Wednesday Night TV

Season finales are exciting, but the summer cable shows don't really get going til about the 10th of June, so it'll be a slow couple weeks in between. But tonight, Bones' season finale along with the last Lost before the big season ending episode next week. My commentary on both after the jump.

Lost: When counting down his top 5 moments in life, I was kinda hoping #1 would be killing Ethan. Would've given a nice incredibly dark edge to Charlie. And I can definitely see him finding that moment extremely satisfying in a slightly crazy way.

Charlie's impending death finally comes to the big payoff. It's amazing how quickly Charlie's good moods can be ruined by a concerned glance from Desmond. But this time Desmond sees Charlie's death leading directly to Claire leaving the island (suspiciously absent are any references to anyone else leaving, or whether Claire's leaving with rescuers or if somehow the Others get hold of her and take her away). Charlie decides that he's willing to sacrifice himself, and accepts the assignment to dive into the looking glass station underwater, where he'll flip a switch and drown. Instead of finding an abandoned hatch with a switch, he finds a manned (or womanned) station, with two young ladies running up to him with guns.


Rose, to Bernard: "If you're going to be hiding in the bushes, let's get you into something dark." Does it make me a perv and/or racist that I found that hilarious? Anyway the plan is for Bernard, Sayid, and a few others to hide out and when the Others come, to shoot at the tents to set the dynamite off. While Charlie takes out the jamming station, everyone else heads to the radio tower so they can try to call Naomi's ship as soon as communications are un-jammed. Nothing actually gets resolved (including the question of why Jack is being such a dick), leaving the potential for a super exciting final episode.


Bones: More weddings should feature ZZ Top music. And pie instead of cake (a campaign I've been running for years, long before Turk on Scrubs made that joke). Also, it'd be fun at least once to go to a wedding that ended up like a TV one, in which inevitably something goes horribly wrong, and often no one ends up married.

Such was the case on tonight's Bones (I love a good misleading screencap), which had an ok mystery, a couple of father cameos (Ryan O'Neal getting himself caught on purpose, and Billy Gibbons giving away his daughter, who was wearing some kind of ridiculous looking hood instead of a veil). Pretty fun episode, and they set up plenty of fun little questions for next year. I'm hoping, though, that they play it cool and don't have a big season premiere full of resolutions. But either way, this is how procedurals should work. The case of the week gets wrapped up every week, but the characters are strong and capable of change and growth and they work in plot threads that run over multiple episodes. Also, Sea Chimps!

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Wednesday Night TV

ABC is seriously pushing the Traveler series, huh? Seems like they ran the promo during every commercial break on Lost, which, along with Bones, I'll cover after the jump...

Lost: So Ben's a big fat liar and he wasn't born on the island at all. Kinda funny that he was born outside Portland (but "Not In Portland" either). His mother died giving birth, and his father joined the Dharma Initiative when Ben was a young boy. Ben's dad, like everyone else on Lost's dad, was a huge jerk, and blamed Ben (out loud) for killing his mother. One day he sees his mother in the woods, just like Jack had seen his father when he first arrived. He goes wandering into the woods looking for her and sees Richard Alpert, one of the "hostiles," and looking the exact same age he looks today. Ben wants to join run off with them, but it seems to take about 20 years for their plan to pay off, as Ben gasses his father while the rest of the hostiles gas the rest of the Dharma Initiative. So it seems that killing your father is a rite of passage for joining their little clique.


Locke shows back up with the others carrying the corpse of dear old dad, and demands to see Jacob. There's some resistance, but after Locke beats the snot out of Mikhail, Ben agrees. He takes Locke to a ratty looking cabin and starts talking to an empty chair. Locke starts thinking Ben has lost his mind, but just as he's about to leave he hears "help me" in a decidedly non-Ben voice. Locke shines his flashlight on Ben and all hell breaks loose. Jacob is a Luddite so he invisibly starts throwing stuff around and breaking things, and shoves Ben against the wall. He becomes visible for just a second (above, though I'm sure Lost Easter Eggs will have a much clearer shot, if they don't already) before Locke leaves. Locke thinks it was all a trick, but Ben just wants to know what Jacob said to Locke, so he leads Locke to the mass grave of the gassed Dharma folks and shoots Locke and leaves him for dead.

