May sweeps is starting to wrap up, which means fewer TV posts on the horizon. This also means more comic books and movies. Sadly, I'm screencapless for a couple days due to computer problems, but it should be worked out by mid-week. Until then, another full slate of Sunday Night shows, with Fox's animation block and HBO's lineup. King of the Hill, The Simpsons, Family Guy, American Dad, The Sopranos, and Entourage after the jump.
King of the Hill: The long dormant Nancy/John Redcorn relationship comes back this week when Nancy's assigned to interview him. She's drawn to him because of their history, because she's losing her hair due to the stress of having to be without him, and because Dale's misunderstanding of equinoxes and tricked out cars have him thinking he's traveled back in time by one day.
An ok episode, but really they've been through this plot before. Dale's crazy but deep down he's sweet, and Nancy'd rather put up with his insanity than deal with the guilt of cheating on him.
The Simpsons: Homer getting everyone lost in an electrified corn maze (no relation to Gilmore Girls' hay bale maze) inexplicably leads Santa's Little Helper to becoming a police dog. But a cop's life changes a man... or dog... and he can't live with the Simpsons anymore. But in the end all it takes is a toxic cloud caused by a replacement pet snake and a frisbee to bring Santa's Little Helper back, and everyone's all back to normal.
Not a great episode by any stretch. Other than the police animal training montage, there were only a few good parts:
Family Guy: An encounter with toxic waste in the country drive Lois to get all political, taking on Adam West for mayor of Quahog. She trails in the polls until Brian tells her that undecided voters are too stupid to hear complicated rhetoric, and are best wooed with the stupidly obvious, and her controversial anti-terrorism stance propels her to victory. But after a few small victories, she starts taking advantage of the perks, and becomes as corrupt as Mayor West.
Not a terrible story, and quite a few good jokes tonight:
American Dad: Stan wants to teach Steve and his friends to be real men, so he has them run their own cattle ranch. They don't want to eat the meat from the cows though, so only Stan is driven mad by the meat that turns out to be full of mad cow. 
Roger has a crush on the clerk at the liquor store, so he gets Hayley to pretend to be his girlfriend to make her jealous, but Roger ends up falling for Hayley in the process. But his declaration that she's the "prettiest girl in the house" suddenly starts a competition between Hayley and Francine. In the end, it was all a setup by Roger to submit a video for mother-daughter-catfight.com.
The Sopranos: Chris and Tony get in a wreck, and Tony uses it as an excuse to off him. It's been a long time coming, with all the grief he's been causing him. The movie, the drugs, the wet blanket 12 step program attitude... it's been frustrating and has put Tony in jeopardy. The funny thing is, Tony doesn't feel a bit of remorse or sadness, only relief. To get away from all the mourners dragging him down, he heads to Vegas, meets a friend of Chris's (the gorgeous Sarah Shahi). They share some sex, some pot, then in a peyote-induce haze, wander the casino floor (I think the Venetian, but I'm not sure). Tony lays some bets and starts hitting. He realizes the curse of Christopher has been lifted.
A.J.'s a different story. He had been feeling great after the acid to the toes guy, but the second one leaves a sour taste in his mouth. My only guess is that he felt the first guy deserved it, the second guy's only crime was being Somalian.
The only other thing going on is Tony's asbestos disposal operation. The dumping goes to Leotardo's turf, and he wants 25%. Tony's not going to pay that, so he's holding out. The guy's removing the asbestos are caught in the middle and end up dumping it in a pond. I'm sure that'll come up later.
I'm sure the people hoping for a bloodbath were a little excited with this episode, with at least one major character getting offed, but I really think the show's going to end more subtly.
Entourage: Turtle meets the girl of his dreams ("Me with tits."), Drama's show gets ripped to shreds by the critics but is a hit with the people, and Vince is pushing all-in on Medellin. Vince and E are putting up everything they have (including the house) to buy the script, since the big wig they were trying to get to bankroll it was threatening to buy it just to keep it from them after he felt slighted.
Yet another episode that didn't seem entirely funny. Drama's scenes at the "massage" parlor were kinda funny, and Ari occasionally gets a good line in, but mostly it played like a light drama.
