Monday Night TV

I always get wordy with Prison Break because there's always so much going on, even when it's not all that interesting. So sorry for the lengthy writeup. Highlight for spoilers:

• Prison Break: Kellerman testifies to framing Burrows and to being under orders to kill Sara. The whole "nobody will believe me, they erased any record that I ever existed" thing flew out the window, and the judge vaguely references corroborating documents (that as far as I know never previously existed) in the process of dismissing charges against Sara and Burrows and arresting Kellerman. Much later, Kellerman's in prisoner transport, and you know that's not going to go smoothly. The show continues to cop out though, because when two masked guys bust open the transport van and shoot inside, they zoom out and don't show us Kellerman get shot. So now we're pretty sure they just shot the anonymous guard and abducted Kellerman.
  
  
  
  Sucre takes off against doctor's orders. Bellick and T-Bag are stuck in the same prison, and Maricruz's location is stuck in there with them. And then that's it for all those characters in this episode.
  
  Michael uses himself as a bargaining chip to some marina mobster guy, on a boat full of rather attractive women in bikinis. Arriving at Mahone's designated location, Michael hides the money just as Kim shows up, and Mahone plans to frame Schofield and Burrows for the murder he's about to commit, then take the money and the boat and live happily ever after with that crazy lady from Rescue Me. But plans like that never work out, and Kim shows up with some muscle, giving our heroes enough time to escape. Schofield's slick plan with the mobster was to hide a bunch of drugs on the boat and call in a tip to screw over Mahone.
  
  Sara makes it down to Panama and lets them know about Kellerman and the charges. They enjoy an emotional moment of celebration, but their relief is all too brief, because Kim shows up to hold them at gun point. And by the rules of Prison Break, that means their escape is guaranteed. Which is assured when Sarah shoots him in the gut. So now they're fleeing Panamanian cops for that murder, and they left all the money in the river, which has got to suck. Michael and Sara share a brief "I love you" moment before he takes the blame for her. So Michael, Bellick, Mahone, and T-Bag all appear to be stuck in Panamanian jail... is next season going to be Panamanian Prison Break?
  
  But they take Michael and Mahone to a place with "sona" on the door, which the evil old guy mentioned earlier in this episode as important sounding, so we're looking at some crazy conspiracy stuff. The evil old guy is revealed to be some kind of general, and his assistant says "you know he's gonna break out, it's in his blood," and evil old general says "that's exactly what we want him to do." And the season ends with Michael walking through a creepy looking prison hallway and out into a rainy area that sounds like a gladiator arena. Huh? TV Squad had an article marked as spoilery for the third season about it being all weird, which I won't be reading probably ever because I'm spoiler-paranoid, but now the potential weirdness makes sense. I have no idea where they're going with this, and I'll keep watching next year, but I can't say I'm particularly excited to find out.


• The Riches: Wow, the "Previously on The Riches..." segment was like 20 minutes long. We pick up Cael and Tammy in the diner with Dale on their tail. Cael turns out to not be the world's biggest moron, and realizes she's setting him up. He's smooth though and avoids Dale, but it looks like the crazy pregnant lady from the pilot (whose name might be Ginny?) is following him.
  
  The stoner guitar guy from last week is conveniently in Di Di's English class. If you couldn't tell that he's a rebel last week from his guitar playing, because he wears a jacket over his school uniform. And Cael's ability to steal stuff looks like it'll make him instantly popular at rich buffer school.
  
  Nina the neighbor remains awesome, mentioning to Wayne in passing that her husband hasn't had sex with her in five years before fondling the extremely phallic handle of her mug. And explains how she doesn't have a drug problem because they're prescription pills, and how her neighbors like animal porn, eat broccoli, and run off with 17 year olds. Then lights up a joint. I think she's still billed as a guest star, but I really hope she's always on, cause she's hilarious.
  
  
  
  Wayne's picked up on Dahlia's drug problem, though, and that's leading to more than a little tension. Sounds like she started using because she hated Wayne for getting her sent to prison.
  
  This show really shines when Wayne has to make shit up. "I mean, we are completely against anyone blowing up. Even a little bit." "When I'm nervous, I refer to myself in the third person."
  