Back on the beach, Sawyer plays Juliet's tape for Sayid and Kate. They decide to fill everyone in on the tape and Naomi. Just as they play the tape for everyone, Jack and Juliet show up. It seems that Juliet told Jack everything as soon as she returned from the hatch with Sun (so that was probably the subject of the "should we tell her?" conversation last week). Jack's developed an enormous ego, apparently, and figures there isn't any point to telling anyone until he's decided what to do about it. Since, you know, none of those other people could have helpful advice. He says "we have some catching up to do," and that storyline is ignored for the rest of the episode.

Some crazy questions... how is Alpert not aging? Ben still ages, so it's not just the island. Do the other others not age, and if so how long have they been there? Are they the Black Rock pirates? That'd be cool. Who's Jacob and why is he (mostly) invisible? And what's up with Jack's personality change?

Bones: A glow in the dark skeleton seems like a radioactive thing at first, but it turns out to be a sushi thing. The victim looks like a sort of Rachel Ray (but she looks like Saffron from the band Republica with the red streaks in her hair). They dance around a bunch of theories before arriving at the fact that the victim was sleeping with her best friend's boyfriend.


Mostly a typical episode, except they were much heavier with the sexual tension between Booth and Brennan, some quality mac and cheese banter, and Hodgins and Angela finally getting engaged thanks to a heartfelt non-proposal.

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Massive Catch-up

Having already seen Spider-man 3, I don't have a movie to catch this weekend, which leaves a little extra time to catch up on TV. A whole mess of shows after the jump.


Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: Olivia has a brother pops up again, but she's lost faith in him and is now helping the Feds find him. Soon though she bails to follow leads about her father, learns a lot more, and begins to wonder if her mother was really raped. It turns out, though, that the Jersey cop who was after him in the previous episode had framed Simon, and was out to kill him after her sister, Simon's alleged first victim, killed herself. Olivia shows up just in time, and talks the cop into confessing everything, and Simon gets off entirely.


Bones: I don't have too much to say about this episode, except that if, in a case involving someone falling out of an airplane, you find that the body's been chopped up by a heavy not-too-sharp object moving really fast, and that he was struck many times almost simultaneously, how does it take you half the episode to come up with the "hit by the propeller" theory?


Law & Order: Criminal Intent: Of course one of the Law & Orders was going to rip this particular story from the headlines... diaper-wearing crazed astronauts is just too juicy to ignore. Weird though that this episode aired the same week as the Bones about an astronaut... also weird that they both used the same fake NASA-like group (the National Space Agency). I found Tate Donovan's wife entirely creepy, the way she referred to him as "the Commander." But otherwise it was a pretty forgettable episode.

Entourage: The "one time thing" concept doesn't seem to go well with Amanda and Vince, since they both are really into each other. Ari has a formerly loserish college friend (Artie Lange) visiting who has an inexplicably hot fiancee (Leslie Bibb). Turns out that he made millions on the internet, which makes Ari really jealous.

Pauly Shore wants Drama for a new Punk'd ripoff show, but Drama knows about it ahead of time, planning to act surprised. When a UFC guy argues with him over a parking space, he assumes that it's the prank and practically gets in a fight. But the prank turns out to be something else, and the UFC guy's after him. Drama goes to a fight to kiss up to the guy, but ends up in the octagon on his knees begging for forgiveness when Pauly Shore pops out and reveals that it was all a big prank. Kinda funny, but predictable.

The Sopranos: Tony is seriously strapped for cash. Gambling problems, funding Carmela's spec house, losing Vito (his best earner), and his debt to Hesh leave him in bad financial shape. Carmela closes on the spec house, but she figures it's her money, so Tony won't see any of it, leading to a whole lot of tension.


With Vito gone, his kid's doing the goth thing (Phil says he looks like "a Puerto Rican whore") and acting out. His mother wants a fresh start somewhere else, and money to move there from Tony. Given the money issues, Tony's desperate to straighten the kid out somehow. But it doesn't work, cause for some reason the kid ends up taking a Count Dooku in the shower after gym class. Tony advises her to send him to a (much cheaper) camp for troubled kids.

