Battlestar Galactica: You hit like a girl!

Spoilers for "Battlestar Galactica" just as soon as I have some of what Adama and Roslin were smoking...

The Gradually Expanding Flashback is one of my least favorite narrative devices. Everybody uses it, and they rarely use it well, either giving away the big secret long before they show it or ruining whatever interest I had in the secret by forcing me to watch the same fractured scenes over and over and over again. And as "Unfinished Business" was at the halfway mark, I was getting frustrated. Obviously, Apollo and Starbuck had sex on New Caprica, obviously one of them immediately ran back to his/her official partner, obviously there was a lot of bitterness. Skip to the end already, I thought.

Then we got to the end, and even though things played out almost exactly as I had figured, Katee Sackhoff and, especially, Jamie Bamber sold me on the pain of it. Getting to the climax didn't make me see the earlier flashbacks in a new light, but the performances sucked me in, anyway.

I've always been intrigued by how Moore and company have handled the Unresolved Sexual Tension between these two, keeping it deep in the background and acting like it's something they may or may not get around to resolving one of these days. I don't know that they're soulmates, but there's some chemistry between the actors and some very twisted history between the characters, so I could see that clinch at the end leading to some kind of dysfunctional relationship. If nothing else, Anders and Dualla are out for good, it seems.

(Also in the "we'll get to it when we get to it" category: Adama and Roslin. Watching them get baked on New Caprica was just lovely. It's so rare to see Adama enjoy himself.)

This was definitely the strongest episode in several weeks, maybe back to "Collaborators," but it had a couple of problems. First, Adama's speech didn't work at all, nor do I think that the speech would overpower the crew's image of their unstoppable leader getting whupped by Chief Tyrol. Everybody calls him "The old man," but he's always presented himself to them as the most badass old man ever, and that first punch aside he got absolutely torn apart by the deck chief.

Also in the category of ruining a carefully cultivated illusion: Katee Sackhoff can't throw a decent punch. She and the producers normally do a great job at presenting Starbuck as the ultimate warrior, such that it doesn't matter that she's not built like Lucy Lawless. But she looked really out of her element in the ring, and the fight with Hot Dog in particular was very awkwardly staged.

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

I'm expecting a call from 1983

A bit slammed right now, but use this thread to comment on "My Name Is Earl" and "30 Rock" here. Click here to read the full post

The O.C.: Pajama time

Spoilers for "The O.C." just as soon as I pet my bunny...

Well, last night was The Taylor Townsend Show, and is that such a bad thing? They're not even being subtle about putting her together with Ryan, they've contrived a reason for her to share scenes with Julie and Kaitlin, and Sandy and Julie act like she's been one of their sons' friends since kindergarten. But this isn't a Cousin Oliver situation because Taylor is just too funny, and any excuse to put her in scenes with any other character is fine by me. In particular, Ryan was funny last night because of her, particularly his amazement at Taylor's amazing psychic powers.

Liked Julie and Kaitlin fighting over the same guy (particularly Julie shamelessly dancing around in her tennis skirt), liked that Che totally sold out Summer and didn't realize what a dick move it was because of his love of The Movement, and I even liked The Bullet.

I'm not saying that I don't want the show to ever be serious again, but the one area where it's almost never faltered has been the comedy, and I'm glad Josh figured that out (and/or decided to ignore the network notes asking for more angst). As mentioned yesterday, I've essentially given up on "Grey's Anatomy," so as long as "O.C." and "Scrubs"/"30 Rock" remain in existence, they get the Thursday at 9 priority.

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

Survivor: Nevermind the bollocks

Spoilers for "Survivor" just as soon as I throw out a few pepperoni belches...

After a brilliant, unpredictable episode highlighted by two people making decisions to shake up the power structure based entirely on rational game logic, we get an episode where the person who's obviously on the chopping block goes home, and where everyone -- even resident Vulcan master Yul -- spends most of their time stewing in some U-G-L-Y emotion.

First, we have the food auction. This seemed like the first one in a while that wasn't designed to make sure every contestant got at least a little food in their belly. I'm sure there was stuff we didn't see (on the CBS website, there's a photo of Adam eating french fries), but Yul very obviously didn't get food, and neither did some other people. Given that, and the new No Sharing policy, Jonathan really needed to cool it, both during and after the challenge. Outside of the hidden envelope (which turned out to be not nearly as powerful as the one Danni bid on in Guatemala that won her the entire game), there was no reason to start getting strategic in the middle of a food challenge. Randomly bidding up Parvati just made him look like a jerk to his new allies, as did his whole "I can't believe how much I ate" lament and belch-fest afterwards. I like Jonathan a lot and have been mostly confused by how much distrust and dislike he's inspired, but even I could understand why everyone was so put off by him there.

That said, I loved his rebuttal to Candace's melodramatic whinging after Aitu+ ate the fish on their own -- and the fact that everyone in Aitu was down with not sharing. Ordinarily, I hate when the alliance in power treats the minority like garbage (see Jenna and her crew lounging around when they had the numbers in Amazon), but this was different. As both Jonathan and Ozzy said, at what point are people who do no work still entitled to enjoy the fruits of other people's labors?

Yul and company definitely made the right call in not giving in to Raro's pettiness. As we saw last week, a one-vote margin can be flipped without a lot of trouble. What if they kicked off Jonathan and then Parvati got working on, say, Ozzy (or, as Probst called him, Dolphin Boy), to point out how tough Yul would be to beat at the end? The Aitu 4 seems too tight for that to happen, but you don't want to take that risk.

