange groove that doesn't always leave me a ton to say by the time I have time to say it.

But "Letting You Go" was a very strong episode on several levels. It kept up the goofy enthusiasm of Jules and her cul de sac crew to find ways to fight boredom by trying to start new rituals, first with morning drinking, then with the late night Enya parties. The entire cast is really game for this stuff, and here I want to single out Josh Hopkins, who came across as a total stiff in nearly everything I've seen him do in the past, and is completely loose and fun and fearless here as Grayson.

The episode also did a good job of pushing the Jules/Travis relationship back to the forefront, after letting it slip away at various points this season. Jules is, on many levels, a sad character (again: morning drinking), and I like that the writers have found ways to acknowledge that quality, and the clinginess of her relationship with Travis, without undermining the humor of it all. And it also makes sense that Travis's impending departure (from her home, if not the show) would finally send Jules towards Grayson.

One question: is the mention of Winston University (home of the med school affiliated with Sacred Heart on "Scrubs") the first sign that "Cougar Town" and "Scrubs" are part of the same fictional universe, even with Christa Miller playing different roles in each? Or was there an earlier one I've forgotten?

(And second question: funnier Bill Lawrence show dog? Rowdy or Dog Travis?)

What did everybody else think?

Modern Family, "Travels with Scout": I am not left-handed, either

2010-04-29T08:51:00.001-04:00

A review of last night's "Modern Family" coming up just as soon as I lose the deposit on that fog machine...

I often have less to say about the episodes of "Modern Family" that work than the ones that don't, and since two and a half out of the three main stories this week were very funny, I'm going to be brief.

Cameron's brief drumming career was a nice example of the writers striking gold with an unexpected character crossover, with Dylan and his bandmates briefly being awed by Cam's stick skills, and Mitchell and Hayley bonding over their totally rockin' boyfriends. Jay's fiasco with the slasher film was a good story where good intentions (and a mental image of Mitchell's friend as a sweet kid who would never star in such a movie) led to increasingly bad consequences (and which gave Rico Rodriguez his usual chances to shine as Manny), and in the main plot, I enjoyed both Claire's growing affection for Scout and Luke unintentionally acting like a dog.

But as to the main part of the main plot, I think I find Fred Willard a little too perfect in his casting as Phil's dad, if that makes sense. If you wanted to cast someone who'd be Phil plus a few decades, you go get Willard, who's made a career out of playing men who think they're much funnier than they actually are. But the idea that Phil is the way he is because his dad is exactly like him, while logical, was maybe too on-the-nose to click for me, and I spent a lot of the Willard scenes waiting for the episode to swing around to someone else's story.

Still, very funny overall ("What's up with 21 Jump Street?"). What did everybody else think?

American Idol: Top 6 results

2010-04-28T22:13:00.004-04:00

Quick spoilers for tonight's "American Idol" elimination show coming up after I laugh about how the show actually ran short tonight, forcing Seacrest to vamp...

So, bottom three of Big Mike, Siobhan and Casey. Big Mike sent to safety, commercial break, then Siobhan goes home.

Early in the finals, Siobhan was the only contestant I cared about other than Crystal. But as I said last night, I grew tired of Siobhan's one not-so-great trick, and also of her endless babbling whenever the judges criticized her (she was at least 40 percent responsible for a lot of the overruns). I'm more bored with Aaron, but she was one of two who most deserved to go home.

Question: when is the last time someone in the finals went home after getting the pimp spot? I know Melinda Doolittle did in season 6 (but in the Top 3 show, which doesn't quite count), and I know Lilly went home despite being pimped in the semis this year, but has it happened in the finals in recent years before this week?

Firewall & Iceberg podcast, episode 14: Happy Town, Breaking Bad, and more

2010-04-28T16:19:00.002-04:00

Wednesday brings with it another episode of the Firewall & Iceberg podcast, this time with Dan and I (with no new "Lost" episode to dissect) trying to muster some enthusiasm to talk about "Idol," teaming up to slam "Happy Town," discussing our divergent paths with this season of "Survivor," checking in on the awesomeness of "Breaking Bad" this season, and more.

Fienberg has all the relevant links and times up at his blog, and if you subscribe via iTunes or RSS, it should be all ready to download.

30 for 30, "Run Ricky Run": The spliff myth?

2010-04-28T12:14:00.001-04:00

A quick review of "Run Ricky Run," the latest "30 for 30" film, coming up just as soon as I put on a wedding dress...

After last week's unsurprisingly polarizing "Silly Little Game" (which I liked even with the wacky re-creations of events), "30 for 30" is back on firmer documentary ground with "Run Ricky Run," Sean Pamphilon and Royce Toni's extremely personal portrait of Ricky Williams. Though Pamphilon's perspective was more inside than, say, Steve James's on Allen Iverson, I appreciated that this wasn't a one-hour apology for Ricky. It looked at his failings, but also at the potential causes of those failings (being molested by his father, anxiety disorders) that go far deeper than the easy media "He just likes smoking pot too much" narrative.

(On the one hand, I found it a nice touch that they kept showing "PTI" clips to see how Tony and Wilbon's take on the guy changed over the years. On the other hand, I'm angry that I was forced to watch even a few seconds of Skip Bayless, after going out of my way to avoid him for several years now.)

I watched this only a few days after a Tribeca Film Festival screening of Ice Cube's "Straight Outta L.A." (it airs May 11), and it's hard for this more low-key story to live up to seeing Al Davis's terrifying face in HD on a giant movie screen. But "Run Ricky Run" did its job in showing me a side of a story I only thought I understood.

What did everybody else think?

American Idol: Can't anyone here produce a TV show?

2010-04-28T09:55:00.000-04:00

Okay, this is just getting stupid now. After everyone got so angry last week about "American Idol" running five minutes long (despite only having seven performances to stretch out over an hour) and cutting off people's DVR recordings of "Glee" (and after people were torqued that the "Idol" Gives Back results show ran 17 hours long and prevented part of America from enjoying Tim Urban's elimination), the show somehow ran long again last night. It was only by a minute or two, but once again people watching "Glee" on a DVR delay lost part of the final musical number.

After the jump, I look at who's potentially to blame, and what can be done to fix things...

Okay, so our candidates for blame, in no particular order:

Bruce Gowers: He's the director of the show (Emmy-winning director, no less, even though they can't bring it in on time and the cameras are never where they should be), so on one level the buck stops with him. By now, he should have realized they're having trouble with time and ordered some things cut, whether it's judge talk, or Ryan Seacrest chatting up Shania Twain to fill time that ultimately didn't need to be filled, or what have you. Keep the show lean and mean for the first 2/3rds, and if it looks like there will be time, you can do a little padding around the last few performances. In a live telecast, the director is calling the shots, and Gower has failed miserably in this area.

Ryan Seacrest: Keeping the trains running on time has always been one of Seacrest's specialties, but he's been flaky in a lot of ways this season, including this one. If Gowers isn't telling him to cut the judges off when they start to bicker, or to go straight to the phone numbers once Simon's done talking, then Seacrest needs to take that initiative on his own and get things moving. Again, save the contestant-judge dialogue for late in the show if it's abundantly clear you have time to spare.

Four judges: It still boggles my mind that it occurred to no one on the show last year that bringing in a fourth judge would consume air time, and that something else would have to give. What's given, for the most part, is the number of songs - we're only going to get 5 next week, when in the pre-Kara days, we would have gotten 10 (two from each contestant) - even though that's the whole point of the show. But even when stretching 12 songs over 2 hours, or 6 songs over 1, the judges still consume way too much air and airtime. And it isn't just that there's an extra judge, but that Kara and Ellen are both chattier than Paula was (Paula, for all her insanity, seemed aware that she should stop talking after a while). So by the time we get to Simon (the other major reason for watching), the other three have gone on so much that the show is running long, and Simon gets cut off abruptly more often than not. They all need to be given earpieces so that Gowers (or, hopefully, someone more competent) can tell them to wrap it up and hand things off to the next judge. That, or they need to be given shock collars that go off if they run over their allotted time.

The producers: Again, four judges is too many. They either needed to not replace Paula when she left (and I was saying that even before Ellen turned out to be a complete waste of time), or they needed to be willing to sacrifice some other part of the show. I don't care if that's the mentor clips, or the Seacresterviews (which, admittedly, Coke sponsors), the introduction, or what have you, but something had to give, and nothing has. And as the bosses of the judges, Seacrest and Gowers, they should have authority to speed things up. But they don't seem to care.

Fox: The sense I get from talking to people at Fox is that they're as annoyed by this as the rest of us - several "Fringe" episodes got messed up this way last spring, and now it's happening to "Glee," a much more important piece of the network's future - but they have no control over the "Idol" producers. When a show is as big a hit as "Idol" is - single-handedly carrying Fox to a first-place Nielsen finish season after season - the producers realize that the network needs them more than they need the network, and they can do what they want with impunity. What's Fox going to do? Cancel "Idol"? Cut off the telecasts at 9 no matter what? (That would anger even more people than are being irked about the "Glee" thing.)

Basically, until Ken Warwick and company decide they care about ending on time, we're stuck with this mess. So if you watch "Idol" and/or "Glee," make sure your recordings are padded by a minimum of five minutes every week. And even that wouldn't have helped you with last week's results show. Sigh...

Parenthood, "Perchance to Dream": It's tricky

2010-04-28T07:29:00.000-04:00

A review of last night's "Parenthood" coming up just as soon as I unleash the fever...

Parenthood (whether the concept or the TV show) isn't a competition, but I couldn't help noticing that the parent doing the best job in "Perchance to Dream" is Crosby (and Jasmine, too). Adam freaks out over Haddie's sexuality, Sarah again tries to project all of her regrets onto Amber, and Julia took the broken mug issue way too far to overcompensate for the old lawyer=liar saw. Crosby, meanwhile, had no problem interrupting his date with Jasmine to help Jabbar through his fear of pooping in strange places, and he and Jasmine both recognized that they don't want to send the wrong message to the kid if their attempt to go from co-parents to couple doesn't work out.

Now, I'm not complaining about any of the others this week. Some of the most interesting stories on this show involve parents screwing up, as we saw with the scene where Haddie called Adam on his double-standard treatment of her. But just as no one would have expected Dax Shepard to give one of the best performances among this cast, who would have thought after the first few episodes that we might get a night where Crosby was so much more on his game than his siblings?

I don't want to give short shrift to Kristina's decision, by the way. The whole work/kids dilemma is a familiar one, in life and on TV, and Kristina has the added complication of a special needs kid. As much as she enjoyed her time back in grown-up world, I can understand her reluctance to go back full-time not long after finding out about Max's Asperger's (and not long before Haddie goes to college). And it was interesting to watch Adam throughout that scene, because you could tell he was trying to do right by his wife even as he very clearly didn't want her to go work for Sundra from "Survivor: Cook Islands."

"Perchance to Dream" was one of the show's more thematically and tonally consistent episodes. It was also a fairly light one, not only with Adam's goofy dancing, but Sarah and Amber listening in horror to Mike O'Malley's poems about Sarah's va-jay-jay, everyone else's reaction to Julia's cordoned-off area, and Drew's reaction to Haddie taking off her bra in the kitchen. Plus, Run-DMC! (Which gives me an excuse to link to the original video, with Penn & Teller.)

What did everybody else think?

'Happy Town' review: Sepinwall on TV

2010-04-28T07:00:00.002-04:00

In today's column, I review "Happy Town," which premieres tonight on ABC. Not a fan, and it won't be part of the blog rotation as I move over to HitFix (nor would it have been were I staying here). Feel free to discuss the premiere here if you watch it tonight.

Justified, "Blind Spot": Don't make me a target

2010-04-27T23:05:00.005-04:00

A review of tonight's "Justified" coming up just as soon as you think we're going to banter here...

"You think there's never going to be any consequences for this?" -Art

Raylan Givens began this series as a man in control - of his emotions, of predicting the actions of his opponents, and of winning any and every fight. As we enter the second half of this first season, his return to Kentucky, and the various headaches from his past that have come with it, now has him as a man in control of very little, save for his usual good aim and skill in a fight. He can keep it together when dealing with the amateurs and low-level thieves and killers he's faced in recent episodes, but put him in a room with Boyd Crowder as Boyd goes on about the Good Book, and all of Raylan's cool, all of his training, goes out the window, and he becomes every bit a 21st century Seth Bullock. His relationship with Ava has opened up all kinds of blind spots - to how he's risking his career, and to the dangers still posed from the Miami mob over his shooting of Tommy Bucks - and all of a sudden, Raylan looks less a superman than a mortal, fallible one.

After last week's episode tried to split its focus between a routine Raylan case and all the ongoing storylines, "Blind Spot" was devoted entirely to the various messes Raylan finds himself in, with Art, with the Crowders, and with Miami. And while I've quite enjoyed a bunch of the self-contained stories the show has done, there's no question that it's more intense, and more fun, when we're dealing with stories and characters continuing from week to week.

Walton Goggins was tremendous tonight (as was Timothy Olyphant at showing Raylan losing his cool). Goggins can go pretty broad at times, as he did in the series pilot, but ever since Boyd had his jailhouse conversion, he's been doing some really small, interesting work with the character. As Goggins plays him, you're never quite clear how much of the born-again thing is real and how much is Boyd just playing an angle. After all, Raylan told us in the pilot that Boyd was too smart to buy into the white supremacy nonsense, and was just doing it as a way to get over. It's entirely possible that's what he's doing here - that he knows it gets under Raylan's skin, and even that he knows he can survive whatever the other prisoners throw at him - but there's also a weird conviction to it. If it's all an act, would he really let things in the prison laundry go that far, not knowing his father was nearby and ready to save him?

And speaking of big, bad Bo Crowder, give a big welcome to Mr. M.C. Gainey, boys and girls. When I said a few weeks ago that the producers had to get a really imposing actor to play Bo after the off-screen build-up, Gainey (aka Tom Friendly from "Lost," among many, many bad-ass roles) was the kind of guy I had in mind.

We're very clearly pushing towards some kind of ultimate confrontation between Raylan, the Crowders and Miami in the second half, and I'm looking forward to every minute of it.

Some other thoughts:

• Better late than never, but I was glad to see Ava finally acknowledge that it's kind of a big deal, emotionally, that she killed her husband. Up until now, Ava's been temptress first, character second, and between the early scene in her bedroom and then her initiative in stopping the bad guys at the end, she seems both more like a real person and more like a good match for Raylan.

• And speaking of which, note Winona trying to mark her territory by going on and on with Ava about all the burdens of having been married to Raylan.

• Getting back to Seth Bullock, in an interesting bit of casting, the hitman from Miami was played by Ray McKinnon, who played the doomed reverend on "Deadwood" season one. Not only does he have history with Olyphant, but he and Goggins teamed up for "The Accountant," a 2001 short film that won both men an Oscar (and led to me sitting at home asking, "What on earth is Shane from 'The Shield' doing at the Academy Awards?").

What did everybody else think?

American Idol, Top 6: Shania Twain Night

2010-04-27T21:39:00.000-04:00

A review of tonight's "American Idol" performances coming up just as soon as I lament professional comedian Ellen DeGeneres' need to do two different "Shania Twain-as-train" jokes in one episode...

First of all, Shania Twain's Canadian-ness is one of those things I tend to forget (in spite of my own half-Canadian ancestry) for years at a time because I only hear her sing, and the accent only comes out in her speaking voice. Very unsettling to be reminded she could have played the love interest in a Bob & Doug McKenzie movie if the timing had been a bit different.

As to the show itself? Well, let's just say I find Shania's speaking voice more interest than a lot of what's in her songbook - and particularly the parts of her songbook that were performed this evening. (If only Big Mike or Aaron had come out and did "Man, I Feel Like a Woman"...)

Lee Dewyze, "You're Still the One": Every week, the judges completely ignore the number of outright horrible notes he lets into his performances. Until this week, those at least were the exception each week and not the rule, but tonight Lee sounded more off-key then on, while at the same time looking like he had just been up all night trying to recreate the "ADRIAN!!!!" scene from the end of the first "Rocky." I don't dislike Lee in general, but this was probably the worst he's been so far.

Michael Lynche, "It Only Hurts When I'm Breathing": This is Big Mike doing his young Luther thing. Mostly sounded good - though the falsetto was oddly weak in spots - and passionate (the "wet" quality Simon was complaining about), but didn't do a lot for me.

Casey James, "Don't": Some other contestants this season have been ruined by inconsistent comments from the judges. Fortunately for Casey, the judges have all been telling him the same thing for weeks, and he finally listened. No pointless guitar mini-solos, no fixed half-smile; just his usual Bob Seger voice married to some genuine emotion. More vibrato than I would have liked, but overall his best since "Jealous Guy," and one of his strongest performances overall.

Crystal Bowersox, "No One Needs to Know": After last week's powerhouse, tear-inducing "People Get Ready," Crystal takes it down several notches with a quirky alt-country performance that sounded very much like the sort of thing she might play at a concert five years from now in between two of her better-known hits. I liked the vibe of it, and the way Crystal sounded a bit like Neko Case when she went into the falsetto. The judges were clearly irked (though only Simon came out and admitted it) she didn't swing for the fences again after last week, but I'm fine with a Mama Sox double now and then.

Aaron Kelly, "You Got a Way": Aaron's voice has been pretty brutal the last month or so, but on a country-themed night he finally managed to grab hold of the notes and not sound like he was straining to reach them. But if he sounded better technically, he still put me to sleep, though I believe I woke up just in time to hear Kara accuse him of being a virgin. Is that about right?

Siobhan Magnus, "Any Man of Mine": Okay, I think I'm done with her. All the usual Siobhan tics - dull, pitchy low notes at the beginning, building to a wail and an endless power note - and here we got the added bonus of her having major breath control issues as she tried to walk and sing at the same time, and then as she tried to deal with some particularly wordy verses. The judges were impressed by the big note at the end, but I've seen that trick too often to care when the rest of the song was so uninspired.

Best of the night: The Outlaw Casey James, followed a ways back by Crystal.

In danger: I'd be fine with either Siobhan or Aaron going, but he had the whole "I was singing it to my mom" moment, and she had the pimp spot, which is still mostly invulnerable, so... Lee, in spite of never being in the bottom 3 before? Big Mike, because his voters could get complacent twice? I'll be curious to see if Crystal goes bottom 3 after the judges finally criticized her, and also after a small-by-design performance, but I'd be stunned if she was in real danger.

Finally, as many of you know by now, I'll be blogging at HitFix starting next week, and in figuring out how the new job is going to work, I think "Idol" is one of the few shows I cover regularly now that won't get the weekly treatment in the new home.

Part of that is that it's been a real bear doing "Idol" and "Lost" live on the same night (which wasn't a problem this week), part is that I've been really uninspired by the cast this season, and part of it is that Fienberg has always been much, much better at writing about "Idol" (here's his review of tonight's show). When I was a solo act, it made sense for me to carve out time to do these weekly write-ups; when I'm at a place where another guy does it and does it better than me (and cares more than I do), it makes sense to focus time and energy elsewhere. I'm sure I'll weigh in from time to time, and maybe even do a weekly post where I link to Dan and invite you to comment, but at least until the finals, I'm out of the "Idol" reviewing game.

What did everybody else think?

Lost: You (still) want answers?

2010-04-27T17:02:00.001-04:00

Tonight's "Lost" is the only repeat of the season ("Ab Aeterno," the Richard episode), so I figured I'd use the opportunity to re-ask a question from the start of the season: which mysteries will you be most disappointed if they aren't answered by season's end?

And to that I'd now add this: based on how this season has gone, and how some mysteries like the whispers have been explained, have your expectations for the final episodes changed?

United States of Tara, "Torando": Beautiful disaster

2010-04-26T23:00:00.004-04:00

A review of tonight's "United States of Tara" coming up just as soon as my anger is a very pretty costume...

"Group time. Who wants to begin?" -Shoshana

We're at the midway point of season two, so why not lock most of the regulars into the Hubbard basement for some bonding and uncomfortable truths?

"Torando" - named for the misspelling on the TV weather report that so unnerves Marshall - ultimately didn't go as full "Breakfast Club" as I was expecting once the Gregsons, Charmaine and Ted and Hanny(*) went into the basement together - but, of course, it couldn't. Still lots of season to go, lots more to be revealed about Tara's psyche, the childhood secret that she and Charmaine share (that fractured Tara's mind and made Charmaine afraid of basements), and the state of Tara and Max's marriage.

(*) But not, interestingly, Courtney, whom I would have pegged for a berth in the basement just so she could weird out Marshall and his new grown-up gay role models with her plan to be a "celibate power couple." Down the road, I guess.

But "Torando" still offered us plenty of revelations, including a lot more detail about Shoshana and Tara's relationship with her. I wondered all through last week's episode whether Shoshana knew she was an alter, and it becomes clear here that she does, and that this fact doesn't seem to matter to either her or Tara when it comes to their "therapy." (And it was also interesting to see Ted acknowledge how much she resembles the real Shoshana, other than the slight lisp - and then funny to see Max and Charmaine simultaneously tell him not to tell Tara that, lest the lisp become part of the character.) I don't know if there's an actual case of an alter being used as a healing tool like this, but as a dramatic device, it works, particularly in an episode like this where the other characters were all trapped with Shoshana and forced to listen to her psycho-analyze them. (And because Shoshana is an alter, with a slightly over-the-top Noo Yawk accent from Toni Collette, we can laugh a bit at her rather than feel uncomfortable that the show is using Shoshana to tell us things about the characters we should be able to figure out in less obvious ways.)

And in addition to Shoshana, we got rapid-fire appearances by Buck, and Alice, and even Gimme, as Collette got to prove once and for all how unnecessary last year's alter costumes were. She's good enough to tell you exactly who she's playing without the pumps and the ponchos and the hunting vests, isn't she?

And for all of Max's despair about the flickering light at the end of the tunnel, and Marshall's unease about what the "Torando" misspelling says about society, and everyone's fear of the storm's damage, in the end the Gregsons do what they usually do in these circumstances: they took pain (or, in this case, fear), and they (literally) danced around it. And in the final moments of the episode, Tara stepped out of the Hubbard house and into the wreckage of their neighborhood (in a sequence gorgeously shot by Craig Gillespie). Tara's as much a mess as that tornado-ravaged street, but in the end she and her family will have to pick up and start trying to patch things up again.

Finally, in case you missed the news earlier today, I'll be moving to HitFix.com in a week's time. While I've tried to get these "Tara" reviews up by the time the show finishes airing on Monday nights, I suspect the next week is going to be chaotic enough that my review of episode 7 will be one of the first things I post to the HitFix version of the blog on Tuesday, rather than one of the last things I post here on Monday. So I look forward to discussing "Department of (Bleeped)-Up Family Services" with you at HitFix next week.

What did everybody else think?

Chuck, "Chuck vs. the Honeymooners": Sarah smile

2010-04-26T21:00:00.011-04:00

"Chuck" is back after a couple of weeks off, and I have a review coming up just as soon as I pretend to be Canadian to be well-liked...

"But off the record, it's about damn time." -General Beckman

What she said.

