Sometimes I Think of Things

Misuse of Trademark

2012-01-29T00:25:00.001-05:00

I don't know why, but I think maybe Jon Lajoie is going to hell.

It's just a feeling I have here.

Way less creepy than the actual music video

2012-01-22T06:08:00.001-05:00

Low Bar

2012-01-21T23:59:00.001-05:00

As promised, I watched Napoleon Dynamite. It wasn't as bad as I was expecting it to be. If they toned it down a little bit, it would actually be a pretty solid Saturday morning cartoon. As it is, though, it's not offensively awful like Allen Gregory was or even just sort of depressingly bad like Bob's Burgers or The Simpsons, but it's not good. If it's on in the 8:30 slot I probably won't watch it, but if it gets stuck between two shows I do watch, then I won't change the channel.

Now, to the reviews:
Castle
"Dial M for Mayor"
Castle's friend the Mayor may be involved in a murder. A woman quit her job as a professor, moved into a flophouse and started working at a phone sex line, then turned up dead. No one knew why until the team discovered that she was doing research for a book. Just as they're starting to get to the bottom of things, and it looks like the Mayor is a murderer, the shadowy figure calls Castle and gives him a clue. It turns out one of the Mayor's staff members was involved in some embezzlement from a charity, and he poured his heart out to the lady on the other end of the phone sex line. She planned to use that information to write an even awesomer book than one about being poor, but he found out and killed her. Just as he's about to tell Beckett who was behind the embezzling, a big-shot lawyer comes in and saves his ass. Castle meets with the shadowy figure again and learns that he's actually trying to help him protect Beckett; without the Mayor, Castle can't stay on the team, and without Castle, there's no one to keep Beckett from looking into her mother's murder.

What I Liked
-New crime blog written by Beckett and Castle: An Officer and a Gentleman. I'd read it once or twice.
-Boss at the phone sex line is the Chief Sexecutive Officer. I don't care where I work; from now on, that's my new title.

What I Hated
-The bad guy was obvious because I recognized the actor. Specifically, he plays one of the interns on Bones.
-"The person I called was..." that's a cheap way to build suspense, and nowadays it seems really old-fashioned.

Final Thoughts
This was okay, but I wasn't really feeling it. I think it could've done with a bit more humour.
** 1/2 out of *****

Family Guy
"The Blind Side"
Peter gets a new deaf co-worker, which indirectly leads to Brian dating a blind woman. But, she doesn't know he's a dog, and she's not a fan of dogs in general. So, he does what he can to stop her from finding out. It doesn't last forever, though, and even though Stewie chops off his tail, Brian is found out and he gets dumped. But, he uses a different voice and gets another date with her, pretending to be someone else.

Also, the Griffins got new stairs and Peter kept falling down them. It wasn't funny.

What I Liked
-Blind person Titanic. That's kinda what Leonardo DiCaprio looks like in my mind, too.
-A true gentleman takes topless photos of the blind chick. Yes he does, yes he does.

What I Hated
-Peter can't tell if the Hispanic woman works at the drugstore. That wasn't funny.
-Brian fights the muggers. Ugh.
-Peter keeps falling down the stairs. Pratfalls can be funny, even animated pratfalls, but these were not.

Final Thoughts
After last week's high, Family Guy once again returns to mediocrity.

Fourteen laughs.
** 1/2 out of *****

Hawaii Five-O
"Puʻolo"
A parcel van stopped by some dudes with a plan, and the young guy in the van does something stupid and gets his old partner killed... just before his 25th anniversary. After the team checks the manifest they find that nothing's missing, but young guy lied and told him he wasn't in the back even though his bloody fingerprint was back there. He was smuggling stuff, and that's what the hijackers took. He'd lead them to his contact, but McGarrett shot him. They find out the guys used to work with a guy with a mullet who's been on the show before. They get him out, wire him up and send him off to meet the guy with Kamekona. Things go south, though, and there's a shitload of shooting... and then Rufio pulls out a flamethrower for like ten seconds. He was helping a dude smuggle RFID chips for passports and there were 100 of them in the box that was taken.

McGarrett flashes back to when his dad sent him away because some shit was about to go down, and told him that he could always trust Joe White. But Joe's being all mysterious. Then some Yakuza guys try to kill him and McGarrett makes him go into protective custody for like 12 seconds, because later they go to a meeting with the Yakuza to prove Joe didn't kill the boss.

Then the plots converge. White was trying to get a phony passport made by a guy who's now a suspect. They track him down, and he's not in good shape. He took a bullet to the chest, but he didn't die, so he gives up some names and the team busts the bad guys at the airport.

White explains the Shelbourne stuff, but it doesn't really jibe with the previous parts of the plot. However, it does make for a good excuse for Terry O'Quinn to leave the show.

What I Liked
-Danny wonders if McGarrett was pretending to hear something to justify entering a house without a warrant. Then he actually hears something.
-The ladies interview a bad guy with a mullet. He's awesome and hungry. Also, he likes it spicy!
-Big fucking Subway product placement in the middle of the episode. It was insanely blatant, but they had some fun with it and very nearly made it a commercial, so I approve
-Chief hijacker guy rolls in on a Segway. And it's Rufio!

What I Hated
-Rachel goes into labour and Danny has to be there for her since her husband is out of the country. How conveeeeeeeenient. Also, she needs an emergency C-section. How conveeeeeeeeenienter.
-Joe White was in protective custody... but then he wasn't. Why even bother with that?

Final Thoughts
The baby stuff is over, but the Shelbourne stuff just got sillier. This wasn't really a good episode, but it had Rufio with a fucking flamethrower, so it gets an extra half star.
** 1/2 out of *****

The Big Bang Theory
"The Recombination Hypothesis"
Leonard asks Penny on a date. It doesn't go well, but afterwards she calls him over in the middle of the night for sex. They decide to pretend that they're not together in front of their friends. The gang has dinner at the cheesecake factory the next night, and Penny waits on them. Leonard brings something up that he just should've let go, and they get in a big fight. Later, she calls him out of bed, and they continue the fight, then have sex again. Leonard can't foresee a situation where it goes well for the two of them, and neither can Penny. BUT, it doesn't matter, since it was all just Leonard running through what would happen if he asked Penny out. Even though it seemed like it would end badly, he asks her out for real, anyway. This was the 100th episode of The Big Bang Theory, which doesn't matter so much since it was already running in syndication.

What I Liked
-"Live long and suck it, Zachary Quinto." It's funny, 'cause he's gay.
-Amy likes the kinky sex stuff. It's always the ones you least suspect. And the ones who wear a lot of leather.
-So many Settlers of Catan boner jokes. It may be low-hanging fruit, but who doesn't love a good dick joke?

What I Hated
-Too many gay jokes. Why bash on the gays? They have it hard enough already. Boner joke.
-It was all just Leonard imagining what would happen if he asked Penny out. Fucking cop out, man.

Final Thoughts
Man, fuck it being 'all a dream' or whatever. I fucking hate when shows do that. It cost this episode half a star.

I realize that they're professionals and all, but it must be weird to act alongside someone you used to date; especially if your characters are a couple. I sometimes wonder how much real anger goes into the fights they have.

Nineteen laughs.
** 1/2 out of *****

The Finder
"Bullets"
A prison warden asks Walter to help a death row inmate clear his name. The prisoner asks Walter to look for the bullet that he says will exonerate him from a murder committed 20 years ago. At the same time, Sweets from Bones comes to town to evaluate Walter's mental state to see if he's fit to work as a consultant for the federal government. After interviewing an old IA dude and some literal Miami Vice guys, Walter surveys the crime scene and finds that it's now a parking lot for a self-storage building. The IA guy is all smug, but gives Walter a clue that leads him to an old girlfriend of the death row guy. She tells him everyone was on the take back then. Under hypnosis, Walter realizes that the bullet was actually fired from the opposite direction to what death row guy thought, and he finds it lodged in an old billboard. It's not enough for a stay of execution, but it's enough for Walter to accuse the IA guy of being the murderer. IA guy flips out and the shooting begins. It ends when Walter shoots the guy in the ass where he believes a second bullet is still lodged. It's there, so death row guy goes free and is reunited with his old ladyfriend. And, I assume he gets a big cash settlement from the government. Sweets still thinks Walter's crazy, but Walter tells him why he's compelled to find things, and he gets a six-month reprieve.

Meanwhile, a rich pretty-boy invites Willa to play volleyball on the beach. She's good, so a rich girl acts like a bitch to her, and Willa and the pretty-boy steal her car. He wrecks it, and then threatens to let her take the fall, so she steals his wallet, and tosses it in the car so he gets busted.

What I Liked
-Creepy sex talk with the adults and Willa. It's weird being around teenagers who you know have gotten busy if you're not related to them. You can talk about sex around them, but you still feel like you shouldn't.
-Walter takes Sweets' evaluation, but he doesn't take it seriously. That's pretty much how I handle all of my evaluations.
-Things go all 1980s shootout at the end. The 80s were not a good time for fashion, but the shootouts were great.

What I Hated
-Sweets hypnotizes Walter with a watch. It's 20-fucking-12, we do not need that 1950s bullshit.

Final Thoughts
Still not as good as the backdoor pilot was.
** 1/2 out of *****

This week's worst show was:
How I Met Your Mother
"46 Minutes
Marshall and Lily move to Long Island, so Barney takes over as undisputed leader of the gang. Dangerous adventures with Stripper Lily and her Russian boyfriend ensue. Plus, Robin and Dr. Kal Penn don't want to say "no" to anything since they're still early in their relationship and don't want to seem boring. Ted gets super wasted at an underground poker game and everyone learns a valuable lesson about friendship.

Meanwhile, at Marshall and Lily's house, Lily's dad is being a dick since they now live in the house he grew up in, and he knows all the quirks. He uses the intercom to talk Marshall through flipping a circuit breaker, and everyone learns a valuable lesson of some sort.

What I Liked
-New opening titles featuring the leader of the gang, Barney. How I Met Your Barney is not a good idea for a spinoff, though.
-"Let's declare our independence with an 'on-da-peen-dance'. High-five!
-Barney replaces Lily with Stripper Lily. I feel all my shenanigans would be more interesting if my female friends were more willing to get naked.

What I Hated
-Sappy ending. I don't want to learn any lessons. I want to see hi-jinks!

Final Thoughts
I still really don't like Chris Elliott as Lily's dad. I hope we've seen the last of him for a while. That being said, I do wonder why Lily and Marshall were being such dicks to him; he was only trying to help.

HIMYM really hasn't been all that great lately. I hope it recovers.

Eleven laughs.
** out of *****

This week's best show was:
Fringe
"Enemy of my Enemy"
They're still in the other universe, and David Robert Jones wants to see the boss. He needs a hard drive that the fake Alternabrandon was storing some data on. In order to get it back in a timely manner, he has one of his subordinates kill a bunch of people in a hospital. Walternate agrees to give it to him, and has the Fringe team follow him. While he's being observed, he pulls a paper bag full of money out of the trash and starts giving it away. The bills are covered with trackers using the same signal as the one that's planted on him, and he loses them. This bums Walternate out, and combined with the fact that he has no idea how to reconfigure the machine to help Peter, drives him to drink. But, Elizabeth thinks she can help. She goes to the other universe and tells Walter she forgives him for stealing her son, and convinces him to help. Meanwhile, Peter figures out Jones' plan, but he jumps back and forth between universes to evade capture and picks up some minerals to use to make a battery or a weapon or something. Olivia almost gets chopped in half by a closing portal, but Peter gets her to stop before she goes through. The Fringe teams in both universes know they have a common enemy and agree to work together. But, they don't know that Jones is working with Nina... dun dun dunnnnn!

What I Liked
-Altastrid thinks it's coll that Peter's from another timeline. I think the characters on this show often lose sight of just how awesome everything they do is.
-The Olivias still don't like each other. It's subtle, but Anna Torv was definitely giving herself the ol' stink eye there at the end.

What I Hated
-Jones jumps between universes just to jump back with a truckload of stuff. I'm not sure how much time elapsed between one Fringe team missing him and the other catching up with him, but shouldn't the alt-verse people at least have left a few guys hanging around the quarry on their side? Just in case he came back or something.

Final Thoughts
This was the one they were originally going to come back from the break with, and it certainly picks up the action for the second part of the season. Now there's a real antagonist on the show and not just a bunch of monsters of the week. That'll be nice.

Not a great episode, but it pulls out a win in a below average week.
*** out of *****

So, here are the standings after sixteen weeks:
The Big Bang Theory - 72
Castle - 71
Community - 67
Fringe - 63
Hawaii Five-O - 58
Family Guy - 52
House - 44
How I Met Your Mother - 42
The Cleveland Show - 27
American Dad - 26
The Finder - 8

Adjust Your Race

2012-01-15T23:59:00.002-05:00

If this were a real product, I'd use it. Pale folks like me need a little extra saturation.

Shows You Don't Watch

2012-01-14T23:49:00.001-05:00

It dawned on me recently that I watch a lot of shows that aren't particularly popular. They're often in danger of cancellation, and that's really kind of stressful. Starting this week and continuing until I don't want to do it anymore, I'll be including the episode titles in each of my reviews. It'll make it easier to track things.

American Dad
"The Unbrave One"
Steve doesn't have Stan's back in a fight at the movie theatre, so Stan thinks he's a coward. Steve wants to prove that he's not, but if he tries to prove he's brave, Stan will just think he's trying to impress him. So, Roger dresses Steve up as a superhero and gets some doctored footage of him being brave on the news. But, before Steve can reveal he's a hero, Roger takes all the glory. Despondent, Steve runs off to chuck the hero costume in the river, but just as he's about to, a car with a baby in it starts rolling down a hill. He saves the baby and winds up on the news. Stan sees it and shakes his son's hand.

In a subplot, Francine thinks she might be pregnant. She's not.

What I Liked
-Steve sings "Baby Come Back" rather than having Stan's back. That's not the kind of backup he meant!
-Stan got a weird, automated Japanese vasectomy. That's a good idea for a product. I'll bet it exists already, though.
-Dontell's Abortion Juice: You Don't Need No Baby! Also a good idea for a product.
-Diarrhea Perlman's. I would not frequent that establishment.
-Steve punches a kid to steal his scooter so he can save the baby. Punching kids to save smaller kids is always funny.

What I Hated
-Stan gets his ass kicked again. He's supposed to be a tough CIA guy, but he's constantly getting beaten up.
-Maybe baby. It's not that fun to say.
-Stan's heroes brunch. Ugh.
-Piña Colada Song. I don't like it that much. Also, turns out it's called "Escape"
-Quagmire showed up at the end in a cameo as Dr. Vadger. Crossovers really aren't as much fun on cartoons. Especially cartoons made by the same people.

Final Thoughts
This was a pretty cohesive episode. The plots with Francine thinking she was pregnant and Steve being a coward actually fit together pretty well.

Nineteen laughs
*** out of *****

Castle
"Till Death Do Us Part"
Ryan's getting married and he's on a cleanse so he can't eat, so he's very testy throughout the whole episode. It comes around later.

A naked guy falls out a window, but the fall didn't kill him, he was poisoned. Through some sleuthing, the gang determines that he's a pickup artist who's been banging his way around the city. He also had a really complex secret identity and a big fat wad of cash, so at first they think he was Jason Bourne or something. But really he was just working undercover banging women involved with a big deal his company was negotiating, and his boss set him up with the cash and ID. He was killed by a chick who found out what he was up to and was just protecting her company.

As it turns out, the guy kept a log of all his conquests and inside was a picture of Ryan's fiancee... dated one month after she and Ryan got together. Castle and Beckett are concerned about telling him, so they get him to eat first. He's actually cool with it, though, because he loves his lady and it's not like they were exclusive at the time. Ryan gets married on a full stomach and Castle wonders if a third wedding might be the charm.

What I Liked
-Naked guy falls on a fruit stand while a dude is talking about firmness with a chick. Heh, boner joke.
-Alexis & Martha's hypothetical fury. Do not scorn redheads. It's bad for your health.
-The dead dude was Jason Bourne. Except he wasn't, awwwwwwwwww.
-Becket calls Esposito "The Situation" while he tries to find a +1 for Ryan's wedding to make Lanie jealous. Anything that makes that nickname into an insult is fine by me.

What I Hated
-Authentic pickup artist talk, or at least something like it. In the past I have perhaps not been as gentlemanly with woman as I should've been, but I never used any special techniques to get ladies. Giving that bs any more exposure than its already had demeans us all.

Final Thoughts
This was a fun one. It had laughs, it had intrigue, it had a wedding. If it had had a gunfight, it would've been better, but I guess we can't have everything.
*** 1/2 out of *****

Fringe
"Back To Where You've Never Been"
It's back.

Peter's dreaming about the good life back home, but he's still trapped in the wrong universe/timeline. He tries to enlist Walter to help him reconfigure the machine, but this Walter's wife killed herself after their son died because Walter was off trying to help another Peter and he won't help. So, Peter gets Olivia and Lincoln to get him Walter's old transdimensional portal machine so he can ask Walternate for help.

On the other side, the translucent shapeshifters are fucking around. Walternate won't allow anyone else to examine them, so Alterolivia and Alternalincoln get suspicious. Lincoln and Peter nearly bluff their way to see Walternate, but they get busted when Alternalincoln notices something's gone funny with his ID.

On the way to the interrogation, the Fringe guy transporting Lincoln and Peter shoots his partner and then tries to kill them. His partner wasn't quite dead, though, so after a struggle, Lincoln kills the guy and creates a diversion while Peter escapes on the subway.

Peter goes to his "mother's" house and she gets the MPs to take him to see Walternate. While they're chatting, Walternate zaps Alternabrandon with a fancy device and discovers he's a shapeshifter. Some third party is fucking around and they've already infiltrated the government in that universe. Walternate promises to help Peter get home, but first he needs his help to convince the other universe that he's not behind the shapeshifters.

Lincoln gets taken in by Alternolivia and Alternalincoln and they hold him in a supply closet to keep him off the radar because they know something's up. They trace a call that the traitor agent got just before he started shooting and get Alternabroyles to give them a little leeway. When they leave, Alternabroyles makes a call. He lets David Robert Jones know that the two of them are coming to him.

Back in the other universe, Olivia is just waiting around when the Observer shows up and tells her that she has to die. He's been shot, and before Olivia can call for help, he disappears.

What I Liked
-Peter explains how he killed David Robert Jones just before he and Lincoln go through the portal. Always tell a dude when he's about to jump through a thing that could cut him in half.
-Lincoln and Alternalincoln make cracks about how the other one sucks. I don't know why, but I always think it's fun when alternate versions of characters get all snippy with one another.
-The Observer does that thing where he talks at the save time as a person to Olivia. It's a good way to explain to someone that you're a time-travelling guy.

What I Hated
-They're not performing daily tests on all the high-ranking government guys. When the Federation was infiltrated by shapeshifters they did blood tests all the damn time. Was DS9 not a show in the alternate universe?
-The product placement for the Nissan Leaf was a bit much. It didn't reach a Bones or Chuck level, but it was pretty bad. I guess they gotta pay the bills somehow, though.

Final Thoughts
This was the episode that was supposed to air before the winter break, but it got delayed by the World Series. It was certainly a lot more cliffhangery than the one that ended up being shown last. The effect is lessened somewhat because we don't have to wait eight weeks for a new episode, but it still works.
*** 1/2 out of *****

The Big Bang Theory
"The Shiny Trinket Maneuver"
While Sheldon and Amy are out on their contractual date night at the Cheesecake Factory, Sheldon ignores Amy getting published in a prestigious journal. She is understandably upset. In order to repair their relationship, Penny convinces Sheldon to buy Amy some jewelry. At first Amy is upset that Sheldon would think she was so shallow, but then screw it, she's a princess and she has a tiara.

Meanwhile, Howard is putting on a magic show for his cousin's birthday party and Bernadette is his lovely assistant. Unfortunately, she doesn't like kids. That could be a deal-breaker for Wolowitz because he really wants children. He considers calling off the engagement, but Bernadette comes up with a compromise: She makes more money, so she'll focus on her career while he stays home with the kids. He reluctantly agrees and they have some make-up sex.

What I Liked
-Sheldon's koala face. Koalas are pretty neat, so I can understand making that face when you see them.
-Amy thinks jewelry is shallow... until she gets a tiara. Women love tiaras.
-Howard pulls a condom from behind Bernadette's ear. That's my kind of magic.

What I Hated
-Sheldon poo-poos Wolowitz's magic show. Man, who hates magic?
-They say Nathan Fillion would've been a better Green Lantern than Ryan Reynolds. I like Nathan, but he's probably too old and fat too be the Green Lantern. Also, fights like that really hurt the possibility of a Two Guys and A Girl reunion show.
-Red Dead Redemption product placement? I don't know why, but they had Sheldon playing it and they showed a couple shots of the screen. That game came out like two years ago, so it was really weird to see.

Final Thoughts
Although the plots didn't mesh together at all, the fact that both of the guys who are in steady relationships were having lady troubles at least gave them a common theme. I appreciate things like that.

Twenty-seven laughs.
*** 1/2 out of *****

The Finder
"An Orphan Walks Into a Bar"
It's the series premiere, so here's the rundown: Walter's the eponymous finder. He's a brain-damaged war veteran who has a supernatural ability to find anything. Leo's his legal adviser and sidekick. Walter found him in time to stop him from murdering a man, and now he believes Walter's magical. Isabel is a US Marshal and their buddy. She and Walter sometimes want to get it on, but not always. Willa is their ward. She's a young felon on probation, and her job is to work at The Ends of the Earth, which is Walter and Leo's bar in the Florida Keys. People come to Walter and ask him to find things. Hilarity ensues.

This week, a military kid asks Walter to find his dad's body. Dad was a navy vet who Walter found once after he crashed behind enemy lines. His plane went down over the swamp and his body was never found. After Walter makes some inquiries at the airfield, a couple goons drop by to kick some ass and find "the drugs".

After some rigmarole with a sexy lady drug dealer, Walter finds out the dad wasn't a smuggler, but was taking painkillers to Haiti on his own dime. A friend of his wanted a cut of the take, but there was no take, so he tainted the plane's fuel and that's why it went down. Friendo rats on the drug dealer lady, and the kid gets to bury his dad.

Meanwhile, Willa's a gypsy, her probation officer wants her back in jail, and she wants to get the hell out of the Keys. Her cousin or something offers to get her out if she robs the bar, but there isn't enough cash in the till, so she sticks around until she can break into Walter's vault.

What I Liked
-The footstep-making robot. I'd have no use for it, but I still want one.
-Walter gets Isabel drunk so she'll spend the night. Even good-looking guys use that move.
-He keeps telling Isabel to shoot people, but she never does. One of these days she'll listen. Maybe in the season finale.
-Leo talks about smuggling peanuts so no one gets arrested on the drug boat. Peanuts can be just as deadly as drugs if you give them to the wrong person.

What I Hated
-Willa's cousin Timo or Tebow or whatever his name is. He seems like he'll be really annoying if he keeps showing up.
-Willa's plot in general. They're doing the standard setup where she's a bad girl and at the moment of truth she'll redeem herself, but her bad friends will still be bad and the gang will have to save her. I hope I'm wrong, but that's what I think is coming.

Final Thoughts
Honestly, I liked the backdoor pilot more. It's a shame they couldn't get Saffron Burrows to stick around. I'll watch a few more episodes to see how it goes. The ratings weren't great, though, so it may not last that much longer anyway.
** 1/2 out of *****

This week's worst show was:
The Cleveland Show
"Y Tu Junior Tambien"
This one kinda bums me out because it really wasn't all that bad of an episode. It was by no means good, but it was certainly a tiny step up from where The Cleveland Show's been for its past few episodes. But, it was a pretty strong week overall, so it loses.

Cleveland's bummed that Junior's the only one of his friends who doesn't have a girlfriend. Through some stuff, Junior ends up dating a hot, illegal alien waitress at a Mexican restaurant. The guys make fun of Cleveland because his son has a hotter chick than him. ICE agents try to bust the chick, but Junior marries her so she can stay in the country. On their wedding night they go to get it on, but Junior's only 14 and too immature for banging, so they split up. But, they stay married so she won't have to leave the country. Rosie Perez played the aunt.

I wonder sometimes if Roberta's still really a character on this show since she's not in it very much. Sort of like Hayley on American Dad.

I don't have a lot to say about this episode. It wasn't offensive in its badness, so I can't talk about that, and there weren't that many good points, either. At least it wasn't a Rallo-heavy episode. Those suck most of the time.

Twelve laughs.
** out of *****

I think I'm going to start doing the best and worst in the same format as the other entries with maybe a little more commentary. Doing them the old way just fucks things up for me. Anyway, this week's best show was:
Family Guy
"Meg and Quagmire"
Meg turns 18, and that's Quagmire's cue to enter. He tries to score with her, and at first Lois tells Peter that Meg's just trying to get attention and that he should leave the two of them alone. But, eventually Quagmire takes Meg up to his cabin and Lois admits she was wrong. They rush up and get there just in time to stop the giggity, and Lois gets Quagmire to agree to stay away from Meg by threatening to cut off his junk and feed it to Brian.

What I Liked
-Pretty much the entirety of the Teen Choice Awards. I've never watched the show, but I figure that's about how it would go.
-Jewish fight club. Again, never seen one, but I figure that the depiction was pretty close.
-"My father is Mr. Quagmire... Oh, wait." That's a good bit. Quagmire's dad becoming a woman has been useful for a lot more jokes than I thought it would be.
-"Go home and rub out a giggity." The word 'giggity' has yet to enter the dictionary, but I think that's because it has too many uses. It's like 'fuck' in that respect.
-Stewie defends Meg's honour. A tiny bro sticking up for his sis is always funny.
-Vagician. I wish I'd thought that up two years ago. It would've been a good description of the guy I used to be. The prefix 'vag-' should be used on far more words.
-"How about a nice game of chess?" "I prefer bangin'" If only the real WarGames had been like that.

What I Hated
-Mexico girls. Ugh, too long, not funny enough.
-Live action sleepy animation director. A little too inside-jokey for me.

Final Thoughts
It dragged a bit near the end, but this was easily one of the best Family Guy episodes in years. There was only one stupid, overly long bit and I actually laughed at the end of it, which is probably a first.

Twenty-six laughs.
**** out of *****

So, here are the standings after fifteen weeks:
Community - 67
The Big Bang Theory - 66
Castle - 65
Fringe - 56
Hawaii Five-O - 52
Family Guy - 46
House - 44
How I Met Your Mother - 41
The Cleveland Show - 27
American Dad - 26
The Finder - 2

I believe the "Girrrrrrrrrl" is implied

2012-01-11T07:37:00.000-05:00

There's a show called Work It that just started. It's about a pair of dudes who dress up as women so they can get jobs as pharmaceutical reps. It's more or less Bosom Buddies, but 30 years later and with guys who look even less like women than Tom Hanks and Peter Scolari did. That's actually the show from which Tom Hanks derives all his success, because after it was over he killed Peter Scolari and absorbed his essence, thus becoming twice the actor he was before.

Anyway, I'm mentioning it just because I'm pretty sure this is the start of the end of the world. In 2012 they made a TV show about guys (burly, not at all feminine guys) who pretend to be women (and actually succeed in fooling people) so they can work as drug reps. The Mayans were right. This is the end.

I finished it once. ONCE.

2012-01-08T23:58:00.002-05:00

Battletoads is probably one of the top ten most devilishly impossible video games in history. Watch some guys play it:

The second part is up, but not the third. Will one of them make it to the end before going insane? We'll just have to wait to find out.

Only Twooooooooo

2012-01-07T17:32:00.003-05:00

There were only two shows this week. Which means one is the winner and one is the loser. It was a really hard decision.

This week's worst show was:
Hawaii Five-O
This was probably the most convoluted murder plot I've ever seen on TV, and that's really saying something.

A teenager was murdered because her dad was on the jury of a personal injury trial. It wasn't a high-value suit, but the construction company that was at fault was afraid the trial would expose the fact that they'd falsified some records so they could use cheaper, low-quality Chinese steel in their construction. So, they hired a jury consultant who paid a hitman to murder the girl so her dad would be excused from duty so the alternate juror(who had been bribed) could keep the rest of the jury from asking questions about the steel.

The way they get to the final suspect is really convoluted, too. Some kid at the high school created a digital yearbook and distributed it around the school. But, it had a trojan installed that would allow him to take control of their webcams and watch them get it on and so forth. He was blackmailing the dead girl's bff because he caught her banging the school's headmaster. Fortunately, he also caught the dead girl's murder, and since she was just a kid and the killer was an expensive hitman, it all spiralled from there.

Also, there was some stuff with Joe White, but that plot's still moving way too slowly.

This crap just isn't the stuff Hawaii Five-O should be doing. There should be bikini girls and guns and shots of the ocean, and stuff like that. I don't think anyone got shot in this episode, and I certainly don't remember any bikini girls. Why even shoot in Hawaii if you're not going to take advantage of the locale?
* 1/2 out of *****

This week's best show was:
How I Met Your Mother
How I Met Your Mother wins this week simply because it was somewhat less convoluted than Hawaii Five-O. And I say somewhat because it actually was a bit convoluted. They've been doing the thing where Future Ted is narrating the story of one of the other characters telling a flashback story a lot lately, and it really doesn't work well at all. It becomes this whole meta mess with stories within stories like it's fucking Inception or something.

Anyway, this week Ted tells the story of how Marshall went to his father's grave and told the story of New Year's Eve:

Ted and Barney don't want to pay the cover fee for MacLaren's, so they open up Puzzles in Ted's apartment. Things get broken, so they have to start charging more for drinks and hire a bouncer. They brought back Will Sasso, which was a bit weird because his character was last mentioned in the middle of season 4, and wasn't very interesting.

Marshall and Lily spend a quiet evening at home. Lily tells her dad she's pregnant and it doesn't look like he gives a crap, but then he drives all night to congratulate her in person. They brought back Chris Elliott, too, which is weird because he sucks and his character sucks. Supposedly he's in the next episode, so I'm not looking forward to that.

The one good plot was about Robin's New Year's Eve, and that's thanks entirely to Sandy Rivers. He breaks up with the producer he's been banging and then gets wasted and disappears, so Robin has to take over and do the New Year countdown on national TV. Of all the spouses of the main characters they've had on the show, I like Alexis Denisof's character the best, and I'm glad he's been on a few times this season.

There was a lot going on, and although they found an interesting way to have the Barney & Ted and Robin plots overlap, it still seemed somewhat disjointed. Sure, they were all having New Year's Eve adventures, but they really didn't have anything to do with each other. Plus, there was sort of a fourth plot with Marshall's brothers and a bunch of other people showing up to tailgate at Marshall's father's grave. That's too many plots.

Ten laughs.
** out of *****

So, here are the standings after fourteen weeks:
Community - 67
The Big Bang Theory - 60
Castle - 59
Hawaii Five-O - 52
Fringe - 50
House - 44
How I Met Your Mother - 41
Family Guy - 39
The Cleveland Show - 26
American Dad - 23

It's a new year

2012-01-01T13:27:00.002-05:00

Here, have a slideshow of people celebrating the end of 2011 and the beginning of 2012

Perplexus Epic

2011-12-30T17:47:00.001-05:00

Every once in a while, someone in my family gives me a puzzle. Not a simple picture puzzle, mind you, but elaborate things made of plastic and metal. This year, I was given a Perplexus Epic. The goal is relatively simple: Roll a steel ball-bearing along a track to get to the end. The track itself is quite complex, though, and features 125 segments you must follow. Or does it?

You see, the box says there are "125 challenging barriers" and the numbering on the track would seem to indicate that number 125 is indeed the end. However, as far as I can tell, there is no 64. The numbers on the track go 62-63-65. There are other segments without numbers, but 62 is the top of a staircase, 63 is the bottom, and then 65 is at the top of another staircase. There's a little nub right next to it that could be 64, but it's so close and so small that I'd hardly consider it a barrier. Plus, 125 isn't a barrier so much as it is a little pit the ball drops in when you're finished. But, I guess 125 sounds better than 123.

