Gilmore Girls: So long, farewell, amen

Sigh... It's all over. Spoilers for the "Gilmore Girls" series finale coming right up...

David Rosenthal knew. He obviously knew this would be the end. In form, if not always in style (because nobody could write Amy Sherman-Palladino dialogue as well as Amy could), this is exactly what a "Gilmore Girls" series finale should have looked like. Rory meets her idol and gets a lavish send-off from the town, Luke and Lorelai get back together (but not for such an extended period that we have to deal with whatever the hell has been going on with Lauren Graham and Scott Patterson all these years), Lorelai makes peace with her father and her mother, Lorelai sends Rory off into true adulthood, and we close with a mirror of the pilot, with Lorelai and Rory having coffee and an excessive breakfast at Luke's. Short of Amy coming back to write those legendary final two words (any guesses? "Shut up," maybe?), I don't know how much more we could have wanted.

In a lot of ways, it reminded me of "The West Wing" finale, another show where the chief creative voice had left the building and the product had suffered, and yet the replacement found a way to do right by the fans in the end. In particular, Richard's "It takes a remarkable person to inspire all of this" speech to Lorelai may have gotten me more misty-eyed than anything I've seen on television since Jed Bartlet said goodbye to Charlie. Even when "Gilmore Girls" had its problems -- and the last few seasons have given us many, many problems -- it was always worth watching for the interplay between Lauren Graham, Edward Herrmann and Kelly Bishop, and all three were in top form at the end. (As touching in its own way, if not as waterworks-inducing, was Lorelai realizing that her mother just wanted an excuse to keep having the Friday night dinners, and finding a way to agree without embarrassing Emily by calling her on it.)

Luke and Lorelai's reconciliation was very spare and nicely-done, with Luke's "I just like to see you happy" all the words that were needed. Interesting choice, though, to immediately pan up to show the party instead of the lingering kiss; were they giving the couple their privacy, or not forcing Lauren and Scott to smooch at length? (See? This is why I'm glad the show's not continuing, because I don't want to be thinking this much about off-screen rumors and whatnot.)

The hour wasn't perfect, of course, though again some of that is because of things that happened a long time ago. The Lane/Rory scene, for instance, would have had far more impact if Lane had actually been written as Rory's best friend the last three or four seasons, instead of the townie pal she left behind for Yale. (Still, it was nice to take a trip down Lane's love memory lane, including a Dave Rygalski shout-out.) And outside of Michel and Rory mocking Lorelai's behavior around celebrity guests, most of the humor didn't really work. A shame for such a historically funny show to go out so relatively flat.

Still, given everything we and the show have been though, Amy's absence and the fact that there had to be some wiggle room left open for one last season (which probably would have featured the return of Logan), this was about as good a finale as I could have hoped for. I'm bummed that Lauren Graham will likely never again have a part this good to show how amazing she is, but it's time. Bye, Stars Hollow. It's been fun. Click here to read the full post

'Live' link

This morning's column is a three-fer (and sort of a four-fer), with thoughts on the new "SNL in the '90s" documentary (as well as the current season), plus the end of "Gilmore Girls" and a plea for the safety of "HIMYM." (Not that I think it's in major danger, but it never hurts to fight.) Click here to read the full post

'Gilmore Girls,' R.I.P.

So of course Warner Bros. and the CW have to go and kill my buzz from the "I Will Always Love You" scene (see below) by announcing that negotiations with Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel fell through and "Gilmore Girls" will be ending in a few weeks. The full statement:

"Announcing the final season of 'Gilmore Girls' is truly a sad moment for everyone at The CW and Warner Bros. Television. This series helped define a network and created a fantastic, storybook world featuring some of television's most memorable, lovable characters. We thank Amy Sherman-Palladino, Dan Palladino, Dave Rosenthal, the amazing cast led by Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel, as well as the producers, writers and crew for giving us this delightful gem for the past seven years. We would also like to thank the critics and 'Gilmore' fans for their passionate support and promise to give this series the send-off it deserves."

One potential piece of good news: the absence of "Gilmore Girls" increases the odds, however incrementally, of "Veronica Mars" coming back. Click here to read the full post

Gilmore Girls: She made it her own, dawg!

I'm coming a day late to the "Gilmore Girls" party, so after the spoiler jump, I'm only going to talk about The Scene. If you watched the episode already, you know what I'm talking about. And if you haven't, you may as well just watch it on YouTube, because it so thoroughly dwarfs everything else in the episode that it renders the rest of the hour almost irrelevant.

Sweet fancy Moses! Not that the Emmys will ever recognize this show -- if "The Lauren Graham Rule" couldn't get her a nomination, nothing will -- but her karaoke rendition of "I Will Always Love You," begun as a joke and then turning into a very on-the-nose commentary on her relationship with Luke, was a three-minute acting master class. It took a song I despise with every fiber of my being and made it incredibly moving. Every single "American Idol" contestant could stand to watch that scene to learn a thing or 12 about selling the emotions of a song.

Now, the important question: Is this the best single moment of Lauren Graham's career, or does that award have to go to the car sex scene in "Bad Santa"? Fire away, though I'm guessing we're going to have an extreme gender split on these results. Click here to read the full post

Fatal errors

Spoilers for last night's "House" and "Gilmore Girls" coming up just as soon as I straighten my UPenn diploma...

