My Boys, "Dinner Party": Pants-free in the Love Zone

Spoilers for "My Boys" coming up just as soon as I tell a Charlie Rose lie...

If the season premiere was half-funny, half-obligatory, then "Dinner Party" is "My Boys" firing pretty much on all cylinders. PJ isn't necessarily funny by herself, but put her in a situation where she has to hold the leash for some of her boys -- notably Kenny and Mike here -- and Jordana Spiro can do something amusing with that. So last week's half-boys/half-PJ (with a sprinkling of Bobby) formula wasn't that great, while this week's half-Andy/half-PJ+boys worked quite nicely.

Andy's nanny situation started out cliched but kinda funny (notably with Bobby's Chris Farley-esque "Do you guys remember the time she was here?") and then became unexpected and very funny as he realized the downside of having an ultra-hot nanny. (It's no coincidence that the lamest part of that subplot, and of the whole episode, was the scene where Brendan and Bobby both show up at the house to drool over Elsa, as it's the part that plays most into the cliche.) Andy's desire to take off his pants, eat junk food and watch "Point Break" was a nice commentary on the priorities of a happily-married guy in his late '30s, and well-played by Jim Gaffigan. (His monologue about the two women being "the perfect level of attractive" was particularly nice.)

But for once, an Andy story wasn't the highlight of a "My Boys" episode. I really got a kick out of the whole situation with Mike and Kenny and the two musicians, whether it was PJ shutting them up with the self-tanner/pillowcase-underpants warning (as I said in last week's column, funny shorthand for how much dirt she has on them both), Mike complaining that "my girl's broken," or Kenny inexplicably turning out to be the evening's real drawing card. (In fairness, his only real competition was Mike, but under normal circumstances, I can see how the two would be equally girl-repelling -- just as, under the right circumstances, either one could suddenly seem strangely appealing.)

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

Remember that time, five minutes ago... ?

Watched the "Top Chef" reunion special in the middle of doing some other work this morning, and wasn't particularly moved. Other than the awkward moment where Jen and Zoi were asked if they had broken up (which, arguably, they brought on themselves by agreeing to go on a reality show together as a couple), and the clear signs that time has healed all wounds except the one between Andrew and Lisa, there wasn't anything all that revelatory about the season contained therein.

So let me ask you this: given that the reunion show is now a staple of most successful reality franchises, what in your mind makes a good one? Is it just the opportunity to again see people you liked who went home early? Are you looking for answers about things that weren't properly explained during the show? Do you want to see the villains apologize for their behavior, and/or get roasted for it?

And who, in your opinion, is an especially good reunion show host? Once upon a time, I would have said Jeff Probst, but my high opinion of his early "Survivor" reunion work was largely a response to the absurdly low bar set by Bryant Gumbel (who couldn't remember people's names and asked tasteless questions like why Mad Dog got so fat or why Amber didn't wear a skimpier bikini) and then Rosie O'Donnell (who talked to five people during the Marquesas reunion and didn't so much ask questions as issue Mike Francesa-style pronouncements about the season). Since at least Vanuatu (if not before), it's become clear that Jeff plays favorites at the reunions and tries to reshape the season's narrative to reflect well on those favorites.

So if not Probst, then who? Thoughts? Click here to read the full post

Jimmy has fear? A thousand times no!

Ah, the themed collection of YouTube links -- the last refuge of the idea-free (or time-crunched) blogger.

While I haven't been able to justify using "NewsRadio" for one of my summer TV club entries -- I love it, but it ain't deep enough to merit extensive analysis -- it is wickedly funny (even at the comedy-rich time, but especially in comparison to the comedy scraps we get today) and profoundly silly, and so I offer up the following sampler:

• Bill and Dave struggle to give up their respective addictions to cigarettes and coffee
• Jimmy reads from his twice-translated memoir
• Bill tries plugging a new sponsor, then makes the mistake of getting slang advice from Catherine
• Matthew makes a big on-air gaffe
• Trouble with a baseball promo
• Beth designed a new hat
• Bill exercises his inner Mark Russell
• Matthew tries out some facial hair
• Dave reads Bill's message from beyond the grave (surprisingly funny given that the cast was still grieving Phil Hartman, then painful when Dave gets to the end, then funny again)

And if that's not enough, you can check out some of the show's best episodes over at Hulu:

• "Arcade" (pictured above), which exemplifies everything that made "NewsRadio" great (things like gross sandwiches and childish behavior)
• "The Bitch Session," the finest example of behind-the-scenes drama at the show turning into hilarious comedy
• "Review," in which Bill finds several thousand ways to conjugate "adequate"
• "The Real Deal," in which Jerry Seinfeld tries and fails to boost the show's ratings

For some reason, "Halloween," featuring the hotness that was young Dave Foley in a dress, is one of the random episodes that isn't up there.

God, I miss that show. Click here to read the full post

Time to fondle my sweaters: Wet Hot American Summer

Still swamped with the composer story, plus writing up the next "Wire" review, so the best I've got at the moment is to link to the recent appreciations of the brilliant, bizarre "Wet Hot American Summer" over at The Onion AV Club and at Tomato Nation. They inspired me to watch it again the other day, this time with the alternate soundtrack (if you have the DVD, you know what I'm talking about) and it literally made water come out my nose at one point. Yes, I'm 12 years old. Thanks for asking. Click here to read the full post

The Mole: Things get a bit shirty

After yesterday's seven-post explosion, things are a bit slower today, in part because I'm focusing on a story I'm doing for Sunday about Bear McCreary and Michael Giacchino (composers for BSG and Lost, respectively). But I have a minute to breathe here and thought I'd offer a few words on why "The Mole" isn't working this season, just as soon as I scan my business card for clues...

There are reality franchises that need villains to work and there are ones that don't. "Survivor," I would argue, does, in that the most satisfying moments and seasons are often the ones where the obnoxious people get their comeuppance. (The flip side of that, of course, is that seasons where the bad guys win ultimately leave a bad taste in your mouth.) "The Amazing Race" really doesn't, though the show has had some memorable villains, depending on your definition of the term, like Colin or Boston Rob.

I'd put "The Mole" even more firmly into the latter category. If you like the concept -- one of the more intricate ones in the genre -- then the game itself should be enough for you to enjoy it, and if you don't like the concept, then no amount of nasty behavior will make up for that. The new season would likely be tanking in the ratings even with a cast full of swell people -- it's a failed reality show that hasn't been seen in its original incarnation in nearly seven years -- but for those of us who did turn up to watch it, the presence of loud, abrasive, "I didn't come here to make friends!" cliches like Nicole and Paul make the new season kind of intolerable.