I wrote a bit about this episode in today's column - specifically, about how happy I was to see the show not only not miss a beat with Chuck and Sarah together, but be even more fun in a number of ways.

So rather than rehash that point - or note, as Fienberg talked about on last week's podcast, what a refreshing change it was to have an entire episode with Sarah looking happy - I'll try to go a little more in-depth about why "Chuck vs. the Honeymooners" worked so well.

After so much darkness earlier in Season 3.0 (much of it effective, some of it not), it was a welcome change of pace to have a straight-up romp(*) with the two crazy kids enjoying the hell out of each other's company, being turned on by the idea of fighting evil together, trying on ridiculous cover identities (and Yvonne Strahovski adding another convincing, albeit exaggerated, accent to her repertoire with her Texas gal character), lying to each other for a good reason (and with relatively low stakes, since everyone watching knew they'd wind up staying in the spy game, and together) and kicking very much butt together.

(*) One false note, which we get in lieu of the "Chuck" Plot Hole of the Week: the (offscreen) murder of the two Interpol agents who were sent to clean up Chuck and Sarah's mess. Death isn't normally out of place on "Chuck," but it felt that way in the midst of a very light episode - particularly since it was Chuck and Sarah's foolhardy actions that led to those two deaths. I wouldn't have wanted to stop the hijinx for some "Oh my god, we got those two men killed!" angst but I'd rather the two characters (whom we never met, anyway) had just been taken out of the picture in a different way. A nice beating would have sufficed.

Between the introduction of Chuck Fu and the arrival of Shaw, Sarah was unfortunately on the sideline for a lot of this season, so it was a pleasure to see her as an active, super-capable spy and kung fu fighter, and then to see Chuck fighting right alongside her, with the two even punching in unison when the handcuffs got involved. As the two fought one-armed, back-to-back in the final fight in the cafe, I made a note that it reminded me of season one's "Chuck vs. the Undercover Lover," where Casey beat up the bad guys with Chuck strapped to his back, even using Chuck against his will to knock a few of their opponents out. "Only here," I noted, "Chuck can fight, too."

And then, of course, moments later, we got a more direct recreation of that fight, only with Morgan taking the place of Chuck as the hapless nerd strapped to Casey. And that scene capped a wonderful episode for the unlikely new Casey/Morgan partnership, and lived up to the promise of Morgan joining Team Bartowski. I'm 100% on board with the producers' desire to have Chuck get better at the spy game (in part on his own, in part with the new Intersect), because if the character didn't grow, the same jokes would get lame and repetitive. But by throwing Morgan - whose own brand of nerditry is a bit different and more aggressively ignorant of spy stuff than Chuck's - into the mix, those jokes get a fresh new life. (Along with hilarious new jokes like Morgan's sub-eating ID photo or his super-secret crotch money pouch.) And it's also interesting to see Casey showing more respect for Morgan's contributions upfront than he was giving Chuck at this stage of Chuck's spy career. I suppose the writers have to do some more finessing to justify Morgan's gig since he doesn't have an Intersect in his head (and since being "the Intersect of Chuck" is only useful on occasion), but the idea that the little bearded dude's outsider perspective has value in spy world is a promising one.

And after Ellie and Awesome didn't get a farewell in what was originally going to be the end of the season, the characters get a better send-off - for now, as I suspect Chuck and Sarah will wind up on a spy mission to Africa within an episode or two - and even get serenaded by Jeffster! (Unplugged!) Any episode with a drunken Ellie being flanked by Jeff and Lester in turtlenecks and wire-rim glasses singing "Leaving on a Jet Plane" is overflowing with goodness, is it not?

Some other thoughts:

• This week in "Chuck" pop culture references, so many memorable thrillers have taken place on trains that I'm not even sure what to list first: "North by Northwest"? "Strangers on a Train"? "Murder on the Orient Express"? "Silver Streak"? Regardless, lots of great movies (or occasionally great, like "Silver Streak") take place on trains - including John Frankenheimer's great, simply-titled "The Train," which Matt Seitz has often argued was "Die Hard on a Train" 25 years early - and any or all should be in your Netflix queue (start with "North by Northwest," then "The Train"). Meanwhile, Jeffster!'s folkie look resembled early Simon and Garfunkel (even as they sang John Denver by way of Peter, Paul & Mary).

• This week in "Chuck" music: "Holiday" by Vampire Weekend plays over the opening montage of Chuck and Sarah spending an awful lot of time in their passenger compartment, Polyphonic Spree's "Light & Day/Reach for the Sun" plays as Chuck and Sarah resolve to not quit the spy game together, and Chuck puts on the seminal Nina Simone version of "Feeling Good" as his choice for what will become Sarah's favorite song.

• In addition to CIA's hysterical photo collage of Morgan, I loved the stern caller ID picture of General Beckman that Chuck had on his iPhone. In general, the show has a lot of fun with those pictures (I recall Devon's was one of him kissing his biceps, right?), and this was no exception.

• Speaking of phones, Sarah's sure got a thing against iPhones, doesn't she? She threw hers into the pool in the season premiere, then threw Chuck's out of the train here.

• And speaking of Devon's biceps, loved his explanation for why he would pack dumbbells on a trip to Africa: pointing to his splendid torso and explaining, "This didn't happen by accident."

Finally, in case you didn't see the news this afternoon, this blog will be relocating in a little over a week to HitFix.com. Assuming I get next week's "Chuck vs. the Role Models" in advance, that will be, somewhat appropriately, the subject of the last review on this version of the blog, and my write-ups of the season's final episodes will be over at HitFix.

What did everybody else think?

Big news: I'm going to HitFix

2010-04-26T14:12:00.003-04:00

Big announcement today, folks: a week from tomorrow, I will be leaving The Star-Ledger full-time and going to work at HitFix.com, and this blog will be going with me.

Please allow me to explain...

Here's the deal: on Monday, May 3, I'll say goodbye to The Star-Ledger newsroom, post my review of that night's "Chuck," and prepare to make the virtual move to HitFix (a great general interest entertainment site I've linked to a time or 20 because my old friend and podcasting partner Dan Fienberg is an editor and writer there). Starting Tuesday, May 4, this version of the blog will continue to exist as an archive of my writing from the fall of 2005 through now, but all my new material will be posted to HitFix.com/whatsalanwatching

In many ways, not much will change. The blog there will work the same way it always has here, with lots of reviews of the shows I watch each night, plus column-style entries reviewing shows in advance, commenting on the news of the TV business, checking in on series midway through a season, revisiting old shows in the summer (up next: "The Wire" season 3), etc. But rather than splitting my online presence between this version of the blog and the one at NJ.com (where all my Star-Ledger columns appeared), everything will now be in one place.

I've been given permission by my new ~~ant~~ HitFix overlords to import over the commenting rules I've used here for the last 4 and a half years. So while you'll have to register to comment at HitFix (or else use the option to comment via your Facebook account, if you want), the registration process is pretty easy, and the goal of keeping things civil and smart remains. What has made this site so special over the years is your presence and enthusiasm and cleverness, and I'd hate to set up shop at the new digs without you.

So why am I doing this? Several reasons. For one, The Star-Ledger is the only job I've ever had. I started there as an intern a week after I graduated college, backed my way into a TV critic position there within a few weeks, and have been doing the same thing for 14 years since. And while it's been a great home to me for all those years, eventually, a man's gotta try something different. I began my career writing about TV online with the "NYPD Blue" fan site in college, and even with the blog these last few years, I've still felt more print journalist than online guy. I like the idea of being at a website, and I've been really impressed with what Dan, Drew McWeeney and everyone else at HitFix have been doing over the last year. So when they approached me recently about the chance to join the team, I was excited.

(My bosses at The Star-Ledger, by the way, have been very gracious about this, and in fact we've arranged for some of my column-style HitFix stories to appear in the paper on a regular basis. So those of you who live in New Jersey and have gotten used to reading me in the paper can still do so over your morning bagel.)

The goal is to make the transition as seamless as possible. There's of course going to be an adjustment period, but I hope HitFix will feel just as homey as this place in short order.

In the meantime, I have a sign-up form below for an e-mail alert telling you when new posts are up on HitFix, and you can also go to sign up to comment at HitFix. My new e-mail address, meanwhile, is sepinwall@hitfix.com.

One more week here, then exciting new adventures. I can't wait.

Find out First

A new era begins on Tuesday, May 4 when Alan Sepinwall's What's Alan Watching moves to HitFix. Enter your E-mail address to get instant alerts for the latest posts at his new home.

There is a new blog logo. Discuss.

2010-04-26T09:27:00.002-04:00

Another week brings with it another logo, this one with a theme submitted by reader Bryan Farris.

As always, this post has links to, and explanations for, all the previous logos.

'Chuck' finds love, and is better for it: Sepinwall on TV

2010-04-26T07:00:00.000-04:00

Haven't written about "Chuck" in the newspaper in a while, so I devoted today's column to previewing tonight's episode, in which Chuck and Sarah are finally together, and all remains awesome with the world.

Back tonight with a spoiler-y review covering some specifics of this one.

Treme, "Right Place, Wrong Time": Are you in, or are you out?

2010-04-25T23:00:00.010-04:00

A review of tonight's "Treme" coming up just as soon as I have a rhythm and blues intervention...

"People want to see what happened." -The bus driver

James Poniewozik and I both cited the scene at the end of this episode in our initial reviews of "Treme." I said that Albert's dismissal of the tourists, safe behind their tinted glass, was reflective of David Simon's full-immersion approach to portraying cities, where Poniewozik found it a bit on the nose and said, "It also raises a question: why are we watching, and why did HBO pick up the show, if not to 'see what happened'?"

Jim has a point (and later got Simon to expand on the purpose of that scene), in that no matter how deeply "Treme" goes into showing us New Orleans and its people, viewers like me who've never been there will remain tourists, watching through our own kind of glass. But I guess there are varying levels of tourism, and varying levels of authenticity, and "Right Place, Wrong Time"(*) is all about characters coming into conflict over who is and isn't a true son or daughter of New Orleans, with the rights and privileges some believe that allows.

(*) With a teleplay by the late David Mills.

Davis confronts his neighbors about trying to gentrify the neighborhood and is stunned to discover that they're natives who know almost as much about Treme and its music as he does. Ladonna gets frustrated in dealing with her Creole in-laws because she thinks they find her beneath them. Dr. John leads Delmond and the other session musicians in a performance of the Mardi Gras Indian anthem "Indian Red," with Dr. John saying he intends to do the song with love and respect for the traditions, even as Delmond acknowledges that men like his father - who himself sings "Indian Red" at the memorial for Wild Man Jesse - wouldn't see it that way.

And Davis and Creighton - two men who would seem to be kindred spirits in many ways, including how each views himself as a guardian of the city and its culture - meet and fall into instant loathing, though that has more to do with Creighton's dislike of having this doofus around his teenage daughter than Creighton finding Davis to be pretentious.

So the question, I guess, is what level of authenticity should be considered acceptable? Or, rather, is it stupid and self-defeating to devote time and energy trying to stratify this - to suggest that I'm somehow superior to a passenger on a "Katrina tour" bus, or that Dr. John (himself a native of the city) doesn't have the right to sing "Indian Red"? Or are these distinctions important? Albert seems to think that if the city is rebuilt without Mardi Gras Indians, or with the Lower Ninth given over to developers, then there isn't much point to it, where Delmond finds the insularity of the city so frustrating that he understands why so many of its musicians have to leave to succeed. Maybe both father and son have a point; maybe neither of them do. Maybe Simon, Overmyer and the rest of the writers expect us to find Davis's self-righteousness charming, or maybe they intend for him to be insufferable.

Only way to find out for sure, I suppose, is to spend a lot more time pressed up against the looking glass.

Beyond that issue of authenticity, "Right Place, Right Time" brings more characters together, deepens our understanding of them, and moves stories together a bit, before climaxing with that beautiful, haunting memorial for Wild Man Jesse.

Toni winds up getting both Davis and Antoine out of jail for running afoul of the cops (though Davis' arrest was more deserving, whereas Antoine was just drunk and clumsy), and Davis in turn becomes Sofia's piano teacher. Antoine, who's been trying to be more faithful to Desiree, gets into his scrape with the law(*) in part because he stopped for an impromptu jam with Sonny and Annie, and as we follow those two on their own, we learn that there's an unspoken tension in Sonny and Annie's relationship because Sonny resents Annie's superior talent. Ladonna again gets screwed over by her roof contractor and also strikes out in her attempt to get her stuck-up in-laws to help search for Daymo. And with the state of the restaurant growing more dire, Janette even consents to let Davis take her out for an expensive meal to repay her for the wine he drank in the pilot, and then goes to bed with him(**).

(*) And the idea that the cops may have either broken or lost his trombone is no small plot point on a show about broke-ass musicians. Without that horn, Antoine is in big trouble.

(**) The cast is wall-to-wall terrific, but my favorite acting moment here was Kim Dickens showing us the long moment of thought required by Janette before she decided that, yes, she was going to have sex with Davis again.

And, of course, Albert's search for Wild Man Jesse ends in tragedy, as he and Jesse's son Lorenzo make the unfortunate discovery of his body, trapped under the canoe he was presumably going to use to ride out the storm. And where Delmond has no use for the Indian tradition, Lorenzo is right there to chant and sing as Albert and his fellow chiefs gather to say goodbye to Jesse, only to have the beautiful ritual interrupted by the tour bus.

Those tourists are sent away by Albert, Robinette and the others, but we tourists at home are invited to witness the whole thing.

Some other thoughts:

• As always, be sure to check out Dave Walker's "Treme" blog for the Times-Picayune for explanations of all the local color. Dave pointed me to this site for some more background on chiefs, wild men and "Indian Red."

• It's not TV, it's HBO, which means we get to open with Antoine having his way with one of the strippers (going on, of course, about how his instrument is called a 'bone), and then get another priceless look on Wendell Pierce's face when Desiree resolves to remind him what good loving he gets right at home.

• Though "Treme" takes place several years back, the first time it really felt like a period piece was the brief scene where Creighton and Toni watch Sofia's YouTube video, and Creighton has to explain the concept of YouTube (then relatively new) to Toni.

• The real Davis, by the way, has taught piano (including "Tipitina") to David Simon's son.

• In last week's episode, Davis mentioned that all crime had left the city after the storm, and here Sonny tells his friend that all drugs are gone, too - and we learn that Sonny was forced by the storm to clean up his own habit.

One word of caution: as of now, this was the last episode I received in advance. I'm hopeful that I'll get more soon, but sometimes the production schedule doesn't allow for that. So there's a chance these reviews might relocate to Mondays in the future unless more screeners turn up.

What did everybody else think?

Breaking Bad, "Sunset": Partners in crime

2010-04-25T22:59:00.006-04:00

A review of tonight's "Breaking Bad" coming up just as soon as I do a riverdance...

"Please tell me you got something!" -Jesse

Walt spends much of the first half of "Sunset" in the company of Gale, his new lab assistant in the Walt-cave, and a nail-biting chunk of the second half trapped in the RV with Jesse. And while Walt and Gale seem a perfect match on paper in nearly every way, it's clear by the end of this gripping episode that for all their flaws and incompatibilities, Walt and Jesse are, much to both their chagrins, made for each other.

After Walt tried to ban Jesse from the meth business last week, I assumed it might be a long time before the two might work together again. I of course neglected to factor in two things: 1)Walt and Jesse's tremendous capacity, both separately and together, for screwing up; and 2)The weird gravitational pull that RV held over their relationship.

"Breaking Bad" always seems to find a higher gear whenever those two are in the RV together, and so it shouldn't be a surprise that their final time in that accursed but useful vehicle/domicile would be one of the most memorable yet. I've loved every minute of season three so far as the show has gone in an even darker direction, but the climax to "Sunset" felt very much like old-school "Breaking Bad": Walt and Jesse finding a way to make a bad problem worse, stuck in the RV together, Jesse waiting for Walt's great brain to find a way out of the mess.

From the minute Walt pulled onto Clovis's lot and started barking orders about destroying the RV, I knew things would go pear-shaped, and they did. Where Walt feared that Hank might have tapped Jesse's phone and hung up without explaining the situation, what he should have feared was the exact reaction Jesse had when Badger told him Walt was taking away the RV (Jesse's entire business) to destroy it. And so Jesse led Hank right where Walt didn't want him to be, with those scenes feeling oddly like a desert twist on "Jaws," with Hank as the shark circling the boat, looking for a way in to devour the lives of the men inside. So intense, so well-acted by Cranston and Paul and Dean Norris, and so well-written and directed by John Shiban (behind the camera for an episode of TV for the first time since a 2002 "X-Files").

Walt ultimately recognized the three words that have saved his hash so many times before - "better call Saul" - but the look on Hank's face in the hospital (confusing, then relief, then complete and utter rage) suggests that the hunt from Heisenberg has turned from an excuse to avoid El Paso into an absolute vendetta.

Of course, Hank is now the target of a vendetta himself, as Gus has decided that the headache of a murdered DEA agent is less vexing than losing Walt's genius too soon. (Even though I believe Gus is going to use Gale to copy the Heisenberg formula so he can produce it without this egomaniacal loose cannon.) Hank may be able to win the day in a bar fight, but the only thing that has thus far been able to stop the Cousins is Gus himself. I've been worried for a while that Hank might not survive the season, but is he even going to make it deep into the second half of it?

And what happens to Walt and Jesse now that the RV is gone? Does Walt take pity on Jesse and offer him either money or a job (assuming Gus would allow this) to make up for the mobile meth lab's destruction? Or, without that vehicle to hold them together, will the rift between the two grow wider and nastier?

Incredible episode. My jaw was on the floor for large chunks of it.

Some other thoughts:

• Loved Walt insisting on taking the model home, and then going through a morning ritual (the shirt, and the brown bag lunch with his name on it) as if he were going to a real punch-the-clock job. It's a fake life he's living, and so he needs all the accessories to make it look (and make himself feel) good.

• Badger returns to New Mexico after fleeing the state late last season after Walt and Jesse's business got him into legal trouble. And he busts a few fancy dance moves upon returning.

• Lots of great, off-beat music throughout the episode, but particularly the use of some of Vince Guaraldi's "Peanuts" music for the meth-cooking montage in the Walt-cave.

• You can find the full text of "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" here.

• Two notable guest stars: David Costabile (recently a villain on "Damages," but also the "more with less" newspaper editor in "The Wire" season 5 and Mel's husband on "Flight of the Conchords") as Gale, and Larry Hankin (who, to me, will always be the Kramer from Jerry and George's sitcom pilot on "Seinfeld") as the legally-wise junkyard manager.

• As I watched the Native American cop head towards his demise at the hands of the Cousins in the prologue, I again thought to myself that someone is missing a golden opportunity at giving a spin on the cop drama series by setting one on an Indian reservation. "Mystery!" did a few adaptations of Tony Hillerman's Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee novels in the early '00s, and at one time there was talk of DC Comics trying to turn "Scalped" into a TV show, but that world feels like it has so much untapped potential for a weekly cop show. Am I alone on that?

What did everybody else think?

The Pacific, "Part Seven": My father's gun

2010-04-25T22:00:00.011-04:00

A review of tonight's "The Pacific" - the most intense, harrowing, and best installment yet - coming up just as soon as I hit the driving range...

"You don't wanna do that." -Snafu

I complained in the early "Pacific" reviews that vignettes of Sledge back home in Mobile were sometimes a distraction - that I would have rather stayed with Leckie and Basilone in the field than to keep coming back to the kid who wouldn't be seeing combat for until the miniseries was almost half over.

But ultimately, those scenes turn out to have been essential. Because we spent a fair amount of time with Sledge as a naive kid eager to go to war to prove himself, it's far more striking to now see him as the veteran who leaves Peleliu haunted by what he saw and did there. The Sledge of Mobile would have looked at those women in white and then sheepishly averted his eyes when called on it; the Sledge of Peleliu was able to scare off another man in uniform with his stare. Terrific work by Joseph Mazzello throughout.

After being horrified by Snafu's amoral attitude and tooth-scavenging in Part Five, Sledge is ready to follow suit here - and in a wonderful moment, so ambiguously-played by Rami Malek, Snafu gets him to stop, perhaps because Snafu means what he says about germs, or perhaps because Snafu's not so far gone that he recognizes there's some part of Sledgehammer that should be protected from becoming like him. Of course, that he does it only moments after we see him casually dropping pebbles into a dead man's open skull cavity - a horrifying image that's not going to leave my brain anytime soon - only adds to the ambiguity(*), and the dark comedy of it all.

(*) Also ambiguous, and horrific: Snafu killing the wounded soldier whose teeth are being excavated by another Marine. He says he did it because it "makes it easier," but you could also read it as Snafu putting the poor bastard out of his misery.

By spending three episodes on one island, and most of that time with Sledge, this stretch of the miniseries feels a little more focused than some of the early episodes on Guadalcanal. By the time we leave Peleliu, I felt like I understood not only Sledge, but Snafu and Gunny Haney and the late Ack-Ack, where Leckie and Basilone were the only men in their respective stories who got much characterization. "The Pacific" was designed as a three-character piece, with each man trading spotlights, but given that they barely cross paths with each other, it helps if they have other people to react to, and Sledge in this Peleliu sequence has by far the richest supporting cast. Hell, Snafu alone is such a weird, compelling figure that this episode feels less a Sledge solo than a Sledge/Snafu duet.

There's more action at night than there was in the previous two episodes, and in general, director Tim Van Patten seems content to let things seem as chaotic and blurred together as it does to Sledge, whose only real way to differentiate the days is with the tally he keeps in his Bible-cum-journal.

Ultimately, nothing seems to matter on Peleliu except the chaos. Ack-Ack is killed by sniper fire (and his body is given a touching impromptu honor guard from the gathered Marines), Gunny Haney finally cracks under the pressure of a very different war from the one he fought as a young man, and the island itself turns out to have no military value. At episode's end, Eugene runs into the water on Pavuvu to get clean, but there are some thing you just can't wash off.

Some other thoughts

• In a role reversal, now it's Basilone as subject of a few random trips home while we follow Sledge in combat, with the hero of Guadalcanal miserable as a celebrity back in America while his buddies are getting chewed up overseas.

• Speaking of which, we get a couple of cameos from characters from earlier in the series, as Chesty Puller limps past Sledge while Leckie's pal Chuckler is carried off in a stretcher, wounded but alive. Bruce McKenna said he would have loved to feature more of Chesty, particularly after he saw William Sadler's performance; the problem was that after Guadalcanal, Chesty was never geographically all that close to the events our main characters were involved in.

• But if Chesty is largely absent, Scott Gibson got to do some nice work as Ack-Ack Haldane, who gets to show the kind of subtle leadership that Leckie never really seemed to witness during his time in action. Here, we see him distracting Sledge with talk of home, and then with a very important, but safe and easy to perform, task: waking him from a 20-minute cat nap.

• McKenna wrote the "Bastogne" episode of "Band of Brothers" that focused on combat from the point of view of the company medic. Here he echoes that idea with the sequence where Sledge has to serve as a stretcher bearer, running frantically through the field of fire, in as much danger as the other Marines but not in a position to fight back.

