South Park, "Dead Celebrities": Ignorance, not bliss

Some thoughts on last night's "South Park" mid-season premiere coming up just as soon as I buy some new underwear...

The "SNL"-style writing schedule that Trey Parker and Matt Stone have chosen to use on "South Park" (which Stone described in great detail when he was on Bill Simmons' podcast a couple of weeks ago) can keep the episodes feeling fresh, but it can also leave them feeling half-finished. Sometimes, it's as if Parker, Stone and company needed to take another few passes through the script to really nail the jokes; other times, the entire idea seems like the wrong approach to the story, but perhaps there simply wasn't time to go back and start from scratch.

Given some past celebrity-skewering "South Park" episodes, opening the back half of this season with a look at all the famous people who died over the summer seemed appropriate. Unfortunately, "Dead Celebrities" mainly turned out to be a rehash of the Michael Jackson jokes they told give years ago in "The Jeffersons" - then randomly turned into a kiddie beauty pageant parody (and a predictable one, at that) halfway through. Because the most recent "Simpsons" episode (one of the strongest in a while) was able to tell a single story from beginning to middle to end with no major digressions, I was probably a little more sensitive to abrupt story shifts in my animated comedies this week.

I did get a kick out of the running gag about Kyle's disbelief that Cartman would keep eating Chipotle, but overall, "Dead Celebrities" was a misfire. It happens. "South Park" misses about as often as it hits this far into its run. Hopefully next week's show will work better.

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

South Park, "The Ring": The power of mice compels you

Quick spoilers for last night's lucky 13th "South Park" season premiere (which you can watch here if you missed it) coming up just as soon as I pretend like I've never, ever watched "Grey's Anatomy"...

Thirteen seasons in, I pretty much tend to check in on "South Park" only for the season premieres, or for memorable events (though the latest election ep was a disappointment), or when I've heard from people after the fact that they did something amazing.

I'm not sure I'd put "The Ring" into that spread-the-word last category, in that its targets -- the Jonas Brothers, and the Disney company for using them to sell sex to little girls with impunity -- were so easy to hit. But the scenes with a foul-mouthed, violent Mickey Mouse stomping on one of the Jonii while lecturing them on their place in his evil corporate empire are going to give me nightmares for a long time -- not least because my daughter still watches the occasional "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse" episode -- and in some ways that's the mark of a classic "South Park." If I'm not being horrified (by Mickey, and by the sexually-aggressive preschool girls) on some level, they're not doing their jobs, are they?

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

South Park, "About Last Night": Obama's eleven

Brief spoilers for last night's "South Park" post-election extravaganza coming up just as soon as I steal some TV's...

"Trapper Keeper," the episode Trey Parker and Matt Stone did in the immediate, uncertain aftermath of the Bush/Gore election, remains one of my favorite "South Park" episodes ever. I must have watched it at least a couple of dozen times within the first year it aired (it was my "Turk dances" before Turk danced, the perfect picker-upper after a lousy day) and likely would have watched it even more if I had kept my old ReplayTV unit that had it stored on the hard drive.

So even though I don't watch "South Park" as often as I used to, I always make a point to check out their election shows, even though they've now led to diminished returns each time since. It's basically the same joke every time: there's really no difference between the two candidates, and everyone getting worked up about their guy versus the other guy is an idiot. There was a hint of that in "Trapper Keeper," and the theme became more overt in the 2004 edition, and was officially driven into the ground with this extended "Ocean's Eleven" parody where McCain and Obama were revealed as master jewel thieves who used the campaign to create a nationwide distraction on election night.

Really this is the theme of the vast majority of "South Park" episodes: people who care too much need to get over themselves. But the execution of that theme varies from week to week, election to election, and the jokes in "About Last Night" were played out within the first five minutes. Seeing Randy Marsh go overboard in his Obama worship, and McCain supporters like Butters' parents prepare for the end of the world was briefly amusing, but then there wasn't a second joke on top of that. Even the payoff about Ike faking the suicide attempt to help the thieves pull off the Hope Diamond heist just made me shrug. The whole thing was like a half-hour "SNL" sketch.

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

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

Two colleges and a digestive block

Lots and lots to get to, and while few of them are thematically related, I don't have time for many, many posts. Actually, the best thing I watched all night was a review screener of "The Office" episode airing May 4, which is the funniest damn thing I've seen in a long time, but I can't write more about that now. In order: "The O.C.," "Survivor," "South Park" and "Alias."