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Sunday Night TV
Sunday, May 6, 2007
Sunday Night TV
A full slate of Sunday night TV, with Fox's animation block and HBO's Sopranos and Entourage after the jump.
King of the Hill: Dale checked out a new book on explosives from the library under the name Rusty Shackleford. But the real Rusty Shackleford showed up to confront Dale for all the damage he's doing to his name. Apparently Dale thought he'd died in third grade, but he just moved away. The guy's decided he's not leaving until he straightened things out with Dale. And Peggy's still working for Chris Elliott's real estate company. Chane Wasonasong teases Peggy with the idea that they'll move, but it's actually to talk over her commitment to be a Cozy Kitchen representative, which appears to fall somewhere between Tupperware sales and a pyramid scheme, and the only way out is to find a sucker to take over for you. 
At this point, it seemed like Rusty would be the obvious solution, since sending the Cozy Kitchen folks after him would send him running, solving both problems at once. But instead, Peggy and Dale go for a fake murder/suicide pact, figuring that if Cozy Kitchen and Rusty think they're dead, they're in the clear. That doesn't work out, but all Peggy has to do is agree to fake her Cozy Kitchen boss's death to get her out of her commitment, and Dale just has to sign some forms to clear up Rusty's identity theft issues.
A pretty cool episode if only for the appearance of an actual Rusty Shackleford, and a good Dale episode is usually pretty hilarious. Best lines:
The Simpsons: Homer takes Nappien, an Ambien-type drug, and starts doing "kooky" things at night (setting up videotapes as dominoes, vandalizing a wax museum). Rather than quitting, he decides to lock himself in his room so he can't get into any trouble. But Bart realizes he get Homer to do his bidding in his sleep, but after some hijinks they end up crashing into the fire station, injuring the entire fire department. So Homer, Moe, Apu, and Skinner volunteer to fill in (despite the fact that I'm sure Apu ran the volunteer fire department already). 
They start to enjoy the perks of the job with everyone hooking them up with free stuff after they save them, but when Mr. Burns' house catches fire, he gives them a half hearted thanks and tells them to get lost, so Moe comes up with the idea that they could exaggerate the severity of fires and just take stuff. Marge and the kids catch them in the act, though, and guilt Homer into stopping, just in time for Homer to heroically save the day.
Best parts:
Family Guy: The Griffins have ballet night? Chris' school has history books from 1948, so Lois heads to the PTA to complain, but the problem is budget cuts due to the No Child Left Behind laws. In order to raise the school's test scores, they expel the dumbest kid in school: Chris. At this point the episode takes a 10 minute detour with the return of the bad coupon chicken, which was pretty well done. 
But we pick the story back up with Carter Pewterschmidt getting Chris into a fancy private school, where being poor isn't going over well. To help him fit in better, Carter gets him inducted into the Skull & Bones society. But when he finds out that the family had to get second jobs (selling buttscratchers, prostitution, and following fat guys around with a tuba) to pay for his tuition, he just wants to go back to James Woods High, so Carter pulls some strings.
Best parts:
American Dad: The CIA has to hide their illegal stuff, so Stan gets to take all sorts of fancy gadgets home. But a listening device reveals that the neighbors, who Stan assumes love him, all think he's a jackass. So Stan becomes consumed to faking his way into being liked. When all his efforts fail, he uses a new CIA power to seize all their property to "help with the war on terror." When his family thinks he's gone crazy, he kicks them out too. But eventually he discovers that everyone hates everyone, and all is well.