I do worry, though, that Yul is being far, far too open with his strategery now that he has the numbers. Showing everyone the hidden idol? Probably a good call. Raro doesn't have the numbers to target anyone else in the alliance, and the only time that Cao Boi's Plan Voodoo (split your votes between the idol-holder and the person you want to go home to neutralize the idol without hurting yourself) would work would be if everyone remaining were to team up against Yul and Becky, and that ain't happening. On the other hand, telling Candace -- who has the means and the motive to stir up trouble -- that you can predict what Jonathan's going to do? Not so smart, even if Jonathan hates Candace too much to pay attention to her. And having a discussion with BFF Becky about how you're going to appeal to the jury -- in a way that suggests you don't know who you'll be sitting next to -- was also not the smartest. She looked really disturbed by the tone of that chat.

Snarky Probst had one of his best lines ever at the end of one of the nastiest Tribal Councils ever (and can we put a Hannibal Lecter mask and straightjacket on Nate so I don't have to watch his stupid Lex-like overreactions?) when he told Candace that, while the kiss was nice, if it was really love, Adam would have given up his immunity to her.

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

Scrubs: They really like to dance

Spoilers for the return of "Scrubs" just as soon as I get the address of that Joe Piscopo Lookalike Contest...

Turk danced! Turk danced! Turk danced! Okay, so it wasn't as brilliant as the last time, and I don't know for certain that I was directly responsible for the scene (even though I asked the writers to do it, like, seven dozen times over a one-hour lunch), but any time you combine Donald Faison and slightly vintage music video moves, good things happen.

The rest of the episode? Up and down. I wasn't one of the people too put off by last year's drive into wackier territory, but this one felt like everyone was trying too hard for the big return: the random Blue Man Group appearance, the make-up enhanced alt-versions of J.D., Cox and The Janitor, the big stunt where The Janitor turns J.D. into the American flag, etc. There was too much payoff, not enough set up.

And yet my favorite moments all involved the bizarre throwaways: Ted and Keith Dudemeister mixing Pop Rocks and soda, The Janitor pondering a sex change, Alt-Janitor's "I punched a whale," Kim weeping over her brother's death at the hands of a Funky Cold Medina (which reminded me a bit of the Bobby McFerrin sketch from the Alec Baldwin "SNL"), etc. So I'm having trouble putting my finger on exactly what bothered me about this episode, save for the obvious answer that I didn't laugh as much as I often do when I watch the show.

But hell, it's back, Turk danced again, and Cox wore his Z. Cavaricci pants again, so I'm not going to complain too much. What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

The Office: British invasion

Spoilers for "The Office" just as soon as I go play a few holes of Folf...

When I wrote my review of this episode, I somehow missed the memo that this was the one written by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. In retrospect, I should have spotted that, credit-free rough cut or no, because this felt squirmier by at least 10 percent -- or, roughly, the difference between David Brent and Michael Scott.

In particular, the Prison Mike scene made me cringe in a way no TV comedy has since the dance routine that got David canned in the original series. I spend far too much time analyzing the minute differences between David and Michael, and much of those nuances come from the actors. There's a kind of sweaty malevolence that Gervais can pull off without seeming totally loathsome, but that doesn't fit Steve Carell at all; witness how much more uncomfortable it is when Michael pretends to fire Pam than it was when David tried the same with Dawn. The American writers quickly recognized this, and have fashioned Michael's personal brand of cluelessness into a more childlike inability to read a room. Even when he's agressive, it's in such an obviously harmless way that the Scranton people have all learned to tune him out over the years. Screaming in Phyllis' face is just something I would never expect or want to see Michael doing.

That said, I thought our visiting writers did a bang-up job on other parts of the episode, especially the Jim/Andy/Karen/Pam non-quadrangle. Tie between "Also, do you speak Pig Latin?" and Andy's falsetto, Pig Latin "Rainbow Connection" for funniest bit. (I've sung my daughter to sleep with "Rainbow Connection" for years, and I may never be able to get through it with a straight face again, dammit.)

Whatever hurt Pam is feeling over Jim's unavailability, she still has such affection for him that she can admire the artistry in how he sicc'ed Andy on her, and verrry interesting that Jim went out of his way to make Karen an accomplice in pranking somebody else. Clearly, she knows little or nothing about Jim's previous dealing with Pam, else she would start to wonder why he knows so damn much about her. Jim, a bit of advice: in a situation like this, full disclosure is really the only way to go.

Other highlights and thoughts:

• While I had trouble with the Martin subplot overall, I thought it was a nice touch that the hated Toby -- master of conflict resolution -- was the one who was able to calm Michael down and set everyone free without bloodshed.
• I want to know exactly how Martin explained insider trading that convinced Kevin that this is what he does.
• In the British series, the arrival of the merged staff eventually led to David's firing. Here, Michael's nearly halfway towards scaring off all the newbies. What terrible humiliation do you think awaits nursing mom Hannah? (And what office has a Bring Your Infant To Work All Day Day?)
• I quoted it in the review, but once again: "Why did the convict have to be a black guy? It is such a stereotype. I just wish Josh had made a more progressive choice, like a white guy who went to prison for polluting a black guy's lake." Also, would it be fair to say that most non-Christians would trust Apollo Creed more than Jesus? I'd certainly trust Apollo to find me a really good bargain on where to eat lunch (most likely at Burger King).

What did everybody else think?