"The O.C." is really frustrating me lately, because parts of it are just good enough that I want to keep watching, while others are at the same baffling, cringe-inducing level that's typified most of seasons two and three. If the show would just be bad all the time, I could walk away, but it keeps teasing me with these reminders of what it used to be like.

The good: The return of Anna, even if she was there as Seth's fairy godmother/plot device, and even if I'm puzzled by how Samaire Armstrong now looks like she's using Drea de Matteo's stylist and sounds like a cross between Drew Barrymore and Kellie Pickler, neither of which were true as recently as her time on "Entourage." Wha happen? Also good: Ryan happy. I feared we were going to get back on that cosmic treadmill where, just as he's breaking out the smile, someone slips a flaming sack of karmic crap next to the pool house door. On the other hand, given Theresa's history with honesty and this baby, shouldn't he ask to see a copy of the paternity test?

The bad: I hate, hate, hate plots that only can continue if the characters involved won't sit down and talk honestly for, oh, three minutes. All Seth friggin' had to do was blurt out the phrase "I didn't get in!" during that walking tour, and we could move on. This is all just dumb and protracted.

The unknown: because it was late and because I just don't care anymore about certain characters and subplots that have been on this show for far too long, I fast-forwarded through every Marissa scene that didn't feature Ryan or Summer, and every Sandy and Kirsten scene whenever it became obvious that it was about the hospital storyline, so I have no idea what happened with any of it. Did Ryan's freshman buddy turn out to be a jackass?

You watch "Survivor" long enough, and you can pretty much tell by the pacing when there's not going to be a Tribal Council for some reason. With the way the episode was moving, plus Bruce's intestinal distress, plus that long-ago teased footage of someone being med-evac'ed out of the game, I think we all knew where this was going. I'm assuming he's going to be well enough to return to the jury at some point, if not in the very next episode, then before the end (and they can show him the raw footage of Tribal Council at the hospital in the meantime to keep him as informed as the rest). Otherwise, what's the option? Bring Nick back? Have an even-numbered jury pool and risk a tie vote for the million bucks?

Not an especially satisfying ending, but one of the most entertaining iterations of the chopping challenge to date. Because Terry was the only obvious target, once he went out, it got ugly in a hurry. Loved seeing Courtney and Shane wig out over the answers, loved that Cirie knew everyone would have picked her as the least likely to survive on her own (and Aras picking Terry? WTF? He may be a sucky strategerist, but in terms of survival ability, I'll pick Top Gun over the leaf-phobic, the nicotine junkie, the hippie who wants to hold a sacred burial ceremony for every dead creature and plant on the island, the Boston chick who hasn't done squat from day one, the 57-year-old man with the rock garden, and even the yoga dude who loves to sleep in the teepee in his daddy's backyard).

Loved pretty much all of it, even though I'm not sure how much it changed anything. Shane's a tool, but I do believe he was playing Aras and Cirie -- as we all know by now, he's a sometimes actor, and that interview he gave about what he did was one of the few times since the season began where he didn't seem like this character he'd invented to go fame-whoring with Johnny Fairplay for the next five years. Bruce was the only one who would have had his feelings hurt by being targeted quickly, and that's moot. So the only real fallout is Courtney's flakiness -- and if Shane thinks she's his best final two partner, he'll have to screw over his two strongest allies to bring her there. He's not that dumb, even if he believes they could be the first alliance to survive the post-merge game intact. (Um, Tagi? Porno Brian's group? Team Tom?)

Now, where does this week's "South Park" rank among the show's freakiest? Above or below Lemmiwinks? In case you didn't see it -- and, if not, you'd better hurry, as this may join "Trapped in the Closet" on the Never To Be Re-Aired list very soon -- what started as a parody of the James Frey/Oprah controversy turned into a surreal hostage drama involving two of... um... Oprah's orifices, each of which spoke with a different British dialect. ("Gary," and you know what that is if you saw it, sounded a bit like Terry Jones playing the mom in "Life of Brian.") I really don't know what else to say about it, except that I think Trey and Matt may have been smoking Towelie for the entire writing period.

