Lost, "Follow the Leader": Paid the cost to be the boss

Spoilers for tonight's "Lost" coming up just as soon as I buy shares in Microsoft...

"I'm starting to think John Locke is going to be trouble." -Richard Alpert
"Why do you think I tried to kill him?" -Ben

Of the many recurring themes of "Lost," the question of what makes a good leader -- and how someone can be the perfect leader in one situation and a complete disaster in another -- has always been one of my favorites. It's fun to watch, and to debate -- I can go on for a few hours about all the ways in which Sayid was the perfect leader for nearly every situation of the first four seasons, not that anyone on the show was ever wise enough to notice -- and so an episode with a title like "Follow the Leader," with so much musing about who deserves to be in charge of different factions, was right up my alley.

Between 1977 and 2007, we have many past, present and future leaders coming into conflict with one another -- some on their way up the leadership track, some on their way back down -- with the one constant being immortal Richard Alpert.

We see in both eras that Richard's role is to be the "advisor," as Ben puts it, to whoever the island has chosen to lead the Others -- a coalition of Eloise and Widmore in 1977, Locke in the present -- and to aid them in carrying out their plans. It seems he has to listen to them, to go along with whatever they're doing, even if he disagrees with it, and even though he's older, wiser and more tightly-connected to the island than any of them. But we also see throughout the episode -- just as we did back when Richard was introduced back in season three, when he helped Locke to undermine Ben's leadership -- that he's not quite as subservient as he appears. He's not happy with Ellie's decision to follow Jack, nor with Locke's insistence on going to see Jacob -- and taking the rest of the Others with him -- and you can see in both eras that he's trying to figure out a way to follow the letter of whatever law keeps him from being the leader while ducking the spirit of it.

Sometime between now and the end of the series, we almost have to get a Richard flashback episode, one that likely goes back to the Black Rock era (as hinted at by the ship in a bottle gag at the top of the episode), if not all the way back to when the statue and the Temple were built. There's too much island mythology to unravel any other way in the limited time we have left, and as Ben notes to Sun, Richard's had this job "for a very, very long time." He's the man who's been witness to so many things that the show has only implied so far, and we have to find out what he knows to understand it all.

And among the first things we have to understand is who exactly Richard reports to: Jacob, or the island? Until this episode, I would have assumed the two entities were more or less the same. But Locke is getting his marching orders -- including instructions on how to orchestrate Richard's end of the compass scene from the season premiere -- from someone or something, and whatever that force is, it's telling him he needs to kill Jacob. Is it possible that Jacob -- and the people like Ben, and Widmore, and possibly Richard, who have claimed to follow him -- don't really have the island's best interest at heart at all? And if so, which side should we be rooting for? Jacob did, after all, ask Locke to help him back in "The Man Behind the Curtain," and in a tone that implied he was a prisoner of the cabin, if not the island itself. As with the Widmore/Ben feud, it's unclear who, if anyone, is the good guy in this particular conflict.

Back in the '70s, we have a variety of power struggles among different factions, just as the Oceanic 815 survivors were constantly bickering over who got to deliver the orders. Radzinsky stages a wartime coup of sorts among the Dharma Intiative, even as Dr. Chang (having meditated on Faraday's warning) is doing his best to get the women and children out alive. Sawyer's reign as an important man among both the Dharma group and the time-travelers comes to an end after he's caught by Radzinsky and Phil, and so he reverts back to his self-preservationist roots, trading a map to the Others in exchange for submarine passage for himself and his special lady Juliet. And Kate, who once would have followed Jack blindly into the gates of Hell, rebels against his attempt to follow through with Faraday's plan to explode Jughead in the Swan, preventing the Incident and all the deaths that followed.

It's that last conflict that's the heart of most of the 1977 scenes. Jack means well, but he's willfully operating with blinders on, as he so often does. He doesn't know exactly what Dan intended to do, nor how it's going to work, but he's so caught up in the idea of preventing the plane crash and all the bad things that happened that he's wiling to go forward with the insane idea of detonating a hydrogen bomb, without even having a quantum physicist's knowledge of how this is all supposed to work.

Kate, conversely, initially seems against Jack's plan for selfish reasons: sure, dozens upon dozens of other people (from the anonymous Socks to people she knew well like Boone and Shannon and Michael) might not have died, but Kate would still be a prisoner, and she'd never get to have all that fun, sexy love triangle time with Jack and Sawyer. As she puts it to Jack, "It was not all misery!"

But the more the episode went along, the more it seemed that Kate was the one thinking clearly. Jack doesn't know what he's doing, and is consumed with a Locke-like mania, predicated on the belief that he has some grand destiny to fulfill, and that faith is all it will take to make that happen. Locke acted that way, and people died -- and I suspect more of them will die in his crusade to take out Jacob -- and the same will very likely happen with Jack being this stubborn.

My best guess at this point, actually, is that Dan was right in the first place: whatever happened, happened, and every action the time-unstuck characters take will only ensure that history goes along the proper course. Maybe if Radzinsky weren't losing his mind about a possible attack by the Hostiles, or if Jack weren't attempting to assault the Swan with a freakin' hydrogen bomb, the Incident never would have happened. We've already seen Charlotte and Miles and their mothers evacuated from the island just as they remember -- with Miles finally coming to understand why his father was such an apparent bastard to him and his mother -- and that only happened because of the time travel. As Eloise told Desmond, the universe has a way of course-correcting, and I'm assuming the season ends with the Incident having taken place, followed by Jack, Sayid, Kate and company hurled back to the present, having accomplished nothing but ensuring the predetermined flow of history.

Now, to get there, a lot is going to have to happen, starting with the Dharma sub making a u-turn to deposit Sawyer, Juliet and Kate back onto Craphole Island.

In the end, the reign of LaFleur ended just as messily as every other leader's tenure on this island. (Maybe that's a part of being a leader of any island faction: with great power comes the inevitable beatdown. Sawyer's face looked an awful lot like Ben's by the end of the episode.) Even as Sawyer lost his Churchill-like wisdom and serenity, Josh Holloway and Elizabeth Mitchell continued to kill it in showing Sawyer and Juliet's deep love and trust of one another, in the Dharma security office, on the dock as they said goodbye (and, in Sawyer's case, "Good riddance") to the island, and on the sub as they pondered a free life in the real world of 1977. But on "Lost," happiness doesn't even last as long as a leader's time in office, and so of course Kate had to be dumped into the sub and shackled next to them. Awk-ward! Great looks on everyone's face, and lots of promise for next week's two-hour finale.

Some other thoughts on "Follow the Leader":

• Though we couldn't hear all of Widmore and Eloise's conversation, the snippets we did hear, and his pat of her belly, implies she's pregnant with Dan in 1977, which answers some of my chronology questions from last week (and means that Jeremy Davies was playing quite a bit younger -- and that the Dan that Desmond met in 1996 was only 18 or 19). I'm assuming that part of the fallout from the Incident will involve Eloise moving to the mainland to have and raise the son she knows she's destined to kill.

• Speaking of which, for the benefit of the people who don't read all of the comments, I want to again commend all the posters last week who suggested the reason for Dan's awful destiny was to put his journal in his mother's hands, so that Eloise would know most of what would happen for the next 30 years. This also explains why she told Penny last week that she no longer knew anything that was coming next. I'll still miss Jeremy Davies, who was incredible in his spotlight episodes this season, but I at least feel better that Dan didn't just die to close a chronal loop.

• While Radzinsky and Phil were slapping around Sawyer, all I could think of was why they didn't drag Sawyer out to see crazy Oldham from "He's Our You." I know Stu thought time was of the essence, but that seemed the easiest and most secure way to get a confession -- unless, of course, everyone was so spooked by what they thought was the failed interrogation of Sayid that they've dismissed the idea of Oldham's truth serum.

• Hurley, terrible liar. Doesn't know when he was supposed to be born, or who the president was, and assumed that the Korean War question was a trick of Chang's. Hilarious scene.

• Locke gets to kill another boar, and to return to Others camp with another corpse on his back.