Click here to read the full post

What Alan was watching a while ago

As I mentioned in the comments section for the morning column link, working as a solo critic has cut into my blogging time, and I've gotten weeks behind on commenting on some shows. So, while taking a break from today's marathon of "Sleeper Cell" season two, some quick thoughts on, in order, "Friday Night Lights," "Grey's Anatomy," "Gilmore Girls" and "Dexter," and if there's anything obvious I've left out, we can get a discussion going in the comments. Tally-ho and all that...

Well, turns out NBC didn't show the "Friday Night Lights" homecoming episode out of order, as Tuesday's show clearly took place after the previous one. This wasn't one of my favorite episodes, but even when the show isn't clicking, I can always count on the family dynamics at the Taylor household to keep me engaged. (Taylor had one line about how, contrary to opinion, he does understand women, that I really wish I had written down so I could cite it exactly. The phrasing was very nice.) I would care more about the poor, doomed Riggins brothers and the Street/Lyla/Riggins triangle if the actors playing Riggins and Lyla didn't feel better-suited to "One Tree Hill," and as fair as they've tried to play Street's recovery, him participating in a Murderball scrimmage four or five weeks after he was paralyzed? Huh? I get that it's TV, and that this was around the point where the producers saw the writing on the wall and started cramming as many ideas in as they could before cancellation, but would it have killed them to wait at least until the Panthers season ended?

(On the plus side, NBC is moving the show to Wednesdays at 8 in January, which gets it out of the way of "American Idol" and gives me a Wednesday night show I actually want to watch. Last night's schedule was so barren on every channel that I toggled between "Mythbusters" and the "Clerks II" DVD. But we already talked about Pillowpants and the Listerfiend back in July.)

I'm starting to think I'm not cut out to be a "Grey's Anatomy" viewer much longer. The turducken-sized Thanksgiving episode had the show firing on all cylinders in a way it hasn't since that time Coach Taylor blew up real good after the Super Bowl, and yet it still bugged the hell out of me. Again, we're in the Denny Duquette area where characters are doing indefensible things that both their friends and the audience are supposed to forgive them for in the name of friendship, characterization, whatever, and I just can't do it. When Meredith shut McDreamy down on the subject of whether she should have ratted out Burke and Cristina, it was close to brick-throwing time again. (Ditto Izzie expecting an apology from George when he had exactly zilch to apologize for, given the history and the current circumstances.) The show is still the show; I'm just at or near my limit for what I'll swallow to get to the good stuff.

Speaking of treasure being surrounded by trash, Paris and Doyle's hip-hop dancing was about the only thing keeping me conscious for most of the latest "Gilmore Girls." I like Michael DeLuise when he has a good script and/or director (notably as Sipowicz Jr.), but take either or both of those away and he's always a half-step away from offensive overacting; my head hurt so much listening to him that I barely even noticed the rest of the Luke subplot, and I've lost whatever interest I may have had in the drawn-out process of Lorelai realizing the mistake she made in marrying Christopher.

If I've been sparse in commenting on "Dexter," it's because the show is so consistent both in what it does and how well it does it, and there are only so many different ways I can compliment Michael C. Hall for acting like a man who's always acting or admire the artful framing of the murder scenes. Things have gotten veddy interesting, however, now that the Ice Truck Killer's identity is known to us, and Sunday's serial killer couples weekend to Dexter's ancestral home was a creepy change of pace. I haven't read the book, but knowing that there are sequels (and that the TV show is going to continue), I have a sense of where things are going. But I look forward to hearing at the end of the season how much the show borrowed from the novel and how much had to be invented for series TV purposes.

Back to watching Oded Fehr get kicked in the nuts a lot. To paraphrase a very wise man, "Sleeper Cell" season one had heart, but "Sleeper Cell" season two has knees to the groin. Click here to read the full post

Comedy. Ha-ha.

Today's column looks at the four NBC Thursday comedies (and I'll have more to say about them tonight -- Scrubs and Office in particular):

If the sitcom is dead, then how did NBC cobble together a Thursday night schedule with four funny comedies in a row?

Maybe I'm asking the wrong question. Maybe I should be wondering how long NBC will be able to keep this shiny new four comedy line-up -- "My Name Is Earl" at 8, "The Office" at 8:30, "Scrubs" at 9 and "30 Rock" at 9:30 -- together.

After a promising move to Thursdays last January, "Earl" and "Office" have both taken a hit from ABC's new "Ugly Betty." "30 Rock" was a nonentity on Wednesdays earlier this season, and a 40-minute episode two Thursdays ago completely tanked. Previous NBC regimes have jerked "Scrubs" around the schedule so many times that its audience is small enough that the writers now seem to be taking viewer requests on what jokes to use.

But more on that in a minute. The larger issue is that while all four of these comedies have very funny people working in front of and behind the camera, the days of the mass-appeal comedy hit died with "Everybody Loves Raymond" (if not "Friends" or "Seinfeld" before that). "Scrubs" has spent its entire life span as a cult success at best, "Earl" and "Office" seem destined to share that fate, and "30 Rock" is going to be lucky to make it to 2007. As much as I admire NBC entertainment boss Kevin Reilly for resurrecting the two-hour Thursday sitcom bloc that made NBC the dominant power in the '80s and '90s, this feels like a tilting at windmills gesture.

To read the whole thing, click here. Click here to read the full post

I used to like David Caruso...

Endless CSI: Miami one-liners. Have fun counting the number of times he doesn't flip on the shades. Click here to read the full post

Veronica Mars: Thank you, sir, may I have another?

