Caprica, "Reins of a Waterfall": Boxing day

A review of last night's "Caprica" coming up just as soon as I glue your nose to your ear...

"Balance it out." -Joe Adama

And it was when we got to that line, at the end of the three screener episodes I got in late December, that I knew I was in with "Caprica" for the long haul.

It's a fundamentally different show than "Battlestar Galactica," despite sharing a universe (and Willie Adama) with it, not just because of the earthbound setting, but the elements at play: corporate intrigue, police investigations, corruption, revenge melodrama, teen angst, etc. But "different" does not equal "bad," and so far I've been enjoying seeing these elements of non-sci-fi dramas injected into this world, in the same way I dug the military and political aspects of "BSG."

And, as on the other show, Ron Moore is clearly reacting to the over-reliance on techno-babble over human drama from his "Star Trek" experience. Yes, Daniel Graystone's building sentient robots and we spend a lot of time in a virtual reality space, but Joe makes it clear where the series' priorities lie when he tells Daniel, "Don't give me techno-talk! Just help me find my daughter!"

After the pilot made it seem like these two would be reluctant, unlikely allies, the events of these next two episodes have explained how they've instead become blood enemies, and Esai Morales has been great at portraying the irrationality of grief.

I also really liked the black humor of the scene where Amanda and Daniel come home to find each other bloodied for different reasons (the Graystones are having a bad stretch) and wind up having sex with the poor Zoe/Avatar/Cylon has to stand and watch.

Things are still getting messy in both the real and holo-band world, with more hints about what Sister Clarice is up to (she was meant to use the avatar to help the cause "through apotheosis"), and with Lacy and Zoe releasing Tamara's avatar into the rest of the holo-band world because they don't realize who/what she is.

Still lots of world-building going on, from Patton Oswalt as Baxter Sarno, a kind of 12 Colonies cross between Jay Leno (the style of his jokes) and Jon Stewart ("More than half of college-age viewers say they get their news from Sarno!") to the use of old juke-joint R&B on the soundtrack in the Little Tauron scenes to our glimpses of Agent Dunham and his partner working the case. And after a casual reference in last week's dialogue, we get more explicit confirmation that Joe's brother Sam is gay, and that it doesn't seem to be a big deal for Joe or Willie. (We'll have to wait and see whether that's because they're family, or if the "BSG"/"Caprica" universe has a lack of homophobia in the same way we've seen in the past that there's no real sexism.)

Finally, since I've said in previous writings that you don't need to have seen "Battlestar Galactica" to understand or appreciate "Caprica," it occurs to me that we should try to be courteous to the "BSG" ignorant in case this show inspires them to check out the older one. That doesn't mean you can't talk about parallels between stories on the two shows, or how "Caprica" stories are pointing towards events on "BSG" - just that if we can all be a little oblique about that, I think it would be nice. Those who saw "BSG" will get what you're talking about, and those who didn't won't be spoiled.

I say this because I was too explicit in a reference to the "BSG" finale in last week's review, and I regret that. (I've since changed the reference, and I will say that if you saw the original version, it gave away too much, but still only a small aspect of the whole finale.)

And with that out of the way... what did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Burn Notice, "Noble Cause": Micro-rave

The Thursday night TV show pile-up meant I didn't get to this week's "Burn Notice" until last night. But even if I'd watched it on time, I don't know that I'd have a lot to say about it. Chris Vance is being a little too hammy and eeeeevil as Gilroy, and the case of Sugar and his slow cousin Dougie felt like that occasional instance of a "Burn Notice" plot that wasn't so much a retro story with a twist, but a story you might have seen on a show 30 years ago.

On the plus side: Michael's microwave shenanigans, the return of Chuck Finley, the reason behind Madeline receiving a crime-stoppers award, and Erik King (Doakes from "Dexter") getting some employment. Not a bad episode - just a blah one.

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

The Office, "Sabre": Where's Wallace?

A review of "The Office" coming up just as soon as I taste a rainbow...

I've seen a lot of you complain a lot this season that "The Office" feels played-out, and/or that Jim and Pam (Pam especially) have become really smug and annoying. Though I haven't found season six to be as strong or consistent as season five was, "Sabre" was the first episode to really make me see the validity of either of those complaints. It was an episode that felt too reminiscent of a previous one (with Michael reacting to Sabre's new policies with only slightly more maturity than he took to Charles Miner), where most of the laughs came from relatively minor characters (David Wallace, Andy, Erin) and where I really disliked Jim and Pam for the first time, maybe, ever.

I was hoping when they announced that Dunder-Mifflin had been sold based on the strength of the branches, and of this branch in particular, that we might get a story arc where Michael was more or less left alone to wield his peculiar brand of managerial strategy. Instead, Sabre(*) comes in and starts dictating policy changes. I recognize that mergers and consolidations are a big part of corporate culture now, and lots of real-life Michaels and Creeds are being forced to learn a new set of rules after having years to get used to the old ones. But at the same time, the show has gone to this particular well an awful lot, notably with Ryan's brief corporate reign and then the Miner/Michael Scott Paper Company arc, and I'd rather see them try something different at this point.

(*) By the way, is there not a single hockey fan at Dunder-Mifflin Scranton? Perhaps one who's ever paid a visit to the company's Buffalo branch, where they have an NHL team whose name would have told them that it's not pronounced "SOB-ray"?

Still, there was some funny material in the main story, most of it taking place at the home of an unemployed David Wallace, now so lacking in direction and drive that he's happy for the first time in his life to see Michael Scott show up unannounced. Andy Buckley has mainly had to play the exasperated straight man to Michael since he first turned up in season two, and it was fun to watch him cut loose and play this pathetic creature shuffling around his house, coming up with terrible business ideas(**), jamming with his son on a "Suck-It" theme song, etc.

(**) When David proposed the idea for the Suck-It, my wife turned to me and said, "Every parent thinks that one up at some point or another. Then we realize it's stupid."

Ed Helms and Ellie Kemper continue to be adorable and funny as the oblivious, Bizarro World version of Jim and Pam. However, their overlapping confessions to the camera crew was one of two instances in this episode where I began to wonder about the consistency of that device. We saw in seasons past that the camera guys befriended Pam and weren't above interfering in the action a little (as they did by tipping Pam off to the Dwight/Angela secret romance), and I would have to think these guys would take pity on these two and clue them in in some way.

(The other documentary issue: if we assume that the film is something Dunder-Mifflin signed off on years ago, shouldn't it be an issue for new management? Even if it's a case where Gabe or Kathy Bates or someone does a double take and says something like, "Oh, yeah, that's part of the deal, too.")

As for Jim and Pam's daycare center interview, that's a kind of story I rarely like on any sitcom (even though I've faced childcare availability issues myself over the years), and this one struck a particularly flat note. When I find myself sympathizing with Joey Slotnick from "The Single Guy" over Pamela Morgan Beasley Halpert, something has gone seriously awry with the heart of the series, even if John Krasinski (who directed this one) can do a good Christian Slater impression.

Ah, well. At least it wasn't a clip show. And we do get one more new episode next week before yet another hiatus (this one due to the Olympics).

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

Parks and Recreation, "Sweetums": What's crackin', DJ Roomba?

A review of last night's "Parks and Recreation" coming up just as soon as I drop in a token and look at a duck...

"Sweetums" lived up to its name, not only in its high-fructose antics like the parks department turning the office into a rave after having too many NutriYum bars(*) or Tom introducing his co-workers (and the audience) to the hilarious splendor of DJ Roomba, but in its level of genuine sweetness.

(*) The actual NutriYum commercial reminded me very much of the sort of thing that Troy McClure would have done on "The Simpsons," and I mean that in a good way.

This season has made it clear that Ron F'ing Swanson(**) not only appreciates Leslie for making his job so much easier, but likes her as a person. So it was interesting to see her push her status as Ron's work wife too far (to his mind), then funny to see Ron try to prove her wrong (the hand-crafted harp, complete with photographic evidence, was a highlight), and then ultimately for him to realize(***) he was over-reacting, and to give a very Swanson-esque apology, complete with the terse, factual closing line, "That is the end of what I have to say."