It's one thing for me to be wondering if someone is performing badly in a challenge (say, Bobby lounging in the wheelbarrow last week) because they're actually the Mole, because they want people to think they're the Mole, or because they're just terrible. That's the point of the show, even if it can occasionally get annoying that everyone seems to be tanking to fool the other players, which leads to a microscopic prize total. But there's no strategic or dramatic upside to someone yelling at the rest of the team during dinner (Paul) or "jokingly" threatening to kill another contestant (Nicole); it's just the kind of lame interpersonal drama that every reality show producer decided they needed after "The Apprentice" season one was a hit -- and, for some unknown reason, Omarosa got the lion's share of the credit for that.

So even though the clothes-off-your-back challenge was kind of entertaining -- albeit not as much as the embarrassing costume challenge from season 2, and although one of the teams completely lucked into finding the right laundromat, which you could tell frustrated the producers and host -- I really don't want to spend time with those two anymore. I can't imagine ABC giving "The Mole" a third strike (fourth if you count the "celebrity" incarnation), so I imagine last night was the last time I'll be seeing it.

Anybody else watching at this point? Anybody else as fed up with the loudmouths as I am? Click here to read the full post

Secret Diary of a Call Girl: Brokeback Belle

Very brief spoilers for the premiere of "Secret Diary of a Call Girl" coming up just as soon as I check my deodorant supply...

I said most of what I thought of the show in today's column: Billie Piper's quite saucy and fun, and I like the dissection of what a hooker's job actually entails beyond the obvious, but it's all quite superficial and safe. The premiere is mainly about the line Hannah tries to draw between her personal life and her work life as Belle, complete with her being drawn to, and then rejecting, a john who wanted the reality and not the fantasy. Not surprisingly, though, the more entertaining part of the episode was Belle helping her other new client saddle up.

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

William Hurt joins the cast of 'Damages'

Hot off the press releases:

LOS ANGELES, June 16, 2008 – Academy Award winning actor William Hurt will join the cast of FX’s Golden Globe award winning series Damages for its second season, which is scheduled to return to the network in early 2009, announced Nick Grad, Executive Vice President of Original Programming, FX Networks.

Production of season two starts on June 24th in New York. Damages is produced by Sony Pictures Television (SPT) and FX Productions.

Hurt joins Damages for a season-long arc as a new client of Patty Hewes (Glenn Close). Details of Hurt's character are being kept under wraps, but insiders have intimated that Hurt's character will not only share a professional past with Hewes, but a personal one as well.

The release later, in a passage discussing all the actors from season one, says "(Glenn) Close, (Rose) Byrne and (Tate) Donovan all return for season two."

I wasn't a fan of "Damages" season one, as I didn't like Byrne's character and felt the show tried too hard to keep pulling the rug out from under the audience at the expense of solid characterization and storytelling, but I know a lot of other people liked it, and Hurt is a good get for them. Click here to read the full post

In Plain Sight, "Here Comes the Bride": Slutty Mary

Brief spoilers for episode three of "In Plain Sight" coming up just as soon as I work on my lasso skills...

Of the five episodes of "In Plain Sight" I've seen (including next week's with Dave Foley and one down the road with Wendell Pierce), "Here Comes the Bride" was the most overtly farcical, even with guest star Missi Pyle doing relatively subdued work compared to what she's usually asked to do. We had the runner about Marshall taking mambo lessons (and the boss showing him the right way to do it), Mary having to tart herself up and then try to take out bad guys in two very uncomfortable, revealing outfits, and that wonderful moment at the end where Dershowitz the cop rode by in the background, pulling the second bad guy along with him. (That was much better than had we actually watched the rest of that chase go down.)

And because it was quite funny, I didn't mind the predictability of the story (Mary was so convinced that the Missi character was unreformed that of course she would turn out to be), or the waste of Joanna Cassidy as Missi's prospective mother-in-law (a paycheck's a paycheck, I guess), or that I'm supposed to buy the thirtysomething Cristian De La Fuente as a promising minor league baseball player (though I suppose he could be a Crash Davis career minor league type who's hitting well at a position where the big league club is thin).

The show's not always deep, but I'm really digging it.

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

Friends pay tribute to Tim Russert's thunderous spirit

One other story from today's paper: a recap of how the Sunday morning talk shows dealt with the passing of Tim Russert. Click here to read the full post

Doctor Who, "The Unicorn and the Wasp": The butler didn't do it

Spoilers for the latest episode of "Doctor Who" just as soon as I gather all of you into the sitting room...

If I only had a TARDIS -- or a willingness to subvert the law -- I'd jump straight ahead to next week's Steven Moffat-penned episode, which I've heard is up to his usual standards, and ignore "The Unicorn and the Wasp" altogether.

(Insert usual warning here about how we're going to respect the American broadcast order and not discuss any details about episodes that have only aired in the UK.)

"The Unicorn and the Wasp" wasn't so much bad as it was awfully thin. By now, these episodes where The Doctor encounters a legendary British author and gets caught up in an adventure that resembles one of his/her stories have become perhaps the most formulaic part of each season, and they become largely dependent on your knowledge of/affection for the author in question to work. I've read precious little Agatha Christie, and so telling a Christie-style story, with the only twist being the addition of a giant alien wasp, didn't do much for me.

And yet, the entire episode was almost worth it just for another game of Doctor/Donna pantomime. For the most part, the writers haven't tried to re-jigger the show to showcase Catherine Tate's comic side, but I get a kick out of occasional moments like their re-introduction in "Partners in Crime" or, here, Donna being the world's worst Charades partner during The Doctor's attempt to un-poison himself.

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

Sepinwall on TV: 'Middleman' review

In the second of today's columns (sort of; see below), I briefly review "The Middleman," ABC Family's swingin' new comic book adaptation. I never read the comic, but I dug the show enough to stick around to see if they can sustain what looks to be a very tricky tone. (I should also mention that the pilot's available as a free iTunes download, if you don't want to wait for tonight.)

And given the show's retro vibe, it finally gives me an excuse to link to YouTube clips of the opening credits for a lot of the Marvel Comics cartoon adaptations of the '60s: Spider-Man, Iron Man, Captain America, The Incredible Hulk, The Mighty Thor, The Fantastic Four, and the whole shebang. Most of them are quite heinous -- notable exception: the Spider-Man theme, which is so awesome The Ramones covered it -- but as a pop culture historian type/geek, I can never get enough of this stuff. Click here to read the full post

Sepinwall on TV: 'Secret Diary of a Call Girl' review

In one of today's two columns (technically, they ran together in print, but I separated them for on-line purposes), I review Showtime's new "Secret Diary of a Call Girl," in which we find out what Rose Tyler has really been up to since she left The Doctor.

I'll probably have a quick post up tonight to talk about the premiere. I know there have been some requests for "Weeds" commentary, as there are every summer, but having watched the season's first three episodes, I've realized that I just don't care anymore, if I ever did, about what's happening on that show. Click here to read the full post

Battlestar Galactica, "Revelations": No sleep till Brooklyn

Spoilers for "Revelations," the "Battlestar Galactica" '08 finale, coming up just as soon as I roll a hard six...

Frak me.