• Regardless of what Richard is up to, what do you suppose Ben's game is? Is he really already disobeying the orders he got in "Dead Is Dead"? Or is he setting up Richard? Or just amusing himself while following orders? Either way, it's a lot of fun to watch Michael Emerson play a sidelined but still troublesome Ben, and it continues to be great to watch this serene, cocky Terry O'Quinn.

• For that matter, it was amusing as hell to see Richard and Ben so at a loss in the time travel scene. Nice to see the shoe on the other foot now and then.

• And speaking of the compass scene, we still don't know where the compass originated from (Richard gets it in 1954 from Locke, who then gets it from Richard in 2007 to give back to Richard in 1954), and we find out that Locke's instructions to bring back the entire Oceanic Six originated from Locke himself. Now, some of that also came from Ben and Ms. Hawking and Christian Shepard, but mostly it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

• I know nearly every network show has had its budget trimmed some in this rough economy, so I'll give the show a pass for the cheesey-looking CGI on the submarine departure sequence, which managed to look worse than Lapidus landing the Ajira plane on the Alcatraz runway.

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

Scrubs, "My Finale": Sacred Heart, unbroken

Spoilers for the "Scrubs" finale -- be it season or series -- coming up just as soon as I take the reins...

"I'm real sorry there, newbie. But this is not a special day for me. It's just a day." -Dr. Cox

"Endings are never easy. I always build them up so much in my head, they can't possibly live up to my expectations, and I just end up disappointed. I'm not even sure why it matters to me so much ow things end here. I guess it's because that we all want to believe that what we do is very important: that people hang on to our every word, that people care what we think. The truth is, you should consider yourself lucky if you even occasionally get to make someone, anyone, feel a little better. After that, it's all about the people you let into your life." -J.D.

"My Finale" made me happy. And it made me sad. Seems about right for the ending of a show that so often expertly balanced comedy and tragedy.

For that matter, "My Finale" did a nice job of being both a definitive ending for J.D. (and for Kelso) and just another day in the life for Cox, Turk, Carla and all the others are staying behind. Whether or not the show continues with a reconfigured cast, I like endings that acknowledge that the characters' lives continue, even though we won't get to see any of it.

Written and directed, as it should have been, by Bill Lawrence, "My Finale" hit all the necessary points. It gave us all those flashbacks to J.D. in the pilot, to show how far he's come -- and, for that matter, to show how much the characters around him grew and changed with him. (He humanized Cox, and Cox in turn humanized Kelso, more than either man would like to admit.) It featured a bunch of "Scrubs" Greatest Hits, whether it was Cox reciting the final lines of his greatest rant ever, or Turk giving J.D. his biggest and best "EEEEEAGLE!" It gave us a payoff to the debate about whether J.D. put a penny in the door -- and in doing so, brilliantly and permanently changed my impression of the J.D./Janitor rivalry -- and it gave us The Janitor's real name (Glenn Matthews), then immediately pulled the rug out from under the idea by having someone else walk by and call him "Tony." (And in so doing, it gave fans everywhere license to keep calling the guy whatever they want. He could really be Glenn, or Tony, or Jan I. Tor, or Neil Flynn, or Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate. It's all up to you to decide.)

It gave us that sweet J.D./Carla moment where they thought back on how he used to be "Bambi." It gave us one Turk/J.D. hug after another (along with the guys' delight at Carla and Elliot's mock girl-on-girl hug). It gave us a reminder that J.D. and Jordan slept together once upon a time, and it gave us that wonderful line-up of guest stars and minor characters from over the years, including, but not limited to: J.D.'s brother Dan, The Todd, Tasty Coma Wife, crazy Jill, Laverne, Rex, Ted's band, Dr. Wen, Colin Hay (who did appear on camera a few times), Lady, Keith Dudemeister, Dr. Mickhead, both the character Randall Winston (the little person custodian) and the producer Randall Winston (as the hook-handed security guard), the studly gynecologist, Mrs. Tanner (repeating the advice she gave J.D. at the end of "My Old Lady"), Colonel Doctor, Snoop Dogg Attending, and Hooch (now in a straightjacket, because Hooch is crazy!).

It was every bit the trip down memory lane I would have liked, without actually closing down the hospital or killing off anybody else major.

And then the show that always used music so brilliantly did it three more times at the end, first with Peter Gabriel's "The Book of Love" playing over J.D.'s imagined home movies of life after Sacred Heart (and, as with Janitor's name, it was presented in a way that allowed the audience to accept it as what would really happen, or not), followed by the guitar part of Lazlo Bane's "Superman" over J.D. driving out of the parking lot one last time, followed with the closing credits behind-the-scenes reel being accompanied by The Blanks singing their own version of "Superman."

Nice. Very, very nice. And that's not even mentioning maybe the best, most serio-comic moment in the whole hour: Cox delivering a heartfelt speech to Sunny about how much J.D. really means to him, with J.D. sneaking up behind him halfway through. (Like The Janitor, he staged a little play to get what he wanted, and I loved Sunny's horror at realizing the long-term implications of her involvement in it.)

I could go on for a while about the other moments in the finale (including Christa Millers' hilarious delivery of "I want to touch it but I don't!" as Jordan studied the blotch on Ted's skin), but "My Finale" deliberately put me in such a nostalgic mood that what I'd really like to do is let you waste some of your evening the same way I wasted much of this afternoon: by looking back at some classic moments from the eight-season run of this wonderful series. The YouTube links below are by no means complete, both for time and because not everything I wanted was posted (copyright issues prevent the "I Will Follow You Into the Dark" sequence from "My Last Words" from playing with sound, for instance), but here's some quality ones (in addition to the ones already linked to above, and feel free to post more of your own in the comments:

• Ben's funeral

• "Waiting For My Real Life to Begin" from "My Philosophy"

• "Guy Love"

• JD tries to comfort Dr. Cox in "My Lunch"

• Turk dances to "Poison"

• Turk rewrites the "Sanford & Son" theme

• Dr. Cox's back problem

• The best of Ted's band

• Dr. Cox gets payback on JD

• J.D. tells Janitor a riddle

• The complete saga of "Dr. Acula"

And before I go, I want to post an excerpt from a column I wrote at the start of the show's last season on NBC, when it looked like the show was limping to the finish line, instead of this wonderful, unexpected victory lap on ABC:

At a time when the traditional sitcom was beginning its death rattle, "Scrubs" proved that a little imagination and a lot of gusto could create a new kind of comedy that was funny without a laugh track. In the brilliant John C. McGinley's Dr. Cox (a kind of proto-House -- and, frankly, a more interesting dramatic character than House, though Hugh Laurie gets better jokes these days) and Ken Jennings' venomous chief of medicine Dr. Kelso, the show gave us two hilarious updates to the old TV cliche of the crusty but benign boss.

Before "The O.C." and "Grey's Anatomy" made it de riguer to close episodes with montages scored to cool indie rock songs, "Scrubs" was regularly making beautiful use of off-the-beaten-path music. The show also had a knack for doing its own ingenious musical numbers without making a big deal about it, like suicidal hospital lawyer Ted (Sam Lloyd) commenting on episodes with the help of his a cappella "band," or Turk celebrating the chance to remove J.D.'s appendix with a funky song and dance called "I Get To Cut You Open."

Because it debuted in the waning days of NBC's comedy empire (even briefly airing after "Friends," but so irregularly that it didn't help build an audience), overlapped with several other laugh track-free comedies that got bigger ratings and/or more award show love ("Malcolm in the Middle," "Arrested Development"), and comes to the end of its run with so many other shows having cribbed from it, "Scrubs" never got and probably never will get the credit it deserves. But at its best, it was as funny as any other comedy on television, as moving as any drama.

And with that, I bid farewell to "Scrubs" -- at least to this version of it. Whether or not the show comes back next year, regardless of what it's called, who's in it, and whether it's any good at all, we'll always have these eight seasons, and they'll always make me smile.