What did everybody else think?

Doctor Who, "The Beast Below": Thar she blows!

2010-04-24T22:10:00.001-04:00

A quick review of the second "Doctor Who" episode of the Matt Smith/Steven Moffat era coming up just as soon as I abdicate...

Even more than last week's "The Eleventh Hour," "The Beast Below" was a clear sign Moffat isn't throwing out most of what Russell T. Davies did. As Davies so often did around this point in the season, we travel to a far future version of Earth (or, here, a temporarily nomadic Earth civilization traveling the galaxy while waiting for their planet to stop burning).

But "The Beast Below" was also reminiscent of many Moffat-scripted episodes from the Davies era, not just with the "Everybody lives!"-style ending in which both the star whale and the ship were saved, but in the way it was overflowing with creative ideas: Starship UK itself, the Smilers and the weird martial law they practiced, Liz 10 and her hooded guards, the memory-erasing vote, etc. Some became strong parts of the climax, while others (mainly the martial law and the depressed, frightened populace) were largely forgotten. (Though an argument could be made that the horrible practice of torturing the whale led to all of society's problems, and that people would be happier now that the whale was free and a volunteer.)

This was a good Amy episode, establishing some limits in her relationship with The Doctor and also letting her save the day instead of him. And it moved along the season's continuing threads (Amy as runaway bride, the cracks in the universe appearing on the side of Starship UK).

Very solid second effort. "The Eleventh Hour" was no fluke.

Keeping in mind that we will not discuss anything that happens in episodes that have yet to air in the US, what did everybody else think?

Party Down, "Jackal Onassis Backstage Party": Really Roman

2010-04-23T22:30:00.007-04:00

I wrote about the new season of "Party Down" in general in today's column. Some quick thoughts on the season two premiere coming up just as soon as you have a conversation I'm not going to participate in...

As I said in the column, the two real issues I had with the season is that Megan Mullally takes a while to fit in, and that Henry becoming team leader seemed like one of those ideas that seemed better as a season-ending cliffhanger rather than a season-starting status quo. TV shows like to do these "everything you know is wrong!" finales and worry about the consequences later, and the consequences tend to be 3-5 episodes spent/wasted on returning things to exactly the way they were before (because, after all, we liked things the way they were). Henry running the team - and being in a relationship with Uta just as Casey returns from her cruise ship gig - does have some promise that pays off in spots, but the balance of this episode felt off.

So because I didn't love the new arrangement, and because Mullally was largely off to the side, it was left to the Roman/Kyle duo to largely carry things. And, fortunately, Roman's complete and utter loathsomeness was up to the challenge, as he discovered that women preferred Kyle to him even when he was disguised as a popular, lady-killing Marilyn Manson-type rock star(*).

(*) Played by Jimmi Simpson, aka the lead McPoyle on "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia."

Nice cameo by Danny Woodburn (aka Mickey from "Seinfeld") as the waiter fired to make way for Casey's return, and while I prefer my Ron Donald to be uptight and oblivious, Ken Marino did have fun playing a drunk, self-destructive Ron.

This is definitely the weakest of the season's 10 episodes, and I know some of you who already streamed it on Starz's website said that means the rest of the season must be pretty great. And it is.

What did everybody else think?

Gravity: I watched so you don't have to

2010-04-23T11:39:00.002-04:00

Fienberg and I spent a decent portion of this week's podcast bashing the hell out of "Gravity," the heinous new non-comedy that Starz has for whatever reason decided to pair with "Party Down" tonight at 10:30. For those of you who read but don't listen, here's the gist:

It was created by and co-stars Eric Schaeffer, an actor/writer/producer who specializes in making incredibly uncomfortable films ("If Lucy Fell") and/or TV shows ("Starved") in which he plays completely loathsome human beings surrounded by broad caricatures. Here, he's a cop who somehow becomes connected to members of a support group for suicide survivors (including Krysten Ritter, Ivan Sergei and, given nothing to do in the episodes I've seen, Ving Rhames).

I actually vaguely liked "Starved" (about a support group for people with eating disorders) when it debuted, in part because it seemed to have a point-of-view about its subject, in part because I thought some of its comedy bits were, while gross, kind of funny. (They did an episode where Schaeffer's character had a mishap while getting a colonic.) Here, I have no idea what the point of anything is, nor what exactly I'm supposed to find funny (other than, again, a bunch of broadly-drawn stereotypes about gays and other minorities). Nor do I have any idea why Schaeffer's character is on the show, save that Schaeffer likes to put himself in the things he does.

It's not funny, it's not engaging, it's not in any way, shape or form a good match with "Party Down," and I would advise those of you watching that show tonight to change the channel abruptly as soon as the end credits are done rolling.

That is all.

Community, "Contemporary American Poultry": Rags to riches

2010-04-23T10:35:00.000-04:00

A review of last night's "Community" coming up just as soon as throat surgery humanizes me...

I talk a lot in these reviews about how much pop culture referencing is too much, and "Contemporary American Poultry" took the idea about as far as it could go with an extended, marvelously-executed homage to "Goodfellas." We got Abed-as-Henry-Hill voiceover, push-ins, doo-wop on the soundtrack, freeze-frames, the extended piano coda to "Layla" accompanying a massacre of sorts, and even a brief homage to the end of the famous tracking shot of Henry and Karen at the Copa(*). There was also a bit of "The Godfather" thrown in, with people kissing Abed's ring, while the door was closed on Jeff as if he were Kay Corleone.

(*) Poniewozik wondered why they didn't do a full-on tracking shot, and the answer to that is that they take forever to shoot, and no weekly sitcom has that kind of time in the schedule.

All of that was very well-done, and appropriate for an Abed spotlight episode, in that Abed tends to relate to people through popular culture. And it led to a very nice character moment between Abed and Jeff in the kitchen, and it's the show's commitment to its characters, and also to showing how a community works (here with the chicken taking on too much currency) that makes it something far richer and more interesting than just a live-action "Family Guy." And because the "very special episode" conversation between Jeff and Abed felt earned and true to both men, it then gave the show license to throw in the "Sixteen Candles" gag at the end.

Some other thoughts:

• The "streets ahead" running gag is apparently Dan Harmon getting one final bit of revenge against some guy who attacked him on Twitter. I'm sure others of you can fill in the background on this.

• A monkey with the name Annie's Boobs was just the comedy gift that kept on giving, wasn't it?

• Add Alison Brie to the list of sitcom actors I want to see dancing as often as possible, after she busted out both The Running Man and The Robot in celebrating her new backpack.

• Shirley had a great line about Abed stealing Sexy Dreadlock Guy and how Tyler Perry has made a lot of movies explaining why that's wrong.

What did everybody else think?

30 Rock, "Lee Marvin vs. Derek Jeter" & "Khonani": Nerds!

2010-04-23T10:11:00.001-04:00

A quick review of last night's "30 Rock" double-feature - and why I may be taking a break from reviews for a while - coming up just as soon as Santa Claus takes a shower...

There was a time when getting two episodes of "30 Rock" in one night would have been the highlight of my TV week. The way this season has gone, though, seeing those two episodes on my DVR's list of scheduled recordings only filled me with dread. Watching only one "30 Rock" has felt like a chore lately, and two in short order - both featuring plots where Jack tries and fails to choose between Avery and Nancy - was even moreso.

And where I was able to say earlier this season that even the weak episodes had enough funny jokes on the side to make the viewing time worth it, I mostly spent this combined hour saying to myself, "Okay, I recognize what joke they're going for here" - case in point, both Jack's situation and the janitor spat as Conan/Leno parody(*) - but never actually laughing.

(*) A few weeks back, some of you convincingly argued that the Tracy-as-Bizarro-Tiger-Woods story worked independently of the ripped-from-the-headlines aspect, since it was also a nice role reversal for Tracy (and since plenty of other celebrities have also gotten in trouble for stepping out on their wives). With Khonani, there was no way to view it as anything but Conan, and yet it already felt dated, since the actual mess happened months ago, and since Conan ultimately chose TBS over Fox. The speed with which "South Park," "The Daily Show" and some other series can respond to events in the news like this has made it a lot tougher on shows like "30 Rock" that work on a more elongated schedule.

I don't want to be the crank making the same complaints about episodes week after week, and it's entirely possible that if I can step away from having to write about each episode - a process that requires me to figure out what worked and what didn't, and why - I might start to enjoy "30 Rock" again. (That plan worked wonders for me and "Grey's Anatomy," where I still watch it most weeks and can focus on the parts I like, since I don't have to write about the parts I don't.) So until we get a "30 Rock" episode or two that makes me laugh early and often the way the show used to, I think I'm hiatus'ing it from the blog rotation. Happier for everyone that way.

But for this week, what did everybody else think?

The Office, "Secretary's Day": C is for suspension

2010-04-23T08:00:00.000-04:00

A review of last night's "The Office" coming up just as soon as I send out a snail mail blast...

There were a lot of good things in "Secretary's Day," including maybe the best showcase yet for super cast addition Ellie Kemper, and a fine subplot about Oscar's joke video about Kevin. But several pieces never quite fit together well.

The Cookie Monster video has irrevocably changed the way I will hear Kevin's voice from now on in the same way that I can no longer watch the "Parks and Recreation" credits without singing "Jabba the Hutt!" That whole subplot was a very funny portrayal of an office joke run amok, and had a nice payoff with Kevin taking control of the joke by turning everyone's impressions onto Gabe. And, for that matter, it was good to see Gabe doing something other than playing middleman between Michael and Jo Bennett. The idea of him as the corporate bogeyman whom no one actually fears because they can see he has no power is very promising, and I look forward to more of that.

But when Kevin went to Gabe to complain about the video, all I could think was, "Why isn't he going to Toby?" Had they done this as an episode where Toby wasn't at work that day, it would have been fine, but once we saw him at the fax machine, it became a distraction. Toby eventually figured into the story (by giving Jim and Pam the ammo to get two extra paid vacation days), but overall it felt like they shoehorned Gabe into what should have been a Toby story because they needed to give the new guy something to do (and/or because, as one of the showrunners, Paul Lieberstein has less time to appear on camera these days). It's something that could have been easily fixed either with Toby absent all show, or even with a brief scene of Toby sending Kevin to see Gabe because he didn't want to deal with the problem, but we got neither in the final cut.

As for the Erin story, it worked if you were able to completely forget every previous Michael/Erin scene. Until now, the idea has been that these two have a mutual admiration society - that Erin not only worships Michael, but that Michael in turn is grateful to finally have the fawning sidekick and partner in crime he always hoped Pam would be. Here, though, Mindy Kaling's script tried to portray the relationship as entirely one-sided, with Michael barely tolerating Erin's presence as a favor to Andy. As much fun as some of Erin's non-stop chatter was ("then it became a full Taco Bell and I couldn't keep up"), and as well as she played the freak-out at the restaurant (pictured above, with Erin trying to turn her hair into her room), it wasn't until the final scene on the bench that any part of the episode resembled the previously-established dynamic between those two.

Still, it was good to have the Angela cat finally come out of the bag, and funny to see Erin throw a cake in Andy's face, and also to hear the phrase "a novelization of the movie 'Precious, Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire,'" but as with the Kevin subplot, this needed some tinkering.

A few other thoughts:

• I was afraid to go back and freeze-frame, but did we actually see Meredith's exposed breast in the scene where she was using Pam's breast pump? Also, should I even ask why she would be using it, or just block the whole moment from my memory?

• TV-savviness: Dwight thinks of "Sesame Street" as "that program where all the puppets live in the barrio," while Gabe suggests everyone leave the impressions to "the pros at 'Mad TV.'"

• I should also say that I liked how Kaling's script and Steve Carell's direction gave us a slightly more grown-up, recognizably human Michael, after we've seen a few episodes this season (including the Kaling-scripted "Manager and Salesman") that set him at a more cartoonish angle.

What did everybody else think?

'Party Down' season two review: Sepinwall on TV

2010-04-23T07:00:00.002-04:00

In today's column, I review "Party Down" season two, and talk about the bittersweet nature of watching a show that's so funny, knowing that one of the main reasons for that (Adam Scott) won't be back full-time if there's another season.

I'll have a short review of the premiere up tonight at 10:30.

'You Don't Know Jack' review: Sepinwall on TV

2010-04-22T07:00:00.002-04:00

In today's column, I review Al Pacino in "You Don't Know Jack" on HBO, and discuss the ongoing struggle between Pacino the actor and Pacino the ham.

American Idol: Idol Gives Back, the voters take dreams away

2010-04-21T22:59:00.000-04:00

It's easy to mock or complain about a lot of things "American Idol" does, and even about the length and some of the creative choices of the "Idol" Gives Back show itself in years past, but I refuse to do anything but applaud the charitable approach itself, and I would encourage you to donate some money if you can.

As for the elimination part of the show, I have the results spoilers coming up after the jump...

Unlike season 6, when the show wimped out at the last minute from sending anyone home, or season 7, when they separated the results show from "Idol" Gives Back, here we actually got an elimination on the same night as the telethon, and it was the feel-good ending I was hoping for, with Tim Urban's dimples finally failing him.

What was vaguely interesting was that Casey James wound up in the bottom group with him, leaving Crystal, Lee and Siobhan as the only contestants to not yet wind up at risk on an elimination show. We've gone pretty deep into seasons with one contestant never being at risk (Taylor and Carrie both won their seasons that way, for instance), and I'm sure we've gone far with it never happening with two, but can any amateur "Idol"-ologist tell me what's the farthest we've gone with three never being at risk? Is this unusual, or am I just desperate to find something to pay attention to this season besides Crystal's super-competence?

What did everybody else think? Relieved TUrban went home, or annoyed you'll miss the spectacle of Simon trying to find nice things to say so as not to rile the kid's fanbase? And how did this year's telethon compare to the previous two?

Firewall & Iceberg podcast, episode 13: Party Down, Gravity, You Don't Know Jack and more

2010-04-21T15:54:00.003-04:00

New Firewall & Iceberg podcast is up, in which Dan and I talk about a bunch of things, including Friday's return of "Party Down." NJ.com has the relevant podcast links and running times.

Parenthood, "Rubber Band Ball": Our little genius

2010-04-21T11:18:00.000-04:00

A quick review of last night's "Parenthood" coming up just as soon as I leave my sock and take your innocence...

First, in case you missed the news yesterday, NBC renewed "Parenthood" for next season. So no worries on that front.

"Rubber Band Ball," meanwhile, did a good job of addressing some holes the show has left in previous episodes. We got our first extended time with grandparents Zeek and Camille (so much so that I'll try to refrain from calling them Coach and Holly McClane from now on), as they began to tell their own story rather than just offer wisdom and/or comic relief for the adult siblings. It finally occurred to Crosby and/or the writers that he might have a reason to feel angry that he missed the first five years of Jabbar's life. And Amber finally pointed out the unintended subtext of all of Sarah's "don't repeat my mistakes" lectures to her mom. All those developments were welcome/overdue.

Meanwhile, the Asperger's/gifted story nicely humanized Kristina and Adam in their reactions to the idea that Max might not be the only "different" kid in the family - and then to the news that Sydney's difference is something to be celebrated rather than managed. My only complaint with that subplot: after the show made such a big deal about how hard it was to get an appointment with The Bob Dylan of Autism in the second episode, Julia managed to get in to have him evaluate Sydney awfully quickly.

There have been some episodes so far that have felt all over the map tonally, but "Rubber Band Ball" managed to feel all of a piece while servicing all of the different groups, including the grandparents. Nicely-done, show.

What did everybody else think?

30 for 30, "Silly Little Game": Turning fantasy into reality

2010-04-21T07:30:00.000-04:00

A quick review of last night's "Silly Little Game," the latest film in the "30 for 30" series, coming up just as soon as I buy you a new dress shirt...

"Silly Little Game" directors Lucas Jansen and Adam Kurland faced a tougher challenge than most of the other "30 for 30" directors, in that there's no exciting archival footage of their subject to keep things interesting between the talking heads. So they decided to do re-enactments, and then spiced those up with a healthy dose of absurdity (the interrogation of the league's first female member, or roto players following real players around the base paths). After so many more traditional documentaries in the series, the dramatization approach could have been a disaster, but it worked. Those scenes were funny, and a nice reminder of the stupid level of obsession that comes with fantasy sports. (And I say this as a guy with too many fantasy teams.)

I knew something of the origins of the game, but the full details were a lot of fun, be it the other players detailing the level of Lee Eisenberg's evil or the revelation that in those early days, fantasy baseball was so exotic that strangers actually wanted to hear about it. (Whereas today, the first rule anyone with a fantasy team learns is "no one wants to hear about your fantasy team.")

But while most of this was played for comedy, there was a definite bittersweet tinge to it all, in the way Daniel Okrent and his friends never figured out how to cash in on their huge discovery, and also in the notion that Okrent never managed to win the original league. (Since Okrent compared the box scores to the Talmud, I may as well compare him to Moses leading the Jews through the desert but never getting to enter the Promised Land.) The scene where Meatloaf expressed complete ignorance to and disinterest in the origins of fantasy spoke to the millions of non-famous fantasy players who surely feel the same way, and I'd like to think at least some of those people happened to watch "Silly Little Game" last night, or will see one of its many later airings.

What did everybody else think?

Lost, "The Last Recruit": Harmonic convergence

2010-04-20T23:34:00.000-04:00

A review of tonight's "Lost" coming up just as soon as I need a moment...

"So nice to have everyone back together again." -Smokey

Last week, I expressed some concern that Lindelof and Cuse had waited too long to get to the Desmond portion of the season, not just because I think his presence (even if largely in the background and unexplained) might have spiced up the sideways stories, but because I worried we had spent so much time on narrative dead ends or seemingly inconsequential stories that there wouldn't be enough time left to properly resolve the stories of both the season and the series.

"The Last Recruit" put many of those fears to rest, reminding me that even when Darlton seem to be dragging their feet within either an episode or a season, they generally have a plan for what to do when it's time to start moving quickly.

For the first time since the premiere, we didn't focus on any one character or pair, but rather bounced from person to person, story to story as everyone began to come together, both in the real world and the sideways one. We got payoffs to a number of arcs and/or mysteries - Smokey admits he was posing as Christian Shepard all these years, Jin and Sun are finally reunited, Kate makes peace with Claire - and some high-caliber acting from just about everyone in the ensemble. (And if I've done my math correctly, the only castmember to not appear was Nestor Carbonell, since Richard is off with Ben and Miles in the real world and has yet to appear in the sideways universe.)

In fact, because "The Last Recruit" was largely devoted to moving various chess pieces into position on the board in both universes, there's less to deconstruct and puzzle over here than usual, so instead I want to point to some of the stronger emotional moments of the hour, in no particular order:

• Since Desmond had his moment of revelation at the end of "Happily Ever After," Henry Ian Cusick has been playing the character in both universes with a look of serene confidence, but here he got to (superbly) play a much sadder note as Desmond listened to Sayid explain what he asked Smokey for in exchange for going to the dark side. Desmond knows about doing crazy things for love, and he also knows far more about what's going on in both universes than anyone else does, and he feels so sorry that Sayid has let himself become a monster for no reason. (Also, as with last week's fall down the well, I have absolutely no concern about Desmond's future until we actually see his corpse - and maybe not even then.)

• While Alt-Jack's relationship with son David didn't do much for me back in "Lighthouse," their scenes had greater weight here now that we seem to be heading towards a point where the sideways characters have to sacrifice their universe so that the real one can survive and Smokey can be defeated. (That's my operating theory this week, at least.) And that means not only do some characters like Locke and Libby and Ilana have to realize they're going to die again, but it means Alt-Jack is going to have to deal with saying goodbye to the son who shouldn't exist, just as they're starting to get along. And while I'm not a Jack fan in general, I do not envy the man the choice I assume is coming.

• Desmond and Penny eclipsed Jin and Sun as the "Lost" couple whose happy ending I root for the most, but it was still nice to see the real versions of those characters finally get back together for the first time in almost three years. (On the other hand, if the only point of Sun's temporary loss of English was to show her love for Jin restoring it later, they needn't have bothered. Daniel Dae Kim and Yunjin Kim played that moment so well that no additional garnish was needed, and all it did was distract me with thoughts of, "So we wasted several episodes on this because...?")

• As I've said before, the narrative style of the show means we often won't see certain characters paired together for months or even years at a time, and that can occasionally rob some urgency from their stories. Sun and Jin suffered from this a bit, and with Jack and Sawyer separated since the season's first couple of episodes, I worried that some of the heat over Juliet's death would have gone away by now. But as soon as they were on Libby's boat together, it all came back - with the added wrinkle of Jack having taken over Locke's role as the one who believes in the power of the island (and who isn't a sucker), while Sawyer is now the Jack-like leader who just wants to get everyone the hell off, grand design be damned. Good stuff from both Matthew Fox and Josh Holloway.

• Because Jack never found out Claire was his sister until after he'd left the island, some Jack/Claire interaction was a long time in coming, and we got some in both universes. I particularly liked how, after the initial shock (well-played by Fox), Alt-Jack mainly seemed amused by the idea that Christian had left him with a long-lost half-sister.

All in all, a good episode - not mind-blowing, but necessary.

Some other thoughts:

• Lapidus still doesn't get much to do, but here he was the recipient of two great Sawyer lines, first with James describing him as looking like "he just stepped out of a Burt Reynolds movie," and then with the nickname "Chesty."

• So ultimately, was Alt-Desmond's plan in running over Locke to give him a near-death experience akin to the one that clued him into the real world's existence, or was he just trying to put Locke in a position to meet up with Jack?

• More bleed-over from real world to sideways world, as Alt-Sun is terrified to see Alt-Locke being wheeled into the hospital next to her.

• Was I the only one who flashed on Larry David doing the stink-eye lie detector gag on "Curb Your Enthusiasm" as Smokey tried to figure out if Sayid really killed Desmond?

• So, why was Alt-Sawyer in Australia? He seemed too jolly in "LA X" to have murdered Frank Duckett the way real Sawyer did, but he's trying to hide something.

• Assuming I'm right that Sayid didn't kill Desmond, and assuming Claire is sincere in burying the hatchet with Kate, is Hurley right that characters with the "sickness" can be brought back from the dark side, just like our pal Anakin?

• Nice of the writers to give Ilana a role in the sideways world now that she's kaput in the real one.

What did everybody else think?

Justified, "The Collection": Art, gallery

2010-04-20T23:05:00.008-04:00

A review of tonight's "Justified" coming up just as soon as I can't keep staring at your nipples...

I was less troubled than many of you by the more self-contained natures of the early installments of "Justified," but "The Collection" was an episode where the arc stories were a whole lot more interesting than Raylan's case of the week. And that's despite a very strong guest cast (Brett Cullen, Tony Hale, Katherine LaNasa and the ever-reliable Robert Picardo) in that portion of the episode.