Just the other day, Fienberg was complaining to me that it had been a while since "House" had killed a patient, so he's obviously very pleased with last night's episode. Patients have died before on occasion, but usually because the team couldn't find the right treatment in time; other than maybe that Chase/House inquisition episode from last season (the details of which I don't remember), this was an extremely rare case of House's "treat first, diagnosis much later" strategy backfiring and being directly responsible for a fatality. Omar Epps gets another potential Emmy reel in an episode guest-starring Roc Dutton, but he didn't really grab me until the last scene with Foreman's mom. Various TV guides spoiled the Alzheimer's revelation, but it was devastating anyway. Beautifully played by Epps and the actress cast as Mrs. Foreman.

Meanwhile, after an episode so boring I felt absolutely no need to review it, "Gilmore Girls" was back to at least decent levels, thanks largely to the biggest Paris spotlight of the season. The envelope-opening scene was priceless in its many mood swings, and I liked Doyle finally figuring out how to handle her after all these years of being the bottom in this relationship.

The use of the Jeep and the broken dollhouse as metaphors for Lorelai and Luke's relationship was a bit sledgehammer-y, but I'm glad that they're finally getting significant screentime again. Whatever personal problems may or may not exist between the two actors, they have good chemistry, especially when they're as annoyed with each other as they were for most of this episode. It's just a shame that Amy's parting gift and Rosenthal's decision to really deal with the consequences of it has kept the two of them apart for almost all of what could be the final season. I expect in the end that the CW is going to come up with some sort of compromise, an abbreviated season or whatever, to get Graham and Bledel to commit to one more year, but in the event that falls through, I can't imagine getting any real closure on this relationship over the next three episodes.

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

Snowy morning catch-up

As I watch the winter's stubbborn refusal to go away, time to finally offer my own thoughts on Monday night's "Heroes" and "24," plus last night's "Gilmore Girls" and "House," all coming up...

You fine people have covered almost every aspect of "Heroes" in your comments, so I'll just add a few random thoughts:

• While it was a strong episode overall with plenty of cliffhanger goodness to drive us crazy over the six-week break, it wasn't as good as last week's all-HRG and Claire hour, losing in emotional resonance what it tried to make up in business. I wouldn't want this show to become season two or three of "Lost," where most of the characters disappear for weeks on end while one person gets a spotlight at a time, but I think I'd like to see "Heroes" try at least a handful of single-focus episodes a season.
• The Sylar/Peter cliffhanger would be scarier if we didn't know that Peter has to live to be involved in the nuke story, and that Future Hiro has seen him with a scar. Still, nice of Sylar to finally cut Peter's stupid hair.
• Why would Linderman hire Jessica to kill Nathan if he was going to offer him the vice-presidency? Fienberg's theory is that Jessica wasn't supposed to kill him, just get rid of the feds and scare him into taking Linderman's offer, but Niki sure seemed to think Nathan's life was in danger from her alter ego.
• The Haitian's "higher power" is Nathan and Peter's mom. Nicely done, a surprising revelation that at the same time makes perfect sense.
  
• Either Ando is secretly a mole for Linderman, or Linderman's casino security is awful. You make the call.

Moving on to "24," I'm still not feeling this season. There are isolated good moments, like Lennox turning in Chad Lowe at the earliest opportunity, and Powers Boothe is going to be a more interesting figure than D.B. Woodside, but I still don't feel like a nuke actually went off in the LA area, and Jack is being dumber than usual with his method of assault on the consulate and inability to let Chloe know what was up. (Couldn't he have just kept his cell phone on in his pocket or something?) Even more than Daniel Craig's James Bond, Jack is a blunt instrument, but he's shown himself to be capable of slightly clever thinking in the past (see him stinging Logan last year), and I get bored when the plot rests on Jack thinking only with his fists and the nearest torture implement. (Also, Sam Raimi deserves some kind of royalty for stealing the cigar cutter gag from "Darkman.")

I feel like I'm still watching "Gilmore Girls" out of habit rather than anything in the show itself. I was glad to see Rory finally call Logan on his tired act of being a jerk and then pulling a grand gesture to make up for it. It was nice to revisit the lingering issues of Lorelai and Rory's time away from Emily, even though the recasting of Mia was distracting (if they hadn't done it, they could've run a scene from "The Ins and Outs of Inns" in the previouslies). But the humor doesn't really feel there right now; Zach, of all people, was the only character to make me laugh last night.

Very, very good "House," in both the patient storyline (Kurtwood Smith was wonderful, and seeing Hugh Laurie and Dave Matthews jam on the piano was a treat) and the "cancer" plot for House. I'm torn on the latter, though, since on the one hand I appreciate that the writers are letting their main character be pathetic and despicable to the degree that he would fake cancer to get high, but on the other hand this should be the final nail in the coffin of his career at this hospital, if not in medicine. After everything Cutty and Wilson did for him during the Tritter mess, he cheats his way through rehab and then pulls this? This is not a man's whose judgment on anything should be trusted anymore. I know that the show has always bent plausibility with the stuff House gets away with, but this felt like him going too far even within the rules the writers have laid out.

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

Gilmore Girls: Cleaning up Amy's mess

"Gilmore Girls" spoilers coming right up...

Well, gee, that only took Rosenthal and company 14 episodes to fix -- kind of.