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

Better Off Ted, 'Get Happy': Cat people vs. spacemen

Tuesday is, at the moment, one of my bigger scheduling traffic jam days, which means it's going to take me a while to work through it all. Still haven't watched "Fringe," or "Cupid," and while I just finished the "Better Off Ted" finale, I don't really have time to write about it. Fortunately, Fienberg did, so go read him and then share your thoughts on the finale wherever. Click here to read the full post

My Boys, "Madder of Degrees": The weather outside's delightful

Quick spoilers for last night's "My Boys" (as well as belated thoughts on last week's episode) coming up just as soon as I deal with my cat allergy...

"My Boys" is a show I watch with my wife, which means sometimes it has to wait until we both have the chance to watch it together (and after we've already watched other shows together that are higher on the blog priority list), so last night we wound up doing a double-feature with both "Madder of Degrees" and last week's "Carpe Burritoem."

I don't necessarily have a lot to say about either one, because when "My Boys" is clicking the way it has been all season, it's just... fun. I have a good time watching it, whether the behavior is on the more realistic side (PJ realizing she and Bobby are moving too fast because of the warm temperature) or sillier (last week, Kenny getting way too serious about his band, or Mike playing emotional crash test dummy). Any episode that gives Jamie Kaler a chance to do his McConnaughey is alright, alright with me, and if they can find a way to work in somebody like Felicia Day on top of that, so much the better.

I'd say "Carpe Burritoem" was probably the better of the two, as it featured that great climax with Bobby warning Mike that "it's a trap!" and Brendo describing his adventures in Tulsa, but both episodes just made me happy.

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

Reaper, "My Brother's Reaper": Attack of the stripper clowns

Spoilers for last night's "Reaper" coming up just as soon as I wish that I had Jessie's girl...

We have three episodes to go in this second, and likely final, season of "Reaper," and it looks like the show is once again picking up its game just as we get close to the end of the year.

"My Brother's Reaper" was a lot of fun, between the Church of Steventology, Morgan making himself (too) at home at the guys' place, the planning and execution of Ted's non-bachelor party (and, for that matter, Ted's evil scheme to get his job back), and the entire mission with Michael Weaver as the wealthy, polar bear-armed d-bag who hoped to repent in the 11th hour, but didn't know how.

Nina's kiss of Sam now makes more sense -- she was checking him out to see if he'd need to be put down like Morgan -- and in the show's cosmology, Morgan's death doesn't mean we're actually rid of him, since we know Hell is so easy to escape from.

Andi-as-boss was a bad idea from the start, and while Missi Peregrym and Bret Harrison still don't have much chemistry together, it was nice to see them at least goofing off and enjoying each other's company at the end of the episode. And Rick Gonzalez and Ray Wise continue to kill every joke they're given.

If I'm correct and this is going to be the end of the show, I'm glad it's at least going out on a strong note, as opposed to the meandering first half of the season. Maybe if there's a miraculous renewal, whoever's running things next season can find a way to start out strong, instead of taking months to get their acts together.

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

'Scrubs' finale review - Sepinwall on TV

In today's column, I review the "Scrubs" series finale -- if, in fact, that's what it is -- and muse a little more on the wisdom of trying to keep the show going without Zach Braff and anyone else who can't/won't come back if the show gets picked up.

The finale's really good. I'll have a spoiler review up tonight as soon as it ends. Click here to read the full post

Rescue Me, "Sheila": Nightmares and dreamscapes

Tonight's "Rescue Me" was the last of this season's episodes that I watched in a quick burst back in January, so I'll offer up some very brief thoughts after the jump, and, time permitting, we can go a little deeper starting next week...

"Sheila" was, I thought, the strongest of these first five. While I think the series overdoes Tommy dream sequences in general, his nightmare of suitcase bombs and 9/11-style dust falling all over the city was effectively disturbing, and felt nicely tied to the renewed focus on the falling towers. Beyond that, the writers continue to rehabilitate characters who had turned into nothing but broad (and often annoying) comic relief, as Garrity is diagnosed with kidney cancer from his time working at Ground Zero, while Sheila gets a look at the 9/11 footage of Jimmy and makes peace with Damian's decision to join the FDNY. (And enlists Mike to be his mentor, a very promising idea for the former probie.)

When I complained about the bar and some of the other comic scenes last week, some readers suggested that they needed the laughs as relief from the more intense scenes. I don't disagree on that broad point. What made "Rescue Me" so good in its early days was its mix of the utterly tragic and the completely silly. My problem came when certain characters became nothing but walking punchlines, so stupid (Garrity, Mike) or crazy (Sheila), that they ceased to resemble actual human beings, and suddenly the joke wasn't funny anymore. Sean getting cancer isn't going to make him stop being funny, but it's also going to make those funny scenes more effective, because I again get to believe that he's a person and not just an excuse for cheap laughs. Great work from Steven Pasquale, who's rarely (if ever) been asked to go to a dark place like he did tonight. And this is two weeks in a row where I didn't really hate Sheila.

And a good chunk of the episode's comedy came from a good source in the return of Michael J. Fox as crazy Dwight. One of the many shames of Fox's Parkinson's diagnosis is that he doesn't have the time, or focus, or both, to perform much anymore, and a character like this is a reminder of what a great comic actor he is. This is a weirder character than he usually plays, and he's absolutely nailing it, with Denis Leary graciously playing straight man to him most of the time.

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

American Idol, Top 4: Rock 'n Roll Night

Song-by-song thoughts on tonight's "American Idol" -- and on the idiotic, but not unentertaining, decision to have the contestants perform duets -- coming right up...

Once again, I have to rail against the bumbling on this show. Once upon a time, they were able to squeeze ten songs into an hour. Ten. Now they freak out if the number goes over seven, in part because four judges is too many, in part because all the judges talk too long, in part because there's too much window-dressing (I like Slash, but he's unnecessary), but mainly because the show has just become so fat and lazy and arrogant that they couldn't find a way to make it work. So rather than letting each contestant sing two solo songs, we got one solo apiece, followed by two duets.

And the duets were pretty good, actually. On "Renegade," Danny and Kris harmonized in a way that "Idol" contestants rarely manage to do with each other, and Adam and Allison just tore up the stage on "Slow Ride," but it had nothing to do with anything. It's not fair to judge anyone that way after it's been an individual competition all along, and the show seemed to acknowledge this by not running phone numbers under the performances or showing them as part of the end-of-show clip package. (They had the judges critique them because the last time they had the judges not critique a performance, Paula traveled through time, saw the future, and everybody got mad.) Even Simon admitted it was stupid, throwing up his hands after Kris and Danny's performance and suggesting half-heartedly that Danny "won" the duet.

And despite all that, the show still ran past its alloted time-slot.

Bumblers. It's an embarrassment. This stuff would have been cool as part of the results show, or in the finale, but it had no business being part of the episode where people are voting. Period.

Now, onto the actual solos, performer-by-performer:

Adam Lambert, "Whole Lotta Love": First off, Led Zeppelin is legendary for either refusing to license out their music or charging such a high quote that nobody (even their pal Cameron Crowe) can afford much of it. So either "Idol" isn't nearly as cheap with its music licensing budget as we all assume, or else the guys from Zeppelin really, really like Adam Lambert and dropped their quote for him.

I was, frankly, so gobsmacked by his ability to sing the song that it took me nearly half the performance to notice much about it. There wasn't a lot of surprise in it -- this wasn't Adam turning Johnny Cash into a sitar dirge, or going stripped-down for Smokey Robinson -- and I frankly prefer an Adam who restrains his tendency to wail a little. But I can't deny that in terms of charisma, vocal chops and ability to work the stage and the band, he's leaps and bounds among the competition every week, and particularly on this week. No contest. I preferred his "Tracks of My Tears" and a few other performances he's done, but this is gonna vault him into the finals. He barely needs to show up next week.

Allison Iraheta, "Crybaby": Shut up, Randy. Shut up, Kara. Shut up, all judges, in fact. Yes, there's a certain monotonous quality to this cut from the Janis Joplin catalog, but I though it was a perfect choice for Allison: quiet passion on the verses and powerful but controlled outer-range belting on the chorus. To be perfectly honest, I enjoyed listening to this more than I did Adam's "Whole Lotta Love," as my head starts to hurt a little when he stays in his upper register that long. Whether best of the night or second best, she was far better-suited to the theme than either of the guys who followed her, and I really hope she sticks around.