(**) If you haven't seen it yet, the NBC promo department put together this awesome Ron-centric trailer for the show. Enjoy.

(***) He realized this after Leslie made what's at least the second "Dead Poets Society" reference on an NBC Thursday comedy this season, after the "Community" episode that introduced John Michael Higgins. I would like to hear more of a eulogy that begins, "Oh captain, my captain! Ron Swanson: a swan song."

The Leslie/Ron story also returned to a goldmine for the series: the civil servants having to deal with the insane questions and complaints from their constituents. (And this time, Ann had to suffer through it with them, in a pretty good comic outing for Rashida Jones, who also got to spray Leslie with water, Jim Halpert-style.)

Tom's story was impressive in that it made me feel sorry for him (for his inability to tell Wendy how he feels) at the same time he was being an inconsiderate jerk to all the co-workers who showed up to help him move. The episode was awash in Tom Haverford d-baggery, from his fashion show in the teaser (with the LED belt that said variations on "What's crackin'?") to his Canadian DVD edition of "Deep Blue Sea" to him having a box containing nothing but pocket squares.

We also got a continuation of the running gag about the Parks department's hatred of the library (and vice versa), and more movement on the Andy/April quasi-romance, with April feeling squeezed between her judgmental gay boyfriends and Andy's cheerful obliviousness.

Finally, in case you missed the news last week, NBC gave the show a very early renewal for next season. The ratings still aren't very good, so it's nice to see the network rewarding the show for raising its game and being so consistently good this year.

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

Community, "Romantic Expressionism": Who's your Greendale daddy?

A review of last night's strong "Community" coming up just as soon as I die from a lack of service...

I've talked a lot in these "Community" reviews about the dangers of trying to force an Unresolved Sexual Tension situation when the chemistry's lacking, as it was with Jeff and Britta. "Romantic Expressionism" kind of brilliantly reacts to that concern by creating UST between every single member of the group, regardless of gender, age, or Pierce-ness. (Okay, so maybe Pierce-ness is still a problem for the rest.) I doubt the series is going to follow up on most of the potential combinations we saw in that hilarious staring contest scene at the library - unless NBC pushes for the Annie-Britta one to goose the male demo numbers, that is - but at least they're out there now, and the characters have accepted that they're not really a family, but a collection of unattached, consenting-but-weird adults.

And I will also admit this: Jeff and Britta were great together last night. Not necessarily in a "now they are clearly meant to hook up" way, but just as comedy partners. Britta opposing Jeff's antics in the early episodes was a cliche, and it also didn't serve Gillian Jacobs very well. But having them work towards the same goal - in this case, protecting Annie from "gateway douchebag" Vaughn - with markedly different levels of skill at manipulation was very funny, and the first time in a while that I enjoyed them as a duo, sexual tension or not. Give us a few more stories like this for the pair, and I might stop objecting to the idea that they're each other's romantic density, even if I don't know how necessary it is.

At the same time, Alison Brie was on fire (as she's been for most of the season), regardless of which character Annie was paired with, be it Vaughn (who turned out to be just simple, but not bad, in the end), Troy (being hilariously gross as he tried to mark his territory with her, and calling back to his obsession with "butt stuff" from the psychology episode), Jeff(*), Britta, etc. And seeing Annie absolutely melt in response to Vaughn's song was a reminder that, for all the pop culture references, meta jokes and withering sarcasm, "Community" is a show with a lot of heart, and the kind that rarely feels as forced as it does on some other sitcoms.

(*) I don't think it was an accident that, in the staring scene, Annie's gaze lingered on Jeff for a very long time, given the abundant sparks between the two in the debate episode. I wonder if, in retrospect, the writers regret making Annie so young, as it makes a potential Jeff/Annie romance kind of icky. On the other hand, they seem to be having a lot of fun with the characters' awareness of the icky of it.

The B-story was a simple but effectively funny one, showing old man Pierce's struggle to adapt to yet another college ritual: snarking on bad movies in someone's dorm room. The "Kick-Puncher" movies were amusingly awful in their own right, as were many of the comments, but Pierce's need to hire a writing team was a great touch (as were complaints like, "What are you, my third wife's therapist?"), and then we got another vintage, slightly meta(**) Chevy Chase fall where he knocked down lots of things and made everybody laugh.

(**) This week's winner for meta humor, though, was Vaughn referring to Shirley as "that Sherry Shepherd lady."

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

30 Rock, "Verna": Clang, clang, clang went the mommy

A quick review of tonight's "30 Rock" coming up just as soon as I pre-apologize for clogging your tub, sink and toilet...

There's a generational thing with "Saturday Night Live" where the cast from your formative years is the cast you have the fondest memories of, making it the one period where you'll forgive all the sins (sketches that go on too long, recurring characters who recur too often, etc.) you can find in the show later on. For me, that was the Phil Hartman/Dana Carvey/Jon Lovitz cast - or, I should say, the Hartman/Carvey/Lovitz/Jan Hooks cast. For all that people talked about "SNL" as being a horrible showcase for women before Tina Fey and company showed up in the late '90s, Hooks was just as important a part of the late '80s/early '90s cast as Hartman, able to be just as strong playing the comic center of a sketch as she was being the straight woman.

So I was excited to hear that Hooks would become the latest "SNL" alum to pop by "30 Rock," in what IMDb tells me is her first credited acting gig since 2004's "Jiminy Glick in Lalawood." (Sigh...)

Unfortunately, Hooks wound up in another disappointing episode of what's been an up-and-mostly-down season of "30 Rock."

"Verna" was an episode combining two of my least favorite parts of the show: Jenna, and Jack's mommy issues. (Though Elaine Stritch didn't appear, it was a Colleen episode by proxy.) I understand the desire to make Jenna be less of a cartoon on occasion - and I've certainly complained plenty about Jenna subplots that are too far removed from reality to work - but the only parts of the Jenna/Verna/Jack story I found funny were on the margins, like Alec Baldwin evoking his "Glengarry Glen Ross" character with his "Always. Speak. Quieter." mantra, or Jenna conveniently having a hand mic in her purse.

Liz's story, meanwhile, was at least the third time she's had a "TGS" staffer crash at her pad (following Pete a few years back and Tracy earlier this season) and led to another one of those climaxes where the whole gang watches a horrifying video of Liz, only not as horrifying (or funny) as her phone sex ad from "Apollo, Apollo."

It's "30 Rock," which means there will always be funny lines and weird gags, but it was pretty weak overall.

What did everybody else think? And did the outtakes of Kenneth talking to Pete (including renaming this show "You-Know-What and the Bear"), which were tacked onto the end of my screener, survive to the air version? Click here to read the full post

Fringe, "Jacksonville": The glimmer woman

A quick review of the "Fringe" winter finale coming up just as soon as you get me some pretzels...

As "Fringe" heads into another long, frustrating hiatus (so that Fox can find a timeslot for the very silly "Past Life"), I'm wondering how strong my interest will be in seeing the show when it returns in April. There are some things it does very well. You can always count, for instance, on freaky/cool/disturbing teasers, like tonight's collision of two buildings from parallel universes, and the people in them(*). And John Noble will always be wonderful, whether he's being endearingly wacky (the pretzel gag), or terrified, or forced to face up to the despicable nature of all those experiments he did with "Bellie" all those years ago. And episodes can usually be counted on to wrap up well, as we got the swirling building disappearance (with better CGI effects than I've seen on a number of shows this week, like "Lost" and "Human Target") and Olivia discovering Walter's terrible secret about which universe this Peter Bishop came from.

(*) The most prominent of said people was played by Jim True-Frost, well-known to "Wire" fans as Prez. I was a little disappointed he didn't get a chance to do much with old co-star Lance Reddick, frankly.

The problem, almost always, is in the long, boring middle between the disturbing teasers and the episode's resolution - and that seems to be true whether it's a standalone episode like last week's evil Nazi story or a mythology-heavy one like this. I also don't find Olivia wandering around a fantasy dreamscape nearly as fascinating as the show's producers do.