I give the new team credit for not sweeping the idiotic Christopher one-night stand cliffhanger under the rug, and for trying to play it out as the characters might, but 14 episodes? Out of 22? In what may or may not be the show's final season? The writers had to spend that much time on Lorelai realizing once again that, when push comes to shove, Chris is a selfish loser? I'll grant you that we didn't spend every single one of the 14 on this arc, but it's pretty close. Some very fine acting by Lauren Graham at the end, but I could not be happier to see the back of this storyline.

In our other major relationship, things are going so well, everyone's behaving so maturely, that one of two things has to be going on. Either the writers are using Rory and Logan as a counterpoint to how messed up Lorelai and Chris have been, or they're setting them up for a major fall. At first, I assumed Hunky TA would cause some trouble, but Rory ratted herself out on that one almost instantly. After last week, a few of you guessed that Logan was about to go broke and that would put strain on the relationship if Rory was the rich one. I don't know, but I'm glad to see Logan no longer being an ass, even if I don't totally buy the transformation from Point A to Point Z.

It's late and I'm tired, so let me open the floor already. What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Gilmore Girls: But isn't it always sunny in Philadelphia?

Spoilers for "Gilmore Girls" just as soon as I figure out who inherits my comic book collection...

Whatever the failings of the post-Palladino writing team are, these people know what to do with Richard and Emily -- which makes their absence from about half this season's episodes feel really unfortunate. (Is this a "Veronica Mars"-style budget situation where only certain actors are signed for all 22 episodes, or is this just Rosenthal and company trying to navigate a show with too many regular actors?)

Their handle on the elder Gilmores is so solid, in fact, that I spent a good chunk of this episode trying to figure out whose side they expected me to be on in Lorelai's increasing frustration with Emily. Having just been through a loved one getting surgery (which turned out fine) and obsessing over all kinds of minutiae, I was firmly with Emily throughout. (Even in her dealings with Luke, where her manners were terrible but she took him at his word about wanting to do anything to help.)

Yet I couldn't help shake the feeling that the writers intended me to, like Lorelai, be frustrated or appalled by Emily's behavior until the big heart to heart in the gift shop, at which point it was all supposed to make sense. Instead, it was Lorelai and her inability to understand her mother's needs that was bugging me. Now, Lorelai's always been an intentionally flawed character, so I could be misreading how I think the writers wanted me to respond, but Emily's explanation for why she was doing what she was doing was so blindingly obvious that I think even Zach would have figured it out by the second commercial break.

That gift shop scene featured the episode's only blatant call-back to season one's superior "Forgiveness and Stuff" (the first time I realized how well Amy and Lauren Graham could handle heavier material), but obviously there's a through-line with Luke again showing up to be there for Lorelai and company. As the hour was going along, I was prepared to cut Christopher some measure of slack: he just had a bad fight with his wife and stormed out, and who's to say he was even checking his voicemail for a while, when he could only assume it was Lorelai calling to in some way continue that fight? But then he had to go and be a total jackass when he saw Luke there, so no slack for him. The unraveling of this marriage is going to get uglier and uglier, and I'm not sure I want to see this show go to that place for very long. Here's hoping Chris and G.G. exit stage right within the next episode or two.

In obvious contrast to Chris was Logan. I still don't like the guy, but it felt very in-character for a crisis to bring out all of his best, most selfless qualities. Marian, on the other hand, started getting suspicious of him being so perfect in this situation, and of the constantly-buzzing Blackberry, and worried that there was going to be some revelation that he was with another woman or something equally damning. Doesn't look to be going that way.

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

Gilmore Girls: The G.G. problem

Coming very late to "Gilmore Girls," I'd rather steer clear of the episode itself -- though I can never complain too much about an episode that features Gil, or one that has a vintage scene like Lorelai venting to Rory about her writer's block -- and deal with a question that the show has awkwardly sidestepped:

What's up with G.G.?

In all of the awkwardness surrounding Lorelai's impulse buy of a marriage to Christopher, the arrival of a little girl into her home and life has been all but ignored. Back when Lorelai and Luke were together, there was some tension over his desire to have a kid and her feeling that she was done with that part of her life, and now she's got another woman's four-year-old running underfoot. That's a major, major lifestyle change for her, almost as big as Zach and Lane's impending twins -- hell, even if they have a nanny to take care of her, that's still another person inserted into Lorelai's life -- but it's not treated as such. G.G.'s just kinda there (and not played by the best kid actress, to boot).

It's not even that G.G.'s high maintenance, since she's seemed pretty easy-going since Lorelai had her parenting intervention with Chris. But the arrival of any kid, especially one that young and non-self-sufficient, would throw anyone's life majorly out of whack, and it's barely been commented on, let alone mined for potential conflict.

Anybody else bugged by this, or is it just me? 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

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

Gilmore Girls: Well, they did it

Spoilers for "Gilmore Girls" just as soon as I calculate how many restraining orders David Rosenthal is going to have to file this morning...

Well... um... how about that Lane and Zach subplot, huh? ("Hit me! Hit me!") Clearly, that's what everyone's going to be talking about this morning, right? Right? Right. Sigh...

If it wasn't for last shot of the hour, I would think Rosenthal and company had just decided to hitch their wagons to Lorelai and Chris as a couple, all the Luke and Lorelai fans be damned. But that sure as hell looked like buyer's remorse on Lorelai's face, which more than likely means that this is the rock bottom of her relationship with the guy, the cold slap of reality she needed so she can spend the rest of the season getting out and finding a way back to Luke.