Kris Allen, "Come Together": I don't think the theme was necessarily a bad fit for Kris, since there are plenty of songs in the rock genre that'd be perfect for him. But the song was a bad choice (not that "Revolution" would have been better). "Come Together" is a weird, ugly song that requires a weird, (metaphorically) ugly singer. Carly Smithson fit the bill last year. Kris doesn't. He's too clean-cut to be singing about "walrus gumboots" and "toe-jam football," and he seems like he's trying too hard. The vocal itself is fine, and this is as good as he's sounded on the guitar (I think; with the "Idol" sound mix, you can never really tell), but the end result was awkward.

Danny Gokey, "Dream On": Ow. Ow. Ow. OW! Pardon me, but my ears are still ringing from those last few, agonizing screeches. This is the first time Danny has outright sounded bad on the show. And it's not that he can't sing rock at all -- he was just fine on "Renegade" (and, as Simon noted, better than Kris) -- but he has neither the range nor the attitude to take on Steven Tyler and do anything but look and sound foolish. Bad, bad choice.

Best of the night: Vocally, I might give a slight edge to Allison, but on the whole package, it's Adam. It's always been Adam. It's gonna be Adam until the end, and then we'll see what happens once people have the ability to vote against him in a 1-on-1 scenario.

In danger: Everybody else, really. Between Adam's bottom two scare last week and the way this theme fit him like a glove, he's in absolutely zero danger this week. Allison has bottom-surfed her way this far, and the judges damned her with faint praise -- but then, they did the same with Kris, and outright panned Danny.

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

Scrubs, "My Chief Concern": A surgeon and a doc, above it all

Spoilers for the penultimate episode of "Scrubs" coming up just as soon as I stop for blueberries...

"I want you to stop changing your lives, okay? We've been conditioned to think that change is good and exciting, but what if it's not? What if it's actually very bad and very dangerous?" -Janitor

"My Chief Concern," which was bumped from its regularly-scheduled timeslot last week in classic "Scrubs" fashion, almost plays like an alternate, preliminary version of the series finale. It's written by Bill Lawrence's longtime lieutenants Neil Goldman and Garrett Donovan and directed by Zach Braff himself, and it focuses primarily on saying goodbye to the series' most important relationship: the undying bromance between J.D. and Turk. There's some more J.D./Turk farewell stuff in tomorrow's actual series finale, but considering how key this duo was to so much of the show's classic comedy (including the musical number that inspired this post's title), it felt right that they'd get an additional spotlight before the end.

When "My Cuz" aired a couple of weeks ago, we all wondered what the big deal was about a 37-minute commute, and "My Chief Concern" does a better job explaining why J.D. might feel compelled to take a job closer to his new apartment -- and why it would be a big deal in his friendship with Turk. They're not unattached 20somethings anymore. They have families and responsibility -- Turk especially, with a wife, one kid here and one on the way, and now the huge job of Chief of Surgery -- and if they're not working in the same place, the amount of time they'll see each other in a given week (or month, or year) plummets. Guys I used to work with, who I hung out with all the time, and who don't live that much further from me, now have to be scheduled in around playdates, bedtimes, family get-togethers, etc., etc., etc. And as Turk points out, it's only a 37-minute drive under optimal circumstances, and even then twice as long round trip for one or the other. It felt real -- not a great tragedy, but simply the way life moves on. The exact kind of change the Janitor fears is what happens to all of us if we're living our lives without our heads in the sand.

And even as J.D. and Turk's story was getting poignant, the rest of the episode brought plenty of marvelous comic moments, whether it was Elliot's disturbing sex fantasy ("but then it takes a left turn and I go on a killing spree"), Janitor playing father figure ("keep that anger growing, like an anger baby"), Kelso's own son becoming a full-fledged man whore, Ted horrifying everyone (including himself) with the mental image of him having sex(*), Turk's multiple ID badge photos, and Jimmy the Overly Touchy Orderly joining the Brain Trust and meeting his soul mate in The Todd.

(*) And, of course, the return of Gooch!, a character whom I feel needs an exclamation point next to her name, ala Jeffster!

Couple that with Elizabeth Banks getting to do something funny for the first time in forever as Kim, our first Denise sighting in a while(**), another fine musical montage choice in "Winter Song" by Sara Bareilles and Ingrid Michaelson, and the set up for Kelso's exit (he'll be traveling the country as a doctor with Locum Tenens), and you have a fine lead-in to the finale, which I liked a lot.

(**) Though I was confused about Cox needing to more or less introduce himself to Denise, as I can think of a few occasions where he led intern rounds and had conversations with her.

Tomorrow's Star-Ledger column will be a preview of the finale, including some more thoughts about whether I think the idea of continuing the show without Braff and others is a good idea, and I should have my finale blog review ready to post as soon as it ends.

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

House, "Under My Skin": A moment like this

Spoilers for last night's "House" coming up just as soon as I get my best friend to oversee this blog entry...

Okay, that's two really strong episodes in a row. I'm just skeptical about the bigger picture.

Hugh Laurie, Robert Sean Leonard, Lisa Edelstein and Anne Dudek were all terrific as House realized he was so far down the rabbit hole that he had no choice but to admit his weakness to his closest friends. The case was interesting; it was nice to see the team solve the problem without House, and the last few episodes have made much better use of Chase as the one guy in the hospital who has no problem saying no to House.

But what, ultimately, are the implications of House's Vicodin detox? The Amber hallucination may have gone away, but the leg pain will be worse than ever, and House is enough of an addictive personality that I can see him going back to the pills (albeit maybe in smaller doses) just as easily as the show abandoned his various cures for the pain in the past within an episode or three.

"House" as a series has a mixed track record about major change. The disbanding of the original team took, though it's taken the writers nearly two seasons to figure out what to do with Chase and Cameron. None of House's major life changes or epiphanies ever stick, however, and David Shore has been on record as saying he doesn't believe House can really change.

And if that's the case, why are we bothering to play around with this? Just to finally put House and Cuddy together romantically for a while? I like the two actors together -- especially in an episode like this where Cuddy isn't acting like a lovestruck middle schooler -- but if I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop, I can't really invest in it.

I know some of you will say -- because you've said it before in the last few weeks -- that Shore can't win: if he doesn't change anything, he's accused of predictability, and if he does, we all assume it's a fake-out. But those accusations and assumptions also come from our knowledge of what the show's done before. If they had spent more time on the ketamine cure, for instance, I'd have more faith in this storyline's long-term viability. But they abandoned the idea as soon as it was expedient, and so I'm skeptical.

Again, I don't want to take anything away from "Under My Skin" itself. I'm just going to be casting a very wary eye as I watch next week's season finale.

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

HIMYM, "Right Place Right Time": Hey glad girls

Spoilers for tonight's "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as a clown predicts the weather...

Stella is not the Mother.

Of that, I feel confident -- as confident as I can about a show that, by design, has had to draw out the premise of its title for four years now with various head fakes and potential loves of Ted's life who turned out to be anything but.

My guess is that, as some people speculated last year, the Mother will turn out to be a friend of Stella's, with whom she went out with on the same St. Patrick's Day night when Ted stole the yellow umbrella(*). Ted and Stella will reconnect, she'll feel bad again about dumping him on their wedding day, and as a peace offering she'll fix him up with the eventual Mother. This is my assumption. I liked Sarah Chalke as Stella at first, but the writers didn't know what to do with her except have her and Ted get into fights about how they shouldn't be together, and the events of "Shelter Island" -- particularly the hypothetical flash-forward to a future where Stella was the mom, and Future Ted was telling the story to two different, blonde, kids -- would seem to make it clear that the show can't and won't try going down that path again.

(*) We saw Ted and Barney out on the town that night in "No Tomorrow," and Stella mentioned having gone out to a bar that night in "Ten Sessions."