And, finally, "Alias." I had basically given up on it a couple of years ago, stopping back in every now and then to see if it made any more sense or if the producers had just introduced another Everything You Thought You Knew Was Wrong evil conspiracy to distract the audience from the fact that they had no idea where the plot was going. (I'm thinking that, at the end of this season of "Lost," Kate is going to wake up in an alley behind the hatch with a scar on her belly and a few missing years in her life.) But I figured I'd stick around for this five-week curtain call and... I just think I've outgrown it. Lena Olin and Victor Garber are awesome, but my mind kept wandering and wandering and wandering. What's the name of the new evil group? The Fifth Pope? The Seventh Seal? Shark Sandwich? Whatever it is, anytime anyone mentioned their name, I zoned out. Out of nostalgia for what I used to like about the show, I'm going to stick around till the end, but if the remaining time commitment were more than a month, I don't think even Jennifer Garner in another rubber dress would keep me around. Click here to read the full post

You can't do that on television

(Haven't seen "Lost" yet, so this entry will present comments, in order, on "The Loop," "South Park," the "American Idol" results and "House.")

Why is "The Loop" first in the batting order today? No particular reason, except I liked that picture the best -- and it wasn't even from last night's episode, or even last week's. I'm capricious; sue me.

With only one episode to go and ratings so bad that it's almost certainly not coming back, I've realized that I'm really gonna miss this show -- not just because it's often funny, but because I remain in awe at the shit they're able to sneak past the censor. Two weeks ago (the episode pictured above), the writers set up an elaborate scenario where one of Sam's friends had to give him a hand job (off-camera, but still) to save his real job. Last week, they figured out an excuse for Mimi Rogers' character to stick her hand up a dog's ass (off-camera, but still). Last night was fairly mild in comparison, but it did have Sam getting his pubes disintegrated (semi-off-camera, but still), not to mention one female roommate referring to the other's snooch being visible (to her, not to us, but still).

Matt once had a long talk with the Fox censor, specifically about why "The Simpsons" seemed able to get away with so much. His response was along the lines of, "If I think it's funny, I'll let it slide." The thing that separates "The Loop" from your standard tasteless Fox comedy is that it's a smart tastless comedy, not a stupid one. The writers earned that hand job joke, just like they earned the dog joke (which also involved a wireless thumb drive that could still transmit so long as Sam kept his laptop right next to the dog's butt), etc. They put in the time and thought to set them up properly, so it wasn't cheap. (Well, the snooch joke was a little cheap, but I'll give it to them.)

Tonight's season (series?) finale -- titled "The Rusty Trombone," don't forget -- features a Very Special Guest Star who would have been a lot more special a year and a half ago (if you want to know, Google "Brett Harrison" and "roommate"). It's no "Arrested Development," but "The Loop" deserved better than Thursday burial.

Over on Comedy Central, "South Park" pulled off the double-switch. Since everyone was assuming they would do another Terrance & Philip stunt like they did with part two of "Who is Cartman's father?," they did it again, and after a minute or so of that to scare away the most gullible, they got back to "Cartoon Wars."

Not sure this needed to be a two-parter, though. Most of the points got made last week, and the only new touches were the presence of Bart Simpson (and he's done things much worse than decapitating Jebediah's statue) and Trey and Matt's acknowledgement that "Family Guy" may have some advantages over them: "At least it doesn't get all preachy and up its own ass with messages." Oh, and were all the people in the Al Qaeda video supposed to be recognizable? Dubya was obvious, and I spotted Carson from "Queer Eye," but it was late and I was too tired to freeze frame and study carefully.

Not much of a stunner on "American Idol." Bucky wasn't going to win, but inside his own unchallenging box, he's been more entertaining than Ace for a while. But we're now in that stage of the competition where the middle-of-the-pack contestants are in bigger danger than the awful people. I wouldn't be at all stunned to see Elliot and Katharine go before Ace, followed by a Paris boot before the inevitable Chris/Taylor/Pickler final three. Then again, Elliot and Kat seem better-equipped than most to kick ass on Great American Songbook Night (featuring the dessicated remains of Rod Stewart), so maybe they'll snare enough casual voters to hold off the latest object of Paula's obsession for a week.

And then, there's "House" (or "Maude," I forget). Good to see the doc and friends all clean up nice -- House's double-take at Cameron in the red dress was a nice touch -- and seeing House playing cards in that tuxedo, I couldn't help but wonder how much more fun "Casino Royale" would be with Hugh Laurie sipping the vodka martinis instead of Daniel Craig. ("The Gun Seller," the Laurie-written book I mentioned a month or two back, is basically a James Bond parody, which may have also put the idea in my head. The Bond movies are practically parodies of themselves, anyway.)