Penn & Teller: Bullshit!: I was two episodes behind, so two weeks ago they covered immigration. They talked about some interesting stuff. Apparently, just as many illegal aliens enter the country legally and stay after their visas expire as sneak across the border. They rather amusingly hired a group of illegal immigrants to build a fence like the one proposed for the Mexican border, and then had them go under, through, and over it. It took eight hours to build, and 5 minutes to get past.

This week's episode was on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The ADA's statistics count 51 million disabled people in the US, which is one in six. It includes people who have trouble with money or using the phone. That seems kind of messed up, though the braille on the drive-up ATMs is quite funny. Penn & Teller as Libertarians obviously also don't like the idea of the government telling people what to do with their own private property, and generally legislating niceness.

House: A kid about to donate bone marrow to his brother develops an infection, so the race is on to find and cure the infection before his brother's leukemia kills him. The plan is to keep him cold to make the infection worse so they can figure out what it is faster. But that turns out to backfire, forcing the infection into the son's heart. Foreman's still dealing with losing a patient last week. House thinks he has Steve Blass disease, and is actually trying to be patient with him, which is pretty un-House-like.


House is still keeping Hector, Wilson's ex-wife's dog, and it's causing him lots of problems. It gets into his vicodin stash, chews up his cane (forcing him to get a sweet new one with a flame decal). But when he eventually gives the dog back, he seems sad to let it go.

They finally track down what was causing the son's infection, and this is where the episode took a crazy left turn that I didn't get. Foreman straps the now-healing son to the table and without anesthetic (because he wasn't well enough), starts extracting bone marrow even though it sounded excruciating. It works, both kids are going to get well, but Foreman doesn't like that he's "becoming" House, and gives his two weeks notice.

Smallville: And old fashioned mystery at the Planet. Lana gets shot, and gets medivac-ed to Smallville for some reason. But what was she doing all dolled up at night, out with Lionel instead of Lex? Jimmy's fascination with old movies and a blow to the head send us into an extended black & white film noir fantasy/dream sequence. There were some nice touches, using the back projection and sped up film during the car chases, the old timey wipes to transition between scenes, cigarette smoke pouring into every frame (I'm surprised they can even do that).


Since most of the episode was spent in fantasy land, very little was devoted to the actual goings on. Towards the end, they worked in Canadian-filmed TV staple Richard Kahan, a plug for Sprint, let Clark save the day, and reveal the plot behind the attempted murder, which was entirely uninteresting. But the fantasy sequence was fun enough that the episode wasn't a waste of time.

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Thursday Night TV/Catch Up

NBC's Thursday night lineup is almost back in full force with three shows back from hiatus with new episodes. My Name is Earl won't be back until next week, but three shows are back. Highlight for spoilers:

• The Office: Dwight and his pepper spray... "who's laughing now?" That's a great way after the break to address the Jim/Roy tension without opening the episode with a very unfunny savage beating. Although Dwight beating Roy with nunchucks would have been a very funny savage beating. That little fight sets up the entire episode.
  
  
  Dwight's heroics have Angela practically melting, so she spends the episode looking for new, hot tales of Dwight kicking ass. Jim feels a debt to Dwight for helping him out, but Dwight doesn't want to take rewards for his heroism.
  
  Roy's fired, which is weird, but has Darryl's angling for a raise, and Michael's trying out Wikipedia tactics for winning negotiations. But his strategies all result in Darryl taking camera phone pictures of embarrassing things.
  
  Ryan and Kelly are still in adjacent cubes, and their constant bickering is hilarious. I hadn't realized Toby would be next door. Toby also spend a lot of time with Michael, and every scene with them was hilarious... their interaction is one of my favorite parts of the show.
  
  Pam tries to apologize about the whole Roy thing, but Jim is a huge dick about it, saying rather dismissively that Pam and Roy would end up back together again. But they share a friendly coffee together which sort of makes Jim's dickish prediction look right on.
  
  Best moments:
  
  • "Everyone here is extremely gruntled."
  
  
  • "Because. That is the way these things are done... in films."
  
  
  • "Every year I get a $100 gas card. Can't put a price tag on that."
  
  
  • The Creed/Michael exchange: "Here's the $40 you gave me." "I didn't give you $40." "In a way, you did."
  
  
  • "Toby is the worst human being I've ever known."
  