Part of the problem is that this is already the third story in six episodes about a group of thieves double-crossing and trying to kill each other. While that's a staple of crime fiction in general and Elmore Leonard books in particular, Leonard's books come out with much less frequency than episodes of "Justified," and by the time LaNasa's character started blackmailing Hale, all I could think was, "Oh, this again? And so soon?"

And unless an episodic story is executed as well as the Roland Pike one from "Long in the Tooth," it's just not going to stack up well next to Raylan's ongoing problems with his father, his ex-wife, his boss, the Crowder family, etc., etc., etc., and this was an episode that featured movement on all those fronts. One of the advantages of serialization is that, done right, we grow more invested in characters and their stories with each passing week, and that means the stories that aren't continuing have to work even harder to make an impression. It's not a coincidence that the one scene from the art forgery plot that really stood out for me was when Picardo showed Raylan his collection of burned Hitler paintings, because it was such an obvious parallel to how Raylan has built an entire life on defying Arlo Givens and men like him.

But in terms of the ongoing stories, "The Collection" worked splendidly. After Raylan dropped bodies in three of the first five episodes, it was only going to be a matter of time before someone started looking into him, and why not smilin' David Vazquez? And how much worse will said investigation become if Raylan's relationship with Ava screws up Vazquez's case against Boyd Crowder? (Always nice to have Walton Goggins back, by the way.)

And after noting last week that I was starting to forget Natalie Zea is even on the show, Winona was back in a big way here, asking Raylan to look into some shady people her new husband is involved with, and then showing up at Raylan's place to show us a bit of the crazy chemistry that led him to break into her house at the end of the pilot episode.

So Boyd's back (and has some dirt on Arlo), Winona needs Raylan's help, Raylan's in all kinds of trouble at work, and Ava has no interest in running away from Bo Crowder. With this many plates spinning, the show is clearly embracing its serialized qualities. Ultimately, that's a good thing.

A few other thoughts:

• As Raylan was questioning Brett Cullen about all the possible murders being committed, I got an odd Columbo vibe off of Raylan - albeit a Lt. Columbo who'd just as soon put a bullet between his suspect's eyes as trick him into incriminating himself.

• I understand that "Justified" is being done on a basic cable budget, and that therefore some corners have to be cut, but the cheapness of the green screen effects whenever two characters are having a conversation while driving has become really distracting. If they can't afford something more convincing, they need to start placing those conversations in some other setting. Maybe Raylan starts walking a lot?

What did everybody else think?

American Idol, Top 7: Inspirational Songs Night

2010-04-20T21:24:00.001-04:00

Pretty brutal "American Idol" tonight (as I always assume it will be with this theme and its inherent Mariah-ness), with one exception (hint: look up at the picture). If I hadn't skipped the last two weeks because of my time off, I'd be tempted to just do a "Crystal rules, others drool" post, but may as well review contestant by contestant, just as soon as I tell you that I like Spider-Man...

Casey James, "Don't Stop": This is Casey on auto-pilot, with the perma-smile, the mini guitar solos and the usual Bob Seger/Huey Lewis affectations. As usual, there's nothing bad about what he's doing, but there was also nothing all that memorable.

Lee Dewyze, "The Boxer": This Simon & Garfunkel classic re-arranges itself surprisingly well into a more overtly rock ballad, and Lee was definitely playing with more passion than Casey, or than that he'd shown before, but there was still the usual assortment of notes that made me wonder what target he was aiming at that was nowhere near what was on the music sheet.

Tim Urban, "Better Days": Again, he takes everything remotely challenging out of the arrangement to match his woefully limited skillset, yet this time can't even manage to stay in tune all the way through. Both bad (which can be helpful in motivating your fanbase) and boring (which has the opposite effect) at the same time. Might the collision of matter and anti-matter finally be enough to send him home?

Aaron Kelly, "I Believe I Can Fly": I can't remember anyone on the show ever doing this song well, though Fienberg reminded me that Ruben handled it just fine waaay back in season two. Still, this is one of those songs where anyone who's watched the show for even a short amount of time should know is a trap, and Aaron falls right into it. Cheesey and all over the place vocally, with a whole lot of notes that were just pure pain.

Siobhan Magnus, "When You Believe": God, I hate this song so, so, so much, and while Siobhan managed to sing the power notes well without shrieking, the whole performance was incredibly dull - and that's even with her wearing a collection of butterflies on her dress.

Michael Lynche, "Hero": Dozed off halfway through this bland performance and woke up to Simon explaining that songs from the "Spider-Man" soundtrack can't be inspirational. So Simon hates songs about birds, songs from comic book movies... what else?

Crystal Bowersox, "People Get Ready": Mama Sox has been terrific throughout the competition, but that consistency also has started to work against her a bit - if you start out so much better than everyone else, and are consistent in your performances, it starts to feel like you've plateaued. She'd been great, but without an "Idol" Moment. With her beautiful take on this '60s classic - sans guitar, starting off a cappella, and eventually working herself into tears - Crystal finally had her Moment, and hopefully one that will prevent any kind of bored "You're our resident professional" talk from the judges in the weeks to come.

Best of the night: Crystal. No one else in the running.

In danger: I'd like to think that "Idol" Gives Back will have a feel-good ending with Tim going home, but I suspect Aaron's in more danger, and Siobhan may be, too.

What did everybody else think?

Having said that... here's some more news

2010-04-20T14:56:00.001-04:00

Busy busy busy day in TV land. I mentioned the "Mad Men" July 25 return date earlier, and several other developments have happened since:

• Larry David agreed to come back for an eighth season of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" to air in 2011. Basically, HBO extends an open invitation for Larry to continue whenever he wants, and then they wait around for him to say yes. Presumably, he wouldn't be back if he didn't have an idea he thought could top the "Seinfeld" season, just as he came back after TV Larry died and went to Heaven, or after TV Larry joined the Black family.

• NBC has renewed "Parenthood" for next season, which pleases me. I haven't written about recent episodes due to vacation and/or the problems of it airing while I'm busy trying to analyze "Lost," but overall the show's doing more good than bad, and I'd like to see more.

• Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert signed contract extensions with Comedy Central to continue "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" through the 2012 elections.

And that's all... for now, anyway. The way this day's going, I expect six more renewals or premiere dates to be announced before I go home.

UPDATE: And, of course, I was right. FX just announced that the penultimate season of "Rescue Me," and the funny new Louis CK sitcom "Louie," will both premiere on June 29.

Damages: Case closed?

2010-04-20T13:05:00.001-04:00

I've explained in the past why I'm not a big fan of "Damages," but with the show wrapping up its third season last night - and with it looking like a fourth season won't be economically-viable - I was curious how people felt about the finale. Were you satisfied with it, either as a capper to the season, or to the series?

Of reader mail, 'Mad Men' and Alyssa Milano

2010-04-20T10:02:00.001-04:00

Couple of housekeeping things first: Today's column is a reader mailbag with comments on recent topics like Conan to TBS, the sideways universe on "Lost" and the uninspiring "American Idol" cast. And this morning, AMC announced that "Mad Men" season 4 would debut on Sunday, July 25 at 10 p.m. (and that the James Badge Dale-starring thriller "Rubicon" would debut the following Sunday with a two-hour premiere at 8, then air regularly at 9 from then on). So exciting stuff for mid-summer.

Meanwhile, last night saw the premiere of the Alyssa Milano sitcom "Romantically Challenged" on ABC. ABC played a weird game of Hide the Cookie with this one, where they posted a few episodes for review to their press site, then kept changing their minds about which episodes would air first (not a good sign), and then ultimately pulled the episodes that were on the media website (also not a good sign; the TV equivalent of not previewing your movie for critics because you know the reviews will be brutal). And since I was off the last two weeks (and not making an exception to preview Alyssa Milano's new show), I missed seeing the ones that were up and had to watch last night's premiere live (give or take some DVR buffering), and...

... well, I'm glad I hadn't devoted an hour of my life in the last week or two (vacation or not) to watching this. I have no issues with Milano (other than that she once dated Carl Pavano, one of my least favorite Yankees ever), I like co-star Kyle Bornheimer, and I liked parts of creator Ricky Blitt's last show, Fox's short-lived "The Winner" with Rob Corddry. But everyone involved seemed to be trying way too hard (witness the forced smile on Milano's face in the picture above, which she tried to maintain for nearly the whole episode, whether the moment needed it or not), and overall it felt like an example of the set-up/joke/set-up/joke style that's deservedly close to extinction.

I've seen far worse comedies this season ("Brothers," to name one), but this is one I won't be bothering with again, no matter what order ABC shows them in.

Anybody else watch? If so, what did you think?

United States of Tara, "Doin' Time": Patient, heal thyself

2010-04-19T23:00:00.011-04:00

A review of tonight's "United States of Tara" coming up just as soon as I totally subvert the hero archetype...

"She said that you need me to be sick! Because it's the only f--king thing holding us together!" -Tara

If season one of "Tara" was in part about showing how a marriage could hold together in spite of ridiculous stumbling blocks, season two has shown us that there are some things that even the most laid-back husband will not stand for (even if he's played by the guy who kept taking back Carrie Bradshaw after she screwed him over again and again and again). Between Buck's affair, Tara keeping it a secret and now the emergence of another alter - whom Tara is treating not as another symptom, but as a possible cure - Max is about at his breaking point. And Tara taking her sweet time to bail him out of jail while she had a roadside therapy session with Shoshana sure didn't help.

But is Tara right with what she says above? Does their marriage succeed in spite of the DID, or because of it?

Diablo Cody gave an interview to New York Magazine's Vulture blog a couple of weeks where she confessed to dissatisfaction with the show's first season, and specifically with how she and the writing staff serviced Tara herself:

Ironically, I felt that Tara was one of the least interesting characters on the show last season — the audience responded to her various alters, but not to her. So in season two, we’ll get acquainted with Tara, the core identity of the character, and get some insight into her weirdness and her pain and what drives her forward through this endless storm of transition and treatment.

Looking back at my reviews of the first season, I can see where she's coming from, as I tended to respond more to the alters, or Max, or Marshall or the rest of the family, with Tara sort of along for the ride.

And if Tara's behavior earlier in this season in letting Buck and Pammy's affair go on, or here in letting Max stew in jail so she can talk to Shoshana (and possibly avoid being committed by Max) seems more selfish than before, then at least it's Tara making choices, as opposed to being dragged through life by her alters. It's showing us the imperfections of Tara, and of her marriage to Max, and it's making me more interested in what happens to her, even if I don't always like what it is she's doing.

And the idea of Tara having co-consciousness with her alters allows for Tara's seemingly insane idea of using Shoshana as an actual therapist to make a weird kind of sense. On one level, it's just an excuse for Toni Collette to act opposite a green-screened version of herself, but she so far is doing that well. And if this series is going to be about this war going on inside Tara's psyche, there have to be times when it's just Tara with another version of herself. And the show's portrayal of the co-consciousness gave us that great visual at the end where a fed up Max accepted Shoshana's existence and chose to talk to her under the veil of "doctor"/patient confidentiality, with Tara having to sit out in the hallway of her own mind while her husband shares his innermost thoughts (about her) with one of her alters.

A few other thoughts:

• Because Pammy is a waitress at Max's favorite bar, he has to be frequently reminded of how his wife snuck around on him. And I loved the way Pammy described Tara to Max to remind him of how intimate she was with his wife: "She tastes like rain. Sometimes kiwi fruit. And once, she tasted like a penny." Between that and Marshall and Kate's discussion about Uncle Jemima and Mr. Butterworth, Sheila Callaghan's script had some of the sharpest dialogue of the season so far.

• As I suspected, Charmaine's baby turns out to be Neil's, and that revelation forces her to admit her true, conflicted feelings about the two men in her life: "I want my wedding pictures with Nick, but I want my wedding night with Neil."

What did everybody else think?

How I Met Your Mother, "Home Wreckers": The money pit

2010-04-19T21:57:00.000-04:00

A quick review of tonight's "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as I picture myself in something Spanish...

Because I was on quasi-vacation, I didn't write about last week's episode, which largely sacrificed emotional truth for the sake of elaborately setting up the (admittedly pretty funny) "King Kong" joke at the end of the episode. "Home Wreckers" was the opposite of that, in that it told a good Ted Mosby story but fell flat in most of its attempts to build laughs around his pain.

I liked the gang's enthusiasm for Marshall's invention of the Drunk Or Kid? game far more than the game itself, and any episode that involves a character falling through a ceiling without Future Ted saying he exaggerated for argument's sake is trying too hard. (Conversely, Future Ted saying "There was no guitar" in response to his stepdad's painting was one of the few strong jokes.)

But if "Home Wreckers" wasn't that successful as comedy, I did like its focus on Ted realizing his personal life has essentially been in neutral since the pilot. I figured we were heading towards the revelation that the awful house would one day be the setting for the longest story in the history of ever, but I still smiled at the time-lapse montage of the living room's transformation.

At the same time, finding out how Ted got the house that he and the Mother will live in takes us no closer to him meeting her than our glimpse of her foot in "Girls vs. Suits" did. I don't know that the show needs to get back to the quest full-time, but it does feel like something has been missing this season. And since the Robin/Barney storyline didn't turn into the big romance it seemed like it might be at the end of last season, perhaps some concentrated, more focused Mother time is necessary, and soon.

What did everybody else think?

The non-vacationing vacation ends

2010-04-19T09:52:00.000-04:00

Well, my family time has come to an end, and as Fienberg joked in the last podcast, I was the worst vacationer ever. Most of what was posted to the blog in the last two weeks was pre-written, but I still couldn't help myself from writing about "Lost," and about Conan going to TBS, and from recording a couple of podcasts.

Regular schedule more or less resumes today (and another blog favorite, "Party Down," returns on Friday). Don't have the time/energy to go back and write about the handful of regular shows I didn't cover while I was gone (the "HIMYM" monkey episode, for instance), but we'll move forward together.

Meanwhile, my return to work brings with it a new blog logo, replacing the David Mills tribute. This one's pretty obvious (so obvious, in fact, that I made it back in October and kept sending it to the bottom of the stack in favor of other ones), but I figure we should ease our way back into things. And, as always, this post has links to, and explanations for, all the previous logo themes.

Good to be back. Lots to do, lots to watch, lots to write and talk about.

Treme, "Meet De Boys on the Battlefront": Pride on Bourbon St.

2010-04-18T23:01:00.009-04:00

A review of the second "Treme" coming up just as soon as my position is untenable...

"People do a lot of dumb s--t 'cause it's easier." -Albert

What Albert tells his buddy with the damaged plaster sounds like a sentiment that could have come from the mouth of Clarke Peters' "Wire" character, Lester Freamon, and it's been a kind of guiding principal of David Simon and company on both series. Lots of TV shows go for the quick fix (telegraphed plots, shorthand characterization) because that's easy to do (and, to be fair, because they can't afford the kind of patience that HBO allows Simon), but a Simon show doesn't. It doesn't do the equivalent of slapping sheet rock over plaster, or closing college departments with practical applications in a town that could use plenty of practical knowledge, or trying to tear down a largely-undamaged housing project at a time when intact low-cost housing is hard to come by. It takes its time, figures out the best way to do the job, and gets it done right.

So episode 2 of "Treme" is still very carefully setting things up, introducing new characters, and showing us different facets to many of the people from last week - and giving us even more music in a standard-length episode than we got in the 80-minute pilot.

We meet Sonny and Annie (played by Michael Huisman and professional violinist Lucia Micarelli), busking away and getting the approval not only of the naive but well-meaning white Wisconsin kids, but some of the black natives. At first they seem mismatched - Sonny is dark and defensive, and pretty contemptuous of the church kids, while Annie is bright and open and tries to cover for Sonny's hostility - but we also see that she plays along with his game (she's the one who says that "'Saints' is extra"), and later that she has both eyes open in their relationship. When a friend asks about Sonny's tales of rescuing people during and after the storm, Annie says in a sad, knowing tone, "He says he did... I wasn't on the boat."

We learned last week from his big chief dance that Albert is a man who is not moved easily off a plan, and we see here that he's also not a man to be trifled with, as he savagely beats on the thief who stole his extensive and expensive tool collection(*). Delmond looks at his father like a crazy man half the time, and that's without knowing Albert's capable of putting a much younger man in the hospital.

(*) As Fienberg watched this scene, he sent me an IM that said, simply, "Do not steal Lester's tools," followed by another one suggesting that Albert hide the body inside a vacant house.

Meanwhile, we get to see a different side of Davis. In the pilot, he came across as fairly insufferable, where here he's... well, he's a guy who means well, even if he has serious blinders on half the time. He doesn't think the on-air voodoo sacrifice will get him fired, and is just trying to share some local culture with his audience. He takes the hotel job his parents insist he try in exchange for a loan, and makes an effort to be polite and not lecture all the tourists on how obnoxious and backwards he finds them. And where at first I worried he was deliberately sending the Wisconsin kids to a trouble spot, it turns out that Bullets was a place where they had a great time, met Antoine(**) and heard some fine music before ultimately doing a few things the church group won't approve of.

(**) "The Wire" was also very good about having random characters cross paths, and because the barriers between this show's different worlds aren't nearly as strong as on "The Wire," there's a lot more of of that fluidity. Frankly, it would have been a disappointment if Davis had sent them to a place where they didn't run into another main character.

Though the full ensemble is now on stage, the world of "Treme" is still being built, piece by piece. Toni and LaDonna appear to finally find Daymo, only for him to turn out to be another man entirely, as part of the ongoing post-Katrina bureaucratic nightmare. Antoine keeps hustling for work, but the best he can find is playing at a Bourbon Street strip club (which won't help Desiree's fears that he's stepping out on her). Janette fails to get the needed loan from her parents, as we get a better sense of how badly her house is wrecked and how much trouble the restaurant is in. (She's in such a slump she even burns an omelet.) Delmond jams with Elvis Costello, but then gets popped for smoking a joint in front of some patrol cops. And Creighton starts preparing Sofia to return to school in town, but at the expense of some other kids displaced by the storm.

And in the end, Albert not only gets his tools back, but finally connects with another member of his Indian tribe. Their two-man rehearsal doesn't look like much now, but as with the rest of "Treme," it's a very promising start.

Some other thoughts:

• First, some very good news: HBO has already ordered a second season of "Treme," after only a single episode aired. (The previous HBO regime gave "The Wire" a fifth season renewal after the season four premiere; maybe this is their way of making it up to David Simon after letting "The Wire" dangle so long after season three.)

• And speaking of "The Wire," yup, that was Anwan Glover, better known to many of you as Slim Charles from "The Wire," as the inmate mistakenly incarcerated as Daymo.

• Some more real-life New Orleans musicians in this one, with Coco Robicheaux hilariously ending Davis's radio career by sacrificing a live chicken on air (and leaving some blood spatter behind in the studio), and the great Allen Toussaint producing Elvis Costello (and Delmond and the rest of the session musicians) for "The River in Reverse" recording sessions.

• Albert's right: Delmond's been gone from the city and its music for a really long time, and you can see the strain in his face as he tries to play it, particularly in the impromptu bar gig. The music sounds great, but it's a lot more effort to do this than to play the New York jazz we heard him perform at the Blue Note last week.

• Not a lot of John Goodman as Creighton in this one, but he does get a lovely David Simon rant on when he discusses all the impractical departments that Tulane chose to keep (including his own): "It's all about identity. Let's not learn how to do anything. Let's just sit and contemplate the glory of me, in all my complexities. Who am I? I am black Jewish woman, hear me roar." Not too far removed from Frank Sobotka's speech about how we used to build things in this country, is it?

• Loved the first meeting of Antoine's ex-wife and his current baby mama, who wasn't at all pleased to hear either that Antoine and Ladonna have been talking lately, or that Antoine has other kids from other women floating around the city.

• And is it a surprise Antoine has kids all over town? Wendell Pierce is one charming SOB, isn't he? I've watched this episode several times now, and the look on his face as he plays his 'bone while flirting with the Bourbon St. stripper is 10 different kinds of slick and/or priceless.

• Interesting contrast between Sofia, who's desperate to get out of Baton Rouge for good, and Ladonna's husband, whose mind seems clearly made up on never going back to New Orleans. Though he's clearly much more stable a partner than Antoine, I wouldn't be surprised if this marriage of Ladonna's ends just as badly as the last one.

• Last week, I endorsed checking out all of Dave Walker's great coverage of "Treme," and he took things to another level immediately after the premiere ended with his exhaustive annotations for the pilot episode, which he intends to continue for ensuing episodes (at least for as long as we get them in advance). If you want to know anything about the local details on the show, keep Dave bookmarked.

What did everybody else think?

Breaking Bad, "Mas": Til meth do us part

2010-04-18T23:00:00.012-04:00

A review of tonight's "Breaking Bad" coming up just as soon as the chemistry is respected...

"I can't tell what he wants. He won't talk to me, he hardly even comes home. He works all day, all night, barely eats, barely speaks to me. It's like something's eating him away from inside. He's just not the same. He's not. Facing death, it changes a person. It has to, don't you think?" -Marie

The White marriage comes to an end in "Mas," as Walt finally signs the divorce papers and moves out, apparently to go work in Gus Frings' diabolical underground meth bunker. But before he leaves, we get to see that, for all their irreconcilable differences, Walt and Skyler both have a capacity for denial and self-rationalization in common.

In Walt's talk with Gus, and then in Skyler's talk with her divorce lawyer, we see them adamantly denying what they're so obviously feeling: that Walt is both jealous and offended that Jesse was able to duplicate the Heisenberg formula on his own, and that Skyler would love to be able to justify keeping Walt's drug money after all that his career as Heisenberg has cost her emotionally.

In the end, Gus effectively plays to both Walt's vanity and his belief in himself as a good father, and Skyler in turn unwittingly gives Walt the final nudge out the door. Walter White will do many things out of spite - will, in fact, destroy his own life out of spite if he has to - and had Skyler remained cold to him and kept him from doing anything with the baby, perhaps he would have continued his squatting campaign. But Skyler's quiet offer to let him comfort the crying baby(*) - and the implication that she'd again allow him to be father to his children, if not husband to his wife - played perfectly into Gus's speech about redefining "family" as "children," and gave him the peace of mind to leave the house and, presumably, go to work in the Walt-Cave.

(*) And here is where having someone as talented and versatile as Bryan Cranston comes in especially handy. I think a lot of actors could play the monster that Walt actually is, and that others could play the loving family man he believes himself to be, but very few could play both and make them seem like two sides of the same character. The look of complete vulnerability and sorrow and gratefulness and love in Walt's eyes as Skyler tells him to pick up Holly is worlds away from the man who will later be so cold and arrogant in muscling Jesse Pinkman out of the meth business, but Cranston sells them both.

Walt, of course, doesn't realize that Gus is only giving him a temporary reprieve before the Cousins come calling - that his plan is, I'm guessing, to take those three months to let his own people learn the Heisenberg formula until they have no need of Walt himself - nor does Skyler know that she's tentatively letting Walt back into her life at a moment when his life is becoming more dangerous than ever. All she knows is that she's miserable, has no support system other than Ted Beneke, and would just like to let the conflict die a little bit.

