Not much tonight, but I'll be catching up with stuff over the weekend (among others, Bones, SVU, Criminal Intent, House, The Sopranos, Entourage), but tonight just Law & Order and Acceptable TV.
Law & Order: This week, our case is ripped from the story about those kidnapped boys in Missouri a few months back. A young boy is kidnapped and killed, and the evidence leads them to a kidnapper who's held an older boy captive for five years. It turns out though that the kidnapper wasn't the murderer, it was the older boy, leading to a traditional L&O court case. It was nice to see Olivet back, but otherwise the episode was a little too generic.
Acceptable TV: Mr. Sprinkles and Who's Gonna Train Me returned (with a Steve Agee cameo in the latter), and Sin Trek, I'm Not Racist, and Price of Dollars (which was funny, but I don't see how the concept lends itself to a second episode) premiered. I'll be voting for these two:
Friday, May 4, 2007
Friday Night TV
Friday, April 27, 2007
Friday Night TV
It's sweeps, but that's not good for Friday Night TV. Why? The networks schedule some of their worst programming for Fridays, and since they're sure to be up against first run network episodes, cable channels don't schedule many first-run stuff for sweeps. But we did get a new Law & Order and Acceptable TV.
Law & Order: A Russian in the business of importing girls for prostitution turns up dead from military-grade ricin poisoning. The victim's brother and partner takes a deal on the prostitution and leads the cops to Nicholas Brezin, an ex-KGB agent whose daughter was apparently recruited by the victim and later killed. But Brezin manages to escape to the Russian consulate just in time to avoid arrest.
Jack works out a deal with the Russians to trade the victim's brother, who the Russians want for kidnapping Russian girls, for Brezin. That seems extremely shady. Rubirosa thinks their case is weak so she starts digging and finds Brezin's daughter alive and kicking. The case rests almost entirely on whether he believed his daughter was alive, because he claims he would never kill the only man who might lead him to his daughter.
Rubirosa decides to dig even more, and discovers phone records implicating Brezin in selling his daughter into prostitution. He explains that he was backed into a corner and given a choice between his two daughters, and since his other daughter was only 14, the only choice was clear. But he'll do anything to keep his family from learning about this, so he agrees to a 10 year manslaughter sentence. 
But the big shocker is that Jack got all misty about fathers and daughters in the end, and meets his daughter (completely unmentioned, I think, in his 12 years on the show until this season) for dinner, and in classic Law & Order fashion, we get to learn exactly nothing about them. But Jack sure looks happy to see her.
Acceptable TV: Mr. Sprinkles and Kitten Calendar are unstoppable juggernauts, huh? Only one new sketch did anything for me though:
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Lots of Catching Up
Almost caught up, I'll probably manage to just catch up in time to fall behind again Sunday night. Past the jump are my thoughts on last week's Gilmore Girls, House, The Shield, the last two weeks of Penn & Teller: Bullshit, and some Acceptable TV clips from the past two episodes.
Gilmore Girls: Logan is crashing with Rory and Paris since he's all no longer living off his father. Rory interviews with the Providence Journal, and she's feeling all grown up businesswoman-y, but as soon as the interview high fades, she starts stressing over getting the job. Then when she ends up getting it, she's stressing over whether to take it or not. After a Logan/Lorelai heart to heart, and then a Logan/Rory heart to heart, she decides to pass to go after her dream internship at the New York Times.
Logan and Rory come home to Stars Hollow for the Spring Fling. Maybe I'm crazy, but a hay bale maze actually sounds fun. I raced my brother through a real live maze (made of wood rather than hay bales) once in Ft. Worth, Texas, and a good time was had by all. Except that I lost. But while people seem to enjoy the Stars Hollow maze, it's mostly there for a cheesy metaphor for Luke and Lorelai to get lost but then find each other. 
Any episode with Kirk wearing a giant minotaur head and stilts has to be pretty good (if only he could've done both at the same time) and I'm glad that we're finally making progress towards the inevitable reunion of Luke and Lorelai.
House: Hey, Carla Gallo from Undeclared, and that guy from Grandma's Boy and Art School Confidential. And I love a good Casablanca reference.