So of course, I make a comment in yesterday's blog about John C. McGinley generally getting more dramatic material to play than Laurie on a night when Laurie gave his most interesting performance since "Three Patients." House's patients have occasionally died in the past, but it was always because he found out too late what was wrong; to him, the unsolved mystery is worse than the unsaved patient.

After last week's Foreman-centric episode, this one started off looking like a House vs. Chase dynamic, with the cock-blocking at the party and Chase's bitching about House's Esther obsession. But they dropped that theme about a third of the way through, which is a shame; Chase's petulance and his longer history with House usually brings the funny. My eyebrow raised at Chase's reference to House having assistants before him, which made me wonder: what exactly is the chronology of House's time at Princeton-Plainsborough? It was unclear to me in "Three Patients" exactly when House suffered his leg injury, and as I recall, the episode implied that he wasn't on staff there at the time, but got the job out of pity (or to stave off a malpractice suit). I could be wrong, but the fact that Esther was his patient 12 years ago and someone who worked with both Chase and House knew about it started the mental gears turning.

Like I said, I'll get to "Lost" later today, and I'm annoyed that I gave up on this season of "Amazing Race" in the very week that I hear there was finally an episode with some good challenges and suspense. Meanwhile, links: Wednesday's column, in which I detail the stunning way by which ABC turned "Commander In Chief" from a show that was going to be around for years into something that likely won't be on next year's schedule; and today's column, where I revisit "Everybody Hates Chris." Click here to read the full post

Blew him up real good!

(In today's exciting installment, in order: "Veronica Mars," "American Idol," "South Park")

Oh, "Veronica Mars"... just when I was getting really worried about this season, you throw out back-to-back episodes like last week's college preview and now this... this... I don't want to say "masterpiece," because it wasn't, but it was bursting with chocolately, chippity goodness in a way that the show used to pull off routinely in season one. Let's count:

• A Dirty Sanchez reference, which may be the greatest thing they've ever slipped under the nose of the censors (what's next? space-docking?);
  
• More Logan/Veronica banter in one episode than we had in all of the first half of the season (though their slow dance seemed more like a bone thrown to the 'shippers than something Veronica would actually want to do);
• Wallace getting a storyline that allowed him to be less than perfect, along with Jackie continuing to convincingly transform from bitch to good girl (though they stole the bit about her Sadie Hawkins date from the "Freaks & Geeks" pilot);
  
• Closure to the Felix storyline, which will hopefully allow Rob and company to focus so much on the bus crash in the last handful of episodes that we start to care about it again;
• And best of all, that ending! Weevil ignores Veronica's advice to stick to the straight and narrow on this and arranges to have Thumper killed... and in a bit of poetic justice that I should have seen coming but didn't (at least not until we saw the inspector find the motorcycle chained up), Logan inadvertently becomes Thumper's killer.
  

That, my friends, is some real film noir shenanigans. Those last few minutes have bought the show at least a year and a half's worth of goodwill from me, it was that clever and evil.

A few other quick thoughts and questions: What was the significance of the little kid poking his face out the van window as Weevil doped Thumper? So Woody and Beaver are both gay, right? Woody has now become so obviously creepy that I desperately want him to be a red herring -- but if he is, who the hell was responsible for the bus crash? I'm sure the Fitzpatricks were involved in some way (right before they stuffed the gag in Thumper's mouth, he mentioned having something big to hold over them), but they seem to have been the hired help for whatever this was about.

Meanwhile, "American Idol" delivered one of those "shocking" exits that really shouldn't be to anyone who's been watching this show for the last four years. On nights when nobody's really good and nobody's really awful, it comes down to fanbases. We already can assume from Simon's not-so-subtle "predictions" about the top 3 that Chris, Taylor and Pickler are way ahead of the pack in each week's voting. If they weren't, Taylor would have been ripe for a bottom three scare, since he went first and wasn't that great. Mandisa, meanwhile, has always struck me as one of those performers like Amy Adams whose fate depends entirely on kicking ass every time out and getting votes from people who aren't obsessed with a particular contestant. She went early on Tuesday and gave a very mediocre performance: kiss of death. I'm annoyed that Ace, Kellie and Bucky are still there ahead of her, but we're in the fifth season, and I'm used to it.