It Kinda Spoils the Illusion

2011-12-25T00:05:00.001-05:00

It's Christmas, and it's Sunday, so have some Christmas filler:

I did this once with an old cassette tape I had called The Smurfs All-Star Show. It turned out it was just a bunch of British dudes.

Rabies

2011-12-24T22:27:00.005-05:00

It was a party! We ate food, drank beer, and played games. Also, a dog bit me.

The Wii says it, so it must be true.

With all the beatings he gets, I can see why their love life suffers.

Oh, no, sleepy TJ is gonna spill his beer.

And he did.

I didn't think it had broken the skin, but it did. Here's what it looks like now:

Finale Quatre

2011-12-21T20:16:00.002-05:00

Only four shows that I watch ran new episodes last week, but this is still late because I didn't feel like doing it. TV's gotten so bad lately that it's really kind of depressing to go back and rehash it. For the fifth week in a row, nothing did better than 3 stars, and in fact, this week nothing did better than 2 1/2 stars.

American Dad
It's Christmas, and Stan wants to be crucifix Jesus in his church's play. But, he's too fat, so instead he gets to play Santa. Somehow, Roger ends up as Jesus, so Stan beats the crap out of him, and the video of Santa beating up Jesus gets Stan excommunicated. To get back in, he must kill the anti-Christ, or find the holy grail.

Fortunately, Jeff and Hayley have adopted a child who just might be the anti-Christ. Stan and the guys go to check out the orphanage, while the kid, who Jeff has named Nemo (it's OMEN backwards!) takes telepathic control of Steve. Nemo burns down the orphanage with his mind and kills Father Donovan. Stan and Roger go to the Vatican to retrieve some sacred daggers to kill Nemo, but Hayley loves her new child, and shoots Stan before he can stab the kid. Nemo gets sent to live with Sarah Palin, and Stan gets back into the church because Roger's pimp cup is actually the holy grail.

What I Liked
-Santa beats up Jesus. That should happen every Christmas.

What I Hated
-Roger ends up as Jesus somehow. It really doesn't make any sense.
-The show takes a shot at Sarah Palin. I guess when they wrote the episode 8 months ago or whatever, they thought she'd still be relevant today.

Final Thoughts
Not nearly as good as the Christmas episodes from previous seasons.

Ten laughs.
** out of *****

The Cleveland Show
The Cleveland Show does Die Hard. Cleveland is John McClane, Junior is Al, Tim is Hans, and so forth.

What I Liked
-Holt/Ellis does a shitload of coke. The excesses of the 1980s were great.
-"Scooby Dooby Doo, motherfucker!"
-Tim's fake name as Hans is Dick Poop. Works for me.
-Callback to Peter destroying Cleveland's house all those times. I like callbacks.
-Junior shoots a kid at the end. Sometimes kids just gotta get shot.

What I Hated
-"Weird Science!" Why?

Final Thoughts
This really could've worked if they'd had more time, but trying to jam a 90-minute movie into a 20-minute episode of a TV show just made it seem way too rushed. I don't think they'll be doing any of the sequels.

Ten laughs.
** out of *****

This week's worst show was:
Hawaii Five-O
Describing the plot for this one would be pointless because it's just way too fucking convoluted. Why do they always have to go through so many damned suspects before they get to the real killer?

They run into Tom Sizemore's character, who I guess is going to be a recurring guest star on the series for a while, since there really wasn't a good reason to have him in the episode. I'm never going to be able to remember his character's name, so in the future, I shall continue to refer to him as Tom Sizemore.

Danno's staying at the Hilton for product placement purposes. I guess there's one in Hawaii. I wonder if they actually got to shoot there, or if they had to go for a lower-budget hotel or a set. The room they were in was pretty big, and if I were the Hilton people, I'd want to show off all the fancy amenities at the hotel, so I would've let them film there. But, I'm not in charge of the hotel chain, so what do I know. Anyway, aside from product placement, this scene had Danny and Lori handcuffed together so McGarrett could get all jealous and shit. They really just need to get to the banging already.

After being engaged for two or three weeks, Chin got married. That has to be the shortest engagement in TV history.

Also, Joe White's up to something, and McGarrett wants to know what it is. We'll find out in the new year, I guess. Not nearly enough time is being devoted to this particular plot. Well, maybe enough time is, but not enough time per episode, so we get like two minutes of plot continuation every week, and the whole thing seems terribly rushed.

There was one part that I actually enjoyed, and it's a bit silly. One of the dead people was the girlfriend of some degenerate dude, and when the team finds him, he's more upset that the killer broke his favourite beer mirror than he is that his girlfriend was murdered. He just loved that beer mirror so much!

Everything else was confusing crap, though, and there wasn't even really any good banter or shooting of dudes.
* 1/2 out of *****

This week's best show was:
Family Guy
Mr. Pewterschmidt falls asleep at the wheel, and the family takes him down to Florida so he can retire. He doesn't really like it there, but Peter convinces him to stay. Six months later, he's gone catatonic, so they bring him back to Rhode Island so he can work until he drops dead.

This was not a good episode, it was merely the best of a bad crop.

There really isn't all that much to say about it, either. Carter doesn't want to retire, then he retires and doesn't like it, then he goes back to work. The end.

However, there was one bit that I really liked: The retirement community had a movie theatre where every seat had a button that would pause the movie every time you had a question. That's a good idea.

Fifteen laughs.
** 1/2 out of *****

So, here are the standings after thirteen weeks:
Community - 67
The Big Bang Theory - 60
Castle - 59
Hawaii Five-O - 51
Fringe - 50
House - 44
Family Guy - 39
How I Met Your Mother - 39
The Cleveland Show - 26
American Dad - 23

Now begins the two or three-week wait until any of these shows return with new episodes. I may try watching one or two of the mid-season replacement shows next year. I liked the backdoor pilot they did for The Finder on Bones, so I'll give that a shot, and there was one other one that I was going to watch, but now can't remember. I'm a bit bummed that Community's going to be on the back burner for a while, but the preview for the next episode of Fringe has me kinda excited, so at least there's that. I'm not sure when it starts, but I'll watch one episode of Napoleon Dynamite to see if it's worse than Allen Gregory; it'll be tough, but I think they can do it.

What are you a doctor of?

2011-12-21T18:17:00.002-05:00

Today, for no particular reason I'm aware of, I remembered an old substitute teacher from my elementary school days. Her name was Dr. Star(or possibly Starr), and she was a total bitch.

For starters, during her time there, she earned a doctorate in something, and when she went from Ms. to Dr. she insisted that 8-year-olds refer to her by her new title, and would give you shit if you screwed it up. Now that I'm older, I have to wonder just why the fuck she was working as a part-time substitute elementary school teacher if she had a fucking doctorate. It seems like she should've been teaching at the high school level at the very least.

Also, from what I remember, she wasn't a very good teacher. She didn't spend a whole lot of time instructing, and seemed to like going back and assigning marks to old work that wasn't meant to be marked. Every month we had to make a new title page in our workbooks just to keep things separated, and around about May she went back and gave my October title page a C. Not that that affected me in any real way, but looking back on it now, it just seems really sad and petty.

Anyway, that's something I remembered today. Fuck you, Dr. Star, wherever you may be.

What not to do

2011-12-11T01:24:00.000-05:00

This seems like a really useful product... that won't be available until the middle of next year. Now, I'm no marketing genius, but it seems to me that if you're going to release a video like this that gets millions of views and has hundreds of thousands of people ready to impulse buy your product, then maybe -just maybe- you should have it available for purchase. I'm just saying.

Classic Sitcom Crap

2011-12-10T17:55:00.004-05:00

Community
It's the Christmas episode, and Community's shitting all over Glee.

With the glee club in the loony bin, it's up to the study group to take over the Christmas pageant. At first they don't want to, but the glee club director infects Abed with Christmas cheer, and then it's a whole 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' thing where they all fall one by one. But, Abed sees how the director's a dick at the end, and lets Britta take over his role in the pageant. She can't sing worth shit, so the director goes nuts and admits to murdering one of the previous glee clubs, then he runs away. With proof that Christmas can be evil, Abed goes to watch the Inspector Spacetime Christmas special all alone, but the gang joins him because it's better to be together.

What I Liked
-Jeff uses ASCAP to stop the glee club. At least it's good for something.

What I Hated
-Abed & Troy's songs. Baby Boomer Santa was long and boring, and the rap was just pointless.
-Annie's 'sexy' costume isn't particularly sexy. The outfit she wore at the beginning of the season premiere showed off a similar amount of skin, and it wasn't trying to be overtly sexy.
-Whatever the fuck was going on over the credits. That was some tedious shit.

Final Thoughts
This was probably the worst episode of Community this season, and not at all a good one to go out on if the show doesn't make it back on the schedule. Maybe it just wasn't working for me because I've never seen Glee, so I don't really know what they were making fun of, but the musical numbers just dragged on and on. Honestly, I don't care if people learn valuable lessons, I just want to be entertained for half an hour, and this episode did a really poor job of it.

This week's best line: "And then in 1970 he did more drugs, and his hair stayed long, and he grew a moustache." -Abed

Eleven laughs.
** out of *****

Family Guy
Cleveland visits Quahog, and in an effort to assert their masculinity, the guys take a road trip to New Orleans. On the way there they get off the main road and are pulled over and arrested by a southern sheriff. They do their 30 days, but the warden at the prison threatens to keep them locked up forever, so they escape. They hop a train to Quahog where the sheriff and his cops catch up with them, but Joe has the local cops get the drop on them, then shoots the sheriff in the leg, gives him a speech, and tells him to leave town.

Also, the wives stay home and drink a bunch of wine, but they're really not in the episode all that much.

What I Liked
-Bonnie wants Joe to vacuum up the tire treads in the carpet, but he can't because he has to roll around in order to get to them. It's a simple joke, but it's a nice joke.
-Quagmire's beads thought bubble. Yeah, we all knew what was going on with those beads. The kids didn't, but we did.
-The guys talk about McDaniel's and Burger Queen and Quagmire bitches. I really fucking hate when shows do that. Just because a name is Trademarked it doesn't mean you can't say it at all.

What I Hated
-The jury at the guys' trial was composed of Simpsons characters. They haven't been peers for at least five years.
-Instead of talking about how he learned something, Peter just does the cadences. La-zy.

Final Thoughts
This was a better episode of Family Guy than the ones they've shown recently. Perhaps that means they should bring Cleveland back to the show more often.

Nineteen laughs.
** 1/2 out of *****

Hawaii Five-O
A busload of kids is kidnapped by some drug dealers who want their product back after the Five-O team took down their smuggling ring. Except they really just wanted to burn it so the guy who got taken during the drug bust could get out of prison. One of the kids was the son of the guy who tipped off the cops, so that's why they took them.

Also, Joe White kidnaps a Yakuza boss for some reason. At the end of the episode, he shows the guy to McGarrett, then drives off and calls up a dude to tell him that McGarrett's getting too close. I'm very confused.

What I Liked
-The guy playing the governor acts as if he's reading a speech while giving a speech. I'm not sure if that was good acting or not, but I liked it.
-McGarrett says "Book 'em Danno" again. It's been too long since he's done that.

What I Hated
-Joe gets shit-canned for helping McGarrett in Korea. I have no idea how the navy found out about that.

Final Thoughts
This was actually a really mediocre episode. They've done the thing where they kidnap a bunch of kids before (albeit they were a bit older last time), and I wasn't too enthused by it that time, either.
** out of *****

The Big Bang Theory
One of Leonard's old buddies sends him a message; he's in town and wants to meet up for a drink. It turns out that he has a stupid idea and needs a tech head to help him out, and Leonard's the smartest guy he ever knew. Although he can't help, Leonard uses the opportunity to confront the bully about all the crap he did when they were younger. The bully didn't actually know he was a bully, so he gets wasted and heads over to Leonard and Sheldon's to apologize. He's too drunk to drive, so Leonard lets him crash on the couch. In the morning, he acts like an asshole, so Leonard asks him to leave, then shoves him. But he's much bigger than them, so Leonard and Sheldon must flee.

Meanwhile, Penny finds out that she was also unknowingly a bully in high school, and as an act of repentance, she donates some of her old clothes to charity. Except while she's at the donation box, she notices that some of the stuff is really nice and wants to take it. In the end, she doesn't, but Bernadette grabs some boots.

What I Liked
-The previous Pope was a Harlem Globetrotter. Fun fact!
-Sheldon shits on the Newcomb Medal, which Raj and Leonard have both won. Seriously, fuck the Newcomb Medal.
-"Leonard, I platonically love you, man." It's nice that Sheldon can admit he has feelings.
-Sheldon wants to murder the bully in his sleep. It was a good plan, and I think the guys should've gone through with it.
-Sheldon's aware of the "You just have to outrun one of your friends" rule. It's a rule to live by.

What I Hated
-The bully's a loser and not a car dealer or something like he would be in real life.
-Neither Penny, nor Leonard's bully actually knew they were bullies. Bullies know when they're bullying people. It's not rocket science.

Final Thoughts
I swear they've done an episode where the guys confront a bully at least once before. This episode made me laugh a decent amount, but it really wasn't very good.

Eighteen laughs.
** 1/2 out of *****

The Cleveland Show
Cleveland gets fatter and Donna makes him join a gym. But, even with Holt as his personal trainer, Cleveland's not into it, so he buys some men's shapewear and merely pretends to be all buff. Donna takes him to the Superintendent's Ball where his man girdle explodes and his gut pours all over the floor. Everyone laughs at him until Donna pulls off her wig and her boob enhancing things that I can't remember the name of, and shows that she's ugly, too. Then they do it on a table.

In the b-plot, Murray starts dating a gold digger, and Rallo tries to stop them from getting married. It doesn't work, but Murray quickly learns that his lady's not all she was cracked up to be, so he and Rallo drive her insane with cats until she has to be put in a home.

What I Liked
-Murray shows up for a second in Cleveland and Donna's plot, but realizes he doesn't belong there. At least they're admitting that the plots have nothing to do with each other.
-They use "Somebody's Watching Me" as background music while the guys are driving the gold digger crazy. I like that song.

What I Hated
-Cleveland's fat explodes out of his suit like he's Eddie Murphy's Nutty Professor. I didn't want to remember that movie.
-Lots of ugly sex. Even animated ugly sex isn't pretty.

Final Thoughts
I fucking hate Murray. It's great that Carl Reiner's still alive, but he's really not funny or interesting on this show.

Nine laughs.
** out of *****

This week's worst show was:
How I Met Your Mother
Robin's worried she might be pregnant, so she goes to the OB/Gyn. Not only is she not pregnant, but she can't ever have children. She's sad.

Marshall puts Christmas lights on the house with help from a neighbourhood kid... who steals his phone and strands him on the roof so he can throw a party.

I'm really not sure what was going on in terms of narration. It starts off as Robin telling a story to her kids a la Future Ted, but then it turns out they're imaginary, and the episode ends with narration by Future Ted to his kids. If the entire show's supposed to be a story his telling, then how the hell could he tell them things he doesn't know anything about?

The whole Robin pregnancy thing was just stupid from beginning to end. There must be something really wrong with the women on sitcoms. In real life, people have to work really hard not to get pregnant, but on sitcoms it turns out that it's damn near impossible to knock someone up, and half the women can't have children at all. I thought this show was above lazy bullshit like that, but I guess I was wrong.

You'd think that someone in the neighbourhood would've noticed that Marshall was trapped on the roof and that there was a huge party going on in his place. But, no.

Eight laughs.
* 1/2 out of *****

This week's best show was:
Castle
After last week, I was a little concerned that all the shows I watch were going down the crapper. This week didn't help matters much, but at least this episode was okay.

Castle and Beckett wake up handcuffed together in a dark basement with no idea how where they are or how they got there. There's a locked freezer in the room that's full of chains and bloody knives, so they know it's not a fun basement. After nearly escaping through a hatch in the ceiling before a dude slams it down on them, they kick through a wall and discover a freaking tiger.

Meanwhile, Ryan and Esposito notice they're missing and try to track them down. They arrive just in time to save Castle and Beckett from the tiger, and their backup arrests the rednecks who were smuggling tigers. Apparently it's legal to sell them in Texas, but not anywhere else in the US.

It was a little too convenient that Martha and Alexis were out of town so they wouldn't notice that Castle was missing, but everything else about that part was okay. The cops really ought to have been telling people where the hell they were going when they went out to chase leads, and I'm glad the Cap'n made that a new rule.

Castle seems like a good guy to be handcuffed to. He keeps things light, and he's willing to hack your arm off Mad Max-style if necessary.
*** out of *****

So, here are the standings after twelve weeks:
Community - 67
The Big Bang Theory - 60
Castle - 59
Fringe - 50
Hawaii Five-O - 50
House - 44
How I Met Your Mother - 39
Family Guy - 35
The Cleveland Show - 23
American Dad - 20

This story is from the internet

2011-12-04T13:30:00.002-05:00

I think some of the stuff referenced in the video still exists. That's kinda neat.

Five shows, none of them good

2011-12-03T23:57:00.001-05:00

Yet another sad week for TV. Maybe I should just stop watching entirely.

American Dad
Bullock hires a freelance alien hunter named Shannon Sharp to track down Roger. In a seemingly unrelated event, Stan bumps into a woman named Scarlett he had a crush on at CIA school. He's all over her, which pisses off Francine, so she gets Roger to seduce her. Roger's all over it because it's not all right for a lady like that to go a day without a crispy pickle. Steve's jealous, so he tips off Mr. Sharp, and shit's about to go down. But, as it turns out, Scarlett's also a freelance alien hunter. She kills Shannon, then Francine kills her before she can kill Stan. Unfortunately, she's already had a chance to dissect Roger, so they have to put him back together.

In the b-plot, Steve accidentally wears some of Hayley's panties to school, and he thinks they're lucky. Snot finds out about them, and steals them while Steve's showering after gym. As it turns out, they really were lucky panties, so Hayley goes over to Snot's house and kicks his ass to get them back. Snot really enjoys to getting to have so much physical contact with Hayley, so in the end, everyone is happy.

What I Liked
-"You are a complicated man, Smith. I would love to do mushrooms with you." Right now, Bullock is my favourite character on any show.
-Stan eats Shannon Sharp's spaghetti. It was out of nowhere. I like those kinds of gags sometimes.
-Hayley's actually in the episode. But, where was Jeff? Where was Jeff?

What I Hated
-Again, the plots are unrelated. At least there weren't three of them, though.
-Putting Roger back together. It went on way too long and wasn't funny or interesting in any way.
-The guys investigating Shannon Sharp's suicide. Ugh. Why? Did they have a minute to fill at the end of the episode?

Final Thoughts
Week after week, I'm amazed at the stuff they can get Patrick Stewart to say. He's a 71-year-old British knight and they get him to talk about doing mushrooms. Extraordinary.

Thirteen laughs.
** 1/2 out of *****

Family Guy
Peter was too fat to ride a roller coaster at a local amusement park, so he straps on a girdle and the Griffins visit an out-of-town park. After Peter causes an accident on the roller coaster, they all head home. But, on the way back, their car breaks down, and they're forced to spend the night at a hotel in Amish country. While they're there, Meg falls for an Amish boy. His father's worried she might corrupt him, and Peter acts like an ass, so they're kicked out of town, but the boy stows away with them. This starts a feud between Peter and the boy's father that gets way the hell out of hand. The feud ends when the boy shows his father how feuding has made him corrupt. Then he decides to leave Meg and stay in Amish country. The end.

What I Liked
-The steam from Quagmire's pie tries to rape Peter. Rape jokes can sometimes be funny. I'll bet quite a few people were pissed off by this one, though.
-Brian smacks Stewie for saying "I thought something looked a-mish." That was the correct response.
-A horse poops on Meg. Everyone and everything should poop on Meg.
-Peter plays Highway to Hell for the Amish. That's not the best introduction to music he could've given them, but I suppose it was better than having to explain that a 'ho' is not actually a gardening implement in certain contexts.

What I Hated
-Legs Go All the Way Up Griffin. That was a silly joke.
-The battle at the end. It went on too long and was silly.

Final Thoughts
Meg-heavy episodes are never very good, and this one is no exception. Supposedly it comes from the fact that the show is mainly written by dudes who have no idea how to write dialogue for a teenage girl, and also Mila Kunis' voice is annoying as hell.

Eleven laughs.
** out of *****

House
Some dude has a heart attack. Park and Adams search his house and find a hidden room full of guns. So, all the doctors start talking about guns, and Wilson bets that House has one somewhere even though he's on probation. He tries to search House's apartment, but he gets caught in a net. They go back and forth as they always do, and eventually Wilson gives up. Meanwhile, Park and Adams bicker a lot, and the team cures the guy. He had diphtheria because he was too paranoid to get his shots or something.

Meanwhile, Taub and Chase think Foreman works too hard and needs to get laid. Taub sics all the nurses on him, but he turns them down. However, he meets a lady at the gym and winds up making out with her in her apartment... until she realizes her husband's home. Foreman's not going to pursue things, but then he changes his mind and meets up with her at a bar.

What I Liked
-They at least tried to integrate the product placement into the show. Adams tells Park about her car's ability to follow the line on the road, and then Park basically says she doesn't give a shit. That was much better than that stuff usually is.
-House busts a clinic patient for stealing by noticing he had silver nitrate on his hands. I'm enjoying House's clinic duty this season.
-Wilson doublebluffs House and traps him in his own bathroom by taking the doorknobs off. I saw it coming, but it was still funny.

What I Hated
-Foreman decides to date a married woman. He spends half the episode telling people how he doesn't need drama in his life and then he goes out with a chick who has a husband. Fuck that noise.

Final Thoughts
If I wanted to watch bickering doctors, I'd watch Grey's Anatomy (I assume they bicker. I've never actually seen an episode). Park and Adams better learn to live with each other because if they don't, then the show's going to be annoying as fuck.

** out of *****

This week's worst show was:
The Cleveland Show
Donna joins a women's group, which screws up the family's home life. So, Cleveland does the only logical thing and poses as a woman in a burka to convince the ladies that they should appreciate their husbands more. Through a short series of stupid bullshit things, he ends up posing as one of the wives of a wealthy Yemeni man. But after getting worked like a slave for a while, Cleveland realizes the life of a wife isn't so great, and thus appreciates Donna more.

In the B-plot, Junior babysits Rallo and winds up acting as his avatar to fight a bully. Which works out until the bully also gets his brother to act as an avatar. They fight for what seems like half an hour until the older brothers are injured and Rallo and the bully become buddies.

Man, fuck this episode. How many times must the 'You gotta appreciate your wife more' story be told? It's a sitcom staple that probably goes back to the days of radio, so I'm pretty sure that particular well's run dry. Fucking 'walk a mile in my shoes, idiot husband' bullshit.

The avatar stuff wasn't nearly as offensive, but it was just sort of mindless, and the whole avatar thing was done much better by American Dad.

This has really fallen to a Simpsons level of crapitude. Which is funny, incidentally, because I'm pretty sure they've done like 12 episodes where Homer learns to appreciate the things Marge does for him. If I were still doing things the same way I was last year, there's a good chance it would be relegated. I'm not, though, so I shall continue to watch in the hopes that it will get better.

Nine laughs.
* 1/2 out of *****

This week's best show was:
Community
I've decided this was the best show of the week based on the number of laughs it got, but it's not getting a better star rating because it honestly wasn't very good.

Annie accidentally steps on and breaks Abed's super special edition Dark Knight DVD, and tries to cover it up by staging a burglary. Abed dresses as Batman and investigates, quickly settling on their landlord as the most likely culprit. He, Annie, and Troy go in through the window and find that their landlord didn't break the DVD, but he did steal a bunch of shoes from women in the building. Annie sort of apologizes to Batman, and the case is closed, I guess.

In the other plot, there are some loud, annoying Europeans at the foosball table, and Jeff wants them to shut up. They will, but only if he can beat them. When he was young, he played a lot, but quit after he was bullied. It turns out Shirley also used to play when she was young, but it brought out a bad side in her, and she quit. After practicing a bit, the two of them go to dinner, where Shirley tells the story of why she quit: She bullied a kid and jabbed him with the rod until he peed himself. Jeff quickly recognizes that she was the one who bullied him, and points out that her goody-goody attitude is just a veneer covering up a horrible person. The two of them wind up back at the foosball table and have an anime-style cartoon game battle. They make up, and at the game against the Europeans, they strand the ball in a spot where none of the guys can get it, and then go to the movies.

Things actually started pretty well, but it all went down the shitter about halfway through the episode. The animated portion wasn't interesting, nor was it a particularly good parody of anime-style battling. During the credits, Leonard reviews Eugenio's Four-Cheese Pizza, and it was so bad I nearly turned it off.

Learning a little bit about Shirley and Jeff's childhoods was a bit interesting, but they really ruined it by showing young Shirley and young Jeff walking away arm-in-arm at the end of the episode. I thought Community was above that kind of schmaltzy crap.

No Chang or Dean this week. Also, I think Alison Brie looked a little thinner, but I'm not sure.

This week's best line: "Oh, you are so on that things have now become very much like Donkey Kong." -Lead Annoying European

Sixteen laughs.
** 1/2 out of *****

So, here are the standings after eleven weeks:
Community - 63
The Big Bang Theory - 54
Castle - 52
Fringe - 50
Hawaii Five-O - 46
House - 44
How I Met Your Mother - 38
Family Guy - 29
American Dad - 20
The Cleveland Show - 19

Her last name isn't really Bacon

2011-11-27T01:09:00.001-05:00

Kate Beaton went to talk to the King of Spain:

I may be starting to hate TV

2011-11-26T23:59:00.003-05:00

Again, only one show managed to break the three-star barrier. That's pretty bad. Either I'm becoming harder to please in my old age, or TV is getting worse.

American Dad
It's Steve's birthday and Stan realizes that he hasn't been around for many of the moments in his son's life. Unfortunately, Steve's now at the age where all he cares about are boobs. But, Stan wants to spend time with him, so he uses a CIA avatar in the shape of a hot, teenage girl with the voice of Sarah Michelle Gellar to hang out with Steve. It works for a while, but when Stan can't bring himself to get physical with Steve, it falls apart. So, Stan says if Steve will take him to the dance, he'll go all the way. It almost works, but Francine finds out what's going on and then fights the avatar with a mech. Steve doesn't get laid, but Stan got to spend some time with him, so it all worked out.

Meanwhile, Roger steals a limo and then picks up some frat guys who stiff him. He then resolves to run them all over, which he eventually manages to do.

What I Liked
-Black Dick is huge and veiny. Patrick Stewart has the best lines, and I'm still amazed that they can get him to say them.
-Steve's schedule says 'Whack it' every day. That's about right.
-Stan dances erotically in the avatar booth. It looks so wrong, but it feels so right.
-Patrick Stewart says "sex-pummelled". Best actor ever.

What I Hated
-Roger's plot is unconnected to the rest of the episode. Again.

Final Thoughts
It's becoming a bit obvious that the writers are really having trouble integrating some of the characters into the plot. I understand that it can be hard to do, but that's no excuse.

Eleven laughs.
** out of *****

Family Guy
Everyone heads over to the Griffin house for Thanksgiving, including surprise guest Kevin Swanson, who everyone thought had died in Iraq. He tells everyone he's been in a coma for years, but gaps quickly begin to appear in his story. Eventually, he confesses that he abandoned his post after an explosion, and Joe arrests him for being a fugitive. But, after reminding his dad how he once let a guy off for shoplifting soup to feed his family, Kevin is released. Or is he?!? Another Kevin arrives and claims the first one is an impostor, but we don't have time for that.

What I Liked
-Joe's butt doesn't work anymore, and he can't poop. That's lowbrow humour, but I don't care.
-James Woods High School football's 'Not Gay Revue'. Ain't many things gayer than showering with a bunch of guys and smacking them on the ass, but you gotta do what you gotta do if you want to get ahead in the world of sports.
-Son died tomato.
-The baby Swanson whose inner monologue is the voice of Patrick Stewart watched The Human Centipede. That's not appropriate for children.
-Future old people are wizards. I plan to be old in the future, so I'd damn well better be a wizard.
-Duty means poop. Lowbrow!

What I Hated
-Kevin gets all preachy about the war and brings up the Nazis. Yeah, it's a stupid war, but fucking Godwin's Law, man.

Final Thoughts
This episode started off really strongly and had some good jokes, but after Kevin and Brian started getting all preachy, it went right to shit. Not everything needs to have social commentary. Sometimes you can just make poop jokes.

Seventeen laughs.
** 1/2 out of *****

Hawaii Five-O
A reporter calls her boss to tell him she thinks she's being followed, and she's going to send him a file. But, when she gets home her computer is gone, and someone's in her house. She hides under a table, but she gets dragged out and murdered.

Larisa Oleynik's butt returns and tells McGarrett that her fiancee is in North Korea, and she needs his help to get him back. They go, but it's a trap, and she betrays him to Wo Fat. Her fiancee really was a prisoner in North Korea, but he's been dead for a while. Larisa Oleynik's butt smacks a guard to get a moment with the body and pulls a pin out of her fiancee's knee before she can be retaken and chained up. Wo Fat tortures McGarrett for information on something his dad was investigating, but McGarrett doesn't know anything, so he ices Larisa Oleynik's butt and prepares to move out. Just before she died, she managed to toss the pin to McGarrett, and he picks his cuffs and nearly escapes, but gets caught at the last second.

Back in Hawaii, the murder investigation has led the team to an apartment where Larisa Oleynik's butt was staying under a fake name. After discovering that something fishy is going on, and unable to contact McGarrett, they ask Joe White for help. He gets them a little information, along with the assistance of some SEALs who owe McGarrett a favour. The lot of them head off to South Korea to do some highly illegal shit.

With help from Jimmy Buffet, they infiltrate North Korea, kill everyone but Wo Fat, and get McGarrett back. Easy peasy.

What I Liked
-Chin proposes to his ex-fiancee. D'awww.
-Max matter-of-factly says "Yes, it's very sad." Robot doctors are the future!
-Larisa Oleynik's butt is back. I missed it.
-All the divorced men on the helicopter make the "Find a woman you really hate and buy her a house" joke when Chin tells everyone he's getting married.

What I Hated
-White gives the "You can back out" speech. No one ever backs out.
-Weston hugs Steve just a little too much when they get him back. Really? They want to go that route?
-They killed Larisa Oleynik's butt. And they didn't even have the common courtesy to put her in a bikini first.

Final Thoughts
This wasn't really a satisfying end to that particular plot. Larisa Oleynik's butt was far too trusting of Wo Fat, and really should've expected the double cross. Also, it was way too easy for them to fly a helicopter in and out of North Korea. It's certainly possible to get over the board via land, but in the air, if they spot you it would cause a fucking war. They really should've gone with Vietnam or something, instead.

** out of *****

House
A 14-year-old girl collapses. She appears to be pregnant, but has no idea how it could've happened. Also, there's nasty porn in her room that she says belongs to a boyfriend who no one has ever met. She has multiple personalities, and the boyfriend doesn't exist. The pregnancy doesn't exist either, and is actually a hormonal disorder which caused all kinds of shit.

House also takes on the case of the dead son of a man in his anger management group. Foreman doesn't want him to do it because it would involve violating his parole, and Wilson tries to talk him out of it, but he still does it because he's addicted to solving mysteries. Even though it gets him an ass-whooping by the dead kid's mother's new husband, House figures out what killed the kid. He had a genetic disorder passed on to him by his mother that made him partially deaf. House nearly gets another ass-whooping before he loudly explains that the disorder is genetic and thus affecting the mother's new son. The cops show up to take House back to the hospital, and Foreman gives him 30 clinic hours as punishment.

Meanwhile, Chase is up to something. He goes full metrosexual, but won't tell anyone why. He did a medical segment on the news using an over-the-top Australian accent. It'll never come up again.

What I Liked
-House and Foreman do duelling cases, but Foreman wins because the patient in his case is still alive.