Because "Fringe" airs on such a busy viewing night for me and simply isn't as high on my priority list as, say, the NBC comedies, I tend to let episodes stack up on the DVR for a while. And when I get to them, it's usually in conjunction with completing some other task. (The Nazi episode accompanied yesterday morning's workout, and then the sorting of some laundry.) It's not a bad show, but even in is more mythology-heavy episodes (which tend to be the creatively stronger ones), it's rarely compelling enough that I feel in the need to hurry to see it. And with it being out of sight, out of mind until April Fool's Day, it may feel very easy for me to just cut the cord.

The ratings have ticked up in recent weeks, and some people at Fox I spoke with at press tour seemed perfectly content with the ratings when you factor in DVR usage. (They knew when they moved it to Thursdays that its audience might wait a day or two to watch it, but would be technologically-adept enough to be willing and able to do that.) We'll just have to see how much loyalty there is over the next two months.

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

Cougar Town, "All the Wrong Reasons": The truth hurts

A quick, late-in-the-day review of last night's "Cougar Town" coming up just as soon as I go to an underpass to buy fish and sports coats...

After a start of the season where the male characters were clearly generating more laughs than the female ones, "Cougar Town" had achieved some comedy gender equality in more recent episodes. Unfortunately, "All the Wrong Reasons" felt more like one of those earlier outings. Busy Philipps will never not be funny (particularly as Laurie took us closer than ever to meeting the horror show that is Dale), but the Jules and Ellie storyline was pretty flat and predictable.

(Though even there, in fairness, I had a good laugh at Jules stopping to pick up the garbage can that Ellie tipped over during their foot chase.)

The guy stuff, unsurprisingly, still worked, even if they re-used the photo montage gag(*) - and the larger joke about the price you pay for partying in your 40s like you're still in your 20s - from "Into the Great Wide Open" (which was itself kind of cribbed from "The Hangover"). The guys still have great chemistry, and it was funny to watch Bobby and Andy horrifying Grayson with their keg-pumping routine, Andy waking up in can jail and Grayson discovering "Seacrest Out" written on his torso.

(*) As happened last time, the tall black cop in the photo montage was played by Bill Lawrence's longtime producing partner Randall Winston, who has lent his name to a character or institution on every one of Lawrence's shows. In this case, we meet Jules and Ellie's elderly neighbors, the Winstons.

"Cougar Town" has been on such a good streak of late that I'm not too concerned by an episode that feels like a regression. Every show gets a mulligan now and again.

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

Demetri & Sarah, together at last

As mentioned from time to time, there are certain shows I watch but don't write about much, either because I view them irregularly, or because they don't seem to lend themselves well to the episode-by-episode review structure I use here on the blog. FX's very funny "Archer" qualifies for the latter group, while "Important Things with Demetri Martin" and "The Sarah Silverman Program," both returning tonight (at 10 & 10:30, respectively) on Comedy Central, fit into the center of that particular Venn diagram.

I enjoy them both for different reasons - "Important Things" for Martin's dry, absurdist wit (which we discussed in this interview last year), "Sarah Silverman" for the surreal, go-for-broke-ness of it - and tonight's season premieres are good examples of each. Martin explores the subject of "attention" (he suggests any statement will get more attention if you loudly count down to it), while Silverman misses a lip-waxing appointment, takes her new mustache way too seriously, and then sings an incredibly catchy, disturbing song about a part of the human anatomy.

You have to be in the right head space to enjoy either one, and it's not exactly the same head space, but the two do manage to play well together in this musical clip. Click here to read the full post

Modern Family, "Moon Landing": Po-lice that moostash!

A quick review of last night's "Modern Family" coming up just as soon as I blame the Latino driver...

"Moon Landing" was a mixed bag of an episode, I thought. There were plenty of great one-liners as usual - Phil comparing Jägermeister to a potion from a fairy tale, "only you don't wake up in a castle, you wake up in a frat house with a bad reputation" may be the funniest joke of the series so far - and some good bits of physical (Jay in the locker room with Cam) and behavioral (Manny stuffing his mouth with cupcakes to avoid his mom's wrath) comedy, yet something felt lacking in it.

The set-up of making the Dunphy house seem like a hellmouth for Minnie Driver's arrival was a little labored (and/or predictable); if not for the usual endearing goofiness from Dylan, and my love of mustache-related humor, I would have gotten very impatient with that storyline. Conversely, the resolutions to both Jay and Gloria's stories felt too abrupt.

(Also, Driver's non-regional American accent is distracting, as opposed to when she puts on a specific one, like on "The Riches." Neither is incredibly believable, but at least on "The Riches" I accepted it and moved on, where here I kept thinking, "Boy, Minnie's struggling with this, isn't she?")

The show has banked enough good will with me, though, that I'm fine with an episode that worked in the small moments but not in the bigger ones. The Jagermeister joke alone was worth the tune-in.

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

Friday Night Lights, "Laboring": Toothpicking against the spread

A review of the penultimate "Friday Night Lights" of season four (finale airing next Wednesday at 9 on DirecTV's 101 Network) coming up just as soon as I drive 50 miles to deliver this blog post...

"I am not playing on a fair field here." -Coach
"That makes two of us, hon." -Mrs. Coach

On one level, "Laboring" is a table-setting episode, preparing us for the season-climaxing showdown between East and West Dillon, for a reckoning between Tami and the school board, for whatever's to come between Vince and Kennard, and between the Riggins boys and the cops.

But, like season one's penultimate hour, "Best Laid Plans" (with trouble swirling around the Panthers on the eve of the state championship), "Laboring" was a table-setter that brought a lot to the table on its own: great moments for half the cast and some huge developments in their own right, regardless of how things play out in the finale.

There's a real sense of despair to a lot of what happens, particularly with the Taylors. Eric knows he doesn't have much of a prayer of beating the Panthers(*) under optimal conditions, and those conditions are now far, far from optimal. Luke is out of the game, which limits his offensive weapons to, basically Vince, and takes away most of the gadget plays that were working so well earlier in the season. And because the Panthers had to use a bazooka as a fly-swatter to respond to Landry's toothpick prank, the Panthers get to play the game on their cushy home field, with the Lions and their fledgling fan base forced to feel like pathetic outsiders in a game that should have been theirs.

(*) And, it occurs to me, if he were to win that game, the people in town would only grow to hate him more. Panther pride runs a little too deep for people to applaud the plucky underdog school across town for an unlikely victory, if that victory also keeps the beloved Panthers out of the playoffs.

And Eric has to deal with this - and the idiot radio calls(**) and defacing of his car and the rest - at the same time Tami has developed her own hate squad thanks to the abortion controversy. "FNL" in general, and Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton in particular, often offer up a ray of hope and idealism in the middle of potentially grim circumstances, but here our most hopeful characters were at their most hopeless. Tami doesn't want to write that letter of apology(***), but can she put her ideals ahead of her family's livelihood?

(**) I thought it was a nice touch that Slammin' Sammy, usually just as much a pig-headed yahoo as his listeners, tried to shut down that one caller's attempt to paint East Dillon as a ghetto hellhole she wouldn't take her family to. Sammy may be an ignoramus and an agitator in many ways, but that doesn't automatically make him a bigot.

(***) And would the apology letter even work? Given how dug-in the opposition seems to be, wouldn't Tami apologizing (for something she didn't do) only make matters worse? I don't know small town politics very well, but isn't the wiser course for Tami to argue that at no point did she tell Becky to get an abortion? Which has the benefit of being true?

While the Taylors are trapped in bleak circumstance, it's up to the Riggins boys to provide some hope and happiness - for a little while. After some comic relief from Billy failing to be calm about the birth, we get this perfect moment with the two brothers at home, staring down at the baby, and Tim (wonderfully played by Taylor Kitsch) getting to appreciate the site of a Riggins man being a good daddy for once.