So a little girl has JRA, they think, meaning her immune system is attacking her joints and eyes and other stuff. Then she has a stroke. This means her blood is too thick, which actually caused the JRA symptoms, but they don't know why. An inspection of their house reveals some bloody clothing, so they suspect abuse, perform an exam, and find a series of cuts in her genital area. This is turning disturbing like an SVU episode. Then they figure out that she's somehow hit puberty.
The sick girl's brother has a crush on Cameron, and she seems to be using his affections to mess with Chase, which is kinda bitchy. But the crush turns out to from the same early onset puberty. And in the end, it all turns out to be cause of their father's "male enhancement" cream. If that could seriously cause something like this, how is it even legal?
House's clinic hours were pretty useless this week, despite that guy's cameo, but there was a pretty funny side story about Wilson and Cuddy, and I love that House watches wrestling. It's sorta like his soap operas, except homo erotic. With the exception of House messing with Wilson, the episode was pretty lame, I thought. Probably the least interesting of the season.
The Shield: Dutch and Billings catch a robbery/murder with some guys boosting ephedrine from a pharmacy. Billings says they make a good team, that his strengths are Dutch's weaknesses, and accuses Dutch of both arrogance and insecurity (and he does manage to show both pretty frequently). Dutch manages to ditch the pharmacy case onto the strike team (or just Gardocki, who doesn't have a personal day available to go help kill Guardo) because he wants back on Lem's murder. He floats the name of a guy named Hernan, who sounds all super scary, but it turns out that Hernan is an undercover Fed. But for now, Dutch is stuck babysitting the case. The same people hit a second pharmacy, and I think the pharmacy manager was the secretary from Andy Barker, P.I..
Officer Tina, who's been under Dutch's tutelage for a while, practically has an orgasm when she sees Gardocki knock a suspect around. And then later when the bust a related drug ring, she roughs a guy up herself, and then almost jumps Gardocki. She still seems to stick with the detective lessons from Dutch, but when he brings her over to check out his case library, she seems to be on to the fact that he just wants in her pants. 
Guardo calls in about the kidnapping, and Vic threatens to rape and kill the girl over the phone while Guardo listening. I'm not sure it's just a threat, either. They arrange an exchange, but Guardo still thinks it's a ransom, so he's worried about protecting the money, while Vic is just planning to blow in and kill the guy. When Vendrell brings the kidnapped girlfriend back home, she says she's pregnant. So now by killing Lem he's also going to orphan an unborn child. He really can't handle the guilt, and when they abduct Guardo, Vendrell looks like he's just barely going to talk Vic out of killing the guy, but then Vic turns around and shoots him.
And the episode wraps up with news that Claudette has found a new strike team guy. Not a new addition, but Vic's replacement for when he retires in a month. Another good episode. A bigger role than usual for Billings and Gardocki, which is nice, but whatever happened to that murder scene they found in the season premiere? It seemed like that was going to be the season's big investigation, but then completely disappeared. Also, Danny and Julien seem to be relgated to background characters this year. But it's all ok, because the Lem/Guardo/Kavanaugh stuff has been very entertaining.
Acceptable TV: I was an entire week behind, so I checked out last week's stuff on the website as well as this week's content. Both were fairly weak, but Operation Kitten Calendar 3 last week and The Highfiver this week were both good.
Penn & Teller: Bullshit: Oh boy, the circumcision episode a while back was the grossest thing I've ever seen, but this was a close second. The theme two weeks ago was the detoxification movement, so they showed us someone actually getting a colonic, with the little clumps of crap coming out. Nasty. The look on the guy's face was priceless, though. You could tell he immediately regretted the decision to go in there. But the episode ran with the idea that we've seen quite a few times in the series: don't take medical advice from anyone but a doctor. Especially if they're telling you to buy $43 cans of maple syrup or charging you to stick stuff up your ass.
The second episode was about demonic possession and exorcism and stuff. This touched on an issue that's always bugged me. What kind of an idiot would worship Satan? Believing in the Christian devil means you also believe in the all powerful and benevolent god of Christianity who offers eternal life in paradise in exchange for faith and being sorry when you screw up, so they decide to go with the one who offers eternal torture. Sure. The guy with his pendulum that answers questions about demons was hilarious. I feel awful for those people that buy into this stuff though. I felt worse when we learned that one exorcist is a public school teacher, and that another tells kids that their imaginary friends are demons.