-The patient has to explain that the Magic 8-ball she was holding when she collapsed was the toy, and not drugs. You should always be clear when you're giving information to your doctor.

What I Hated
-Multiple personalities. It's like a damned soap opera.

Final Thoughts
The ads for this episode described it as so shocking that they could only show us brief glimpses of it. It wasn't nearly as shocking as the episode from last week where the kid had syphilis because his father raped him.
** out of *****

How I Met Your Mother
Lily and Marshall consider moving out to Long Island, and Robin tries to stop them. They decide to have Thanksgiving dinner at their new place. Robin locks herself in the bathroom and refuses to come out until everyone stops acting crazy.

Meanwhile, Barney's upset that Robin didn't leave Kal Penn for him, and he and Ted get really drunk and decide to become bro-parents. After a little chatting the next day, Ted decides it a bad idea, but Barney shows up with a baby. The try out the parenting thing and it goes relatively well. However, at dinner, James shows up to reclaim his new daughter, Sadie. He tells Ted a story about how he almost had a baby with a female friend once, but he decided against it and now he has a husband and two kids. So, Ted tells Barney that they won't be adopting any babies. A still kinda bummed Barney climbs in the bathroom window to talk to Robin. She tells him she's pregnant.

What I Liked
-Barney and Ted have a conversation about how awesome it would be to be gay. If only women were more like guys.
-Marshall runs into Ernie Hudson and nearly becomes a Ghostbuster. That's probably the way to go when that sort of thing happens.
-Barney calls dibs on all three hypothetical nannies. You should always call dibs as soon as possible.

What I Hated
-Bob Saget gives out narration spoilers. It makes no sense in context, and it really killed the flow of the episode.
-Lily and Marshall's apartment shrinks for some reason. I get why they did it narratively, but I think there were better ways to show that their apartment was too small than by actually shrinking the set.

Final Thoughts
It would be supremely odd if they did a storyline this season where Lily and Robin are both pregnant, when a year or two ago, Alyson and Cobie were pregnant at the same time but neither of their characters were. I'm betting Robin will miscarry, though.

Fifteen laughs.
** 1/2 out of *****

This week's worst show was:
The Cleveland Show
It wasn't offensively bad, but something's gotta be the worst episode of the week.

Junior's the only one who goes to school on Skip Day, and Cleveland is upset that his son's such a wuss. But, it turns out that Junior has superhuman strength and can whoop Cleveland's ass. To save his daddy's pride, Junior tells everyone that Cleveland beat him up, but that gets him arrested. Junior breaks him out of jail and a high-speed chase ensues, during which, father and son have a heart-to-heart talk. In the end, everyone is happy.

In the B-plot, Rallo gets in a hit-and-run accident with Kendra and Lester thinks Holt did it and tries to murder him by cutting the brake lines on his recumbent bicycle. Rallo confesses at the last second, and all is well.

Again, this episode was just kind of there. It didn't o anything totally awful, but it was such a throwaway that it might as well not have existed. If given a choice between this and Allen Gregory or Bob's Burgers, I'd certainly go with The Cleveland Show, but that's really not saying much. While those shows are blatantly awful, they have more emotional resonance with me, simply because I hate them. Episodes of Seth MacFarlane's shows like this one have no effect on me whatsoever. If I hadn't written it down, I'd have no idea what this episode was about, but I can totally remember the plot of the one shitty episode of Allen Gregory I watched.

Ten laughs.
* 1/2 out of *****

This week's best show was:
Castle
There's a sniper doing some sniping on the streets of New York. Everyone's careful around Beckett on account of the fact that she was recently shot by a sniper, but she says she's fine. It's a lie! She has a serious PTSD problem, and needs to visit Counsellor Worf. She hangs back for most of the case while Esposito takes the lead. At the end, she tracks the guy down and almost talks him out of killing anymore people, but he's a nut, so Esposito has to shoot him.

Michael Dorn's doing a pretty good job in his recurring role as Beckett's psychiatrist. He's very quiet and subdued, and a lot more reassuring than Marina Sirtis ever was.

The whole concept that the sniper was leaving behind paper dolls that foretold his next target was really well executed. Alexis got to help crack the case because of it, Castle got to show off his big brain, and the reveal at the end that the last doll was actually a chain of paper dolls was pretty neat. Kudos to whoever came up with that bit.

I'm not sure I bought into Beckett's drunken PTSD freak out. They haven't really shown much to indicate that getting shot had any effect on her at all. The sniper would've brought up a lot of painful memories, but it would've been nice to see a little build up beforehand. As it was, it really seemed like she was totally fine with almost getting murdered. I don't know much about PTSD, so that may be how things really are, but it still didn't really fit with the way her character had been progressing.

I swear I heard someone say "What the fuck?" after the first girl was shot at the beginning of the episode. That was pretty rad.
*** out of *****

So, here are the standings after ten weeks:
Community - 58
The Big Bang Theory - 54
Castle - 52
Fringe - 50
Hawaii Five-O - 46
House - 41
How I Met Your Mother - 38
Family Guy - 26
The Cleveland Show - 18
American Dad - 15

Recycling

2011-11-24T19:01:00.003-05:00

I learned something today. It's something that I didn't need to know, and it kinda makes me sad to know it.

Remember the movie Wild Things? It came out in 1998 and was notable only for its relatively hot (for the time) Denise Richards on Neve Campbell topless makeout scene. Well, despite the fact that the ending didn't really leave the door open for a sequel, they made one... and another... and another.

The fourth film in the series is called Wild Things: Foursome and stars Ashley Parker Angel... who is not a female porn star, but actually one of the singers from early 2000s fake boy-band, O-Town.

I think there are probably boobs in it, but I don't know. Regardless, the whole thing just makes me kinda sad. Someone made a third direct-to-DVD sequel to a not particularly popular movie, and the star was the pretty-boy from a third-rate boy band. What hath science wrought?

There are 15

2011-11-20T01:12:00.001-05:00

Why don't we have a show like this in Canada? Or at least the English-speaking portion of North America?

I thought November was when the good episodes come on

2011-11-19T15:32:00.005-05:00

This was not a good week for TV. Only one show even managed to break the three-star barrier.

American Dad
Stan really wants to be a best man at a wedding, but his last single guy friend is Principal Lewis, and his girlfriend just dumped him. As it turns out, his girlfriend was the superintendent, and Stan convinces her that Lewis has changed and is ready for a commitment, so she agrees to marry him, and Stan finally gets to be a best man. But, during the course of his duties, Stan tracks down Tracy, Principal Lewis' prison wife, who puts the kibosh on the wedding. But, Stan beats up Lewis, thus claiming his prison wife and the wedding goes forth as planned. That is, of course, until Stan learns that the superintendent just wants to marry Principal Lewis so she can have his biracial baby and win an election. At the last moment, Stan stops the wedding, and the superintendent kicks his ass, thus claiming his prison wife. She has his baby and wins the election, and everyone lives happily ever after.

Meanwhile, Roger buys some magic shorts that make him taller and more handsome. He and Steve head down to Miami to show them off, and Roger bumps into Ricky Martin. They go to get it on, but Roger can't take off his shorts, so it doesn't happen. There was a real connection there, though, so Roger tracks Ricky down and drops his shorts to show off the real Roger. This impresses Ricky, who, as it turns out, has been wearing a magic t-shirt for years. He takes it off, revealing his flab, and Roger quickly snags it and runs away, now in possession of a complete magic outfit.

What I Liked
-Marriage negotiations with the superintendent. A lefty cappuccino would be nice. Maybe I should get remarried.
-Principal Lewis was the inspiration for Diff'rent Strokes. Somehow I don't think it's ever going to come up again, but I wish it would.
-Stan overkills Tracy, but it doesn't work. Death cannot stop true love.
-Hayley and Jeff are actually there. I guess Seth wanted to toss his sister a little work.

What I Hated
-Roger's plot. So very strange.

Final Thoughts
The two plot lines didn't fit together at all, and had so little to do with each other that they didn't even take place in the same state for the most part. I hate when shows do that.

Principal Lewis played a major part in the episode for a second consecutive week. I feel like he works best in small doses, so it's kinda like they OD'ed on him.

Fourteen laughs.
** out of *****

Community
Greendale needs a new commercial, and the Dean gets the group to star in it. Meanwhile, Abed films a documentary of the commercial filming process because he thinks it's going to drive the Dean insane. He's not wrong. Just before they wrap filming, the Dean gets a call from Greendale's most famous Alumnus, Luis Guzman, saying that he'd be willing to be in the commercial. But, he's busy, so he won't be available to do it for a couple weeks. In that time, the Dean goes off the deep end and nearly takes everyone with him, and it becomes a whole Apocalypse Now thing. Annie becomes the script supervisor with Stockholm Syndrome, Jeff plays the Dean in the ad and nearly loses himself in the part, and Pierce won't come out of the trailer he rented for himself until the production gets him a trailer.

Before all is lost, Britta tells the Dean he's nuts, and everyone abandons him, which leaves him to complete his vision... which Luis Guzman just can't star in. The Dean has a breakdown, but when he shows the completed commercial to the school's board of directors, Abed has used the Dean's shots from the first day, and a few from his documentary to fix it. Everyone forgives the Dean because they're all screwed up in some way, and they all have a big group hug.

What I Liked
-Jeff plays the Dean. A bit on the nose, but still pretty funny.
-Abed realizes the Dean is going nuts, but won't stop it because he's trying to be objective. Sometimes you've just got to let things play out.
-Joel McHale says he's bald. Good of him to finally admit it.

What I Hated
-Chang as Jeff's understudy. Why?
-Too many references to Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now. When you point out what you're doing, it becomes far less clever. Especially when you do it like thirty times.
-Troy and Britta's relationship progresses. I'm not against it per se, but it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. Donald Glover and Gillian Jacobs look age-appropriate for each other, but on the show she's playing a character who's ten years older than him. When I was 21, I sure as hell wasn't interested in 31-year-old women. I'm barely interested in them now.

Final Thoughts
Alison Brie spent a good chunk of the episode covering her midsection with various objects. It may be a coincidence, or it may be that she's starting to show and they need to hide it.

They brought in a tonne of guest characters for this episode, so I'm betting it cost a lot of money. Which is a shame, because it was the weakest episode so far this season.

This week's best line: "We open on a typical day at Greendale only the students all look happy and you can't smell that smell." -Dean Pelton

Sixteen laughs.
** 1/2 out of *****

Fringe
Olivia's looking a bit rough, and she's taking some meds. While she's out refilling her prescription in the middle of the night, she runs into Lincoln at a 24-hour diner. All the fringe stuff has been making it so he can't sleep at night. Which is understandable. During the course of the episode, Olivia asks around, and it turns out she's the only one who isn't freaked out by all the crazy crap that happens in her life.

Meanwhile, there's an invisible dude out there who's sucking the pigments out of people in an effort to become visible again. He was born with a rare genetic abnormality which made him highly susceptible to light. A precursor to Massive Dynamic had him declared dead when he was four days old, and then experimented on him until they found a way to make him completely invisible. After a fire in the lab, they thought he was dead... but he wasn't. Walter figures out that the pigmentation treatments invisible guy is giving himself are going to kill him, and that he'll be visible under UV light. So, the team tracks him down, and Olivia tries to convince him to go back to the lab. Invisible guy's not into it, and he disappears and gives himself one last treatment, which allows him to have a short conversation with a pretty woman who lives in the apartment building where he's staying. Then he dies, happy that he has at last been seen.

Peter goes shopping because he literally doesn't own anything. The FBI guy who's watching him is a bit short with him, but when Lincoln drops some data on the Machine off at his place, he actually treats him like a human. Peter easily deduces that Lincoln's into Olivia, so he gives Lincoln some less-nerdy glasses so that he might hit that. Olivia visits Nina and asks her if the cortexiphan trials might have stunted her emotions Nina doesn't think so, so Olivia asks Lincoln out on a sort-of date. Before she can go, though, Nina and some goons gas her, and inject her with cortexiphan. The show fades to black, and we get to wait until January to find out what the hell that was about.

What I Liked
-Walter buys $818 worth of octopus stuff because science has no price.
-Is repigmentize a word? Probably not, but it should be.
-Invisible mouse. The best kind of mouse!

What I Hated
-Invisible guy kinda gets all stalkerish with the pretty woman in his building. It's like Hollow Man, but without the rape.

Final Thoughts
This really wasn't a sufficient episode to lead into a seven or eight-week break. It was less of a "Gee, this is awesome, I wanna know what happens next!" cliffhanger and more of a "What the fuck was that?" cliffhanger. We simply don't know enough about this Nina to deduce what her motivations might be, so the whole 'gassing her surrogate daughter and giving her drugs' thing is sort of out of the blue. My best guess is that the rained out World Series game mucked up the schedule, and they really meant to go out on the next episode, the preview of which looks far more exciting than this episode was.

I also don't know about the whole Lincoln-Olivia relationship thing. You gotta bang someone, I guess. And I suppose there aren't a whole lot of options for either of them, but it's kinda been done before.
** 1/2 out of *****

Hawaii Five-O
A car chase in a shipping yard reveals a dead guy in the trunk of a stolen car. Dead guy had all sorts of plastic surgery done and sanded off his finger prints because he was in Witness Protection and hiding from the Irish mob. But the mob tracked him down, which leads to one mob guy getting shot, and the other going to prison for life for some earlier murders. But, they didn't kill him. He died on the operating table while he was getting plastic surgery, and the surgeon put a bullet in him to make it look like a hit.

What I Liked
-Danno's living on McGarrett's couch. No TV after midnight, and 3-minute showers.
-Max gets all snippy with Danny & McGarrett because they didn't RSVP to his theme movie night. Always RSVP!
-Kamekona helps track down some guys who work on stolen cars, and he gets Kono a nice air freshener for the car. Women love fresh air.

What I Hated
-Weston goes undercover to catch a car thief, and they make a big deal about how slutty she's dressed, but she's really not wearing anything particularly slutty.

Final Thoughts
Eh, it was okay.
** 1/2 out of *****

How I Met Your Mother
Barney and Robin got busy, and thus cheated on their respective significant others. But, they both still like the people they're dating, so they decide not to tell them... until they get trapped on a boat for Sandy Rivers' annual "Bang the New Intern" cruise. Things get a little too real, and after deciding they both might be interested in being together, Barney and Robin resolve to tell Nora and Dr. Kal Penn what happened, then meet up at MacLaren's to talk about their future. Barney tells Nora he cheated, and she gives him an out, but he won't take it. Robin's about to tell Kal Penn what happened, but he convinces her not to tell him because no matter what bad thing she might have done, he loves her, so he doesn't need to know.

Ted, Marshall and Lily go to Somethingpalooza where Ted and Marshall spark up a fat sandwich. When Lily finds out, she makes them go off to get her nachos, but they get lost and miss the whole show... only they don't. They were just so damn high that it seemed like hours when they were only gone for ten minutes. Thus, they learn that there's still time left for them to do all the things in life that they wanted to do, and that they should maybe stop smoking weed at concerts.

What I Liked
-Ted brings out the sandwiches. That's been a relatively good way to show drug use over the years.
-Sandy Rivers tries to nail the new intern. It doesn't work, but he certainly makes hiking up her skirt and bending her over a railing sound romantic.
-There's an oddly specific song about cheating that Barney and Robin dance with their SOs to. Ever more specific than the song from Baseketball.
-Sandy's even more of an expert at dodging thrown drinks than Barney. I like Sandy. I wish he'd been on the show more over the years.
-Everyone at the concert cares about nachos. Nachos are important.

What I Hated
-Ted and Marshall are so high they go retarded. It's a damn near Reefer Madness level of "Drugs are bad" bullshit.

Final Thoughts
I think that may have finally put the nail in the Barney and Robin relationship. Which is good because they really didn't work together as a couple, and having Ted as the last single person when he's been actively trying to settle down for more than six years just would've exposed how big of a douche Ted is.

Fourteen laughs.
** 1/2 out of *****

The Big Bang Theory
Sheldon takes Amy to new comic book night, and Stuart ends up asking her out. Sheldon's sort of cool with it at first, but when they go on a second date, he crashes it to ask Amy to be his girlfriend. She accepts.

Also, Penny drinks too much, and the guys play some more of the CCG the show invented.

What I Liked
-Sheldon tries to get Leonard to become a history professor. When your career as a physicist is over, that might be the way to go.
-Bernadette's upset with her mom for smoking while pregnant, thus stunting her growth. This show really does have a tiny cast.
-Penny adapts to Sheldon's knock by adding "Who do we love?" between the "Knock-knock-knock" and "Penny?" portions. I like how they try to keep that bit fresh. Although, I do find it a little weird that it's kind of become Sheldon's catchphrase.

What I Hated
-Sheldon comes up with a relationship contract that includes huge limits on something as innocuous as hand-holding, and Amy agrees to it.
-Penny's a drunk. Everyone's an alcoholic on this show. Raj, Amy, Penny. It's getting silly.

Final Thoughts
Now that the Amy-Sheldon relationship is official, I think it's probably mined-out, laugh-wise. With the contract in place, there's no real chance of anything physical happening between them, and Amy's lust was really the only thing providing any laughs. Having her sign off on that is totally antithetical when just a few episodes earlier she was practically begging him to at least go for second base.

Fifteen laughs.
** 1/2 out of *****

This week's worst show was:
Family Guy
Stewie and Brian go back in time to find a ball Brian buried, and end up during the time of the pilot episode. While they're there, Brian tells his past self about 9/11 and he stops it, which leads to a civil war and the near total destruction of the United States. So, they go back to the past to stop Brian from doing it, and this causes a whole deal where dozens of Brian & Stewie pairs go back in time to stop the previous set from doing something. Eventually, one set goes back and stops the original set from doing anything at all, and that saves the universe. It was all kinda dull.

The early portion of the episode served as a sort of a clip show, but all the clips were from one episode. There was also some monkeying around going on with the aspect ratio because the show's in widescreen now. There were a few unfunny gags about the animation being crappy, and a crack about Lacey Chabert, but other than that, they could've used any pre-9/11 episode and been able to pull off the same story. So, I honestly don't see the point of just sticking with the pilot the entire time.

There was some 3D animation going on in the dystopian future, and I'll bet it cost a whole shitload, but it wasn't terribly interesting to look at, and it didn't actually add anything to the show. Maybe they'll save the models and use them for an upcoming Family Guy video game, but other than that, I see no use for that stuff whatsoever.

After this aired, some groups got their panties in a wad about the implication that the world is somehow better off because of the terrorist attacks. Getting that bit of attention may have been the whole point of the episode, because it certainly wasn't funny or even particularly entertaining.

Nine laughs.
* 1/2 out of *****

This week's best show was:
House
A shitty teenage birthday clown gets punched gets punched in the dick by some horrible shit and has a stroke. His mother and stepfather want him to be a lawyer, but he wants to be a circus clown because his dead father was one. Only his dead father isn't actually dead. As it so happens, he's just a drunk. Well, not just a drunk. He sexually molested his son when he was young, and that's why his wife threw him out and told the boy he was dead. Over time, the kid forgot about the molestation and grew an unhealthy obsession with his father. Little did he know that the syphilis his father gave him when he was four would nearly kill him 12 years later. Fucking A, that's some dark shit.

House tries to figure out how Adams' parents screwed her up. They screwed her up by not screwing her up, although I'm not sure if you can call that actually screwing someone up.

Wilson gets tickets to a big fight in Atlantic City, but House can't go because Foreman won't give him permission. He tries a couple tactics to get to go, but it doesn't work, and Foreman convinces Wilson to give up the tickets to keep his friend out of jail. However, it's all a ruse, and Foreman takes House to the fight while Wilson sits back at House's place and watches on pay-per-view.

And, Taub's having more family troubles. His ex-wife and her new boyfriend want to move with his daughter to Portland. He struggles with letting her go because it would mean losing his relationship with one daughter while at the same time allowing him to become much closer with his other daughter. In the end, he says fuck it and won't let them go.

This wasn't really a great episode, but it was a bad week for television, so it got the top spot. Unfortunately, there's not really much to say about it.

I really didn't see that reveal coming at the end. Kids who idolize their dead parents who they barely knew really do exist, but I think it's probably extremely rare to idolize someone who raped you when you were four.

There's nothing good about the Taub family story except for the fact that his daughters are named Sophie and Sophia. Everything else is crap, and I hope they're finished with it by now. I find it a bit strange that his ex-wife is in a position to be moving somewhere with a guy. The baby's clearly less than six months old at this point, and I find it hard to believe that any dude would get seriously involved with a pregnant chick or a new mother who was knocked up by her ex-husband. That's way more unrealistic than most of the medical stuff they do on this show.
*** out of *****

So, here are the standings after nine weeks:
Community - 58
The Big Bang Theory - 54
Fringe - 50
Castle - 45
Hawaii Five-O - 42
House - 37
How I Met Your Mother - 32
Family Guy - 20
The Cleveland Show - 17
American Dad - 11

Who loves free stuff?

2011-11-15T23:05:00.002-05:00

I do! I love free stuff.

Procter & Gamble sent me a box of stuff just for men

Detergent. Because manly men smell like the ocean.

Shampoo + Conditioner in one. Because manly men don't have time for two bottles. And it fights dandruff because manly men don't have dry scalps.

Lotion. Because manly men like lotion.

And a bunch of stuff to clean your teeth. Because manly men hate gingivitis.

This is a much better way to advertise to me than by showing me a lot of ads. I finally got around to using one of my free Mr Clean Magic Erasers, and it worked really well. You should all by one if your walls get scuffed up.

Just when you thought it was safe

2011-11-13T13:57:00.001-05:00

Guys who think they're marines biologists ruin all my pool parties.

Writing and cooking can lead to burning!

2011-11-11T18:30:00.007-05:00

Nine shows this week. I think my preferred number is about eight. That's enough that the post is relatively long, and it doesn't take me four hours to write.

Castle
Alexis is sad because she broke up with Ashley, but luckily, Castle has to leave town, so he suggests that she have a few gal pals come by while he's in Atlantic City investigating a murder. But, thanks to the power of the internet, and Alexis' desire to get over her ex by jumping on a jock dude, the small gathering of lady friends becomes a full-blown party that breaks some shit. Fortunately, she manages to fix things before her dad gets home.

The case is pretty standard except the guys have to go to Atlantic City, so they don't have jurisdiction, and have to dress up as Elvis to get back into the casino where they're conducting their investigation. The guy's wife killed him. And after they solve things, it's impromptu bachelor party time for Ryan. Viva AC!

What I Liked
-Lanie gives Esposito some lip even though the breakup was "mutual". It's never mutual, and even if it is, it won't matter to the lady.
-Castle gets to go to Atlantic City. His past there wasn't as sordid as I would've liked. Some damage to the hotel on a previous visit, but nothing so grand as to get him a lifetime ban.
-Dad's out of town, so it's time for some boys to come over! It's never just a girls night when there's no adult supervision. Never.
-Esposito as brown Elvis: Elvez.

What I Hated
-Alexis kept letting people in even after the party got a bit out of control. I thought she was supposed to be smart. A smart girl would've just let the newcomers stew down in the lobby.

Final Thoughts
The Bitch Cap'n wasn't as much of a bitch this week, but that may be because she was only hanging out with Beckett and not the guys. Perhaps she just really hates men.

I thought like they should've made more of a deal about Alexis lying to her dad about the party. There was an episode a year or two ago where she lied to him, and they made a whole thing about it. But, conversely, I'm glad they didn't make any kind of a deal out of all the underage drinking that was going on at her party. A lot of shows would've had her get too drunk and ride the dumb jock guy's bologna pogna. Not this one, though.

The whole Atlantic City location was a bit of a waste. Mainly it was an excuse to dress the guys up as Elvis, which is really more of a Las Vegas thing. Nathan Fillion's looking a bit chunky. I think that's why they had him play the fat Elvis.
** 1/2 out of *****

Community
Annie's moving in with Troy & Abed. Unfortunately, she hasn't checked things out thoroughly, and they don't actually have a second bedroom for her, so she'll have to sleep in a blanket fort. Except they really do have a second bedroom, they just have it dressed up like a holodeck and use it for imagination adventures. She's thinking of staying in her horrible old place, but they convince her to stay by moving her stuff into their room and their stuff into the blanket fort.

Meanwhile, Shirley & Britta are helping Annie move and pick up a hitchhiker on one trip. He's a crazy guy who's super-religious because he thinks he's Jesus... and he loves pot. Shirley likes him at first, then Britta likes him when he reveals he thinks he's Jesus, then neither of them like him when he reveals he doesn't think races should mix. And they both learn a valuable lesson about tolerating each other's bullshit.

At the same time, Pierce is making repairs to Annie's apartment so she can get back her security deposit. He fucks up royally and then nearly dies when he inhales some paint fumes.

Finally, Jeff is pretending to be sick so he can partake in low, low prices at a sale at the mall. But, the Dean bumps into him and blackmails him into a day of fun by threatening to tell the gang where he really was. Jeff actually starts to have fun, but the Dean accidentally lets it slip that he tricked Jeff into going to the sale, and then fun time is over.

He shows up with beer at Troy, Abed, and Annie's place, and all is forgiven because the Dean tweeted a video of the two of them singing together.

What I Liked
-Jeff goes to extremes to pretend he's sick by having the sales girl pretend to be a nurse while he's on the phone with Britta. He's seen enough TV to know that just a raspy voice is not enough.
-Troy & Abed's puppet show.

What I Hated
-Annie didn't check out Troy & Abed's apartment before she agreed to move in. That does not fit with her character at all. Plus, she's been there before, so how did she not know they didn't really have a second bedroom available?

Final Thoughts
No Chang this week. He's actually not all that important a character.

I'm glad we got to see a little bit of the Dean outside of Greendale, even though it was pretty much exactly like he is inside of Greendale, just with even less power.

Although Jeff was the one who was supposed to be playing sick, Alison Brie actually sounded like she might've been a bit under the weather while they were shooting this. Her sick voice is just lovely. Although, I don't want to say she looks fat, but either Alison Brie is pregnant, or she's hit a bit of a wall.

This week's best line: "Britta, Don't make jokes! You're bad at it!" -Annie

Twenty-one laughs.
*** out of *****

Family Guy
Ryan Reynolds is in town to film a movie, and he's very interested in Peter for some reason. They have a grand, homoerotic time together, but R² can't deal with someone who uses labels like "Gay" and "Straight" so, he sends Peter away. But, maybe he'll be back someday.

In the b-plot, Stewie drives Brian's car and wrecks it. Brian threatens to tell Peter and Lois, so Stewie tries to run away to the airport, but gets off the bus at the wrong stop. Consuela finds him, and claims him as her own, naming him Ernesto. Brian tracks him down, and agrees not to tell on him. But, as he tries to take him home, Consuela won't let him go. One of her friends flashes a piece, but Stewie wants to leave, so he takes it, shoots Consuela in the foot, then empties the mag into the walls and ceiling. Because, seriously, fuck that noise.

What I Liked
-R² is in a tonne of upcoming stuff. Including Hotler. I'm not gonna lie, I'd watch that.
-Depressing 1970s sci-fi movie. Way too on the nose. The 1970s were a bad time for sci-fi.
-Peter's Mexican food farts. They were much better than his Moroccan food farts.
-They brought back the random stabbing guy. I love that guy.
-Snooki died. Such a shame. She was so young.

What I Hated
-Screaming autistic lady. Not funny, just sad.

Final Thoughts
There was some weird stuff going on in this episode. How the hell did they get Ryan Reynolds to agree to do it? He's People's Sexiest Man!

Twenty laughs.
** 1/2 out of *****

Hawaii Five-O
A plane goes down with an ICE agent on board. But she was dead before the plane even took off. The team thinks she was investigating a medical marijuana dispensary, but she was actually looking into exotic animal smuggling. She was about to shut down a smuggling ring that would've cut off a Chinese herbalist's supply, and it just so happens that he was treating one of the guys she was using as an informant. He killed her because he thought the herbalist was curing his cancer, but it turns out most of that kind of treatment is total bullshit, so when he finds out he's dying he kidnaps the herbalist and leaves him to die in a shipping container out in the jungle. The team tracks down the guy who leads them to the herbalist, and they save him just in time.

TV's Greg Grunberg played the dead agent's superior officer.

What I Liked
-Good banter in Danno's apartment while watching Enemy Mine. I'd be astonished if more than 5% of the people watching this episode could remember that movie, though.
-Danno takes the dead agent's god and makes McGarrett ride in the back so the dog can have the window. McGarrett needs to get his own car so stuff like that doesn't happen.
-Chin and Kono get the munchies after visiting a medical marijuana patient. Showing the real effects of marijuana usage on TV is really rare. I'm surprised they didn't get reefer madness.
-Max thinks he's met the agent played by Greg Grunberg. Who would've guessed that the remake of Hawaii Five-O would turn out to be so much better than Heroes?
-Max gets himself a brand new bitchin' Camaro with a Warp 9 licence plate. I was wondering how they were going to get the new model of that car on the show. I think next year they'll probably have Danny wreck his current one.

What I Hated
-They came back from commercial in the middle of a chase scene. It was a bit jarring.

Final Thoughts
Things are going all right out in Hawaii now. They're not making enough use of gratuitous bikini girls, though. I can't remember the last time I saw one.
*** out of *****

House
Small-town dude cheats on his wife with the local beauty queen and has some kind of mid-coital seizure. He confesses to his wife and she forgives him, but he needs a liver transplant, and when the townspeople come to his aid, he confesses to a bunch of other stuff, too. Then his skin starts to fall off. Chase sits with him so he doesn't have to die alone, and while he's there, the dude confesses to a bunch of murders. He has some weird autoimmune thing that causes and aneurysm that causes him to confess to a bunch of things he didn't do. He got it from cleaning products in the cheap motel room where he was banging the girl. He didn't murder anyone or embezzle any money from the town's charity, and he tells his wife he didn't actually cheat on her.

Meanwhile, Taub and Chase are back. Taub has his two babies together for the first time, and he can't get a babysitter. He pawns them off on Wilson, but House finds them and collects their DNA. He sets up a pool where people can bet on whether the kids are actually Taub's or not, so everyone in the hospital -even Wilson- tries to get some of his DNA so they can run a paternity test. Eventually, Taub gives in and runs the test himself, but House steals the tests before he can look at them. Then Taub shreds them.

What I Liked
-Foreman has notes for his meeting with Taub & Chase, and Chase steals them. I'm interested to see how the new dynamic with him being their actual boss works out.
-House gets the ladies to carry furniture while the guys sit around. Equal rights!
-Dr. Park acts tough for the prostitutes at the motel where sick dude was cheating. You gotta be tough, or they'll fuck you up.
-The betting pool. Although, I do think that someone should've gotten their hands on Taub's DNA much more quickly. And, technically, House could've checked to see if the two kids were related to each other without using Taub's DNA. It wouldn't have been as accurate, but it probably would've been good enough to prove that they were both his, or at least one wasn't.
-Dude's liver fails, and holy shit does he turn yellow. I don't know how realistic it was, but damn.
-House gets a bar for his office. All offices should have bars in them. Even mine.
-All the renovation work going on in the outer office is just to install a remote-controlled wall panel that opens up into Wilson's office. They'd better use it a few more times.

What I Hated
-Somehow, House manages to steal Taub's DNA test results, as apparently he is a ninja or something. And then he doesn't even look at them before Taub shreds them. So the entire subplot was for nothing. We may never know if Taub's kids are actually his.

Final Thoughts
It looks like they might be grooming Chase to take over for House at some point, since he's the one who really figured things out this week. It works because both of their names are words.

The case wasn't terribly interesting, but all the stuff with Taub and Chase was good, which is actually quite surprising since Taub usually sucks. I hope they'll still have stuff for him to do after this.
*** out of *****

How I Met Your Mother
Barney tells a story about some Indiana Jones shit that causes him to lose the ducky tie, but Lily finds it outside in the trash. He's really tired of wearing it, so he tries to convince Marshall to let him out of the bet by offering him more slaps. Since Marshall's down to his last one, he considers it, but really isn't sure. Near the end of the episode, Marshall offers to let the bet go in exchange for three more slaps. Two of which he uses right away.