Roger's out to make a quick buck and convinces Steve to help lie to a neighbor when Roger pretends to fall on the sidewalk. This quickly turns into a scheme where Roger goes around injuring Steve for money and free stuff, but Steve comes up with the idea of selling one of the evacuated houses to an unsuspecting couple. But Steve cons Roger out of his half of the money, leaving Roger stranded in Mexico, with only a fire extinguisher full of tequila to comfort him. Best parts:
Entourage: Benicio Del Toro pulls out of Medellin, but the studio chief's only given them til sundown to find a replacement. The only problem is that it's Yom Kippur and the producer, played by Adam Goldberg, and studio head are both Jewish, so they can't do business or use the phone. Ari represents Goldberg's character, so even without Vince as a client, he stands to lose a lot of money if they don't land Vince in time. Amanda and Ari play sacrilegious phone tag trying to work the deal out, but they fail to meet the deadline and the movie gets shut down. Vince blames Amanda for not pursuing it hard enough and confronts her, saying he shouldn't have left Ari. She says the movie was ruined by Adam Goldberg, who interrupted the studio head at his synagogue twice that day to get an answer. Vince apologizes, but Amanda feels like she never had his confidence and drops him as a client.
Elsewhere, Drama buys a horse to save it from the glue factory, but unsurprisingly it doesn't fit well at Vince's house. It'll cost to much to keep it at a stable, and he's picking up fines for having a horse without a permit. He finally gets rid of it by showing up at Edward Burns' house with the horse as a gift. Burns wants to turn it down, but his daughter sees it and flips out, so now he can't give it back without breaking the kid's heart.
The Sopranos: A.J.'s depressed about his fiancee. He goes to visit her at her job and is all weepy and creepy. He spots a happy couple at work, breaks into tears, and quits on the spot. Meadow begins to suspect that he might be suicidal. Tony convinces him to go to a party at the Bing with some of Tony's friends' kids who are at college. They run a bookmaking operation, and A.J. goes along with them for a collection. When they start beating the guy down and pouring acid on his foot, A.J. gets a scary look on his face like when Tony's about to do something evil, which was kinda great, and when he returns home he's alive again. I definitely see him joining the family business if it doesn't blow up in his face first.
Christopher and Paulie, as usual, are at odds with each other. Paulie sends Little Paulie twice to boost power tools from Chris' father-in-law. Chris gets more pissed each time and eventually throws Little Paulie out a window. Paulie in return drives all over Chris' lawn and tears it up. Tony brokers an uneasy peace, again as usual, an uneasy peace between them. But to seal the truce, Chris has a drink. So naturally they cut straight to Chris loaded, and Paulie being an even bigger asshole. He goes to Tim Daly's house for help, and gets a little annoyed with the guy so he pops him in the head.
Kind of an awesome episode, between Christopher's random violence, Paulie driving like a maniac on his lawn, A.J.'s great transformation from depressed to mobster, and a great therapy session. I know lots of people want a bloodbath between New York and Jersey to wrap up the series, but if they just keep giving us episodes like this I'm perfectly happy.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Sunday Night TV
The Sopranos and Entourage will have to wait, cause it's animation night for me. A double dose of King of the Hill, The Simpsons, Family Guy, and American Dad after the jump.
King of the Hill: Bill looks for meaning in his life, and decides to get more involved in the church, but he ends up involved with Rev. Stroup. They have to sneak around for a while, but when they go public with their relationship (and their displays of affection), everyone becomes so uncomfortable around them that they try to break them up. Rather than take their disapproval, she quits and moves in with Bill. But without the sneaking around and taboo, Bill loses interest. But how to break up with a minister who left a church for you? And Bill obviously has little experience dumping women. But after trying a crazy Boomhauer/Dale idea, he follows Hank's advice and is honest with her, and everything wraps up nicely. Best moments:
In the second episode, Bobby's school has started an alternative P.E. program where a local community college designs video games and the students play test the games for "virtual P.E." credit. It's a pretty ridiculous setup, but nicely introduces two stories. Hank puts Bobby back in P.E. and forces him to take the Presidential fitness test, and the game designers find Hank amusing and design a whole game, the Grand Theft Auto-like "Pro-PAIN!", based on him. Hank starts playing the game, though, and becomes quickly addicted, ignoring Bobby's training. As usual with these things, Peggy steps in and forces Hank to do the right thing. And of course Bobby didn't pass, but did manage a single pull-up, so it was a moral victory.
The Simpsons: The Isotots, Bart's little league team, is one out away from some sort of championship when an easy fly ball heads Bart's way. Since him catching it would be boring, he flubs it, they lose the game, and the entire town (even a Bill Buckner-like character) hates him. Bart goes crazy from all the hate, so they re-enact the final out to return his sanity.