Of course, a Riggins man's happiness can never last very long. So after Tim got to enjoy being an uncle, and showing his new ranch property to Becky, he winds up going to jail, along with Billy, for the chop shop operation. (The large wad of cash Tim gave the realtor surely didn't help.) And will little baby Stephen Hannibal suddenly have to go years without seeing his daddy? With Taylor Kitsch not being a regular after this season, I could see a circumstance in which Tim and Billy do go away for a while, and if we see Tim at all in season five, it'll be with Coach talking to him through prison glass.

Meanwhile, Vince was busy burying the man (boy, really) responsible for drawing the Riggins boys (back) into a life of crime, and then being sucked into Kennard's plan for revenge at any cost. And Jess, realizing what her ex is about to risk, fights to stop him from doing just that, even if she has to ditch Landry in the process.

As with most "FNL" stories related to the criminal world, Vince's plot was the part of the episode that most bordered on cliche. But every time it threatened to get silly or caricatured, Michael B. Jordan and Jurnee Smollett dragged it back into something real and painful, as exemplified by the scene where Jess shows up at Vince's apartment to tell him, "I know that good guy that's inside of you!" To which Vince (desperate to keep Jess away from him as he goes on a mission that could land him in jail or the morgue) replies, "I am a monster! That's what I am! I am that guy!" That dialogue could be terribly corny, bu these two superb young actors made me ignore the words being spoken and focus on the pain, hurt and love behind them.

Thanks to Jess, Vince makes the right decision in the end, but he does it in a way that puts him in the sights of Kennard (who feels like Vince owes him this killing for the rehab loan). And it occurs to me that, because Kennard was the mastermind behind the whole car theft ring, we could see a finale in which Tim and Vince's problems cancel each other out, with Billy rolling on Kennard to secure his freedom (and unintentionally secure Vince's safety).

And if that's what winds up happening, I'm not sure how I'd feel about it. On the one hand, it would seem a little too neat for a show that likes to be sloppy even with its happy endings. On the other, after so much bleakness for our characters in recent weeks, I could use a little sunlight - whether that comes from an improbable, pride-restoring win for the Lions, or Tami getting to keep her job without compromising her beliefs, or Vince and/or Tim getting out from under their criminal burdens. I don't know that I want all of those problems to be solved, but I do love these characters - both old and new - enough to not want to see them suffer any more.

Some other thoughts:

• Am I the only one who was under the impression that Jess's mom was either dead or out of the picture, and that she and Virgil had been raising her brothers on their own? Instead, this week we meet her mother, Bird (played by Lorraine Toussaint), whose appearance played out as if Steve Harris wasn't available this week and so the writers scrambled to give Jess a different parent. Then again, Toussaint's IMDb entry says she was in "Stay" earlier this season, but either I didn't notice her, her scenes got cut, or (as is often the case with the IMDb and TV guest stars) the info is wrong. Whatever the explanation, I was distracted. UPDATE: Several commenters have pointed out that in the final air version, Jess introduces Bird as her aunt, not her mom, which means one of two things: 1)The line was changed in post-production after the screener I got (ala Principal Burnwell's reference to the game "last night"/"last Friday" earlier this season), or 2)My hearing's going. I am open to either possibility.

• Speaking of moms, Dana Wheeler-Nicholson makes her first appearance of the season as Mindy's mom (Tyra's, too) in the labor and delivery scenes.

• Though we know Coach to be a very good and wise man, he's also a stubborn one who (rightly) views himself as separate from the kids he coaches, so we very rarely see him admit a mistake to one of them. That's why it was a bit eye-opening, if appropriate, to see him apologize to Luke for giving him a hard time about the injury. Some of you last week objected to my attempt to categorize Luke's actions as selfless - that he was doing it in his quest for a scholarship that will get him the hell out of town. And while there was certainly something to that, keep in mind that he suffered the injury in the same episode where Coach gave him a giant guilt trip about missing practice because he had to help his dad with the fence - sending a very clear message that Luke should never let his personal problems get in the way of practicing and playing for the Lions. And I'm sure Eric, away from the heat of the moment when he discovered the hip flexor injury, realized the role he played in this mess.

• Presumably, this is Jesse Plemons' last year as a regular on the show as well, and I feel bad that Landry has been a bit lost in the shuffle as we head to the end of his time in Dillon. His relationship with Jess has turned out to be more about giving us a window into Jess's feelings for Vince, and this was the first episode in a while where he felt like an integral part of the football team (between his field goal kicking being the only thing standing between the team and more jingle-jangles, and then Landry coming up with the toothpick plan). And though his big moment (waiting outside the BBQ joint for Jess, only to be told by Bird that she wasn't coming) wasn't as flashy as Jess and Vince crying in each other's arms, Plemons did again make me feel sorry for young Lance.

• Kennard said their target was a couple of hours away, and it certainly seemed like Vince got out of the car close to the end of their drive. How exactly did he make it from the middle of nowhere back to Dillon on the same night?

• Notable songs this week: "I Like You So Much Better When You're Naked" by Ida Maria (Billy goes in to be there for Mindy during the delivery), "Rock Candy" by Montrose (Tim playing air guitar at Riggin's Rigs before the cops come), and "When the Night Comes" by Dan Auerbach (the final montage).

• Every time Principal Burnwell complains about all the problems Coach has brought to his school, I want to remind him that his school didn't exist before this year. But as with all things East Dillon, the show tends to wax and wane on what all these characters were doing before the redistricting happened.

• Because Madison Burge isn't technically a regular castmember, and because Becky seemed to say goodbye to Tim last week, I wondered if we had perhaps seen the last of the character - that perhaps that was the compromise the creative team had to make for this story, by letting a character get an abortion and then quickly writing her out. But she's still very much present, even if Tim won't respond to her crush on him, and even if, with Tim in jail and Luke having been pushed away, her connection to the rest of the "FNL" world is pretty tenuous.

Back next week for the finale - which will be the first one, I believe, where I'll watch it not worrying if it's the last episode of the show I'll ever get to see. Hooray for two-year renewals!

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

Human Target, "Sanctuary": Bulletproof monk

My brain's starting to pay the price from staying up til the middle of the night to write last night's "Lost" review, so I don't have much candle power left to write about tonight's "Human Target," which was a fun mash-up of "Die Hard," Indiana Jones and six other pop culture influences, and gets extra credit just for Chance's use of a censer. Top that with some good Chi McBride comedy and some very interesting shadings for Guererro and it was arguably the strongest episode so far - albeit of a show that seems content to operate on a fairly lightweight, but well-executed, level.

Plus, after all my comic book nerditry on today's podcast, I had to appreciate a good "Crisis on Infinite Earths" gag.

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

Firewall & Iceberg podcast, episode 2.1: Lost, Fringe, American Idol and more

So, after the fun hijinx Fienberg and I had with our first podcast attempt at press tour, we gave it another go via Skype today, so head on over to NJ.com to download the new podcast and read my explanation for what's in it, and for why, however lame this version is, it's not 1/10th as horrible as the one we recorded, then abandoned, earlier today. Click here to read the full post

Lost, "LA X": Multi-tasking

A review of the "Lost" final season premiere coming up just as soon as I bring a book into a cave...

"My condition is irreversible." -Locke
"Nothing is irreversible." -Jack

Hot damn, that was fun.

The traveling comedy/obfuscation team of Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse spent much of this final "Lost" hiatus promising that season six would have a new narrative structure, just as we got in seasons four (flash-forwards) and five (time travel). Having taken us both back and forwards through time, turns out the game for year six involves going sideways, with a "Sliding Doors"(*) approach that allows Cuselof to have it both ways with last year's cliffhanger, as we see one timeline where Faraday's plan worked and Jack and company wound up back on the plane in 2004, and another where it didn't and everyone's in the middle of a big mess on Craphole Island in 2007.

(*) I swear, I spent the first fifteen minutes after the premiere ended wrestling with whether to use "Sliding Sawyers" as a subject line, or if that would be an unfair giveaway for time-shifters, folks on the West Coast, etc. Ain't easy when my fondness for semi-clever wordplay clashes with my hawkishness about spoiler protection.