But here's the thing: as I said in that "Shelter Island" review, the show has given us too many red herrings, and Ted's romantic life has proven to be one of the least interesting parts of the show, that I've largely lost interest in who the Mother is and when we get to meet her. Unless they have a terrific actress in mind -- someone who pops on the screen, and is funny, and has chemistry with Josh Radnor at least as good as Cobie Smulders or, say, Ashley Williams did -- then I'd rather the show not be going here now. If the casting and conecption of the Mother isn't perfect, I'd rather the show just wait till the end of its very last episode, have Ted bump into a woman at a party, and hear Saget go, "And that, kids, is how I met your mother. Good night."

Or, failing that, I'd like to see the show take the same approach it did in season two, where Ted was with Robin, and happy, and therefore the series was able to spend most of its time on other, funnier, more compelling storylines while Ted and Robin's couplehood was just taken for granted.

Because on a show where I was still invested in that kind of foundational story arc, I'd have been tearing my hair out each time the episode jumped away from Ted with the yellow umbrella to show yet another vignette explaining how he got there. Instead, I found myself enjoying the vignettes so much I kept forgetting the reason they were there.

Heck, I even loved the return of the Intervention gag (from the episode of the same name, also written by Stephen Lloyd), when I disliked it the first time out. I guess it was one of those Letterman things where the sudden return of a joke I had quickly grown sick of somehow made it funny all over again. That, or it was just the surprise of it, and the complete lack of commentary, and the looks of disgust on Ted, Robin and Barney's faces, that made it work.

I was also amused that Marshall went to the trouble of computing Barney's success rate (foreshadowing of his pie chart addiction), because from the minute Barney announced he was about to reach the 200-woman number, I kept asking myself, "Isn't that too low?" My approach was a little different, in that I just divided 200 by the last decade (while he was sexually active before that, it wasn't that often) and came up with under two women a month. This would be a lot for most men, but for a blatant himbo like Barney, and one who prides himself on rarely bedding the same woman twice? Seemed low to me. So I'm glad Marshall did the math on it. (And, as an added bonus, he compared it to Jim Abbott's batting average, making "HIMYM" the second excellent comedy this spring to do a random Jim Abbott joke.)

Funny episode and an outstanding use of Guide By Voices' "Glad Girls." But I'm holding my breath on the Mother thing. Whether it's Stella, Stella's friend, or someone Stella will accidentally introduce Ted to, it looks like the show is finally going for it. And I really hope they get it right -- especially since the look on Barney's face when he ripped up his list and peered over at Robin had me a lot more excited than finding out who was under the blue umbrella.

Go big or go home on this one, I think.

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

In Treatment: Week five in review

Once again, I'm reviewing all five of this week's episodes of "In Treatment" at once, with general thoughts followed by brief takes on each patient. Spoilers coming up just as soon as I look at my watch...

For the first time in the brief history of "In Treatment," the series skips over a week in the lives of Paul and his patients(*), as he returns to work after taking time off to bury and grieve for his father.

(*) In case you didn't know, "In Treatment" itself takes next week off so HBO can debut a documentary series tied to The Alzheimer's Project, with the show coming back on May 17 for the final two weeks of the season. It's unfortunate that HBO couldn't have scheduled the season so that the break fell between weeks 4 & 5 instead of 5 & 6, so we could have experienced the gap right along with Paul's patients. Made too much sense to happen, I guess.

And when Paul comes back, he discovers just how much his patients -- at least, these four patients in crisis, as opposed to more mundane cases like the impotent law student whose session we glimpse at the start of the Oliver episode -- have come to depend on him. For them, he's more than a therapist: he's a surrogate husband, or father, or simply the only thing keeping them alive. He has become the most important figure in each of his patient's lives (maybe Walter less than the others, but he's also better at hiding/denying his true feelings), and when that relationship gets severed, even temporarily, they don't react well.

Paul returns to major developments in every case: Mia is pregnant, April is losing her hair and getting weak from the chemo (though this could at least be predicted), Bess has yet to return home to Oliver, and Walter is in the hospital with "food poisoning." Even the Gina episode comes with a couple of seismic shifts, as Paul tries to reconcile with Kate, and gets a settlement offer from Alex's father.

Mia

"This is me being caring. Is that okay?" -Mia
"You don't have to worry about my feelings." -Paul
"Does anybody?" -Mia

Mia just can't help herself, can she? She has to feel like the most special patient in Paul's practice, and so she's constantly taking advantage of her past history with him, and her firm's present association with him, to get access and information that the other patients don't have. And yet Hope Davis plays her with this tremendous vulnerability and self-awareness that makes it impossible not to like her even when she's being an entitled, intrusive pain. Just look at that lopsided grin she flashes Paul after springing the news of her pregnancy; she is so desperate for his approval, isn't she?

As Mia notes, this seems like kismet: all these years after Paul talked her into aborting the last pregnancy she had (or so she believes), she's come to him with an unexpected, last-chance (and, though it's not discussed here, no doubt high-risk) pregnancy. And even though she claims it's the thing she wanted to make her life complete, she realizes the picture isn't as full as she really, really wants.

For the first time since the premiere episode, Paul is off his game with Mia, so thrown by his father's death that he has a harder time concealing his emotions -- in this case, dismay over her casual attitude about not informing the presumed baby daddy -- in front of her, and even surreptitiously glancing at his inherited wristwatch when her monologue brings him to think about his dad.

And Mia, in turn, drops the remaining pretense about her desire for Paul. She may not want him sexually right now (though with that Irish accent and those baby blues, how could she resist?), but she wants him to be her partner in every other way, enlisting him to help her make every kind of child-rearing decision that would normally fall to the father, instead of just "a father." And he briefly lets her indulge that fantasy, admitting that the two of them as a couple seems like "it could solve all our problems." But all that does -- as Paul was no doubt expecting -- is to lead her to confront her true fears about the pregnancy, and her realization that it was Mia, and only Mia, who decided to get that abortion 20 years ago. And that realization, in turn, helps her make peace, for now, both with that old decision and her desire to see this pregnancy through.

At session's end, she asks Paul to be happy for her, but he can't be happy for anyone or anything right now, unfortunately.

April

"I thought you were going to take care of me." -April

Even more than Mia, April has built Paul up into the be-all, end-all of her existence. She fantasizes about his eyes, has these elaborate imaginary conversations with him about every topic in her day, and, just as Mia expects him to play adoptive father as well as therapist, April assumes he's going to be her physical as well as emotional caretaker during her cancer battle. And the betrayal on her face and in her voice when she realizes Paul has no plans to take her to the next chemo appointment make it clear why he waited so long to offer in the first place. It's not practical, nor fair (to either Paul or to April) to expect that of him, and if that's the only way she's going to go to chemo, that's a huge problem. I don't disagree with his decision last week -- someone needed to get her there, obviously, before she was too ill for it to matter -- but this is exactly what I'm sure he feared when he wasn't dragging her there in week two or three.

Great as the entire cast is, and great as they all are this week, this is Alison Pill's week to shine above all the others. The moment when April, panicked and betrayed by the idea that Paul doesn't want to take her to chemo, tries to get up too quickly and instead doubles over in both physical and emotional agony, ripped me to the core as I watched it. And she was just as brilliant, albeit in subtler fashion, in the episode's quieter moments, like April telling the charming story of how she became friends with Leah ("You can sing or you can hold your penis, but you cannot sing and hold your penis"), even as she doesn't understand, as Paul does, that this is a relationship she can and should be able to rely on in this situation.

Where Paul is guarded when discussing his father with Mia, and a bit irritated as usual at her overstepping the doctor/patient boundaries, he gives the knowledge freely to April. It's because he feels more of a connection with April, but also because he feels like she needs this level of honesty to make her trust him enough to save her life. She doesn't want to talk about the dream she had before her health scare, but in some ways that's the key to the whole session. It isn't just that April is afraid to trust anyone. It's that her life has been so difficult -- and with the possibility of caring for Daniel, she knows it may only get more difficult -- that the cancer may be providing her with an escape hatch. And it's everything Paul can do to keep her from trying to bail on life. In their last session, he was able to do it by going beyond the call of duty and physically taking her to the doctor. Unwilling or emotionally unable to do that this week, Paul instead sees that hard-won victory slipping through his fingers, and I felt just as alarmed when she left the office as I did when she claimed to have spoken with her mother at the end of the third episode.