I think so, anyway. To be honest, I'm having a hard time getting worked up one way or the other, in part because Amy's last season completely desensitized me to any major out-of-character behavior, in part because, major plotting aside, I don't feel that engaged by the show anymore. It can be funny at times but not consistently enough, and the new writers haven't succeeded in fixing the emotional connections that Amy severed on her way out the door. So I'm ambivalent about almost everything that's happening.

What say the rest of you? Anyone feeling particularly homicidal this morning? Click here to read the full post

Logan + Logan = ????

Thoughts on, in order, "Veronica Logan," "Logan Girls" and "Friday Night Logans" just as soon as I Logan my Logan with some Logan, and possibly top it with an order of Loganberry pancakes...

So what exactly are the differences between VM-Logan and GG-Logan? Both are sons of privilege, with abusive (or, at least in the case of Mitchum Huntzberger, emotionally distant) fathers, they surround themselves with obnoxious rich friends, know how to be polite in front of adults but generally behave like asshats except when they're around their respective girlfriend -- and even there, it can be iffy. Genetics aside, if Jason Dohring and Matt Czuchry tried to pull the Prince and the Pauper gag and traded places for a week, would anyone be able to tell?

Which, of course, made casting Czuchry as VM-Logan's long-lost half-brother on last night's "Veronica Mars" seem like such genius casting that it didn't occur to me that he was an impostor until he mentioned that he surfed. (The episode was called "Charlie Don't Surf," an "Apocalypse Now" tribute.) A nice showcase for Mr. Dohring and a better Logan/Veronica story than last week.

The "Just Shoot Me" reunion gave an interesting twist to the usual private eye infidelity case, in that Keith's client badly wanted her husband to be a cheat -- and not just because she liked having barefoot pizza parties with Keith. Looked like Keith wanted that, too. I am unspoiled on this, and am curious to see if she returns down the road.

The heavier focus on the rape storyline was welcome, though the amount of time spent on Logan Squared robbed it of some urgency, particularly at the end. I'm sure we'll deal with the mysterious Asian guy in the photograph next week, but it felt off to have Veronica clear the frat and then immediately go back to helping Logan without making any apparent effort to track this guy down.

Speaking of our mystery man, there was a "Lebowski" shout-out in that scene where Veronica said "The Chinaman is not the issue here," but the censors cut it. So we had to settle for the "Careful, man, there's a beverage here!" In other Things That Got Cut, the girl with the rat trap idea was at one point going to be Alia Shawkat's character from "The Rapes of Graff," but they couldn't get Shawkat to come back for some logistical reason. And I have to assume there were more Wallace scenes that wound up on the cutting room floor, because I know how carefully Rob and company try to dole out appearances by the non-Veronica/Keith/Logan characters, and they wouldn't waste one of Percy Daggs' episodes on a single scene, would they?

On to the show where the other Logan actually plays Logan, "Gilmore Girls" continues the hard sell on the Lorelai/Christopher relationship, arguably past the point they needed to. I think I understood Lorelai's point in the scene where she contrasted Chris abandoning Rory with Sherry abandoning GiGi, but it came across as her absolving him of all guilt because he was just a stupid kid. (As opposed to him continuing to float in and out of Rory's life through all of his 20s and most of his 30s...) And I'm surprised Lorelai or Sookie failed to mention the other pitfall of sending GiGi to Paris on her own: if Sherry suddenly becomes so gripped with maternal feelings that she doesn't want to give her back, Christopher's going to have a much harder time re-asserting custody across international borders.

While GG-Logan doesn't make me want to punch him in the face quite as often as when he was first introduced, I still don't care much about him or his relationship with Rory. But once again I'm relieved that the Rosenthal regime has characters actually expressing their feelings immediately instead of passive-agressively stewing for half a season. And wasn't that the Orbit gum girl as Logan's leggy colleague?

For me, the highlight of the episode -- outside of the look of pure, Stanley on Pretzel Day glee on Richard's face at the prospect of seeing the Emily in jail photos -- was the bad pickle smell, which was silly and broad but got just enough screentime that I didn't get sick of everyone's horrified reaction to it.

Finally, we have our one non-Logan-related drama of the evening in "Friday Night Lights." (And I tried really, really hard to find some kind of Logan-ish element. Closest I came was the fact that the actor who plays Voodoo is also on "The Game," which airs on the same network as both of the Logans.)

I don't know that this episode was quite as gripping as the first three, but I liked the extended focus on Saracen, as well as continued realistic friction in the Taylor marriage -- and the meeting of the two stories when Coach realized he had just suggested that his quarterback get his daughter into the back of a Volkswagen (or similarly uncomfortable place).

Questions: Is there any way the Street rehab storyline doesn't turn into "Murderball: The Series"? Will the writers need to make Voodoo commit some particularly heinous act to justify Saracen's continued status as QB One? And whatever happened to the good old days when high school sports rivals just stole each other's goat mascots?

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

Speaking of Massive Attack...

... it's time for a massive catch-up, before I get too bogged down toggling between Giants-Cowboys and my regular Monday night shows. Really brief spoilers for, in order, "Gilmore Girls," "The Nine," "My Name Is Earl," "Kidnapped" and "Dexter" coming up in a jiffy...