And now I'm left with only Entourage, The Sopranos, two Jerichos, and Smallville to watch.
Saturday, April 7, 2007
Friday Night TV/Catching up
Trying out a new spoiler hiding method. Let me know in the comments if you like it or not. Still no idea about how to hide them for RSS subscribers, but I hope that's not a problem. Behind the jump are possible spoilers if you haven't watched this week's Law & Order and Friday Night Lights, plus some clips from Acceptable TV. 
Turns out the jeweler knocked her up and confesses with 25 minutes to go. After about a million Law & Order episodes, there are three ways this goes: the confession is thrown out, some crazy affirmative defense, or the confession was fake. But look the hell out, there is a fourth possibility that I had not considered. He makes it look like a fake confession, fingers a rap mogul, but it turns out the jeweler did it anyway. It's still a shadow of its former self, but this was the best episode in a while.
Coach Taylor's line about "have you ever thought about coaching?" last week was apparently a firm offer to be an assistant coach, cause now he and Street are teaming up on Saracen to get him ready for the state finals. "You better not rest on your laurels." "You don't have any laurels." Good stuff. But can he really be a high school coach? He talked at some point about getting his GED, but I'm not sure he ever got it. And when they had that alumni day episode, the ex-player asked about a coaching job but I was pretty sure Coach told him there was nothing available. I figure with a government job there'd be educational requirements and a long complicated hiring process. But it's fun to have him around anyway.
Landry does his best for Tyra after the events of last week. He tries not to betray her confidence but in the end he goes to Tami. She and Tyra go to the police and file a report, and Landry's reward for his good deeds is being called "a smelly geek" and generally being hated. You feel awful for the guy, but you also know that's the only way Tyra would've reacted. I really liked how they handled this in the first half of the episode. But then I felt like she admitted her mistakes way too quickly and Landry turned into a dick. I think they wanted it to be his "standing up for himself" moment, but she's like a few days removed from an attempted rape and is in the middle of apologizing to him when he starts giving her crap for her choices in men. It just seems poorly timed.
Things have gone pretty well for Lyla right up to the pilot, and now she's due for life to crap on her. Her boyfriend gets paralyzed, her father's a philanderer and everyone knows it, and now she catches Street making out with the tattoo girl about five minutes after finding out that her parents are divorcing. I guess she cheated on Street in the first place, so maybe this is all karmic retribution?
Still to watch: Jericho.
I was very angry to discover that NBC is running Friday Night Lights promos with big spoilers for the season finale, so if you're spoilers paranoid like me, I'd suggest changing the channel or skipping ahead if you see a FNL commercial start.
Friday, March 30, 2007
Friday Night TV
Highlight for spoilers:
- Law & Order: Law & Order loves the religion-themed shows, huh? A serial arsonist is targeting churches, but this most recent one was a copycat arson to hide a murder. The motive? A guy was teaching kids in a parochial school about evolution. And they work in a little teacher/student sex for good measure.
I figured the guy from Touching Evil can't just be one of those people who talks for a minute and is never seen again. So no surprise when he turns out to be the killer. Cool to see Danielle Melnick, she's one of my two favorite recurring lawyers (along with Dworkin), because she's a big fan of the crazy defense strategies, and doesn't disappoint here. Justifiable homicide because he thought his daughter's life was being put into danger. Because learning crazy ideas like evolution will surely incur the wrath of God. A creative idea that a judge somehow bought into.
And in the end it turns out he was pissed cause a guy was sleeping his daughter. Only it was the wrong guy. She just said the name of the evolution guy cause her dad hated him anyway. While he rots in jail, you have to figure she's going to be riddled with guilt for the rest of her life.
Random aside: I've always thought the Law & Order theme song sounds like the intro to "Where It's At" by Beck. - Acceptable TV: Same as last week, check out the official site to watch anything you missed, and to vote for your favorites. Homeless James Bond and Mr. Sprinkles, the two I voted for last week, both came back. Neither was as good as the first episode, though Bond was still pretty good while Sprinkles was genuinely disappointing. The only funny aspect was the Captain Crunch character.