Okay, hands up, everybody who immediately flashed on Charlton Heston screaming, "You maniacs! You blew it up! Damn you! Goddamn you all to hell!" at the end of "Planet of the Apes" when you got a look at the wreckage of the Brooklyn Bridge?

In many ways, that amazing final sequence -- tracking from Adama's hand holding the irradiated fistful of dirt, past every major character surveying the reality of their "salvation" (including little character grace notes like Caprica Six reaching out a hand to comfort new lover Tigh), and then to that iconic frame of the Bridge as evidence that this is, in fact, Earth -- could have been the end of the series. Sure, it would be a nihilistic as hell ending, and one that left many, many questions still to be resolved, but so much of the amazing "Revelations" (one of the best episodes in the history of the series) had such an air of finality to it that I would almost be okay with all the loose ends. The humans and Cylons finally had something resembling an actual peace (signaled by the amnesty for the Final Four, as well as the freedom of the previously-incarcerated Caprica Six), Roslin and Adama have found each other for however much time she has left, Lee finally and unequivocally became a man, and the rag-tag fleet (now half-Cylon) had finally made its way to a place called Earth... only to find it in even worse shape than old Caprica (where at least the buildings were still standing and Helo could occasionally whip up a nice breakfast).

And yet I doubt anyone can complain that there won't be enough to deal with over the course of season 4.5 (wahhhh... I want it nowwwwwww!), given that we still have to deal with:

• The identity of the final Cylon
  
• The origin and nature of the entire Final Five
• The origin of the rest of the skinjobs
• The fate of the 13th colony, and what role (if any) they played in the destruction of Earth
  
• The identity of the person/persons/entities that have been orchestrating all this, and what it means that "All of this has happened before and all of it will happen again"
• The opera house vision and the fate of Hera
• What exactly happened to Kara when she went into the maelstrom, and what she's really the harbinger of
• Roslin's health
• The true nature of Head Six, Head Baltar, Head Leoben, and all the other "angels"
• Tigh and Caprica Six's baby
• The whereabouts of Boomer and whether any of the 1, 4, or 5 models are still out there

And, oh yeah, what the hell does the rag-tag fleet do now? The algae planet blew up in the nova, New Caprica got nuked, and all the original Colonial planets are irradiated (and possibly occupied by Cavil and company, if they didn't all die in the attack on the Hub). Does everybody go back to the cursed planet of Kobol? Do they give up? Start mass-producing anti-radiation meds and figure out a way to terraform the remnants of Earth?

I don't know, but we obviously have until early '09 (sigh...) to speculate on that, just as we all freaked out about the Final Four revelation at the end of season three. Right now, I want to sing the praises of "Revelations" as an episode, and not as a launching point for what's still to come.

Because, again... frak me. I watched this on one of SciFi.com's hourly streams, on a small screen, with a whirlwind of activity going on around me and I could not have been more riveted. Bradley Thompson, David Weddle, Michael Rymer and company outdid themselves on this, one of the busiest and yet most emotional hours of "Galactica" ever.

And I wrestled for a while with my feelings about it being only an hour. On the one hand, the condensed running time meant that a lot of major events had to be glossed over or outright skipped -- Athena getting sprung from jail to help plot the suicide mission against D'Anna, the reactions of most of the characters to learning the identities of the Final Four, etc. -- in favor of squeezing in the story and hitting the real emotional high points. But much as I wanted to see, say, Gaeta learn that two of the men who nearly airlocked him were Cylons, or Caprica Six finally understanding Tigh's motivation for his special private visits to the brig, the finished product was like a gourmet five-course meal where every course was the entree. Everything we needed to see was there, immaculately written, directed and played.

Take Bill Adama's reaction to learning that his best, oldest friend -- the man he had trusted over the decades despite everyone else in the universe telling him he was naive at best, insane at worst for doing so -- was a Cylon. After having Adama's reaction start off the way every fanboy's did -- first confusion, then denial, followed by asking how Saul could be a Cylon if he got old and went bald? -- we quickly proceeded to watch our fearless, stoic leader lose his s--t on an epic scale. Remember what I said last week about Mary McDonnell finding new, terrifying levels of brilliance every time I thought she couldn't be any better? Take that, double it, and you've got Edward James Olmos in the raw here.

What made Adama's breakdown especially painful wasn't just Olmos letting it all rip (though I know my soul ached when I heard that first guttural yell), or even the knowledge of how well Adama usually carried himself in a crisis (though that didn't help), but rather that pre-credits scene, seemingly unnecessary at the time, where Lee talks to Kara about being afraid of his father, and Kara quotes Leoben's philosophy that the only way for children to reach their full potential is for their parents to die. Leoben is, of course, an ass, and so a large chunk of this episode was spent proving him wrong. Bill didn't die, didn't even injure anything worse than his knuckles (not physically, anyway), and yet Lee Adama managed to become a man -- not the scared, confused kid who could occasionally playact a man in seasons past -- in his father's moment of crisis. There will come a terrible point in the lives of many people, if one of their parents happens to live long enough, where the roles will reverse and the child will have to play father to the man. The moment on the floor of Bill's quarters, when Lee held his crying father in his arms and told him that everything would be okay -- that Lee would make sure it would be okay -- was that moment for the Adama clan, and while Bill eventually pulled himself together and the old dynamic re-asserted itself, I don't think there's any more backsliding for young master Lee. This is who he is now, and it was touching and scary and absolutely well-earned to witness.

(As an aside: I've always admired Jamie Bamber's work on this show but never felt the writers quite knew what to do with Apollo, which is one of the reasons his rank and role has changed so often. I'm glad that, in the end, they found the right one for both actor and character to play, because he was outstanding.)

And let's not forget the behavior of the man on the other side of the Cylon revelation: Saul Mother-Frakkin' Tigh, as played by Michael Mother-Frakkin' Hogan and his amazing acting eye. Of course Saul would out himself under these circumstances. It's the ideal scenario for him, really: he gets to unburden himself of his horrible secret, potentially save the fleet, and then die before he has to deal with being around all his comrades who have discovered his shameful true identity. And so he walks, resolute, into his oldest friend's office and sets himself up to die -- wants to die, really -- and then stands, just as resolute and ramrod straight, in the airlock as he waits for the gambit by Lee (a kid he once had little use for, and here comes to respect) to play out, one way or the other. It's like the "Galactica" production team is testing Hogan to see how much he can give by taking away as much as possible -- "Okay, Mike, try acting after we cover up one of your eyes for the rest of the series!" "Okay, Mike, now you're going to stand perfectly motionless for half an episode where you're the emotional fulcrum!" -- and he keeps passing their tests with flying colors.

And then, of course, there's Mary McDonnell herself, so brilliant in playing a completely different Laura from the one we saw for most of "Hub." This is a Laura at peace with everything, because she knows she could die soon but has the love of Bill Adama, who is able to be around Gaius Baltar without the old homicidal impulses resurfacing, who even respects the selfish twit enough to recognize that he has a better chance than she does of getting through to D'Anna. For a half-second, I thought Laura's "Take him. That's good" comment to Baltar's offer was just her keeping herself out of the line of fire and making sure he'd be the first one executed if D'Anna lost it, but I quickly realized that she and Baltar moved past all of that when she saved his life last week.