Meanwhile, the framing device for the episode is the gang telling Dr. Kal Penn a story about what they did during Hurricane Irene that caused a no boogie boarding sign to be put up in front of MacLaren's. So, it's old Ted telling a story about how he and his friends once told a story. Marshall was worried because he didn't have insurance, and is in constant danger of bear attacks. Ted's all prepared and wants to leave town, but Barney doesn't want to. Eventually they get stuck in the city, but it's really not so bad. On their way home from the bar, Barney and Robin talk about how they almost kissed during the hurricane... and then they actually make out in the back of a cab.

What I Liked
-They bring back the slap bet. Some of the continuity stuff on this show is good, and shouldn't be left to rot like the Slutty Pumpkin should've.
-Ted comes up with the name Hurrican Eriksen for Marshall and Lily's kid. It's a good name.

What I Hated
-Meta storytelling. It really doesn't make much sense for old Ted to be telling a story about how he and his friends once told a story.
-Barney does a commercial for Moore's. Promotional consideration better damn well have been paid for.
-Marshall's afraid of bear attacks. Why?
-Power goes out in Barney's building, but not in any of the neighbouring buildings. He's rich, his building should be the last one to lose power.
-Barney and Robin make out. I thought the whole point of them getting into relationships was so that they could move on. But now we're back to where things were two years ago. No wonder it's been taking Ted forever to meet the kids' mother: his life keeps rewinding.

Final Thoughts
Will the Barney and Robin stuff go somewhere this time, or will it go nowhere again? And why the heck was Barney wearing the ducky tie in a flashforward from an earlier episode? These, and other questions will be answered... at some point.

Eight laughs.
** out of *****

The Big Bang Theory
There's a blue jay on Sheldon and Leonard's windowsill, and Sheldon is terrified of it. He tries to scare it off by making cat noises, and by shooting it with an ultrasonic pulse, but that doesn't work and just winds up shattering his windows. Then he works up the nerve to try to swat it away with a broom, and it flies into the apartment. So, he calls Amy and Bernadette to come over and deal with it because they're both biologists. Bernadette gets him to pet it, and he actually starts to really like it. But, as he goes to bring its nest indoors, it flies away. And so ends their brief love affair.

Meanwhile, Leonard and Penny hang out. They go to a movie and Leonard decides that he's not going to just do what Penny wants anymore, because sex is off the table. The see a documentary on dams, and then go to a bar where they each try to chat someone up. Penny's guy leaves, and when she goes to hang out with Leonard again, he's still talking to his lady, which indirectly leads to a fight between Penny and Leonard. The girl leaves while Leonard's back is turned, so he takes Penny home. When they get there, they apologize to each other, and Penny mentions that she actually likes confident, assertive Leonard. But, that's not really who he is.

What I Liked
-Leonard's willing to grant that Sheldon may have actually created a monster. I've often considered creating one myself, and the only thing that holds me back is the throng of villagers with torches and pitchforks.
-Sheldon gives Leonard excellent fashion advice. He may not have social skills, but he knows all about fashion, apparently.
-All the stuff Leonard used to do for Penny was just so he could get some action. That's actually kind of sad, now that I think about it.
-Sheldon tries to get the girls to flush the bird. That's what I'd do if a damn bird flew into my apartment.
-Leonard puts sex back on the table. If you're with a lady who you think you might enjoy boning, sex should always be on the table. Always.

What I Hated
-Leonard's kind of a dick to Penny. Even though it's not a date, he could've still sprung for the fries at the bar.

Final Thoughts
The exploration of Penny and Leonard's post-dating relationship was sort of interesting, but the stuff with Sheldon and the bird sort of fell flat.

Twenty laughs.
** 1/2 out of *****

This week's worst show was:
American Dad
Stan and Francine make Roger Steve's legal guardian. At a meeting with Principal Lewis (who is now Steve's buddy), Roger causes a ruckus and eventually gets him fired. Then Steve runs away with him. Unfortunately, Principal Lewis is off his nut and wants to commit suicide in the Grand Canyon. It doesn't quite work out.

Meanwhile, Stan and Francine visit the world's largest water park. But, it's still not all that big, so their four days of passes turn out to be entirely too many. They can't get a refund, so in order to get back at the park, they resolve to do it on one of the water slides. Stan comes in too hot, and it doesn't quite work out.

I don't really know what to say about this one. It certainly wasn't all that funny. But, it was just unfunny, and not blatantly offensive in a Simpsons sort of way. Except for Freddie. They introduced a character named Freddie who is a boy about Steve's age who makes an annoying, high-pitched screaming noise for some reason. I really hope they don't bring him back. Annoying things aren't funny; they're just annoying.

The logic behind making Roger Steve's legal guardian really escapes me. There was one line about who Roger's good at taking care of things, but throughout most of the show, all we've seen is that he's a violent drug addict who can't really take care of himself, let alone another person. I understand that the point was for wackiness to ensue, but the setup could've made a little more sense. Plus, where the heck was Hayley? Couldn't she look after Steve while their parents were on vacation? I'm always kind of fuzzy as to where she and Jeff live, since they really don't seem to be around the house all that often.

Six laughs.
* 1/2 out of *****

This week's best show was:
Fringe
Nobody who reads this actually watches Fringe, and there's a better than average chance that it's going to get cancelled after this season, but I still watch it because it has really good episodes sometimes. This actually wasn't the best one, but it was still better than everything else that was on this week.

There's some wacky time shit going on, and the Fringe thing things it might be related to Peter. Thus, they let him out of his cell and allow him to assist with the case. Walter's not happy about it, though. He refuses to work with Peter or even acknowledge him as a person.

Eventually, they discover that some of the time anomalies are bubble-shaped, and they trace the source of them back to Stephen Root's house. He's an electrical engineer, and his wife(who was played by his actual, real life wife) was a physicist until she developed Alzheimer's. But, she was working on time travel stuff, and after three years of trying he was finally able to build a machine to make it work for a little while. All he needs to get things working permanently is for her to finish some equations she was working on before her disease kicked in.

As the team discovers his house, and FBI dude walks up to it and is disintegrated by the time bubble surrounding it, so Peter gets Walter to build a portable Faraday cage so he can walk in and shut shit down. Walter grudgingly does it and admits that Peter had a good idea.

While he's inside, Peter convinces Stephen Root to shut things down before the time bubbles kill more people. He agrees, in exchange for immunity from prosecution. While he fully intends to start his work back up and rebuild the machine, while he's not looking, his wife blacks out all the data in her equations, and leaves him a note telling him to get on with his life.

After learning that Stephen Root only had success with his machine after he popped back into the universe, Peter decides that he's the catalyst for the temporal wonkiness, and that he doesn't belong in this universe. Walter won't speak to him, and the woman he loves thinks he's a stranger, so he figures the timeline's fine, he's just in the wrong place.

There's a good parallel in this episode between Stephen Root's wife having early-onset Alzheimer's and Olivia not remembering Peter at all. I saw what they did there, and I liked it.

I generally don't notice the music on TV shows, but the stuff in this one was really good. It did an excellent job of conveying just how bummed out Peter is. Is existing really all that much better than not existing if all the people you knew and loved have no memory of you?

I really don't know where they're going to go with things now. Peter thinks he's in an entirely different universe now, and not just a different timeline, so next week he's going to start trying to get back to his own universe. But, they've been building so much stuff up in this universe that there's no way they're just going to let it go. So, if it actually is a different universe, that means they're going to have to continue the story there while also doing episodes in the original universe. Except both universes also have evil duplicates, which means four different universes to deal with. And there's always the chance they'll go completely nuts and have a new timeline in the original universe where Peter didn't exist. That'd be way too much to follow, though, so I hope they don't go that way.
*** 1/2 out of *****

So, here are the standings after eight weeks:
Community - 51
The Big Bang Theory - 47
Castle - 45
Fringe - 43
Hawaii Five-O - 35
House - 29
How I Met Your Mother - 25
Family Guy - 19
The Cleveland Show - 17
American Dad - 9

Well, most people

2011-11-06T01:54:00.001-04:00

It's not on the harp, but you can still watch:

Almost on time

2011-11-05T22:33:00.007-04:00

I also watched Allen Gregory this week, but it was shit and I won't be watching another episode, so I won't bother reviewing it.

Castle
Martha and Castle are at a bank trying to get a loan when the place gets robbed. Fortunately, he was on the phone with Beckett at the time, and the cops show up almost immediately. Cop jurisdiction stuff happens between Beckett and the hostage negotiation captain guy. One of the hostages has a seizure, and it turns out he's the main bad dude. He hired the others to break into a safe deposit box his ex-wife was using to communicate with her mother. Now that he has the info, he doesn't need them, so he pre-rigged their explosives to go off early and paint the walls with their blood. But, the team figures it out and makes a phone call to get the local PD to bust him before he can escape with his son.

Meanwhile, Alexis shows up because she knows her dad and grandmother are trapped in the bank. Beckett has to move her back, so she calls Ashley, but keeps getting his voice mail. She's had enough of that crap, so she breaks up with him.

What I Liked
-The bank robbers are in scrubs and use the code names Dr. Howser, Dr. Quinn, Trapper John, and Dr. Huxtable... who happens to be black. Is that racist?
-The banker saw Martha in the 1980s as Titania. It's nice that her character got some development in this episode. We usually don't get to see enough of Castle's family.
-Martha critiques Castle's acting while he's playing innocent so the robbers won't notice him sending a message to the outside. I wonder if Nathan's going to get the same kind of criticism from his fellow cast members.
-Castle's kept track of how many times he and Beckett have saved each other's lives. He's up 9 to 8.

What I Hated
-Beckett was the one who pretended to be an EMT to get the seizure guy out. She'd been on the damn phone with the robbers. They could've recognized her voice and screwed everything up.
-The scene with the priest who knew the wife was still alive. I felt like it should've been longer.

Final Thoughts
Not a bad episode. The bank heist itself didn't have nearly enough action for my tastes, but Martha and Alexis both got some good character development, and that makes up for it.
*** out of *****

Family Guy
Quagmire autoerotically asphyxiates himself and his sister Brenda comes to take care of him and brings her abusive boyfriend Jeff along. Jeff smacks Brenda around too much, so the folks in the neighbourhood have an intervention. But, it turns out that Brenda's pregnant and she and Jeff are going to get married, so Quagmire, Joe, and Peter take him to the woods to kill him. Jeff figures things out and gets the drop on them. He knocks out Peter and Joe and drives Quagmire off somewhere to kill him. Unfortunately for him, he tries to do it by choking him, and while he's digging the hole, Quagmire gets back up, gets in the car and runs him down.

What I Liked
-Clown porn. We all have our fetishes. Ain't nothing wrong with clown porn.
-Iraq lobster. I'm sure someone else did this first, but this was on TV, so it wins.
-Cock-a-doodle doo as gay sex. We all have our fetishes, etc.
-Eddie Izzard is very discreet. I sometimes have these "Who would you rather do" conversations, and I like Family Guy's take on them.
-Peter's addition to Jeff's fake goodbye note. Grape-Aid is pretty good.

What I Hated
-Quagmire's stupid "woman" speech. If I wanted melodrama, I'd watch fucking Degrassi.

Final Thoughts
It was funny enough, but holy fuck did it get dark there at the end.

Twenty-one laughs.
*** out of *****

Fringe
Peter's back, and he has some pants now. They stick him in secure holding at the Federal Building. He refuses to speak to anyone but Walter, but Walter's very frightened in this timeline and can't handle speaking with him for long before he flips out and leaves.

Meanwhile, one of the new shapeshifters kills a guy while looking for an ex-Massive Dynamic scientist. Lincoln and Olivia investigate, but they're too late, and the shapeshifter gets the guy. She tells him she has cancer and his research helped cure her, so he tries to finish his work. His first attempt doesn't quite work and it causes the shapeshifter to switch into the body of someone she impersonated earlier: his wife. He's a little put off, but she breaks his hand and forces him back to work. Just as he finishes, the FBI shows up and the shooting begins. But, she escapes by turning into one of the agents and pitching his body in the nearby lake.

Back at the Federal Building, Walter visits Peter again and says he cannot help him. Peter dying is Walter's punishment for breaching the barrier between universes, and he doesn't deserve a second chance with his son. Also, Olivia has a strange time skip moment.

The shapeshifter pulls a quantum entangled typewriter out of a locker somewhere and tells someone the scientist's serum works. Whoever's on the other end tells her to make preparations because they're sending the others.

What I Liked
-Olivia walks in on Walter drugging himself to sleep and awake, Michael Jackson style. Maybe in this timeline he didn't die.
-Lincoln makes a knowing face when Olivia asks why Peter was in her dreams. Acting!

What I Hated
-No one watches Peter in the FBI interrogation room. That's just stupid.
-Shapeshifter lady somehow killed an FBI guy, stole his clothes, and got changed in less than 30 seconds. That's bullshit.
-Olivia has a weird time skip moment and doesn't tell anyone. They live in a world of alternate universes and shape-changing cyborgs, but she doesn't tell anyone when time shifts for her because... they might think she's crazy or something, I guess.

Final Thoughts
Things need to move a bit faster on this show. The ratings aren't great, and they can't afford to be all Lost-like and wait a long time to reveal the mysteries or whatever. Where did the new shapeshifters come from, and what's their motivation. We need at least some answers to those questions before the show goes on its end of year break.

Also, Peter better damn well not turn out to be one of the new shapeshifters. That would be totally bogus.
** 1/2 out of *****

Hawaii Five-O
It's Halloween and some idiot and his girlfriend are out ghost hunting when someone sneaks up and kills them both. It was some guy who worked at a mortuary who was stealing tendons from corpses and selling them on the black market then burying the bodies in an old native Hawaiian cemetery. The team catches up to him, but his partner kills him dead. Then they catch up to that guy and he self-immolates for some reason.

Also, there's a subplot about how Danno didn't respect the spirits, so Robert Englund throws some rocks through his car windows.

What I Liked
-Ghostbusters theme song. Just agree to make the damn movie, Bill Murray.
-Fat guy gives tiny alcohol bottles as a treat in Grace's pumpkin. All kids love little bottles of scotch.
-Danno guesses Slutty Wonder Woman as Weston's costume. We never get to find out what it was, though. Such a shame.
-In-car banter. This is what I want from this show. Danny and McGarrett giving each other the business.
-Max in costume as a dude from The Matrix. Although, he uses his sunglasses in a more CSI:Miami style.
-Danno negotiates with a dead guy's landlord in order to get a good deal on an apartment. You've gotta do whatever you can to save a buck in today's economy.
-Chin carries Danny's very large mattress into his new apartment and asks him "What you plannin' on doing on this very large mattress?"

What I Hated
-Danny was seeing real ghosts. Yeah, fine, whatever.

Final Thoughts
Now that things aren't all serious business, I'm enjoying this show a hell of a lot more. Unfortunately, it's on against Castle, and that's also a non-serious police procedural, so the two shows are splitting the audience. Meanwhile, I have nothing to watch on Tuesday or Wednesday.
*** out of *****

House
There's a guy with crazy vision. House blackmails him into funding his team by threatening to send him to a facility that only treats people with mental disorders, which would kill the guy's outsourcing deal with China.

Park makes a bet with House that she won't get fired after her disciplinary hearing, so he tries to get her fired. But, Wilson's a good guy, so he makes a counter bet with House to keep him from getting her fired. In the end, she cries at her hearing, and doesn't get fired.

House also needs plenty of cash money to rehire Taub and Chase, so he steals some hospital equipment and pawns it or something so he can buy stock in the sick guy's company. When they cure him, the stock goes up, House gets rich and he gives the money to Foreman so he can get his office and his team back.

What I Liked
-House and the team work out of Foreman's office. It's fucking huge, he could've let them work in the corner or something and not been such a d-bag about it all.
-House like the idea that loyalty gave a guy cancer. Of all the things that can give you cancer, that's probably one of the most obscure.

What I Hated
-Dr. Park is yet another TV doctor who doesn't have any money. I realize she's an intern or something, but she's a doctor and she lives with her parents; she should at least have $100 to blow.

Final Thoughts
House finally has the money to get his team back. Getting the band back together isn't always the best idea, but if there's one thing this show is good at, it's returning things to the status quo. They should get Ron Perlman to do a voiceover: House... House never changes.
** 1/2 out of *****

How I Met Your Mother
Lily's grandparents give her their house in the suburbs. Normally, she wouldn't want to live there, but she has "pregnancy brain" and is nesting. Marshall tries to convince her not to make any rash decisions, and eventually works when she realizes just how stupid she is.

Barney's dad is on Facebook with all the other uncool people, and mentions to Robin that his mom was born in Manitoba, which makes Barney 1/4 Canadian. She uses this knowledge to get back at him for years of Canada jokes, but agrees to stop if he dresses as a mountie for the annual rooftop Halloween party. Instead, he dresses as Apollo Creed. Specifically, super-American Apollo Creed from Rocky IV.

Meanwhile, Ted notices the Slutty Pumpkin costume in a store window, and tracks down the woman who wore it in 2001. It's TV's Katie Holmes! They try to date for a bit, but it turns out they don't like anything about each other.

What I Liked
-Barney's paternal grandmother is Canadian. Everyone in the world is fucking Canadian now, bitches. It's the silent takeover!
-Robin crosschecks Ted and barney for being man whores. I personally would've gone with a spear, but she probably didn't want to get suspended.
-15-year-old Ted wants adult Ted to bang anyone he can. I'm all for that. Listen to your 15-year-old selves, folks. They know what's best.

What I Hated
-Lily's super stupid to the point of ridiculousness. It'd be funny if this were 1973.
-Lily and Marshall use living in the suburbs as some kind of weird sex metaphor. It was just gross.
-Barney splits into two personalities like in that Superman movie, and American Barney punches Canadian Barney a bunch. We're polite, but we're not that polite.

Final Thoughts
I really didn't see the point of bringing back the slutty pumpkin. The original episode was in the first season, six years ago. Since then they haven't really mentioned her, and actually cut out a joke that featured her a few episodes back. All this episode did was prove that Ted actually hasn't grown as a character. Which would be fine, except that's the whole point of the freaking show. Ted's telling a story to his kids about all the growth he needed to experience so he could meet their mother. But the past six years of stories have been pointless because he actually hasn't grown. Seriously, fuck Ted.

Fourteen laughs.
** out of *****

The Big Bang Theory
It's an Amy episode... that's a first, I think. Amy's bummed because Bernadette and Penny went shopping for wedding dresses without her. She gets depressed and asks Sheldon to comfort her physically, but he argues her down to cuddling. Then she gets wasted and asks again. Sheldon gets Leonard and Howard to talk to Penny and Bernadette and the two of them apologize and Bernadette makes Amy her maid of honour, and everything's better.

What I Liked
-Amy plays Everybody Hurts on the harp. I didn't even know that was possible.
-Leonard imitates Sheldon's knock. Apparently there's a shirt out there that says "*Knock-knock* Penny" three times. It's becoming a thing.
-Sheldon and Amy's intimacy negotiations. She drops way lower than I would've were the positions reversed. Nothing below second base.
-Raj thinks about the ladies getting naked and washing each other. He doesn't have a girlfriend, so it's a productive use of his time.

What I Hated
-Sheldon has to be told to use the phone to contact Amy. Oh, how quaint. Using technology that everyone still uses with great frequency to contact someone. It's like the stone age!
-Drunk Amy. Sort of pointless, and not very funny.

Final Thoughts
I wonder if they're actually building to a point where Sheldon and Amy will get it on. That seems like season finale stuff to me.

Seeing one of the ladies as the focus of the show seems to indicate there's some kind of growth going on. Will that bring in new viewers or just alienate the old ones? Only time will tell.

Twenty-five laughs.
*** out of *****

This week's worst show was:
The Cleveland Show
It was Halloween. Rallo and Cleveland both go on sleepovers but get scared and have to call someone to pick them up. So, Donna and Junior set up some cameras and scary stuff in a spooky house and drop the two of them off there. But, while they're doing that, an annoying guy who Cleveland was a jerk to shows up at the Tubbs-Brown house and tries to murder them with an axe. Cleveland and Rallo show up just in time to save them, and the annoying guy winds up dead.

In the b-plot, Roberta meets two guys who look like the guys from Twilight. She thinks they're a vampire and a werewolf who want to fight over her, but it turns out they're just gay. Which is pretty much how it would be in real life. In the end, we all learned that most gay people aren't monsters, but most monsters are gay.

They used the Black Eyed Peas song I Gotta Feeling a couple times in this episode. I'm pretty sure they also used it in last years American Dad Halloween episode. What's the deal with that?

Annoying guy showed up in at least one previous episode, and I'm actually glad they killed him off. He was the sort of character that they could really overuse despite the fact that he's really not funny. Like Herbert on Family Guy.

There's not really much else to say about this. It wasn't good, and I can't get back the time I used watching it. I probably would've just watched something else, though.

Fourteen laughs.
* 1/2 out of *****

This week's best show was:
Community
Hawthorne wipes are huge in the gay community, so Pierce plans a party to announce some new gay-themed wipes. But his dad is still alive and a huge bigot, so Pierce cancels the party. Jeff has daddy issues too, though, so he uncancels the party. At first, Pierce isn't happy about it, but all the praise from the gays makes him change his mind. Unfortunately, just as he's making a speech, his dad shows up, and Pierce cancels the product release, then fakes a heart attack to get away. At the hospital, Jeff tells off Pierce's dad, which kills him. Jeff gets Cornelius' ivory toupee, and Pierce finally gets to tell his dad to suck it.

Meanwhile, the janitor wants Troy to be a plumber, but the Vice-Dean of AC Repair wants him to be an AC repair man. He decides he just wants to watch TV with Abed.

John Goodman once again plays the vice-dean to perfection. He's a bit cartoonish, but that's exactly what the role calls for. I'm looking forward to him showing up in a couple more episodes.

Chang seemed a little bit superfluous. They had him show up at the party and the funeral, but he didn't do much and probably could've been cut out without damaging the episode. I'm not sure I'm buying him as a security guard, either.

There were a lot of really spectacular lines in this episode, and it was really hard for me to choose the best one. In the end, I went with the low-hanging fruit because those jokes are the hardest to make funny: "That's not what I meant. Stop putting gay things in my mouth." -Pierce

Thirty-three laughs.
**** out of *****

So, here are the standings after seven weeks:
Community - 43
The Big Bang Theory - 42
Castle - 40
Fringe - 34
Hawaii Five-O - 27
How I Met Your Mother - 23
House - 21
The Cleveland Show - 17
Family Guy - 14
American Dad - 8

I was out of town again

2011-11-03T15:39:00.005-04:00

Once again, I was delayed by being stuck out in the country. I do so hate it there.

Community
It's Halloween, and Britta holds a pre-party party in the study room so she can suss out which one of the group has homicidal tendencies. The tests she gave them came back as six normal, one crazy, and she's concerned the crazy one might flip out and kill them all.

So, to kill some time, the gang tells scary stories. Britta tells a story about a guy with a hook hand. Abed retells it, but with more logical characters who don't do dumb shit that gets them killed. Troy tells a story where he and Abed get sown together by Pierce and then gain psychic mind powers which they use to torture him. Pierce tells a story where Troy & Abed are gangsters, and he's a sexual tyrannosaurus who beats up Troy with his giant dick. Shirley's story is about everyone else doing drugs and being evil.

The stories kinda piss everyone off, and they want to leave, but Britta tells them all that one of them might be crazy, and she won't let them leave until they find out who. But, it turns out that Jeff filled his form out randomly and that Britta fed the forms through upside down anyway. She sticks 'em back in the right way, and the new results say that six of them are crazy. They decide not to find out who's sane, but the audience finds out it's Abed.

What I Liked
-Jeff the vampire gets Annie to teach him to read. Even vampires should be literate.
-Troy & Abed sew Pierce's butt to his chest. That seems like it'd be hard to do, but it's still funny.
-The lights blink out and everyone pulls weapons on each other. That's what should happen in all scary movies when the lights go out.
-This week's best line "Pilates is a demon that eats your genitals." -Devil Dean

What I Hated
-Britta ran the forms through upside down. It's a tired, old cliche, and I expected better from this show.

Final Thoughts
The Ending implication was that six of the members of the group were insane, but Jeff's form was just random, so he might also be sane.

This episode was okay, but it wasn't as much fun as last year's Halloween episode.

Fifteen laughs.
** 1/2 out of *****

Hawaii Five-O
McGarret fights Chuck Liddell in a charity fight, and Weston flirts with him while she tapes up his hands.

18 hours earlier, a guy with a bullet in his chest gets taped to a chair and thrown in a pool.

Joe White brings in an NCIS lip reader to analyze the tape of McGarrett's dad. This leads to Wo Fat paying White a visit and nearly choking him to death before getting clubbed in the head and running off. Then he kills White's old Japanese friend for some reason.

In the murder plot, the dead guy was owned a restaurant and ran a series of charity gyms around the state to help keep young people off the street. The first suspects are a group of valets who worked at his restaurant who've been pulling of high-end home invasions. They get busted, but it wasn't them. The next suspect is an MMA guy who had a verbal fight with the dead guy. It wasn't him, either. Last suspect is dead guy's brother-in-law. He did it.

While apprehending the MMA guy, McGarrett fucks him up a bit, so he has to take his place in the charity fight. He does not win.

What I Liked
-Rack Bauer makes a guest appearance. I'm glad to see she still has a career, since it may eventually lead to her taking her top off.
-One of the robbers repeatedly says "Lawyer" while they're interrogating him. That's what everyone should fucking do.
-Max smells Weston. It's not creepy, it's science!

What I Hated
-NCIS crossover with Kinsie Blye. Why? Seriously, why?
-MMA guy ran for no particular reason. Maybe I missed the explanation, but there really wasn't a good reason for that guy to run.

Final Thoughts
Not as much banter in this one as I would've liked, but it wasn't dark or depressing, and the stuff with the guys trying to talk McGarrett out of fighting was fun. I've certainly been enjoying the show more since they finished off Kono's undercover plot.

** 1/2 out of *****

The Big Bang Theory
There's a hot girl at the comic book shop. She flirts with Leonard to get him to give up a rare comic he's buying. He doesn't go for it, but she gives him her number, which results in her going over to his place to show off the comic she draws... and for hot makeouts. Leonard asks Penny for advice on what to do since he has a girlfriend, but then decides to go over to comic book girl's place anyway. They're about to get their bone on when Leonard changes his mind and leaves. He confesses to Priya, who tells him she slept with her old boyfriend... so, they both cheated. She cheated worse, though.

Meanwhile, the guys scare Sheldon and he needs to get back at them. He fails a few times before finally succeeding with Leonard.

What I Liked
-Leonard makes the Wall of Heroes in the comic book store for picking up the girl. Truly, he is king of the nerds.
-Captain Sweatpants was there. I like that the comic book store has regulars.
-Sheldon tries to scare an Indian with a snake. Maybe that's racist... I dunno.
-Leonard and Penny's "Is it cheating- Yeah, probably." exchange. If you're asking that question, the answer usually is "Yes".
-Sheldon finally gets Leonard. Hiding in the couch is an excellent scare tactic.

What I Hated
-The sequence where the guys scare Sheldon. It went on way too long and wasn't funny.

Final Thoughts
As dreamy as Johnny Galecki is in real life, I still find it hard to believe that Leonard would have so many women all over his junk. Maybe he's the king of the nerds, but Priya and Penny don't hang out in those circles and they still fell in love with him. It's a bit ridiculous, even for this show.

Fifteen laughs.
** 1/2 out of *****

This week's worst show was:
How I Met Your Mother
Barney's brother James comes to town and notices that Nora is way too much like their mother. This leads to a series of events where the entire gang and Dr. Kal Penn all worry that the people they're with are too much like their parents. Also Ted and Kal aren't really getting along all that well, but it's mainly because Ted sucks so much. In yet another plot, Barney and Nora are finally going to bone after they finish their date, but bad shit keeps happening to spoil the mood.

I found it weird that James was only in the first part of the first segment of the episode and then just disappeared. Sure, he sets the plot in motion, but it really seemed like they only had Wayne Brady for like an afternoon and needed to shoot his part as fast as possible. Which is fine because the James character has really been kinda lame since he got married.

Bringing back the parents meant bringing back Chris Elliot, and that just makes me sad. He's not funny anymore (if he ever was), but everyone pretends that he is. They didn't even go for it and have the hallucinated Lily's dad kiss the hallucinated Marshall's dad. Teasing man-on-man action is even more overdone than actual woman-on-woman action.

It's been about ten days, and I honestly can't remember if Barney and Nora wound up having sex or not. I think that they did, but that really wasn't the point of their part of the show. I can't tell you what the point actually was, but I'm sure it wasn't just about sex.

Overall, this episode was kind of just there. It wasn't overly offensive or awful or anything like that, but even in a week of mediocre episodes, it wasn't good.

Twelve laughs.
** out of *****

This week's best show was:
Castle
A ghost hunter has been murdered in a haunted house. Who you gonna call?

The ghost hunter had lived nearby as a child and witnessed a murder in the house, but repressed the memory because that's some scary shit. Coming back to the house brought everything back, so the original killer killed him. It was the detective who investigated the murders back in the day. He was boning the chick and murdered her when she threatened to leave him, then killed her husband so he could frame him. The building was designed with a secret alcove where he hid the dead husband, and from whence he snuck out to kill the ghost hunter.

Also, Ryan and his fiancee double date with Esplanie. The fiancee asks when the two of them are going to get engaged, which leads to a fight, and Esplanie is no more. It's kind of a bummer since having a couple who work together in a relationship could've led to wacky shenanigans, but Esplanie never really got that much screen time, and if they couldn't find the time for it, perhaps the show's better off with them apart. I think maybe the only reason they made them a couple in the first place was because one of the writers came up with 'Esplanie' and thought it was funny.

The ghost hunting stuff was pretty good. Castle and Ryan got to go off and investigate the paranormal, while Beckett and Esposito stayed behind and put on their serious faces. Plus, Castle got Beckett to say "I ain't afraid of no ghost" and then the Ghostbusters theme song played. I think it really helps goofballs -such as myself- appreciate a show when the lead character is also a huge goofball. Castle doing spooky ghost faces with the light from his phone after the power goes off was genius. Actually, Nathan Fillion had a lot of good faces this week.

There wasn't a lot of at-home stuff this week, but what there was had Castle using his daughter as a shield against TV zombies, and Alexis getting peeved at Ashley for not calling and then heading out to party with her chums. I can't speak to the young couple stuff since I've never stood a girl up, but I'm more than willing to use any of my relatives as a human shield in the event of a zombie invasion, and I'm happy to see such realism portrayed on TV.

The only aspect that this episode was missing was costumes. How can you have a Halloween episode without anyone dressing up? That's a minor quibble, though.
**** out of *****

So, here are the standings after six weeks:
Community - 34
The Big Bang Theory - 34
Castle - 32
Fringe - 30
How I Met Your Mother - 21
Hawaii Five-O - 19
House - 17
The Cleveland Show - 16
American Dad - 8
Family Guy - 6

Trapped

2011-10-30T05:21:00.002-04:00

I'm stuck out in the country for a few days. Click here to learn about one of the things I'll be doing.

Not the kind with thunder

2011-10-23T03:44:00.000-04:00

Here, watch a Tim Minchin thing:

Gratuitous Bisexual Makeouts

2011-10-22T19:00:00.003-04:00

I sure didn't watch a whole heck of a lot of TV this week. I blame it on the baseball playoffs, although I'm not entirely sure it has anything to do with them. It wasn't a good week for shows, either, and it took me a while to decide which shows were the best and worst of the week simply because the pickings were quite slim.

Castle
It's the Thomas Crown Affair. I haven't seen the original, but a good chunk of the plot of this episode is almost exactly like the remake. Except it's a sculpture and not a painting, Castle's not the thief, and the thief is also a murderer. The murderer/thief actually owned the sculpture and was stealing it so she'd get it in her divorce. She killed the guy because he caught her in the act.