  
  • "It will be a groundbreaking case when it inevitably goes to trial."
  
  
  • "You know who's a real Hero? Hiro from Heroes. That's a real hero. Also, Bono."


• 30 Rock: Will Arnett as a rival executive of Jack's is great casting. And giving him a gay crush on Kenneth is excellent. Both executive types using him as their pawn in a power struggle was better still. And it all lead up to a great payoff with the fireworks show making it look like Rockefeller Center blowing up.
  
  
  Elsewhere, Jason Sudeikis did seem so normal. I'm not so concerned about the alcoholism, but his name is Floyd? That's no good. But Liz manages in a messed up way to end up with him. I'm not a 'shipper by any stretch of the imagination, but this makes me happy.
  
  And in a third plot that was mostly just to set up some Tracy insanity, Tracy finds out he might be a descendant of Thomas Jefferson, while Toofer's ancestor was a black Confederate soldier who helped hide John Wilkes Booth.
  
  Best moments:
  
  • "A talking like this contest."
  
  
  • "I never got out of my car, and she never got all the way out of her toll booth."
  
  
  • Good to see Dr. Spaceman back. Chris Parnell is great at sounding reassuring and knowledgeable while saying ridiculous stuff.
  
  
  • "Dr. Spaceman, when they check my DNA will it tell me what diseases I might get or help me to remember my ATM PIN code?"
  
  
  • "Love is like an onion. You peel layer after stinky layer until you're just weeping over the sink..."
  
  
  • The Maury Povich dream sequence was excellent. Alec Baldwin as Thomas Jefferson giving the audience the double finger?
  
  
  • "The last time I drank I ended up doing a man on the street commercial for Tarzan on Ice."
  
  
  • "What's that? MC Lyte just murdered Danny Bonaduce? Thanks, phone!"
  
  
  • Is it weird that Liz's speech about all the crazy crap she's done made her even more attractive?


• Scrubs: Laverne remains in a coma, setting us up for a downer episode. But Carla is now seeing Laverne's pre-death ghost following her around and talking to her (which allows us a great callback to Nicole Sullivan's character as the ghost following Dr. Cox).
  
  
  We finally get an explanation for Dr. Cox's shaved head a few episodes back, which was apparently aired out of order. "Nobody liked my haircut, so now they can all just suck it," was a great shout out to the fans, who have been complaining about the 'do all year. "Are you on call tonight or will you be busy fighting Superman?" Anyway, he and Jordan finally have their baby, but he wants badly for the birth not to be associated with Laverne's death so he's hot to keep it a secret. But of course that fails, they make some points about the circle of life or whatever, and enjoy some touching moments. An ok episode, but I like the show when it's just more fun.
  
  Best moments:
  
  • Bad news robot. I think they blew the entire effects budget on JD's disintegration.
  
  
  • Janitor converting to the Norse religion his awesome.
  
  
  • Delivery Guy and his speed metal again. Lots of little callbacks this episode.
  
  
  • Turk mentions all the black people around, Snoop Dogg resident and the security guard, but whatever happened to Hooch?
  
  
  • Shadow Puppet Theater!
  
  
  
  


• Bones: Building an episode around a Poco song is a great way to ensure that I'm not going to love it. Lots of the issues with Brennan and her parents that I really wasn't interested in before are brought back up, and I mostly remain uninterested.
  
  
  The focus almost entirely on Brennan also means that Hodges and Zack and everyone get pushed into the background, with almost everything they do being scientific babbling to push the plot forward. I like Bones, but as a mystery show with interesting characters, not as a character-driven show with some crime thing going on in the background.

Still to watch: Friday Night Lights (fresh off a Peabody Award), Jericho.

Once again, I didn't watch Andy Barker, P.I., because I'd already seen it. Decent episode though, Traci Lords was very funny.

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TV Catch Up

With nothing but repeats Thursday night (except an Andy Barker, P.I. that I'd already seen online), I had hoped to catch up on even more stuff, but I ended up mostly catching up on sleep. Highlight for spoilers:

• House: Tricky with the opener, since we usually see the case of the week person in the sequence before the credits, but it turns out to be a dream House was having about having his leg blown off in Iraq or something. But it turns out we did see the case of the week person, because House was dreaming about the guy before he even got the case, giving us two mysteries: what's wrong with the guy, and why is House having psychic dreams about him?
  