Spoilers for the "Veronica Mars" rape story finale just as soon as I try to figure out who that funny brunette in the "Ask me about my STD" t-shirt was supposed to be...

And so we've come to the end of our first "Veronica" mini-mystery, and I'm mostly happy. There were the usual scares as Veronica faced the big bad, but not in a way that copied either "Leave It to Beaver" or "Not Pictured." All but one castmember (Lamb) appeared, and all but one of the rest (Weevil) played a significant role. Rob and company played as fair as they could with the identity of rapist(s), though with only nine episodes to play with instead of 22, they had to toss out some very crucial information very quickly.

In particular, the relationship between Mercer and Moe and how it was forged during their own stint in Professor Homer's Stanford Prison Experiment had only one hint prior to this episode, way back in "My Big Fat Greek Rush Week." I quote Couch Baron's TWoP recap of the scene:

Wallace tells Moe that he can't be there because of the experiment, and Moe replies that he did it the year before [...] and says that it's pretty intense. He gets an odd look on his face as he adds, "It's, like... life-changing." He pauses long enough before leaving to prompt "Buh?" looks from Wallace and Veronica.

Maybe it wouldn't have felt so out of left field if we had been able to see more of Horshack and Rafe, the freshman class's equivalent of Mercer and Moe (albeit without all the rape-y badness), but the bit about Horshack helping Rafe cheat happened off-camera, and as far as I know, the first time we knew Mercer did the Experiment was when Veronica saw the picture of him and Moe in their respective costumes. (And even there, it had been so long since I saw the episode that all I noticed was Mercer and Moe and not their costumes; the backstory didn't click in my head until Mercer slapped Moe and said, "Stop blubbering, prisoner!")

That aside, there were a couple of other nagging issues, but nothing that troubled me overly. First, how could it not have occurred to Veronica sooner (like back in the episode where she exonerated Mercer) that it's possible to pre-tape a radio call-in show, how could it have not occurred to the cops to ask (Lamb's a smug ass, but not an idiot), and how could no one at the radio station have noticed that Mercer often wasn't in the studio when his show was airing? Second, if Moe was too squeamish to do anything but bait and shave Veronica's head, who committed the rape when Mercer and Logan were having their Light My Fire trip south of the border? Did Mercer order Moe to do it to give him an alibi (which turned out to be useless after the motel fire), or was that one of the Lilith House women doing a copycat fake? As Veronica asked last week, exactly how many of the rapes were real?

I like the role that Parker played in rescuing Veronica this time. Given the nature of the plot, Veronica almost had to get drugged at some point, which also meant she needed some saving (unless she has a mutant healing factor we haven't been told about), and it felt appropriate that it was a former victim -- and that Veronica managed to get her licks in with both Mercer and Moe before the GHB completely got to her.

We'd been heading towards the Veronica/Logan split practically since the season started. Good as Jason Dohring is at the puppy dog eyes, I hope he doesn't have to keep at it for too long. The thing is, Veronica does let people help her, as we saw when she recruited Wallace, Piz, Mac and even Moe (whoops) to assist at the Pi Sig party. It just has to be on her terms, and she has to clearly be in charge, and Logan's not having that. He wants to be Veronica's savior, not her sidekick. Nice closing touch with him getting himself thrown into a locked room with Veronica's attackers, though at what point is he nearing his third strike?

Meanwhile, Rob quite cleverly threw the start of the new mystery into the tail end of the first one. A few weeks ago, I dismissed Dean O'Dell as a serious rape suspect because "I think it'd be a waste of Begley and a good character who could be around for several years to dispense with him in nine episodes." Show's what I know: they find a way to get rid of the guy without making him the rapist, or even seriously discussed as a suspect. Sigh... I liked the guy, but now it's on to guessing whodunnthis. I think the Lilith women were busy throwing eggs outside, so that leaves his wife, Dr. Landry and the influential (and mobbed-up?) alumnus who bullied him into reinstating the Greek system.

So what did everybody else think? Satisfying conclusion or not? Click here to read the full post

Big, Boys

Open thread for discussion of the debuts of "Big Day" and "My Boys." I liked 'em; how about you? Click here to read the full post

Time travelling

Spoilers for, in order, "How I Met Your Mother," "Heroes" and "Studio 60" just as soon as I have a flashback, a flashforward, an in media res opening and then another flashback...

Fun With Unchronological Storytelling #1: "How I Met Your Mother," which is already one huge flashback, sneaks in a "one year later" coda that, among other things, establishes that Marshall and Lily will be married and Ted and Robin will still be dating a year or so from now. The former's not a shock at all, while the latter is a mild but not unpleasant surprise. Since this season has been consistently funnier than season one, it's fair to say that Ted and Robin as a couple hasn't hurt the show at all, and keeping the focus of Ted's mopey quest for The One leaves more room for Swarley and slap bet-style hijinks.

Overall, this one wasn't as legendary as the last few weeks (after "Slap Bet," I was starting to wonder if it had eclipsed "The Office" as my favorite comedy), but a nice spotlight on Barney that wasn't really awkward even with the NPH's recent uncloseting. Frankly, I was more distracted by flashbacks to Wayne Brady threatening to choke a bitch. "Singles stamina" was another good, observant concept, though I wish Marshall could regain his stamina just long enough to dance again, dammit.

Fun With Unchronological Storytelling #2: When TV shows do flashback episodes to events that happened before the pilot, there's a tendency to cram every significant event in each characters' backstory into the span of a couple of days. ("The Shield" did this a few years ago, and it was one of the few bad "Shield" episodes ever.) "Heroes" was definitely guilty of this, but it was still a very strong episode, arguably better than last week's This Is The One You've Been Waiting For confrontation between Peter and Sylar.