Also, Beckett is jealous that Castle's got the insurance lady all up in his business. His mom's happy about it though, since he hasn't gone out with any ladies in a while, and she wants him out of the house.

What I Liked
-Dr. Michael Dorn: Psychiatrist. He's a much better counsellor than Deanna Troi.
-Beckett finds sexy undies in insurance lady's room, and Esposito gives her the business. Although, personally, I've never found the appeal of lingerie. It's just one more thing to take off.
-Castle air-chokes Beckett because she's so frustrating. I've wanted to air-choke many a lady in my time, so I can understand the feeling.

What I Hated
-Beckett's jealousy. If she wants Castle, all she has to do is say so, but apparently she prefers to whine about it.
-The statue never left the museum. Fuck that noise. If you're going to rip something off, don't be so damned obvious.

Final Thoughts
Seriously, if you've seen the Thomas Crown Affair, you've more or less seen this episode. There's a semi-hot female insurance agent, some wise-cracking police, and the artwork was in the museum the whole time. The episode was okay, but it was so derivative that I can't justify giving it a high rating.
** 1/2 out of *****

Hawaii Five-O
A university women's volleyball coach gets iced, and it's up to the Five-O team to catch the killer for some reason. Anyway, the coach was staying in a rich couple's guest house, and the rich husband was laundering money for Billy Baldwin. Unfortunately, the rich wife found out, stole the money, and ran off with it. So, Billy Baldwin had the coach and the husband killed to flush her out.

Billy Baldwin's goon tracks the wife down, but when he goes to get her, Chin and Weston are waiting. Weston shoots the goon in the abdomen, but he gets away, with Kono as his driver. The team tracks her down, brings her in, and then Tom Sizemore shows up to tell them that she's been working undercover for him. Billy Baldwin was his ex-partner who went bad, and now he wants to bring him down.

Kono goes back in, and Billy's gang manages to track the wife down. They grab her and take her to the bank where she put the money in a safety deposit box. Kono retrieves it, but on the way out of the bank the manager notices they're being a bit shifty and intimates to one of his employees that he should hit the silent alarm. Billy's no fool, so he sees this and the shooting begins. He takes a hostage and flees the bank, but Tom Sizemore's an excellent pistol marksman and shoots him a couple times.

With Billy under arrest and on the way to the hospital, Kono's free to rejoin the Five-O. McGarrett punches Tom Sizemore in the face for messing with his team, and everything is cool.

What I Liked
-Danny bitches about how often he gets shot at. The Danny-McGarrett banter is what makes this show good. They definitely need more of it. Danny's straight-laced, and McGarrett's crazy, so it's like fucking Lethal Weapon, and you can't have buddy cop stuff if the buddy cops don't banter.
-Photos of a scantily-clad chick that weren't gratuitous in any way. If they can find a way to integrate more of that stuff into the plot, I'll definitely continue watching.

What I Hated
-This episode brought to you by SkyDrive. I don't know what it is, but such blatant product placement does not make me want to use it. Or even look it up, for that matter.
-Chin and McGarrett play Good Cop-Bad Cop with Kono. That bullshit might work on meth dealers, but she was part of their team: Did they really expect her to start spilling the beans?
-Slow-mo team walking towards the camera shot. It's a classic thing, but it's been done so often that it's fucking bullshit at this point.

Final Thoughts
I fucking called it. Last week I said it would probably turn out that Kono was undercover, and this week that proved to be true. I expected it would take them at least another couple episodes to get to the reveal, but I guess they wanted to get things back to normal. And, I think I'm fine with that. This show works a lot better when things aren't depressing as fuck. It still wasn't a great episode, but it was certainly an improvement over last week.
** 1/2 out of *****

The Big Bang Theory
Sheldon's mother comes to visit. He wants her to make fried chicken, but she's tired, so Leonard takes them out for sushi. This begins a short series of things where Sheldon's friends monopolize his mother's time, which makes him jealous.

Mrs. Cooper goes sightseeing with the gang to various churches while Sheldon visits Amy and gets caught in the rain on his way home. Thus, his mom has to take care of him.

What I Liked
-Raj gets six new friends, but three, sadly, are dead.
-Sheldon's mom makes him get Raj a hot beverage.
-'Bitchiness' is a clinical term.
-Penny prays to god to get her brother to stop cooking meth, but to be cool and not send the cops.
-Sheldon's mom sings Soft Kitty. D'awwwwww.

What I Hated
-Lame super-religious jokes. I'm sure some people are that religious, but it's not funny.

Final Thoughts
There wasn't a whole heck of a lot about this episode that was memorable. And, I find it a bit odd that good Catholic girl Bernadette wasn't in the episode with the hardcore southern christian lady. I'm sure there could've been a few jokes about the schism between Protestants and Catholics.

Raj needing to be drunk to talk to women still isn't that funny, but Raj's budding alcoholism is actually starting to become humourous. Hopefully they won't take it too far.

Seventeen laughs.
** 1/2 out of *****

Now, let's go deeper. This week's worst show was:

How I Met Your Mother
It's really hard to find stuff to talk about from this episode because it really didn't have a lot going on.

Dr. Kal Penn tries not to analyze Robin and the gang, Marshall and Lily have the sex of their baby on a card and they try to stop themselves from looking at it, and Ted goes on a date and tries not to research her on the internet beforehand. They all fail. Moreover, they all fail in relatively unfunny ways.

Having a psychiatrist try not to analyze a clearly dysfunctional group of people may seem funny in theory, but in practice it just serves to point out how unrealistic things are. In reality, such a messed up group of people would have split apart years ago. They're held together by little more than their alcoholism at this point.

They brought back Ray Wise as Robin's dad for a flashback, and I have to say that I'm still not a fan of that choice. He seems a lot more like a creepy uncle than an overbearing, wealthy father who really wanted a son. The original guy they had was far better.

There wasn't really anything funny about Ted being unable to converse with a lady without looking her up on the internet first. How is that even possible for most women? Most of the time you'd be lucky to find her Facebook page, and that's only if it's open to the public and you know the correct spelling of her last name. I've gone out with women whose first names I've barely known, let alone their last, so you'd really have to try hard to research every woman you date, and that's a special level of crazy. Yet one more reason Ted's still single.

Thirteen laughs.
** out of *****

But, enough of that bs. This week's best show was:

House
A rich dude collapses, and it's up to House and the team to find out what the balls is wrong with him. This week, the team consists of Dr. Park, Dr. Adams, the rich lady doctor from the first episode, and Dr. Remy "Thirteen" Hadley, so for the first time ever, it's just House and the ladies.

Unfortunately, Thirteen doesn't want to come back. She has a nice new girlfriend, and she wants to go to Greece to bang and run out the clock until her disease kicks in. House convinces her that she should come back and work for him, but sees that she's happy and fires her. And that's likely the last we shall see of Olivia Wilde on this show.

The other ladies get into a tiff that only ladies could get into. Dr. Adams grew up rich and Dr. Park grew up poor. They're like some kind of odd couple. Anyway, Adams gives Park a cup of coffee, but she can't accept any kind of charity, so she pays her back. Things escalate until Park tricks Adams into paying for repairs to House's car, thinking it was hers.

That actually ties in well to the rich dude's problem: He has a disorder that's made him ridiculously altruistic to the point that he's given away millions of dollars and is willing to donate both of his kidneys, even though it means he'll die in a couple years. House wants his money so he can rehire Taub and Chase, and Wilson wants a kidney for one of his patients, but they both know it would be unethical to get what they want from the guy if he's sick. Eventually, House cures him, and his altruism goes away. No cash for House.

The random bit of clinic duty House did this week had him diagnosing a kid as a masturbator. It really didn't have anything to do with the rest of the episode, and it seemed a little out of place, but it was funny, so it's okay.

Near the end of the episode, Wilson finally interrupts House in the middle of one of his epiphanies. It took like seven years.

I'm not really going to miss Olivia Wilde. She was absent for a good chunk of the previous season, and I barely noticed she was gone. So, her leaving doesn't really have any emotional resonance. Honestly, I'm not sure why they bothered to bring her back at all. There weren't any lingering questions about what was going to happen to her in the future, and she was never a particularly interesting character. My best guess is they brought her back due to her "star power" and for some gratuitous bisexual kissing. Which is a bit silly because it's not 1997 anymore, and this is House, not Ally McBeal.

Overall, this was a decent episode. House and Wilson did some stuff, Foreman got to be the boss for a minute, and the new team screwed around with each other. If they can keep that up and not have any weird relationship drama, the series might end on a high note.
*** out of *****

So, here are the standings after five weeks:
Community - 30
Fringe - 30
The Big Bang Theory - 30
Castle - 27
How I Met Your Mother - 20
House - 17
The Cleveland Show - 16
Hawaii Five-O - 15
American Dad - 8
Family Guy - 6

Forrest Gump's was 75

2011-10-17T07:16:00.000-04:00

I hope everyone read the article on the Flynn Effect I linked to last week, because now it's time to discuss it.

For those of you who did not read it, the gist of it is this: Older people's IQs are lower on average than younger people's IQs. That's not to say that people get less intelligent as they get older, just that each successive generation is smarter than the previous one. So, should your elders attempt to point out that kids these days are morons or something like that, you can point to data that shows that the opposite is in fact true, and the reason that Andy Rooney can't figure out how to turn on his computer is because he's stupid, not because computers are complicated.

Individual old people may be quite smart, and individual young people may be idiots -particularly teenagers- but on average a group of 9-year-olds will be smarter than a group of 90-year-olds.

This is important because old people are also more likely to bitch about changes in technology. You want to know why we don't have self-driving cars and robot hookers? Because old people, that's why. Old people retard progress essentially because they're too stupid to understand new things. The switchover from analog to digital TV broadcasts took a decade because we had to wait for some of the older people to die off. If they had still been alive, they would've had a shit fit about needing a new remote, and our politicians would've spent all their time on the phone with grandpa listening to him bitch about the high cost of AAA batteries.

Now, although they'll make up a disproportionately large segment of the low-IQ population, old people aren't the only stupid ones out there. I looked it up a while back, and it's actually far worse than I thought it was.

You see, IQs are relative; they have to be in order to make any sense. Simply saying a person has an IQ of 107 doesn't mean anything if there's nothing to compare it to. So, once a decade or so, the scale is calibrated. They give a large number of people an IQ test, set the median at 100, and then normalize scores so they fit a normal distribution curve with a standard deviation of 15 points. This means that 68.2% of people have IQs between 85 and 115. It also means that 15.9% of people have IQs lower than 85. That's a shitload. In Canada, it's about 5.5 million. In the US, it's closer to 50 million. And the terribly frightening thing is this: ~80% of those people can vote. Old people make up a disproportionate number of people with lower IQs, and a disproportionate number of people who vote. Things really start to make a lot more sense when you realize that.

Remember this?:

Now you have the answer.

You know what? It's cool, man

2011-10-16T01:07:00.000-04:00

It's a bit of a bait and switch, but it's funny, so I'm not mad.

Shrinkage

2011-10-15T23:06:00.005-04:00

Not as many shows this week. I like that because it means I don't end up spending three hours typing this shit up.

Castle
Some guys pouring concrete find the corpse of a young woman. It turns out the girl was killed by Ryan's gun, which was taken by the notorious 3x killer. Ryan is understandably upset.

This is a little complicated, so bear with me. The girl was framed by a narcotics officer and forced to become an informant. She was tutoring the son of the leader of one of the local Tongs. She and the son happened to fall in love and decided to run away together. But, the son's older brother found out and shot her. Ryan and Esposito convince the younger son to wear a wire, and they catch the older son and make him think the younger son was killed so he con go into witness protection. Ryan gets his gun back.

At home, Alexis is handling the complaints department for her student government. Her friend who used to have the job set her up. It's a terrible, long, boring job. But, it'll look good on a college application.

What I Liked
-They don't want Castle to explain his theory, but he has to because it's a good one, and him just telling them the conclusion doesn't make any sense.
-Esposito dressed as early 1990s Fresh Prince, and Ryan as a 1920s news boy. Castle takes a picture of them because they look so goofy. That's what I'd do.

What I Hated
-Ryan beating himself up for losing his gun. The people on this show seem to get incapacitated with some frequency, so it'd be surprising if they didn't all lose their guns at some point.
-Sappy toast at the end. They don't toast any of the other murder victims, so it was weird to see them do it for this one.

Final Thoughts
I wasn't feeling this one. There was nothing bad about it per se, but it wasn't particularly fun or interesting.

** 1/2 out of *****

Fringe
The sun rises, and a Star Trekish energy cloud tries to wake Olivia, but it freaks her out and she pulls her gun on it. It disappears, but not before burning her arm and attracting all the metal in the room.

At the lab, Walter thinks the cloud might be related to one of the Cortexiphan kids. In this universe, Olivia ran away from the trials, and doesn't know much about them. She goes to Nina(who she apparently has been quite close with for at least 15 years) for information, which leads them to New York.

In New York, they find one of the former Cortexiphan kids whose power to astral project used to have a magnetic side effect. He can't do it at will anymore, and his life's been pretty fucked up since the experiments. He's not the source of the cloud, but it appears again, and he manages to disperse it.

They make a plan to draw the cloud back near a transformer station so the guy can siphon off the electricity and disperse the cloud permanently. It's working, but the cloud turns into Peter sort of, and Olivia stops the guy. This causes Peter to rematerialize butt naked in the middle of Reiden Lake while the Observer looks on. A father and son are fishing nearby, and take him to the hospital where he calls the team. But, although he knows them, they have no idea who he is.

There's also a subplot about Olivia deciding whether or not to send Walter back to St. Claire's, and Walter trying to prove that he's still useful. She decides not to send him back.

What I Liked
-Walter's ghostbusting in the lab is based on the fight scenes in The Matrix.
-Walter tells Nina to go fuck herself, but Astrid doesn't pass on the message.
-Canadian flags clearly visible in the background in "New York". One of these days they're just going to have to set an episode in Vancouver.
-Walter flips out over germs and trashes his hotel room, rock star style. Really, everyone should do that. A $200/night room should not have semen all over it.

What I Hated
-Olivia keeps sensitive documents in her jacket pocket. I know it was necessary to drive the plot, but that seems like a really foolish thing for an FBI agent to do.

Final Thoughts
Poor Peter just can't catch a break. First he doesn't exist, then he appears butt naked in a freezing ass lake, and finally the woman he loves has no idea who he is. It's rough being the guy who saved two universes. I think they brought him back an episode or two too soon.

Nina still exists in post-crisis Fringe, but Lincoln's not in this episode. They may be the same person.

There was a lot of post-crisis exposition in this episode, and not all of it really fit in organically, but I suppose the writers did their best. There's an entirely new universe to explain, and not a whole lot of time to do it.

The Walter and Olivia drama bits were quite well done. It seems like their relationship hasn't been as friendly without Peter around as a moderator, and although I didn't have any doubt that she'd refuse to send him back to the mental hospital, Walter really didn't know what was going to happen.
*** out of *****

House
Foreman is Dean of Medicine at the hospital, and he springs House from prison a few months early so he can consult on a case. There are some lungs from a transplant patient that Wilson needs for a lady with cancer, and they're fucked up.

Unfortunately, since House has been gone so long, his team is gone too, and all he has is young Dr. Park, played by Charlene Yi. She's good, but she's only on loan from neurology because her attending groped her and she hit him.

Park's planning to leave the hospital because if she leaves there's no need for an inquiry into what happened, and she won't need to tell her parents. She's unmarried and Asian, and they're old school, so she still lives with them.

Meanwhile, Wilson's pissed at House and only tolerating his bullshit because he needs him to cure the lungs.

House convinces Wilson to con his patient into a painful treatment that'll extend her life long enough for him to fix the lungs. He also convinces Dr. Park to stick around and tell her parents what happened. After a few missteps, the lungs are cured, the transplant is successful, and Wilson punches House in the face so they can be friends again.

What I Liked
-House was "Raped-raped, but not raped-raped-raped."
-House plays My Heart Will Go on in Wilson's office to get him to forgive him.
-"Ahh! She's dying!" House freaks out over the woman dying.
-Hey, it's Ralph Garman!

What I Hated
-Foreman's Dean of Medicine for some reason. That makes sense show-wise, but it doesn't make sense in terms of what would actually happen. There are plenty of more qualified people available.

Final Thoughts
I never particularly liked Taub, and I don't care about his baby drama, and I'm fine with Chase and Thirteen being gone, too. If they don't come back, it's not really going to bother me at all. It'll be interesting to see what Foreman does in his new position.

The dynamic between House and Wilson was pretty good this week. They don't always agree, and they don't always like each other, but they're bros, so a good punch in the jaw is all it takes to fix things between them.
*** out of *****

How I Met Your Mother
Dr. Kumar dumps Robin as a patient because he thinks she's cute and doesn't think dating is appropriate. They have breakfast together for a week before finally agreeing to go out on a real date. But it's weird because he knows some deep, dark secrets about her, and she doesn't know anything about him. To get back on even footing, she acts as his psychiatrist for two hours. He has family issues.

Ted takes his Intro to Architecture class to look at GNB's new headquarters, but he can't get in, so he ends up walking them around town. Eventually, he convinces one kid to look into architecture as a career, but Future Ted says the kid ends up as a DJ.

Marshall's Boss, Garrison Cootes isn't as much of a hardass as Marshall would like. They get a settlement from some company, but it's not very much and they end up spending the money on cake because Cootes thinks the world is already fucked and he's just running out the clock until society crumbles and he can move into his bunker with enough canned food for years and all five seasons of Friday Night Lights on DVD. But, Marshall convinces him that there's still hope, and Martin Short becomes a badass lawyer once again.

Barney's concerned that Nora may be 37 because she doesn't like Ewoks, and he's having trouble dealing with that fact. It turns out she's only 29, and she doesn't like Ewoks because she saw Star Wars for the first time last year.

What I Liked
-Nora hates Ewoks. That woman has some taste. Ewoks fucking suck.
-Barney gives Ted's class Ewok lessons. Those are way more useful than anything else they'd learn in Intro to Architecture.
-Robin was about to get her swerve on at like 11am. Morning sex is the sweetest fruit of all.
-"Crispin Glover creepy."

What I Hated
-Lily drives across town for cake because she's pregnant. It's not 1981, so that kind of joke's not funny anymore. Maybe it'll come back around in a few decades, but only if writers let it die.
-Jacob James Olmos fight. No one could possibly think that was correct.

Final Thoughts
This episode was kinda all over the place. Ted's stuff was boring and pointless as usual, but there were three other plot threads and none of them were particularly fleshed out. I think the show suffers when the gang doesn't do stuff together, because there are only 22 minutes in the show, and that's not a lot of time for four separate plots.

Eleven laughs.
** out of *****

The Big Bang Theory
Sheldon and Leonard buy a sword from Stuart. While they're at the comic book shop, Wil Wheaton comes in to pick up some stuff, and invites all of them to a party at his place. Initially, Sheldon doesn't want to go because Wil's his nemesis and he's pissed at Leonard because he's going. However, when he finds out Brent Spiner's there, he decides to go, so he can meet him. At the party, Wil gives Sheldon an autographed, mint in box Wesley Crush action figure, which Brent quickly opens. Thus, Wil and Sheldon become friends, and evil Brent Spiner is now Sheldon's enemy.

Meanwhile, one of Howard's projects gets chosen for use on the International Space Station, which means he gets to go to space for three weeks as a mission specialist. Bernadette's a little upset by the news since he didn't tell her he might be going to space, and if he goes, there's a chance he could explode. Eventually, she decides that she doesn't want to stand in the way of his dreams, so she's willing to let him go, but she tells his mother, who's not keen on her little boy going to space. Howard gets pissed at Bernadette, but she knows she fucked up, and apologizes.

What I Liked
-"The one kid from Stand By Me that no one remembers." That's a pretty apt description of Wil.
-Brent Spiner!
-Leonard and Raj haggling with Brent for autographed Mr. Data action figures.

What I Hated
-Howard and Bernadette's kiss. There was no passion behind it. It looked like two teenagers who don't like each other kissing in a school play.
-Evil Wil Wheaton replaced by Evil Brent Spiner. He doesn't have a goatee! How can he be evil?

Final Thoughts
I liked this episode. The Wil Wheaton plot was considerably stronger than the Howard & Bernadette plot, but both of them had their moments. It's a little sad to lose evil Wil Wheaton but they can always make him evil again later, and if the show lasts a couple more seasons, they can get evil versions of the rest of the TNG cast.

Twenty-two laughs.
*** 1/2 out of *****

It's depth time. This week's worst show was:

Hawaii Five-O
It's starting to get hard to justify watching this show. The crimes aren't terribly interesting, there's minimal use of attractive girls in bikinis, and Larisa Oleynik's butt isn't even on the show anymore.

There's a hand in the water. It belonged to a salvage diver. He located the resting place of an old military ambulance that held his grandfather's coffin. But, his coffin was stuffed with old money that was supposed to be destroyed, so two guys he called to help him out killed him, and then one of them killed the other because there's no honour amongst thieves.

Kono's still hanging out with bad dudes. She's been doing it for weeks now, but nothing she's done has been particularly bad. It's not like they've been hijacking anything or robbing banks or even swindling old ladies out of their pension money. They basically seem to drink and play poker. But, the audience can tell they're bad people because Chin doesn't like them, and they're always darkly lit. Billy Baldwin should be shooting people in the face and getting Kono to blow him under the table while he plays cards. That's evil. Getting a former police officer to access some data on the police department servers is grade school shit. My guess -and I hope I'm wrong on this- is that it'll turn out that Kono's running some kind of undercover operation. It seems like the obvious way to go, and "obvious" is definitely a word I'd use to describe the writing on this show.

Case in point: Joe White didn't actually send the tape they found of McGarrett's father off to the DoD for analysis, and McGarrett's lady friend stationed on a nearby naval vessel gets transferred halfway around the world, so McGarrett can have legitimate sex with the new girl they brought in a couple weeks ago. At no point was there ever any doubt that White hadn't sent the tape for analysis. As soon as they had him say something along the lines of "Be patient, it's just taking a while," I knew that would be the outcome. If McGarrett had ever watched TV before, he would've known that, too. And it's equally obvious that the new chick, whatshername was just brought onto the show so she could fuck McGarrett. Unfortunately, I guess they forgot that McGarrett was already fucking someone else, and they had to get rid of her so he wouldn't look like an asshole. He's still going to look like a bit of an asshole, but it's not cheating if you're in different hemispheres, I guess.

Overall, I just haven't been enjoying this season as much as the first one. Everyone's acting all depressed, and even their cases are bumming me out. The dead guy's mother had fucking Alzheimer's or something and thought her son was 12 years old and going to be home from school soon. That's fucking dire, and it's not what I want out of this show. I want cool helicopter shots of the island, occasional T&A, a little light gunfighting, and Danno booking people. In short, I want fun, and Hawaii Five-O just hasn't been much fun this season.
* 1/2 out of *****

Enough of that bleak shit.

For the second week in a row, the week's best show was:

Community
This was a fun episode.

Troy and Abed hold a party at their new apartment, and everyone's there. They sit down to play Yahtzee, and when the pizza shows up, Jeff throws a die to see who has to go get it. This creates six(actually seven) alternate timelines, and we get to see all of them.

I'm not going to go through all the different timelines and their subtle differences, but the following things basically hold true in all but two of them: Britta has a bit of a drug problem, Shirley has a bit of a baking problem, Pierce is upset that Troy moved out of the mansion and gives him a scary troll doll, Troy's becoming a man and that sort of leads to him butting heads with Jeff, Jeff wants to take care of Annie, and Annie wants to take care of Jeff. Abed mainly acts as an observer.

In the sixth timeline, shit goes horribly, horribly wrong. Annie's gun accidentally goes off and kills Pierce, Jeff loses his arm in a fire, Troy destroys his voice box while eating the flaming troll doll, Annie goes insane and gets committed, Shirley has a severe drinking problem, and Britta dyes a blue streak into her hair. But, Abed has a solution: He makes everyone fake beards so they can tell it's the evil universe. No one else is on board, but Troy's his bro, and they'll be evil together.

In the seventh, legitimate timeline, Jeff gets sent down to get the pizza, and while he's gone, everyone starts singing and dancing, and things are all right. Everyone's still a little dysfunctional, but they're not open about it, so the status quo remains. I'm not sure if the lesson was supposed to be that Jeff fucks everything up, or that Jeff forces people to be who they really are, or if there's really any lesson to be learned at all other than you shouldn't send Troy down to get the pizza.

The one real gripe I have with this episode is that they killed a lot of time with repetition. It allowed them to get off five or so quips about Pierce nailing Eartha Kitt in an airplane bathroom, but they also showed Abed explaining that Jeff would create six different timelines every time. I think that after the third instance, that became completely unnecessary. The effect of the die flying up in the air and dropping down through a hole indicating which timeline they were in ate up a bit of time, too, but it was kind of neat, so I guess it's okay.

I'm left wondering how things are going to proceed this season. There are clearly a few issues between various members of the group, and although they've been partially resolved on the show, they haven't actually been dealt with in the existing timeline. There's some Fringe shit going on.

This week's best line: "There's no such thing as Single Malt Platinum Boobs and Billiards Club? Ah, I guess I never said it out loud." -Jeff

Twenty-three laughs.
**** out of *****

So, here are the standings after four weeks:
Community - 30
Fringe - 30
The Big Bang Theory - 26
Castle - 23
How I Met Your Mother - 19
The Cleveland Show - 16
House - 12
Hawaii Five-O - 11
American Dad - 8
Family Guy - 6

Popsicle is a brand name

2011-10-12T20:59:00.004-04:00

American Dad
Hurricane Flozell comes to Langley Falls. Alphabetically this comes first, but it was actually the last stop. They were going to do the whole hurricane crossover thing last year, but then there was a tornado that killed a bunch of people, so they decided to hold off for a while.

Anyway, Buckle wants to evacuate everyone, but Stan's made the house waterproof, so he convinces his family to stay. Then shit starts to go sour. The pressure from the floodwater knocks the house off its foundation and it floats away. Stan makes an anchor, and the house flips over, causing a whole Poseidon Adventure thing. There's a shark and a bear, and things keep getting worse until Buckle comes back and saves the day. Stan learns that he's good 99% of the time, but during crises, he should back off... he's not gonna, though.

It turns out the Griffins and the Browns have washed up next to the Smiths, and the three fathers have a Mexican standoff, which quickly ends when Stan accidentally shoots Francine.

What I Liked
-The Gay/Jewish media conspiracy. I love conspiracies.
-The sky ate Greg!
-They can't take the other car because it's not amphibious.
-Steve's porn collection features a lot of pregnant Asian chicks. It's good that Francine's not concerned about the existence of Steve's porn, just the subject.

What I Hated
-Stan's completely inept, again. He's becoming the Homer Simpson of this show, and that's not a good thing. It may have been in 1996, but not today.

Final Thoughts
I've never been able to understand how Stan keeps his job with the CIA. He can't fight, he can't assassinate people properly, and he makes terrible decisions during crisis situations. It's so weird.

Nineteen laughs.
** 1/2 out of *****

Castle
Alexis gets the small envelope from Mr. Stan Ford, and her world is destroyed. She spends a good chunk of the episode flipping out because she doesn't know what to do with her life.

Oh, and there's a dead person's blood, but no body. Castle thinks it's the work of assassins. He's wrong. The blood belongs to a researcher in the field of life extension who had a contract to have himself cryogenically frozen when he died. The killer's not the head of the cryogenics company, or the skeezy porno guy who was funding the researcher's work, or the son of a rival who happened to be in his class. Instead, it was his wife, April O'Neil. She found out he had a fatal brain tumour and was going to let his brain rot so he could continue his work. But that would mean he couldn't be revived in the future, and she couldn't deal with that, so she shot him. After being caught, she pops a cyanide pill and the cryogenics company hauls her away to be frozen.

What I Liked
-Beckett makes a joke about her boobs.
-Post-Docs Play Doctor. Best porn series ever.
-Castle points out a suspect jumped out the window after hearing the glass break. Then yells "He's got the head, he's got the head!" I'm a fan of people pointing out the obvious if it's funny.
-The signal's coming from inside the building!

What I Hated
-Captain's a bitch again for no particular reason.
-Alexis doesn't get into Stanford. The ridiculously driven daughters of insanely rich people never seem to get into the college of their choice on TV. It's completely unbelievable.

Final Thoughts
If they wanted to keep Molly Quinn around for the rest of the season, they shouldn't have come up with a stupid plot point that would cause her to leave halfway through. Killing it this way is just silly. Castle's rich. If his daughter wants to go to Stanford in January, all he has to do is cut a cheque. The whole cryogenics plot was more realistic.

Even so, I thought this episode was okay. The killer's motivations actually made sense, and were kinda romantic when you think about it. Although, I suspect her husband's gonna be pissed if they ever get defrosted.
*** out of *****

Family Guy
Hurricane Flozell makes it to Quahog somehow. The Griffins are trapped inside, so Brian decides to do some 'shrooming. He hallucinates and cuts his ear off. Stewie sews it back on and looks after him.

Meanwhile, Meg is tired of people crapping on her and we get some shitty, unfunny melodrama more worthy of a James L. Brooks episode of The Simpsons. Family Guy's supposed to be above that bullshit.

Eventually, Meg decides the family needs a lightning rod for its anger, and that she should be it. Brian thinks that's cool beans.

What I Liked
-GI Jose: Real Mexican Hero. You know enough. And knowing is half the battle!
-Brian hallucinates a scene from Time Bandits. Time Bandits is awesome and should be referenced in every show.
-Black woman vs. Italian man. My little sister claims to have scene something go down exactly as they portrayed it. But, I don't know if I believe her.

What I Hated
-Peter sings the opening chase music from Indiana Jones. It went on waaaaaaaaaay too long and wasn't funny. Having things go on too long is one of the mainstays of this show, but it's almost never funny.
-Brian's freaky trip. It was just weird. I'm sure it cost a lot because they used some nonstandard animation. It wasn't worth it.
-Stewie just said that. No one's going to tweet that.
-Meg's bullshit. So boring.

Final Thoughts
There's a reason Meg gets shit on so much, and it's because she fucking sucks as a character. It's entirely the fault of the writers, but there's no undoing it. And the best thing about Mila Kunis is most certainly not her voice, so giving her a lot of lines is a terrible idea.

Nineteen laughs.
** out of *****

Fringe
Walter's being analyzed by the chief psychiatrist from St. Claire's because people are starting to become a tad concerned for Walter's well being. He's seeing and hearing Peter, and that's making him behave even more strangely than he usually does.

Case-wise, a boy gets chased by two others into a sewer tunnel, and the two start growing roots all over their faces or something. An intelligent fungus has bonded with the boy and their each other's only friends. While Olivia and Lincoln work on a way to kill the fungus, Walter needs to find a way to disconnect the boy from it. He discovers that the boy's the one maintaining the connection because he's lonely, so Walter promises they'll hang out later, and the boy lets go, which allows Lincoln and Olivia to poison the fuck out of the fungus with some super poison from Massive Dynamic.

Afterwards, Walter sees Peter again in a reflection on a clipboard and decides to lobotomize himself so he won't have to return to the mental hospital. Olivia catches him as he's hammering a giant spike into his brain, and stops him. She gets him to tell her what the problem is, and it turns out that she's been dreaming about Peter. Now Walter knows he's not crazy, and if they're both seeing Peter, he must be important, so they need to find him!

What I Liked
-Walter thinks the thing that killed the boys might be bigfoot. That should be the initial theory on every show.
-The boys actually die. It's so rare that children die on TV if it's not from cancer or something.
-Lincoln and Olivia have a nice chat together in their nerd glasses.
-"I'm thinking flamethrowers."
-There's always time for popsicles.
-Walter names the psychic fungus Gus. That's what I'd go with.
-I'm perfectly sane. Sane people give themselves lobotomies with spikes, right?