And that in turn led to James Callis getting his own wonderful turn at bat, as Baltar tried to talk D'Anna off the ledge of mutually-assured destruction. Again, we shouldn't believe a scintilla of Baltar's transformation into man of God, given all we know of him over the years, but Callis has sold me on it, and therefore I buy into how even hardcore D'Anna might be inclined to listen to him when he explains how brute force never worked in forging peace with humanity in the past. Baltar believes his own spiel about how we're all perfect creations of God's plan and therefore should be forgiven all their sins -- as his mortal enemy Laura forgave him in his moment of greatest vulnerability last week -- and therefore he believes that D'Anna can be forgiven by humanity, and vice versa.

If there was a frustrating part of "Revelations," it was one more of design than execution, and that was Tory throwing in with her Cylon brothers and sisters and telling humanity to talk to the hand. They've been taking Tory down this path all season, and Rekha Sharma did a fine job playing every step along the way. It's just that, in an episode where every other character, human and Cylon, were almost unfailingly wise and noble and self-sacrificing (even D'Anna, scary as she is, was convinced this was the only way to save her people), seeing Tory ditch her old crowd to go hang with the cool kids stuck out. It wasn't a false note, but it still didn't fit with the rest of the piece, especially since Anders and Tyrol got relatively short shrift during the hour. I liked how Tyrol seemed so calm at the moment of discovery, how he shrugged and told Sam to fess up to the missus, and I loved how Katee Sackhoff played Kara's reaction to this news (betrayed and yet full of resolve to fix this crisis, her lying toaster husband be damned), but I feel much more attached to those two than to Tory and would have rather spent more time with them somehow than with her totally overestimating her underestimation of Lee.

But again, everyone and everything else was so perfect here that I can forgive Tory her moment of false superiority. From Adama getting his uniform back on through the shot of the Raptors entering the atmosphere was just pure, concentrated happiness for almost every character on the show (save Tigh and Tyrol) -- and so of course all that happiness had to be dashed, in as devastating a manner as possible.

And of course the show that uses robots and space ships with FTL drives to tell stories about a post-9/11 world would eventually wind up with all of its characters wandering around a ruined version of lower Manhattan.

Some other thoughts on "Revelations":

• I loved how the celebration montage paid so much respect to the history of the series. We had the smooch between the two longtime deckhands whose names I'm forgetting, a brief glimpse of the mining ship (who have always had it the worst of anybody in the rag-tag fleet), and of course Kara standing at the memorial wall, thanking Kat for her role in getting them there ("We made it, kid").
  
• At one point in his speech, Adama refers to them being on the run for three years. Does that make sense? We know at least a year passed before they got to New Caprica, another year spent there before the Cylons showed up, several more months before the Exodus, then a very long stretch of time covering the voyage to the algae planet, the build-up to Baltar's trial, and all the shenanigans of season 4.0.Seems like it should be closer to four than three, no?
• Another nice nod to continuity to have poor family-less Laird as the deck chief now that Tyrol got himself demoted.
• Since there's all this talk of doing multiple TV-movies after the series is finished, I could imagine them devoting an entire one to all the things that happened off-camera in this episode -- again, much of it revolving around everybody responding to knowing the names of the Final Four. As I've said, there needs to be a scene at some point where Tyrol and a Sharon (preferably Boomer, but Athena will do) sit down and talk about how life could've been very different.
  
• Now, why do you suppose D'Anna said that only four of the Five were in the fleet? We know she saw all five of them on the algae planet, and if she didn't recognize the fifth, she would just assume he or she was a random person in the fleet, so what? Was the fifth Cylon aready on the baseship (Helo? Laura? Baltar? Hot Dog?) and D'Anna didn't feel like spilling that news at that point? Is the fifth somewhere in the fleet but in a position where D'Anna knows he or she would never surface? Regardless of her reasons for (presumably) lying, I did like the way she cleverly informed Lee and Tigh that she was already in contact with the Four, implying that she was somehow communicating through secret Cylon means when she was just speaking loudly in the presence of all four of them.

I could probably go on for a few more thousand words -- including the usual raves for the work of Gary Hutzel's FX team and Bear McCreary on the score -- but it's nearly 11 o'clock and I want to get this posted the second the finale's done airing. What did everybody else think? And how do you intend to fill the gap between now and '09? Click here to read the full post

Swingtown, "Love Will Find a Way": Subtle as a leisure suit

Well, that's it for me with "Swingtown." I thought about going into all the ways that the second episode confirmed my opinion of the pilot, but I just don't care enough to bother. Basically, this is a Max Fischer Players version of "The Ice Storm," with (slightly) better production values. Feel free to get spoiler-y in the comments if you want, but I'm done with this one.

(Amusingly, after the first episode performed decently in the ratings, the PTC finally did call for "Swingtown" to be taken off the air. So we're still in agreement, for different reasons.) Click here to read the full post

The Wire, Season 1, Episode 3, "The Buys" (Veterans edition)

Once again, we're going to talk about season one of "The Wire" in two different versions: one safe for people who are brand-new to the show (or who haven't watched all the way through to the end), one where we can talk about anything from first episode to last. This is the latter; scroll down for the newbies edition if you want to be protected from discussion of things that are still to come, both this season and in later seasons.

Spoilers for episode three, "The Buys," coming up just as soon as I walk on broken glass...

As I've written many times before, I'm grateful that HBO sent out the first four episodes of "The Wire" for review instead of just one or two. Because the show proceeds at such a measured pace, because it has so many characters and stories going, and because it so often refuses to play by the normal rules of TV storytelling, it took a while to really appreciate how great the show was. For some, that revelation didn't (or won't) come for another episode or two. For me, it was the chess scene contained right here in "The Buys."

If the first two episodes established D'Angelo as more thoughtful than your average TV drug dealer -- and "The Wire" as more thoughtful than your average cop show -- then the chess scene, where he schools Bodie and Wallace on both the game (chess) and The Game (drugs) is the moment when I realized that I was looking at someone -- and something -- very special here. Not only does the chess/drug metaphor work, but it shows how well D'Angelo understands the rigged, unchangeable nature of The Game, and how deep this series intends to go.

Bodie and Wallace using the chess board to play checkers -- a fine game, but a simpler one where it's easy to play in a relaxed, reactive fashion -- are standing in for every TV crime drama that preceded "The Wire." They had the same pieces at their disposal, but they chose to play an easier game with more instant gratification, where David Simon and company are in this for the long haul, setting up pieces for moves that we won't get to see for weeks or months or, in some cases, years. The pieces are not interchangeable; each one has its own unique role to play on the board, and each one's actions affect what happens to every other piece. And if you stick around for all those moves, it'll be clear that, as D'Angelo says, chess is the better game, yo.