Sylar's origin story (and confirmation that Sylar does, in fact, steal people's powers along with their brains) and Hiro realizing the limits of his powers were obviously the big events, but I feel like we also filled in some good blanks about Nathan (who once upon a time was capable of doing the right thing without too much agonizing, and who flew for the first time as a literal flight-or-fight response that he couldn't control) and Niki, and continued the character rehab Claire started getting last week (showing that she never wanted to be a bitchy cheerleader).

(One completely anal fanboy nitpicky question that nagged at me as I tried to fall asleep: if Hiro teleported back to present-day Tokyo and had to take non-super transportation back to Texas, wouldn't someone in airport security or Customs on either side of Pacific at least raise an eyebrow over him making two Japan-->America trips in a short period without any record of his return to Japan? Again, not a big deal, but it kept me up a few minutes, so I felt I had to share.)

Not So Much Fun With Unchronological Storytelling: "Studio 60," which trotted out one of Sorkin's more tired narrative devices of beginning in media res, then skipping back to show how we arrived at this pivotal moment. John Wells has beat this one into the ground, too, and Sorkin just did it with the first part of "Nevada Day," and unless he finds a way for the flashbacks to completely alter our interpretation of what we saw in the present, I don't want to see him do it again for a long, long time.

On the plus side, it looks like Sorkin finally found a way to use Mark McKinney as something more than a glorified researcher. I liked him as the unfunny comedy guru, though the contrast would have been more effective if the Matt or Lucy or Darius ever seemed remotely funny -- or even just excitable -- most of the time. (Among the many "Studio 60" elements I've grown to hate: the way that characters will read scripts completely stone-faced, then declare, "This is really funny." If you want to demonstrate how funny it is, have you thought of laughing?) The decision to keep working on a hostage-themed sketch even as the Grosse Pointe thing kept going and going and going felt odd -- even if the situation ended without bloodshed, why did the cell phone minutes story have to be done as a hostage situation?

Elsewhere: The Howie Mandel monologue wasn't significantly lamer than your standard "SNL" monologue that has no joke outside of using elements of the host's famous show/movie. Suzanne the PA continues the transition to NewDonna that a lot of the Sorkin-ites assumed when she asked Matt in the pilot if he was here to save them. Sorkin again loses any credibility on his "these characters aren't really based on real people" story by making Jordan the victim of a newsmagazine takedown that sounded an awful lot like Lynn Hirschberg's "Jamie Tarses' Fall, As Scheduled" from the NY Times Magazine.

And we discover that Harriet Hayes, comedy goddess, whose role as co-anchor of "News 60" is entirely dependent on her ability to deliver a basic punchline, cannot, in fact, deliver a basic punchline. Sorkin, he of the plagiarism-is-evil attitude, owes either an apology or some royalties to Dennis Palumbo, Richard Benjamin, Mel Brooks or whoever wrote the scene in "My Favorite Year" where Benjy the Jewish comedy writer tries to teach K.C. the uptight WASP how to tell a joke, including the use of the "the duck says 'Get this guy off my ass'" gag. (And the next time, Sorkin may want to pay closer attention to that scene, as he uses "A man" and "a doctor's office" when Benjy clearly explained that "This guy" and "a psychiatrist's office" are both funnier.)

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

Girls will be boys

This morning's column deals with TBS' "My Boys" and the rape finale of "Veronica Mars." On the former:

P.J Franklin has a gender identity crisis. A sportswriter who covers the Chicago Cubs, she's a switch-hitter of sorts: She looks womanly, talks manly. A pretty, outgoing blonde who knows her way around a makeup case, she's most comfortable hanging out with her all-male posse of friends, playing poker, drinking beer and talking sports. Put her into a romantic situation, and both she and the man tend to get confused about who's who.

At the end of a first date, she gets handsy with the guy, and after assuring him that she doesn't expect any kind of cuddling or emotional connection afterwards, he freaks out, insisting, "Guys act like that! Girls say things like, 'Wait! Why is this happening so fast?'"

PJ is the lead of the new comedy "My Boys" (10 & 10:30 p.m., TBS), and like its heroine, the show borrows from both sexes. It's a relationship show in the vein of "Sex and the City," but also one that a man can watch without feeling like he's just taking one for the team.

And one paragraph on "Veronica" that you should keep an eye on:

The streamlined approach has turned out fairly well so far, but with some bumps. Despite only running nine episodes, the rape storyline still followed the season-two pattern of dragging in the middle, and while there's been enough time to lay out a half-dozen or so legitimate suspects, some important clues flew by in a hurry. (In particular, anyone who has easy access to previous episodes may want to rewatch the second one before they get to the rape finale, and that's all I have to say about that.)

To read the full column, click here. Click here to read the full post

Wire week 12 talk for the On Demand'ers

Talk about episode 12, "That's Got His Own," here. Click here to read the full post

Big Day, pretty decent show

Today's column is a review of "Big Day," which premieres tomorrow night on ABC:

A wise man named Melvin Kaminsky once said, "Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die."

"Big Day," a new series set entirely on the day of a young couple's wedding, understands this concept fundamentally. Anyone who's ever been dumb enough to get themselves involved in planning a lavish wedding (he says while raising his hand sheepishly) no doubt has nightmares about fights over which second cousins to invite, exploding budgets, pushy caterers, etc. To you, that was terrible. But "Big Day" makes those things happen to other people, then multiplies them by a ridiculousness factor of five.