  So the Riches are Jewish? I have no idea why Dahlia tilted her cross necklace crooked and called it an "x" rather than just saying it was a "t," but the bumbling "x marks the Jew" speech was amusingly awkward. And Doug had an ex-wife who's hot for alimony? Complications galore.
  
  They tackle the ex-wife issue this week, running an alpaca-based con against the ex's crooked lawyer. It works out pretty smoothly, but of course, Wayne still manages to get impulsive and wanders into the ex-wife's house. It sounds like Doug was a huge asshole, holding out on his wife long enough for her to lose her house and their kids to end up in a homeless shelter. It's a really good scene though where Wayne acts as the lawyer and pretends to have Doug on the phone, but he's really talking to Dahlia as they're able to make up.
  
  Hey speaking of huge assholes, Panetta's at the same party as the Malloys, wanders into the bathroom, sees Dahlia sneaking some pills, and gropes her. That was a totally weird scene.

Still to watch: Nothing.

The Shield kicks off tomorrow, plus FX ran a cool looking promo for Rescue Me this summer.

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Monday Night TV

As a TV and internet addict, I'm a big fan of electricity. Except when I don't have any. I got home around 9:30, ready to tonight's offerings, only to discover that the power was out. And it stayed out until this morning. A few years ago this would've meant I missed my favorite shows, but things are pretty awesome these days. Highlight for spoilers:

• Prison Break: It looks like I recorded the first 10 minutes or so before the power died, but Fox is kind enough to put the episode online here.
  
  
  
  Is there some tradition about military men killing themselves in dress uniform, or did everyone just really like that part of A Few Good Men? Not that it was poorly acted, but I felt like the scene with Kellerman and his sister after the gun jammed lacked emotional weight because we've seen her for all of a minute prior to this. And then he shows up at Sara's trial, but I have no idea how he is a "very credible witness," though, since Kim and friends supposedly deleted all the evidence that he ever worked for them. I like that Sara's defense lawyer is that guy who, although he's had a long and successful acting career, I will always think of as Davis Lynch from Wings and Diane's fake boyfriend who turned out to be gay on the last episode of Cheers ("Muffin, come back!").
  
  A recurring theme in this show that holding someone at gunpoint almost guarantees their escape. It happened with Bellick holding T-Bag, and Linc holding Mahone. Related to the latter, I'm not sure I like the idea that Schofield and Linc aren't capable of killing a man. I understand the idea of portraying them as moral and all that, but I think that if you're fighting for your life long enough, you ought to become willing to take the lives of those who would take yours. Between the brothers not killing folks when they had the chance, C-Note's suicide a couple episodes back, and Kellerman's suicide, I feel like the show is wussing out a lot lately. Cutting away when something exciting is about to happen, only to cut back later and show that it didn't... you can only do that so many times before it gets irritating.


• Everybody Hates Chris: The CW is also friendly and put this episode up on their video site.
  
  I had been souring a bit on the show lately, but I really liked some of the father/son moments. Rochelle's part this week was nice, too. She can be quite the bitch on occasion, but this week was really looking out for Tanya and even Jackee's character. I don't find Monk particularly funny though, and I wish they'd go back to Antonio Fargas as Chris' boss. The two highlights for me were Julius' "cool" scenes and the part where Chris' love interest takes over the narration and instantly asks out the random other guy.

The Riches gets repeated on FX tonight at midnight, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report ran this afternoon (which I watch, but would find impossible to review... I don't know how TV Squad's Annie does it)... so I will end up not missing anything. Hooray for the internets!

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Monday Night TV

Another rerun-heavy week, with basically nothing on tomorrow, but some shows of note tonight. Highlight for spoilers:

• Prison Break We pick up the action at el aeropuerto, where Sucre and Bellick chase T-Bag and his recently recovered bag o' cash. When T-Bag gets away, Bellick uses the fact that he's apparently kidnapped Maricruz to compel Sucre to keep helping him. Bellick sounds especially stupid this week, threatening a Mexican guy in Mexico by pretending to be INS, and using the line "your sweet little plum is going to dry up like a raisin." T-Bag uses his escape to apparently nail and then murder a prostitute.
  