Finally, what a weird "South Park." When they did their "Simpsons Did It!" episode, it was with affection, but you can tell that Trey and Matt share Cartman's feelings about "Family Guy." A pretty spot-on parody of that show's reliance on random pop culture jokes that are, as Cartman put it, "all interchangeable and irrelevant to the plot." (In fairness, the "Family Guy" episodes that are good dig a little deeper than that.) They're a little late to the Muhammad cartoon controversy, but my favorite part of the episode was the monologue about defending free speech, followed by Stan's dad declaring that he'd rather go with the head in the sand idea.

Anyone want to place odds on whether there actually is a part two? It would be a very Matt and Trey thing to do a fake teaser to a show that'll never exist. Click here to read the full post

I wish I could go back to college...

Now that's more like it, "Veronica Mars." A good self-contained mystery, a suggestion that the show could do okay once Veronica leaves high school, a gratuitously awesome "Arrested Development" double-cameo, the biggest spotlight yet for wisecracking Cliff, and a fine showcase for Jason Dohring, who's becoming so good that Veronica may need to investigate a case of show-stealing.

First, let's consider "Veronica Mars: The College Years." Really, there are only four essential characters to this show: Veronica, Keith, Logan and Wallace. Veronica and Wallace are already going to be Hearst together (Veronica getting some kind of scholarship is a fait accompli), and Keith will be just at the other end of town, with Veronica no doubt still helping out around the office. Logan could decide to straighten up, fly right and go to school, and I'm sure a hefty donation could grease his admission into Hearst. Or, if the show wants to avoid the "90210" syndrome where all the characters miraculously wound up at the same school, Logan could keep living off his trust fund, hanging out with the college kids without actually bothering to take classes. I like Weevil, and he could pop up from time to time as a townie. And as much as I love Dick (feel free to quote that out of context far and wide), he and Beaver are expendable; there are at least as many asshole rich kids in college as there can be in high school -- not to mention twice as many cliques and weird societies as you can find in high school. So college wouldn't automatically spell creative doomsday for this show the way it did for "90210," and "Buffy," and "Gilmore Girls," and... shhh. I'm having a moment.

I wasn't exactly holding my breath for the return of Troy, but he served a useful purpose as a character whose involvement in the rape story would move Veronica to be involved, but who was sketchy enough that we could have some doubt about his innocence. I like that the rapist didn't go to jail, as that creates a nice parallel with no one really getting punished for what happened to Veronica. As cool as it was to see Michael Cera and Alia Shawkat only slightly out of Bluth character, I couldn't shake the feeling that he was the rapist -- not only because it felt weird that one of them was central to that story while the other was basically a walking in-joke, but because it would have been a twisted adaptation of George Michael's obsessesion with Maebe. Ah, well. Marian had the best suggestion of the night: "They should have gotten Ron Howard to narrate this one." ("And that's when Veronica realized she had made a terrible mistake.")

Cliff and Lamb are my favorite non-Keith adult characters, so any subplot that has one busting on the other gets the Sepinwall seal of approval. Best part of that entire story: Keith's "Gone on a puzzling errand" note for Veronica.

And jack-rammers, but Jason Dohring is good. Veronica as a character is great because she'll never change much from her post-rape personality, but Logan is still a work in progress, which gives Dohring more chances to stretch than Kristen Bell. I know the Felix subplot was cooked up to give Kristen a break from her crushing season one workload, and Dohring and Enrico Colantoni are the only other actors on the show who could shoulder this much non-Veronica screen time. The only problem, as Matt pointed out in yesterday's column (and as posters on forums throughout creation have been saying for months) is that it's kept Veronica and Logan apart for most of the year, and whether they're dating or just trash-talking each other, the show's not nearly as interesting without some major Veronica/Logan interaction.

Elsewhere in TV land (and did anybody catch the "Inside TV Land" special with William Shatner? because that guy may be stranger in real life than Denny Crane, and I love it), I haven't watched "Lost" yet, but "South Park" was an inevitable let-down after last week. Other than the George Clooney Oscar speech joke -- which was funny both because it was true and because it showed Trey and Matt aren't afraid to fuck with anyone, including the guy they owe their careers to -- the hybrid/smug joke felt labored, so the only fun was listening to Ike talk about being baked.