  
  Hugh Laurie has such a convincing American accent that it was only from his IMDB page that I learned he was not from the US of A. But sitting in the tub with those somewhat grandmotherly glasses on, he looked as British as a tea-drinking soccer hooligan with bad teeth.
  
  House became obsessed with the idea that the guy was a model or in a movie (possibly porn) or on TV. I kept thinking "Of course the guy's been on TV, he's Riley from Buffy!" But no fourth wall jokes for this show, it turned out he dated Cuddy once several years ago.
  
  House also has some of his own medical issues this week, in the form of difficulty urinating. While I can't imagine how bad any of it must be, I have a hard time imagining that not being able to pee more than a few drips is that much worse than a self-administered catheter. That scene was brutal. Plus, it reminded me of the even more brutal Deadwood kidney stone removal scene. Yikes.
  
  And they're playing up the Chase/Cameron relationship even more. While I'm not sure about the storyline, there's something really hot about the normally reserved Cameron being all "I know I'm sexy and you can't resist me."


• Bones: Hooray, more of Wyatt, Booth's therapist. This week, he does a little couples counselling for Booth and Brennan, deciding that it wasn't her feelings for him that kept her from taking off with Sully. Hopefully it was the fact that he was a crappy character and seriously reduced my enjoyment of the show. Anyway, this immediately solved the tension between the two, which seems odd, but I'll buy it. The cool part was that Angela thought he was full of it. Convinced that they're nuts for each other, she confronts Mr. Fancy Pants shrink with her own theory, and they share an awesome scene at the end. If they hadn't spent most of the season hooking up Angela and Hodgins, I'd hope they'd hook her up with ol' Gordon, cause that would be tons of fun.
  
  
  As for the case, a grave robber breaks a water main, and bodies from all over the cemetery float up, so Bones & Co. are called in to identify and re-bury them, but shockingly they discover a murder victim buried amongst the old corpses. Some stuff happens, and the priest quickly admits his guilt. Easy confessions on TV are always lies to cover for someone, so as soon as the priest said he did it, you knew it was someone else. But I was stumped as to who, so I was pleasantly surprised with the resolution. The administrator lady, "practically raised" by the old priest, is a great unexpected fit, and there were enough characters floating around with possible motives (the possibly abused kid and the grave robber kid) that it was still a mystery. But there's no way her confession holds up in court, right? A priest asking questions with no cops around, any decent lawyer gets that tossed. I like how shows without lawyer characters ignore stuff like this.
  
  I'm kinda surprised that they'd make a lead character in a fairly popular TV show both an atheist and a jerk about it. Seems like that might alienate the 90% of the world that believe in some sort of god.

Still to watch: Friday Night Lights, Jericho.

The original Law & Order comes back for the first new episode since sweeps, and Acceptable TV returns for its second episode on VH1 at 10. Too late to vote, but you can still check out last week's sketches on the Acceptable TV website.

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TV Catch-up

A little catch up this afternoon before starting in on Thursday night shows. Highlight for spoilers:

• Bones: I have nothing against the actor who played Sully, nor was the character really that bad, but I'm absolutely thrilled to see him leave. Booth's relationships haven't thrown the show's tone/pacing/whatever off, but every scene with Brennan and Sully seems to grind the show to a halt. At least to me.
  
  This week they find the body, or rather skin and organs because someone removed the bones, of a mail order bride from China. The lack of bones makes things a little difficult, but eventually, thanks to guest star Michael Paul Chan (Lt. Tao from The Closer), we come to the conclusion that the bones were removed for some kind of Chinese wedding/burial ceremony, but we eventually loop around to find it was the weird lady who runs the bride import company. Not a great mystery, but not that bad.
  
  Despite the especially gory case of the week, we still had plenty of funny moments: "No bones, no Bones," switchamacallit, and the balloon head. I tend to prefer a little more Zack and Hodgins, but it was still an ok episode. The presence of a lot of Sully was made up for by the fact that we won't be seeing him again (for a while at least... I hope).


