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

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

Several reasons to applaud this move:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Neither did a lot of the Vince/Luke interaction. When "Friday Night Lights" is at its best, it transcends the usual cliches of high school movies and TV shows, but here both their fighting and their detente felt exactly like the sort of thing I've seen a million times before, and not just in Riggins and Smash's arguments in the first two seasons. I know it's hard to introduce two new characters and so quickly have to put them at odds with each other and have it feel real and not trite, but "Friday Night Lights" has proven itself up to that task in the past. Just not here. I appreciate that both Luke (still hanging out with JD and his punk friends, and quick to judge Vince) and Vince (more in his interactions with Jess and Landry than in this story) were allowed to show ugly sides this week, but I'd rather the tension between the two of them be more natural.

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

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

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

Some other thoughts:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

'The Prisoner' review - Sepinwall on TV

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

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

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

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

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

You can read the full review here.

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

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

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

Best of the best of the best?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sons of Anarchy, "Service": Meet your unmaker

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

"The outlaw had mercy." -Opie

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And it's great.

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

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

Some other thoughts:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

You want some mystery with your logo?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• "Mad Men" - Pete, Betty, Don, Joan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

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

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

Lie to Me, "Black Friday": Buyers remorse

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

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

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

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

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

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

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

House, "Teamwork": How to drink supplied worms

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

Wow, that one angered me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

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

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

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

SNL: A new Slate?

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

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

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

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

What do you think? Fair or foul? And has anyone been enjoying the show this season more than I have? Click here to read the full post

White Collar, "Flip of the Coin": A hip, modern antiquities thief

Quick thoughts on last night's "White Collar" coming up just as soon as I have a round of drinks and Parcheesi...

I didn't write about last week's episode, and I don't think "White Collar" is a show that, as presently constituted, is going to get regular blog treatment from me. Like "Burn Notice" in its first season, it feels too slight. I enjoy watching Tim DeKay and Matthew Bomer work together - and in this episode I liked seeing Moz get pulled into the case and come face-to-face with Agent Burke - but the stories seem barely there, and they aren't doing much with the guest stars so far. (How do you get Garrett Dillahunt and only use him for two scenes?)

But it's amiable enough, and maybe in time it'll make the same creative leap that "Burn Notice" did between seasons one and two. In the meantime, I'll watch, but unless there's something I specifically want to write about, I won't be writing.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

The Office, "Murder": The game of distraction

Thoughts on tonight's "The Office" coming up just as soon as the Yakuza visits the Lackawanna Trolley Museum...

We've seen variations on this basic story outline - Michael does something that Jim thinks is stupid, but which turns out to represent the height of Michael's peculiar managerial genius - before, particularly since the co-managers idea was set up earlier this year. But it was executed fairly well, and John Krasinski again got to nail a great dramatic moment, as Jim reacted to the terrifying phone call from David Wallace, then composed himself for the good of the staff.

And what I'm really curious about is how the show handles the fiscal crisis at Dunder-Mifflin. That's also in many ways a variation on something they've done before - the company has been through multiple financial crises since the series began, most notably with the branch closing/merger in the middle of season three - and while it would be silly for this down-to-earth show to ignore what's going on in our economy, I hope the writers have something unique in mind for how this new problem is going to play out.

One thing that gives me hope about that is how the Andy and Erin story is going so far. In many ways it's like a funhouse mirror version of the PB&J romance: goofy salesman pining after cute receptionist, only both parties are far weirder and more oblivious than the original models. The combination of these two characters, and of Ed Helms and Ellie Kemper, allows the writers to push a similar scenario in a more overtly comic direction, while still getting some pathos out of it. It's goofy that the two of them can't figure out whether they're asking each other out as characters in the game or as themselves, but at the same time I do feel bad for both of them about the miscommunication.

And in the end, the murder game provided an opportunity for some silly fun for both the characters and the actors. You could tell how much Helms, Steve Carell, Rainn Wilson and even Jenna Fischer were enjoying that Mexican stand-off at the end, and how much the three guys got a kick out of being kids again to do those exaggerated death scenes. Moments like that are infectious, and are part of why I love "The Office."

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

30 Rock, "The Problem Solvers": She's the one

Quick spoilers for tonight's "30 Rock" coming up just as soon as I say "Wade Bogg's Carpet World" five times fast(*)...

(*) You can't do it, can you?

Okay, that's two episodes in a row now that, if not entirely satisfying (like the gourmet meal "30 Rock" can be at its best), at least made me laugh a whole bunch (like a really good pizza).

We seem to have moved away from the abrasive "real America" material for the time being, which is a huge step in the right direction. Ditto the new story idea of having Jack and Liz team up to make a "Dealbreakers" talk show. If the final sequence was a little obvious in how it applied the hoariest of romantic comedy cliches to Jack and Liz's friendship, at least it kept it clear that this is a friendship, and Tina Fey is smart enough to keep it that way.

The Tracy/Jenna team often seems too far out of the realm of reality for me to enjoy them - each character tends to work best when playing off of the more grounded Liz or Jack - yet this is two episodes in a row where I haven't cringed at their combined subplot. The running gag with the t-shirt confusion was a highlight, but the two characters were shooting so many jokes out there ("black stripper with blue eyes," Jenna referring to Kenneth as an "underhuman") that enough landed to make it work. And I don't know where Jack "Danny" Baker fits into the show long-term, but Cheyenne Jackson fit in well his first time out. (Or maybe I'm just a sucker for Canadian pronunciation humor.)

Plus, any episode that so expertly parodies the hideous monstrosity that is ESPN's "Around the Horn" (the obvious inspiration for "Sports Shouting") deserves applause.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post