And only a week late, I was proven right about Lisa getting bounced from "American Idol." Again, didn't see the results show, but I doubt I would have been that shocked by Kat being in the bottom two. Weird shit happens on nights when everyone is good or everyone sucks, and she doesn't have the obvious fanbase that people like Taylor, Chris and Pickler have. (Guys generally don't power-vote for this show, so being a smoking hottie will only carrie you so far.) I suspect, however, that this should galvanize anyone afflicted with the McPheever to get off their ass and dial a few times next week (Undercover Black Man, this means you), so I'm not worried yet. Click here to read the full post

Wha happen?

I know, I know, I know... the four of you who actually read this blog have all been complaining about the tardiness of the latest entry, so I'll try to tackle Wednesday through the weekend (or what I've seen of it) as quick as I can.

"Lost": The whole Zen "no answers" thing works out really well for an episode like this, which was basically a one-hour expansion of a few lines of Ana-Lucia dialogue from the week before. If you're willing to accept that there's going to be wheel-spinning and hedging and no new information except when the writers have absolutely no choice, then you can enjoy the character and thriller aspects. I liked the extended look at the tailaways, and the sort of parallel structure to the main characters, with Ana-Lucia as Kate, Mr. Eko (my favorite character on the show by far these days) as Locke and Goodwin seeming to be Jack. Brett Cullen, who played Goodwin, is one of my favorite Hey, It's That Guys (TV division), and once again he got the job done. Hopefully, either this or "West Wing" is going to lead him to another regular job. (He has a supporting role on a WB midseason show with Rebecca Romijn, but it's so lousy that he'll probably be looking for a new gig inside a month.) The scene on top of the mountain where Ana-Lucia and Goodwin pleasantly chatted while each was sizing the other up for the kill was the kind of character-based suspense this show does so damn well that I'm willing to ignore the non-info thing.

The one problem the producers have is that they introduced Ana-Lucia in a way designed to make viewers just despise her -- sneering in every scene, bullying three of the main characters, yelling loudly whenever anyone tries to get answers and, last week, killing Shannon -- and now they're backtracking and trying to show why you should like her. It doesn't work that way, which J.J. Abrams (who I know isn't very hands-on these days) should remember from the "Alias" season with Melissa George. She was also intro'd in a manner where fans had no choice but to hate her (disrupting their long-awaited Sydney/Vaughn romance), and when the effort to make her sympathetic didn't work, J.J. admitted defeat and turned her evil full-time. Ana-Lucia has built up so much bad karma with the viewers over only a few weeks that she may never enter their good graces. Maybe she'll have to go and join The Others at some point.

"Veronica Mars": An odd episode, tonally darker than even this show usually gets. Sheriff Lamb is one of the show's better recurring characters, so I like giving him some depth, so long as he doesn't suddenly turn into a nice guy. (His jerkiness is his most likable trait.) Little movement on the bus crash and only slightly more on Logan's case, though the idea of having Logan and Duncan live together is genius, since it forces Veronica and Duncan to trade insults on a regular basis.

"South Park": I'm the only person I know who saw this one and was underwhelmed. I just feel like Tom Cruise and Scientology are like a turkey shoot these days, and this could have been a lot savager and funnier than it was. The two best jokes: the "THIS IS WHAT SCIENTOLOGISTS ACTUALLY BELIEVE" caption over the history video, and Stan (and, by proxy, Matt and Trey) daring the Scientologists to sue, followed by a closing credits full of John and Jane Smiths.

"Survivor": Hogeboom lives to landscape another day! Woo-hoo! What I liked about this episode the most was the irony Jamie becomes so paranoid that his allies are going to turn on him that his paranoia drives them to turn on him. Ever since Alanis Morissette ruined everyone's definition of irony, you rarely see the concept in its 100% pure form like this. Oh, and this blog entry has been brought to you by Folger's. Damn, that's good coffee! And hot!

"The O.C.": Well, I give them points for not letting Summer be dumb enough to fall into Taylor's jealousy trap -- yet -- and for letting Julie plausibly outsmart 7 of 9, but the show's overall IQ has dropped so many points since the first season that I feel uncomfortable watching it. Season three "O.C." is the kind of show that season one "O.C." would have mocked.

"ER": I'll give 'em this: as stupid as I thought the plane crash in Chicago idea was, it got me watching the show for the first time this season. Incredibly stupid, but entertaining in a C-level disaster movie way. No "ER" disaster episode is ever going to top season one's blizzard episode (where the producers didn't have to blow the budget on snow and crash effects, since everything took place inside the hospital), but this wasn't any cheesier than the helicopter crash, or the train crash, or the toxic waste spill, or the spree shooting, or... (As Matt put it, "Did they build this hospital on top of a Hellmouth?")