• Friday Night Lights: Somehow I completely missed the fact that Julie would be completely pissed at the idea of leaving Dillon for TMU. Her scene with her dad near the end was really nice. The Taylor family is easily one of the best on TV. A lesser family drama would've had him turn the job down right there and have a group hug, a shock-value show would have him accept for the drama of the moment, while Friday Night Lights is patient with the storyline and to squeeze real drama out of it.
  
  I love that Street got unceremoniously cut from the quad rugby team. Quite the ego on that dude though. He may be the best athlete on the floor, but he's been playing the game for what, six weeks? I have no idea how long, really, but he broke his neck in the first game and the football season isn't over yet.
  
  The scene where the tattoo girl (whose name slips my mind) offers Street a ride was hilarious. "I can give you gas money, or... something." Wink, wink. So that finally goes where it was obviously heading, with a make-out session at Stonehenge II (I was hoping it would be a stonehenge that was in danger of being crushed by a dwarf, but it was a roughly full scale replica).
  
  And the scene where Street coaches Saracen is the scene I've been waiting for all year. Great step forward for Street, whose future, I think, is in coaching. Great moment for Saracen, too, who has yet to gain the swagger needed to lead a football team, but Street figures out right away how to inspire some confidence. ESPN.com columnist Bill Simmons
  likes to count the "chill scenes" in sports movies. I don't remember many in sports TV shows, which are typically pretty awful, but this was a rare one. And a great one. I actually came to this show from the movie, which I liked a lot, and was much much heavier on the football content. I still love the show, but do miss the football sometimes, and this was by far the best scene they've ever had on that front.
  
  Thank goodness Riggins finally tried to get into his neighbor's pants, cause the kid storyline, which I didn't really mind, got old fast, and like tattoo girl, we all know where this was heading.
  
  Tammi makes Tyra her personal project as a guidance counselor, but Tyra's mom is not playing along, and continues to freak out over the Buddy thing, and just have issues in general. But they sorta make up at the end, though I'm sure the crazy isn't anywhere near over yet. Speaking of crazy, Lyla's having trouble with her father and Street, and ends the episode with a nice little rampage at the car lot.
  
  Yet another great episode. I'm probably more desperate for Veronica Mars to hang on for another season, but FNL is a close second.

Left to watch: All caught up.

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Wednesday Night TV

A break, finally, from all the reruns that have been on this week. Highlight for spoilers:

• Lost: A Claire flashback this week... is this only her second one, or third? She's been ignored a lot, but given the Others' obsession with fertility and babies, I have to assume she'll end up being really important in the grand scheme.
  
  Do I just not remember the parts where Charlie redeemed himself for acting all crazy and almost getting the baby killed? Claire certainly seems all chummy with him again in the first half of the episode.
  
  Her tagged bird plan is actually pretty smart (except for not covering it in some kind of scotch tape or plastic), but as soon as Desmond showed up (after a second of him looking like a c-blocker), you kind of new where that was headed. I thought the note was a little wordy, though. But I guess it was a dramatic moment so they wanted poetic sounding words rather than just cramming as much information as they could fit on the page, which is probably what they'd actually do.
  
  Jack's dad paying for Claire's Mom's hospital stay was a nice spooky thing when he was a mystery benefactor, but I could've sworn Australia had some kind of universal health care system. Nice, I guess, to get the Jack's father/Claire thing out of the way, since the fans had picked up on that during the Ana Lucia flashback.
  
  Over in the crew headed to rescue Jack, we get a nice spooky scene where Captain Eyepatch reveals all the creepy stuff he knows about the castaways, including Locke's paralysis, but naturally that get's cut off. That security perimeter was pretty messed up. Would've been more dramatic if it hadn't reminded me of the "brown noise" from South Park though. I get Locke taking the C4, I guess, though it makes his actions last week even stupider, but why didn't he take more of it? It's certainly a lot nicer to have around than that dynamite if you ask me (or Arzt). Jack playing football at the end was a fun twist to end the episode.
  
  Is it messed up that my first thought about the opening car wreck scene was that Claire looks much hotter with dark hair? And speaking of hot, I'll admit it. Kate climbing that tree was strangely appealing. I'm pretty easy to please in that respect.
  
  Another quality episode. With the exception of the incredibly boring tattoo episode, this half of the season has been really good. Lost-haters be damned, I still love this show.