It was clear quickly that there was something hinky with the 2004 timeline, particularly since I had only recently rewatched the pilot to write this morning's column. Jack's hair was obviously wrong (as was Rose's), but so were subtler details like the dialogue between Jack and Cindy, or the fact that she gives him only one bottle here, when she slipped him two in the pilot. And then as the flight went along, things became more and more disconnected from the timeline we originally knew: Desmond is on board, Hurley is blissfully lucky, Boone failed to bring Shannon home, etc.

(Perhaps the biggest change of all in the new timeline: the island is underwater. So when Juliet set off Jughead, a whole lotta people died. Hell of a plan, Jack.)

It's a trope of many comic book time travel stories that if you go back in time to change the past, all you do is create an alternate timeline, while the old one you wanted to change still exists. Based on Juliet's posthumous declaration to Sawyer that "It worked" (and based on Lindelof's comic book bonafides), I'm going to assume that's the operating theory here, and that the 2004 scenes aren't some extended dream sequence.

For a brief period, I began to wonder if the gimmick was worth the screen time, and the effort of bringing back Ian Somerhalder, Dominic Monaghan and the rest. Whether the 2004 timeline is real or not (and there comes a point where I have to set my inner comic book nerd aside and acknowledge that none of this is real), the fact is I've spent the last 5 years being invested in the characters back on the island in 2007, and it's their stories I want to see continued.

And, certainly, the parts of "LA X" that resonated with me most deeply were the ones taking place on the island, about which I'll have plenty to say in a bit. But as the premiere moved along and we kept zipping back to hang out on Oceanic 815 (and then in the airport), I began to have the same feeling I did when I rewatched the pilot: I was just so happy to be reminded of when I liked Jack or when Locke was a serene wise man and not a pig-headed victim. I remembered that I did, once upon a time, care about Boone and Charlie (and the unfortunately-absent Shannon). And as the characters landed at LAX and their stories took unexpected turns - Kate escaping from Marshal Mars (and commandeering a cab occupied by Claire, in a neat convergence of Aaron's two mommies), Charlie and Jin independently winding up in custody, Jack and Locke bonding over their respective lost luggage (and Jack and his savior complex wondering if he can fix Locke's wrecked spine) - I couldn't help but be curious about where this was all going.

Not only do I wonder where these alt-stories will travel, but what connection it's all going to have to the "proper" timeline on the island. Will they just be used to illuminate characters' behavior in the island present, the same way they did back in the early flashback days (pre-Jack's tattoos, at least)? Or is the parallel structure telling us something else? Will Alt-Jack reach a point in his time on the mainland where he realizes, just as his bearded counterpart once did, that he has to go back? Might there be a circumstance where the two Sawyers meet and the universe explodes in a collision of sarcasm and anti-sarcasm? Or will the island and mainland timelines remain independent for the rest of the show's run?

If the 2004 scenes were often intriguing, and occasionally distracting, they were still a sideshow to the main event taking place back on the island.

Where to begin? With the confirmation that Evil Locke (or the Man in Black, or Esau, or whatever we want to call him), is Smokey?

With Sawyer and Juliet's tearful, and all-too-brief reunion in the wreckage of the Swan station?

With our first visit to the temple of The Others, and our introduction to two new recurring characters played by John Hawkes (another "Deadwood" alum) and Hiroyuki Sanada?

With Sayid's death and apparent resurrection?

Let's bounce around, why don't we?

When Locke turned out to not be Locke in last year's finale, I wondered exactly why the smoke monster - which we'd been previously told was the island's "security system" - would tell Ben to blindly follow a man who turned out to not be acting in the interests of the island (and/or Jacob, if you can separate the two). Well, now we know: Smokey ain't working for Jacob, but against him, and is made up of the Man in Black. Like so many "Lost" mysteries, the explanation raises up plenty of new questions - for starters, why Smokey would be willing to work with Ben in previous periods, when Ben was following the orders of Jacob - but we finally have something resembling a definitive answer of exactly what/who the monster is. Now we just need to know exactly who/what Esau is. Heh.

Whatever he/it is, Terry O'Quinn is clearly relishing the chance to play this new, mysterious, dangerous character, and Non-Locke's powers and knowledge of people like Ben and Richard (whom he last saw when Richard was "in chains") creates an unsettling dynamic among these characters who are so used to being in charge. And he also finally, more clearly delineates between the good guys and the bad guys (I think). Since Jacob=light, and Esau=dark, and The Others were with Jacob, and our heroes are now with The Others, that should lay things clear, right? (Of course, we'll still need to learn why The Others were all into kidnapping, torture and other experiments while Jacob was still alive, or if we're just supposed to write that off to Ben being kind of a dick as the human leader.)

And since Ben made clear last season that the island, as far as he knew, could not resurrect people - which was then confirmed when we saw Locke's corpse and discovered that the guy we thought was Locke was really the Man in Black - does that mean we shouldn't be so quick to assume the Sayid who sat up at episode's end is really our Sayid? Could Jacob be using Sayid's body to find his own loophole in this never-ending fight? Or did he just know that the only way to defeat an immortal man who can turn into a smoke monster is with a communications expert-turned-torturer-turned-international-assassin with great hair?

If Sayid's back to life for real, great, but if not, I think I'm okay with it. It felt like the character hit a natural stopping point after he shot young Ben last season, and his opening moments with Hurley in "LA X" suggested the show was saying goodbye to that iteration of Sayid just as Sayid was preparing to say goodbye to this mortal coil. (And, as with Alt-Locke, Naveen Andrews will still get to play a version of the character we know so well.)

Whether Sayid got resurrected or just reanimated and possessed, he's still ambulatory in some fashion, where Juliet appears to be so dead that not even Miracle Max could do anything for her. Josh Holloway and Elizabeth Mitchell got to put a moving coda onto the couple they created with the writers last year, and it was every bit as heart-wrenching as Juliet's plunge into the Swan shaft at the end of "The Incident." The only problem I had with it, I think, is that Sawyer's love and grief for Juliet was portrayed here as so strong and all-consuming that I can't imagine the show plausibly trying to revisit the Jack/Kate/Sawyer triangle, at least in this timeline. Unless there's a point in this season where island time jumps forward a long way from this tragic moment, Sawyer's going to be too wrapped up in his feelings for Blondie to convincingly give Freckles the time of day as anything but a shoulder to cry on and an extra gun to back his play.

Juliet's death also gives the show a fresh spin on the enmity between Sawyer and Jack, and the massive, fatal failure of the Jughead plan (from this Jack's perspective, anyway) might hopefully convince Jack once and for all that things tend to go bad when he's appointed or appoints himself leader of anything. But probably not.

And speaking of leaders, we meet another of a sort in the Hiroyuki Sanada character to be named later. (Several internet sources list Hawkes' character as "Lennon," which simultaneously seems too obvious and amusing, and for simplicity's sake, I'll use that until we get in-show evidence to the contrary.) The temple Others seem culturally different from several other Others factions we've seen, styled more like hippies. (Might we find out that there are a bunch of Dharma defectors and/or their descendants among this bunch?) We've been hearing about the temple for years, and this is definitely an interesting introduction to the place.

And I see by the clock that it's now 1:06 a.m., so I better get to the bullet points before my brain shuts down. Some other thoughts:

• Well, we knew that Cindy and the kids were among the group sent to the temple back in season three, but we still hadn't seen them in all that time. Now we have. All that's left is an explanation for why they (and any other Oceanic survivors recruited into Other-dom) didn't skip around in time last year.

• Getting back to Rose and Bernard, did Jughead's detonation fling them back into the present as well, or did it only affect the time travelers who were close to its explosion?

• Alt-Sawyer has his counterpart's nicknaming gifts, as he dubs Cindy "Earhart." (While doing some prep for this season, I stumbled across this awesome YouTube collection of Sawyer nicknames and its sequel. Absolutely worth the waste of your time.)