"SNL": I'm starting to feel like one of those monks from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" who wander around constantly smashing boards into their faces as mortification. Why else am I watching this show week after week? The problem isn't just the lousy writing and flimsy premises (a house music parody? a sketch designed to let the cast showcase their impressions of late '50s celebrities?), but the fact that it's a cast full of second and third-tier "SNL" types. The writing has been uneven practically since the show began, but the good casts always have at least one or two people who are funny even with lousy material: Gilda, Belushi and Murray in the original cast, Lovitz and Hartman in the late '80s, Will Ferrell in the late '90s. This group has some talented impressionists (Heder's Pacino is the best I've ever seen) and people who can be funny on the rare occasion when the sketch is working, but the closest thing they have to people who can rise above the material are Will Forte and Amy Poehler, but even they only occasionally can make something out of nothing.

"The Simpsons": Not the funniest episode of the season by a long stretch, but I give them points for a relatively coherent Homer-Lisa story, though the California recall election parody felt like filler between emotional beats of the story. This is two weeks in a row where they've tried to return to smaller stories about the family, and it's clear that most of the current writers have either let those muscles atrophy or never had them in the first place (the younger ones who grew up on the years of the show where Homer flew in the space shuttle and toured with Hullabalooza). Still, I appreciate the effort now and then; the first couple of seasons weren't always that hilarious, but there was a heart to those stories that kept me around, long after our hero turned into Jerkass Homer.

More on "Grey's Anatomy," "Curb" and other Sunday shows either later Monday or on Tuesday morning. I'll get a relatively fixed schedule on this thing sooner or later. Really. Click here to read the full post

HOGEBOOM!!!!! (and some other stuff)

Going in reverse chronological order of when I watched things from the last couple of days:

"The O.C.": Okay, I think I'm going to need some kind of flow chart to keep track of all the flirting and soulful looks going on between the regular characters and their Bizarro World equivalents from Newport Union. Marissa's on the verge of dating Johnny (aka Bizarro-Ryan), Taylor Townsend (kind of a Bizarro-Summer, though she goes to Harbor) is putting a move on Seth, and Ryan and Summer are sharing more screen time together than they have in the entire series put together. Is that all? Did I miss anyone? My brain hurts. Bonus points for the complete lack of Evil Dean, but I'm not feeling the love this week.

"The Apprentice": Yeah, I've been sucked back in, dammit, and it wasn't even a good episode. Another multiple-firing, both well-deserved, but if Trump fired every contestants who deserved to be fired every week, the season would be about two weeks long. (Episode one: meet the contestants. Episode two: everyone but Randal gets fired.) One of the duller product-placed tasks of all time.

"Survivor": Hogeboom, Hogeboom, Hogeboom. From laughingstock to crafty genius you've gone, my lanky friend. The dramatic pause before busting out the Mini-Idol was one of the coolest "Survivor" moments in a long time (and would have been cooler if the editors hadn't played up Gary's probable exit so blatantly that you knew he'd pull a rabbit or idol out of his hat by episode's end). I just hope he can exercise some of his experience at lawncare (and what was up with that weird football anecdote at one point? I thought he said he was a landscaper) to convince Rafe, Cindy and Lydia to turn against the Axis of Evil, because if any of those three idiots win, I'll be irked. (Though I have to say, I'd almost be more irked by a Lydia win, since she'd be the most inconsequential winner, screentime-wise, since Vecepia.)

"Veronica Mars": A dark, dark episode (and, judging from the previews, not the last one this month) where things got so bad that a Veronica/Wiedman team-up actually seemed like a wise idea. Weevil, Cliff and Aaron all return, Joss Whedon and Kim from "Top Model" both don't embarrass themselves in acting cameos, and we get some quality Weevil/Logan fighting. Not happy, but damn good.

"South Park": I have a list of things that are always funny, under any circumstance. Al Pacino doing a Cuban accent? Always funny. Will Ferrell wearing a fake mustache? Always funny. Cartman being a hatemonger? Always, always funny. Not the most original "South Park" ever, but the scene with the anguished parents of the three Ginger Kids was worth tuning in for by itself. Question: is Lindsay Lohan a Ginger Kid? Click here to read the full post