What I Hated
-Ugly, annoying, whiny bitch kid.

Final Thoughts
I really hope that Walter was lying and he won't see that kid again soon. Damn, he was annoying. There's a reason why you shouldn't work with children, and it's because they're not very good actors.

Is Blair Brown still on this show? She's in the credits, but we haven't seen Nina Sharp at all this season. At least she got a mention in the episode, so we know she exists in this timeline. Oddly enough, Peter's had more screen time, and he doesn't exist.

It was fun to see Lincoln get a real introduction to the world of Fringe stuff. Nearly getting killed by an intelligent fungus would probably freak most people out. I can't tell if they're trying to build a romantic relationship between Lincoln and Olivia or what, but the two characters have been working well together, so I could see it going that way.

Walter hammering a spike into his brain made me go gaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh.

There was one thing wrong with Olivia's drawing of Peter: It didn't have nearly enough stubble.
*** out of *****

Hawaii Five-O
McGarrett and White do some male bonding. It's not gay at all.

Some SEAL dude shot himself in the head, but McGarrett gets Max to reopen the file because White doesn't believe it's a suicide. Turns out that it's not. Another SEAL dude shows up on Max's slab, also set up to look like a suicide. Someone's killing SEALs, and not the kind you make gloves out of. The SEALs had fucked up a drug cartel's shit, and now the cartel's getting revenge. A third SEAL gets thrown out of a plane with his chute cut, but McGarrett comes out of nowhere to save him. They kill the drug cartel's assassin, and then the Five-O team goes to watch the SEALs kill a bunch of people.

In the b-plot, Kono's hanging with a bad crowd, which includes a mob guy played by Billy Baldwin. She logs into Chin's police account to steal info for the dude and ominous music plays.

What I Liked
-Billy Baldwin!
-Chin almost gets killed by a booby trap. It's always hilarious when that stuff happens to him.

What I Hated
-The killer was hired by a drug cartel. The war on drugs just doesn't work.
-The team watching the SEALs kill a bunch of drug dealers was morbid as fuck. Watching people die should not be entertainment, even if they are scumbags.

Final Thoughts
Danny didn't have a whole heck of a lot to do in this episode since it was pretty heavy on other people's plots. I'm a tad concerned that without his family drama stuff, there won't be much for him to do this season.

Not enough chicks in bikinis.
** out of *****

House
House is in prison. He's up for parole, but he doesn't want to play ball. Still, the parole committee has a mandate to reduce the prison population, so if he stays out of trouble for five days, they'll let him out.

His friends on the inside include his psychotic cellmate whose medication he monitors and whose pet cricket he cures, another guy who he plays chess with, and Steve Urkel who's basically the prison's Morgan Freeman. He's smarter than everyone in prison, but he's still a prick, so he does a couple things that might get him shanked. The lead skinhead has been charging him a pill tax, and now that he's on his way out, House needs to come up with 20 vicodin, or he'll get his shit beat on the outside.

Meanwhile, a new prisoner is having trouble, and House helps with the diagnosis, even though he's decided that when he gets out he wants to become a physics professor so he won't have to deal with people anymore. The head prison doctor is a useless bureaucrat, but the new, young lady doctor is open to House's ideas and helps him, even though it gets her fired.

The young doctor gets House the pills he needs, but he figures out what's wrong with the sick prisoner, so he needs to get back into the clinic. He causes a riot by tossing the vicodin in the air, and just before the skinhead leader's muscle murders House, his cellmate clocks everyone with a chair and beats the shit out of the chief skinhead.

For causing the riot, House gets sent to solitary and loses his chance at probation. But, being right is better than being free, and he managed to save the sick guy, so that's all that matters to him.

What I Liked
-"Doctors can be degenerates. This is America."
-It's not lupus.
-The sick prisoner starts bleeding like a mofo, and the doctor chick's all like "Cool!"
-House trachs the sick guy with his friend's prison shank.

What I Hated
-House wasn't secretly stashing more vicodin for a rainy day. He should've known about exit taxes and been prepared for them.

Final Thoughts
They had to do at least one episode with House in prison, but I would've thought it would be more interesting to see how he dealt with things initially, rather than how he was coping at the end of his sentence. Those were really the only two ways they could go, though, so I suppose it's fine.
** 1/2 out of *****

How I Met Your Mother
Robin goes to see court-mandated psychiatrist, Kal Penn. She's freaking out because Barney's being so romantic with Nora. She also tells a side story about how Ted wants in on all the baby stuff with Marshall and Lily, but Lily wants to drink and eat sushi a little. Kal Penn thinks this diversion makes Robin's story a little long-winded.

Anyway, Robin helps Barney shut down all his long-running scams that were designed to send him a constant stream of women. But, she can't help but send him one last lady, who she tackles just in time. And that's why she had court-mandated psychiatry.

What I Liked
-StinsonBreastReduction.com and LinsonBreastLawsuit.com. Both real websites.
-Kal Penn gets that sometimes the A and B-plots don't tie together very well.

What I Hated
-Ted and Marshall at a baby birthing class. That was just odd.

Final Thoughts
So, since the story's being told by Future Ted, this week's episode was Future Ted telling a story about how Robin once told a story. That's a bit silly.

It was nice that they actually built the two websites from the episode, but they're not particularly detailed. Another couple hours worth of effort could've made them really awesome.

Twelve laughs.
** out of *****

The Big Bang Theory
The boys play D&D. Raj is upset and eating a whole pie because he doesn't have a girlfriend and the other three guys do. Sheldon decides to do everything in his life based on how his D&D dice come up. Hilarity ensues.

Across the hall, the girls are doing something with wax. Penny decides to help Raj out and sets him up with a deaf girl from her spin class. It works out, but Raj has to bring Howard on their first date because he doesn't know sign language. Hilarity ensues.

Eventually, Sheldon lets it slip that Raj's family is super rich and that the deaf girl is only dating him for his money. Raj tells his parents about his girlfriend and they make him choose between love and money. He chooses love, but the girl only loves his money. So sad. But if he marries an Indian girl his father will buy him a Maserati, so he's got that going for him.

What I Liked
-Penny's bikini area is fine. I'll bet it is.
-Raj trades gifts for sex. Always a good idea.
-Raj's father tells him love doesn't last forever right in front of his mother. The Koothrappalis are a funny couple.

What I Hated
-Sheldon no longer wears underwear. I don't need that image in my head when I'm trying to think of Kaley Cuoco's bikini area.
-Howard creeping on chicks at the gym. We get it, he's a pervert. Have him do perverted things with his fiancee. That's why she's there.

Final Thoughts
The conceit that Raj can't talk to women unless he's drunk is getting a bit old. He's been hanging out with several women on a near daily basis for years now, and he got naked and fooled around with Penny, so he should be able to get out a few phrases at the very least. If they're doing some romance thing where the girl of his dreams can get him to talk, they'd better bloody get on with it already.

Sheldon's dice thing didn't really get enough exploration. It was a decent gag, but it needed more time.

Twenty-six laughs.
*** out of *****

The Cleveland Show
The hurricane started the night off in Stoolbend.

The Browns and Tubbs are going on a cruise, so Cleveland throws out all the food in the fridge. Then the shit hits the fan. They don't evacuate -I think because of a black people joke- and they get trapped without any food because Donna doesn't get out much, and only buys 24h worth of food every day so she can go shopping.

Since they're well and truly boned, they start praying. But, Junior doesn't because he doesn't believe in god; he's not an atheist though, because Brian Griffin was a d-bag. Being a black southern family, they try to convert him. It doesn't work, though.

Junior's rationed some food so they won't starve, but everyone threatens him, so he locks it up. This leads Cleveland to call down God's wrath, but he misses the mark and lands a tree on Cleveland instead of Junior. The rest of the family refuses Junior's help, so he uses engineering to get his dad out. Everyone thanks God for the miracle, and Junior gets the fuck out 'cause he's tired of that shit.

What I Liked
-Larvelle's description of the path of hurricane Flozell. It's going to American Dad town!
-It's called a grocery store, not a market. Fucking thank you! I've been saying that to old people for years.
-Cleveland thinks he's Walter Cronkite. They got a couple good lines out of that one.

What I Hated
-The retarded news reader. Not funny.
-No Joseph Gordon-Levitt jokes. Why not? He's ripe for parody, especially now.
-The song about God. It wasn't catchy, or funny. It just killed some time that could've been better spent on more Walter Cronkite jokes.

Final Thoughts
These shows never do religious stuff particularly well. Even Family Guy's Church of Fonzie thing wasn't all that great. I think they should just ignore religion and do more poop jokes

Eighteen laughs.
** 1/2 out of *****

Now, for some depth. Only a little this week, though.

This week's worst show was:

2 Broke Girls
This was the first episode of this show I've seen. I decided to give it a chance because I had nothing better to do, and Kat Dennings has a big rack that she's willing to show off. I don't think I'll be watching it again. I certainly won't be reviewing it again.

Kat Dennings is Max, a chick who grew up poor. The other girl is Caroline, and she grew up rich. They live together and work together at a diner, which I think is owned by a stereotypical Asian guy. He's sad because Max won't accept his Facebook friend request. The cook at the diner sexually harasses the ladies.

So, being broke, the two girls go shopping at Goodwill and get in a tiff with a tough girl. Eventually, the tough girl comes to the diner, and Caroline dumps some food all over a shirt she sniped at the store when Max wasn't looking. The 2 girls bond.

Now, for starters, I looked it up, and the show actually starts with a 2. That's pretty douchetastic. I'm not sure who thought that was a good idea, but they were wrong.

The girls also have a horse for some reason. I'm willing to bet that the producers will get rid of it before the end of the season. It just won't add very much to the show, and they'll have to write around it a lot. It may seem like a neat gimmick right now -sort of like the monkey on Friends- but it's going to get old really fast.

The plot was nothing. There may as well not have been a plot.

Five laughs.
* out of *****

This week's best show was:

Community
Chang's nuts and thinks he's a film noir detective. He ends up burning down the storage closet he lives in. The Dean decides to play into Chang's delusions because it'll keep him from getting in trouble, so the head of security quits, and Chang gets promoted.

The study group gets assigned lab partners in biology because they sat in a weird configuration. They convince the professor to let them choose, but since there are only seven of them, they can't be divided evenly and get stuck with an extra guy: Todd. Their initial pairings don't work out, so they rank each other and get Abed to assign the pairs. Unfortunately, he just separates them by popularity, which causes strife. They fail to complete their lab project, so the biology professor makes the seven of them one big group. They'll pass or fail as a team.

The professor's question about Lego was so sad. What the fuck happened to Lego, man?

I hope they can figure out a way to better integrate Chang into the show now that he's the head of security. For the first three episodes, he's just sort of been off to the side.

Best line: "This was also a test, and you all penised... passed. Maybe I need to take one. A test, not a penis." -Britta

Twenty-three laughs.
*** 1/2 out of *****

So, here are the standings after three weeks:
Fringe - 25
Community - 23
Castle - 20
The Big Bang Theory - 20
How I Met Your Mother - 17
The Cleveland Show - 16
Hawaii Five-O - 10
American Dad - 8
House - 7
Family Guy - 6

In Like Him

2011-10-09T11:02:00.002-04:00

Today's filler is an article on the Flynn Effect. Read it carefully, there will be a test later.

Delays

2011-10-08T17:38:00.002-04:00

I'm trapped in the country without access to a computer with a legitimate keyboard. And since I don't think it would be possible to type everything out on my tablet in a reasonable amount of time, this week's reviews will be delayed until Wednesday. I know I promised regularity, but constipation happens.

Random Nudity

2011-10-05T15:07:00.003-04:00

I have invented a new game. Here's how it works: Visit your favourite search engine's image tab. Turn safesearch off. Type in three random letters. See how far down you have to scroll to find naked pictures or porn.

Obviously something like "xxx" or "ass" will get you nudity or porn faster than most other combinations, but all of them should get you something eventually. I've played several times over the past few days, and I've yet to be disappointed.

Jefe

2011-10-02T12:37:00.001-04:00

It probably doesn't mean what you think it means.

Crisis on a couple o' Earths

2011-10-01T22:23:00.004-04:00

Castle
For the first time in a while, it started with a rapist and not a murderer. There was a murder a few seconds later, but still, it was a nice change of pace. Some guy in a superhero costume chops a rapist in half with a sword. That's nice, but it's still against the law, so the gang investigates.

The first suspect's a legitimate businessman who got his ass carved up by the hero, Lone Vengeance. The second is another costumed hero who wanted to become Lone Vengeance's sidekick. The third s the writer of the Lone Vengeance comic book. It's not him, but he confesses anyway to protect the fourth suspect, the real Lone Vengeance who turns out to be a girl, and a cop. The writer writes about her exploits in an obvious parallel to the Castle-Beckett relationship (obvious because they mention it in the episode). As it turns out, it was the first guy, who wanted to frame Lone Vengeance and kill the rapist who had been ratting him out to the authorities. The cop gets let loose so the new Cap'n can save face, and immediately sucks face with the writer. Castle and Becket look on, and feel slightly uncomfortable.

Back at home, Gran's making costumes for her Shakespeare theatre group, and Alexis is planning for her life at Stanford in the spring. She wants to take all the classes her boyfriend is in, but Castle doesn't think it's a good idea. At first she has a teenage freakout because he expects her to be logical all the time when he's a goofball, but eventually she comes around and decides to choose her own courses... and maybe move in with her boyfriend. Which, understandably, freaks out her dad.

What I Liked
-"You do not understand the sacred bond between a man and his junk."
-Ryan becomes the master of crazy theories.

What I Hated
-Bitch Captain being a stupid bitch
-Castle saying Lone Vengeance can't have a partner because he's lone. The Lone Ranger had a partner.

Final Thoughts
Sort of a middling episode. The whole "He's a hero!" "He's a menace" thing was very Spider-Many. I, too, shall be sad when Alexis goes off to college. The family on this show is actually functional, and that's very rare in TV today.
** 1/2 out of *****

Community
There's another Annie. She's just like the original Annie, only Asian. They get in a weird passive-aggressive battle over the Model UN club, and it lands them in a winner-takes-all battle for world supremacy involving everyone but Britta. When victory seems assured, Jeff cuts a fart that nearly kills her team, and Original Annie throws a tantrum. This leads to a heart-to-heart talk between Jeff and Annie where they both realize they have to grow up. In the end, the UN of Original Annie's universe wins by using an interdimensional portal to travel to Asian Annie's universe.

Why not Britta? Because she's upset one of her old activist pals is doing much more extreme activisting, so she decides to get more active. But, she has a real life, now, and doesn't want to ruin it. Fortunately, Chang wants to do some real security guarding, so Britta gets to be tased, and Change gets to do some tasing.

What I Liked
-I am Fartacus!
-Abed mumbles nonsense and no one cuts away because reality doesn't work like that. Jeff calls him on it, then Abed starts to really explain his plan, and the show cuts away.
-Blue UN wins via portal.
-"There's nothing to be Zambia about, Annie." - Jeff

What I Hated
-The whole passive-aggressive Annie fight. I realize that chicks do this, but it annoys me as much on TV as it does in real life.
-Garrett reading things. I could barely understand what the actor was saying.
-Annie comes close to losing because Jeff rips one.

Final Thoughts
The Britta-Change stuff could've used a bit more development. I hope that's the last we see of Asian Annie. Passive aggressive bitchiness doesn't make for good comedy.

Twenty laughs.
** 1/2 out of *****

Family Guy
Peter blows the family's life savings on lottery tickets, and they actually win. Quagmire and Joe quickly try to take advantage of Peter's newfound wealth, but he knows he's the guy bankrolling everything, so he uses that to fuck with the guys and get them to do crazy stuff.

The money is quickly lost, and despite winning the lottery a second time, the family's in dire straits. But, Peter's investment into Quagmire's penis-enlargement pill scheme paid off, and Quagmire writes Peter a cheque so the Griffins can keep their home. Friendship is important, even if your friend's been a dick for a while.

What I Liked
-The pregnant dancer from the opening titles. It's always funny when the floozy you're banging gets knocked up.
-Adam West's 4-piece suit
-Penis butler. I'm not sure how one buttles a penis, but I'd love to find out.
-Peter's anger at Anna Paquin. I don't understand his hate for her boobs, though. They seem okay to me. Nothing to write home about, but fine.

What I Hated
-Bruce Jenner strutting around. Hasn't the man suffered enough?
-The montage song. It just didn't do it for me.
-Michael McDonald during allergy season. Too long, not funny.
-They blew through all the money. There were so many things they could've done if they'd held on to that plot line for a whole season.

Final Thoughts
Some guy won a real life sweepstakes, I guess. I don't know, there was a weird bit at the end.

This wasn't a particularly memorable episode. I was pretty sure they were going to lose all the money by the end, but I was hoping I was wrong.

Eighteen laughs.
** out of *****

Fringe
There's a creepy dude out there, and he's doing creepy, evil science stuff. The alternaverse is dealing with a serial killer who sticks some kind of science gizmo into people's heads and kills them by freezing their brains. With nothing much to go on, the alternate Fringe Division requests Fringe Division's assistance. They want to bring the killer's duplicate over to their universe to see if he can offer them any insight into his motivations. Olivia's reluctant to help, but Broyles thinks it'll help build trust between the universes, and at any rate the duplicate happens to be a criminal profiler.

Olivia sedates the profiler so he won't know where they're going, and goes with him to the altverse to supervise while Fauxlivia takes the him around the killer's house. Unfortunately, the profiler finds a picture of "his" father in the house, and the two Olivias are forced to reveal that there are two universes. The profiler is understandably confused by all this. I'm a bit confused just trying to write about it. Then some people came over and made a bunch of noise and I missed a chunk of the episode.

The profiler manages to track down the killer and tries to convince him that there's a way to stop being so evil. When he was young he met a woman who helped him grow up to be a non-psychopath. The killer's lazy, so he knocks out the profiler and uses a machine to suck out his memories of the woman. It actually helps him, so when the Fringe Division folks finally show up, the killer is despondent over all the evil he's done and blows his own brains out. The profiler has convenient plot-related amnesia, and everyone is happy. Well, not happy but fine.

Back at Universe A's lab, Walter has covered up everything reflective so he can't see Peter, but then he starts to hear Peter. Astrid knows something's wrong, but Walter won't tell her what it is. Agent Lee's in town and maybe joining the team. Astrid thinks Olivia should go on a date with him, but she's afraid it might go badly and complicate their workplace relationship.

At the end of the episode, Walter's alone in his room again and Peter starts asking for his help, which freaks Walter the fuck out. I guess Peter exists but he's trapped in limbo or something.

What I Liked
-Astrid mentions that a guy who's Olivia's type might not exist. I like the subtle meta-references they've been making.
-Olivia killed her stepdad when she shot him. I guess post-crisis Olivia is a better shot.
-Walter re-enacts this commercial
-There's a plausible explanation for the absence of alt Charlie: He's on his honeymoon with bug lady.

What I Hated
-Profiler guy cries about his childhood. That bit went on way too long.

Final Thoughts
Post-Crisis Olivia seems to be a bit angrier than Pre-Crisis Olivia. I missed a chunk, but I can only rate what I saw, and what I saw was good.
*** out of *****

Hawaii Five-O
Some chick whens the paddleboard world championships and gets kidnapped before she even has a chance to pick up her trophy. The team suspects some guy, but it turns out that he's just an extractor who gets people out of cults. The girl had a heart condition, and her grandfather was the cult leader, so her mother faked her death when she was a baby and put her up for adoption. But, now that she's famous, the cult leader tracks her down, and brings her back into the fold. Five-O tracks him down, and rides horses through the rough terrain to get to the cult's compound in time to shoot a bunch of right-wing nutjobs and give the girl her heart medication before she dies.

The governor brings in an officer from homeland security to help add a little accountability to the Five-O team. McGarrett initially keeps her on the sidelines because he doesn't trust her yet, but she earns his trust by the end of the episode.

Meanwhile, Tom Sizemore has taken some time out of his busy schedule of (allegedly) beating people to do a guest spot as an IA investigator checking out Kono. He figures she's dirty, and refers her case to the state prosecutors.

Larisa Oleynik's butt does a little research on McGarrett, but then tells everyone her fiancee might be alive, and heads back to the mainland.

What I Liked
-Chan and Danny giving McGarrett the business for going on a "date" with the new girl. That was some good snark.
-McGarret and Danny bickering on the horses.
-Danny yelling at McGarrett to try not to kill everyone during the gunfight. After which he proceeds to shoot a few more guys.

What I Hated
-Chin inexplicably rides a motorcycle now for some reason. Without a helmet, I might add.
-McGarrett gives both the "I trust them with my life" and "Don't make promises you can't keep" speeches. He's a walking tough guy cliche.
-Their guns have infinite bullets. McGarrett was busting caps like they were going out of style and never had to reload. Unless he carries an extra magazine hidden in his ass, he really should've been more concerned about conserving ammo.
-No more Larisa Oleynik's butt for a while.

Final Thoughts
I'm not sure how they're going to get Kono out of trouble, and the amount of screen time that bit got wasn't commensurate with the seriousness. But that seems to be the one plot line they're hanging on to from last season's finale, so I guess it's okay that its taking a few episodes to resolve.

The action stuff on the show is fine, but the part of the show I enjoy most is the interaction between Danny and McGarrett. It's very 1980s buddy cop.

The episode wasn't so hot, and we lost Larisa Oleynik's butt for a while. That's a terrible shame.
** 1/2 out of *****

How I Met Your Mother
Barney's running a long con... or is he? Using the power of suggestion, Barney convinces Marshall to get the gang to go for dinner at a hibachi restaurant, wherein he belittles the chefs skills. Marshall bets Barney can't do it with the stakes being that if he can, Barney gets to squeeze one of Lily's new, larger pregnancy boobs, and if he can't, Barney has to wear Marshall's new ducky tie for an entire year. During dinner, the chef and Barney exchange knowing glances, and Barney shows off astounding dexterity with his chop sticks, and Marshall realizes he was conned into going to the restaurant, so Lily calls off the bet by saying she'll show Barney her boobs out in the alley. While they're out there, Marshall thinks it might be a double con, and the bets back on. But, it turns out Barney really did spend six months at hibachi chef school and can do all the tricks. Unfortunately for him, Lily wins the bet by sabotaging the last trick when she flashes Barney to distract him. And so begins the year of the Ducky tie.

Ted tells a story (which really means future Ted is telling a story about how he once told a story) about the previous night when he spent some time with Victoria. He went with her to her catering company's kitchen to help wash the dishes and maybe get a little downstairs action. But, it turns out she's in a long term relationship with a guy who's going to ask her to marry him. Ted felt a bit guilty for dumping her in favour of Robin, but his guilt is absolved when he finds out Victoria started dating her boyfriend almost immediately after Ted dumped her. They kiss anyway, but she decides they were fated to meet just so she would know if sticking with her current man is the right choice. She decides that it is, and tells Ted that the reason he's still single is because Robin's in his life. He thinks that's bull, but future Ted knows it's the truth.

What I Liked
-Alyson Hannigan's boobs. Of course, she got them a year ago when she was actually pregnant.
-Barney's impression of the hibachi guy. It wasn't at all racist.
-They brought back the bang-bang-bang song. If I had a full-length version of it, I'd add it to my sex playlist.
-Ted doesn't get to see Lily's boobs, but the hibachi chef does.
-Victoria lays the whole "It's weird that you and Barney both dated Robin and the three of you still hang out" thing on front street. It needed to be said.

What I Hated
-#stinsonrocks and all the other hash tag crap Barney said.
-There was a better clip of the gang listing all the people Ted used to date, and it wasn't in the episode. Here it is for your enjoyment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLtu7UV8OUs I don't know why they'd cut it for time and not some of the other crap.
-Ted kisses a chick who's about to get engaged to a guy she's been with for six years. If you're gonna marry someone, you don't make out with an ex.

Final Thoughts
The Victoria stuff was actually pretty lousy. Ted's a douche, that's why he's alone, and no one would consider breaking off a six-year relationship for him. The ending of the bet plot was spoiled a bit because the previous episode had a shot of Barney wearing the ducky tie.

Twelve laughs.
** out of *****

The Big Bang Theory
Raj, Howard and Bernadette go to the movies, Sheldon goes to a model train store, and Penny goes to work. That leaves Amy and Leonard together in the apartment. They don't really talk, but they get to know each other a little better. She invites him as her date to a faculty wedding because Sheldon acted like a child at the last one they went to. Sheldon's a bit of a downer, but Amy's finger moustache and awesome chicken dancing get him to have fun.

Meanwhile, Bernadette spends the night at Howard and his mother's place. He wants her to move in with the two of them after they get married, but she's not thrilled with the idea. Howard's childishness and his mother's eccentricities strain things, but as it turns out, Bernadette's got what it takes to be a stereotypical jewish mother, and she gets along fine with Howard's mom.

What I Liked
-Sheldon says Penny's momma's so fat.
-Howard's mom calls Bernadette a slut.
-Amy's finger moustache. It broke the ice.

What I Hated
-Amy being weird.
-Chicken dance. Man, fuck that noise.

Final Thoughts
There isn't a lot of substance to these kinds of episodes. They're just sort of there. Like the mints you grab on the way out of a restaurant.

Seventeen laughs.
** out of *****

Time for some depth. This week's worst show was:

American Dad
Man, I do not know what the fuck was up with this episode. It started with some unnecessary Cee Lo Green live action, and just got weirder and weirder.

After getting in a car accident where he was purposely creamed by Principal Lewis, Stan buys a hot tub, which is alive and evil. It causes him to shirk his responsibilities and party all day with scantily clad chicks. At first Francine likes the hot tub, and they bone in it, but later it takes over Stan's life, and she takes the kids to stay with her parents. Stan continues to live as a hot tub guy until the salesman discovers that the tub was struck by lightning and came to life. Stan manages to overcome the tub's power, but it impersonates him and calls Francine back to the house so it can murder her. Stan makes it back home before the deed is done, and it's life-and-death struggle time. Stan loses and dies at the end. I guess the show's over.

The whole episode was a musical, and I guess it may have been a bit of an homage to Little Shop of Horrors, but damned if I know. There were a couple funny bits like Stan choosing the hot tub over his family, and a couple of the musical bits were good, but everything else was crazy. Kind of like a Cee Lo Green music video, now that I think about it. Perhaps his inclusion wasn't as superfluous as I thought it was.

At any rate, the songs really weren't very good, and the video-like segments that accompanied them -while parodic- mostly looked like the machinations of someone who had taken a tad too much cocaine... or not nearly enough.

Aside from that, the actual plot of the episode was something that's been done a million times before in various sitcoms, and -I think- at least one other episode of American Dad: The husband becomes obsessed with something, causing the wife to leave him, but at the last second he realizes family is more important and they get back together. That's BS, by the way. Unless your hobby is fucking other women, there's no way your wife should leave you over it. What she should do is convince you that spending time with her is better. That may require some bruised knees, but it's way cheaper than a divorce. Anyway, I digress. When the underlying plot is bad, slapping a musical veneer on top doesn't make things better. It just serves to expose how underdeveloped the plot is because the musical numbers take up so much time. So, what this episode ended up with was a shitty plot topped off with some shitty music, like a some kind of shit pizza or shit cupcake.

The ending is where it's most evident that there wasn't enough time for music and a plot: Stan dies. The end. That's it. There's no resolution to anything. Francine's still trapped in the hot tub, and I guess she drowns, but it's not in the episode. Roger and Steve are still at their grandparents place, and they'll probably never know exactly what killed their parents. And the hot tub itself is free to keep murdering unsuspecting middle-aged men and their wives. I wasn't paying very close attention, and I figured there'd be another act after Stan went down. Nope. Cee Lo just pops up and says "Stan died. The end." That's some Simpsons-level bullshit.

Nine laughs.

* 1/2 out of *****

But, enough of that shit. Let's talk about something good. This week's best show was:

The Cleveland Show
I know. I'm as surprised as you are. It was by no means a great half-hour of TV, but everything else I watched this week was pretty bad, so it came out on top.

Peter Griffin comes to Stoolbend, but doesn't talk to Cleveland, which makes him wonder what the deal is. So Cleveland heads back to Quahog to see what the dealio is. Peter just doesn't think the two of them were ever more than drinking buddies, so he feels no need to call on Cleveland when he's in town. Back home, Cleveland is sad and resolves to work on his friendship with his Stoolbend friends. Conveniently, Nature Boy Ric Flair is running a friendship camp nearby. The guys go, but they sink their canoes and get lost in the woods. Eventually they're found by a band of friendly rednecks who want to rape them. Cleveland escapes and gets back to the camp where he gets a massage and remembers the value of friendship. He heads back to the camp where he is quickly recaptured, but before his butthole can be violated, Peter and the evil monkey from Chris' closet arrive to save the day. Peter has also remembered the value of friendship, and he and Cleveland make up while the monkey rips the rednecks' faces and nuts off. Also there was a b-plot where Donna entered Rallo in a quiz bowl so she could look good in front of the other parents, but it wasn't important.

There certainly was a lot of crude humour in this episode, but it was funny, and that's what's important. Rape jokes are usually considered off limits, but there's really no reason for that. We make light of every other horrible thing that happens, so rape should be no different. I mean, a monkey ripping a bunch of dudes' faces and nuts off is pretty horrible, but I doubt too many people will complain about that joke. If rape jokes can help people learn about the value of friendship, then that's enough justification for me.

Ric Flair was a bit of an odd choice to be running a friendship camp. Apparently he'll do just about anything for money, though. He was funny, too. A bit heavy on the "Woo!"s perhaps, but I still liked his bit, and I hope they bring him back. Seth MacFarlane's shows do good things with their guest stars, and I wouldn't be against Flair becoming The Cleveland Show's version of Adam West or Patrick Stewart.

The b-plot was unnecessary junk, but I suppose I can understand why they'd need to break up all the rape jokes with something more savoury. That doesn't make it good though. The stupid kid in the super hard quiz bowl thing has been done a hundred times before, and it always sucks. This time it was coupled with the parent trying to keep up with tbe other parents thing, which made the whole plot shit to the second power. However, it was totally forgettable, so I can forget its faults.

Besides, we finally learned the difference between The Cleveland Show and Family Guy, and that alone is worthy of high praise. For those who did not watch, the difference is Family Guy would've shown the rape and then had a show tune about the rape.

Twenty-one laughs.
*** 1/2 out of *****

So, here are the standings after two weeks:
Fringe - 15
How I Met Your Mother - 13
Community - 12
Castle - 10
The Big Bang Theory - 10
The Cleveland Show - 9
Hawaii Five-O - 6
Family Guy - 2
American Dad - 1

Trying it out

2011-09-26T12:20:00.002-04:00

In an effort to keep up with the times, this post, all previous posts, and all posts I make in the future (unless I decided to get rid of it) will now feature the Google+ button. Now you can let all your internet friends know how awesome my posts are. We'll see how it goes. I'm not expecting much.

Select Cities

2011-09-25T00:02:00.002-04:00

People of the internet, should I see this movie if it opens in my city?

TV: With a Vengeance

2011-09-24T23:59:00.005-04:00

TV's back! And today, I'm debuting the new format. It'll probably require some tweaking, but I think it'll be more informative and useful. Let's go!

Castle
Beckett's been shot, and she doesn't remember that Castle told her he loved her... Except she really does and she's just lying to him. She gets patched up, breaks up with her boyfriend, and ignores Castle for three months.

Meanwhile, there's a new captain at the precinct, and she's a no-nonsense, by-the-book TV cliche. She's kicked Castle out, but he calls the mayor and gets back in.

There's a murder and Beckett has a little trouble getting her mojo back, but she finds it eventually. Alexis wants her dad to stop playing cop because she's worried he might get shot. Some shadowy dude with a lot of powerful friends got an envelope full of incriminating evidence from the old captain. He tells Castle that if Beckett backs off investigating her mother's murder, then they'll leave her alone. Castle gets her to back off, and keeps the investigation going by himself on the down low.