And just as Skyler goes from loving the feel of Ted's heated bathroom floor to becoming uncomfortable with it, I suspect Walt's love of Gus's pimped-out lab will fade over time as he begins to recognize just how dangerous a man he's working for. Walt goes into his meeting with Gus convinced that he's outsmarted him, when in fact the only way to do that would have been to just hand Jesse his half of the money and walk away without ever seeing Gus. Gus played him, and Walt's too arrogant and crazy to see that yet. But he's not stupid, even if he has blind spots, and day after day spent under the laundry facility is going to wear on him, especially without Jesse around to teach and/or bully.

And either way, what happens when the three months are up? At least Skyler should be thankful that Walt's not living in the house anymore, given what the Cousins might do to anyone else they find when they come for their target.

Some other thoughts:

• Skyler with the lawyer reminded me very much of Carmela Soprano going to see the elderly therapist who told her in no uncertain terms to take the kids and walk out on Tony and his "blood money." And, just like Carmela, Skyler didn't want to hear that.

• We open with a hilarious flashback to what Jesse was up to in the pilot in between when Walt gave him the money and when he turned up with the RV. Not only does it give Aaron Paul a chance to slip back into Jesse's clueless but happy old skin, it temporarily brings Combo back to life, and shows how Combo caused his own death a few times over. Not only did he agree to become one of Jesse's dealers, but had he not gotten Jesse the RV in the first place, the White/Pinkman partnership would have been stillborn, and Combo wouldn't have become high-profile enough to attract a hit from a rival crew.

• On another show, Hank's discovery that Jesse (whom he knows is connected to Walt) is connected to the RV that carried the blue meth would ultimately lead to Hank again coming thisclose, but no closer, to discovering Heisenberg's identity. On "Breaking Bad," given that we're in season three of what was conceived of as a four-season series (though it could always run a bit longer), I wouldn't at all be surprised to see Hank keep working his way up the food chain - which would not be a good thing for him, methinks. In the end, maybe going to El Paso instead of Gomey would have been the safer move.

• Love the contrast of Walt using the closet in the nursery as an office - complete with a tiny chair that stuck to his behind when he stood up - to Walt being shown the wonders of the Walt-Cave. Walt's a genius, but he's an amateur. Gus Frings is no amateur.

• Saul Goodman, shameless as always: completely on Jesse's side when it looks like that's where the meth money is coming from, then tosses him over immediately when Walt turns out to be the real cash cow - and caves on his exorbitant fees when Walt finally realizes Saul needs him as much or more than he needs Saul.

• That Aztek windshield is just taking a beating, isn't it? It's like the forces of karma just don't want it to remain intact.

What did everybody else think?

The Pacific, "Part Six": To Hell and back

2010-04-18T22:00:00.007-04:00

A review of "The Pacific" chapter six coming up just as soon as I count bandages...

"History is full of wars fought for a hundred reasons. But this war - our war - well, I want to believe - I have to believe - that if I step across that airfield, every man that's wounded, every man I lose, that it's all worthwhile because our cause is just. 'Course, if a just cause came with hot food and some water, that'd be okay, too." -Ack-Ack Haldane

I once interviewed CBS football analyst Phil Simms the day after a game where a punt returner got completely crushed by a defender a split-second after he caught the ball. We talked about that play, and I marveled that any human being could do a job where such a thing is required. Simms, who knew a thing or 12 about getting hit from his days as the Giants' quarterback, looked at me with the disappointment of a man who's spent a lifetime talking with people who don't understand the game he used to play, and said, "There's no choice. You don't think about it; you just do it, because that's the game."

I thought a lot about Simms' comment as I watched the Marines try to cross the Peleliu airfield in Part Six. Obviously, getting shot at by the Japanese is infinitely more dangerous than getting sacked by Reggie White, but watching the brutal airfield sequence, all I could think was, "How do men do this? How do they just run across a this killing zone?" And then I thought, like Simms said, "What other choice do they have? These are their orders, and this is what men in combat do."

"Part Six," directed by Tony To and shot once again by Remi Adefarasin, featured perhaps the most intense combat yet in "The Pacific." We got a taste of the savagery of Peleliu last week, but a lot of that episode was spent with the men enjoying some downtime on Pavuvu. Here, there's no let-up, no escape, unless you're someone like Leckie or Runner, who get hurt badly enough to be sent away on a Navy ship, but not killed.

Leckie gets taken out of action (leaving Sledge as the only one of our main characters still in the field), and there's that great moment on the ship where he's relieved to find Runner and says that he didn't abandon him, but got hurt looking for a corpsman to save him, and Runner tells him he doesn't need to say anything. Because that's another thing about being in combat with someone: you know them better than almost anyone else on the planet, and you know if they're the type who would run out of fear or the type who would run for help. By this point, Runner and Leckie have been through so much together that there's no doubt in Runner's mind what Leckie was up to. Very nice work by James Badge Dale, and by Keith Nobbs as Runner.

While Leckie's war is over for now, Sledge's is only getting worse, just as old buddy Sid feared, even as he tried to convince Eugene's parents otherwise on his return to Alabama.

As Sledge's unit moves across the airfield and then into the hills on Peleliu, we see again and again how savage, and how random, combat can be. Sledge goes back to help the fallen Snafu, and in the process another Marine dies while carrying the mortar that Sledge put down. At night, one Marine is so emotionally scarred from what he's seen so far on the island that he can't stop screaming, even when restrained and injected with morphine. The danger of giving away their position (and, though it's not exactly stated, of spurring panic in the rest of the men) becomes so great that the Marines have no choice but to kill the poor bastard with a shovel. (This really happened in front of Sledge.)

As Sledge, no longer innocent after only a few days of action, reluctantly tells Snafu, "I guess better him than all of us."

Yet despite isolated incidents of panic, brutal conditions, a lack of supplies and unbelievably fierce fighting in the daytime, most of the men aren't cracking under all of this. When one of Sledge's buddies admits he still has a little bit of precious water in his canteen, he passes it around, and every man takes only his small share. When the Marines aboard a transport vehicle won't take away the wounded men from Sledge's unit, the officers stand in front of the truck to block its passage until the wounded are loaded aboard. And when Sledge's CO Ack-Ack Haldane realizes his orders are going to get his men killed, he heads back to battalion and gets them changed.

If you go into a battle as horrible as the one on Peleliu, you don't always have a choice about where you have to go and what obstacles you have to get past. But if you're able to keep your wits about you, and are very lucky indeed, maybe you can make it to the other side in one piece.

Some other thoughts

• As mentioned above, this one was directed by Tony To, who's been a part of the Tom Hanks/HBO gang going back to "From the Earth to the Moon." Fienberg interviewed James Badge Dale before the miniseries began, and Dale gives a great account of the day everyone on set warned him, "Tony's To's gonna blow you up." Fair warning: the interview gives away some things about Leckie post-Peleliu, which we won't be discussing here.

• The green screen shot at the end on the boat is the first effect of the series that doesn't look all that convincing. Given how incredible the rest of the hour looks, I'll allow it.

• Bit by bit, we've been seeing the shots from the opening title sequence turn up in the episodes, and here we get a big one, with Leckie making his way back across the airfield while gravel and debris flies all around.

• Sledge actually picked up the "Sledgehammer" nickname in basic training, but it was still a good moment for the slightly fictionalized Sledge and Snafu for Snafu to bestow it upon him here as semi-stated thanks for saving his life. (And in real life, the basic training nickname was half-mocking; here, it's a compliment to his fortitude in battle.)

• And speaking of nicknames, nice callback for Runner to call Leckie "Peaches" when they find each other on the ship.

Once again, as alluded to above, we're not going to talk about events that took place after what's depicted in this episode, and specifically treating the fates of Sledge, Leckie and Basilone as spoilers. But with that in mind, what did everybody else think?

Doctor Who, "The Eleventh Hour": Suspender animation

2010-04-17T22:10:00.013-04:00

"Doctor Who" is back with a new man (young Matt Smith) in the lead role, and a new writer (Steven Moffat) running the show, and I have a quick review of the new regime coming up just as soon as I drink a bowl of custard...

"Hello, I'm The Doctor. So, basically... run." -The Doctor

At the time Matt Smith's casting was announced, I said that Moffat's previous "Who" episodes - which tended to be the highlight of each season - made me trust him implicitly, even though I had no idea who Smith was. By all accounts, Moffat had no intention of hiring the youngest-ever Doctor, but was so blown away by Smith's audition that he had to hire him - and Smith's work in "The Eleventh Hour" showed us exactly what Moffat saw in that audition.

Smith's young, yes, but there's a gravity to his performance that made it clear this gawky kid with the Flock of Seagulls haircut had, in fact, been around for hundreds of years and all the previous lives viewers have been watching for the last few decades. And just as David Tennant built on the character as played by Christopher Eccleston and made his Doctor less wounded and more exuberant, Smith's take on the character seems to have the enthusiastic eccentricity of Tennant(*) while playing the character as less reckless and prone to anger. Ten was arrogant, where Eleven is merely cocky.

(*) Smith also, like Tennant, seems to take great joy in saying certain words, here with the way he turned "laptop" into a five-course meal.

Smith also brings a great physicality to the part, not only in the slapstick like The Doctor's first few minutes at Amelia Pond's house(**), but in the odd, alien walk he adopts. Moffat's script certainly plays up Smith's rubbery features - when he asks Amy, "Do I even look like people?," the answer is clearly meant to be "no."

(**) I, frankly, would have watched at least 20 more minutes of Smith's Doctor trying and being disgusted by various foods in Amelia's kitchen.

And after playing Eleven as out of sorts for much of the episode, running around in the tattered remnants of Ten's wardrobe, Smith shows Eleven clearly getting his act together as he assembles a new (stolen) outfit. It's a great build-up for the character, and Smith owns every moment of it.

"Eleventh Hour" is also a great build-up for Karen Gillan's immensely likable Amy Pond, who has by far the most interesting, emotionally resonant backstory of the modern companions. There's an element of Donna Noble in there, in that Amy had to wait a while to get aboard the TARDIS (and in the end turns out to be another runaway bride), but it's one thing for a middle-aged woman to wait, and quite another for a little girl, who grows up with The Doctor at the forefront of her imagination. He has a powerful hold over her psyche, and that's going to complicate her obvious attraction to him (check out the look on her face as she watches him strip) and give this relationship elements of all three previous major modern companions.

For that matter, there were a lot of familiar elements in "Eleventh Hour." Amy's era-spanning relationship with The Doctor isn't dissimilar to the situation between Ten and Madame de Pompadour in the Moffat-scripted "The Girl in the Fireplace," and the Atraxi and Prisoner Zero felt like they could have been villains from a Russell T. Davies episode. (Moffat no doubt deliberately chose some more generic bad guys, so as not to distract from the establishing of Eleven and Amy.)

I know some "Who" fans who were dissatisfied with parts or all of the Davies era and were hoping Moffat would completely clean the slate and take the series in a different creative direction. Clearly, that's not going to be the case (Moffat, unsurprisingly, has nothing but positive things to say about Davies' run on the show), and what changes we see are going to be on a smaller scale. Moffat's both a funnier writer than Davies (here's just one clip from his insanely great Britcom "Coupling") and better at (or more interested in) creating an unsettling level of tension, but overall this is the Davies formula with a slightly different flavor. And as I loved most of the previous four seasons, I'm okay with that.

Very promising start to the semi-new era.

A few other thoughts:

• Moffat brings back a few elements from his previous episodes on the series with Tennant: The Doctor snaps his fingers to open the TARDIS doors, just as River Song told him he could back in "Silence in the Library," and at one point he uses the phrase "wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey," which is a phrase Ten used to explain the time-space continuum to Sally Sparrow in "Blink."

• The design of the Atraxi ships looked very much like the Kryptonian technology from "Superman: The Motion Picture," with bonus giant eyeballs.

• One notable change from Davies: Moffat and director Adam Smith attempt to show us how The Doctor sees the world, being aware of all angles and events everywhere he goes. How do you feel about him suddenly having Matrix-vision? True to what we know about the character, or a crutch in an episode that was otherwise designed to take away The Doctor's crutches (the TARDIS and the sonic screwdriver) to show him saving the world through sheer cleverness?

• In the UK, "Doctor Who" is seen as a family show first and foremost (Moffat once told me, "The entire point of `Doctor Who' is to frighten children"), and so Moffat had to play it safe with Amy's profession, claiming she's a "kiss-o-gram," when her embarrassment in that and other scenes suggests she does more than kiss when she's dressed as a cop, or nurse, or nun.

The UK is a few weeks ahead of us, and I'm sure some of you who live on this side of the pond have already watched additional episodes through extra-legal means, but we're going to stick with the usual "Doctor Who" spoiler policy around here, which means no talking about any episode (on any level) that has yet to air in the United States.

Keeping that in mind... what did everybody else think?

Firewall & Iceberg podcast, episode 12: Conan to TBS, Doctor Who, Glee and more

2010-04-14T23:57:00.001-04:00

A late night edition of the Firewall & Iceberg podcast this week, and you can find the relevant links, files and running times over at NJ.com. Normal schedule should be restored next week.

Lost, "Everybody Loves Hugo": Throw the Scot down the well

2010-04-14T00:03:00.002-04:00

Still off through the end of this week, but I can't help myself from writing about "Lost," so a quick review of tonight's episode (along with some thoughts on where we are in this final season) coming up just as soon as I'm well enough for a fajita field trip...

"Whoa. Dude." -Hurley

Well, we're clearly cooking with gas at this point in the season. Desmond's return has goosed the narrative stakes in both the sideways universe and the real one, two of the three island factions have finally come together(*), stuff blew up left and right(**), Des and Locke are trying to kill each other in the two timelines, and the sideways world again was used well to bring back a character whose time on the show felt like it came to too abrupt an end in the real timeline.

(*) Albeit in an episode that saw the creation of another faction in the Richard/Ben/Miles group, since groups on "Lost" are forever picking sides and walking off, going all the way back to when Jack took half the Oceanic survivors into the caves back in season one.

(**) Albeit with explosions that continued this season's trend of unimpressive CGI work. Whatever cuts ABC's made in the show's budget the last couple of years, the digital FX department has definitely been a big victim.

My fear, though, is that it's taken us too long to get to this point.

In the early years of the show, a "Lost" episode and a "Lost" season tended to be constructed the same way: an exciting beginning, then a lot of narrative throat-cleaning, and then an exciting finish. Once Cuse and Lindelof got permission to set an end date and knew what they were moving towards, seasons 4 and 5 became much denser, both from week to week and over the course of each season. Season 6, on the other hand, has felt like a throwback, not just with the return of old characters like Charlie and Boone and, now, Libby, but with the way that we're heading into the home stretch with material that it feels the show would have been better-served to deal with sooner.

Though some of the early sideways stories were entertaining through the sheer force of personality of the actors/characters being spotlighted (Locke, Ben), there was nothing all that interesting about the sideways world itself until last week. By making Desmond aware of the wrongness of the world - and introducing other characters like Charlie and Faraday who also recognized this - we finally tied that world to the one we care about, and created some urgency to our visits to LA. But I'd have rather see this happen a few weeks into the season and not now, not only because it would have given greater purpose to some of those meandering flash-sideways stories like Jack's son or Jin's amazing adventure in the freezer, but because it feels like now that we have a sideways story arc (Desmond tries to nudge the Oceanic passengers into realizing that this world isn't right), the resolution of it is going to feel rushed.

But Cuse and Lindelof have earned some trust over these past few years. Even if I didn't love a lot of the first half of this season, I want to believe that they know just how much time they need to tell the remaining story, that even if "What Kate Does" hasn't retroactively gotten better, that we're heading towards a finish close to what a series this great deserves. Because I don't want the season to turn into one big dead end like Ilana ultimately was.(***)

(***) Even in death, Ilana amounted to little, as Arzt beat her to that particular punchline by five years. The Ajira crew ultimately added about as much to the series' larger mythos as the tailies - Richard or Jacob's ghost could have very easily explained the candidate thing with just as much detail as Ilana ever offered - and the tailies at least gave us Libby's romance with Hurley and Mr. Eko and his Jesus stick for entertainment value.

And in the meantime, Desmond's actions, as well as the resurrected Libby's awareness of her other too-brief life, gave Hurley's sideways story some juice, along with giving Jorge Garcia another chance to show he has far more to offer the series than comic relief.

In sideways world, Hurley's a man who seemingly has everything (his version of the happy ending deal all the island folk apparently got) but is incredibly lonely. In the real world, he's lost so many people while standing on the sidelines that he once again asserts himself and takes a surprising leadership role on the island. (And Jack, finally after all these years learning that he can't fix everything, seems okay with playing Hurley's sidekick for once, in a nice role reversal and good moment for the character.)

Garcia had a lot of good moments in this one, but my favorite came early on, when he tells Ilana that Libby was "murdered," and this tone of pained disbelief comes into his voice as he says the word. One of Hurley's most recognizable traits is his ability to discuss the most ridiculous events of the series in the most matter-of-fact tone, but with his delivery of that one word, Garcia makes it clear just how much this one particular event continues to rock his world, years later.

Libby's return didn't explain what she was doing in the mental hospital in the real world, and I suppose that's one mystery I can live without them explaining. But I'm hoping we'll get more of Cynthia Watros in the coming weeks, along with more Dominic Monaghan and Jeremy Davies and even Ian Somerhalder. Because if alt-Desmond's mission is to bring an end to sideways world so the real world can be saved, a bunch of people are going to have to accept that they're going to die again, and there's a lot of good material to be mined there - assuming there's both time and available actors for that.

As for the Locke/Desmond mutual attempted murder game going on in both timelines, I'm not assuming either real Des or alt-Locke are dead just yet. Desmond's fall down the electromagnetic well is one of those classic comic book-style "if you don't see a dead body, you don't have a dead character" moments, and alt-Locke is still breathing (and looking remarkably like Locke on the ground after his father threw him out the window in "The Man from Tallahassee"). I am curious, though, if alt-Desmond has a specific reason for targeting our poor, self-actualized substitute teacher - perhaps recognizing that damaging Smokey's host body in the sidways world hurts him in the real one - or if alt-Des is going more by instinct, and somehow knows in his gut that the man with John Locke's face has just tried to hurt him.

Anyway, we'll have more time to speculate on all of that once I'm working full-time again (and less sleep-deprived), so in the meantime, some other thoughts:

• Couple of notable guest stars this week: Samm Levine (from my beloved "Freaks and Geeks" had a brief appearance as the Mr. Cluck's employee who recognizes Hurley (and I thank the "Lost" producers for giving him more dialogue than Quentin Tarantino did in all of "Inglourious Basterds"), Bruce Davison reprises his role from season two's "Dave" as Dr. Brooks.

• So the whispers were the voices of all the souls trapped on the island because of the actions they committed there while alive. On the one hand, that's not a surprising answer; on the other, that's sort of the risk Cuse and Lindelof face in giving us answers to questions like that at this late date. After six years of speculation, of course most of us are going to have come up with an idea like this to describe the whispers, just as I'm sure the identities of Adam and Eve will wind up being something that's already mentioned on Lostpedia. But by tying the answer to a character moment - Michael asking Hurley to apologize to Libby for him - the revelation merited more than a shrug.

• I swear, every time a character with a gun talks about getting in an outrigger (here it was Richard), I turn into Millhouse in "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show" whining, "When are they gonna get to the fireworks factory?!?!?!?!"

• Another possible "Lost" spin-off: a game show called "How Do You Break the Ice with the Smoke Monster, Anyway?"

What did everybody else think?

Justified, "The Lord of War and Thunder": Raylan at the bat

2010-04-13T23:05:00.009-04:00

A review of tonight's "Justified" coming up just as soon as I get my dignity back...

"But our stories are our own, huh? We all got our cross to bear." -Arlo Givens

The early episodes of "Justified" dropped so many ominous hints about Raylan's father that the episode introducing Papa Givens was going to have a lot to live up to. Fortunately, "The Lord of War and Thunder" was up to expectations, thanks in part to the casting of ace character actor Raymond J. Barry as Arlo, in part due to Timothy Olyphant putting Raylan's more laid-back qualities aside for an episode and unleashing that anger we all know he plays so well.

In particular, I loved the scene where Raylan goes to Perkins' house and tells the story of his childhood. It wasn't because of the content of the speech, since a lot of the Givens family backstory was already strongly implied (as I've said, Graham Yost characters tend to spell out more than is necessary), but because of how Olyphant played it. In that scene, Raylan wasn't talking to Perkins, and was barely even talking at him. In that moment, Raylan was alone with the ghosts of his childhood, and anyone else in the room was irrelevant, except as someone whose ass Raylan could kick if they were dumb enough to make him.

And it's also a mark of both Olyphant's performance and the way Yost and company have written the character that he did not, in fact, go off on Perkins or his nephews when the opportunity arose. Raylan's angry, but he grew up in the home of a man who couldn't control his anger. And just as Arlo vowed to be the opposite of his own father, Raylan the son of a criminal not only went into the law, but made himself into a man with a tight leash on his own fury. He can let it out when necessary, but usually he does it in a controlled manner. He has his code, and he makes sure his opponents know it; if they follow his rules, they get a pass, and if they don't, he can always tell himself it's their own fault they're dead.

(And, really, can you blame him after seeing the little cemetary outside his childhood home? We all figuratively have a gravestone waiting with our name on it, but Raylan had to grow up looking at a literal one. It'd make any man angry and death-obsessed.)

After the last few episodes were largely self-contained adventures of Raylan and the other Marshals, "The Lord of War and Thunder" suggested that "Justified" may have room for some longer-term storytelling, after all. Not only does Raylan vow to put Arlo back in prison, somehow, but we're reminded that Boyd has a very large family, and most of them - including papa Bo (who will also require great casting, after the build-up here) - aren't too happy with either Raylan or Ava. And I liked the way this episode flipped the format, with the more serialized and personal plots taking the forefront but with an engaging, and brief, episodic story about Raylan playing gardener to catch a fugitive. If the series can be fluid about its format - standalone-only if the story's good enough to carry the hour (like last week's fugitive dentist plot), and a mix when it's not - I'll be very pleased.

A few other thoughts:

• These days, with most shows operating on a tight budget where only a handful of actors are budgeted to appear in every single episode, the idea of who is or isn't a "regular castmember" is less aesthetic than it is contractual. Still, when Winona turned up in the scene where Ava met U.S. Attorney David Vazquez, I shrugged and said, "Oh, yeah, Natalie Zea is on this show." She appeared briefly in the pilot and the second episode, wasn't in episodes 3 and 4 at all, and did a scene and a half here. I like Zea fine, but I enjoy Olyphant's chemistry with Joelle Carter so much that I don't exactly miss her when she's not around.

• Yost brings in another familiar face from a past project, casting Rick Gomez (who was wisecracking George Luz in "Band of Brothers," as well as the older brother of Josh Gomez from "Chuck") as Vazquez. Given all the talk about both the Crowder family and the legal problems that would come from Raylan and Ava having a relationship, I'm expecting/hoping to see a lot more of Gomez down the road.