• Bones: I was disappointed to see Bones' super handy agent boyfriend return (and he calls her Tempy?), and with their temporary partnership over, they now come up with flimsy excuses to involve him in the investigation so he has something to do. But I was happy to see Jonathan Slavin (Byron from Andy Richter Controls the Universe) make an appearance. But as usual with these shows, you have to immediately suspect the familiar actor. I didn't see the Strangers on a Train (or... on a chat room) aspect coming, but I was not the least bit surprised that Slavin's character was involved.
  
  We go with a plot that I'm guessing they've been saving for a week when they were out of ideas: someone's killing people in the same way Brennan's described in her books. Not that exciting, but they have a few nice scenes. The part where they were determining how to get the bullet out of the rat was excellent.



• South Park: Hoooooo-lyyyyy cow. The reveal of Butters' accountabili-buddy hanging himself managed to not be one of the wrongest jokes in the episode. "A secluded camp where lots of bi-curious boys are all put together? That sounds like a good idea!" just about killed me.

On the Tivo: Jericho, Halfway Home.

Ah, ABC goes with the extremely annoying moving ad in the corner of the screen to plug Dancing With the Stars. I hoped that after Family Guy annoyed the crap out of Arrested Development viewers, the networks might abandon those. But alas, no.

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TV Catchup

Lots of catchup. Highlights for spoilers:

• Bones: I like seeing Booth's shrink back. Their scenes together are always nice. I do not like seeing Agent Multitalented back. But it kinda seemed like Meredith Monroe was completely underused.
  
  Meredith Monroe kinda looked like Cameron Richardson here. I never watched The Creek, but MM's nice looking and not a bad actress at all, so it seems like a waste to just have her on for three seconds.

• Friday Night Lights: Damn, this show is good. Everyone's pushing all-in this week. Smash and the rest of the black players put their futures on the line for their walkout, Saracen puts a lot of money up to try to get Julie back, and Street's ready to dump his education for quad rugby and a G.E.D. Plus the whole season's out there hanging in the balance - the JV squad shows up to try to fill in for the walked out guys, and if they have to play, the upcoming playoff game will be a joke.
  
  A couple really great scenes. Coach asks Tami for her advise as far as firing Mac, as guidance counselor, as his wife, and as his friend. Riggins swallows his pride and tells Smash that the team needs his leadership, and Smash throwing Mac's white players/leadership comments back in his face. And Mac handing in his resignation... he seems to look racist sympathetic all at once, which is hard to pull off.
  
  The whole situation plays out in shades of gray. If you know a guy is a good man and he's truly sorry for his mistake, do you punish him for a big mistake? Is it worth sticking to your guns over one guy if it might mean your education? Plus the game ended in victory, but in the worst possible way. Mac gets a shot at semi-redemption when he chases off the cops who want to blame Smash for the whole incident. So they win and move on, but it's not like everything is wrapped up in a neat little package.
  
  Oh, and Landry hitting on Tyra was kinda hilarious, as was his "look them in the eyes, not in the rack" comment.

• Knights of Prosperity: Yikes. The whole montage of attempts to get into the club was supposed to be funny, but it was devoid of laughs. Esperanza's ex, drug lord Enrico (played by Bobby Cannavale from Third Watch), had a couple good lines, but that was about it. As much as I like the cast, the show is really struggling to make me laugh. And with the Mick Jagger thing seemingly wrapped up, I think this would've been a good place to end, but I think it's going to keep limping along for the rest of the season. I might be done with it, though, I'm not sure.

• Law & Order: Criminal Intent: I feel like the intros to this show have really changed of late. It used to be the eerie music would slowly swell as they showed a series of disjunct scenes leading up to a body being discovered, and the scenes would be clues to the eventual solution of the mystery. But last week we had the "Under Pressure" montage cutting between the Aaron Burr/Hamilton reenactment and the sniper, this week we get a guy plugging a CD dissolving into a Tupac/Biggie-style rap murder. Fab Five Freddy played the rapper though, which is kinda cool.
  
  The mid-episode murder felt much more like how the show used to work. The first person shot of murderer, the music coming up, all that. I realize that the whole "talking to the cops gets you killed" thing was crucial to the plot, but I feel like they way overemphasized it. Between the undercover guy, the DJ, the white rap mogul guy, and the guy they confronted in his apartment... I mean, we get it already.
  