What I Liked
-Poor sad Castle signing his new book. I also like that they actually release these books. Heat Rises is in stores now, people.
-"People Magazine. What?!"
-Geoff Pierson's shadowy bad guy.

What I Hated
-Annoying bitch captain. These sorts of characters really bug me. They're assholes for the sake of being assholes, and all they tend to do is slow the plot down for no reason other than that's what an asshole would do.

Final Thoughts
There's not a whole lot to say about this one. It was an average sort of episode with a few good bits, and one new annoying character who I hope doesn't get much screen time. At least it didn't totally undo all the cliffhangery bits from the previous season's finale. That's not something that I can say for all the shows I watch.
** 1/2 out of *****

Community
School's back in session. The study group is taking Biology 101 with an angry ex-con professor. Pierce can't get in the class initially, but Jeff gets kicked out, and suddenly Pierce is back in the study group, and Jeff is out. After a brief bout of insanity, Jeff learns to let go or something and gets back in the class.

Meanwhile, the dean gets in a fight with the assistant dean of the air conditioning repair school annex, and, coincidentally, releases gas into the air ducts to incapacitate Annie's Boobs. It turns out that it wasn't a monkey, but Chang who's been living in the ducts, and he becomes a security guard in exchange for room and board when it turns out 80% of the college's budget came from alumni donations to the AC Repair program and the assistant dean has bullied himself a new deal.

What I Liked
-The tiny skirt that Alison Brie wore in the opening musical number. She's my age, not 20, so it's not creepy... Well, it's a little creepy.
-Jim Rash is in the opening credits. The dean always delivers comedy, and I'm glad they've recognized that fact.
-The vibration of Jeff's phone was louder than the ringer. FINALLY, someone acknowledges that in the media.
-Evil John Goodman.
-Jeff kills the magic table.
-Best Line: "Monkey knockout gas. Now that's the kind of grounded, sensible thinking I wanna see this year." -The Dean

What I Hated
-The opening musical number. It didn't really move me in any way.
-The weird 2001 sequence that Jeff went through after he got gassed. That part of the movie was awful, and including it in a comedy show 40 years later didn't make it better.
-Pierce is back in the group already. Why? Why do that so quickly?

Final Thoughts
There were a few interesting developments in this episode, and one big, uninteresting undevelopment. Pierce was out of the study group for a grand total of about ten minutes of TV time. I knew he'd be back, but I didn't think it would be so fast. I'm not sold on the bio teacher yet. I'll give him a few episodes to see if he ever does anything funny. Eighteen laughs.
*** out of *****

Fringe
Peter never existed, so things are a bit different. But, the two universes are still working together in an uneasy truce. The Olivias fucking hate each other.

Agent Lincoln Lee is still an agent, and his partner gets iced by a weird, translucent dude who sort of looks like Agent Scott did in the pilot. Fear not, because the Fringe Division is on the case. They're a bit different, though. Walter's afraid to leave the lab, so Astrid carries a mobile video link to show him the dead bodies, and Olivia's not nearly as nice because she's basically been alone since her boyfriend died three years ago, and the guy she started dating afterwards never existed.

Lincoln horns in on the action and helps Olivia kill the bad dudes. It turns out they're human-mechanical hybrids but not the same as the shapeshifters. I blame ZFT.

Meanwhile, glimmers of Peter are popping up all Where's Waldo?-style, and the Observer needs to erase them. He builds a machine to wipe Peter out permanently, but then wusses out before he flips the switch. I guess Joshua Jackson won't have to do Mighty Ducks IV after all.

What I Liked
-One of the fringe sciences in the opening title sequence was "Existence". Ha!
-They actually brought up John Scott. His plot line kinda died in the first season, so it's nice to have at least some mention of it.
-Near the end of the episode, Olivia hands a box to Fauxlivia. It's such a subtle effect that the girl I was watching with didn't even notice what had happened. I guess Joshua Jackson's coat budget is now going to Anna Torv-based special effects.

What I Hated
-The opening titles were yellow. It just doesn't look quite right. I was fine with the red, but yellow doesn't work for me.

Final Thoughts
There are many questions to be answered now that one of the main characters never existed. However, I'm not sure any answers will be forthcoming, since I'm pretty sure they're going to bring him back about 8-10 episodes in, so it may be pointless to explain everything.
*** out of *****

How I Met Your Mother - Episode 1
Lily's pregnant but doesn't want to tell anyone because she's afraid of jinxing it. That'd be fine, except the gang drinks constantly. So, Marshall's drinking for two.

Everyone goes to Ted's friend Punchy's wedding where the main attraction is supposed to be Ted breaking down and crying during his best man toast as he has done several times in the past.

Eventually, Lily can't hide her pregnancy anymore, and Marshall accidentally ruins the wedding when he points out that Ted's tears are tears of joy for Lily, but the bride thinks Marshall's actually talking about her hidden pregnancy. Turns out that Punchy's been drinking for two, too.

Also, Robin still likes Barney for some reason.

What I Liked
-Punchy's auto-tuned remix of Ted's sad best man speeches.

What I Hated
-Robin's truth voice. It was just sad, not funny.
-Repetitive fake outs as to how Marshall ruined the wedding. Just fucking get on with it already.
-Ted trying to brag in the face of many babies. Ted's an ass. Why is this show about him?
-Gratuitous dance scene. It was long and pointless, and made no damn sense whatsoever.
-Ted being a whiny bitch again. There's a reason he's not married, and it's because he sucks.

Final Thoughts
This was not an auspicious start to the season. Autotuned Ted should've been on YouTube before the episode aired, but it's not even officially up there right now. The producers are usually better about that kind of thing. Thirteen laughs.
** out of *****

The Big Bang Theory - Episode 1
When last we left our heroes, Raj and Penny had just done the nasty and Priya had moved back to India. Leonard was understandably upset about all this.

In this episode, we learn that Raj and Penny didn't actually have sex, they just fooled around a bit and Raj prematurely ejaculated. Howard and Bernadette are kinda miffed at Raj because he had a crush on her and Howard is a jealous fool. That plot line sort of dies, though. Also, the guys play in a faculty paintball tournament and win, although it's not really important.

What I Liked
-"For the record, I do have genitals. They're functional and aesthetically pleasing."
-Penny finally got a job.
-Rose-scented hemorrhoid cream.

What I Hated
-The apocryphal Catherine the Great story. She didn't bang her horse.
-The whole paintball subplot. It was completely unnecessary.
-Christine Baranski. She was just a bitch and didn't add anything to the episode.
-Penny and Raj didn't actually have sex. Such a huge fucking cop out.

Final Thoughts
This was a pretty weak episode. It basically undid the only interesting thing that happened in last season's finale, and it had a strange, tacked-on paintball plot that didn't really get much attention and which wasn't very funny. Seventeen laughs.
** 1/2 out of *****

TBBT - Episode 2
Penny gets a chair out of the garbage and it freaks out Sheldon. Leonard and Priya try to maintain a long-distance relationship by sexing it up over Skype video chat. Hilarity ensues.

What I Liked
-Sheldon's multiple attempts to get Penny to get rid of the chair were pretty good. Although, I don't think you can self-appoint yourself to the CDC.
-Leonard and Priya's hot, hot sex was hot.
-Amy asking Sheldon to kiss her where she's never been kissed before. I like it when women are straightforward with what they want sexually.

What I Hated
-Sheldon's flip out over Penny's chair was a bit much.
-Wolowitz's tele-makeout device was creepy and weird and unfunny.

Final Thoughts
This certainly was an episode. It wasn't particularly funny or memorable, but it was definitely 20-odd minutes of TV. Thirteen laughs.
** out of *****

Now, let's get a little more in depth. This week's worst show was:

Hawaii Five-O
Oh my, where do I begin with this one? I've used it already this week, but I think it applies in this case as well: When last we left our heroes, they were, to use the vernacular, proper fucked. McGarrett was in jail, accused of murdering the governor, Danny's ex-wife was pregnant with his child and moving back to New Jersey, Chin Ho was working for the HPD, Kono was arrested for her part in stealing $10 million from an evidence locker that the team used to save Chin Ho from a crazed killer, and the Five-O team was disbanded. Things looked pretty bleak. Fortunately, there's one man who can save them. The writer? No, this episode was written by two men. I'm talking about TV's Terry O'Quinn! He's back in Hawaii and he's going to save the day.

But, he can't do it alone. Masi Oka's socially-awkward coroner Max is now featured in the opening credits, and Larisa Oleynik's butt is back for at least a couple guest shots as well. James Marsters is back as the aforementioned crazed Irish killer Victor Hesse, there's a new head cheese in a Lieutenant Governor played by "Hey, it's that guy!" Richard T. Jones, and Iron Chef:America Chairman Mark Dacascos is around to suave things up as suave mofo and mob boss Wo Fat. They certainly dumped a lot of money into the guest star budget for this one.

Maybe they should've saved a bit and used it on more free coffee and doughnuts in the writer's room, though, 'cause, seriously, fuck this episode. Almost everything is undone. All that stuff in the first paragraph about the team being fucked is pretty much gone by the end of the episode, and that's just the tip of the shit iceberg. Hawaii Five-O's season premiere is quite the floater.

Now, McGarrett's in jail, and you can't really do a cop show if your lead character's a prisoner, so Joe White(O'Quinn) friend of McGarrett's father, and the guy who trained him comes to town to help clear his name. It's a bit convoluted, and I may get a few of the details wrong, but here's the gist of how he does it: Larisa Oleynik's butt has a picture of an old Japanese WWII medal that leads White to an old Japanese man who somehow leads the team to a hidden camera McGarrett's dad put in the governor's office. The fancy hidden camera footage shows that McGarrett did not, in fact, kill the governor, and everything's hunky dory. Except for the fact that his dad has been dead for like a fucking year. The camera not only remained hidden, but it somehow kept operating for an entire year without anyone maintaining it. They might as well have had a wizard save McGarrett because that's one magic camera.

While White's running around Diagon Alley, Hesse shanks McGarrett. As it turns out, Wo Fat is on his way out of town, and before he goes, he's going to tie up loose ends, one of which is Hesse. So, James Marsters and his terrible Irish accent need McGarrett to kill Wo Fat before Wo Fat kills him and steals his lucky charms. One quick shank, and McGarrett's out of the hospital and escaping from an ambulance. He beats up a cop in a gas station bathroom, steals his car, and high tails it over to Max's place to get stitched up before he bleeds to death. Here's another spot where the bullshit is heavy and thick. McGarrett beats the shit out of two EMTs and a uniformed police officer, and at the end of the episode the Lieutenant Governor totally clears him. The fucking A-Team was pursued relentlessly just for breaking out of prison, so having a guy get his job as a quasi-judicial cop back after assaulting a bunch of people is a little ridiculous. Oh, and they go with the "nerdy guy has no money" trope despite the fact that Max is a fucking doctor.

Meanwhile, Danny, Chin Ho, and Kono know Wo Fat was the one who really killed the governor, so they're hunting his ass down. They do a little investigating and run interference to keep the HPD off McGarrett's ass. Eventually Kono gets captured for like 30 seconds and the boys shoot a bunch of dudes on a boat, but it was really kind of superfluous. I think they just needed something for the rest of the team to do during the episode. Anyway, in the end McGarrett cuts the lone surviving bad guy loose so they can follow his ass to Wo Fat, and the Five-O team is reinstated. Except for Kono. You can kick the shit out of a cop, or you can harbour a fugitive and obstruct justice, but if you're being investigated for stealing some money that eventually got put back anyway, you're shit out of luck, apparently. It's all so arbitrary.

That's the only part of last year's cliffhanger that's not completely undone, though. McGarrett's free and clear to do what he wants, Chin spent like a week as a lieutenant with the HPD, and the baby who his ex-wife was absolutely sure was his is actually not Danny's. The last one was the one I thought they'd have the most trouble with because they made a real point last season of saying she was absolutely positive the kid was Danny's. But, I guess it would've been really complicated to address that what with Danny being a guy who wants to look after his family, and his ex-wife wanting to move back to New Jersey, so I suppose it was just easier to say "It's not his baby" and move on with the show than actually trying to address the issue. It's true that cliffhangers need to be resolved, but just getting rid of the problem is not a resolution. Almost nothing that happened in last season's finale matters because they hand-waved it away, which means there was no character growth because the things that would cause the characters to grow basically didn't happen.

I'm not sure I'm buying the Lieutenant Governor character, either. He's a tough-on-crime, no-nonsense type, but he quickly absolves a bunch of people of their crimes and reinstates their nonsense police unit. They needed someone to do that, but I don't think Richard T. Jones needed to be wasted on that sort of thing. Maybe he'll become more interesting as the season goes on, or maybe he'll only show up sporadically to do stupid bullshit. I'm certainly hoping for the former.

The other guests were similarly wasted. They were barely in the episode and served mainly as plot-advancing devices rather than actual characters. McGarrett could've been shanked in prison by any random dude, and Mark Dacascos and Larisa Oleynik's butt were just sort of there. Only Terry O'Quinn actually did something worthwhile, and that's just because his character went to Hogwarts.

At any rate, the final chunk of the shitberg came right at the end. Wo Fat walks into the prison, kills Hesse without even mussing his hair, walks out, and gets driven away by the apparent double agent, Larisa Oleynik's butt. I saw this coming last season, but I didn't want to believe it. Sure, they hid her behind a skirt that was entirely too loose, and she didn't do fuck all, but I was hoping she'd become a full-fledged member of the team later this season and have ample opportunities to wear tiny shorts and Hawaii-appropriate bikinis. I'm sure Masi Oka has a fine posterior, but it's just not the same. Why must Larisa Oleynik's butt be evil? Why?
* 1/2 out of *****

Enough with the bad, let's end with the good. This week's best show was:

How I Met Your Mother - Episode 2
The first episode of HIMYM didn't thrill me, but this one was so much better.

In episode two, Ted re-enters the dating world for the fiftieth time. His face is on the cover of a magazine, and he parlays this into two dates. There's a bit of business surrounding which girl he's going to try to turn into his girlfriend and take to the Architect's Ball, but it's not really important. Eventually he learns that friendship triumphs over the penis (despite the fact that Alyson Hannigan learned that's impossible years go) and takes Robin. In a "NO SHIT!" moment we learn that the Lenny Kravitz who was headlining the Architect's Ball was not the Lenny Kravitz Robin was hoping to see. It would've been a nice surprise if it had been, but that kind of bait and switch is common in TV sitcoms, so I won't fault them for it. Anyway, as it turns out, Victoria, Ted's first real girlfriend on the show, and the girl he dumped so he could go out with Robin is back from Europe and catering the ball. It's about bloody time.

As the story goes, had the show not been picked up after its initial 13-episode run, Victoria would've been the mother, which was why she was so perfect for Ted. Of course, this was back before Ted became a raging douche, so I'm wondering if she'll still be right for him. Perhaps her years in Europe turned her into a douche as well. Or, as the Germans say, a douchenskanken. I suppose we'll find out on Monday.

There's also something going on with Barney and Nora where she doesn't like guys who lie to her, and he's king of the liars, but that's not really important, either. Love triumphs, etc.

The real meat of this episode belongs to the third plot. Marshall's up for a new job at Martin Short's law firm, but before they hire him, they need to run a background check. Unfortunately for Marshall, back in college he was briefly known as Beercules: Drunken campus streaker, and interrupter of campus news segments. And while Lily had forgotten Beercules, the internet remembers all! Thus, to get the job, Marshall must track down the video's host and convince him to take it down. He finds his old buddy Pete(TV's Jimmi Simpson) without much trouble, but Pete's engaged in a gripping game of Edward 40-hands(which involves taping a 40-ounce bottle of malt liquor to each hand and then drinking them) and will only take the video down in exchange for $4 million or help going to the bathroom. Marshall refuses both of these requests, and is instead drawn into a winner-takes-all battle of the sport of kings: Edward 40-hands. He loses, and Beercules is reborn. Fortunately, Martin Short likes Marshall's penis, and he gets the job.

The first two plots were a bit too relationshipy for my tastes. I'm not a woman, and I ultimately don't care that Barney and Ted want to settle down and get married. However, I do like drunk idiots doing drunk idiot things, so the third plot saves the episode. Not just saves: Elevates. Without the magic that is Beercules and the awesomeness that is Edward 40-hands, this episode would have almost no redeeming qualities whatsoever. I often complain about shows that run various plot lines that don't intersect -The Simpsons is an egregious offender- and I guess it's a bit out of character for me to not bitch about it here, but, I don't care. Marshall's plot was awesome, and that's all I needed out of this show.

Twenty-four laughs.
*** 1/2 out of *****

So after one week, here are the standings:

How I Met Your Mother - 11
The Big Bang Theory - 8
Community - 7
Fringe - 7
Castle - 5
Hawaii Five-O - 1

This man is a liar

2011-09-18T08:28:00.003-04:00

This song is on my sex playlist because as it plays we're already having sex, so it's ironic. Until just recently, I thought it was a chick singing it because I didn't pay attention to the lyrics.

Explanations

2011-09-17T18:46:00.003-04:00

In two days, TV will return with a vengeance, so I decided today would be a good day to update everyone on my plans for this season. I'll still be doing my weekly whatevers, but they'll be a bit different.

For starters, I'm going to stop making substantial notes on everything. They were taking forever to type, and they were never in-depth enough to matter. Instead, I'll be breaking everything down into three short sections: What I Liked, What I Hated, and Final Thoughts.

Which is not to say that I won't still be doing any full reviews. The shows that get the highest and lowest star ratings for the week will get full recaps and reviews, the kind you'd see on a reputable entertainment site.

As for the ratings themselves, shows will still be rated out of five stars, but in terms of overall ranking, they'll be awarded points values based on how well they scored during each individual week. For instance, if I watch five shows in a given week, the best show gets five points, and the worst show gets one. I think it'll give a clearer picture of which shows are good, and which shows suck than simply tallying the winners and losers.

Finally, as far as I'm able, I'll be putting the articles up on Saturdays. Things tended to get skewed around last season because I was too tired or whatever, so I figure moving things to Saturday will allow me to get some rest before I post. Regularity must return to Sitot, and this is a good place to start.

Public Service

2011-09-11T06:17:00.003-04:00

Not all filler has to be useless. Today, I offer for your viewing pleasure the 2011 fall TV premiere schedule, courtesy of the apparently still extant TV Guide.
Enjoy

I need a few more shows for my weekly reviews, so leave a comment listing some you're interested in, and I just might start watching.

Counting Celebrities

2011-09-10T17:13:00.004-04:00

Kim Kardashian is a celebrity. I understand why she's a celebrity, but I don't understand how. How does one go from being the mildly-attractive daughter of a dead lawyer to having multiple TV shows and fragrances and clothing lines and so forth? How does one parlay a not particularly good sex tape with a rapper no one's heard of into fame? I thought about this for a while, but then realized I would never figure it out and thought about something else: How many celebrities are there in the US and Canada?

I limited it to those two countries because they're really the only ones I'd ever notice. I'm sure there are plenty of Botswanan celebrities I'll never hear about.

The first thing I needed was some kind of metric for what constitutes a celebrity. Merely being famous isn't enough since all kinds of politicians and mass-murderers and people of those sorts are famous, but I wouldn't really call them celebrities. It took me a few minutes, but I think I came up with a decent way to narrow them down: If you have not been on one of the four major late night talk shows in the last five years, then you are not a celebrity. This excludes local celebrities like guys who play for your town's college football team, and the local weather girl and people like that, and if you haven't done something in the last five years that would warrant you being on one of those shows, then you just aren't culturally relevant enough to be a celebrity.

So, now the calculations become fairly simple. There are going to be plenty of duplicates, but we're going for a maximum possible number. Letterman, Leno, and I think Fallon will normally have two guests and a musical act, while Ferguson just has two guests. Figuring an average of two important people per musical act gives us a total of 14 people per night. The shows air five nights a week with something like six weeks off for vacation. That gives us the following equation:

14 celebrities/night * 5 nights/week * 46 weeks/year * 5 years = 16100 celebrities

Considering the amount of crap I hear about Lindsay Lohan and the Kardashians, that's actually a surprisingly large number. But, remember: It's a maximum. There are other ways to do the calculations.

For instance, let's say that in order to be a celebrity in North America, you must be one of the top 50 competitors in a major sport, have a song in the top 100 at some point, be a major part of one of the top 100 movies of the year, or be a major cast member on a major TV show.

The major sports would be football, baseball, basketball, NASCAR, hockey, golf, tennis, and combat sports. That's eight, giving a total of 400 sports celebrities.

Assuming the average stay in the top 100 of the music charts is five weeks, and the average act will have 1.5 songs on the charts per year gives us
10.4 new charts/year / 1.5 songs/act * 2 artists/act * 100 = 1387 music celebrities.

Let's say five of the actors in any film are celebrity material. With no overlaps that's 500 movie celebrities.

Finally, we have television. I looked it up, and the major US English-language networks + the CW will be running 105 primetime shows this year. Let's say about 55 of those will star people anyone's actually heard of. Add in three Canadian shows, ten Spanish-language shows, and ten daytime shows, and we have a total of 78. I'll be generous and say there are ten cable shows out there people actually give a crap about, and that gives us a grand total of 88 TV shows. Maybe four people per show are legitimately celebrities. So we have 352 TV celebrities.

That gives us 400 + 1387 + 500 + 352 = 2639 celebrities, and as always, if you ain't done shit in five years, you ain't a celebrity. Giving us a final total of 13195 celebrities in Canada and the US. So, the talk show guess was not an unreasonable estimate.

Now, what does it all mean? Well, it means that your chances of being a legitimate celebrity at any point in your life are relatively small. If you live for 80 years and all the celebrities are replaced every five years, that gives only about 211 thousand celebrities in your lifetime. While that may seem like a relatively large number, remember that there are about 350 million people in the US and Canada right now, with more being born every day. But even if all 350 million were born the same day as you, that still leaves you with only a 0.06% chance of becoming a celebrity. So, it's probably not a good career goal. If, however, you have a rich father and aren't butt-ugly, it might be worth it to release a sex tape. I haven't done the math on that one yet.

Tiny Filler

2011-09-04T00:51:00.002-04:00

Damned if you don't get what's advertised.

Appropriate ad placement

2011-09-01T18:45:00.000-04:00

I really hope my health care provider doesn't have more details on that particular subject.

Because I was asked

2011-08-28T00:11:00.002-04:00

Today's filler is serious business. How do you know when you're an alcoholic? This handy guide will tell you.

Probability

2011-08-27T17:30:00.000-04:00

It's time to flex our math muscles once again!

When dealing with probabilities, mathematicians occasionally refer to binary events as coin flips. It makes things easy to understand because just about everyone has flipped a coin at some point in their life.

Now, when you flip a coin, the probability that it will come up heads is 1/2; the probability of two consecutive heads is 1/4, three is 1/8, and so on. As such, flipping three heads in a row is highly unlikely, while ten in a row is nearly impossible. However, since people are flipping coins all the time, despite there being less than a 0.1% chance of it occurring, somewhere in the world, a coin comes up heads ten times in a row multiple times per day.

This got me thinking: What is the maximum number of times any individual coin could have landed heads(or tails) in a row?

The math itself is relatively simple.

Assume it takes two seconds to flip a coin.

Coins were invented around 7000BC at the earliest, so that's about 9000 years, or 9000 * 365.25 * 24 * 60 * 60 = 284018400000 seconds.

Divide that by two and we get a total of 142009200000 or just over 142 billion heads in a row. Of course, the probability of this is so astronomically small that I can't calculate it. But, it is theoretically possible.

For a more realistic approximation of the maximum number of times in a row a coin's come up heads, we'd have to make estimates of the number of coins in circulation at any given time and the number of flips per day each coin undergoes and a bunch of other stuff, and that would get downright annoying.

I deal with theoretical maximums here, and 142 billion is perfectly reasonable... in theory.

Video Dancing

2011-08-21T12:19:00.001-04:00

I couldn't get the embedding to work properly, but here, watch this:
http://www.giantbomb.com/quick-look-ex-dance-central-2/17-4686/

Gonna get me a Kinect and dance all day and night.

I'm considering going back to IE

2011-08-20T09:05:00.000-04:00

The other day I got a notice asking me to upgrade to Firefox 6. It's only been about a month or so since I upgraded to 5, and 4 was out for such a short period of time that I never used it at all. I'm not going to upgrade though, and here's why: I had to downgrade Firefox from version 5.0 to 3.6 because it kept fucking locking up. I don't know who's in charge over there, but this whole rapid release schedule thing is some fucking retarded bullshit. There's a reason companies don't release six versions of their software every year and it's because bugs exist and they can be fucking hard to find. Plus, why in the goddamn fuck would I want to upgrade to Firefox 6 when Firefox 9 is due to be released in four months? Hell, why in the fuck would I want to upgrade to version 6 at all when version 5 was broken and there was never any intention to fix it?

I realize that Google has released like 15 versions of Chrome over the last three years, but that's not a good thing. It's not something that anyone else should be trying to replicate. You release a version, a month or so later you release major bug fixes, and then you trickle out minor bug fixes and security updates over the course of a year or so until your next release is ready. You don't rush shit out the door just to jack up an arbitrary number. You could call the next version Firefox 4500 if you wanted. I won't get it because Firefox 4501 is right around the corner, and Firefox 4499 was broken. IE may not be the best browser in the world, but at least Microsoft tries to fix what's wrong with the latest version before releasing a new one with brand new broken shit.

Hey Google

2011-08-14T19:15:00.003-04:00

This is not a selling point:

Word Replacement

2011-08-14T02:36:00.003-04:00

I found this hilarious because I am 12:

The scourge of mobility

2011-08-13T19:06:00.003-04:00

I have multiple mobile devices. Sometimes I like to use them to browse the internet. Unfortunately, many companies have spent ridiculous amounts of money designing mobile versions of their websites. Why is that unfortunate? I'll tell you.

Firstly, they're inferior to the regular versions of the sites. That's pretty much self-evident because if they were better, then the regular version would be the same... and it never is.

Secondly, they're frequently broken. I tried to use Twitter the other day, and I just got caught in an infinite loop.

Thirdly, because these companies have spent so damned much time and money designing mobile versions of their sites, they want to show them off. Which means that your mobile device will get fucking redirected to their inferior, broken mobile site automatically... and a lot of the time there won't be any way to switch to the regular version.

I'm not the first person to mention this, but I've only recently discovered how damned annoying mobile sites can be. They're broken fucking shit, and probably the worst thing to happen to the internet in quite some time. Worse than AOL. WORSE THAN AO-fucking-L.

SPRAH!

2011-08-07T18:21:00.001-04:00

Dell's running some kind of ad campaign that relates to the customizability of their computers. I'm not sure what it is. Honestly, I didn't pay attention to it. However, the first time I saw it, the ad was frozen on this frame.

I now know what this actually says, but I still choose to believe that it says "SPRAH"

Pooping in a box

2011-08-07T01:09:00.000-04:00

Kitties lead awesome lives.

I've got your mail

2011-08-05T17:01:00.004-04:00

I've lived in my current apartment for two and a half years now, and in that time, not a month has gone by where I haven't gotten mail for the previous occupant. When I first got here, it was especially egregious since the landlord hadn't bothered to empty the mail box since the old guy moved out, and it was jammed full of mail. Nowadays, I only get one or two things a month, and it's still kinda ridiculous, but for a different reason.

It's not just direct advertising spam, either. I get credit cards, bank statements, government stuff; basically the kinds of things you wouldn't want some weird stranger to get his hands on. I get all of that despite the fact that I mark everything as MOVED and toss it right back in the mail box. You'd think that by now American Express would've updated their database. There's no way I could've properly activated the credit card they sent me in this dude's name, but I probably could've used it to make online purchases.

In any event, it makes me wonder if there's anyone out there who's getting my mail. I've lived in a lot of places over the years, and I've signed up for a lot of free trial offers, so it's possible that there are letters for me flying around all over the place. Probably not, though.

Chainsaw

2011-07-31T08:43:00.000-04:00

Dude just doesn't care.

"School"

2011-07-27T22:58:00.004-04:00

A couple weeks ago, the last (and I say last only because there are no more books, I'm sure they'll find some way to milk this cash cow a little more at some point) of the Harry Potter movies was released in theatres. As of today, it has already grossed more than the yearly GDP of some small island nations. Suffice it to say that it's kind of a big deal. Now, I haven't read any of the books, but I have seen the first six movies, so I feel I have at least a little info on how things work in Harry Potter-land, and there's something about it that I find a little... off. Okay, a great many things, but one thing in particular.

For the uninitiated (and I'm sure there's at least one person out there who doesn't know anything about Harry Potter), Harry Potter lives in an alternate England where, in addition to all the regular bits, there's an unseen side world of witches and wizards. Not everyone has magical powers, but at the age of 11, someone drops by to tell the chosen that they're one of the highborn, and they're bundled off to boarding school so they can learn to use their newfound powers properly and not just to do card tricks. In Harry's case, it's Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and most of his magical shenanigans take place in and around the school.

Here's what bothers me: These kids start magic school at 11, and for the next seven years, that's all they learn. That's all they learn. No math, no science, no world history. Just magic. And they weren't chosen for wizard training because they were exceptionally bright or talented. They just happened to be born with magic powers. Half of them are legacies, and at least a few of them are relatively stupid. In our terms, all of them were given super powers and dropped out of school before they hit puberty.

So, sure the world of Harry Potter is filled with magic and wonder, but it's also this entire secret parallel society full of nigh-invincible semi-retards. And every now and then one of them will get it into their retard brain that it might be a good idea to exterminate most of humanity. The whole thing really starts to break down if you give it any thought. Which you shouldn't. They're books and movies. They're not real.

For your health

2011-07-24T13:13:00.003-04:00

Since I may very well be suffering from one, today's filler will teach you all about ear infections. See, I can provide all kinds of useful information, not just ways to score with the ladies.

Ow, my ear

2011-07-23T17:20:00.003-04:00

I woke up a few days ago with a pain in my ear. It wasn't at all pleasant. Every time I chew or yawn or speak, it hurts. Not a severe pain by any means, but painful enough to be annoying.

There are two causes that I can see: a)I smacked myself in the head in the middle of the night or b)I have some kind of ear infection. In the first case, the pain should clear up on its own as long as I didn't rupture something, and in the second case, there's about an 80% chance that I'll clear the infection without issue.

It's that last 20% that bugs me. I could go get some antibiotic drops, but since I don't necessarily need them, it could be a waste of money, and I do so hate wasting money. On the other hand, if it doesn't get better on its own, then I could lose my hearing or some ridiculous shit like that. Is my desire to hear out of my left ear greater than my desire to save $10? It's hard to say.

I complain about this quite frequently

2011-07-17T14:37:00.003-04:00

David Mitchell explains it all:

I'm not sure why it bothers me. I understand the message the people who say "Could care less" are trying to convey, and it's not really their fault that they're getting it wrong. Nevertheless, it sometimes makes me want to give them five upside the eyes.

Of course, then he goes all stupid at the end. You can pronounce the h in herbs when you start doing the same for hour.

Gooooooooooooooooal

2011-07-16T16:23:00.003-04:00

There come times in every person's life when they want something they don't have. Whether it's a new car, a Tickle Me Elmo, or thy neighbour's wife, we all want something sooner or later. For a long time, I haven't really wanted anything of consequence, but now I think I do.

That's not to say that I never wanted anything; I, of course, desired certain food items, and every now and then I'd want sex, but then I'd just go out and get whatever it is I wanted (strangely enough you can get both food and sex at the supermarket), and that would be that. The things I wanted were never the driving force behind my actions. But, the thing that I want now is going to take a lot of work to get. I can't just walk down the street and buy it.

Well, there are actually two things I want. After seeing Grease again recently, I decided that I'd like a blonde Australian girl in tight leather pants. It may be a bit hard to get one of those on this side of the planet, but that's not going to stop me from trying to get one.

The second thing is probably going to be more difficult to get. As such, I have deemed it worthy of an Operation. Today, I begin Operation Get What I Want. However, in order to keep it a surprise, I'm not going to tell you exactly what it is I want. Instead, I shall merely outline the steps I'm taking to get it, and keep you updated on my progress.