Here's the funny thing about "Gilmore Girls": For all the deserved bitching about April as the Cousin Oliver and Lorelai sleeping with Christopher, I don't have a problem with either April or a Lorelai/Christopher couple in a vacuum. I just hated how April was used to make the Lorelai/Christopher thing happen. April as a character is fun, and she brings out a diffrent side of Luke. Meanwhile, Lorelai and Chris have always had chemistry, and the last year or so of the show established that he had finally grown up, so I can see them working together, even if the first six years of the show conditioned me to want Lorelai to end up with Luke. The "Snakes on a Plane" teaser was the most "Gilmore"-y scene we've gotten post-Palladinos, and Lorelai basking in Emily's arrest was close behind.

For all that Hank Steinberg has said he learned from "Lost" and "Prison Break" how not to piss off his audience with the slow reveal, it really feels like "The Nine" is dragging out its account of the hostage crisis. Three episodes in and we're still only on the first 10 minutes or so of the robbbery. It's especially frustrating because the robbery scenes are far and away the best part of each episode, making this show a kind of mirror, mirror version of "Lost," only instead of spending too much time on the past, they're spending too much on the present.

Despite featuring minimal contributions from Joy and Randy, this was probably my favorite "My Name Is Earl" of the season, thanks to TV-Kramer as the lead singer and another fine appearance by Vonnie Ribisi as Ralph.

And so "Kidnapped" begins its end on Saturday nights. I'll be curious to see whether NBC sticks to their commitment to air all 13. I believe Kevin Reilly would, but is he or Zucker calling shots like that? And because they're compressing a 22 episode story down to 13, I find myself not bothering to think too much about whodunnit and why. Instead, I just enjoy watching this group of actors work together. Damn shame they won't get to do it for very long.

Finally, I'm still loving "Dexter," but aside from Dexter himself, Flashback Harry and maybe Rita, I find myself not caring all that much about the characters. I understand the philosophy behind wanting to flesh out the supporting cast -- if this show runs for years and years, Dexter won't be able to carry every episode all by his lonesome -- but he's such a bizarre, unique, riveting character that the relatively normal concerns of Angel with his failed marriage or Doakes and his hassles with the mob or the Lieutenant displaying human emotion feel really pedestrian. On the plus side, the revelation that the security guard was still alive, albeit not all in one piece, was extra-creepy, and reminded me a little of Mr. Sloth from "Seven" or the William Hurt charcter in the original "A History of Violence" graphic novel. (When I heard the movie eliminated that story element, I was stunned: how do you get David Cronenberg to direct a movie where one of the characters has all of his limbs gradually amputated over several decades and then cut all the amputations?)

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What'd the mama tomato say to the baby tomato?

Catch-up time, so look for comments on, in order, "Gilmore Girls," "Jericho," "The Nine," "South Park" and "Grey's Anatomy," just as soon as I figure out whethere I left my $8 million check in the pocket of those jeans I just put in the wash...

Now that's more like it, "Gilmore Girls." Amazing how just bringing back Richard and Emily makes the show feel more like itself, isn't it? (And that's even with Emily's cleverness quotient only at 80 percent or so of normal.) I've always preferred the fluffier stories to the more overtly soapy material, so an episode dealing with Lorelai's fear of cotillions, Rory's fear of text-sex and Lane and Zach's fear of the life-changing creature growing in her belly was right up my alley. I'm even in an optimistic enough mood to say I'm looking forward to Lorelai and Christopher giving things one last shot. Independent of the idiocy with Luke and April, last season did an effective job of transforming Chris into the kind of guy Lorelai might actually want to be with long-term (and that's not just because of his money), so while there will no doubt be Internet rioting if she doesn't get back with Luke eventually, this isn't a terrible avenue to explore.

I'm really riding the knife edge with "Jericho." Like the idea, love Gerald McRaney, like certain moments (the outcast kid discovering the train, the scattered TV images), am more often bored than not with the execution. It feels like the show only occasionally wants to act like the country has been nuked -- in particular, the stuff with the teenagers bear no resemblance to how anyone, even teenagers, would behave in this situation -- the crisis of the week stuff is rarely compelling, and McRaney's been reduced to delivering a speech at the end of every other episode. If there was anything remotely more compelling in the timeslot, I'd be long gone.

Well, "The Nine" absolutely cratered in the ratings in week two. And unlike the pitiful Nielsens for "Friday Night Lights" (my other favorite pilot of the season), I'm okay with that. I'd said all along that I had no idea what the weekly show would be like, and if this is an example of that, I could take it or leave it. Some nice moments, mainly involving Egan acting out all those "Dead Poets Society" life lessons and Felicia realizing that her 911 call created all the problems, but overall it was meh. Because of the time-cut in the pilot, we had to imagine most of what happened during the robbery, and our actual glimpses of it aren't really living up to that.

"South Park" has come back with two duds in a row. The "World of Warcraft" episode was like an "SNL" sketch: funny idea that just kept going and going and going. (And there wasn't even a good payoff to all those images of the fat loser player; how did he react to getting killed?) The 9/11 episode, meanwhile, felt built on a strawman premise ("Ha ha! Look at all these idiots who don't think Al Qaeda caused 9/11!"), and the only parts that made me laugh at all were Mr. Mackey's quest to find the dookie-dropper, and the tumescent hijinks of the Hardly Boys.