Homer gets a job selling mattresses for some reason. The Lovejoys are looking for one to spice up their love life, but the only one that works is the Simpsons' mattress. At least the writers were smart enough to throw in a comment acknowledging how silly this story was.
Neither story made much sense, but this was a really funny episode:
Family Guy: Lois gets hired as the new church organist, and decides it's a good reason to get the family going to church again. But Stewie drinks the communion wine and throws up, so everyone thinks he's posessed, forcing the Griffins to flee to Texas to avoid a forced Exorcism. 
From here on out, the episode mostly plays a lot like To Love and Die in Dixie, one of the best episodes of the series. This episode had some great gags, some of the best of the season, but a few head scratchers. What on earth was up with Stewie's fantasy about meeting Jesus? Or Sneakers O'Toole? And I could've sworn I've seen the bit about the cow having an orgasm from branding somewhere before.
American Dad: Stan learns that Francine had a lot of lovers before they got married, and the plan is for them to get a temporary divorce so Stan can even the score without breaking his wedding vows. But when he meets a woman who shares his passion for guns, Stan gets married to her instead. So Francine learns her lesson about why Stan got so jealous and they get back together, but as usual for American Dad, they crap on the typical heartwarming sitcom moment by having Stan sleep with the new wife anyway.
Steve gets hooked on an energy drink and starts begging like a homeless guy, and Roger dresses like a Persian guy and keeps picking up trashy women at bars and treating them like crap.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Sunday Night TV
Back to watching normal TV after a week of catching up. I'll have to catch Entourage and The Sopranos later cause I'm watching baseball. But King of the Hill and The Simpsons are after the jump.
King of the Hill: The Souphanousinphones want Connie to have a cool job to put on her resume for private high school, so rather than follow her parents' suggestion to work on a squid boat, she decides to be Peggy's protoge at the Arlen Bystander, but Peggy's usual "dictated puff piece" isn't enough for Connie, so she convinces Peggy to do some real investigation into her assignment, a local realtor named Chris Sizemore (voiced by Chris Elliot). When she finds no actual dirt, she writes a disrespectful story anyway. But it turns out that Sizemore was a big advertiser with the paper. Sizemore likes the cut of her jib, or whatever the cliche is, and after getting her fired from the paper, hires her at his real estate agency. And inexplicably, Connie decides to follow her. 
When she starts working for Sizemore, though, she (and Connie) are stuck with the grunt work. Peggy tries to show some initiative but ends up getting fired again. When Connie appears to be headed back to the squid boat, but Peggy decides to give it one last shot. She does a good enough job almost selling a house without a license that Sizemore hires her back.
Dale gets Hank a set of titanium golf clubs. But when Hank gets curious as to how he could afford them, he finds out one of the clubs was used as a murder weapon, and that Dale got them at a police auction. Hank has mixed feelings about them, but all it takes to get past it is asking the guy if he used them for murder, and him saying "no." There's a hilarious scene in the end where Hank finds a ski mask in the clubs, but he happily assumes that the previous owner liked to ski.
King of the Hill at its best is funny and touching, but this one fell short on the latter. But it was still very, very funny. So that's just fine with me. The best parts:
The Simpsons: Marge is embarrassed that she doesn't have email, so she gets to poking around the internet, and ends up finding a World of Warcraft type game. And everyone from around Springfield has their own character in the game, but they're all afraid of an evil shadowknight. Who turns out to be Bart (I was thinking it'd be Milhouse). And Marge is actually kinda proud of him, but having his mom around is really bugging Bart. And then Bart accidentally kills Marge.
Lisa decides to play soccer, and when the ref doesn't show up, Homer volunteers to be a referee. But he's biased and starts favoring Lisa, then she starts taking advantage of his favoritism. A completely stupid and hard to understand Ronaldo cameo shows Homer the error of his ways, and Homer throws her out of the game.