• Bram's failed attempt to survive Smokey's attack finally gives us a good explanation for why Jacob's cabin was surrounded by that circle of ash: it, along with the Dharma sonic barrier, are the only things that seem able to repel the monster.

• Still more explanations: the guitar case Jacob gave Hurley contained not a guitar, but a wooden ankh with a fortune hidden inside.

• We may not have gotten Shannon, or Mr. Eko, or some of the other awesome Oceanic survivors in this one, but we got Arzt! And Frogurt! Both as annoying as ever!

• Good to see Kate's tree-climbing skills are still intact even after a time-jump.

• Also good to know that at least Hurley is the one Oceanic survivor who didn't become a firearms expert shortly after landing on the island (or at any point after).

• Was glad to see that the Miles/LaFleur friendship wasn't quickly forgotten now that we're away from the Dharma days.

• "You're the monster." "Let's not resort to name-calling." Funny funny stuff from the Emerson/O'Quinn duo there.

• Claire makes her first appearance in more than a year, and I hope we finally revisit (in one timeline or the other) the matter of what will happen with Aaron's horrible destiny. And speaking of underserviced characters, I'd really like to see Sun return to prominence this year, now that most of the characters are now back on the island at the same time.

Okay, that's enough out of me. What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Men of a Certain Age, "You Gonna Do That The Rest of Your Life?": Golf in the face of death

A review of last night's "Men of a Certain Age" coming up just as soon as I like to say "the journey"...

"Everyone's great under no pressure, but when you have a little pressure, only some people are great." -Joe

For an episode that opened with a death (albeit the death of a character we'd never heard of before) and had both Joe and Owen contemplating their own mortality, this one felt oddly lightweight. Not that "Men of a Certain Age" is ever that heavy of a show, but there's usually something more satisfying in the shaggy dog-ness of it all than I got last night.

A lot of that insubstantial feeling came from the Terry story. All three main characters have their inner conflicts that the show repeats over and over - Joe struggles with his anxiety, Owen is over-burdened and eats too much, Terry won't grow up - but Terry's always feels the most repetitive, in part because the character was the most familiar to begin with. Scott Bakula's fine, but there's often a predictability to the Terry plots (with occasional exceptions like last week's Big Brother story) that there isn't with the other two guys, and I saw every beat of this one coming, down to Terry using his previously-established knowledge of electrical work to start fixing things around the complex.

(It was fun, however, to watch the other characters react to Terry's usual obliviousness. Carla Gallo is doing some really interesting work as Annie, who knows exactly who and what Terry is and will overlook that, but only to a point she hasn't reached yet.)

Owen's story had some nice moments, as the running gag about his over-eating turned serious (though still offered us comedy like the sound of Andre Braugher saying "jicama" over and over), but like the story with Joe's dad last week, the resolution seemed a little too easy. The difference, of course, is that Braugher's a regular castmember and Robert Loggia isn't. So it's entirely possible we'll see Owen struggle and backslide and sneak some Fiddle Faddle in later episodes. But if this is it, too easy.

The episode's highlight, unsurprisingly, was the return of the Joe & Manfro comedy team (this time written by another "Everybody Loves Raymond" alum, Lew Schneider). I like that there's always this unsettling edge about how the two of them interact. Manfro seems like a goofball, but Joe's always afraid the guy could hurt him. Here, though, Manfro may have given him the inspiration to give the senior tour a try, and I liked the ambiguity of the final scene as compared to how Owen's story resolved. Joe seems determined to stay there all night until he hits 10 in a row, but it's also clear that he's going to be lucky to hit that many consecutively. And after spending so many weeks watching Joe be timid and uncomfortable(*), it was a pleasure to see him kicking ass and taking names on the back nine at the golf course.

(*) Speaking of which, I was glad to have Sarah Clarke back as Dory, but I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop with that character. Between the way Joe behaved on their first date in "Go with the Flow" and his creepy, morbid attitude at Terry's housewarming, I'm wondering why this woman hasn't backed away, very carefully.

No new show next week, with the season's penultimate episode airing on Feb. 15. It's a short season (in this economy, a lot of cable shows seem to be downsizing from 13 episodes to 10), but at least there's already a renewal in the bag so we know the next two won't be the last two.

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

Big Bang Theory, "The Einstein Approximation": Ball pit Bazinga

Though the scene with Sheldon and Leonard in the ball pit on last night's "Big Bang Theory" was hysterical, overall I found the episode to be one of those occasional outings where Sheldon's behavior is pushed so far to the extreme that you wonder why any human being would tolerate him, why Leonard would live with him, the others be friends with him, etc. And I usually find those episodes tough to take, as was the case here.

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

Thoughts on the Oscar nominations?

This isn't a movie blog, but I write about film occasionally enough that I was curious for everyone's reaction to the just-announced Oscar nominations. Because there are so many other awards shows now, the nominees in most of the categories weren't a big surprise. But with the expansion of the Best Picture nominees from 5 to 10, there were a lot of wild cards. (If I had to guess, I'd say that "The Blind Side," "District 9," "A Serious Man," "Up" and "An Education" benefited most from the expansion.)

Of course, the run-up of other awards shows also means there won't be a ton of suspense about who wins, other than perhaps "Avatar" vs. "Hurt Locker" for Best Picture and director, but while we have a few weeks to kill before the big event, what did you think of the nominations? Anyone you hoped/expected to be nominated who wasn't? (For me, it was "500 Days of Summer" for original screenplay.) Any pleasant surprises? (For me, it'd be "In the Loop" for adapted screenplay.) Any nominee you're pulling for, even if they're not the obvious favorite? (I loved Clooney in "Up in the Air," and I'm sure Jeff Bridges is brilliant in "Crazy Heart" and is long overdue, but it'd also be cool to see Jeremy Renner win.)

Have at it. Click here to read the full post

'Lost' season 6 preview - Sepinwall on TV

In today's column, I get myself ready for the final season of "Lost" by looking back to the show's very first episode:

Last week, as preparation for tonight's final season premiere of "Lost," I spun up the series' pilot episode for the first time in years. A couple of hours later, I was left with two thoughts: 1) This remains one of the best pilots ever made, and 2) I have much more faith now that the end will make sense than I did in 2004.

The first observation won't surprise anyone who's seen the "Lost" pilot, which is packed with thrilling, iconic moments like Jack (Matthew Fox) frantically tending to survivors amid the burning wreckage of Oceanic 815; Jack, Kate (Evangeline Lilly) and Charlie (Dominic Monaghan) climbing through the plane's vertical, corpse-strewn first-class cabin; or Sawyer (Josh Holloway) gunning down a charging polar bear with no business being anywhere near a tropical island.

But what stuck out to me even more were the small moments that, in retrospect, pointed toward big revelations down the road.

You can read the full "Lost" column here, and I also wrote a quick recap of how season 5 ended.

To repeat two points from yesterday morning's post, 1)Do not, under any circumstances, post any comments including spoiler details about the upcoming season, whether gleaned from the leaked footage, reports of the Hawaiian screening of the premiere's first hour, promos, or whatnot; and 2)Because I haven't seen the premiere in advance, the earliest you can expect a post on it will be very late (as in post-midnight) tonight. And if I conk out before then, then sometime late tomorrow morning.

Very excited. Click here to read the full post

Life Unexpected, "Rent Uncollected": Family affair

A few quick thoughts on the latest "Life Unexpected" coming up just as soon as I fire up the DeLorean and grab the condoms...

Each week, it seems, we meet, and/or Lux meets, a different part of her family. In the pilot, she found her birth parents. In episode two, we discovered her surrogate family of fellow foster kids. Tonight brings in Lux's grandparents (and aunt) in the form of familiar TV faces Robin Thomas and Susan Hogan (as Baze's parents), Cynthia Stevenson (Cate's mom) and Alexandra Breckenridge (Cate's sister). At some point, the show will need to put the brakes on this before we get to "Episode 21: Lux is horrified when her second cousin Frank is murdered," but for now the expansion of the show's world - and the many potential character combinations, ala "Modern Family," that we now have - has felt natural and interesting.