So we have an argument between father and daughter over the groom's decision to walk down the aisle to the theme from "What's Happening!!," a wedding in a neighboring town that's cornered the market on both photographers and romaine lettuce, two ushers with respective crushes on the bride and groom, a tent that's useless against both the rain and wind, and a wedding planner who always looks five seconds away from taking hostages.

Marla Sokoloff from "The Practice" is Alice, a semi-spoiled princess whose only protection from turning into a Bridezilla is the presence of a Momzilla, Jane (Wendie Malick, perfectly nasty as always). Josh Cooke is the groom, Danny, an arrested development case who still works at the camp where he and Alice met as kids. The camp is also where the two of them met best man Skobo (Stephen Rannazzisi), a hound dog without a conscience who sleeps with Alice's sister Becca (Miriam Shor) the night before the wedding and wakes up to realize she accidentally drank his contact lenses, leaving him without glasses and with "the eyesight of, like, a newborn kitten."

To read the rest, click here. Click here to read the full post

The Wire, "A New Day": Tomb raiders

Spoilers for "The Wire" just as soon as I geek out and do a complete Wire/Lord of the Rings character parallel flowchart...

"This is a tomb. Lex is in there."

Well, halleh-damn-lujah! Finally, finally, finally, Lester figures out about the vacants. And it was so much sweeter because we had to wait so long for it -- through Lester spending several episodes wondering where all the bodies are, through him looking everywhere in town but the vacants, through Herc putting his hands on the nail gun and still not getting it, etc., etc., etc. You have to be extraordinarily patient to love this show, but Simon and company understand the virtues of delayed gratification.

While Omar, Bubbs and Bunk are flashier, slightly more obvious choices, Lester has always been at or near the top of my favorite characters list. It was a pleasure to see him using that great brain of his for something other than assembling dollhouse furniture. You could tell that he had mentally checked out during his most recent stint in Homicide, and then Daniels went and gave him a reason to care again. Two beautiful nearly-silent Lester sequences: him reopening the MCU (along with the intercuts of him opening the subpoenas with the people in those files being introduced to Tommy), and, obviously, him walking through that vacant lot, walking stick in hand like some kind of Biblical wise man, finally figuring out what Marlo was doing with the bodies. (This was punctuated beautifully by Bunk's "Ah, fuck me!" Lester's the smarter member of that team, but not by very much.) It pains me to think of how much progress he could have made on Marlo, Chris and Snoop if it wasn't for Rawls and Marimow.

This being "The Wire," of course, we have to get about 17 bad developments for every good one. So while Tommy and Daniels are sprinkling fairy dust through the city, Michael is going more fully to The Dark Side, Randy's secret is out in the open, Dukie is about to be expelled from the safety of Prez's class, Bunny's class is being shut down, Bubbs and Sherrod continue to take beatings from their nemesis, Burrell is weaseling his way back into power, and Tommy is getting hit with a $54 million dinner check from the school board.

First, we have Michael snatching The Ring from Officer Walker, and in a manner that even Namond considers reckless. (Namond wouldn't have the nerve to try anything, but he'd talk like he did.) I'm assuming he got the gun from new mentor Chris, and you could see how dismayed Chris was to learn that his protege had stuck up for snitching Randy.

Meanwhile, Randy and Dukie are both good and rightly screwed, just in different fashions. It nearly broke my heart when Randy whimpered, "I'm not a snitch" after his beating, and especially when he asked Prez if calling the cops would make things better, when Prez's face showed that it wouldn't. (I know Carmelo Anthony -- he of the infamous cameo in the "Stop Snitching" DVD -- is a big fan of this show; maybe witnessing Randy's plight will make him and others realize that treating snitching as a crime far worse than murder is completely insane. But probably not.)

Poor Dukie, who was finally blossoming in Prez's class, gets banished from the place where his friends are, where his own mentor is, where his computer is, etc., as some kind of unwanted reward for getting good grades. Is a teacher at the high school going to let him sit at the computer all day? Give him a spare lunch? Launder his clothes? Maybe, but the look on Dukie's face suggests that teachers like Prez are rare indeed.

And how's Namond supposed to deal away from Bunny's guidance? The move to shut down the special class isn't a shock, given how characters on this show are so afraid of any change in the way of doing business, but damn. With Bunny, Namond almost seems like a normal kid who's never so much as walked past a corner; away from him, and with the pressure from his evil mom, he could be heading Michael's way.

Over at City Hall, Carcetti has one of those two steps forward, eight steps back episodes. He may be getting short-term results from some of the city agencies (and not to Ervin Burrell: that was actual "quality of life" improvement happening there), but that kind of trick doesn't have any ongoing currency unless he can weed out most of the complacent management. And despite the sales pitch to McNulty, Santangelo and the rest of the Western, I don't know that he has the stones or political muscle to really do it. He's already inching towards keeping Burrell in power. If they can work out some deal where Burrell handles the political stuff and leaves everything else to Rawls, and eventually Daniels, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, but it's a sign that Tommy's plans for reform only can go so far.

After the two big Lester scenes, the highlight of the episode was the latest confrontation between Omar and Prop Joe, complete with another theatrical exit gesture by Omar. (If I thought I had the coolness to pull it off, I do believe I would be throwing around, "Now go ahead and write my ticket so I can tip on out" at the dry cleaner, restaurants, etc., etc.) As bored as Renaldo has looked doing surveillance the last couple of weeks, he was eating up his man's showiness in that scene. That's why they get up in the morning -- and why they occasionally have to go to the bathroom in a stolen cab.

