Last Night's TV

With Battlestar Galactica and Extras and the Fox animation lineup, Sunday's a pretty sweet TV day:

• The Simpsons: Bart gets a driver's license and a pregnant girlfriend (Natalie Portman), Lisa lies about having Native American heritage. Ho-hum in the story department. A few solid jokes (Ultimate Fighting Zoo, for example) and a cool car-ified version of the opening credits. They've been doing a lot more montages set to popular music lately (that Allman Brothers instrumental and Low Rider in this one), which is probably another sign that the show is running out of steam. Still better than most shows though.

• King of the Hill: Unlike The Simpsons, King of the Hill is still in its prime. A snake down the toilet makes Hank a pariah and sends Dale to join Team Snake at the Animal Control office. I love John Goodman. Couldn't place his partner's voice though. My favorite character on this show changes episode to episode, but how can you not love Peggy here? She basically does nothing the whole episode, but has the throwaway line "You know, I always thought we'd be on tv for being murdered in our sleep."

• Family Guy: I'm actually surprised they could get away with the "Stewie the submissive" storyline. But this is another one that's not what it used to be. Two or three good gags (the Irish runway covered in empties being the best), but the show used to make up for it's always week stories with a dozen laugh out loud gags, or at least one that made you laugh so hard you had pause the tv to catch your breath. Not anymore.

• American Dad: As Family Guy has fallen apart, American Dad has hit its stride. Mr. Pibb jokes always make me laugh (see the Venture Bros. season one finale for another example), and the E.T. parody kinda worked. Plus I like how they started with a Lifetime Original Movie joke, and Roger's storyline turned into one. And unlike Family Guy, they can make a reference without cutting the story off. "This is one sweet ride, what is she, a Huffy?" (the other bike-related joke, Rogers' "ehhh" sound when he pushed it over at the end, was damn funny too). And I thought that was Hugh Downs at first as Mr. Pibb, but I guess it was Peter Graves. Cool either way.

• Extras: As far as cringe-factor goes, I complained about the last Office episode, but this was worse. Yet, something about Ricky Gervais makes it still funny even when it's just painful. And the scenes with Maggie and Lamb were fun. Ian McKellan was excellent, as almost every guest star is. For some reason, this show gets almost no attention, but it is damn funny.

• Battlestar Galactica: So the Sagittarons are a Christian Scientist type people who don't believe in modern medicine, and they bring an illness on board. Conveniently for the drama, it's easily cured but fatal if untreated. Sen. Kelly from the first X-Men movie plays the civillian doc treating some people with or without their permission, and the people he treats end up dying. So what happens when you try to help people who don't want your help and it all goes wrong? And boy do they hate him. I wonder what unpopular war is the subject of this metaphor? But in the end, Sen. Kelly admits to killing them on purpose, but because this show is awesome, he's not just mindlessly evil. He has a practical (cold and hateful, yes, but still practical) reason for doing it.
  
  Quick hit thoughts:
  • Dee totally throws like a girl.
  • Does Athena know the Prez is listening in on her visits with Capira Six? Six seems to not know, at least.
  • I don't like the bonus scene thing. If it's worth a scene it should fit with the episode.

Tivo: Empty.

Fox ran a promo for Drive, the highly anticipated (among tv geeks) cross country race drama from Tim Minnear (Angel, Wonderfalls, Firefly, and the hugely underrated The Inside), during the animation block. I'm pretty sure that it will be spectacular or spectacularly bad, and there's almost no way it could be anywhere in between.

The other one they were plugging hard was the Rob Corddry show The Winner from Seth McFarlane and Ricky Blitt (both from Family Guy). Probably will end up sucking, but I'll watch it. Corddry was always good on The Daily Show and his turn as Frank Wrench on Arrested Development convinced me he can handle a show like this.

And Sci-Fi continues to run Painkiller Jane spots during BSG. I'm curious enough to check it out, I guess. Kristanna Loken's easy on the eyes, and it might be mindless fun.