Oliver

"It's like rats abandoning a sinking ship." -Luke

As I've said before, Oliver doesn't have any real problems. I mean, he has external problems, not least of which is the bully(*) who drives him to run away from school and straight to Paul's office (the only place in the world where he feels safe). But all of his emotional issues are being caused by these external forces, and so I like that these last two episodes have spent more time on Paul getting to know the chief external forces -- first Bess, and now Luke.

(*) Another great moment of Paul failing to hide his emotions: check out the look of pure rage on his face when Oliver is telling him about the dog-doo locker prank. It's all in the set of his jaw, but it's there.

Where Bess -- who understandably, if not appropriately, seems determined to extend her Me Time vacation for a good long while -- seems largely oblivious to her behavior and how it affects Oliver, Luke at least is blessed with enough self-awareness to know how badly he's treating his son, if not the wisdom to figure out how to stop doing it.

The patients on "In Treatment" are all in some way supposed to reflect Paul's own problems. Oliver has stood in for Paul's children, whom he struggles to relate to half as well as someone like Oliver or, last year, Sophie. Luke, meanwhile turns out to be a stand-in for Paul himself: a bad dad who wishes he could be a better one, and the son of a distant and adulterous father who fears he's turned into his old man's exact double. When Paul tells him this doesn't have to be so -- "You don't have to become like him. You're not doomed to live your father's life. You have a choice." -- he nods at himself, as if he knows he needs to learn this lesson as badly as Luke.

This session is far from a cure-all, but the look that Luke and Paul exchange at the end suggests that it accomplished a lot more than last week's comparable Bess session. Luke may be an ass, but he'd rather not be, and if Paul can keep getting through to him, then maybe Oliver has a fighting chance.

Walter

"It's too late for me. We both know that." -Walter

If Walter is this year's Alex, then sooner or later he was going to attempt suicide. Is it a coincidence that he tried this after Paul canceled their last session, or has he let Paul become his only lifeline in the same way that April has?

Though the episode takes place in Walter's swank hospital room, it plays out like a traditional "In Treatment" episode, with the two men even moving over to the armchairs so they can sit opposite each other the way they do in therapy. And, as usual, Walter is combative as hell, emotionally slapping Paul across the face with the knowledge of Alex's death and the lawsuit (which makes Oliver this week's only patient to not know more than he should about Paul's personal life) and trying to bully his way out of having to admit that he wanted "a millionaire's death."

But he does admit it -- "I just wanted it to be over. That's all." -- claiming to be doing it for altruistic reasons, even as Paul points out how cruel it would be to his wife and daughter. And for a moment, Paul seems to be getting through to him, just as he's always almost there with April. But then Walter armors up again, and you can see he's resolved to end it, somehow, just as soon as Paul, and Natalie, and Connie, and the world, are looking the other way.

(I liked how Walter refers to Paul as "a young man" in the same week where April is discussing how old he is, and whether 50+ will always seem very old to her.)

Maybe the most interesting scene of the episode -- even though it doesn't feature the amazing John Mahoney -- is at the end, when Natalie tells Paul that Connie has been in rehab, and Paul realizes that Walter's carrying an even greater burden than he's let on. Because the patients can be, at best, unreliable narrators about their own lives, it's always interesting to meet other people who can cut through the half-truths and self-flattery and give Paul a clearer picture. I had always expected to get something like that in the first episode with Alex's father -- to find out that Alex had either exaggerated, or flat-out invented, half of the outlandish stories he told Paul -- but that never happened. Here, if Walter wouldn't tell Paul this huge detail, what else has he left out of the auto-biography?

Gina

"You already know that love's the only thing that has a chance against death." -Gina

His father's death -- and Gina's non-attendance at the funeral (which suggests she now views herself as Paul's therapist more than his friend) -- would likely already have Paul in a bad mood for this session. But then he makes things worse by mistaking the warmth Kate showed him in the aftermath of his father's death with a desire to get back together, humiliating himself by asking her to give him another shot when she's already moved on.

So he's irritated, and on edge, and still filled with self-loathing for refusing to see his dad sooner -- and for not realizing that he had this whole other life outside of being the bastard who walked out on Paul's mom and had an affair with a patient.

Gina says she doesn't want to hear about Paul's patients, which may be the right thing for her as his therapist, but which is kind of unfortunate for me as a viewer. Because if ever there was a week for Paul to talk about his patients -- to talk about how the obligations between a father and son are not unlike those between a doctor and his patient, how he had to temporarily leave his patients because of his father, and all the havoc that caused -- it's this one.

Gina tries to get him to see that it's possible to have mixed feelings about his dad, but he's too raw to see that at this point, and is almost eager to get out and have that uncomfortable meeting with Mr. Prince.

And speaking of which (and I always welcome a chance to watch Glynn Turman in this role), what should Paul do? Gina's been trying to tell him that he isn't responsible for Alex's death. Forget the legal and/or professional implications for a minute. How badly would this retard Paul's attempt to get past the guilt he feels about it? Or would he be able to write a confession he doesn't believe in, just to get this headache over and done with?

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

While I was off in Peacock land...

So having spent the day learning very little about NBC's plans for next fall, I missed out on a couple of other developments in this land we call TV, including (links courtesy of the indispensable TV Tattle):

• "Mad Men" season three started production today, and AMC says the season will premiere sometime in August. That's a bit later than seasons one and two (both of which started in late July), but not too much.

• Fox ordered another season of "Fringe." Click here to read the full post

NBC's faux fall schedule announcement - Sepinwall on TV

Okay, my story on the NBC infront is now up at NJ.com, including a few quotes from Ben Silverman on the state of things (though I didn't get to use all of the lines from my Twitter feed). Feel free to discuss it more here, or to vent more frustration in the post directly below this. Click here to read the full post

NBC announces (some) pick-ups for fall; 'Southland,' 'Parks and Recreation' and 'Heroes' renewed, 'Chuck' and 'Law & Order' in limbo

NBC's "infront" press release is out, and as many predicted, it contains neither a fall schedule, nor news on several bubble shows, including "Law & Order," "My Name Is Earl" and... "Chuck." Looks like we won't know for another two weeks, when NBC gives it another go during the traditional Upfront Week. Click on the link above for all the details at NJ.com

I'm heading into Manhattan in a bit for the press conference, but I don't expect to get a lot more out of these people. Click here to read the full post

Reader mail: Bubble shows and desert island discs

It's another reader mailbag column today, dealing largely with people worrying about whether one show or another might come back next season.

And speaking of which, NBC's "infront" schedule announcement is this afternoon. As I'm writing this note, I've been hearing conflicting things about "Chuck," from the idea that its fate (along with several other bubble shows) might not be determined for another week or two, to Nikki Finke claiming that "Chuck" (and "Medium," and "Law & Order") has already been picked up (and others pointing out just how vague Nikki's report was).

I doubt I'm going to know anything concrete until the infront, which is running between 1:30 and 3 -- and it is entirely possible that, as Josh Schwartz told the "Chuck" cast and crew over the weekend, a decision might not be made for a few weeks. This seems like one of those occasions that Twitter was made for, so keep uploading my Twitter feed and I'll have any of the bare bones up there, followed by a full column an hour or two later.

One other minor cosmetic note: I finally upgraded to the "new" Blogger template, which provides some added functionality for both me and for you -- most notably, on your end, that the archives go back more than a single page, so if you click on a show tag, you'll get to see more than the most recent 20 posts or so with that tag -- but which hopefully shouldn't change the appearance much, if at all. Let me know if you spot any obvious bugs. (Or, if you want to recommend a gadget or 12, feel free.) Click here to read the full post

Breaking Bad, "4 Days Out": Flight of the RV

Spoilers for tonight's "Breaking Bad" coming up just as soon as I enjoy some Funions...