• Couple other guest stars of note: Eddie Jemison from the "Ocean's Eleven" films (but better known in the Sepinwall household for this series of Bud Light commercials) as Glen Perkins, Linda Gehringer as Raylan's knife-wielding stepmom, and Brent Sexton (Damian Lewis's ex-partner from "Life") as the cop from Raylan's hometown.

What did everybody else think?

30 for 30, "No Crossover: The Trial of Allen Iverson": No definitive answers

2010-04-13T14:00:00.006-04:00

"30 for 30" is back on ESPN proper tonight at 8 with Steve James' "No Crossover: The Trial of Allen Iverson." James directed "Hoop Dreams," one of the greatest documentaries ever made (about sports or otherwise), and he and Iverson grew up in the same hometown of Hampton, VA, so I had high expectations for this match of filmmaker and subject. I was not disappointed. A few brief thoughts after the jump...

As the subtitle suggests, "No Crossover" focuses on the bowling alley brawl Iverson was involved in as a 17-year-old. But in a broader sense, the film is about the divide between the black and white populations of Hampton, as seen through the lens of both the trial and James's own upbringing. Some of the film's most affecting moments involve detailing little-known pieces of Iverson's biography, but just as emotional are ones where James talks to his mother, or about his father or, in one case, engages his African-American cameraman in an impromptu dialogue on race. There are documentaries where it feels like the director has inserted himself into the story for the sake of self-promotion, but here the two stories blend together beautifully. (And the whole point of "30 for 30" has been to let the directors tell stories they have a personal stake in, whether they include themselves in the action like James and Peter Berg, or not like Dan Klores.)

For those assuming "No Crossover" will be an apology for Iverson, it is not. Nor is it a condemnation. It looks at the case, and at his life, and lets you choose your own answers about The Answer. Iverson's not always a model citizen (and the film was made before some of the latest bizarre/sad twists in his story), but James tries to place his life and behavior in a greater context, to try to find some truth not only about the bowling alley trial, but so much of AI's story. It's a wonderful film, one of the best of this terrific film series, and I highly recommend it.

Watch it tonight and feel free to discuss it here.

United States of Tara, "You Becoming You": The talking cure

2010-04-12T23:00:00.005-04:00

A review of tonight's "United States of Tara" coming up just as soon as I crack the spine...

"Is Joel Gretsch going to be back as Tara's therapist next season?" -Me, August '09
"No, Tara will have a new therapist." -Diablo Cody
"Oh? Who'd you cast?" -Me
"I can't tell you yet. I promise I'll tell you when I can." -Cody

"Back in the summer, you said you couldn't tell me yet who will play Tara's therapist this season." -Me, January '10
"I still can't tell you." -Cody
"Seriously?" -Me
"Nope. I'll tell you when I can." -Cody

For a while, I assumed the mystery surrounding the new therapist was one of those Clooney-returns-to-"ER" deals, where the actor had enough clout (and enough disinterest in hype) to insist his or her casting not be announced in advance. Then I came to the end of "You Becoming You," and I understood exactly why Cody wanted/needed to keep this particular secret: because the "new therapist" was actually Tara's newest alter, Shoshana, modeled on gay neighbor Ted's real therapist Shoshana in New York.

Of course, sometime between January and now, either Cody or someone at Showtime who outranks her decided to not keep it entirely a secret. Shoshana has been in a lot of the promotional art, and after I watched this episode a few weeks back I saw a couple of interviews with other "Tara" producers that gave away some details about the character, but not necessarily that Tara's psyche created her in lieu of finding an actual therapist. Still, I'm glad I got to be fully surprised. I assumed Tara was lying to Max about talking to the real Shoshana, but only to get him off her back after the Pammy fiasco, so I was nicely dumbfounded when Max walked in on the reality of the situation.

But because Shoshana only appears briefly (while I've seen several more episodes), I'm going to set her aside and focus on some other parts of "You Becoming You," other than to say my eyebrows raised very high when I got a good look at the very Alice-like dress and red heels being worn by the woman in Tara's flashback.

Marshall's storyline continues to maybe the show's strongest blend of comedy and angst, and always wonderfully played by Keir Gilchrist. The Gregsons have always treated Marshall's sexuality as something that's understood but never really addressed head-on, and therefore it felt right that he should finally come out of the closet to his dad in the wake of his failed attempt to prove his heterosexuality with Courtney. Max's completely unruffled response to the announcement - "Good. So, you want anything?" - was a very John Corbett moment at a point in the season where Max is becoming less Corbett-like, and it turned out to be exactly the reaction Marshall needed. He needs to be accepted, but he doesn't really want to talk about it, and certainly not with his parents.

Charmaine, meanwhile, is pregnant, and after she and Tara started talking about the date of conception, my first thought was, "So, it's Neil's baby, right?" Whether it is or it isn't, I hope this story leads to more Patton Oswalt. And Kate's car trouble leads to the first of what should (if the writers were paying attention to how good Viola Davis is with what's so far a tiny part) be many meetings between Lynda and Tara.

What did everybody else think?

Why Conan O'Brien's TBS move was the right one: Sepinwall on TV

2010-04-12T16:22:00.005-04:00

Just as a Very Desmond Episode of "Lost" briefly pulled me out of my family time cocoon, I couldn't not weigh in on Conan O'Brien's decision to do a talk show for TBS, rather than Fox, starting in November. Click on the previous link to NJ.com and you'll see why I'm with Coco on this decision.

Treme, "Do You Know What It Means": The 'n' is for 'nuance'

2010-04-11T23:30:00.022-04:00

I reviewed "Treme" overall in Friday's column. Some thoughts on the pilot episode coming up just as soon as I teach you everything I know about Keynesian economics...

"All you want to do is get high, play some trumpet and barbecue in New Orleans your whole damn life?" -Davis
"That'll work." -Kermit

Just as he did with the pilot for "The Wire," David Simon (there with Ed Burns, here with Eric Overmyer) has no problem plunking his audience down into the middle of what's a foreign country to many of us and assuming we'll pick up the language as we go. So we open with two men (who turn out not to be significant characters) haggling over the fee for the second line parade, and our first familiar face in Wendell Pierce doesn't even turn up for several minutes. We don't get an explanation for what a Mardi Gras Indian is, but instead just see Clarke Peters strutting down an empty street in that amazing yellow feathered costume, looking like a cross between an Indian, an alien and a crazy person. You just go with the music, or you don't.

As I watched the "Treme" pilot, I had enough faith in Simon and company to know that I'd figure things out eventually, and now having seen three episodes, my faith has been rewarded. And because "Treme" is, so far, much more driven by character than plot than "The Wire" was, I had a much stronger sense of the main characters by the end of the pilot than I did about anyone but McNulty by the end of the first "Wire."

It helps that we start off with a somewhat more famous cast this time around. You see, for instance, John Goodman's Creighton going all Walter Sobchek on the British camera crew and you have many of the fine points of that character. (Ultimately, Creighton turns out to be much more refined and sane than Walter; he's just excitable.) And if chatty, hipper-than-thou Davis isn't exactly like other roles Steve Zahn has played, it's in the ballpark enough that all Simon and Overmyer have to do is establish the degree of his quirks. (For instance, that he'll rail against the Tower Records employees about the definition of "consignment," but will largely wimp out on trying to engage Elvis Costello in conversation.)

Clarke Peters played my favorite character on "The Wire," and he quickly establishes Albert as one of the ones to watch closely here. There's that great moment where Albert enters his ruined home and with a few small gestures (a catch of the breath, a change in his eyes), Peters shows you just how much it wrecks him to see that. But then he steps outside, his jaw sets, and he becomes this immovable object - a big chief who isn't going to let his daughter, his son or anyone else stand in the way of his plan to clean out the bar, reassemble his old tribe, and start rehearsing for Carnival. It's a calling he takes so seriously that he won't even let himself break character when his neighbor agrees to haul the junk away from the bar, only allowing himself a little goofy victory dance after the street is completely empty.

We spend a lot of time in the pilot just watching musicians performing their craft. In the same way that "The Wire" would occasionally step back and just let us witness the cops perform their jobs at a high level, the long musical interludes are already revealing things about the characters: that Antoine, for instance, is so desperate for money that he'll perform in a parade he's clearly not in shape for.

We get to meet couples in varying states of their relationship: Creighton and Melissa Leo's Toni as a contented veteran pair who turn out to be a better match than they first seem (as Toni's just as capable of blowing up as her husband), Antoine and Khandi Alexander's Ladonna as exes who haven't lost their old chemistry, and Davis and Kim Dickens' Janette as two people going through the motions because she hasn't found a good enough excuse to kick him to the curb. (And by the end of the pilot, he provides her with one by opening that expensive bottle of wine at a restaurant that can't afford that kind of financial waste.)

And through it all, we see both the heartache and joy of post-Katrina New Orleans. Homes are destroyed, lives are lost or uncertain (like Ladonna's missing brother Daymo), yet there's great music and food and companionship and local pride. There are gigs to hustle for, consignment CDs to be reclaimed, victory dances to do, and money to be played for. It's a place where even the funerals eventually turn into celebrations with dancing and music, and one I look forward to spending a lot of time visiting this season.

Some other thoughts:

• As a lot of you know, a week and a half before the premiere, "Treme" co-executive producer David Mills died unexpectedly after suffering a brain aneurysm on the set. Give his love of music in general and funk in particular, I'm pleased that Davis's old band, whose CDs were being held on consignment by Tower, was named Uncut Funk, which was a fanzine David and his friends used to publish about George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic. (You can hear the music of the real Davis here, by the way.)

• Elvis Costello (who generated my biggest laugh of the pilot with his reaction to Davis's attempt to claim that he taught Kermit Ruffins anything) was one of the first famous musicians to come back to the city after the storm, where he began work on his "River in Reverse" album with Allen Toussaint. And Kermit himself is a local fixture whom Mills once described as "the de facto goodwill ambassador of New Orleans... except he rarely travels to ambassadorize."

• When Creighton declines the lemon ice (out of loyalty to another restaurant that has yet to re-open), the desert that Janette offers to fix for him is a Hubig's fried pie. In his open letter to the city of New Orleans in today's Times-Picayune, Simon cops to the fact that the Hubig's factory didn't reopen for several months after the time period depicted in this episode.

• And speaking of the Times-Picayune, if you like this show, you really owe it to yourself to check out some or all of Dave Walker's exhaustive coverage of the show.

• We don't get an explanation here for Davis's issues with his gay neighbors, but note that he assaults them with the music of New Orleans native Mystikal.

• I found it a nice touch that Toni carries around three giant purses all the time, which is a reminder not only that she has no office to go to because of the flood, but also suggests a character who's always over-extending herself.

• I know it's been 10 years and many films since Rob Brown made his movie debut in "Finding Forrester," but when I saw him as Delmond tearing it up at the Blue Note, I was overcome with the urge to yell out, "You're the man now, dawg!" in a Scottish accent.

What did everybody else think?

Breaking Bad, "Green Light": Half-and-half

2010-04-11T23:00:00.005-04:00

A review of tonight's "Breaking Bad" coming up just as soon as I remember that the dude's name was Mel...

"Sometimes, it doesn't hurt to have someone watching your back." -Mike

"Breaking Bad" has tried to walk a fine line between black comedy and straight drama, and as Walt's heart has gotten darker, so has the show. This season has had its funny moments (roof pizza!) and of course promoted Bob Odenkirk to regular cast status, but on the whole it's felt more serious than before - not less interesting, because Cranston, Paul and company play both sides equally well, but with its feet more firmly planted on one side than the other.

With "Green Light," the funny returns in greater doses. Saul is more at the forefront, Walt is more pathetic than monstrous for most of the hour(*), and the comedy duo of White and Pinkman briefly reunited.

(*) I found it a particularly nice touch that we only heard Walt and Skyler's argument as Mike and Saul were listening to the tape of it in Saul's office. Had we watched it unfold in the White family kitchen, it would have been as ugly as much of the Walt/Skyler interaction has been this year. Seen through Saul and Mike's eyes, though, Walt's a clown with no impulse control.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the show took a darker turn after Jesse turned to heroin, not only because there's not a lot that's funny about that situation, but because it drove a wedge between him and Walt. So much of this show's comedy, even in otherwise bleak episodes like the one at Tuco's house or the one in the desert, comes from seeing these two characters drive each other crazy as they try to solve their latest potentially-fatal problem. And since Jane's death, they've been at peace with each other, but that was largely because neither was cooking meth at the time. No professional friction, just a surrogate father-son dynamic - note Walt telling Jesse, "You're good at a lot of things, son" while trying to talk him out of cooking.

But as soon as Jesse takes out that bag of blue Heisenberg meth, all paternal instincts go out the window. Walt the mentor is overtaken by Walt the aggrieved party, the man whose entire life can be blamed on others, whose stubborn pride eventually poisons every part of his life. Walt should have been proud that he had ultimately turned out to be a good teacher to Jesse - that he had taken the idiotic Cap'n Cook and turned him into an effective Heisenberg substitute. But of course he had just blown up his teaching career by hitting on the principal, and all he could see with that blue bag was that Jesse had stolen from him, in the same way that Gretchen and Elliott made their fortune on his work, and it made Walt go ballistic - and very, very funny.

Cranston's comedy bonafides got a workout in this one, not only in arguing with Jesse, but the whole scene outside Ted Beneke's office (where he assures Skyler everything's fine even as he's hunched over the potted plant he's trying to hurl through Ted's window), his lame brawl with Saul (with Mike picking up Walt like a father might pick up a child throwing a tantrum) and his disastrous attempt to seduce Principal Carmen.

But if Walt was a clown in this episode, he was the sad clown. He's lost his marriage, lost his teaching job, alienated the closest thing he has to a friend in Jesse, and even fired his counsel and money launderer. He's got nothing and no one, and something tells me Gus Frings will never have to tell him about the Cousins (even as the Cousins leave another warning on Walt's street) to get him to resume cooking. Heisenberg is the only thing Walt has left.

Jesse, meanwhile, continues to embrace his inner bad guy, potentially ruining the life of that poor girl at the gas station with his testimonial about the awesome splendor of crystal meth, just because he didn't think to check his wallet before filling up the RV. Aaron Paul has been a revelation as this dead-inside, unapologetic villainous Jesse - we knew he could act, but to be able to take the character to such a different place while still seeming clearly Jesse is no small thing.

And the gas station deal (another one of the show's marvelous short-story-as-teasers) looks like it's going to blow back on Jesse after Hank uses the return of the blue meth as an excuse to get out of his terrifying reassignment to El Paso. Hank struts through the episode being just as self-sabotaging as Walt (talking to Gomey in a similar manner to how Walt treats Jesse), because he's been to the border, and south of it, and he can't do that again - just as he can't admit to that until cornered by his boss(**). He doesn't quite wreck his career the way Walt does, but he's killed any real chance of upward mobility. (And, not that Hank realizes it, but catching Heisenberg won't do him much good, since putting the bracelets on the brother-in-law you didn't realize was the area's most notorious supplier isn't a great resume item.)

(**) Loved the moment where Hank's supervisor forces him to leave aside the macho bluster and confess that he can't go back to El Paso... and how, after a moment, Hank's personality reboots and he tries to act like the confession never even happened.

Walt's got no one, Hank's got no future prospects, Jesse's got no soul, and Skyler may as well put on a scarlet letter at Beneke after Walt's outburst. Not a good place for any of these characters to be, even if "Breaking Bad" rediscovered its sick funny bone while putting them all there.

Some other thoughts:

• What a great addition Jonathan Banks has been as Mike, whose loyalty is again confirmed as to Gus first and everyone else a distant second. His unflappable, completely professional demeanor stands in stark contrast to the excitable, bumbling amateurism of Walt, Jesse, and even Saul, who's only slightly less in-over-his-head than his two favorite clients.

• Is it any surprise that Jane's father would attempt suicide after all he's been through (and caused) over the last few months?

• And is it any surprise that, while Mr. Margolis would respond to the Flight 515 tragedy by trying to kill himself, Saul would try to make a buck off of it?

• Very nice transition between Skyler standing over the copy machine, realizing how much all the women at Beneke hate her, followed by the copy machine's whine intersecting with Skyler and Ted's moans during sex as the camera passes over pictures of Ted's kids.

• A mark of how effective the teaser was: I was actually relieved when Hank went to the gas station and it turned out the girl gave the meth away after sampling a little. On the other hand, it does metaphorically take Jesse off the hook for what he just did. If there's one area the series has shied away from, it's showing the effect of Walt and Jesse's product on its users (unless we count Skank and Spooge). We get to see how their behavior destroys the people immediately around them, but are kept from having to confront the broader destruction they cause. The users of the blue meth are as abstract as the people on the plane.

What did everybody else think?

The Pacific, "Part Five": On the beach

2010-04-11T22:00:00.008-04:00

A review of "The Pacific" part five coming up just as soon as I spell my last name for you...

"Sid, what's it like?" -Sledge
"I slept with a woman in Melbourne. I'm not bragging. That's at one end, right? And then way down there, as far as you can go, that's what it's like. And that... that you can never imagine." -Phillips

"The Pacific" opened with two episodes packed with action and tension, then took a break in Part Three for the extended stay in Melbourne, then went claustrophobic with a Part Four more concerned with the psychological damage of war than the physical. In Part Five, Eugene Sledge finally arrives in the Pacific, briefly spends time with his buddy Sid Phillips and debates theology with Leckie, and with two central characters in the field again (while Basilone is home selling war bonds and sleeping with movie stars), the series moves on to the jaw-dropping action that will dominate its middle hours, with the Battle of Peleliu.

As Tom Hanks says in the opening documentary, the U.S. expected the conflict on Peleliu to last maybe a few days, when instead it dragged on for more than two months. After Guadalcanal, the Japanese realized that hurling themselves at American machine guns wasn't a viable tactic, and instead realized they could dig in, use the terrain as cover, and go after the Americans in a more protected, more ruthless fashion.

And the Americans were not at all ready for that.

Part One featured a kind of nod and a wink to the Omaha Beach sequence from "Saving Private Ryan," with Leckie and his buddies bracing for a brutal beach assault that never materialized. Here, we finally got the "Private Ryan" level of spectacle, with director Carl Franklin, director of photography Remi Adefarasin and company making like Spielberg to depict the complete hell(*) that Sledge and Leckie and the others experienced as the boats landed on Peleliu.

(*) Interestingly, Adefarasin again went with a kind of heavenly light approach (as he did when Leckie climbed back up onto the ship at the end of Part Two) as the front of Sledge's boat opened up - only here what was visible once Sledge's eyes adjusted was the exact opposite of heavenly.

The danger of Spielberg producing another World War II project, and one that features soldiers/Marines landing on a beach under heavy fire, is that it becomes impossible to not compare it to the earlier work - particularly since Sledge, like Tom Hanks's character, briefly loses his hearing from all the bullets and exploding shells whizzing by. But if parts of it were a bit familiar, even shot in the bright blue pallette of this miniseries versus the desaturated grays of "Private Ryan" and "Band," it was still incredible to look at, and harrowing to watch as the attack kept going and going and going. The scope is much greater than anything we saw in "Band" (which had a lower budget and more primitive computer effects), where even the D-Day jump mainly focused in on what Dick Winters was doing and could see.

But Part Five, written by Lawrence Andries and head writer Bruce McKenna, wisely takes its time getting to Peleliu. We've gotten to know Leckie by now, particularly in the third and fourth hours of the miniseries, and here we get to spend a while with Sledge as he adjusts to being in the theater of operations. As we saw in "Band" when Easy Company's replacements started to arrive, there's this great distance between Eugene and best friend Sid, and between the devout, undamaged Eugene and bitter agnostic Leckie, because they've seen and done things he can't possibly imagine.

The episode closes in a brief moment of calm, as Sledge and his buddies talk about family vacations to distract themselves from the horrors they've witnessed, and the horrors yet to come when the sun rises. One guy quotes his father's opinion about the Grand Canyon: "You have to see it to understand... You have to be there, looking down into it."

Eugene Sledge is on Peleliu now, looking down into the nightmare the 1st Marine Division didn't realize it was walking into. He may not understand everything that Sid and Leckie and the rest have experienced over the past two years, but he's already starting to get a pretty clear, bleak picture.

Some other thoughts:

• There's no record of Leckie and Sledge having met, but McKenna justified the scene by pointing out that Sid (who was educated and liked to read) served with Leckie, and Leckie had a reputation as "the book guy," whom other soldiers would go to see for reading material on Pavuvu. Sid would have told Eugene this, and given Sledge's own love of reading and writing, they could have very easily crossed paths. McKenna: "Do I know that it happened, fact positive? No. But it's very likely."

• I know I complained in episode two that the digressions to see Sledge in America were a bit distracting, but I liked how his basic training scene in last week's episode was used to foreshadow the action here, as Sledge winds up in a combat scenario that's exactly what we saw him training for in Part Four.

• Sledge's arrival brings with it the introduction of a bunch of new supporting characters to keep track of. Three that stood out immediately: Capt. Andrew "Ack-Ack" Haldane (played by Scott Gibson), the officer who cuts Sid and Eugene some slack when he catches them wrestling in the dirt; Gunny Haney (Gary Sweet), the old (Haney was a WWI vet), very tan, very intense guy who yells at the sky when the rain stops in mid-shower, and who can get away with chewing out a lieutenant for poor handling of his weapon; and, especially, Rami Malek as Snafu, Sledge's completely amoral new mentor, who smokes and pukes and likes to extract gold teeth from fallen Japanese soldiers. (This was actually a not-uncommon practice in the Pacific theater.)

• Yes, that's Anna Torv from "Fringe" as actress Virginia Grey, who was at the peak of her box office powers at the time she met and fell for Basilone during their war bond drive together. (Basilone told others that he liked Grey because she cared more about the bond drive than her acting career.) "The Pacific" was actually filmed several years ago, before "Fringe" debuted; Torv at the time was just another Australian actor (who could affect a decent American accent) in a miniseries that hired a lot of them in supporting roles.

• I also thought it was a nice touch to show Basilone not only being uncomfortable with celebrity and being out of action, but with the fear that his brother George might get himself killed trying to live up to John's reputation. Being celebrated as a hero can be a burden, especially when you have a large family with others trying to follow in your footsteps.

• The movie the men are watching is 1943's "For Whom the Bell Tolls" with Ingrid Bergman (uttering the famous line "Where do the noses go?") and Gary Cooper. Hoosier's blunt, R-rated advice for Cooper is one of many reminders throughout the episode of how unfiltered the Marines were.

Okay, once again the goal is to treat the big historical aspects of the war (i.e., we won, Peleliu was brutal) as understood fact, while trying to avoid spoiling the fates of Sledge, Leckie and Basilone. Keeping that in mind, what did everybody else think?

'Treme' review: Sepinwall on TV

2010-04-09T07:00:00.002-04:00

In today's column, I review "Treme," the new series about life in post-Katrina New Orleans from David Simon and "The Wire" gang. It's really, really good, but don't go in expecting "The Wire 2: The Squeakquel."