With the Simpson women upset at them, Homer and Bart bond at Moe's and get some good advice. Bart brings Marge's character back to life, sacrificing his awesome Shadowknight power, and Homer shows Lisa a documentary on soccer flopping and riots. Honestly, a pretty stupid episode. A few laughs, though:
Monday, April 2, 2007
Sunday Night TV/Catching Up
No more Battlestar Galactica for a long, long, long, long time. And another week until the HBO shows get going, so it's slim pickings tonight. Highlight for spoilers:
- King of the Hill: Cotton leaves his beloved Cadillac to Hank's previously unmentioned cousin and ZZ Top bass player Dusty Hill. "It's been like a member of the family." "Except that Cotton loved it." This upsets Hank because he wanted the car, and also because Dusty and ZZ Top always played pranks on him (and also played a version of "Radar Love" at Hank's wedding with a 20 minute bass solo).
But the whole thing turned out to be part of a reality show, which of course only served to get Hank even more upset. Will Arnett as the producer was pretty solid. "VH1 Classic is swarming with bands who'll eat anything I tell them to." Plus the climatic moment featuring Dusty's beard caught in a seat belt? Excellent. Not a classic King of the Hill episode by any means, but it was pretty funny. - American Dad: Stan has to set up his boss, Avery, with a friend of Francine, and desperately wants to avoid hearing Francine say "I told you so" in the process. Avery's a little rusty at the whole dating thing, so when he brings the woman home with him, he ends up killing her. Good times. Meanwhile, Roger is embarrassed by not having a nose and puts on a fake one, which results in him being mistaken for Kevin Bacon. And also kills someone. Plus, they made a joke about shoving a baby into a wood chipper and two kids dying in a bungee jumping accident. Pretty morbid episode, huh? But also funny.
The fact that it was called "Stan's Xtreme Bungee Xperience" really sold the bungee joke for me. I really loved the midget airbag assassin, especially after the lengthy seat adjustment sequence. And the Footloose sequence was quite good. I bet that a lot of people hated this episode, but I have a somewhat twisted sense of humor, and really liked it. And as someone who hates to admit his mistakes, I really sympathize with Stan and his "I told you so" fears. - Penn and Teller: Bullshit!: This week's topic is Wal-Mart hatred. They bring up some very interesting points. I know some Wal-Mart haters, some of whom also shop there. A lot of the criticisms revolve around worker mistreatment, and who knows if the Bullshit numbers are believable, but certainly I agree with the idea that they're in business to make money and shouldn't be treated differently just because they've been very good at what they do. And that offering stuff at low prices does help the poor by stretching a dollar further. Particularly effective was the interview with the Chicago mother whose $8.50 an hour from Wal-Mart supports her family and keeps her off welfare, while a city councilman from a richer part of the city wanted to force Wal-Mart to pay its workers twice the minimum wage if they wanted to come to town. But even though they raise some good points, I'm not sure about any argument that comes off as pro-sweatshop. Also not the funniest episode they've done, but still pretty interesting.
Still to watch: I want to check out the rest of The Tudors premiere episode at some point, even though after some reflection I'm not as interested in it as I was after first checking out the pilot. But that's it for now, I think.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Sunday Night TV
Packed night of TV, and my Battlestar Galactica talk goes on forever. Sorry. Highlight to reveal spoilers:
- The Simpsons: It seems like The Simpsons takes longer and longer to get into the meat of the plot. They almost always start off with unrelated stuff, in this case fire safety (with a great "Scent of a Wookiee" joke), but usually the second part becomes the main plotline, here re-enacting major events to replace a lost photo album (with the source music montage that now appears in every single episode). Or at least that becomes a B-story. But they ditched that quickly and went with Homer as a paparazzo.
They didn't seem to take a position on the press/celebrity relationship, with Homer clearly victimizing the famous folks, but when he stopped they all turned completely evil (as evidenced by the hilarious montage at the end, with Tatum snorting Secretariat's ashes, Side Show Mel eating an American flag, etc). This episode was decidedly average up until that montage, but the sequence lifted this week's installment all the way to pretty good.