The show is absolutely in opening gambit mode at this point. We're three episodes in and the Barksdale detail has accomplished next to nothing. They don't even have a photo of their target until late in the episode, thanks to "cuddly housecat" Lester Freamon demonstrating more game than anybody expected of him, and the raid on the low-rises turns out to be as useless as both McNulty and Daniels knew it would be. But pieces are being moved all across the board, defenses are being probed, and all of this will turn out to be brilliant storytelling strategy by the end.

Simon's fondness for parallel dialogue and behavior continues here. In the opening scene, D'Angelo echoes McNulty's thoughts about how stupid it is for the drug business to be conducted in such an agressive, violent manner compared to every other (legitimate) American industry, and though McNulty planted a seed, we know that D has already been questioning how things get done. Meanwhile, we see that both a low man on the drug side like Bodie and a high man on the cop side like Burrell can be equally clueless about how things really work. Bodie is positive that he has the ability to advance in The Game, to get all the way to the other side of the board and win, no matter how many times D tries to tell him that he'll likely always be a pawn. Burrell, meanwhile, is so complacent and far removed from the street in his position as Deputy Ops that he believes Daniels' detail can get to Barksdale with nothing but quick and dirty street-level arrests, when Avon is so far removed from that sort of action that he doesn't even appear in this episode.

Avon's number two man, Stringer Bell, starts to come into focus here after being an equally shadowy presence in the first two episodes. Like D'Angelo -- better than D'Angelo, really -- he has an intuitive grasp of how The Game is played. Where D is shocked by the idea that the "new package" will be the same as the current, stepped-on, impotent brand of dope they're slinging down at The Pit, String understands the power of rebranding, particularly to an ignorant, desperate client base like dope fiends. His take on the drug war is as chilling as it is accurate: "We do worse and we get paid more. The government do better, and it don't mean no nevermind. This s--t here, D, it's forever."

"The Buys" keeps playing with our expectations of these characters based on what we've seen of them so far and what we know from other police show archetypes.(*)

(*) And by now I should probably throw in the obligatory disclaimer about "The Wire" not really being a cop show, but in this embryonic stage of the series, it's using a familiar cops-vs-crooks paradigm to get its points across.

McNulty and Daniels continue to go at it, as McNulty refuses to go along with the pointless raid on the low-rises, which might be an admirable moral stand if he didn't insist on taking it in the most public, petulant manner possible. Daniels, loyal servant of Burrell though he may be, understands just as well as Jimmy how stupid this raid is, and he gives Jimmy opportunity after opportunity to bag on it without being so obviously insubordinate to Daniels, and Jimmy refuses. And just when we're starting to take Daniels' side in all of this, we find out from Jimmy's FBI buddy Fitz that Daniels might be dirty.

And during the raid, there's that wonderful, hilarious moment when Bodie takes a swing at boozing old Pat Mahone, Carver starts wailing on Bodie in retaliation, and we see Kima -- upstanding, forthright Kima, in some ways even more the hero of the piece than Jimmy to this point -- sprinting over. And just as we assume she's going to break up the fight, she instead starts beating on young Mr. Bodie herself, even harder than Carver and the others were doing. Kima just wanted to make sure she got her licks in on a punk who'd hit a cop (useless though Mahone may be), and the ferocity and joy Kima takes in the moment isn't the sort of thing you would ever expect to see from a "good" cop on a different show.

(Punctuating the comic genius of the scene is the quick cut to the equally useless Augie Polk lighting up a cigarette for his prone partner to enjoy during the fracass.)

And then there's the scene at state's attorney Rhonda Pearlman's house, which bounces back so often between the cop show cliche of the secret cop/lawyer romance (going back at least to "Hill Street Blues") and the notion that Jimmy's just there for work reasons that it becomes not a chess game, but a ping pong match. Ronnie's pained reaction to seeing Jimmy at her door makes it clear that this isn't the first time his charming Irish ass has appeared here at a late hour, and as she tries to decide whether she wants to answer his booty call, he instead starts asking her about warrants for cloning pagers... which actually pisses her off more than if he was just there for sex... and so of course Jimmy admits that he's there for that, too, and flashes her that devil grin that he knows she can't resist... and then Ronnie tells him to go... and then we cut to them making the beast with two backs. The constant reversals take what could have been a stock situation and make it into something more interesting and much funnier.

We're not even close to having a sense of the endgame, but things are (very) slowly starting to happen, and a fuller picture will be visible very soon.

Some other thoughts on "The Buys":

• If Avon's the king, Stringer the queen, muscle like Wee-Bey and Stinkum the rooks and slingers like Bodie and Wallace the pawns, what does that make the newest piece on the board, shotgun-toting stick-up boy Omar?
• Bubbs' "What Not to Wear" dope fiend fashion intervention for the undercover Sydnor was another darkly hilarious scene in an episode full of them. Bubbs is yet another character on the show who's never quite what you expect him to be. He's so at ease with himself, and so perceptive about those around him, and yet, as Jimmy notes, if he has the answers, why the hell is he a dope fiend?
• Continuing last week's discussion of the show's rules for background music, the titular buys by Sydnor and Bubbs are accompanied by a low-rise boom box blaring out Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock's "It Takes Two," which was also prominently featured in Simon and Ed Burns' non-fiction book "The Corner" as the signature song during the summer that Simon and Burns were hanging around on the Fayette St. drug corner. (NOTE: Whoops. Several people pointed out to me that "It Takes Two" was the signature summer song in Simon's "Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets." That'll learn me to act like I read books and whatnot.)
• More music: while the rest of the detail is at the low-rises and Prez is stuck doing a crossword puzzle, Jimmy is going over his notes while listening to The Pogues' "Dirty Old Town." Get ready to hear a lot from Jimmy's favorite band over the course of the series.
• Though D'Angelo last week talked about getting an apartment to live with his son and baby mama Donette, it would appear that's more about being there for his kid than any major loyalty to Donette, seeing that he decides to spend the bonus from Stringer on buying a "drink" from Shardene the near-sighted stripper.
• Early in the episode, we're introduced to Prez's odious father-in-law, Southeastern District commander Stan Valchek (wonderfully played by Al Brown). I love Burrell and Daniels' post-mortem discussion of the meeting, where Burrell calls Valchek "a necessary evil" and Daniels asks what's so necessary about him.