Some other random thoughts:

• Those scenes where Bubbs' nemesis beats on him were hard enough to watch the first time, but going back and revisiting every episode for the purpose of these reviews, I keep having to resist the urge to just fast-forward through them. It's like the guy doesn't even exist; he's a nightmare come to haunt Bubbs and Sherrod. Just brutal.
  
• Il Returno de Cheese! Good to see Method Man back in action. Really hard-core fans may notice that Cheese and Randy both have the last name Wagstaff, and Randy's bio on HBO.com begins with this: "Having lost his mother to the streets at a young age and having never known his father, reputedly an eastside corner boy who later became a major drug trafficker..." Hmm is all I can say for now. Hmm.
• How much of Bunk and Lester's good cop/bad cop routine with Herc and Prez was genuine anger on Bunk's part, and how much was play-acting? I lean towards the latter, especially with the way Bunk was able to turn on the charm and get Prez to give them the info they needed on the way out the door.
  
• Good: Tommy quotes "Bull Durham." Bad: he quotes the "announcing my presence with authority" line, which implies he identifies more with Nuke than Crash. Maybe it's one of those short guys envying the tall guy things.
  
• Another hmmm: McNulty and Bodie are suddenly lunching together, talking shop, realizing they share a hatred of Walker, etc.
  
• Hell hath no fury like a Rawls scorned, does it? Tommy would have been much better off not stringing him along quite so much, methinks.
• Carver looked especially pained at learning the results of giving Randy to Herc instead of Bunk.
  

Lines of the week:

• Donut and Randy on planting condoms in Walker's car: "That'll send a message." "Yeah, but what kind?"
• Tommy after meeting with the ministers: "Yummy! My first bowl o' shit!"
• Omar offering toilet paper to Renaldo: "Whether you squat in an alley or sit on a porcelain throne, don't really change the moment, now, do it?"
• Bunk telling Daniels what Homicide needs: "More women! Loose women!"
• Dukie surveying the aftermath of Michael's brawl: "Guess them books are good for something."
• Kenard, on the subject of Namond's new 'do: "Man, do I look like a faggie?"

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

Survivor: Swing shift

"Survivor" spoilers coming up just as soon as I start complaining about those damned kids and their drinking and smooching and slacking...

Amazing, isn't it, how a season that began with a lot of outside garment-rending over racism has turned out to be just a really satisfying edition of "Survivor," no? The mutiny has worked out perfectly for dramatic purposes, turning Aitu from a blandly amiable bunch to tight, lovable underdogs, turning Candace into the best/worst villain since Johnny Fairplay, and forcing Jonathan to have to go all Amazon Rob and flip flop between alliances to save his acting ass.

I hope that Terry from last season was watching tonight. That, buddy, is how you use the Hidden Immunity Idol when you enter the merge with a minority alliance. Yul is obviously book-smart -- see the physics of elephants bit during the challenge(*) -- but he also knew exactly the right play to make with Jonathan.

(*) Probst's reaction to the elephant story was especially priceless, because 30 seconds earlier he was using Jonathan's "I have big feet" excuse as yet another reason to hate on the guy. There's a definite actor vs. reality show host bit of tension going on between those two (best highlighted by, "Jonathan, getting frustrated by me, day 21!"), but after Yul got done explaining the physics of it, even Probst couldn't find a reason to act superior.

Alas, Jonathan has now guaranteed his own loss, though his chances of making final two had he stuck with Raro was pretty damn slim. He probably could have gone to Adam and company and said, "Hey, Yul showed me the Idol; we have to vote for Sundra or Becky," but after they were so smug and dismissive of even the possibility that Yul had the thing, these were clearly not the people with whom to cast his lot. Couldn't have happened to a dumber, more obnoxious bunch. I look forward to the Pagong/Ulong'ing. But I like how Jonathan and Yul understand how to play the game and the fact that it is a game. I had worried that Yul was going to fall into a naivete/integrity trap, but either he's prepared to sell out his Aitu lifemates to take the loathed Jonathan to the final two, or he's learned how to lie well enough to convince Jonathan that he might take him. (I'm leaning towards the latter.)

What did everybody else think? And is there any circumstance under which either Ozzy or Yul doesn't win now? Click here to read the full post

Today, I am thankful for YouTube

Happy Turkey Day, everybody, and shouldn't you be napping on the couch right about now?

Operating under the "everything is on YouTube" theory, I went looking for any clips of the original "What's Alan Watching?" that gave me the title for this blog. While there sadly isn't a full version of the pilot up, there are three clips: Eddie Murphy as James Brown being sentenced to prison (in a scene that presaged "Cop Rock"), Eddie as JB braving the prison showers, and the aptly-titled "Gandhi on Ice." (The last one may be more notable for the two bits at the very end, particularly the random Brent Spiner appearance.) Click here to read the full post

When Logan was right (twice)

Spoilers for "Veronica Mars" and "Gilmore Girls" coming up just as soon as I tell the FBI to call off the search for Tina Majorino...

First things first with "Veronica Mars": I don't care whether or not Keith knows that Veronica got a bad haircut from her attacker. If Keith Mars knew A)that his daughter had been drugged on campus, and B)that there was a serial rapist at work on campus who was drugging his victims, there's no way he wouldn't be on some kind of door-to-door rampage through Hearst. Veronica's a lone wolf, that's part of her personality and appeal, and I get that, but sometimes the contrivances to keep her working solo feel, well, contrived.