A few guest stars this week: Betty White had a random cameo as herself, J.K. Simmons was great (parodying his Spider-man role of J. Jonah Jameson... "This one has 'page one' written all over it!"), and Jon Lovitz as Enrico Iritazzio was ok. - King of the Hill: Lucky goes "stumping," leaving Luanne feeling lonely. To make matters worse, she's spending all her time at work doing hairstyles for prom season, reminding her that she never got to go to hers. So while Lucky recruits Hank and friends to help him take on the Moby Dick of stumps, Luanne talks a lonely kid into asking her to the prom. As usual, everything ends on an unusual, but sweet note, with Lucky and Luanne dancing to "25 or 6 to 4" by Chicago, which is indeed an awesome song (though the only Chicago song I actually like).
Best line of the episode: "Everyone goes to the prom now. Even the crippled and the gay!" Not a great episode, but not bad either. The scheduling has been so weird this year (not starting until late January, doing two episodes after the Super Bowl, and then taking over a month off) that I felt a little lost. - Family Guy: Any footie pajamas-related story is great by me. "Are you telling me I could be pooping and warm?" The whole restaurant storyline was weak, but it served as setup to the pretty good (if completely weird) Crippletron segment, and Peter's wheelchair experiences.
As usual, the story is all over the place, so the quality of the episode depends on the cutaways. It was about 50/50. Tyra Banks on America's Next Top Model turning into an iguana, Mexican Super-friends, the extended Maude theme, the M. Night Shyamalan commercial, and Dumbo Ben Stiller (twice) were all pretty lame, while swapping vocal chords with Patrick Stewart, Quagmire tearing up Lois' carpet, exploding cupcakes, and the M.C. Escher rap video were all very funny. Average episode overall. - American Dad: A CIA drill gone awry sends Stan fleeing into the woods thinking there's a nuclear attack coming. Since the family has been calling him a boob behind his back, he doesn't tell them when he finds out the truth. This story got really weird and wasn't very funny.
Roger, meanwhile, is left behind, and in an effort to get a blender in time to make his special Grey's Anatomy-themed cocktail (weird that Family Guy ended on a Grey's Anatomy joke just before this), goes on jdate to get a desperate woman to marry him so he can put a blender on his registry. I think the Jewish family was Elliott Gould, Liz Sheridan (Jerry's mother on Seinfeld), and Lisa Edelstein (Cuddy from House).
Things wrapped up very neatly in the end, but the episode just wasn't funny. For a while, American Dad was better than Family Guy every week, but the past month or so, FG has raised its game, and AD has turned back into the uneven show that I considered never watching again during the first season. - Battlestar Galactica: Those were some loooong previouslies. We pick up with a few relationship droppings, with Adama and Roslin sharing a morning phone call, and Anders hooking up with Tory (and getting caught by Seelix, who he'd been starting up a relationship with). But that out of the way, we get to the meat of the story, which was especially meaty.
I think Gaeta perjured himself because he still feels guilty about the whole thing, but I'm not really sure.. Weird though how Lee was feeling the hate for the old man last week, but refuses to sell him out for prejudging the case. And then makes a great case for everyone hating him. But it's a good speech, and sums up how I've felt about the trial myself. Though at the end, stepped on one of my most hated conventions of acting/screenwriting: repeating a phrase for dramatic effect. It shows up in movies and tv shows constantly, but who does that in real life? No one. No one.
When the judges adjourned to consider the verdict, it honestly sounded like those scenes in South Park where the angry mob goes "rabble rabble rabble." I was thinking that since a lot of the speech was directed at the Admiral that it'd either be 4-1 guilty or 3-2 not guilty, with Adama on the not guilty end either way. "Not Guilty is not the same as Innocent" was a great way to sum up his position, but you can tell Roslin is seriously pissed.
Lampkin's blue suit was weird. Somewhat pimp-like, complete with the cane which was apparently an affectation. Was that for court, or somehow to win Lee over? Either way, this guy was unbelievably cool, and I hope this isn't the last we see of him.
Baltar really had the crazy eyes (pictured) working for him early on as he vehemently opposed a mistrial. But then after I had been feeling sympathetic for him of late, he instantly turns back into a cocky jackass the instant he gets out of the courtroom. Awesome. As I suspected last week, Keegan Connor Tracy reappears. She's taking Baltar off "to his new life." I hope she's a major character next season, because she's a pretty good actress (and also I think she's really hot). And certainly they wouldn't tease us with the Baltar as a religious icon hints they've been throwing out for a while.