And this was the first "Grey's Anatomy" all season where I didn't once feel the need to yell at the TV. I think the whole "Derek is The One" stuff is fairly lame, but at least the show finally acknowledged that he's an asshole who's probably going to cause her more pain, and at least Finn escaped with more dignity than, say, Aiden did on "Sex and the City." I like that McSteamy's even more of an overt jerk than Derek, and as soon as I saw the salesman patient's face light up real good, I turned to Marian and said, "Well, it's a good thing the hospital finally hired its first plastic surgeon so they'll have someone to deal with this," in the same way that any case remotely involving a woman's reproductive organs or children gets assigned to Addison, anything in the head is Derek's and everything else goes to Burke.

So Denny's father is Remo Williams? Huh. No idea where they're going with Izzy's newfound fortune, although realistically, the only way she could actually get back into the surgical program after, you know, killing a guy, would be through bribery. Callie and McSteamy are an interesting pairing as the two odd hotties out, and Korev and McSteamy are made for each other, professionally.

So what did everybody else think? Off to watch "Survivor" and "Ugly Betty." Click here to read the full post

Gilmore Girls: A step in the right direction

Spoilers for "Gilmore Girls" just as soon as I get a permit to open an outdoor diner...

Well, that was a little more like it. The pace is still uncomfortably slow, a lot of the humor feels forced, and we're two episodes in with no Richard and Emily (those last two issues are no doubt related), but there were a few promising developments.

First, the act with Rory's fake Asian vacation actually felt like the show, and not just a good imitation of the show. The concept, the banter, even the pacing all felt right. And then the gear shift into Rory's anger felt straight and true.

Second, in that scene and in a number of others, people actually talked about what they were feeling. No more of that suffering silence BS that dragged down so much of season six. No more Idiot Plot where the only way it works is if people aren't honest with each other. That's the worst kind of dramatic device, and the show is much better for ditching it.

I feel bad for Lane: crap honeymoon, crap first time and pregnant on the very first shot? Not that kids aren't awesome, but you should have them when you want them -- and after you've had as much time as you need to do grown-up stuff without the logistical complications of a baby or 12. (Also, hearing about Lane's death-by-discount honeymoon made me feel much less sorry for Rory. Poor little rich girl can't tour all of Asia in a summer? Too bad.)

Not back to standards yet, but a definite step up from last week. The teaser with Luke punching Christopher was better itself than anything in the premiere.

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

Gilmore Girls: Not quite right

This morning's review of the "Gilmore Girls" season premiere:

"I woke up one morning and looked around the room. Something wasn't right. I realized that someone had broken in the night before and replaced everything in my apartment with an exact replica! I couldn't believe it. I got my roommate and showed him. I said, 'Look at this -- everything's been replaced with an exact replica!' He said, 'Do I know you?'" -- Steven Wright

Watching the season premiere of "Gilmore Girls," I couldn't stop thinking of that bit of vintage Wright. The show looks the same, the actors are the same, they're behaving in a consistent fashion, and yet... exact replicas.

To read the full column, click here. And if that's not enough reviewin' for one morning, my column on Ted Danson's "Help Me Help You" is here.

UPDATE: Now that "Gilmore" has aired, what sayeth the rest of you?
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David Rosenthal, sane man

New on the official blog: a transcript of my interview with the seemingly level-headed new "Gilmore Girls" showrunner. Click here to read the full post

The trouble with Gilmores

Okay, it's happened, so let's talk "Gilmore Girls" season finale, after the jump for the benefit of the tape-delayed.

Well, they did it. Amy and Dan blew up the show on the way out the door. They may not see it that way, but they just did something even dumber and more character-ruining than Rory losing her virginity to a married man. As the British guy in the same timeslot on that other network might say, Whoopeee!

Look, given where the story has gone for the last half-season, I can buy Lorelai angrily storming out on Luke and having comfort sex with Christopher. Given all the crap Amy and Dan did to her/made her do, this is exactly what she would do. What pisses me off is how much they had to contrive to push their main character into a position where she would turn her baby daddy into her fuck buddy.

I liked April as a character, but as a plot device, she ranks down there with Rosalind Shays going down the elevator shaft, "The X-Files" movie and, yes, Arthur Fonzarelli jumping over the damn shark for show-ruining ability. The Lorelai Gilmore we've known for the previous five-plus seasons would have never put up with Luke's keep-your-distance bullshit, just as the Luke Danes we knew over the same span would have told the woman of his dreams the truth in the first place. (He might have then gotten all knuckle-draggingly protective of April, but Lorelai would have slapped him back into line PDQ.)

So we suffered through a half-season of our hero and heroine being uncommunicative, out-of-character dumbasses, and for what? To drag out a wedding that the show has been leading towards ever since the end of the pilot? To pretend like the show needs long dramatic story arcs, even they almost always suck? To recreate all those warm and fuzzy feelings America has about the words "We were on a break!"? To spare Lauren Graham and/or Scott Patterson the awkwardness of having to, you know, act like they love someone they can't stand? (If you believe the rumors, that is. If they really get along, then this is even more ridiculous.) To branch off into some bizarre new direction where Lorelai winds up with Christopher, even though Amy and Dan have spent so much time in previous seasons pointing out exactly why they would never work as a couple long-term? Someone, please explain it to me like I'm a five-year-old, because it makes no sense to me -- not unless Amy's hats are all laced with some kind of hallucinogen that's absorbed through the scalp.

