TV Catch-up

The cable's out, so I might miss all the Thursday night stuff. Hopefully between network websites and other people's Tivos, I can catch up eventually. But that did free up time to catch up on Wednesday stuff. Highlight for spoilers:

• Jericho: That trading post town at the fairgrounds had the feel of those Fallout video games. The guys checking guns at the gate, especially. So apparently salt is worth a ton, so the snooty rich teenager is again rich. They've also teamed up with a neighboring town to trade salt for parts to make windmills. And the new girl living with Hawkins is just trying to find the "package", which I assume is a bomb he was supposed to set off. Dull episode.


• Friday Night Lights: Geez, so much happens on this show. I love it:
  
  • Buddy Garrity as Dupree/Magnum P.I. is pretty hilarious.
  • Riggins' new neighbor is kinda cute, but her kid is irritatingly cute. I can't imagine a kid that old in Texas (or Tennessee) not knowing how to throw a spiral, though... but I guess that's shorthand for "lacking a father figure."
    
  • Landry's toast was excellent.
    
  • Waverly's whole "where have you been?" introduction just made me assume she'd been knocked up, but it seems like she's got a mental health issue. Bipolar, probably. And now she's off her meds, and kinda losing it.
    
  • Tyra's mom, on the other hand, has already lost it.
    
  • Lyla doesn't react too well to her parents' fighting, nor to Street's tattoo girl.
  • And some nice moments between Tyra and Tami, and Buddy and the Coach there at the end.
  
  
• Knights of Prosperity: Ok, the Oswald Montecristo video was quite amusing. "K-E-E-S-I-N-G" and the fantasy sequence about Kelly Ripa and their inexplicably british kids were both pretty good too. I wouldn't rob Kelly Ripa though. Lenny Kravitz was a better choice. I can see the whole ditching Mick Jagger and looking for someone else to rob really improving the show. This may have been the best episode yet.
  

On the Tivo: TCM stuff. I missed all the Thursday stuff, which I'll have to hunt down.

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TV Catchup

Finishing up Wednesday stuff, highlight for spoilers:

• Friday Night Lights: Alright Julie coming right out and asking for sex all matter-of-factly was quite a shock. Matt's reaction was extremely appropriate, though. All their scenes were cute and everything, but I feel like a pansy for liking them. So enough about that. As usual, the best stuff came from the Taylors, who are really well written and both actors play it perfectly.
  
  Buddy nailed Tyra's mom, felt guilty about it, fired her, and then she showed up outside his church and hit him a bunch. Riggins was all buddy-buddy with his dad, til pops stole a camera from the team, then he went on a bender and got his ass kicked. Not much to the story, but it gets us through the falling out between them, which could've dragged on for way too long, but thankfully didn't. And in what seems to be the theme for last night's TV, a tattoo artist shows up to connect with one of our characters. In this case, Street, who's trying out for quad rugby.
  
  The side stories weren't too great, but the Taylor family carried the episode. I really hope this show lasts, though it's being thrown to the American Idol wolves for the rest of sweeps, which demonstrates the lack of confidence NBC has in it at this point. But if it does get canceled, I just hope they let the production team know ahead of time and let them finish out the season, and wrap things up in a satisfying way.
  

• Knights of Prosperity: Alright, they sucked me back in. The montage with them playing around in Mick's apartment (with a few nice callbacks to the pilot) was funny, as was the portable toilet gag. And Maz Jobrani had a lot of funny moments this episode. Good stuff.

Tivo: Empty, except for more TCM stuff.

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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

After finishing up with Wednesday stuff, I dozed off early and haven't seen a bit of Thursday TV. I'll catch up this afternoon, but for now (highlight to reveal spoilery stuff):

• Friday Night Lights: So we start off the episode with a trick play for a touchdown, which seems to have been run in the 4th quarter of a playoff game that was already wrapped up. Hopefully, that's not the case, cause that's gererally pretty un-cool. But with Smash throwing a TD pass, the local media start asking questions about quarterbacks and race, which seems to be the excuse Mac was looking for to put his foot in his mouth. This starts a whole lot of unrest with the team and the school, eventually resulting in the black players walking out of practice. You have to feel bad for the coach and his wife, because they both really seemed to do everything right as far as handling it, but the way they'd hinted at racial tension since the pilot, it was a powder keg and Mac comments were the match.
  
  I like that Street finally made it back to school, and that it was very difficult. And while I also dig the quad rugby storyline, I don't think giving up on school that quickly really fits with his character. Sure, he's competitive and wants to play the game, but he's also not a quitter. I also loved the powder puff subplot. Coach Taylor's sudden interest in the game, getting to coach his daughter a little, almost charging onto the field to protest a call... good times. It also gave Landry some excellent comic relief scenes, and some new opportunities to show what a perv Lyla's father is.
• Knights of Prosperity: So Gary has like 7 illegitimate children by all different women and he's pretty much never met any of them. They say a sitcom has to have likable characters to succeed, so I guess they're not even trying. But I did like the episode mostly, even though the "unplugging while deleting" thing seemed really stupid, especially after they'd earlier said something about movie hacking being stupidly unrealistic. But computer geekiness aside, there were some solid jokes in here, and Gary's my favorite character so I was glad to see the focus on him. I was debating dropping it, but now I think I'll probably stick with the show until it gets cancelled, which I have to assume will be soon.

Still Parked on the Tivo: Smallville, The Office, My Name is Earl, Scrubs, 30 Rock, The Sarah Silverman Program.

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