And now it's time to talk about how this episode relates to what we know is coming later:

• As with Stringer's presence in these earlier episodes, there's much less to Omar's introduction than I remembered, though Michael K. Williams' delivery of "Well now..." while watching the cops roll out of The Pit foreshadowed all the "Indeed"s and other bon mots that would emerge from Omar in future episodes. It's interesting to see an Omar who isn't such a local legend yet -- Wee-Bey seems puzzled when Bodie first tells him the name -- but of course it makes sense, as much of his legend will be created over the course of the war he conducts with the Barksdales this season.
• Also, note that in our first glimpse of Omar in action, he shoots someone in the knee, a move that Michael will copy during our final glimpse of him at the end of season five.
• During the bogus press conference about the Gant killing, you'll note Bill Zorzi (former Baltimore Sun reporter and future "Wire" writer and castmember) as one of the reporters asking a question, and there's another voice that sounds a lot like David Simon himself.
• During our post-finale interview, Simon and I talked about how all three characters in the chess scene eventually wound up dead -- and at the hands of their employers, at that: "We knew that if we got a long enough run, all three of the chess players would be out of the game, so to speak. Prison or dead. We did not chart all of their fates to a specific outcome, but we knew that the Pit crew would be subject to an exacting attrition."
• With the Gold Gloves photo pull, not only does Lester demonstrate that he's more useful than Polk and Mahone will ever hope to be, but he gets the first chance to show off his flair for the grand gesture with the way he silently drops the poster in front of Kima and Jimmy, then retreats to his desk without comment. One of the reasons Lester is my favorite "Wire" character was his knack for -- need for, really, as intellectual vanity was the Achilles heel that led to him participating in Jimmy's season five shenanigans -- demonstrating his superior brainpower in the most dramatic way possible.

Coming up next Friday: "Old Cases," in which Jimmy and Bunk demonstrate the single most useful word in the English language.

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

The Wire, Season 1, Episode 3, "The Buys" (Newbies edition)

Once again, we're going to talk about season one of "The Wire" in two different versions: one safe for people who are brand-new to the show (or who haven't watched all the way through to the end), one where we can talk about anything from first episode to last. This is the former; scroll up for the veterans edition if you want to discuss things that are still to come, both this season and in later seasons.

Spoilers for episode three, "The Buys," coming up just as soon as I walk on broken glass...

As I've written many times before, I'm grateful that HBO sent out the first four episodes of "The Wire" for review instead of just one or two. Because the show proceeds at such a measured pace, because it has so many characters and stories going, and because it so often refuses to play by the normal rules of TV storytelling, it took a while to really appreciate how great the show was. For some, that revelation didn't (or won't) come for another episode or two. For me, it was the chess scene contained right here in "The Buys."

If the first two episodes established D'Angelo as more thoughtful than your average TV drug dealer -- and "The Wire" as more thoughtful than your average cop show -- then the chess scene, where he schools Bodie and Wallace on both the game (chess) and The Game (drugs) is the moment when I realized that I was looking at someone -- and something -- very special here. Not only does the chess/drug metaphor work, but it shows how well D'Angelo understands the rigged, unchangeable nature of The Game, and how deep this series intends to go.

Bodie and Wallace using the chess board to play checkers -- a fine game, but a simpler one where it's easy to play in a relaxed, reactive fashion -- are standing in for every TV crime drama that preceded "The Wire." They had the same pieces at their disposal, but they chose to play an easier game with more instant gratification, where David Simon and company are in this for the long haul, setting up pieces for moves that we won't get to see for weeks or months or, in some cases, years. The pieces are not interchangeable; each one has its own unique role to play on the board, and each one's actions affect what happens to every other piece. And if you stick around for all those moves, it'll be clear that, as D'Angelo says, chess is the better game, yo.

The show is absolutely in opening gambit mode at this point. We're three episodes in and the Barksdale detail has accomplished next to nothing. They don't even have a photo of their target until late in the episode, thanks to "cuddly housecat" Lester Freamon demonstrating more game than anybody expected of him, and the raid on the low-rises turns out to be as useless as both McNulty and Daniels knew it would be. But pieces are being moved all across the board, defenses are being probed, and all of this will turn out to be brilliant storytelling strategy by the end.

Simon's fondness for parallel dialogue and behavior continues here. In the opening scene, D'Angelo echoes McNulty's thoughts about how stupid it is for the drug business to be conducted in such an agressive, violent manner compared to every other (legitimate) American industry, and though McNulty planted a seed, we know that D has already been questioning how things get done. Meanwhile, we see that both a low man on the drug side like Bodie and a high man on the cop side like Burrell can be equally clueless about how things really work. Bodie is positive that he has the ability to advance in The Game, to get all the way to the other side of the board and win, no matter how many times D tries to tell him that he'll likely always be a pawn. Burrell, meanwhile, is so complacent and far removed from the street in his position as Deputy Ops that he believes Daniels' detail can get to Barksdale with nothing but quick and dirty street-level arrests, when Avon is so far removed from that sort of action that he doesn't even appear in this episode.

Avon's number two man, Stringer Bell, starts to come into focus here after being an equally shadowy presence in the first two episodes. Like D'Angelo -- better than D'Angelo, really -- he has an intuitive grasp of how The Game is played. Where D is shocked by the idea that the "new package" will be the same as the current, stepped-on, impotent brand of dope they're slinging down at The Pit, String understands the power of rebranding, particularly to an ignorant, desperate client base like dope fiends. His take on the drug war is as chilling as it is accurate: "We do worse and we get paid more. The government do better, and it don't mean no nevermind. This s--t here, D, it's forever."

"The Buys" keeps playing with our expectations of these characters based on what we've seen of them so far and what we know from other police show archetypes.(*)

(*) And by now I should probably throw in the obligatory disclaimer about "The Wire" not really being a cop show, but in this embryonic stage of the series, it's using a familiar cops-vs-crooks paradigm to get its points across.

McNulty and Daniels continue to go at it, as McNulty refuses to go along with the pointless raid on the low-rises, which might be an admirable moral stand if he didn't insist on taking it in the most public, petulant manner possible. Daniels, loyal servant of Burrell though he may be, understands just as well as Jimmy how stupid this raid is, and he gives Jimmy opportunity after opportunity to bag on it without being so obviously insubordinate to Daniels, and Jimmy refuses. And just when we're starting to take Daniels' side in all of this, we find out from Jimmy's FBI buddy Fitz that Daniels might be dirty.

And during the raid, there's that wonderful, hilarious moment when Bodie takes a swing at boozing old Pat Mahone, Carver starts wailing on Bodie in retaliation, and we see Kima -- upstanding, forthright Kima, in some ways even more the hero of the piece than Jimmy to this point -- sprinting over. And just as we assume she's going to break up the fight, she instead starts beating on young Mr. Bodie herself, even harder than Carver and the others were doing. Kima just wanted to make sure she got her licks in on a punk who'd hit a cop (useless though Mahone may be), and the ferocity and joy Kima takes in the moment isn't the sort of thing you would ever expect to see from a "good" cop on a different show.

(Punctuating the comic genius of the scene is the quick cut to the equally useless Augie Polk lighting up a cigarette for his prone partner to enjoy during the fracass.)