With the trial wrapped up and the episode not close to over, the instant Adama gives the order to jump to the nebula, you had to know it was going to be a disaster, most likely in the form of a cylon attack. The attack happens, but not before everything goes completely crazy. The power goes out, and then we get a series of unexpected plot developments.
Earlier in the episode, we learned that Roslin, Athena, and Six are all having the same hallucinations involving Hera at the same time. But we see Six go back to hallucination-land, this time without Athena or Roslin in the vision. I guess they could be seeing it, but as far as we know it was just Six. She, Baltar, and Hera look like they meet the final five, though once again we don't see their faces. The song turns out to be "All Along the Watchtower," which is nuts (but cover version that played over the last few minutes was pretty awesome). Tigh, Galen (who I don't remember hearing the music last week, but I might've just missed that), Tory, and Anders seem to think the music means they're cylons (though I think that might be too easy). Even if he is one, Tigh still hates the toasters, so he convinces everyone to go do their jobs.
And just when I think we're about to get into battle, we get the big reveal. It would've been silly to kill one of your best characters off for good, so I was fully expecting Starbuck back. I'm glad that her return is more than a little mysterious though. I guess that stormy thing Starbuck dove down into is supposed to be a wormhole that lead her to Earth? Or she's a cylon and died and resurrected and is going to feed them a wormhole story. Or, and ooh, this one just popped into my head, the cylons used the eggs they harvested from her back on Caprica to build a new model based on Starbuck. Well I'm not good with theories, but anyway this is exciting.
The wait until 2008, or until the between-seasons movie if that happens, will be brutal. They've been billing this as the best show on television, and while I'm not sure about that, it's episodes like this that keep those claims from being outrageous.
Fox's preview for On the Lot actually looked kinda interesting. But I wonder how similar it'll be to Acceptable TV.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Sunday Night TV
Good night of TV, which is now pretty standard for Sundays. Highlight for spoilers:
- The Simpsons: I actually thought the gag was going to be that Prof. Frink's time machine prevented Homer from inventing the condiment pen. Pat Summerall's Smut Yuks sounds like a hilarious joke book. "What the... I've been writing creepy letters to that?" Ok episode, nothing special.
- King of the Hill: I usually love the Bill-centric episodes. They always find the right balance of pathetic and heartwarming. But this one just fell a little short on the funny.
- Family Guy: MS = Monkey Scrotum? A few of the jokes really worked this week, and I sort of liked the Stewie tanning storyline. The Fran Drescher/Gremlins joke started out lame but the head in the microwave killed me. And the Britney Spears bad mother joke, and the Three's Company bit were both classic Family Guy. And "whoever can swallow the most Tylenol PM wins!" was excellent. Best episode in a while.
- American Dad: The Da Vinci Code parody was ok, though the Jenga thing was weak. Arrested Development did the exact same "set a scene in a Burger King to cover production costs" joke, only much funnier. But the wikipedia joke at the end was excellent. For the first time in a while, though, I liked the night's Family Guy better than American Dad.
- Extras: De Niro was weird in that he didn't make fun of himself the way everyone else has. But this one, while still funny, was more about story, a nice moment at the end with Maggie. I really hope this isn't the end of the show, because it's absolutely hilarious.
- Battlestar Galactica: The intro kinda confused me at first. One of the dangers of the Tivo is that you see something weird and rewind it rather than waiting to see if it explains itself. Adama having waking hallucinations though means he's a cylon, obviously. Apollo seems like a ridiculously random choice to head a legal committee. But man, "I don't think she ever loved you"? Ouch. But it seems like it prompted him to grow some balls and at least address the tension with the President.
Not long after Studio 60 does the lame sitcom "trapped on a roof" thing, BSG gets the Chief and Cally stuck in a leaky airlock. More exciting this way, but the exact same device.
And again with the bonus scene, which just irritates me. Is it in continuity or not? I have no idea.
Monday, February 12, 2007
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.