"Why couldn't I have just gone to Santa Fe? Why?" -Jesse

"All the lies -- I can't even keep them straight in my head anymore." -Walt

"4 Days Out" -- another winner in a season full of them -- is the "Breaking Bad" take on "Flight of the Phoenix" (travelers trapped in desert have to find a way to get their wrecked vehicle working again) by way of the "Pine Barrens" episode of "The Sopranos" (bumbling criminals bicker while stranded in the wilderness). It strands Walt and Jesse in the middle of the desert, the battery of their mobile meth lab drained, and nothing to do but dwell on what they've allowed themselves to become -- and what role, if any, the other man played in that transformation.

Jesse should have just gone to Santa Fe to admire "vagina pictures" with Jane instead of facing death by dehydration with his hated former chemistry teacher/current partner. But then, he should never have let Walt talk him into stepping up his game from being low-level Cap'n Cook. When he was Cap'n Cook, the profits were meager, but so was the risk. There was a way out. Now the stakes are too high, the attention (from the DEA and, eventually, from the cartel) too big, and his partner is too arrogant and reckless. Though they managed to avoid dying in the RV with $1.34 million (after expenses) worth of crystal, this isn't the first time that Jesse's association with Walt has brought him close to death, nor will it be the last.

Walt, meanwhile, is usually too busy cleaning up the latest mess he and/or Jesse has made for self-reflection. But stuck in that RV, fearing imminent death twice over -- even if they can get the battery going, he assumes he has only a short time left to live, based on his (mis)reading of the PET scan -- Walt has this moment of clarity where he realizes all he's done, all the lies he's told, all the people who have been and will be hurt by his actions. But because Walt's ultimately more selfish than he tells himself he is, it turns from a moment of self-realization to one of self-pity, and he's prepared to lie there and wallow and let the chemical engine that is his body slowly and painfully stop working.

But then Jesse is able to rouse Walt from his stupor, and we're reminded that, for all his many faults, he's still a genius chemist(*), and he finds a way to cobble together keys, spare change and sponges into making a battery strong enough to jump-start the RV.

(*) He is not, however, a genius chemistry teacher. He tries to turn the battery-building process into a science lesson for Jesse, who never quite gets it, thinking that "a wire" is the elemental answer Walt's looking for.

And having evaded the first kind of death -- and then discovering, to his amazement (and lack of relief), that the experimental cancer treatment has succeeded beyond anyone's wildest expectations -- Walt's left to wonder, what now? He and Jesse come to an understanding, but it seems predicated on Jesse's assumption that Walt will die soon. For that matter, his entire criminal career was predicated on that same assumption -- that Walt wouldn't survive long enough to ever have to live with the things he was doing.

In the final scene of the episode -- brilliantly played, as always, by Bryan Cranston -- Walt studies his reflection in the bathroom mirror, than in the gleaming paper towel dispenser. He does not like any of what he sees, so much so that he begins systematically pounding on the dispenser until it's so badly dented that all he can see is a warped reflection, completely unrecognizable as the man he was, or the man he's become.

Sam Catlin's script overplayed the foreshadowing of how Walt and Jesse would be stranded -- there's a fine line between introducing Chekhov's gun in the first act and introducing his gun, his bazooka, his machete, and his surface-to-air missile collection -- but once we got past that point, Catlin very wisely placed his trust in his actors, and in director Michelle MacLaren and director of photography Michael Slovis to capture the harsh beauty of the desert and the direness of the situation.

I've commented a lot this season on how beautiful the episodes look, and "4 Days Out" felt like a cut above even that. Image after image -- the glowing orange light of the desert, the cool blues of the chemicals mixing together, the tableaux of the RV resting in the tall grass or Walt and Jesse enjoying the night air after a hard day's work -- looked absolutely gorgeous, and captured the dual-edged nature of what's happening here. The meth itself is destructive, both to its users and to Walt and Jesse's lives for making it, but the actual process of making it is a work of art. The desert could kill them without fuel or adequate supplies, but there are far, far uglier resting places. Even the clinic where Walt gets the good news -- so shiny and clean and modern (and with a fountain overflowing with the kind of water Walt will badly need a few days later -- isn't quite what it seems, in that he really, really doesn't want the treatment to work.

But it has -- enough that he actually has a realistic shot at beating the cancer. Now what the hell does he do?

Some other thoughts on "4 Days Out":

• Saul Goodman is obviously still in the picture, now introducing him to the world of money-laundering, as well as snark: "Congratulations, you just left your family a second-hand Subaru." That scene was also a nice reminder that nothing ever goes quite as planned for Walt and Jesse, and that maybe they should wait before spending that 600 grand apiece.

• Did Jesse have that tattoo on his chest before he met Jane, or are we supposed to assume she gave it to him? And what are the chances she got a look at that incriminating pizza box?

• Speaking of Jane, I thought it was a very nice touch that she was eating Cap'n Crunch cereal in Jesse's kitchen. Of course The Artist Formerly Known As Capn'n Cook would eat Cap'N Crunch.

• Two notable songs on the soundtrack this week: "Good Morning Freedom" by Blue Mink as Walt and Jesse drove out to the desert, then "One By One" by The Black Seeds over the montage of Walt and Jesse cooking like a well-oiled machine.

• Meta humor in action: the oncologist jokes with Skyler, "Is that baby ever going to come out, you think?" Sky's pregnancy is an easy way to chart how much (or how little) time has passed since the start of the series, but because of the hiatus between seasons, it really does feel like she's been pregnant forever, doesn't it?

• That scene also provided a rare moment where we got to see all of Walt's family happy at the same time, even though Walt himself wasn't so much happy as stunned.

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

Dollhouse, "Briar Rose": Fairy tale ending

Spoilers for last night's "Dollhouse" coming up just as soon as I find the house inside my house...

"This is a bad place." -Paul
"Bad people, maybe. Good place." -Stephen Kepler

People ask me sometimes why I'm so paranoid about spoilers, and/or why I scold people so often about the No Spoilers rule. An episode like "Briar Rose" is why.

Through the course of my travels across this series of tubes we call the internet, I inadvertently found out that "Firefly" alum Alan Tudyk had been cast to play the mysterious Alpha, and around the same time, commenters on the blog tried talking about the Tudyk casting whenever someone would ask if another character (usually Ballard) was really Alpha. I shut all that down, but I couldn't un-learn the fact itself, and I spent a good portion of "Briar Rose" saying to myself, "I wish I didn't know that Tudyk is really playing Alpha." As the word suggests, it spoiled me of the pleasure of experiencing the episode in general, and the surprise twist in particular, the way Joss Whedon, writer Jane Espenson and company intended.

Even with that reveal ruined, "Briar Rose" was still one of the stronger "Dollhouse" episodes to date. Tudyk was terrific in both his personas(*), the Ballard/Boyd fight was as viscerally exciting as every previous fight involving Tahmoh Penikett, and the final moments -- both Ballard coming face-to-face with DeWitt, and Alpha casually executing his plan -- have me very eager to see next week's finale.

(*) I really wish, though, that we had gotten to see him switch from one character to the other. I know it's a performance either way, but I always love that moment in movies like "Primal Fear" where Edward Norton will switch back and forth on a dime.

Beyond that, there were some nice smaller flourishes, like how well Enver Gjokaj was able to evoke Reed Diamond when Victor got imprinted with Dominic's personality, or the obvious despair in Mellie when she realized she couldn't fulfill the mission (to make Ballard love her) she'd been programmed for.

I'm glad we only spent enough time with the abused girl to set up the climactic moment. As discussed last week, Echo on a mission just isn't inherently interesting, both because Eliza Dushku's a limited actress (though this played to her strengths more than most) and because they're asking us to invest in a brand-new character (or many characters) each week, without enough time to make that work. I am, however, confused about two things: 1)Who's paying for that mission? Does the Dollhouse do pro bono work? 2)How exactly did Topher get a map of this girl's brain? The previous episode established that you have to go in for a bunch of painful brain scans over a period of months to create a proper imprint template. How/why would they do that with this girl in the foster care system, particularly someone who's been through enough pain already?

Whatever problems "Dollhouse" has had over this season, Joss always gives good finale, so I'm very excited to see next week's episode, especially since I have no idea what'll be happening in it.

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

Party Down, "Brandix Corporate Retreat": Peeping Roman

Quick spoilers for tonight's "Party Down" coming up just as soon as I tell you that I've seen "300" exactly 1/4 times (I gave up 30 minutes in)...