I'm not especially wild about what's going on with Lorelai the younger, but at least it didn't make me want to throw a brick at the TV. (Really, that's just an excuse so I can finally go out and buy that plasma screen I've been eyeing.) As I wrote a few weeks back after one of Rory's passive-agressive snits, Amy and Dan found a way to make Logan seem sympathetic: by making Rory the hateable half of this couple. Hey, Rory? Logan does not want to go into the newspaper business. He could not have made this any clearer over and over and over again. I know you want your manchild jerkhole boyfriend to grow up, but falling into lockstep with the family destiny isn't the only way to do that. How about suggesting he blow off his mean old daddy and seek his own future, even if that means giving up mean old daddy's fortune? If having to pay his own way in the world is too harsh a transition, maybe you could get your goofball daddy to give him a hand-out (just as soon as he's done ruining your mom's relationship, of course).

Really, the only part of the finale I enjoyed was the troubador subplot. I have to confess that the only people I recognized were Mr. Rosso, Chloe O'Brien and Kim and Thurston from Sonic Youth (and who I have to assume is their daughter on bass), but the image of all these alt-rock musicians invading Stars Hollow (and Taylor's increasingly flummoxed reaction to them) was hilarious, and the songs worked well as a Greek chorus for the idiot plots going on around them. (Anyone who wants to take a stab at identifying all the musicians -- preferably with some kind of physical description so I can keep track -- I'll owe you a cookie.)

The troubador story is the kind of thing this show has always done best. Like I said before, the drawn-out weepy arcs rarely worked (or, at least, it's been so long since we've had a good one that it's been buried under memories of Rory the homewrecker, Rory the drop-out, April the cousin Oliver, etc., etc.). This show's money has always been the smaller stuff, Lorelai bantering with whoever's in the frame, Emily's attempts to seem human, Sebastian Bach joining Hep Alien, etc. I've joked in the past that there have been seasons where it seemed like the writing staff had a pool going to see who could write the most plotless episode, but you know what? The episodes where nothing happens are infinitely preferable to the sturm und drang we've had to deal with for the last season-plus -- and that we'll have to deal with in the fall when crazy David Rosenthal has to clean up this mess Amy and Dan left behind.

End rant. What say you?
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Super-mega jumbo catch-up

(In this post, in order: "Prison Break," "24," "Scrubs," both parts of "House," "Gilmore Girls" "American Idol" results and "Lost." Sort of chronological, and also, if you didn't see "Lost" and all the Big Things that happened, it's way at the end so you can avoid being spoiled. No "Veronica Mars" until tonight at the earliest, and I'll spoiler-protect it again, given the local pre-emption.)

"Prison Break" has me, then it loses me, then it has me again, over and over. Has me: Westmoreland and Bellick in a fight to the death over discovery of the hatch. Lost me: Westmoreland wins and leaves Bellick alive in the escape tunnel to cause trouble in future episodes. Has me: Michael truthfully asking the doc for help. Lost me: any scene out in the real world. Has me: Michael being cold-blooded enough to betray his buddy Warden Pope to make the escape work. Lost me: Michael being squishy and naive enough to bring Tweener into the escape. Etc, etc., etc. I laughed for a very long time when I realized they were using the "House" theme song for their opening montage, which some Fox rep tried to spin to my friend Joe was simply a case of the "Prison Break" music supervisor having never seen "House." Because, of course, no one at the actual network would have noticed, either. (The original pilot for "Bones" used the same Massive Attack song over a montage, just in case we didn't understand what they were trying to imitate, but I'm pretty sure they changed it before the thing aired.)

Because I'm coming so late to "24," I don't feel there's much more I can say about the eerie/awkward timing of this episode airing three days after the release of "United 93." But when one of the passengers started to make a move towards Jack, I cringed, deeply. (Fienberg has some fun with Jack's harsh treatment of the air marshall and the innocent passenger.) For me, the most entertaining part of the episode was Chloe repeatedly tasering the drunk asshole in the bar, especially since I had been afraid that she was going to become the latest victim of his misogynist rage and be too distracted to help Jack at a critical moment. From a character I didn't like at all when she first appeared in season three, she's now someone I can't imagine how the show did without for the first couple of years. Mary-Lyn rules.

It's probably not a good thing that I spent so much of "Scrubs" fixated on the presence of Paul Adelstein, who's not only Evil Kellerman on "Prison Break," but who was supposed to play Dr. Burke on "Grey's Anatomy" until a last-minute scheduling conflict cost him the sweetest job of his life. (Shonda Rhimes has said, not surprisingly, that Adelstein's Burke was more of a pent-up dweeb than Isaiah Washington's version.) I had feared that Cox's shame-spiral was going to make it hard to be funny, and the only real joke that worked was "Knife-Wrench!" (the song sounded to me like a Neil Flynn improv), but I don't think it was because the A-story was heavy; I just think the jokes weren't very good. (Elliot's walk in the woods in particular seemed like a missed opportunity; couldn't she have been attacked by a bear again?) Still, McGinley is awesome, and the last scene where Cox showed J.D. as much affection as he probably ever will was nice. (It's too bad the writers let him call J.D. by his given name a few times in the early seasons, or else I might have gotten actual chills when he did it here.)