  Linc and Schofield are about to board their freighter, with Michael inviting Sara long. She notices a tail though, and rather than tell Michael, who'd miss his ship out, Sara takes one for the team and says she's already on board. It also seems like she's had time while on the run from the law to get her hair done and do a nice job applying her makeup, as she's suddenly looking especially hot.
  
  C-Note gets offered a walk plus witness protection for his whole family in exchange for testifying against Mahone, and obviously takes it. I think this might actually be the end of his story, since he's probably the most deserving of a happy ending.
  
  Mahone, meanwhile, is having an A Beautiful Mind moment, looking all crazy (which I'm sure is playing right into the hands of the guys working with C-Note to bury him). Schofield's plan is apparently to get to a yacht, which Mahone's crazy pattern recognition, plus a little research, is able to pick up on. He posts a message on that finch webpage about T-Bag being in Panama (where he's showing a preference for a certain type in prostitutes), and Michael falls for the bait, which is likely going to be the focus of next week's episode.
  
  Conspiracy-wise, Agent Kim meets with the mysterious bald old guy we keep seeing in a boat, since it was apparently a blind spot from satellites, but it looked just like the boat where they killed Fredo in The Godfather Part II. So I was expecting old bald guy to kiss him and say "You broke my heart, Kim!" then pop him twice in the head. But instead, it was vague conspiracy talk. Yawn.
  
  Another decent episode, not as good as last week, but still pretty entertaining. I still keep wondering how the show can possibly last through a third season, since it seems to be going to great lengths to stretch things out already. But who knows.



• The Riches: I'm still not clear as to whether Eddie Izzard's character is actually supposed to be born into the traveler lifestyle, or some kind of outsider who married his way in... or if he's even supposed to be American. But the voiceover in the previously is a lot more American-accented, so he probably is. They're both good actors, but why they got two Brits to play Americans in the South is beyond me. But if you can get past the accents, there's a lot to like.
  
  In the opening scene, Dahlia makes Wayne promise not to answer Doug's phone, so that left us absolutely sure he would answer that phone at some point.
  
  The action starts up with the family trying to come up with details about the family so they can keep up their cover. The information gathering out of the computer was kinda cool. The amount you could find out about a person from that is pretty disturbing, so be careful with your laptops. I wouldn't want some nefarious type knowing... uh... the disturbing amount of TV I watch?
  
  Wayne trying on Rich's clothes was amusing. I flashed to that Arrested Development episode where Michael kept looking like a kid around Sally Sitwell, and was forced to wear an oversized jacket to have lunch at that club. And his interview was awesome. "Napoleon used to say 'I know he's a brilliant general, but is he lucky?' He used to say it in French." Great line.
  
  We get a little more insight into the kids this episode. Apparently the teenage son, Cael (IMDB spells it Cael, but it sounds like "Cal"), has a girlfriend back in the traveler camp. Phone calls to her will be a problem at some point. And it's kinda cool that the neighbors think that they have a second daughter.
  
  Dahlia's cookie-microwaving attempt to be all WASP housewife-y to score more pills was pretty amusing. Nothing says classy like taking a swig of cough syrup and stashing the bottle back in your fancy handbag. Or pimping out your teenage daughter so you can steal your RV out of an impound lot (and since the actress who plays Di Di is in her 20's, I don't feel creepy for saying she's totally hot... also I finally realized where I recognized her from - a recent episode of Psych).
  
  Things go pretty well for the family this episode, with Wayne getting the job from Mitch Huntzberger (I forgot his name here) and all that, but I get the feeling they're about to get ugly. The phone Wayne wasn't supposed to answer, which as expected he does pick up at the end, leaves things off on a somewhat ominous note.
  
  Some more random thoughts:
  
  Sweet Dee from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia shows up as the bitchy neighbor, which was pretty awesome just cause I like her, and it was made much more awesome by the fact that her arm fell off in the middle of an argument. I did not see that coming. I hope she's a regular.
  
  The opening credits are pretty trippy, huh? I took a look at the official website, and it's similarly weird. But cool.
  