Medical Hospital was the only of the new ones I liked. The female cast members were looking pretty hot in this one, and I liked the House parody aspect. Super weak ending though. And the user entry this week relied on subtitles in "l33tsp33k", the annoying character substituion language used by kids who think they're hackers, but the Vh1 logo was obscuring a lot of it. The website's overloaded right now, but I'll check it out sometime later. I'm definitely voting for more Bond, but I'm torn between a third Mr. Sprinkles and a second Medical Hospital.
Still to watch: nothing.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Friday Night TV/Catch-up
Two shows with no real plots, so no spoiler warnings here:
- Acceptable TV: A really interesting take on a sketch comedy show. Each sketch is presented as a short "pilot episode." Viewers go to acceptable.tv to vote for their two favorites. The sketches with the most votes get picked up for another episode, while the rest get canceled and replaced by new pilots. They will also feature user submitted videos on the site, and every week the most popular user creation airs on VH1 during the show. It's an awesome concept for a sketch show, since watching SNL often leaves me wondering why so many of the best sketches never show up again, while that Horatio Sanz in drag sketch, the Nunni's, and Deep House Dish have been harder to get rid of than most STDs.
But the good concept is wasted if the mini-pilots aren't any good. You can watch all this week's content on the website if you missed the show. 5 mini-shows this week, plus a user submission: Joke Chasers, Who Farted (a great game show parody, but I'm not sure another episode would be any good), Homeless James Bond, The Teensies (easily the weakest), Anna Manesia (user submitted one, but having Steve Agee of The Sarah Silverman Program in your video is kinda cheating for an "amateur"), and Mr. Sprinkles (and animated "Cat in the Hat" spoof).
I think my votes go to Homeless James Bond and Mr. Sprinkles (or I would if the registration was working, which it currently isn't, at least for me... the voting doesn't last long, so I hope they figure out the issue soon). The Bond sketch had the best jokes of the night, and James Bond movies provide a lot of material to parody, so I think it could last. And Mr. Sprinkles was actually a nice bit of satire. A co-worker mentioned that he was going to sit his kids (aged 6 and 9) down and show them the story about the young boy in Georgia who was recently found dead. He wanted to make sure his kids knew to believe him when he told them to be careful around strangers. And all parents seem to be like this, instilling complete paranoia about people. I'd like my hypothetical (as far as I know) kid to be careful and all, but I'd also want him to know that people in general are good. But I don't think anyone reads this to hear my thoughts on the ills of society, so I'll just say it was funny and move on.
In general I was pretty pleased with the show. All the sketches are kept short, so if they're not funny they're at least over quickly. Assuming the Acceptable TV viewers have similar tastes to me, it could be pretty great. If you don't want to watch the mini-pilots online, Acceptable TV looks like it's repeating a lot over the weekend on VH1. - Penn & Teller: Bullshit: I somehow missed that this had started back up, but hooray! I don't actually subscribe to Showtime, but I can usually find some time to park on a friend's couch to watch their most interesting stuff. Anyway, Bullshit is one of my favorites. They kind of worked their way past the good issues early on, and tend to overstate their cases on the stuff they come up with now, but even if when I think they are bullshitting as much as their targets, the show is still entertaining.
This week's topic: obesity. A perfect example of overstating cases. I agree that crash dieting is terrible for you, that the BMI is stupid, that the weight loss industry is full of misleading information and has a vested interest in their products not working, that the overweight are unfairly discriminated against, and that we're genetically programmed to eat as much food as we can so the industrialized world with abundant food should naturally start to get fat.
However, they make it sound like being really fat isn't that bad for you. I'm neither a doctor nor a nutritionist nor do I even follow my own advice, but it certainly seems like people who try to get some exercise and who eat somewhat sensibly are a heck of a lot healthier than lazy gluttons. I know two guys with diabetes and it has been extremely difficult for them. Had they taken better care of themselves, they wouldn't be dealing with these problems. So the message that being fat is ok seemed... overstated. But hey, the Fat Olympics were hilarious, especially the blue shirted guy knocking into every hurdle before finally just going around the last one. An average episode, but for a show that's typically good, I'm happy with that.
Still to watch: Nothing. I tried to watch Raines but fell asleep. And I wasn't all that tired, so I think I'm done recording it.