Firewall & Iceberg podcast, episode 11: Lost, Chuck and Justified

2010-04-07T13:57:00.003-04:00

Even during family time, there is occasional down time, and while I sat around waiting for a delivery, Fienberg and I recorded a fast-paced, three-item Firewall & Iceberg podcast episode. Relevant links and whatnot are available at NJ.com. No listener mail this week, but the "Justified" segment is largely inspired by the comments in recent episode discussion here.

Justified, "Long in the Tooth": Don't fear the repo

2010-04-06T23:00:00.005-04:00

A review of tonight's "Justified" coming up just as soon as I have the ceviche...

As I've said before, FX sent episodes 1, 2 and 4 out for review while last week's "Fixer" was held due to post-production issues. So since I loved the pilot (which had the Elmore Leonard story to borrow from) and didn't love the second episode, "Long in the Tooth" served as a kind of tie-breaker, and the episode that convinced me that Graham Yost and company can make an Elmore Leonard show even without specific Elmore Leonard source material to lean on.

"Long in the Tooth" had that nice mastery of tones that typifies Leonard (and his literary descendants), with the ability to mix both comic violence like Rolly repossessing the d-bag's fillings with much darker violence like Rolly and Mindy with the coyote, and to mix self-aware pop culture discussion like the hitmen debating "Pulp Fiction"(*) with more iconic uses of pop culture imagery like Raylan's Wild West gunfight with the two hitmen on a lonely desert road.

(*) The reference to the scene where Vincent Vega accidentally shoots Marvin in the face was an amusingly reflexive moment. Leonard characters often talk about pop culture (in part because it gives Leonard an excuse to say what characters look like without using the kind of descriptive language he hates), and that's one of the traits huge Leonard fan Quentin Tarantino incorporated into his own writing, even before Tarantino directly adapted Leonard with "Jackie Brown."

It had my favorite guest performance/character to date with Alan Ruck(**) as Rolly. In "Riverbrook," I got frustrated whenever we cut away from Raylan and back to the bank robber and his motley crew; here, Ruck was as much fun to watch as Tim Olyphant. And Clarence Williams III (who played one of the bad guys in the film version of Leonard's "52 Pick-Up") was amusingly cranky - and racist and sexist and unapologetically offensive in just about every way - as the guy who swapped cars with Rolly.

(**) And even though it's been nearly 25 years since "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," as soon as Rolly sacrificed himself to the sniper's bullet, I said to myself, "He's not dying; he just can't think of anything good to do."

"Long in the Tooth" wasn't perfect. The episode introduced the idea of Raylan having to sit back and let Rachel take lead, then abruptly dropped it halfway through so Raylan could be solo and have his duel in the sun. Raylan having to suppress his innate Raylan-ness for the sake of a higher-ranking, equally competent Marshal actually sounds like a fun idea (albeit the sort of thing that probably plays better as a change-of-pace episode for season two or three), but you either follow through with it and give it a payoff, or you don't do it.

But it was still quite a lot of fun, extremely compelling and hopefully a signpost towards more good things to come.

What did everybody else think?

Lost, "Happily Ever After": Not Desmond's life

2010-04-06T22:50:00.000-04:00

Well, a brief window has opened in my family time schedule, and we're about to find out if my brain is operating at enough candlepower to adequately discuss tonight's "Lost." A briefer-than-it-deserves review coming up just as soon as I accost a man in a dressing gown...

"There's always a choice, brother." -Desmond

It's not an epilogue-in-advance.

Clearly.

The whole epilogue theory, which I began noodling with as much so that I could pretend that the flash-sideways meant something as because I believed in the idea, was pretty concretely disproven by "Happily Ever After."

(Apologies if the next few paragraphs read like complete gibberish, but between my recent sleep deprivation and the usual mechanics of a "Lost" story arc, it's inevitable.)

Instead, it appears that some event - perhaps the detonation of Jughead, perhaps something we've yet to see - has rewritten the timeline, in a way that has given nearly every character what someone, somewhere, thought would be a happy ending for them, whether it worked out exactly or not. Locke has the love of Helen, Ben has a relationship with a living Alex, Jack overcomes his daddy issues, etc., etc., etc. The dead rise up and have more palatable existences (Daniel Faraday, pushed by his mother to become the world's greatest doomed physicist becomes Daniel Widmore, pampered by his mother into becoming a musician who wants to combine classical music with the works of Driveshaft). Not all of it quite works out - Sayid is still a soulless killing machine who can't be with Nadia, Kate's still a fugitive (albeit hanging with the mother of her son from the real timeline), Sun's gutshot - but enough of it does to suggest this wasn't designed as a kind of monkey's paw existence.

In fact, everyone is supposed to be so happy in these alternate lives that they'll never notice how much the universe has changed, or the cost that was paid to attain these lives, or what evil - Smokey, presumably - is busy running amok while Jack's busy having a catch with his son and Sawyer and Miles are acting out unproduced "Nash Bridges" scripts.

And while some people are capable of recognizing the artificiality of this other universe (if that's what it is; for all I know, this could be The Matrix, and Jack and the others are all hanging in suspended animation inside a global cloud of black smoke), the only one capable of sharing knowledge between his two lives is Desmond.

Desmond is "special." Desmond knew the universe wanted Charlie dead well before the universe finally won that battle. Desmond can travel back and forth through his own lifetime, "Quantum Leap"-style. Desmond can survive the time travel sickness because he has Penny as his constant, and can alter the timeline when no one else can. He is, in fact, cool enough that for the first time in forever my "Lost" gag reflex didn't rise up when a character was offered an explanation and declined(*).

(*) That's part Desmond coolness, part that Cuse and Lindelof's "Happily Ever After" script pretty strongly implied what was up, particularly in the scene where Desmond comes face to face with Eloise, who in a universe where she didn't kill her own son wound up marrying Widmore and giving his name to their son. In every timeline, she knows more than everybody else, and here she doesn't even have her son's time-looped notebook to explain it all.

So now there are stakes to the sideways stories. Desmond exists in both realities, and is working a plan in both. Now we know that the sideways world is tied to the one we know, and that it needs to be stopped - that, like the Oceanic Six had to go back to the island, all of the important Oceanic 815 passengers have to accept that this is not their beautiful house, their beautiful wife, etc. That knowledge doesn't retroactively improve dull sideways stories like "What Kate Does" or last week's "The Package" in the way that we might have hoped, but it does make the sideways world matter moving forward into this last rush of episodes.

And with Desmond back in action, and working towards a reunion with his beloved Penny in at least one timeline (if not trying to woo her in the other), I'm pumped to see what comes next.

In the interests of my REM cycle, a few other thoughts and then you guys fire away:

• We see Widmore's scientists have a rabbit on hand (named Angstrom, as a tip of the hat to John Updike), just like Dr. Chang did in the infamous Comic-Con video where the island duplicates the rabbit. At first I assumed the idea was that Desmond was the only man who didn't exist in both timelines as separate entities, but perhaps not. Perhaps Darlton just like rabbits, given how many contexts they've place them in.

• I liked how much of Alt-Desmond's life mirrored what we know of him from the real world: still protecting Charlie Pace, still dancing to Charles Widmore's tune (albeit willingly here), and now it's Penny who's running the steps at the stadium. Eloise says "whatever happened, happened" (but says it to the one man on the show who proves that axiom's not always true). And I literally got goosebumps when we flashed from alt-Charlie's hand to the "Not Penny's boat" scene."

• Like Daniel Faraday (and Keamy, and Bakhunin and many others), George Minkowski comes back to life in sideways-ville, here a talkative limo driver instead of a talkative radio operator.

• So is the sound effect used to transition into the sideways world supposed to sound like an MRI machine?

Lots more of the episode to unpack, but I'm losing steam. We'll see what state I'm in next week - and also whether next week's episode inspires me to power through the fatigue the way this one did - but for now, vis a vis "Happily Ever After," what did everybody else think?

United States of Tara, "The Truth Hurts": Chasing Pammy

2010-04-05T23:00:00.008-04:00

A review of tonight's "United States of Tara" - plus some guest commentary from Diablo Cody herself - coming up just as soon as my heterosexuality stresses me out...

"What you don't get is, people can have a hard time, and then they turn it around. People can change." -Max
"Yeah, people change. And then they change right back." -Neil

Okay, I have to admit that this one kind of troubled me at first - both that Tara would let Buck's relationship with Pammy run for as long as it did before trying to either stop it or tell Pammy the truth, and that she would then go over to Pammy's apartment in what seemed, based on the earlier scene with Charmaine and Ted talking about gay experiences, like an attempt by Tara to see how the other half lives.

I wrote last week about how I understood Tara's reluctance to tell Max (which predictably blew up in her face here when Pammy made a spectacle of herself at the ice rink), and even to an extent that she wouldn't be able to tell Pammy the whole truth upon finding out. (Pammy understands that Buck's not a man, but not that Buck isn't real.) But to let two weeks go by with Buck in the life of that woman and her daughters, and then to apparently take advantage of Pammy's ignorance to satisfy Tara's own curiosity? To me, when I first watched "The Truth Hurts," that bothered me a lot. Tara's not a perfect person, even when she's herself, but she never struck me as someone who would let others be hurt in this way.

So, since it was bugging me, I decided to go straight to the source and ask "Tara" creator/producer Diablo Cody for her take on the Buck/Pammy/Tara triangle. Here's what she had to say:

The story of Pammy and Buck is meant to illustrate that Tara is becoming increasingly co-conscious with the alters. Last season Tara had to piece together video and stories to figure out what the alters were doing. This season, she's more aware, as illustrated by the way she "fights" with Buck over who gets the body, etc. We thought about how it feels, physiologically, to have an affair with someone. You feel more attractive overall. You feel energized. You feel excited. Even though Tara isn't technically having the affair, she shares a body with Buck, who is. So she's feeling a lot of those warm fuzzies too. And though she knows it's wrong once she realizes what's going on, she's addicted to Pammy in a strange, peripheral way.

A DID patient told us about a time she'd impersonated one of her alters in order to gain more information about what the alter had been doing. So we just thought it would be interesting, dramatically, for Tara to break up with Pammy as Buck as a way of both protecting Pammy and gaining for insight for Tara. Plus, it's really funny when Pammy wails, "I never get the guy!" In this case, it's literal - she wants the guy, and what she gets is a suburban mom in drag.

Pammy is of course, always aware that Tara is biologically female. But Pammy is so damaged and insecure that even a transgendered *representation* of a "strong man" is the most comforting thing she's ever experienced. Real men have never come through for her the way Buck does. If wounded women like Pammy are willing to date ex-cons and abusers (and they are), I'm willing to believe that they would even date a man who wasn't a man at all. Pammy's in as much of a fantasy as Buck is.

As I've said in the past, my understanding of DID comes primarily from this show and a string of "Incredible Hulk" comics circa 1991, so the co-consciousness thing is something I'm learning as I go - and maybe something the show should have been willing to spell out a bit more now that it's starting to drive Tara's actions.

But seen in that context (and understanding that Tara's primary goal in going there dressed as Buck was to break up with Pammy), most of my problems with the episode go away - and, in fact, I start to become intrigued by the possibilities. If Tara starts to become more aware of what the alters are up to, and starts to feel some of what they feel, does that make her more complicit when they do bad things? Or is the opposite the case - that even when Tara is Tara, she's not wholly responsible for her own actions? And how is Max - who's already furious with the return of the alters and with Tara's deception(*) - going to react if the line starts to blur between his wife and the weirdos who regularly hijack her body?

(*) But how does he feel about the affair itself? There was talk last season about Buck having caught crabs from a woman at the bowling alley, and there was an open question as to whether this was just another part of Buck's fantasy life, along with his time in Vietnam. But his success with Pammy suggests that Buck certainly could have had a sex life before now. In which case, was Max - who got mighty peeved when it looked like T might hook up with some random guy - okay with that? Or can he handle it so long as his wife's body is only fooling around with other women?

Max's anger (and his subsequent beat-down of Sully) was a good moment for John Corbett, particularly after the earlier scene where Max tries to convince himself and Neil that everything's all better with Tara. Raised expectations lead to increased disappointment when the reality doesn't match your dreams, but it feels right to see that Max isn't just some smiling, ever-patient saint. He has his limits, and the Pammy thing has pushed beyond them.

Early on, before the spit hits the fan, Tara jokes that Marshall dating a girl makes sense on opposite day, and there's a lot of upside-down behavior in this one (Kate, for once, is the most normal, even if she spends half the episode baked). The Gregsons just want an uncomplicated life, but Tara's condition and the world around them aren't making it easy.

Some other thoughts:

• Even by the standards of both pay cable and this show, "The Truth Hurts" felt very sexually frank. Kate calls Tara "doable" and later explains "dogs in a bathtub" to Marshall (my advice: don't Google it for a fuller explanation). Marshall and Courtney experiment with each other in the rafters (Marshall, nervous and not particularly aroused, tells her, "You're very skilled.") And Tara, Charmaine and the gay neighbors try to coin a new name for the vagina ("cou-ton?").

• Patton Oswalt makes a welcome return as Neil and does a nice job delivering a twist on a familiar joke when he tells Max, "I don't want a terrific woman; I want Charmaine."

• Kate's friendship with Lynda still isn't really going anywhere (though I'm sure some viewers weren't displeased to see Kate dressed as Princess Valhalla Hawkwind), but it does add another interesting actor to the recurring ensemble with Joshua Leonard (from "Humpday" and also HBO's "Hung") as Lynda's trustafarian pal/pot connection Ricky. (Incidentally, who coined "trustafarian"? I first heard it on the short-lived ABC sitcom "It's Like, You Know..." in the late '90s, but I always assumed Peter Mehlman got the term from someplace else.)

• Sorry, Lionel, but I, for one, would rather see a play about a slutty dental hygenist than one about a doctor from olden times.

What did everybody else think?

Chuck, "Chuck vs. the Other Guy": We'll always have Paris

2010-04-05T21:00:00.010-04:00

A review of tonight's "Chuck" coming up just as soon as I mix gaming with whiskey...

"You're still Chuck. You're still my Chuck." -Sarah

And after tonight, "Chuck" is very much still my "Chuck," too.

As mentioned many times before, originally "Chuck vs. the Other Guy" was going to be the end of a 13-episode third season - and, depending on how things broke, could well have been the very last episode of the series. We now know that there are six more episodes to go this year, and that a fourth season is still quite possible (the ratings ticked up a couple of points last week, and I still believe NBC has too many holes to not renew, even if it's just for another abbreviated season), but if "Chuck vs. the Other Guy" had been the series finale? Well... I'd have been sad the show was over but pleased that it went out on such a strong note, with easily the best hour of the season, and one that's in my handful of favorites from the entire run to date.

Chris Fedak, Josh Schwartz and company set themselves quite a task in trying to make Chuck a more grown-up spy, and "Chuck" a slightly more grown-up show. There have been episodes this season that were full of fun ("Chuck vs. First Class," "Chuck vs. the Beard"), and episodes that were dark and emotional ("Chuck vs. the Nacho Sampler," "Chuck vs. the Tic Tac"), but the Fedak-scripted "Other Guy" was the first to successfully balance both tones throughout, leading to an hour that made me laugh as much as any this season, but that also made me very pleased about the character growth.

So we got the hilarious cut from Chuck having a kung fu flash to Chuck playing Guitar Hero in his underwear while Morgan lay on the floor, bound by electronics cords, but we also got Sarah dealing with the knowledge that she killed Shaw's wife. We got Jeff and Lester inviting Casey to join their crew (if not to join Jeffster! itself) and Big Mike asking Morgan if he'd be selling his body in his new job, but we also got Chuck finally, definitively getting his first intentional kill. We got that amusingly awkward confrontation with the Ring Director in the overcrowded elevator, but we also got Sarah finally expressing her love for Chuck - and, even better, got them finally, definitively, without any kind of outside complication, becoming a couple(*). And the hour moved fluidly between the fun and serious sides; a show shouldn't be able to work in jokes about The Clapper and Chuck ordering too much back-up while also putting its heroine through an emotional wringer and putting its goofy hero in a position to shoot a man to death and not have the shifts feel jarring, but "Other Guy" did exactly that.

(*) And in Paris, no less - which, since they were both there because of Shaw, became a nice payoff for Shaw making Chuck immediately fly home without seeing the city at the end of "First Class."

I said last week of "Chuck vs. the American Hero," that "This is the show I fought to save last spring," and that sentiment applies even more strongly to "Other Guy," which had everything I ask for in an episode from "Chuck," other than Captain Awesome (along with Ellie, a budget casualty this week) and a performance by Jeffster! (And if they don't rock out again in the back 6, someone's gonna have some 'splaining to do.)

In particular, I'm so glad we got the Chuck and Sarah scene on the floor of his apartment midway through the episode. Not only was it a moment the 'shippers had been waiting three years for (and, based on Sarah's comments on the timing of when she fell for Chuck - i.e., before the end of the pilot - she'd been waiting just as long), but I'm glad Sarah's feelings were addressed before the action on the streets of Paris. We knew from the end of last week's episode that Sarah chose Chuck over Shaw, and that was a big enough moment for the series that it deserved a spotlight separate from the later shenanigans with Shaw. If Sarah were to seemingly choose Chuck just because he saved her life, that would be lame (particularly since he's done it several times before). Sarah, and the show, needed to make it clear that she loved Chuck for being himself, so the final scene in the hotel room wouldn't be Sarah declaring that love for the first time, but letting Chuck know that she could ultimately accept a world in which he kills people on occasion. By letting Sarah choose Chuck in a calm moment, and not in the flush of being rescued from a classic damsel-in-distress situation, it gave Sarah back a lot of the agency she lost this season, even amidst an episode where she was completely helpless for the climax.(**)

(**) And I hope that, in addition to saying goodbye to Shaw and cementing Sarah and Chuck as a couple, this episode allows the writers to turn Sarah back into the assertive, ass-kicking woman we fell for right along with Chuck.

And I liked how the scene with Casey and Chuck on the airplane nicely paralleled the earlier Chuck/Sarah moment. Sarah admits that she liked Chuck way back when he was still a hapless, non-Chuck-Fu-enabled dweeb, and Casey gives Chuck a pep talk by noting that before he had either Intersect in his head, or three years of haphazard spy training, he was someone who was very smart, someone who could foil the bad guys with his lightning-fast label-making skills, who could save the world because he's very good at Missile Command, and here who could track down Shaw because he knew how to read expense reports and vacation requests. (And, since the Intersect 2.0 was on the fritz again due to Chuck's emotions, that perfect double-tap to Shaw's chest was all Chuck the gamer, not Chuck the cyborg.)

We can argue whether or not it was right for the show to go so far in the direction of trying to make Chuck into a "real" (as in traditional) spy, just as we can debate whether the Shaw story worked, and whether Chuck and Sarah's will-they-or-won't-they situation was dragged out too long. (Well, maybe not the last one; I think we're all in agreement that it should've been sooner.) But in the end, the show comes down on the idea of letting Chuck be Chuck, with the resurrection of the original Team Bartowski and the very promising addition of Morgan to the gang in some kind of capacity to be explained later. (And here filling the role Chuck did very early on, as the normal guy applying geek knowledge to spy world.)

Chuck and Sarah are finally together, Casey has his wings back, Morgan's (kind of) a spy and "Chuck" is again 100% fun. That would have been a damn fine note to close the series on. Instead, we get at least 6 more episodes, and maybe another season beyond that, and I hope whatever's coming next can build on the sheer entertainment value of these last two, and learn from some of the stumbles of Season 3.0.

Now excuse me while I hit the local Subway for a tunaroni, just in case.

Some other thoughts:

• Great work from all available castmembers this week, doing what they do best: Yvonne Strahovski playing the tragedy of Sarah (both in the warehouse and then at realizing Shaw wants to kill her in Paris) and the depth of her love for Chuck ("You saved me"), Adam Baldwin seething (and also showing Casey's realization that he likes not only Chuck, but Morgan), Joshua Gomez being over-eager but believable whenever Morgan turns out to be smarter than anyone assumes, Vik Sahay and Scott Krinsky being creepy, and Mark Christopher Lawrence being overly emotional and fatherly. And, of course, Zachary Levi managing to do a little bit of everything, and guiding the show through all the tonal shifts.

• This week in "Chuck" music: "Kettering" by The Antlers plays both as Shaw confronts Sarah in the warehouse and then again as Shaw dies on the bridge, and "Bye Bye Bye" by Plants and Animals plays over Chuck and Sarah's kiss in the hotel, and OMD's "If You Leave" is heard briefly during Chuck's long dark John Hughes night of the soul. And speaking of which...

• This week in "Chuck" pop culture references: Oh, a whole bunch. Chuck of course drowns his sorrows by listening to the music of and quoting from various John Hughes movies like "Breakfast Club," "Pretty in Pink," etc. (The correct version of the "Pink" quote, according to IMDb, is "You said you couldn't be with someone who didn't believe in you. Well I believed in you. I just didn't believe in me.") The business with Chuck demanding the Director produce his Ring Phone felt like a hat-tip to the "I have no gate key" scene from "The Princess Bride." Morgan can spot a fake fight scene due to his love (shared by Quentin Tarantino) of the works of Sonny Chiba. Morgan quotes Yoda in "Empire Strikes Back" when he tells Chuck, "No! There is another!" And the moment when Sarah and Chuck turn the Beckman laptop around so they can have an uninterrupted Parisian romp was reminiscent of how most of the Bond films with Roger Moore ended (case in in point: the final moments of "Moonraker").

• Also, in identifying the songs used every week, I don't want to give short shrift to the work of Tim Jones in composing the weekly score - which, like the rest of the show, does a nice job of balancing tones and paying homage to all the movies and shows that influence "Chuck." I particularly liked the music used as Shaw seemingly kills all the people on the elevator to save Sarah and Chuck.

• Bonita Friedericy has one of the most thankless jobs on the show, as she's there most weeks to give exposition and sign off abruptly. Perhaps as a reward for three seasons of this, Fedak gave her a lot of funny bits to play here, whether it was Beckman admitting an unsurprising fondness for Ayn Rand, Beckman waking up and using The Clapper to turn on her bedroom lights, or Beckman's complete misery at having to deal with the likes of Morgan Guillermo Grimes.

• I'll be curious to see if, having let Chuck kill (albeit under extraordinary circumstances), and having shown Sarah to be okay with it, the writers will let him do it more casually going forward. As some commenters have noted, Chuck's attitude towards killing hasn't quite been the Superman/Captain America approach of "killing is wrong, and if I or my allies have to kill to win the day, we've failed," but rather "killing makes me squeamish, but I'm perfectly fine letting my partner John Casey and the woman I love kill on my behalf." See, for example, Chuck and Sarah's exchange before they go down the elevator shaft. And much as I want to let Chuck be Chuck, that attitude seems more than a bit hypocritical and weak.

• I got a kick out of Casey kicking much Ring butt off-screen while Chuck faced down Shaw, but I wonder if this is it for this particular group. The Director has been captured, Casey reclaimed the Intersect plans (which were the whole point of the elaborate ruse with Shaw taking Sarah to the warehouse, and then pretending to kill the Director and steal the Cipher), and it's still not clear what the group was up to other than trying to build a new Intersect, which Fulcrum was already working on last year.