I didn't want to commenton "House" yesterday because I had watched both parts on a review screener and they had all blended into one big, cool experience. This, ladies and germs, is how you do a Very Special Episode (or Episodes) of a procedural drama. Foreman becoming so desperate that he pulls a House-ian stunt on Cameron (the needle stick) to save his ass, Wilson realizing exactly why House never wants to meet his patients (and yet not giving House a pass on anything), the awful timing of the discover/biopsy... I don't know that this is going to win Omar Epps the Emmy, if only because he may have trouble getting into the category with the obligatory nominations for Terry O'Quinn, the late John Spencer and half the "Sopranos" cast, but the man was really on his game on both nights. (As was Roc Dutton, one of those actors like Gene Hackman who's always playing the same person and yet not.)

"Gilmore Girls" was actually the last thing I watched last night, and I was so tired he quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs... Sorry 'bout that, folks. I typed a bunch of placeholder paragraphs so I could insert the photos easily last night, and I was still so zonked this morning that I forgot to finish this one. Anyway... I was so tired that my opinion of the show might as well involve quick brown foxes and lazy dogs. There was a lot going on (Luke and Michael DeLuise, Michel doing calisthenics, Sookie and Jackson running around with Kumar's wet dream, Rory getting irked at the Mitchum quote, Paris and Doyle penguin-sitting Logan, and Lorelai as chauffeur), and yet it all felt inconsequential. Again, I can pin some of this on physical and emotional fatigue, and some of it on my knowledge of The Ausiello Spoiler depressing me about where all of this is going, but the only stuff I really dug was Michel bouncing around and that last scene between Lorelai and Emily. (Even though I hate where the story is going, Lauren Graham and Kelly Bishop are awesome together.) Oh, and the opening debate about Ashlee Simpson's hair color was pretty good, too. I have a DVD of the finale, and I'm dreading watching it.

Whenever a talented "American Idol" contestant gets an early boot, I always read or hear someone say that they're better off, because it leaves them free of the clutches of the 19 Entertainment hack songwriters. This ignores the fact that Josh Gracin is the only non-winner or runner-up to have a significant post-show singing career, and he has extenuating circumstances on his side. But Paris may actually be the first contestant to go home this early whom I believe could have a career in the music biz. It's not that she's so young and has such a great voice, but that her entire family has connections in the biz, so when she gets a little older and settles on a persona instead of constantly changing her wig and vocal style, she could actually make it. Not really a shock to see her go: DialIdol had her as the bootee (though they also had Katharine in the bottom two, when it was Elliot), and it had been clear for weeks that her versatility was costing her traction with voters who prefer their ponies to do one trick and only one trick. Since I don't think Katharine has the talent to beat out any of the guys (has any winner had a performance as uniformly awful as her "Against All Odds"?), the only question left is whether she goes home next week and creates a sausage-fest final three, or if she can sex it up one more time to carry herself past Elliot.

And, finally, "Lost." If you didn't see the episode yet, you really want to stop reading. I'm cereal! I'm totally cereal! Okay? Do we all understand each other? Very well then.

I have to quote Fienberg, who e-mailed me shortly after it was over to say, "Was pretty much the best anti-Drunk Driving PSA I've ever seen." Amen, brother. Take that, you booze-guzzling newbies! (Lindelof and Cuse insist to Ausiello that this was their plan all along, but I believe that as much as I believe that everything on this show is plotted out far in advance and that it'll all make perfect sense in the end.)

At least Michelle Rodriguez got to spend an entire season annoying the crap out of America. Unless those blankets somehow slowed the two bullets enough to spare Libby (because, of course, there's a fully-equipped trauma center hidden somewhere in the hatch that would allow Jack to save a person who was gutshot twice), then Cynthia Watros had an entire year of her life wasted, and what the hell was the point of the Libby-is-crazy flashback button to "Dave"? You could interpret the previews to think that one of the two survives, but then, you could also interpret the previews to think that Mr. Eko dies next week (Noooooo!!!!), in which case Bernard might want to watch his back. We'll have to wait and see.

A very cool shock ending to what had been an uneven episode for the first 55 minutes. I spent a lot of the Ana-Lucia flashback picturing a slightly different "Lost" where the more annoying regular characters were replaced by people we knew off the island. Imagine that instead of mopey, self-righteous Jack, the castaways' doctor/leader was alcoholic with a God complex Christian Shepherd. Imagine that season two's gullible Locke were replaced by his con man dad, who I'm still convinced is the real Sawyer, and who would see through Henry's latest line of bullshit in a half-second. The constant off-island intersection of the characters' lives -- Ana-Lucia knows Jack's dad! A-L and Christian listen to the same Patsy Cline song from one of the Kate episodes! Jack's dad has an illegitimate daughter whose mom looks and sounds an awful lot like Claire! Sawyer! -- ceased being a novelty for me a while back.

I probably should have seen one or both of the shootings happen, both because Michael's story was full of so many holes considering what we know about the Others (unless, as I've speculated in the past, there's more than one group of Others), and because A-L had sex and Libby was probably about to (loved Jin giving Hurley a reciprocal sex thumbs-up), and women on this island who get laid out of wedlock tend to catch bullets. But they faked me out -- thanks in part to no stupid advance publicity by Cuse and Lindelof about how someone was going to die in this exact episode, and in part because I thought the shock would be Michael opening the vault door and being killed by Henry -- and for a second there, I thought Michael had pulled a Raymond Shaw and killed himself after carrying out his mission. (This was a really bad episode to include a fully-detailed previews; much like the "Sopranos" season premiere, they should have followed it with either no previews at all or one of those "Survivor" finale previews where you see no new footage of any kind.)

So what did everybody else think, about any or all of this? Click here to read the full post