The last few episodes of "Party Down" had been so deliriously funny that I knew a let-down was inevitable sooner or later -- even the best comedies have let-down episodes now and then -- and we finally got it with "Brandix Corporate Retreat." Aside from a few funny throwaway moments like Constance only knowing Rick Fox as an actor, or the revelation of who/what Roman was really peeping on, it was extremely light on laughs and never really built up to a climax the way the previous episodes did.

(Like the subject of Roman's surveillance, the episode wasn't a closer.)

I thought some of the ideas had promise -- Henry's bonding with the guests finally leads to a job offer (albeit one not as promising as he's led to believe), and Henry's increasing investment in the relationship with Casey leads him to do something stupid -- but the execution wasn't there. They didn't even give Rob Corddry anything funny to do, which was odd, given how well they've written for all the previous guest stars.

Hey, it happens. I have an unwatched DVD of the season's final three episodes, and I'm looking forward to it just as much now as I was before seeing this one.

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

Farewell, Undercover Black Man. Hello, David Mills.

Today marks the retirement from blogging of Undercover Black Man, aka Emmy-winning friend of the blog David Mills. As he explained on Monday, he's done 2000 posts in a little over 2 years, and the blogging has taken its toll:

It hasn’t been healthy. Blogging interferes with my sleep pattern. It distorts my food choices. It deprives me of adequate sunlight. (I think I have rickets.) And it has alienated me from people I love and like.

So now he's going back to focusing full-time on his TV writing career. If HBO picks up "Treme," he'll likely be on the writing staff with old friend and sometime collaborator David Simon, and hopefully he'll have another chance to create a show as entertaining as "Kingpin" (and with a longer lifespan).

But before he goes, I want to point you to some of the highlights from his brief but memorable blogging career. He taught us all about the historical fear of attack of the GIANT NEGROES!!, introduced the concept of the Misidentified Black Person of the Week, and pursued other passion projects like uncovering videos of chicks with ukeleles. ("I believe history will show I was ahead of the curve on (this)," he says now.) He also talked politics with David Simon, held a roundtable discussion on the N-word and streamed an awful lot of music at his Vox stash.

UBM, the blogging world is less fun with your departure, but I understand. And, again, I apologize for any way in which I might have inspired you to get rickets. Click here to read the full post

30 Rock, "The Natural Order": Trading places

Spoilers for last night's "30 Rock" coming up just as soon as I send a gibbon to join the Italian Parliament in my place while I make my own soda(*)...

"1959. Boy, it would've been fun to write back then. You could get away with crazy plot twists, because audiences were so much less sophisticated." -Liz

I've been using the phrase "funny forgives a lot" in my reviews of this very uneven "30 Rock" season. But while "The Natural Order" had a number of funny things in it, what elevated the episode above the "collection of amusing gags that never quite come together" level of so much of this season was the straight dramatic scene between Jack and his mom.

Colleen has never been one of my favorite recurring characters. It always feels like the writers believe Elaine Stritch is so innately funny that they don't have to give her much to do to get a laugh, and I don't share that belief. But that moment with Jack, when she shared her own version of the many departures of Jimmy Donaghy, then realized what her son has been carrying with him all these years, was just impeccably played by both Stritch and Alec Baldwin. When Jack and/or Liz get to occasionally show some humanity and vulnerability inside the otherwise cartoonish "30 Rock" world, it makes everything around them that much more interesting. Plus, her delivery of the line about how you can't say no to a Florida man who can drive after dark was perfect.

As for the rest of the episode, I found Liz and Tracy's rivalry hit-or-miss. For every gag that worked (Pete warning Liz not to accept the Race Card), there were one or two that didn't (I'm a fan of slapstick, but Liz's long battle with the water cooler never clicked for me). The idea of a professional Tracy (complete with Cosby sweater and reading glasses) was terrific, but they never really sold Liz forcing herself to be more like Tracy. (After all, didn't she go with him to a strip club in the pilot without being nearly as horrified? Still, I liked Tina Fey's delivery of "Let's go see some naked daughters and moms!")

And Jenna and the gibbon? Well, monkeys are inherently funny, as David Letterman proved in the one shining moment of his Oscar hosting stint. (Go watch that clip, not only for the young and svelte Alec Baldwin, but for how Paul Newman owns everybody with his audition. Seriously. I can wait.) Still, the best part of that entire subplot was a throwaway line, when we heard Kenneth tell a tour group that they were "standing on the very spot where Gracie Allen took Jack Paar's virginity."

Good to see Steve Buscemi back, even briefly (and wearing an unseen costume under his clothes), and to see Pete getting more to do the last few weeks. Not a classic episode, but solid enough, in the end.

What did everybody else think?

(*) Sorry. I couldn't pick just one "as soon as" this week. Click here to read the full post

The Office, "Casual Friday": Playing favorites

Spoilers for last night's "The Office coming up just as soon as I drop out of the seminary...

"Maybe you shouldn't fake fire people anymore." -Pam

The Michael Scott Paper Company arc was so glorious, so clearly one of the best things "The Office" has ever done, that there's been some very understandable concern that bringing things back to the status quo would suck a lot of life out of the series. Instead, "Casual Friday" showed just how much things have changed -- not just since the formation of the MSPC, but since the beginning of the series.

The very first episode of American "Office" was a straight translation of the pilot for the British "Office," and it didn't work -- at all. Where Ricky Gervais was able to play the fake firing of Dawn with the right amount of cheekiness, Steve Carell seemed oddly menacing and cruel in the comparable scene with Pam. Greg Daniels and company wisely never attempted to just copy another British script, and Michael's sense of humor quickly diverged from David Brent's. But now, five seasons in, the writers have such a firm handle on Michael, and the relationship between Michael and Pam has evolved so much, that they could do another version of that scene and make it funny, and poignant, and generally as awesome as some of the better moments from the MSPC era. You can see that Michael means no harm, and you can see that Pam understands his mindset enough to let it wash off her back once she recognizes what he's doing. A great scene for Carell and Jenna Fischer, who have turned into an outstanding duo this season.

Beyond that, the transition of the MSPC staff back to the D-M Scranton branch appropriately didn't go smoothly. Michael, Pam and Ryan acted like soldiers who fought a war together and now can't relate to the civilians they left behind, the remaining D-M sales staff predictably rebelled against the idea of Pam and Ryan keeping all the appropriated clients(*), and Jim tried to stay out of it all by spending a dream-like day with Creed.

(*) Other than Pam's promotion, the best post-MSPC element of the show looks like the end of Dwight's hero worship of Michael. I think the two of them work much better as adversaries than as partners in buffoonery.

And if there was a downside to the MSPC storyline, it was the marginalization of the D-M supporting characters. After sitting on the sidelines for the last few episodes, everybody got a moment to shine, whether it was Meredith obliviously (and repeatedly) flashing the office, Phyllis turning sweetly vicious to Pam ("Close your mouth, sweetie. You look like a trout."), Toby taking charge to shut down Casual Friday (and Meredith being turned on by his assertiveness) or, hysterically, the teaser scene with Kevin's homemade chili. (What made that so brilliant was that they kept playing the audio of Kevin excitedly describing the chili even as we saw him in the present desperately trying to get it back in the pot before anyone else came in to notice.) These actors are all too funny -- and, when needed, good actors (like Phyllis getting to Michael with her rant about how they're supposed to be a family) -- to be marginalized for too long.

Some other thoughts:

• Dwight brought a "pony sandwich" to work? Ugh.

• Michael knows "The Wire" but not "The Shield." Interesting. Also, remember that he's "not to be truffled with."

• I liked seeing a Ryan who's now 100% loyal to Michael, but I wonder if that's a one-and-done thing now that he's been demoted again.

• Dwight doesn't know Stanley's last name, but he does know where to find Ryan's mug when he needs to mix up some more of his "invisible ink."

• Meredith: "I don't know. I saw a crowd; I thought there might be a dog fight or something." She is so hilariously creepy.

• Looks like Erin's around for a while, at least. Always good to have someone who isn't quite used to these people yet.

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