Fortunately, I was over the Keith silliness by the time Patty Hearst got abducted again, and this was one of the season's strongest episodes. With Diane Rugggiero on script, you know there's going to be the funny, and we got it with "keister egg," Veronica's weird "Tommy" dance, or the triple-layered Lebowski/Citizen Kane/William Randolph Hearst thing going on with Bud Rose (flip that one, why don't you?), his missing wife, toady assistant, etc. Plus, we did get a Veronica/Keith team-up, just on the Mystery of the Week instead of the rape arc.

And the arc itself took a big leap forward by essentially clearing Nish and the feminists, because there's no way so much evidence would be pointing towards them in the penultimate episode if they actually did it. My take is that they faked a few of the rapes, and obviously that they raped Chip themselves, but they were just copycatting the real rapist, the one who attacked Maebe and Parker and gave Veronica her close shave last week. I also think the Pi Sigs are in the clear -- from a dramatic standpoint, it's more interesting if the Lilith House women have been doing these copycat crimes to frame the wrong people -- which leaves a whole bunch of people who weren't in this episode: Prof. Landry, Tim the TA, Moe the RA, maybe even Mercer Hayes (but probably not, as he would need an accomplice to attack Veronica while he was still in the pokey).

I tried not to pay too much attention to the previews for next week, but it looks like we'll have the entire supporting cast (save maybe Weevil, who I didn't spot) back for the big finale -- and yet, knowing Rob and company's MO, in the end Veronica no doubt will have to throw down with the big bad all by her lonesome.

As a non-shipper of any kind, I'm not too bothered by the latest Veronica/Logan tumult, but I was pleased to see him win an argument about her stubborn, judgmental qualities. Of course, Veronica went icy on him afterwards, but at least from a show perspective, we're not supposed to be feeling that Veronica's perfect when she clearly isn't.

Similarly being taken down a peg by her Logan is Rory over on "Gilmore Girls." I'm not a Logan H. fan, but Rory needed to wake up and smell the hypocrisy. I ain't saying she a golddigger, but she ain't messing with no broke Marty, you know?

(In fairness, Jess and Dean were poor, but Rory has become much more enamored of the blue-blood lifestyle -- both through her grandparents and through Logan -- since she started college. Remember her whining that they couldn't spend the summer traveling through every country in Europe?)

Not really enthralled by Lorelai and Christopher's big move-in, but I continue to like Luke and April's father-daughter bonding, and I'm still trying to map out the whole "Philadelphia Story" bit at the end. Lorelai's obviously Katharine Hepburn, but does Luke see himself as Cary Grant (the ex/love of her life who convinces Kate to take him back over her bland new fella), or is Christopher supposed to be Cary Grant while Luke is Jimmy Stewart (the new guy who mistakenly thinks he has a shot at Kate, even though she's destined to get back with Cary Grant in the end)?

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

Peripheral Vision Man goes to the mall

Spoilers for "HIMYM" and "Studio 60" just as soon as I call all of my Canadian cousins to ask them whether, in fact, 1986 didn't arrive in Canada until 1993...

Vis a vis "How I Met Your Mother," turns out Robin and I share both a Canadian heritage and a refusal to go to the Willowbrook Mall -- though, unlike Robin, I was never a pop star. I just have too many bad memories of what a bad, generic mall Willowbrook was. But it was the nearest mall growing up, dammit.

Another hilarious episode, and one that has me increasingly convinced that this is the show CBS needs to air after the Super Bowl. That timeslot's not the ratings magnet it use to, but it still has the potential to expose the show to 15-20 million people who have never seen it, and if there's a show on CBS that needs non-CBS viewers to know it exists, it's this one.

On any other show, the video no doubt would have been the highlight, but here it had to compete with both of Marshall's slaps of Barney. Is there anyone, anywhere, who doesn't think Barney made the wrong choice with the 5 vs. 10?

And just as it took America's 1987 six years to get across the border, "Studio 60" is showing that it's taking 2001 five years to enter Aaron Sorkin's consciousness. Sure, Fox scheduled "The Tick" in a much different comedy climate, but would any network bother with "Peripheral Vision Man" today, let alone give Beavis and Hackboy the budget to hire the huge, untalented writing staff we've seen in the two or three scenes set in The Room? And Matt's brief attempt to hold the two under contract after humiliating and marginalizing them since his return didn't make him seem noble; it made him seem like a bully.

I suppose this was an improvement over the Pahrump episodes, in that the lecturing about how Hollywood and fundamentalist Christianity relate to each other was limited to one subplot. But when the show's not being simple-minded and preachy and obnoxious, then it's just dull. Maybe if I liked the characters more, I would enjoy a straightforward inside-baseball episode like this, but nine episodes in, the only ones I still have affection for are Jack, Cal and Jeannie, and they exist on the series' fringes (or, in Jack's case, disappear for entire episodes at a time).

As for the Harriet storyline, there were so many things wrong with it that I don't even care about Aaron's ongoing therapy about his break-up with Kristin Chenoweth. First, if this takes place on the same day as the Nevada trip, Harriet got this offer, agreed to it and let the word spread all within a few hours? Woman works fast. Second, she can't possibly be so naive that she doesn't understand either the lad mag's desire to put her in a photo shoot or one of the reasons she's so valuable to "Studio 60." It would be one thing if she felt offended because Tom and Simon were making it sound like that was the only reason they kept her on the show (i.e., belittling her talent), but she reacted like this had never ocurred to her before. Every time Harriet opens her mouth, I like her less.

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