And then there's the scene at state's attorney Rhonda Pearlman's house, which bounces back so often between the cop show cliche of the secret cop/lawyer romance (going back at least to "Hill Street Blues") and the notion that Jimmy's just there for work reasons that it becomes not a chess game, but a ping pong match. Ronnie's pained reaction to seeing Jimmy at her door makes it clear that this isn't the first time his charming Irish ass has appeared here at a late hour, and as she tries to decide whether she wants to answer his booty call, he instead starts asking her about warrants for cloning pagers... which actually pisses her off more than if he was just there for sex... and so of course Jimmy admits that he's there for that, too, and flashes her that devil grin that he knows she can't resist... and then Ronnie tells him to go... and then we cut to them making the beast with two backs. The constant reversals take what could have been a stock situation and make it into something more interesting and much funnier.

We're not even close to having a sense of the endgame, but things are (very) slowly starting to happen, and a fuller picture will be visible very soon.

Some other thoughts on "The Buys":

• If Avon's the king, Stringer the queen, muscle like Wee-Bey and Stinkum the rooks and slingers like Bodie and Wallace the pawns, what does that make the newest piece on the board, shotgun-toting stick-up boy Omar?
• Bubbs' "What Not to Wear" dope fiend fashion intervention for the undercover Sydnor was another darkly hilarious scene in an episode full of them. Bubbs is yet another character on the show who's never quite what you expect him to be. He's so at ease with himself, and so perceptive about those around him, and yet, as Jimmy notes, if he has the answers, why the hell is he a dope fiend?
• Continuing last week's discussion of the show's rules for background music, the titular buys by Sydnor and Bubbs are accompanied by a low-rise boom box blaring out Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock's "It Takes Two," which was also prominently featured in Simon and Ed Burns' non-fiction book "The Corner" as the signature song during the summer that Simon and Burns were hanging around on the Fayette St. drug corner. (NOTE: Whoops. Several people pointed out to me that "It Takes Two" was the signature summer song in Simon's "Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets." That'll learn me to act like I read books and whatnot.)
• More music: while the rest of the detail is at the low-rises and Prez is stuck doing a crossword puzzle, Jimmy is going over his notes while listening to The Pogues' "Dirty Old Town." Get ready to hear a lot from Jimmy's favorite band over the course of the series.
• Though D'Angelo last week talked about getting an apartment to live with his son and baby mama Donette, it would appear that's more about being there for his kid than any major loyalty to Donette, seeing that he decides to spend the bonus from Stringer on buying a "drink" from Shardene the near-sighted stripper.
• Early in the episode, we're introduced to Prez's odious father-in-law, Southeastern District commander Stan Valchek (wonderfully played by Al Brown). I love Burrell and Daniels' post-mortem discussion of the meeting, where Burrell calls Valchek "a necessary evil" and Daniels asks what's so necessary about him.

Coming up next Friday: "Old Cases," in which Jimmy and Bunk demonstrate the single most useful word in the English language.

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

My Boys, "The Transitioning": Alright, alright, alright!

Spoilers for the "My Boys" season premiere coming up just as soon as I put my integrity up for sale...

I talked a bit about the premiere in today's column -- specifically, that I'm forever grateful that they dropped the sports metaphors from the narration, and that the stuff at Crowley's was a lot more entertaining than the stuff in Italy -- so I'll just hit a few points I couldn't in the paper, either for space or spoiler reasons.

First, we have Bobby as P.J.'s mystery date, which was probably the best option, all things considered. I didn't care about any of her three potential boyfriends -- and didn't want the Cubs/Brewers pitcher back under any circumstances, because that relationship made P.J. look like a complete idiot -- and the show has spent enough time dancing around the idea that P.J. might have feelings for one of her buddies (or vice versa) that they needed to come right out and deal with it sooner or later. They already dismissed a P.J./Brendan coupling at the start of last season, and even though it's been implied that Kenny has a crush on her, I just can't see her with him or Mike, and so that leaves Bobby, whom she almost slept with back in the series premiere. So, good choice, and I think there's real potential in terms of how P.J. tries to deal with her desire to take things to the next level with one of her friends without destroying the dynamic among all of her friends. As Mike puts it, "That (sex among two group members) changes everything. This is sacred."

And speaking of Mike, I'm not sure what was funnier: his lame McConnaughey impression, or the fact that the Crowley's waitress fell for it. (And is McConnaughey now the go-to impression for men under a certain age? I'm surprised by how many guys I know, myself included, who'll launch into a bit of MCConnaughey-as-Wooderson bit under the right circumstances.) Really, I enjoyed all of the shenanigans at Crowley's: Andy getting a little too into his new merchant-of-death gig, Brendan despairing at the thought of having to play adult contemporary, Kenny convincing himself that Bobby was in danger, and everybody else telling Kenny to leave it alone.

Glad to have the show back. And if next week -- also free of both sports metaphors and scenes of P.J. doing her job -- is any indication, the producers actually recognized their weakest points and tried to eliminate them.

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

Emmys: Heigl won't be on anybody's ballot, but who'd be on mine?

The above is a picture you won't see again this fall, as Katherine Heigl's name wasn't on the list of performers who submitted themselves for Emmy consideration this year. When Emmy maven Tom O'Neill asked Heigl's people why she didn't put herself up, she replied:

"I did not feel that I was given the material this season to warrant an Emmy nomination and in an effort to maintain the integrity of the academy organization, I withdrew my name from contention," she tells Gold Derby. "In addition, I did not want to potentially take away an opportunity from an actress who was given such materials."

As if the "Grey's Anatomy" set weren't an already awkward place, that next meeting between Heigl and Shonda Rhimes -- whom Heigl just accused of not giving her anything award-worthy to play -- is going to be just splendid, don't you think?

Meanwhile, the complete list of submitted performers has the usual interesting tidbits about what genres and categories certain shows and people were submitted in. (Keep in mind that the studio and/or producers choose comedy vs. drama, while it's up to the actors themselves to declare whether they think they're a lead or supporting actor.) Matt at Throwing Things has a break-down of some of the more noteworthy decisions, and so after the jump I'm going to do something simpler: based on where people were submitted, I'm going to pick my ideal Emmy nominees in the series acting categories.

First up, I have to say that this isn't as easy as you'd think. Yes, I have an advantage over your average Emmy voter in that I actually watch most of the shows up for consideration, but there are categories where I was hard-pressed to come up with a list of five names (for lead comedy actress, I just gave up), and in others there were at least 10 people who immediately went onto my must-list. So we'll just take it category-by-category, as I try to explain how I got here:

Lead actor in a comedy series

Because there are so few traditional comedies on TV these days -- it seems like half the submitted shows are hour-longs that just have some comedic elements -- there aren't a lot of comedy leads, period, let alone award-worthy ones. Alec Baldwin ("30 Rock") is my obvious choice as the winner, and I'd have to put Steve Carell ("The Office") on any ballot, if only for his work in the season finale (he was quite great for most of the season, in fact). Beyond that? I thought about old pros Brad Garrett and Kelsey Grammer (the latter all but guaranteed of a nomination, because he's popular, because he just had a heart attack and because, even though "Back to You" wasn't much, he's great), and other usual suspects like Larry David ("Curb" was terribly uneven and he wasn't close to the funniest performer this time), Jason Lee, Zach Braff, etc., before finally settling on Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement from "Flight of the Conchords," who were so unusual and funny (and you can't nominate one without the other), plus Zachary Levi, who had to do a lot of heavy lifting on "Chuck" and rarely seemed to break a sweat.