  I'm still not entirely sold on Julianne Nicholson though. I liked her on Conviction ok, but I buy her as the cute girl, but the tough cop with the boy's haircut (I'm not 100% sure, but I think they're trying to go with a lesbian angle with her... she had a lesbian mechanic hit on her earlier this year in front of Logan which she ignored, but did she ignore it cause she's straight, cause she wasn't interested, or cause it was in front of Logan?).
  My least favorite part of the episode was the killer getting shivved at the end, though. Meh.

On the Tivo: nothing.

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Last Night's TV

A little catchup, plus last night's viewing. As always, spoilers. Highlight to reveal:

• Law & Order: CI: Well, cutting straight from the L&O "...these are their stories..." intro to Under Pressure (most overused soundtrack song ever? Or is it Baba O'Reily?) and some guys in 18th century garb about to duel made me think the Tivo somehow switched channels mid-recording. But then the cut to a sniper, so at least I know it wasn't a period drama with weird music choices. Xander Berkely is a pretty good actor, huh? He should be in more stuff.
  

• House: So was the wheelchair bound woman just messing with House, or is she a lesbian? Either way, I hope she hangs around. Despite only a few lines, she was pretty likable. And a few episodes ago, House had quite a bit of sexual tension with a little person, now with a woman in a wheelchair. I could definitely see him having a thing for... atypical women. I liked the case of the week. It's cool to see a solution end up being much more simple that everyone expected it to be. Also, this episode reminded me that I use the word "gyp," and never remember that it's derived from an ethnic stereotype. So I should stop that.

• Bones: I liked the scenes with Booth and the shrink. Replacement partner guy, though? Not so much. And it looks like he'll be back for more. As soon as French Stewart popped up in the credits, I was worried. Partly because he's not the kind of actor you want to see in a drama. Ever. But mostly because anytime someone that famous shows up, you know they're going to play an important role. And when they show up for half a second early on and aren't heard from for 30 minutes, you know they're probably going to be the key to the case. Most likely the murderer. But on the plus side, he wasn't nearly as bad as I thought he'd be. At least he didn't do the eyes half closed 3rd Rock from the Sun thing. Oh, and Hodgins' line about getting caught in a pornado? Excellent.

• Lost: Sweet reveal at the beginning with the Miami skyline. Overall a pretty great episode. I can't say I cared all that much about Juliet, but now I'm warming to her. A few really cool parts. I liked that Ben wakes up mid-surgery. And when Tom explains how it happened, I pictured Jack like Bones from Star Trek: "Dammit, Tom, I'm a spinal surgeon not an anesthesiologist!" The octopus hatch thing was new, and it seems to be where they condition people with music and crazy film montages. Eventually, that'll make sense, I'm sure, and it'll be as clear as an azure sky of deepest summer. I thought the "tell me the story I told you" thing was incredibly lame. I get that they needed some way that she could easily lie without the others knowing, but the 2 minute speech for emotional impact was forced. And she told the story while she was still on dry land, which was just a little stupid, since Juliet could've shot Kate in the face as soon as she got off the radio. And I've always loved the spontaneous car accident... Meet Joe Black is still my favorite, but this one was up there (even if it was just like the one Nip/Tuck did this season), especially cause of the sinister possibilities
  
  We did get some fun guest stars. Zeljko Ivanek, Deadwood's Robin Wiegert, a visit from William "Ethan" Mapother, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's Rob McElhenny, and Nestor Carbonell. I hadn't seen Nestor Carbonell for a while... I first remember seeing him in Muscle, one of the original WB shows that was sort of a daytime soap opera spoof, like Soap. He later popped up in one of those bad NBC sitcoms that was sandwiched between good shows, (maybe Suddenly Susan?), then as Batmanuel on the live action Tick. But then nothing memorable for a few years, and now he's in Lost and Smokin' Aces one right after the other. He was surprisingly good in both, especially since I had previously only thought of him as a comedic actor with a gimmick accent.

Still parked on the Tivo: Friday Night Lights, Knights of Prosperity (which I'm getting close to dumping).

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