I begin today with step one:

Step One - Make a list of the things I need to do in order to get what I want
This one's pretty simple and self-explanatory, but the journey of a thousand miles etc. I think I should be able to accomplish this one without too much trouble. I'll let you all know how it goes.

Of course they will, it'll just take three seasons

2011-07-11T14:19:00.000-04:00

As a man who has watched a lot of TV in my time, I've been witness to the "Will they-Won't they?" situation on a number of occasions. For the uninitiated, it goes like this: You've got two main characters with at least a modicum of sexual tension, and over the course of the series they gradually get into situations wherein boning(or just a relationship if the writers want to get all mushy) should occur. But, at the last second, something stops them. This happens over and over until one of them finally just says "Fuck it" and goes in for the kill. Perhaps the most infamous example was on the late-1980s TV show 'Moonlighting' where Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis spent two and a half seasons conspicuously not fucking before they finally did the nasty... which some claim actually hastened the demise of the show since the not boning was part of what helped drive the series.

At any rate, since a show I've been catching up on just went through it, I decided I'd write a little commentary on the whole "Will they-Won't they?" trope.

To start with, it's not actually as unrealistic a situation as it might seem. I've actually experienced it in real life, and some of the stuff that came up that prevented us from getting together was downright cliche. If someone had written the exact circumstances into a TV show, I would've criticized it for being so unoriginal. And yet, it did happen to me. I went to confess my feelings to her, only to find her making out with another guy. We tried to meet up at a bar to discuss our relationship only to keep comically missing each other. Hell, we even leaned in for a kiss but got interrupted by a phone call. So, despite how unlikely it all may appear, the "Will they-Won't they?" is really fairly true to life. Sometimes.

Where it breaks away from reality is in the post-relationship phase. Most real-life relationships break down at some point and that's equally true of most TV relationships. The difference is that after a real-life breakup, you don't have to see your ex all the time. It generally doesn't work that way on TV since the show's not really about the relationship. So, even after true love bites the big one, the show must go on. While in reality, they ought to be hating each other's guts and not speaking to one another, on TV there's a one or two episode cooling off period and then the status quo is restored. Thus, whereas my "Will they-Won't they?" girl despises me, JD and Elliot on Scrubs went right back to normal and even "Will they-Won't they?"'d again like three more times.

Which raises the question: If they're just going to break up, why even bother making them a couple? There's a short answer and a long answer. The short answer is two words: Blue balls. Even the audience can get them. You can only watch a couple almost get together so many times before you start screaming "Fuck it, just kiss her already!" at the screen. As for the long answer, well, as a long answer it's somewhat more complicated. To start with, women like to watch romance, and men like to watch fucking. If you're going to have any realism in a show, eventually the main characters are going to have to get some action; everybody gets laid sooner or later, even robotic, asexual CSI guys, and it's hard to include that on a show that's not specifically about the fucking(or the relationship) because you only have so much time. Given that there are a maximum of 45 minutes a week in which to show all this boning, and that the audience wants to see at least a little portion of how the couple got from point A to point Bone, it's far more economical to have the sex occur between two regular characters. They can toss off an occasional romantic quip while they're chasing down murderers, and you can bring them both into the episode together by having the phone call about the alien brain parasites come while they're at a coffee shop trying to discuss their feelings. That's quite the time-saver. Which, of course, brings up the issue of time. If they're spending 18 hours a day fighting crime or stitching people's legs back on, the main characters don't have any opportunity to hit up the singles bars. A lot of TV jobs are far more demanding than their real-life counterparts, so if a character's going to get some nookie, it pretty much has to be with one of their coworkers.

Since all of that is being done to save time in the show for more important stuff, the question is: Why the hell do they drag things out for so long? All those almost kisses eat up a lot of screen time. Well, as it turns out, the blame for all the "Will they-Won't they?"ness falls squarely on you, the viewer. The audience is rooting for them to finally get together, but at the same time, it's not the Mulder and Scully Relationship Hour, it's the fucking X-Files. There needs to be a little payoff after the sex, so for a couple episodes the show has to put more focus on the relationship... but that shit gets tired pretty fast. Then the show's stuck with a situation where they have a great romance that they can't put on screen because it's taking too much time away from the plot that people actually want to watch. Which means the writers want to wait as long as possible before they finally put the couple together because they know that four episodes later, it's all downhill. Plus, if they get together too early, they'll split up with five seasons left to go. So, you end up with a couple "Will they-Won't they"ing multiple times, and no one wants to see that. That's right, fuck you, guys who made Scrubs.

Ultimately, the "Will they-Won't they?" needs to be done. It's unfortunate, but there doesn't seem to be a better way to resolve the relationship issue when you have lead male and female protagonists with obvious sexual chemistry. Of course, as with all things, there's a right way and a wrong way, so I'll end this off with a short list:

Right
Castle - Castle & Beckett
Cheers - Sam & Rebecca
Futurama - Fry & Leela
House - House & Cuddy
The X-Files - Mulder & Scully
The Wonder Years - Kevin & Winnie
Who's the Boss? - Tony & Angela

Wrong
Bones - Booth & Brennan
Cheers - Sam & Diane
Chuck - Chuck & Sarah
DS9 - Kira & Odo
Friends - Rachel & Everybody
Scrubs - JD & Elliot
The Office - Jim & Pam

I'm sure there are more in shows that I've watched, but damned if I can remember them right now.

Space

2011-07-10T14:45:00.002-04:00

Spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaace.

Well, not really, it's a shuttle launch. But they were going to space.

Don't Call it a Comeback

2011-07-09T13:43:00.008-04:00

Well, it's a bit of a comeback since I haven't done this in a long time.

Eric and Jen got married. Yay!

The night before the wedding we went on a short boat ride:

Jen bought Eric a new camera. He made ample use of it. I assume it took better photos than my three-year-old phone, but I can't be sure.

On the morning of the wedding, we met at the hall where the reception was going to be held.

Four hours later, we were all groomsmened up.

Damn, I'm pretty.

We were really early, so there wasn't a whole lot to do.

Even the inside of my nose is pretty.

After the ceremony we hung around to get professionally photographed for a few hours. While we were doing that, I spotted a BFC sticker on the University of Waterloo's solar car. UofT 4 Lyfe!

Finally, we got to the reception.

Tired, but still sober groomsmen.

The happy couple enjoying their first post-marriage meal.

And some hot makeouts.

D'awwwwwwwww.

Now they're drunk. The dance floor was on fire that night. Hopefully the number of photos of me dancing can be easily counted on one hand.

The best man's girlfriend was sober, so she came to pick him up. She really had to pee, so they took off before I could get a picture.

And that's the wedding. Next time I go to one, I'm hoping for the opportunity to wear a tuxedo t-shirt.

Weddings are exhausting

2011-07-03T20:26:00.001-04:00

I'm still recovering from all the shenanigans related to my friend's wedding last week. So, here, have some filler:

Geoff Peterson is the best sidekick ever.

4Eva

2011-06-26T01:49:00.002-04:00

Today's filler isn't a video. It's a video game. Team Fortress 2 is now free. Forever and ever until the people at Valve change their minds or shut down the servers or whatever. Download it, play it, enjoy it. But don't feed it after midnight.

Internet Purchases

2011-06-23T17:11:00.003-04:00

A lot of people say that in the future, traditional brick-and-mortar stores will cease to exist; that we'll do all -or at the very least a very high percentage- of our shopping online. This is, of course, bullshit.

The reason is very simple: Internet shit breaks down. Frequently.

Today, I attempted to purchase something from Steam. Since I've never done that before, I had to create an account first. It didn't work. No matter how hard I tried or how long I waited for their bullshit service to get fixed, I couldn't do it. It was impossible for me to give them my money. If what I wanted were available in a store, I could just go out and buy it. Even if the power went out, I could pay with cash at most places. With internet shopping, a minor code snafu means I can't buy shit. Or, if I can't read the Captcha, I can't buy shit. Or, if my internet connection becomes spotty. And on and on and on. I just want to give them my money in exchange for goods. I don't want to bang my head on the keyboard until I lose consciousness.

The Very Best Day

2011-06-19T18:53:00.001-04:00

In my world, every day is Captain Picard Day.

The Second (Probably) Annual Sometimes I Think of Things TV Awards

2011-06-16T14:17:00.002-04:00

The awards are going out a little earlier this year, but that's just the way things are nowadays. If things keep up the way they are, the 2015 Primetime Emmys will be in 2013. Anyway...

To the awards!

Readers' Choice Award
Family Guy and Community
Twice as many votes were cast as last year, but in the end, it was a tie between these two shows. That's two in a row for Family Guy. Still high in quality after all these years.

Best New Show
Hawaii Five-O
It wasn't always great, and it didn't make nearly as much use of bikini girls as it should've, but it had its moments, and I'll be watching it again next season. It's the only new show I watched this season that I can say that about, so Hawaii Five-O wins this one easily.

Worst New Show
Bob's Burgers
This was a tough call. Of the three new shows I watched, two managed to get relegated fairly quickly. But, at least Shit My Dad Says had the good sense to get itself cancelled at the end of the season. Despite its awfulness, Bob's Burgers somehow managed to get renewed. That's a crime against television.

Best New Character
Nikolai Volkoff - Chuck
Chuck has seriously declined in quality, and managed to get itself relegated 3/4 of the way through the season. But, Timothy Dalton's portrayal of the evil -yet strangely genial- arms dealer was absolutely brilliant. His attempt to bond with Chuck and Ellie at a family dinner was one of the highlights of this season of television.

Worst New Character
Son - Shit My Dad Says
He was the main character of the show, and yet he was completely pointless. Also, the actor who played him was just terrible. I can't remember his name, but I can remember his crappy performance.

Best Continuing Character
Castle - Castle
There were a lot of good characters this year, but few of them were as consistent as Richard Castle. He made witty remarks, he beat people up, and he was a good family man. In the land of TV, the likeable man is king.

Worst Continuing Character
Cal Lightman - Lie to Me
Somewhere between seasons, Lightman just became a complete asshole with absolutely no redeeming character traits. It's not so bad, though, because Tim Roth's performance changed somehow and I couldn't understand what the hell he was saying half the time, anyway.

Best Episode
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons - Community
This one actually wasn't the highest rated episode of the season, but it tied for second place, and it was fairly memorable. Who could forget Senor Chang's hate crime makeup or Pierce's "Faaaaaaaaaaaaat"?

Worst Episode
Angry Dad: The Movie - The Simpsons
This was the episode that finally got The Simpsons relegated. They parodied a number of different animated films, but none of the parodies were funny. At all. It probably cost them a fortune to do it, but that money would've been better spent on hiring competent writers.

LeVar Burton Award for Best Community Line
Yes! I want to bathe in manhood. -Troy

Best Season
Community
In a year where I relegated a total of six shows, there were few bright spots. But, Community shone quite brightly. It's episodes received four out of the eight four-star or greater reviews I gave out, and its star average was the highest out of every show I watched. Numbers don't lie.

Worst Season
Lie to Me
A lot of shows had bad, bad seasons this year, but Lie to Me's was the worst. Lightman became an unintelligible prick, the two office dorks were annoying and catty, and I don't know what the hell happened to Kelli Williams' face, but it wasn't good. When every character on your show is completely unlikable and there's no one for the audience to root for, something has gone very wrong. The other shows that ended up relegated had bad seasons, but at least I didn't actively hate all their characters.

Olden Days

2011-06-12T00:36:00.000-04:00

Zaxxon was one of the first games I had on my Commodore 64 back in the late 1980s. Here's a guy playing it.

There weren't a lot of levels, and no matter how many times you killed Zaxxon, he always came back, but it was still fun.

Always Check ID

2011-06-05T15:29:00.002-04:00

That right there is the reason why I don't pick up random girls on the street. The difference between a young-looking 25-year-old and an old-looking 15-year-old is not as great as one might think. Over the past few years I've had to train myself to keep from looking at women's cleavage for the exact same reason. If an over-developed girl decides to show off the goods, it makes me a pedophile. Even though I have no interest in teenagers and actually felt a bit weird typing "show off the goods" up there. And when you're as tall as I am, the angle between looking directly in a woman's eyes and looking at her boobs is really small. It's a dangerous world out there for a man. A world full of boobs of indeterminate age.

See you in the fall

2011-06-01T03:47:00.004-04:00

So, it's the last week of the 2010-11 television season, and only one show I watched had a new episode. Let's do this thing.

House
Synopsis: House is still in the hospital recovering from his leg surgery. Cuddy wants to finally have a conversation about their relationship, but he keeps blowing her off. Eventually, she gets him to talk to her, and he says that he's hurt, but it's not her fault and he'll be all right.

The case involves a performance artist. She thinks she has a deadly disease, so she creates a phony set of symptoms as a test for House and her ultimate piece of art. House figures the whole thing out, but determines that the disease isn't actually going to kill her; her original doctors were just idiots. The final treatment will involve irradiating her brain, but she doesn't want to do it because it'll damage her ability to work. Thirteen convinces her that there's more to life than work, and she changes her mind. This pisses House off, because he feels like people are nothing without their full mental faculties. He tries to talk her out of the treatment, but she asks him why, and he realizes he's an asshole.

Meanwhile, Taub is ducking his ex-wife's phone calls because he doesn't want to tell her that he knocked up a nurse. Foreman tries to convince him to just do it, but Taub's a pussy. Rachel finally comes to the hospital to see Taub, and before he can tell her that he's going to be a dad, she tells him that she's pregnant. It might be his, I'm not sure.

In the end, Wilson and House are heading out on the town, but they stop off at Cuddy's place to return a hairbrush. While they're there, House sees that she's on a double date with her sister and her husband and a dude her sister fixed her up with. This ticks him off, and he purposely drives his car through her wall. He returns her hairbrush and walks off.

The cops come and Cuddy wants to file a restraining order against House. A moderately injured Wilson tells the police to look for House at the dankest bar in New Jersey(which would be pretty fucking dank) because House always goes to bars that match the way he feels. But, House is actually feeling great, and he's at a beachfront bar somewhere, enjoying the sunshine.

Notes
House did a bad thing. You can tell by the way they filmed things.

The MacArthur grants don't legally prove you're a genius.

Letting a dude pour paint thinner on you and light you on fire proves you're an idiot.

If he stops doing stupid things there won't be a show.

Crazy artist lady is crazy.

The Cuddy sisters have a strange relationship.

It's not a good idea to play with House's head 'cause he's way crazier than you are, no matter who you are.

Chase's oath wasn't as cool as House's.

Irradiating your brain may not be fun, but if it's the best way to save your life, I say go for it.

They actually went to lunch. I'm surprised.

Geez, Taub has super sperm all of a sudden.

How the hell did they not notice him standing in front of the window.

Damn, that was a dick move.

Ehhhhhhhh. It was okay.
** 1/2 out of *****

Well, that's it. House both wins and loses this week. Remember to vote for your favourite show for this year's Reader's Choice award. I'd like to get more than one vote this year.

Winners
Community(12)
The Big Bang Theory(12)
Castle(7)
American Dad(3)
Family Guy(3)
House(3)
The Cleveland Show(2)
Chuck
Hawaii Five-O
How I Met Your Mother

Losers
Chuck(8) (relegated)
The Simpsons(8) (relegated)
Hawaii Five-O(5)
Bones(4) (relegated)
Family Guy(4)
How I Met Your Mother(4)
American Dad(3)
Bob's Burgers(3) (relegated)
Castle(3)
House(3)
The Cleveland Show(3)
Lie to Me(2) (relegated)
Shit My Dad Says(2) (relegated)
The Big Bang Theory(2)
Community

Tastes Like Chicken

2011-05-29T14:54:00.001-04:00

I've never had a girl lick my nose before. I bet it's kinda weird.

At Last!

2011-05-28T15:25:00.000-04:00

When I was far younger (as opposed to when I was older), I used to watch what CityTV referred to as Baby Blue movies on Friday nights. The name hearkened back to a time when they'd nearly lost their licence for broadcasting smut many years prior, and the films mainly consisted of sexploitation films with the occasional softcore porn movie thrown in for flavour. Basically, if Shannon Tweed was in it, they'd show it.

Now, one of these movies in particular intrigued me. It had a giant, mutated snake that was eating people, and a guy who killed a dude with a frisbee tipped with razor blades. Oh, and a bunch of bleached blondes who took their gear off.

I sought it out years later, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't remember the title. With the nascent internet providing little help, I gave up and forgot about it. But, less than a week ago I was killing time watching videos on YouTube, and I spotted this:

That led me directly to the title of the film, and a few mouse clicks later I had my very own copy of "Hard Ticket to Hawaii". It is as pure a distillation of the 1980s as one could ever want. The chicks have huge hair (and probably huge bush, but thankfully we don't get to see that) with colour straight from the bottle, the acting is shit, the wardrobe's teeming with pastels, and one of the bad guys wears enormous mirrored sunglasses. It's great. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking up a copy.

I know who wins next week.

2011-05-26T02:25:00.000-04:00

Well, it's getting to be that time, folks. The season's pretty much wrapped up, and the summer bullshit's on its way.

American Dad
Synopsis: Stan wants to go have fun with his work buddies, but he gets stuck in traffic while taking Steve to PSAT study, so he brings him along. They bond over beers and spring break boobs, which makes Steve Stan's bro rather than his son.

The broness goes well for a while, but eventually Steve blows off school to go to the zoo and uses his broness to keep Stan from stopping him from going in the gorilla enclosure. One of the male gorillas starts roughing Steve up, and all looks lost until the gorilla's father teaches Stan a valuable lesson about parenting via sign language to his handler.

In Roger's plot, Roger's running a country music bar in the garage, and wants to sing, but he doesn't have any real country music-type pain to sing about, so he gets boooed off the stage. This leads him to marry a trailer trash skank with a bunch of kids. Things are pretty bleak at the trailer, so he tries to walk away, but his wife brings him back at gunpoint. Eventually, he fakes a domestic dispute and gets her arrested. Her kids go to foster care, and the cops run over the dog. Then the ugliest woman they could realistically draw comes by, and that teaches Roger all about the source of country music. He sings a song at the bar about an how ugly the woman was, and it's a great success.

Notes
Stan's dad phone conversations are almost as sad as the sad phone.

Roger is a master quick change artist.

Man, Frank sucks.

That donkey was hilarious. Purple hat!

Why is Steve hungover? 14-year-olds shouldn't drink.

It's weird to discuss your mom's orgasms.

Bullock is a very considerate boss, but he takes illness way too seriously.

Busboys always miss their cue.

Gorillas aren't as bad as chimps. The silverbacks might fight you, but the rest are cool. Chimps will all rip your balls off.

That old gorilla was very wise.

Twelve laughs, and a not very good plot.
** out of *****

Castle
Synopsis: A bad guy who knows about the people who killed Beckett's mother gets put into gen pop and kills a dirty cop who also knew. At the arraignment for this new murder, three guys dressed as cops bust the guy out and they escape in a helicopter. This leads Beckett to dive back into the investigation of her mother's murder.

Everyone thinks she's obsessed. The Captain tries to talk her out of going through with the investigation, and her dad gets Castle to do the same thing. They're all worried that the whole thing is going to get her killed, but she won't stop. She and Castle finally have a short conversation about their "relationship" and it ends with her telling him to get out of her life.

But, Castle's not one to give up, so he stays on the case and finds a clue that leads Ryan and Esposito to a bar where they find out that the Captain was involved with covering the whole thing up back in the day. The bad guy who escaped in the helicopter breaks into the Captain's house and threatens to expose him and kill his family if he doesn't lead Beckett into an ambush.

The Captain gets Beckett to meet him at the site of the ambush, but Ryan and Esposito tell her about his involvement just in time. She tries to convince him to run, but instead he has Castle drag her away while he stays behind to have a gunfight with the bad guys. He manages to kill most of them right away, but one wings him, and the helicopter guy sneaks behind him and puts two in his chest. As he's about to die, the Captain reaches up and puts one in helicopter guy's gut with a derringer. I'm not sure if the bad guy does, but the Captain sure does.

The gang agrees not to expose his involvement, so he's buried as a hero. As Beckett delivers the eulogy, a sniper shoots her in the chest. Castle shoves her out of the way a second too late, and tells her he loves her as she loses consciousness and the season ends.

Notes
How do you get a blade after an hour in gen pop? He must've sucked a mean dick.

You can't just escape in a helicopter in New York. They'll have someone on your ass in two minutes.

Dudes shouldn't be able to just walk up to Castle's apartment door. He lives in a rich guy building.

There's no sense taking a bribe when you're just going to get busted.

Castle's knowledge of typewriters sure came in handy. I'll bet it never will again.

I've had one of those relationships that suffered from high school bullshittery. It's annoying.

The Captain has a hidden past. Dun dun dunnnnnn.

Castle needs to learn to give up. 24 calls is too many.

Dang, he's a quick shot. But not quite accurate enough.

They killed the cap'n and Beckett. Next year Castle's gonna need to work at a different precinct.

Action, drama, and some movement on the continuing story line. Plus, they actually killed someone. That's pretty good. Of course, no one believes that Beckett is actually dead or dying, or even really hurt badly enough to miss a few episodes, but I won't fault them for that.
*** 1/2 out of *****

Family Guy
Synopsis: It's a one-hour episode as Family Guy does Return of the Jedi. Peter's Han, Lois is Leia, Chris is Luke, Brian is Chewie, Stewie is Vader, Joe is Jabba, and a bunch of characters from American Dad make guest appearances. After the story's finished the Griffins have a conversation about why Peter hates Seth Green so much. He says he just thinks he's a douche. The rest of the family isn't too fond of Seth MacFarlane, but the characters that Seth voices defend him.

Notes
I appreciate the opening crawl's honesty. Normally I'd think it was a gag, but I'm betting it's all true.

Poor Rush.

Poor Mila Kunis never gets many lines.

They wasted a lot of jokes on Joebba the Huttt. It was just too hard to hear his dialogue.

Fucking ewoks, man.

Poor Sum 41 and Avril Lavigne.

Han is dark as fuck.

They always poop on Seth Green in the Star Wars episodes.

Looks like this was expensive as hell.

Twenty laughs, but that was over the course of an hour. This wasn't nearly as good as either of the previous two Star Wars episodes they've done, but they mentioned that in the opening crawl, so they get an extra half a point for honesty.
** out of *****

Hawaii Five-O
Synopsis: One of the governor's aids gets blown the fuck up, and the Five-O are on the case. Wo Fat used a stolen claymore planted in her car to do it, then tried to frame McGarrett by tossing her apartment and then planting his fingerprints all over it. The team tracks down the guy who stole the claymore, but he's been paid to say he sold it to McGarrett, too. Except he doesn't know that McGarrett's the one questioning him when he says it. For some reason, a ten-second video chat with his brother over in Iraq or Afghanistan is enough to convince the guy to drop the dime on Wo Fat, but the car taking him to jail is ambushed, and he dies.

McGarrett suspects the governor is involved somehow, so he breaks into her mansion while she's out at some kind of ceremony. It turns out that her exploded assistant was the one who had been funnelling evidence from his dad's toolbox back to McGarrett, and the governor found out and had her killed.

They start to move to take down the governor, but before they can get going, the HPD comes to arrest McGarrett for blowing up the aid. He gets away, then at night he Splinter Cell's his way back into the governor's mansion to get her to confess to the murder. Eventually she does, but before he can do anything about it, Wo Fat appears and uses a stun gun on McGarrett and then shoots the governor with McGarrett's gun. The cops arrive moments later to take him in.

Meanwhile, the HPD has offered to give Chin Ho his job back and even promote him. At first he says no, but when everything goes to shit, he takes them up on it. Kono gets busted for stealing that $10 million from the evidence locker earlier this season. Danno's been banging his ex-wife, and now she's pregnant. She leaves her husband and wants to move back to New Jersey. Danny agrees to go, but when shit hits the fan, he misses the flight, and she goes alone. Kaye's left alone at the Five-O offices while the regular cops raid them.

As the season ends, it's not good for anyone, really. Except for Chin. He made out okay.

Notes
Never get back together with your ex-wife.

Hey, it's Larisa Oleynik and her butt again! If they bring her back next season, they need to put her in shorts more often.

I knew that chick was gonna explode. It's too bad. Chin was gonna get some lovin'. He sure didn't seem too broken up about it, though.

A claymore is not an IED, it's just an ED.

Everybody runs.

McGarrett's a a serious man. And he will shoot you in the face.

Kinda weird that they called in that dude's brother from a recon patrol in Afghanistan just for a 10-second conversation.

Blaming the governor isn't wise. My first guess would be Kaye. She'd be much easier to buy off.

I don't know if that shot of the lock opening was really necessary.

Danno can't leave Hawaii. Who'll book 'em?

They sent a shitload of guys after McGarrett, but they didn't stop his car or put a guy on his known associates? Or tap their phones? No wonder they need a special task force in Hawaii: their regular cops suck.

He's assaulting a whole bunch of government employees. He's going to prison for a long time.

They're in some deep shit now. Steve and Kono are going to prison, and Danno's lady just flew to the mainland without him. Chin's cool, though. He just got a promotion.

Parts of this episode were a bit silly, and I'm not sure how they're going to get out of it next season, but it was okay. I'll keep watching in the fall.
*** out of *****

House
Synopsis: House finds out that the rat muscle builder causes tumours, so he scans his leg and find out that he does, indeed, have three of them growing in his leg. Being House, he decides to cut them out himself in his bathtub. He gets the first one, but the last two are problematic, so he calls everyone. Everyone but Cuddy ignores him, though. When she gets to his place, she admonishes him for being a jackass, and then takes him to the hospital so a surgeon can chop out his tumours. The surgery's a success, and when House wakes up, Wilson calls him an asshole, and gets him to agree that he needs to make some changes in his life.

One of Thirteen's old prison buddies shows up at her apartment suffering from a stab wound. Thirteen can't complete the treatment by herself, so she calls Chase. The two of them work on her friend, but they can't quite figure out what's wrong with her, so they have to take her to the hospital, or she'll die. But, she'll go back to prison if they do that, so she made Thirteen promise not to take her. Chase didn't promise anything, though, so he gets set to take her. Thirteen tries to block him, and then hits him a bunch, but he tosses her aside, and they go to the hospital. It's reasonably easy to cure her, but she gets busted and has to go back to prison.

Foreman comes home to find Taub talking to a young nurse on the couch. It turns out that Taub knocked her up. He needs a place to think, so they go to a strip club. While they're there, Taub notices an irregular mole on one of the dancers, and then gets bounced for touching her while he tries to examine it. He waits around for the girl to get off work so he can try to help her, but she goes batshit crazy and pulls a gun on him. She doesn't kill him, but the whole thing causes Taub to reevaluate his life, and he decides he wants the nurse to keep the baby. She's on board.

Notes
Word to the wise: when you're severely bleeding, don't drive yourself. Call a cab.

House needs better balance to make use of a hooker's services.

Mazel Tov! Taub's having a baby!

Killing rats by giving them muscles and cancer seems like an overly complicated way to do it.

The ample supply of strippers is an excellent indicator that Taub will be joining a large army of terrible dads.

House is best friends with an oncologist and he employs a surgeon. Someone else could've cut out his tumours.

Why is everyone doing their doctoring at home?

Thirteen has some skills, but Chase is a man and much bigger than her. It wasn't a fair fight.

There's a lot of fast driving in this episode.

Rachel loves pirates. She's a smart girl.

There are some fucked up strippers out there.

Always pee before you make life-changing decisions.

To tell the truth, I thought this whole episode was a bit silly.
** 1/2 out of *****

How I Met Your Mother
Synopsis: Zoey wants to get back together with Ted, and Robin and Barney try to stop him. They make it just in time and convince him not to do it.

Elsewhere, Lily brings Marshall some soup, but later she thinks it gave her food poisoning, and he eats it before she can stop him. So, he winds up going to a job interview thinking he's about to start spewing from both ends. The guy interviewing him shows him a bunch of images of raw sewage being dumped into a lake and dead animals. Marshall almost makes it to the end, but he runs away. It turns out that he wasn't going to be sick, because Lily doesn't have food poisoning: she's pregnant.

Barney runs into that girl he liked and asks for a second chance, which she gives him. Robin is sad.

Ted blows up the Arcadian, and in the future, in a scene that they showed the beginning of way back at the start of the season, Ted acts as Barney's best man. At least I think that's what was happening. It could be some kind of cheap fake out.

Notes
Blowing up a building is fun!

Zoey was married to a rich guy. Her divorce settlement should set her up for life. A couple months living with drug dealers is a small price to pay.

If you get food poisoning from a restaurant, don't go back.

Barney's rules are awesome.

Ted couldn't have dated those women for that long. He didn't have time between on-screen girlfriends.

Hey, it's Dave Foley! He needs work so he can pay his child support.

Dave Foley has some disgusting slides.

I thought Lily might be pregnant, but she had afternoon sickness, not morning sickness.

It's too bad that they didn't show Punchy's wedding. I bet it would've been great.

So, Robin is sad and eventually Barney is getting married... but to whom??? Dun dun dunnn.

Eleven laughs, and some really stupid plots. Seriously, Marshall bailed on an important interview because he thought he might throw up at some point? What the fuck?
* 1/2 out of *****

The Big Bang Theory
Synopsis: Raj hears Priya and Leonard doing some sexy Star Trek roleplaying, so he goes to spend the night at Sheldon's place. Since Priya and Leonard are pretty serious, Raj and Leonard decide to switch apartments for a while. Sheldon's initially reticent, but Raj signs the roommate agreement, and turns out to be a really good roommate.

Meanwhile, Bernadette is getting her Ph.D and has a job offer from a big biotech firm, so she's going to make mad bank, which emasculates Howard.

Priya's parents call and Leonard overhears that she's going back to India in a month. He's ticked off that she didn't tell him, so he exposes their relationship to her parents, who aren't too keen on it.

Back at Raj and Sheldon's, Penny drops by and the three of them have dinner. She and Raj drink entirely too much wine and she reveals that she shouldn't have dumped Leonard, but that she'd be all over Raj's junk if they weren't friends. Then they bone. When they wake up, Raj still can't talk to her because he's not drunk. As she tries to sneak out with Raj walking beside her clad only in a blanket, Leonard, Howard, and Sheldon are all in the living room, and it's exactly what it looks like.

Notes
Busting Leonard's balls is great fun.

Howard has a master's degree in engineering and has done work for NASA. He makes a buttload.

Hearing your sister get her freak on is probably very traumatic.

Amy and Sheldon's online sex is kinky as hell.

Your friends shouldn't imply that you may be a kidnapper/rapist

Brown Martha Stewart is an awesome roommate.

Ain't nothing wrong with a cute girl with big boobs buying you a nice watch.

Raj must be downloading the most shameful porn in existence by now.

Leonard does a very good "Hey look over there!" escape.

Aw yeah, Raj hit it. Good for him.

Twenty-nine laughs, but with a plot that's been done infinity billion times before.
*** out of *****

This week's winner was Castle for the second straight week, and the loser was How I Met Your Mother. As far as I'm aware, everything but House ended this week, so I imagine you can all guess what next week's winner and loser will be.

Winners
Community(12)
The Big Bang Theory(12)
Castle(7)
American Dad(3)
Family Guy(3)
House(2)
The Cleveland Show(2)
Chuck
Hawaii Five-O
How I Met Your Mother

Losers
Chuck(8) (relegated)
The Simpsons(8) (relegated)
Hawaii Five-O(5)
Bones(4) (relegated)
Family Guy(4)
How I Met Your Mother(4)
American Dad(3)
Bob's Burgers(3) (relegated)
Castle(3)
The Cleveland Show(3)
House(2)
Lie to Me(2) (relegated)
Shit My Dad Says(2) (relegated)
The Big Bang Theory(2)
Community

Not Nacho

2011-05-22T00:10:00.002-04:00

Woe be unto us all, the Macho Man is dead. No more questions!