Lead actress in a comedy series

Again, can we just pass on this one? Tina Fey ("30 Rock") is the only submitted performer I can endorse wholeheartedly, and I felt okay about choosing Christina Applegate ("Samantha Who"), who's great on a show that doesn't really deserve her. Unless the rules required me to fill out a full five names, I'd be done after that, but if forced to, I guess I'd add Anna Friel from "Pushing Daisies," Mary-Louise Parker from "Weeds" (the show annoys me these days but at least she's interesting on it) and, just because it would amuse me and make some people's heads explode, Miley Cyrus from "Hannah Montana."

Lead actor in a drama series

Such a strong category that I could come up with two completely separate ballots where I wouldn't feel the least bit self-conscious about including anybody. The five who didn't quite make the cut: Kyle Chandler ("Friday Night Lights"), Tim DeKay (who was one of the two reasons I watched "Tell Me You Love Me," a show I otherwise despised), Damian Lewis ("Life"), Edward James Olmos ("Battlestar Galactica") and Dominic West ("The Wire"). I really can't give you a good reason to exclude any of them, except that the next five were just a tiny bit better: Gabriel Byrne ("In Treatment"), Bryan Cranston ("Breaking Bad"), Michael C. Hall ("Dexter"), Jon Hamm ("Mad Men") and Hugh Laurie ("House").

Lead actress in a drama series

It's all-cable here: Ginnifer Goodwin and Jeanne Tripplehorn from "Big Love" (a show I have issues with, but where the performances by several of the actresses, notably these two, are brilliant), Holly Hunter from "Saving Grace" (like "Samantha Who," a performance better than the show probably earns), Ally Walker (the other reason I stuck it through "Tell Me You Love Me") and, my favorite, Mary McDonnell from "Battlestar Galactica."

Other than Hunter, I would be stunned if any of these people were to get an actual Emmy nomination.

Supporting actor in a comedy series

God, there's a lot of good talent here that I couldn't find room to include, whether it's people being hilarious in tiny roles (Leslie David Baker, Rhys Darby) or more multi-layered performances that didn't have the best material this year (Donald Faison, John C. McGinley, John Krasinski). I have to go with Jim Gaffigan (who single-handedly elevates "My Boys" from amusing time-waster to something I really look forward to), Neil Patrick Harris (hilarious and well-rounded on "How I Met Your Mother"), J.B. Smoove (painfully funny in almost every second of "Curb" screen time), Rainn Wilson (who even got some dramatic notes to play after Dwight got dumped on "The Office") and Ray Wise as the perfect Devil on "Reaper."

Supporting actress in a comedy series

The "Saturday Night Live" actors are now eligible in these categories, and so I have to give some love to the current cast's MVPs, Kristin Wiig and Amy Poehler. Jenna Fischer didn't have anything as blatantly award-baiting on this season of "The Office" as she did last year but was still splendid, as was Angela Kinsey, who's become sort of the first among equals of the show's actors not in the opening credits. For the last slot, I'll go with Dana Delany, who, outside of one or two episodes, didn't have a ton of funny things to do on "Desperate Housewives" but was the best (and at times, only) reason to watch it this year.

Supporting actor in a drama series

Oy. I could fill this with nothing but people from "Lost" and "The Wire," and I still would have too many names (and that's even though certain "Wire" actors like Clarke Peters didn't even bother to submit their names, no doubt knowing their award chances were lost causes). Plus, if I just went with those shows, I'd be leaving out John Slattery's brilliant, oily work on "Mad Men." In an attempt to spread the wealth while also recognizing as much great work as possible, I'll fill out the category with Jorge Garcia and Michael Emerson as my token "Lost" choices, Andre Royo as the lone "Wire" representative (with great apologies to Wendell Pierce and Michael K. Williams), and Michael Hogan and his amazing acting eye from "Battlestar Galactica."

(Other names briefly considered: the men of "Friday Night Lights," Justin Chambers from "Grey's," Blair Underwood from "In Treatment," Robert Sean Leonard from "House" and Scott Foley from "The Unit.")

Supporting actress in a drama series

Connie Britton ("Friday Night Lights") for the win, please. After that, some tough decisions. I thought about Sandra Oh from "Grey's" and Yunjin Kim from "Lost," but while they had some strong individual moments, they didn't register enough over the whole season. Also considered, then dismissed: Maura Tierney (who was great in the Abby-off-the-wagon arc on "ER"), Katee Sackhoff (who brought the crazy on "Galactica") and January Jones (I can never decide how much of what makes her "Mad Men" character work is her performance and how much is the hair, makeup and wardrobe). My other four nominees: Mia Wasikowska and Dianne Wiest (both superb on "In Treatment"), Tricia Helfer for "Galactica," and Amanda Seyfried as another of those great "Big Love" women.

But that's just me spit-balling. Give me a few weeks to really slave over the list and I could be talked into some major changes.

What do you think? Click here to read the full post

Sepinwall on TV: 'My Boys' review

Today's column previews tonight's return of "My Boys," which I couldn't be more pleased about -- especially since the show has finally dropped the lame sports metaphors from P.J.'s narration. I'll be back with a spoiler post tonight, but if you want to get yourself into the mood, it's always a good time to watch the douchebag intervention. Click here to read the full post

Top Chef: And the winner is...

Spoilers for the "Top Chef" season 4 finale coming up just as soon as I stock up on liquid nitrogen..

Stephanie. Okay. I'm fine with that. She was easily one of the best chefs this season, and based on the events of the finale, she was really the only choice.

I don't care how good Lisa's finale dishes were -- and there was so much praise for them that I started to get worried -- because she was such a toxic nightmare throughout the season that it would have been a black mark on the show for her to win. This wasn't like season 3 Dale, where he was only occasionally impressive pre-finale but was usually at least competent; Lisa survived week after week by being the second-worst, and it would reflect really badly on the franchise to have her as the winner.

Richard, meanwhile, presented the opposite problem: he had been up there with Stephanie (and, to a lesser degree, Dale and Antonia) as the best chefs of the season, but, like Casey last year, he choked at the end. He got too caught up in technique over flavor, and even he couldn't really defend his dishes.

And so Stephanie had to be the winner, almost by default, even though the only one of her finale dishes that seemed to get universal praise was her third course. As Ted Allen noted, of course, there's the matter of "better" versus "how much better," and it's possible that Stephanie's meat course was so much better than any dish of the evening that she deserved the win. Still, the editing didn't make her seem that impressive, and it's unclear if that was just to maintain suspense until the ending or if that was an accurate reflection of how the judges reacted to all the dishes.

Anyway, I'm glad with the final result and yet not that excited about it. Seems kind of an appropriate ending for this season, which had so much talent and promise but rarely made my mouth water.

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