And in showing us how Baze's dad disapproves of him, it continues the character's evolution into something more human and likable than just the generic Peter Pan character he could have been. I never thought much of Kris Polaha (good or bad) in his previous series gigs, but more than anything else, he's what has me wanting to keep watching "Life Unexpected" past this episode (the last I saw in advance via a screener).

Again, we get the push-pull of the Lux/Baze/Cate relationship, with everyone backing away and then coming back together for a more formal meeting between Baze, Cate and Lux's friends. I'd like to see the show evolve past that soon, but the performances, and moments like Lux halfway scamming her way into the popular clique(*), still have me enjoying it.

(*) And that worked entirely because two of the girls didn't buy it at all. Had Lux successfully talked herself in with the whole crowd at once, it would have been too much, and too easy.

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

How I Met Your Mother, "The Perfect Week": We want a Swisher, not a belly itcher!

A review of "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as I take a swat at the Hamburglar...

"The Perfect Week" featured plenty of elements that should have made me an absolute sucker for it. It was loaded with baseball jokes, from Ted playing pitching coach to Barney (while accompanied by the score from the original "Major League"(*), to Jim Nantz kicking his chair over at the idea that Marshall would invoke the jinx again, to the cameo by Nick Swisher, who has already vaulted his way into becoming my second-favorite Yankee(**). It had sops to "HIMYM" continuity, like the first mention of Victoria I can recall since the first season and Marshall's ongoing Sasquatch fixation, and meta jokes like Future Ted acknowledging he's a bad dad for telling his kids stories like this one. And much of the episode leaned on the show's most reliable source of humor: Barney's success with the ladies.

(*) It gets overlooked in some circles because it came out the year after "Bull Durham" and ripped off a bunch of elements from that movie (washed-up but wily catcher, pitcher with million dollar arm and no control, voodoo-practicing player, etc.), but it's still one of my favorite Underdog Sports Movies. You can hear a sample of the score here, and keep watching at least until you get to the end of the American Express commercial, which is the moment when I knew the guy playing Willy Mays Hays was gonna be a big star. Shame he forgot how to be funny (and when to pay his taxes).

(**) What can I say? The guy's just an endearing goofball who can hit a little. Of course, the gap between him and first-favorite Yankee Mariano Rivera is insurmountable, but watching Swisher (with more than a little help from CC Sabathia and AJ Burnett) completely reinvent the clubhouse dynamics of what had been a stultifying roster for a long, long time was a joy to behold. Plus, his haircuts are all stupid, including the one he wore tonight.

Yet the baseball jokes got repetitive after a while (though some later ones like Nantz's tantrum were funny anyway), and a lot of the gags sprinkled around it didn't work. Robin's Dale fixation in particular was one of the most annoying things Cobie Smulders has ever been asked to play (and it also feels like the show's done a lot of "Robin gets indignant that people don't realize how hot she is" gags of late), and the initial scene where Ted made his unfortunately-named student cry was Ross Gellar bad, even if some of the follow-up jokes made by the gang made my inner 9-year-old chuckle. And like "The Playbook" from earlier in the season, the Barney jokes began to feel like a crutch after a while.

Lot of strong elements, but not one of the season's stronger episodes.

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

Chuck, "Chuck vs. the Nacho Sampler": Diversified assets

A review of tonight's "Chuck" coming up just as soon as I write this off as a business trip...

"He's turning into a spy. That's a good thing." -Casey
"Is it?" -Sarah

"Chuck vs. the Nacho Sampler" is bookended by a flashback to Chuck and Sarah's first meeting (both the version we saw in the pilot, and then a new version from Sarah's perspective), and the main plot is very reminiscent of season one's "Chuck vs. the Sandworm," where Chuck also befriended an asset with a similar story to his own. But "Nacho Sampler" wasn't just a retread. Rather, it was a sign of how far Chuck and Sarah have come since those early days - and also of how much more confident the show has become over even a season one highlight like "Sandworm."

Back in the "Vicki Vale" scene from the pilot, Sarah was a shark and Chuck was chum. The roles haven't entirely reversed two-plus years later, but Chuck has gotten harder, and Sarah softer. The Chuck of season one would never have been able to go through with sending Manoosh into isolation for the rest of his life, and Sarah would have been annoyed with his refusal to accept the dirty parts of the job. Now, it's Chuck (who's slowly learning the emotional costs of his new career) swallowing his empathy to complete the mission, and it's Sarah (who has learned to let her guard down and value friendship and family) who's troubled to see nice guy Chuck - whom she fell in love with because he wasn't another Casey or Bryce Larkin - able to be as cold as she used to be.

At the same time, in learning how to cultivate and then burn an asset, Chuck starts to realize exactly how Sarah viewed him when they first met, and how their relationship might have gone if a few things had been different.

As I've said many times, the most frustrating part about shows that drag out Unresolved Sexual Tension between the leads is when artificial obstacles get thrown in the way, just because nobody wants the game to end yet. But even more than the introduction of Agent Shaw (who takes the week off) and Hannah (who's relegated to the Morgan B-story), I find it plausible that Chuck and Sarah are influencing the other to change so much that they're not meeting in the middle, but passing each other on the way to the other side. Even if it's, in fact, being done just because Fedak and Schwartz are reluctant to put the two together already, it feels like something that comes out of the paths these two characters have been on for the last 40 episodes, and it was very well-played (as usual) by Zachary Levi and Yvonne Strahovski.

Outside of the Chuck/Sarah issues, the Manoosh story was also a good Chuck/Casey one. With Shaw absent(*), Casey is once again in the role of the Operation Bartowski member who represents the official, remorseless view of spy-dom. He mocks Chuck's initial stumbles, as always - and the two have a priceless bit of physical comedy when Chuck is trying to get the laser pen out of Casey's pocket while they're shackled in Dubai - but he's also the one who thinks Chuck can do it in the first place, and the one who suggests Chuck give Johnny Walker black a whirl to assuage his guilt (as I'm sure Casey has done a time or 50 over his career).

(*) With the budget so lean this year, I'm assuming the producers didn't want to waste Brandon Routh's fee on an episode that didn't really need him.

And we also see Chuck's web of deception not only hurt Manoosh and disturb Sarah, but start to create friction with the people from his "real" life (which, more and more, is becoming as fake as any of Sarah's aliases). Devon is still having trouble being awesome about Chuck's secret, and Ellie and Morgan are both alarmed to discover, independently, that Chuck went to Paris and didn't tell either of them about it. Perhaps worst of all, Morgan has now assigned Jeff and Lester to put their super-stalking powers on the case to find out what Chuck's hiding and why; those guys may be perverted idiots, but other than maybe "Missile Command," stalking is what Jeff does best, and they did manage to get their way into Casey's secret locker compartment at the Buy More, and to crash Castle's electrical grid. Could we be heading for a circumstance where suddenly everyone in Nerd World suddenly knows about Spy World? Or will Jeffster screw it up? (They did, after all, interpret all of Casey's gear to mean he was a fellow stalker.)

Ryan McPartlin continues to do well playing an out-of-his-element Captain Awesome, and Josh Gomez managed to turn Morgan's goofy attempt to seduce Hannah on a dime into an excuse for us to feel sorry for the guy, once again left out of the loop of his best friend's life. But until that moment, Hannah's first week at the Buy More provided some huge, uncomfortable laughs, be it Morgan clambering over the desk of his new "office," or Jeff angrily insisting, "It's my constitutional right to fornicate!"

I know many people automatically assume that anyone new in Chuck's life must be a spy, and it's entirely possible that Hannah will turn out to be exactly that. Right now, though, I buy her as another Lou - a woman drawn to Chuck, whose affections are then disrupted by his spy gig (here with him constantly disappearing for "Yogurt Time"), and she had an unsurprisingly easy time at seeming horrified by Jeff and Lester's leering.