• Given what we know about the rules of pop culture and the "Chuck" writers' devotion to those rules, was there any way Sarah's hotel room wasn't going to have an Eiffel Tower view?

• Why does Casey need a new Crown Victoria? Did I miss it getting damaged in "Tic Tac"? Or is he just taking advantage of his bargaining power to get a more pimped-out model?

Remember: we get two weeks of repeats (I believe next week's is "Chuck vs. First Class") after this, and then Season 3.1 runs for 5 weeks straight beginning April 26, with the last two episodes airing back-to-back on May 24 - which will be a week after NBC announces its schedule for next season. So unlike last year, we'll go into a "Chuck" finale knowing for sure if it's the end of the line or just a pause for a few months.

What did everybody else think?

Going off the grid

2010-04-05T18:20:00.000-04:00

Due to a very happy event in the family, I'm going to be taking the next two weeks off, returning sometime around April 19th.

I know it's not ideal timing, given how many shows I cover that are airing new episodes during this period, but as I had months of warning that this was coming, I've done some prep work. I've seen and written about "The Pacific," "Breaking Bad," "Justified," "United States of Tara" and "Treme" in advance, and conveniently some other big shows I follow like "Chuck" and "Parks and Recreation" will be in repeats while I'm gone.

The one show I really want to be able to cover is "Lost," particularly after what Damon Lindelof implied about this week's episode, but I don't know what I'll be able to do. The best I can promise is to get a post up after I've seen the episode so you all can discuss it, but it may be simply that ("Wild episode; what did everybody think?"), and it may not be what most of you would call prompt. Sometimes, family's gotta take priority, even over Desmond David Hume. Let's play that by ear.

The podcast may also be on hiatus for these two weeks, though Fienberg keeps trying to talk me into carving out 15 minutes to do a quick one. This is a case where subscribing via iTunes or via the RSS feed may be useful, because there may suddenly be an episode posted on a random day/time, or there simply won't be one till I'm back full-time.

While my attention is focused elsewhere, my friend Sarah Bunting has generously volunteered to keep track of the comments and make sure everybody's playing nice while I'm gone. By now, most of you should know the commenting rules by heart, so with any luck, Sarah won't have to do much other than read the many, many, many smart comments you guys make.

See ya on the flip side.

Breaking Bad, "I.F.T.": Kiss the cook?

2010-04-04T23:00:00.010-04:00

A review of tonight's "Breaking Bad" coming up just as soon as I tell you how to fry your chickens...

"All that I've done, all the sacrifices that I have made for this family, all of that will be for nothing if you don't accept what I've earned." -Walt

I didn't put a stopwatch on it, but I would guess that "I.F.T." (the title is an abbreviation for the bombshell Skyler drops on Walt) features the least screentime for Walt of any episode of the series. The only other contender I can think of is season two's Jesse-centric "Peekaboo," but even there, Walt had a prominent subplot with the return of Gretchen. Walt's not absent from "I.F.T.," but more often than not it seems like characters are talking about him rather than interacting with him.

And most of what they're saying about him is that they're waiting for him to be dead.

"I.F.T." lays out two possible outcomes for Walt: either the cancer comes back soon and kills him (which Skyler assumes, and is therefore reluctant to rat him out to the cops), or else Gus Frings finishes his business with Walt and lets the Cousins (here revealed to be actual cousins of Tuco, and nephews of Tio, who turns out to be a former druglord himself called Don Salamanca) do to him what they did to Tortuga(*).

(*) And if the show were, indeed, to end with Walt's decapitated head on top of an exploding tortoise? Instant Top 5 Most Memorable Series Finale Ever. Period.

When you start with a premise like this show has, neither a happy ending nor a long run (Vince Gilligan has said in the past he envisions four seasons) are likely. And if neither of these turn out to be the exact fate Walt suffers, his end will be ugly - and deserved.

Here, even in an episode where Walt largely takes a backseat to Skyler, and Jesse, and Hank, and the cartel, you still get to see the damage he's done to those around him. Once again, he completely checkmates Skyler and makes her the bad guy in their domestic drama. Jesse spends most of the hour doing nothing but calling into Jane's not-yet-deactivated voicemail so he can hear her voice again. And when the phone company finally cuts the line - taking away the last vestige of the woman Jesse loved, and Walt killed - he heads into the desert in the RV to cook on his own, using all the lessons Walt taught him. Tio is still raging over Tuco's death (even though Hank technically fired the killing shot, Tuco was in that situation because of Walt), and that in turn is going to cause all manner of pain and heartache for those associated with Walt. And, of course, Hank's PTSD problems (which here lead to him savagely beating on a pair of tough guys in a biker bar) began not with Tortuga's death, but with him killing Tuco, which only happened because Hank was out looking for Walt.

We talk all the time in these episode discussions about the brilliance of Bryan Cranston, which at this point practically goes without saying, and Aaron Paul did get a deserved Emmy nomination last year, but damn if Anna Gunn isn't kicking ass and taking names so far this season. "I.F.T." was a great showcase for her, between her panic and frustration at the cops' refusal to kick Walt out, then her resentment at how Walt has bended Walter Jr. to his side, then her nervous anticipation as she prepares to seduce Beneke as payback to Walt, then the matter-of-fact-ness of her three-word(**) destruction of Walt's hopes and dreams for their marriage. Walt has an amazing capacity for self-denial, but even he can't ignore anymore what his drug career has done to his family. (Then again, knowing Walt, he'll just put all the blame on Skyler and/or Beneke.)

(**) As we discussed last year when Walt hurled an F-bomb at Gretchen (in the aforementioned "Peekaboo"), that word is one of the few that you can't use even on basic cable, due to agreements the channels have with their advertisers and/or cable operators, and so in both cases the sound drops out for a moment during the word. But I admire AMC's willingness to let Gilligan use it at all, since there are certain scenes - particularly ones like these two, where one character is trying to be incredibly hurtful to another - where no other word would be as effective. And the unbleeped versions will live on forever on DVD.

And how about Dean Norris? It's been a while since we dealt with Hank's emotional problems, post-Tuco and then post-Tortuga, and it felt right that the issue should be revisited in an episode that brought Danny Trejo back to portray Tortuga's very bloody end (and to again establish the Cousins' lethal bonafides). This is a character type you don't often see in American crime fiction: a cop who's good at his job and tough enough to take on and beat two much bigger men by himself, but who can't cope when things rise to a more lethal level. It's unclear exactly what Hank is hoping to achieve here - prove his manhood? get too injured or in too much trouble to go back to El Paso? - but as played by Norris, it was scary to watch, and a problem that's not going away for Hank so long as he remains as in-denial as Walt.

Some other thoughts on "I.F.T.":

• This one was directed by Michelle MacLaren who (along with director of photography Michael Slovis) was responsible for season two's gorgeous desert misadventure "4 Days Out," and it felt right that she should be behind the camera for Jesse's return to both the RV and the desert. I also loved the shot of Gus's chicken facility with its hundreds upon thousands of birds all clustered in on top of each other.

• Mike tells Gus (or one of Gus's people) on the phone, "I'm assuming Saul Goodman doesn't need to know." So does that mean he's an independent operator? Or someone whose loyalty is more to Gus than to Saul (and, by extension, Walt)? Either way, that can't be good.

• What do you suppose the Cousins did to the old woman with the scooter and the wheelchair-accessible minivan? Or am I better off not asking?

• Going forward (assuming he appears in more episodes), do I refer to the character as Tio or Don Salamanca? I'm kind of partial to Tio, even if that's just Spanish for "Uncle."

• When Walt started peeing in the kitchen sink out of spite, I immediately thought of George Costanza's, "It's all pipes!" defense from the episode where he got caught going in the health club shower.

• This is two weeks in a row with a classic rock standard on the soundtrack, this time with ZZ Top's "Tush" playing as Hank has his biker bar showdown.

What did everybody else think?

How to Make It in America, "Never Say Die": Monsta burn

2010-04-04T22:30:00.003-04:00

A quick review of the "How to Make It in America" season finale coming up just as soon as I drive to Florida to see Radiohead...

My fear about "How to Make It," given all the "Entourage" producers involved, was that the show would fall into the "Entourage" trap of letting everything work out perfectly for everyone all the time, with no consequences: a bohemian New York fantasy camp to match the tension-free, comedy-free, interest-free version Vince and his boys are living out in LA. But while things ultimately turned out okay for Ben and Cam, it wasn't without a lot of hard work on their parts, nor without some personal cost, as we saw on Cam's face as he played arsonist to get the t-shirts back.

And we also saw with Rachel's story - where she ditched the rich boyfriend, the promising career and even a reunion with Ben in favor of traveling for as long as her money lasts and figuring her life out - that the show doesn't prize material success above all else.

As Kaplan tells the guys, in a line I'm assuming/hoping the show takes to heart, "The secret is not to get rich quick. The secret is to get rich slow... and you appreciate it."

Ultimately, "How to Make It" isn't a show I love, but it's likable and charming enough - and has elements I feel stronger about (the opening credits, the music in general and the sense of NYC atmosphere) - that I would not at all be displeased should HBO bring it back for another season. It's not a show worth subscribing for, but it's a pleasant bonus to the likes of "The Pacific" and (next week) "Treme."

What did everybody else think?

The Pacific, "Part Four": Bad-ass bed-wetter

2010-04-04T22:00:00.011-04:00

A review of "The Pacific" chapter four coming up just as soon as I have the pause that refreshes...

"This is as bad as my war gets." -Cpl. Ruddiger

The 1st Marine Division is back in action as Part Four begins, but Basilone is back home selling war bonds (and appears only as a character in a comic book being read by Pvt. Loudmouth) and Sledge is still in basic training. So the man of this gripping, nightmarish hour is Bob Leckie, in a tour de force performance by James Badge Dale, who shows you just how bad another man's war can get.

The Battle of Cape Gloucester isn't a particularly famous one, but Part Four worked as a reminder that all battles have their terrifying moments - and that the time in between action can be just as oppressive and soul-wearying, particularly in environments like New Britain and Pavuvu during the rainy season.

So we got that mesmerizing battle scene where the Japanese charge in the torrential rain like a horde of Orcs from "Lord of the Rings," while Leckie has to stand in the intelligence tent and wait to see if he has to blow it (and, possibly, himself) up to keep it from falling into enemy hands. But we also got a lot of scenes of the Marines slowly going crazy amid the rain and the mud and the waiting. Lebec eats his gun (stripping off his clothes first to keep the blood off his uniform). Gibson strangles a Japanese soldier to death and winds up being sent to a mental hospital - where Leckie himself joins him after everyone assumes his bed-wetting is a sign of him losing his marbles.

Leckie does, in fact, suffer from enuresis, but the mental hospital isn't an inappropriate place for him to be. As Dale shows throughout the episode, Leckie is struggling to keep it together out in the jungle. He can hold up enough to take out a Japanese squad by himself when he gets separated from his patrol, but the endless rain and fighting and waiting are getting to him, even worse than the other Marines. For Leckie to wind up in the loony bin, even briefly, is a shocking thing to see in a World War II story(*), but it really did happen to Leckie, and could just as easily have happened to anyone else in his company.

(*) As Bruce McKenna points out, "Band" did show Buck Compton cracking, "but you don't see Buck in the mental hospital after."

Ultimately, Leckie just needs a respite from the front, where Gibson appears irreparably broken, but watching this episode, it's not hard to understand how this could have happened to either of them, or so many other men like them.

Some other thoughts:

• This one was both directed and co-written (with Robert Schenkkan) by "Band of Brothers" veteran Graham Yost (who's now doing FX's "Justified"). Yost also served as one of the showrunners of "The Pacific." Matt Craven, who plays Dr. Grant, is a staple of Yost's work, having appeared in the Yost-directed episode of "From the Earth to the Moon" (my favorite one, about the engineers who built the lunar lander), a couple of episodes of Yost's "Boomtown" and was a regular on his short-lived Jeff Goldblum cop show "Raines." When I interviewed Yost for this feature about Elmore Leonard and "Justified," we eventually got to talking about "The Pacific." Yost told me a story about how Craven was on vacation in Europe and happened to cross paths with Tom Hanks, who was there to either film or promote "Angels and Demons." Hanks saw him, smiled, and said (in that high-pitched voice Hanks uses when he's about to be sarcastic), "Matt? Matt Craven?" Then Hanks looked around, puzzled, and asked, "Where's Graham?"

• That's Nate Corddry as Loudmouth. I wouldn't put his appearance on par with Jimmy Fallon's "Band" cameo (which many people felt was too distracting), in part because Corddry isn't as famous, in part because he already has a track record in drama (he was one of the better parts of "Studio 60"), but I have to admit it was briefly jarring to see him, particularly since he was a new addition to the company. (Had they cast Corddry as, say, Runner, I'd have more easily gone with it.) The real Loudmouth, by the way, was described by Leckie as being quite a bit heavier than Corddry, and was apparently killed by a falling boulder when the Marines tried to dynamite a path through the jungle.

• Soldiers wanting to bring home a Luger as a souvenir was a running story in "Band" (and got at least one paratrooper killed), and here we see Leckie and Lt. Larkin battling for ownership of the Luger-looking Japanese pistol. (I don't know much about weapons, but a cursory Google search suggests it was a Nambu.) And that in turn leads to the great scene where Ruddiger is collecting Leckie's potentially suicide-aiding possessions and Leckie points the gun at him. Who, in that moment, wouldn't take him as a crazy person?

Keeping in mind once again that we're going to avoid discussing any details about the main characters past the events depicted in this particular episode (for the benefit of people who know that we won the war but not what happened to Leckie, Sledge or Basilone), what did everybody else think?

30 for 30, "Guru of Go": For Hank

2010-04-02T16:06:00.001-04:00

I've been trying to write about each "30 for 30" film after they air, but with the scheduling so irregular lately, I wanted to instead remind you that the next film, "Guru of Go," airs tomorrow at 4 p.m. - and not on ESPN itself, but on ABC. (The plan is to try to give the movie bigger exposure on a day when college basketball fans are pumping themselves up for the two Final Four games on CBS.) A few thoughts on it coming up after the jump...

"Guru of Go" tells the story of coach Paul Westhead, who won an NBA title coaching the Lakers in Magic Johnson's rookie season, only to be forced out a few years later in a power struggle with Magic. The bulk of the film covers Westhead's time as coach at Loyola Marymount University, where he won a lot of games, scored a lot of points and made the college game an awful lot of fun with a breakneck run-and-gun style he called "The System," which turned out to be perfectly-suited for his top two recruits, high-volume shooter Bo Kimble, and powerful leaper Hank Gathers, who became the second player to ever lead the NCAA in both scoring and rebounding for a season. Gathers tragically died on the court from a heart condition, and the moment pictured above with Kimble will give goosebumps to anyone who remembers it (or who will see it for the first time in this film).

Where the last "30 for 30" film, "Winning Time" (as well as the next one, Steve James' "No Crossover: The Trial of Allen Iverson," which will air while I'm on vacation, on April 13 at 8 p.m. on ESPN) was a case of a great filmmaker transcending his story, "Guru of Go" is more of a great story, told well-enough. Director Bill Couturie tries to dress things up in different ways (because Westhead's a Shakespeare nut, each segment gets its own Bard quote to introduce it), but most of the film works because of the power of what these three men did together, and what happened to Hank.

Still, it's another very engaging film in a series of them, and I can't recommend "No Crossover" highly enough when it airs on the 13th.

Fringe, "Peter": That '80s show

2010-04-01T22:00:00.004-04:00

"Fringe" is back after a very long absence, and I have a quick review coming up just as soon as I quote Oppenheimer at you...

Though J.J. Abrams doesn't have anything to do with "Lost" anymore, "Peter" felt oddly similar in structure to last week's Richard-centric "Lost": an hour taking place almost entirely in the past, filling in the emotions behind a story where we already knew or suspected most of the details, and a powerhouse acting showcase.

John Noble was wonderful at playing the younger Walter, and at showing how what began as a noble mission (to ensure that "Walternate" and Alt-Elizabeth didn't also lose their son) turned into something else once his wife got a look at a living, breathing Peter. Walter's trip to the other side also gave us an explanation for Nina's fancy bionic arm (because the real one got knocked out of phase with our universe when she and Walter wrestled at the stargate), and showed us a younger, much less certain version of The Observer. And the '80s setting also gave the show's graphics team the chance to put together an awesome version of what the "Fringe" opening credits might look like if it were airing in 1985.

We end the episode more or less where we began, with Olivia still uncertain about what to tell Peter. But given what an important part of the show's mythology Peter's abduction is, we needed an hour to experience it, and to see it as Walter did, and also to watch John Noble be at his best.

What did everybody else think?

Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains, "I'm Not a Good Villain": Jerri in the middle

2010-04-01T21:36:00.001-04:00

Quick spoilers for tonight's "Survivor" coming up just as soon as I enjoy a healthy wrap...

I'm taking the next two weeks off for some family time, and unless things change dramatically between now and then, I'm not sure I'll be returning to this "Survivor" season.

With Boston Rob's exit - at the hands of Coach being wishy-washy and casting a throwaway vote for Courtney that he knew would doom Rob(*) - I fear things are now set up for Russell and Parvati to start running things, not only with the Villains tribe, but with whatever happens post-merge. And though they're both good players - Parvati more than Russell, since he doesn't seem to grasp the "Don't be a jerk to everyone" part of the social game - I find them both to be thoroughly unpleasant people to watch, and I really don't want to see weeks on end of Russell boasting of his awesomeness (using the ouster of Rob as supporting evidence) and Parvati flashing that smug Cheshire grin.

(*) Loved the aftermath of the vote: Rob accepts Jerri's hug, because he gets that it's a game and Jerri did what she thought was best for her, but then snubs Coach (who's a neurotic hypocrite) and says, "You're a little man."

I recognize that "Survivor" is an unpredictable game, and lots of things could change between now and when I'm back from my time off, but if they're in charge, I'm out. Life's too short. I know Russell has his fans, so enjoy him if he goes far again.

What did everybody else think?

Bones, "The Bones on the Blue Line": Author! Author?

2010-04-01T21:00:00.004-04:00

A quick review of tonight's "Bones" coming up just as soon as I turn to page 187...

Fienberg and I joked on yesterday's podcast that this episode was made 100% for me, and while I doubt Hart Hanson even knows who I am (what with me not regularly watching or writing about his show), "The Bones on the Blue Line" did manage to neatly hit two of my buttons.

First, it gave a nice showcase to John Francis Daley, who's as good an expressive an actor as a grown-up as he was as l'il Sam Weir on "Freaks and Geeks." (I also don't know if it was intentional, but I appreciated the Apatovian symmetry of Daley's character getting engaged to Carla Gallo's, what with her being the female lead on "Undeclared.")

Second, it finally addressed a question that's been bugging me since the pilot: how does a woman like Temperance Brennan, who has so little aptitude for or interest in understanding the emotions and motivations of others, become a best-selling crime novelist? Particularly since her books are, as described here, clear roman a clefs based on her work with Booth? (And with a heroine named after Brennan's creator, Kathy Reichs, in a bit of real-world/fictional-world quid pro quo.)

Well, it turns out that Brennan doesn't write the books - or, at least, that she doesn't come up with the parts dealing with emotion, or romance, or whatever it is that's on page 187. It does seem a little sketchy that Angela wouldn't realize just how much she was contributing to the books (I imagine the first drafts would be entirely technical), nor that Brennan wouldn't have realized before now that her success as an author comes as much from the "unimportant parts" as from the science, but it's about the most plausible explanation we're going to get.

What did everybody else think?

A bit more of David Mills

2010-04-01T16:55:00.003-04:00

Still processing the David Mills news. In addition to what I wrote yesterday, there have been a lot of lovely tributes to the man over the last day, including a David Simon-penned obituary, Eric Deggans writing about Mills' journalistic gifts, the Washington Post's pop music plug unearthing some of Mills' best music writing for that paper, and some of Mills' own thoughts on the importance of TV shows having a theme.

And speaking of theme, the new blog logo's theme should be pretty obvious: three characters created or co-created by Mills, and one who was never written better before or after Mills worked on "NYPD Blue."

Cougar Town, "Everything Man": Pursey-cat doll

2010-04-01T14:15:00.001-04:00

Don't have time today for a full-length review of last night's "Cougar Town," but as I missed reviewing last week's altogether, I should say that my opinion here is pretty much in step with Myles McNutt's: even by this show's increasingly weird standards, "Everything Man" felt particularly random, yet the enthusiasm of the cast and creative team manages to carry the day even as we're getting a lot of "at what hour of the night were these written?" jokes about talking Japanese bidets, Travis's girlfriend making out with Dog Travis, or "Molly Ringwald" with rolled R's. And Sheryl Crow's doing fine so far as Grayson's special lady friend, even if she's wisely not being asked to do more than be the foil to Jules and her oddball gang.

What did everybody else think?

Modern Family, "Game Changer": The book of Jobs

2010-04-01T10:13:00.000-04:00

A review of last night's "Modern Family" coming up just as soon as it's go time...

Product integration has become a necessary evil in the TV business. As more and more people gain the ability to skip over the ads that air in between segments of TV shows, the networks have to counter by inserting the ads into the shows. Some shows handle this well by turning it into a self-aware joke ("30 Rock"), and some clumsily and shamlessly throw in the plugs (there was an episode of "Heroes" where Claire got super-excited that HRG had specifically bought her some ugly car). Emily Nussbaum wrote a story last season where she looked at some of the highs and lows of this particular art form, but everyone agrees we're stuck with it.

And as product integration goes, this episode-long plug for the iPad was kind of icky. Yes, Phil has been established as a lover of gadgets, some more useful than others, and if the "Modern Family" writers had tried to - or been allowed to - let some of the other characters question the necessity of the iPad, even as Phil launched a passionate defense, it might have worked better. But devoting the main plot of an episode to Claire desperately trying to get Phil this awesome and super-popular gift, and then climaxing it with the entire cast standing around Phil's new iPad and oooh'ing and aah'ing? Ick. And I say this as someone whose hand is surgically glued to his iPhone.

Beyond that, though, "Game Changer" felt to me like one of the weaker episodes the show's done in a while. As with Phil's love of the iPad, most of the characterization was on-point (Cam's fierce protection of Lily, Manny and Jay's competitiveness, Alex trying to kill Luke), but it felt like there was something missing that I can't quite put my finger on. Like, I could intellectually appreciate why most of the jokes (Jay's disappointment at hearing the tool belt built a gift-wrapping station, or Phil declaring that the 11th birthday party was "when I knew I was funny") should have worked, but something got lost in translation from the page to the final production. I think the only time I laughed out loud was when Manny held out his wrist for the watch.

The characters are so lovingly-rendered that "Modern Family" has now reached the point where I enjoy an episode even if it doesn't make me chuckle much, but this definitely wasn't the follow-up to last week's great "Starry Night" that I was hoping for.

What did everybody else think?