We have only one more episode to go until the show takes a few weeks off for the Olympics. The season wasn't written with that break in mind (remember, it was originally going to premiere after the Olympics), but we seem to be building towards a crisis point in nearly all of Chuck's relationships. Two weeks ago, Agent Shaw watched, somewhat enviously, as Chuck basked in the company of his sister and brother-in-law, his best friend, and his two CIA partners. Tonight, we climax with Chuck drinking alone, Ellie and Morgan suspicious of him, and Sarah worrying that he's becoming something other than the man she fell for. And then, in the closing flashback, we're reminded again that the spy world Chuck is so eager to join is one not built on real relationships, but on deception and using other people for your own ends.

Not a happy place for Chuck, nor as jaunty and feel-good an episode as "Chuck vs. First Class," but "Chuck vs. the Nacho Sampler" felt even more important to our hero's development, and the unfurling of this season's story arc, as seeing him fly (sort of) solo last week.

Some other thoughts:

• This week in "Chuck" pop culture references: Chuck compares himself to celebrity zookeeper Jack Hanna. Chuck impresses Manoosh with his reading choice of Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra's "Y: The Last Man." Sarah's "Frak Off" belly shirt is, of course, a "Battlestar Galactica" joke to play to Manoosh's pre-established "BSG" fixation. One of the items on sale at Weap-Con is the "EM-50 mobile interrogation unit," where in "Stripes," the EM-50 was a mobile assault vehicle disguised as an RV. Casey's line about Chuck bringing a knife to a gunfight is lifted from Sean Connery in "The Untouchables." The French film that Morgan and Hannah discuss, on the other hand, was invented for purposes of the show, and the art department put the name of several "Chuck" writers (including this episode's authors, Matt Miller and Scott Rosenbaum) and crew members on the credits if you look closely. Anything I missed?

• Songs this week include Datarock's "Amarillion" (Hannah enters in her Nerd Herd uniform), "Danny Trejo" by Plastillina Mosh (Chuck smoothing things over with Manoosh), Calvin Harris' "Merrymaking at My Place" (Sarah seducing Manoosh), The Clash's vintage "Rock the Casbah" (the team arrives in Dubai) and "40 Day Dream" by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros (the final montage).

• Two candidates for the still sponsor-less "Chuck" Plot Hole of the Week: 1)Since General Beckman found out that Devon knows Chuck's secret in "Operation Awesome" (if not before that) and is still letting him roam free, why is Chuck so terrified that if Ellie finds out, they go into witness protection? 2)Why would the buyers at Weap-Con be so willing to believe Manoosh's story about the sunglasses? Isn't it entirely possible that he's a martial arts master posing as a dweeb?

• Also, were you disappointed that we never got a Chuck/Manoosh fight scene? Or are you happy that Chuck's Intersect 2.0 skills have mostly turned out to be used for minor action beats (like Chuck using the nacho plate to save Sarah) rather than the new focus of the show?

• With so many funny people around her, Strahovski isn't usually called on to deliver jokes, but I laughed out loud at Sarah's smug, sing-song "Thank you!" after Casey acknowledged that Chuck was in over his head trying to secure an asset. (Though, frankly, that didn't make me laugh nearly as hard as the sight gag of Sarah in the "Frak Off" shirt.)

• After he watched the end of "Chuck vs. First Class," Fienberg complained to me that the Buy More's wind machine wasn't turned on when Hannah entered the store the way it usually is for Sarah, Carina, et al. Well, her entrance at the top of this episode belatedly solved that problem. I guess they were just waiting to get her into her Nerd Herd uniform (in a version that fell somewhere in between Sarah's stripper-iffic version from "Chuck vs. Tom Sawyer" and the anime-influenced one that Anna Wu favored).

• Manoosh was played by Fahim Anwar, in real life an aerospace engineer by day, stand-up comic by night. He wrote a bit about the experience of filming this episode on his blog.

• Which is more impressive and/or funnier: Morgan's new Ass Man office in the custodial closet, or Jeff's men's room stall office (from "Chuck vs. the Predator")? And should we assume that Jeff's office was a casualty of Emmett Millbarge's reign of terror over Buy Moria?

• I loved "Chuck vs. First Class," but in retrospect I realize that Chuck did very little to ensure the success of his first solo mission (other than the fencing match with Stone Cold Steve Austin), and that most of the credit goes to Shaw, Sarah, and the magical Castle joystick. And, having recognized that, Chuck's attempt to get General Beckman to compliment him on his work went over as well with me as it did with Beckman.

• While most of the episode's jokes were landing beautifully, the running gag about the Weap-Con organizer trying to play off all of Operation Bartowski's shenanigans as weapons demonstrations never quite worked, and became a distraction in a few spots. It either needed more time to set up that guy, or else should have been ditched.

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

The Grammys: It takes two to make a thing go right/wrong

Of the major showbiz awards shows, I only watch the Emmys for professional reasons, and at this point I mainly stick with the Oscars for work, as well. (It's a movie awards show, but it's also one of the most-watched TV shows of the year, so I tend to write about it.)

The Grammys, though, I watch for personal reasons. First, it helps me come out from behind my niche-y iPod playlists to get a reminder for a night of what's going on in popular music. Second, I'm a sucker for unconventional duets, which the Grammy telecast has offered up a lot of in recent years. Sometimes, they're incredible (Joss Stone and Melissa Etheridge sing Janis Joplin), and sometimes they fizzle, but they're always interesting to look at to see why one combination works, another doesn't, etc.

Last night, Taylor Swift was the big winner of the night, winning Album of the Year, but she was also part of the evening's most memorably awkward duet, when she teamed up with Stevie Nicks for a medley that included Nicks' "Rhiannon." Swift has carved out a very impressive career for herself by working hard, being very well-rehearsed (see her "surprised" reaction to every single awards victory she's had in the last year) and understanding her strengths (personality, songwriting, stagecraft) and weaknesses (limited vocal range). Placed next to Nicks, and handed a song that wasn't written with her skill set in mind, Swift gave the kind of performance where, if it had happened on "American Idol," Paula Abdul would have started her comments by telling Taylor how pretty she looked.

Hey, it happens, and on balance her night worked out very well for her. So, for those of you who also watched last night, what were some of your favorite and/or least favorite performances, and why? Click here to read the full post

Lost: Return to Craphole Island is imminent

My "Lost" preview column - inspired in part by my decision to re-watch the pilot on Friday for the first time in years - will be posted tomorrow morning. I haven't seen the premiere in advance(*), so we'll see how much physical and mental energy I have on reserve tomorrow night at 11 p.m. Ideally, I'll power through and stay up to write my premiere review, but it may have to wait until Wednesday morning.

(*) Once again, let me remind you of the No Spoilers section of the commenting rules around here. Between the four minutes of the premiere that leaked online, the screening of the premiere's first hour in Hawaii on Saturday, and the promo shown during last night's "Desperate Housewives," there's a lot of potential season six spoilage out there, and I want absolutely none of it discussed here. Got me?

In the meantime, I heartily endorse heading on over to A List of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago to read Isaac Spaceman's latest "Previously on Lost" post, his inspired semi-regular recap of all the weirdness out there on Craphole Island. (Here's last year's version, which may be the pinnacle of this particular gag. And here are the first and second versions.)

At one point, I had contemplated doing a Great Moments on "Lost" post with tons of Hulu embeds in time for the premiere, but other things got in the way, and it feels like something that, if I do it, feels more appropriate for right before the finale. After the jump, though, I've got one of my favorite "Lost" scenes, and one that's fairly unheralded because of the character involved. From season 2's "The Other 48 Days"...



Yes, Ana-Lucia was pretty justly unloved (and the Tailies turned out to be a waste of time), but that's one helluva scene between Michelle Rodriguez and Brett Cullen. And, in retrospect, Ana-Lucia's question about the Army knife has a lot more resonance. (Is that the first reference on the show to the military having once been on the island?)

Too much work to do today and tomorrow, but I'm sorely tempted to just camp out in front of my laptop and watch highlights from the previous five seasons. Click here to read the full post