  Are security guards allowed to actually dress that much like real cops?
  
  Nothing endears you to a character quite like having him drag a pregnant chick out of a car, throw her to the ground, and when a guy comes to her aid, hit him with a tire iron. I'm enjoying all of Dale's scenes.
  
  My issue with the pilot was that I sorta expected a mix of drama and comedy (I hate the word "dramedy" though I guess it applies), but it was fairly laugh-free. This episode was excellent though. I'm almost certainly in for the long haul with this show.

On the Tivo: Everybody Hates Chris.

FX has got The Shield promos coming pretty much non-stop, and I'm excited. My one complaint with all FX shows (including The Shield and The Riches) is that they run over every week by a random number of minutes between 1 and 5, and I usually only get the first minute over recorded. This means if I watch something else at 10, I try to record the 11:00 rerun of the FX show. And sometimes the recording starts with the ending of the episode I'm about to start, which sucks. It's not a problem for now, since I don't watch anything Monday at 10, but it's annoying. I had to record the 11:00 rerun tonight just to catch the end of the episode.

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Monday Night TV

I might give The Black Donnellys a second shot, but for now just these two from the primetime lineup, plus some online stuff. Highlight for spoilers:

• Prison Break: Hey cool, the tape reveal wasn't entirely disappointing. The Prez was nailing her brother, in a kinda nifty but out of left field plot twist. Their conversation was pretty creepy. And she very quickly caves to Schofield, which is better than dragging it out for three episodes, but still kinda odd. Anyway, there's some big reveal of a folder marked "SONA," and I don't know if I'm supposed to know what that means. But after a little pressure from Kim, the President quits rather than pardoning anyone, and the whole plan goes to shit.
  
  Elsewhere, C-note ends up not dying, in what seemed like a non-dramatic turn of events. Mahone pulls a rather slick move letting Sarah steal his gun (sans ammo) so she can be followed to Schofield. And T-bag's attempt to get his cash that he checked like a moron went horribly awry, while Belick and Sucre might join together to get that cash back. The secondary character stuff was pretty lame, but the Schofield-centric stuff was as good as Prison Break's been all season.



• Heroes: Hiro's labeled a cheat so he's having trouble getting in to see Linderman. But conveniently, Nathan Petrelli, who's been working with the Feds all along, is also looking for Linderman, so they go in together. Hiro heads in to steal the sword, which goes awesomely bad until Ando shows up to save the day. They grab the sword and teleport the hell out, but accidentally end up in New York after the bomb. Whoops. Jessica shows up to take out Nate and the feds, but only takes out the unimportant actors before Nikki takes over and tells Nathan whats going on. With Nathan getting ready to shoot him, Linderman gives a nice long speech about the nature of good men or whatever. As I think we all suspected, Linderman knows just about everything about all the powered people, and saves his life with information and what sounds like promises of the Vice Presidency in two years.
  
  Claire and the Hatian are on the run. She doesn't appreciate the magnitude of what her father did for her, but what else would you expect from a teenage girl? It sounded like the Hatian said "Marseille" on the phone, but my French is a little rusty (in the sense that I've never spoken a word of it). But Claire ditches the Hatian in the airport, apparently unhappy at the idea of fleeing the country and not being involved in the storyline at all. So she goes to find Peter, but instead finds her no-longer-evil-seeming grandmother.
  
  Bennett remembers nothing, and Eric Roberts is seeming especially evil, while his new lackey Missy Peregrym is looking especially hot, especially in her little skirt when she shows up at Bennett's place, and being all the bad girl and whatnot. Isaac's understandably pissed at just having shot the woman he loves, Missy Peregrym's shape shifting powers save him from the cops, but ends up painting what looks like his own death. So kicking the junk hasn't given Isaac much happiness, I'm thinking he's probably headed back to it. Back at Casa de Bennett, he's told his wife, and is happy to come home to be able to confess to her, but it turns out to be Missy Peregrym (I still don't know her character's name) doing the shape shifting bit again. So Bennett is quite scrwewed, and they'll probably kill his wife.
  
  Sylar continues to telegraph his creepiness to Mohinder, who catches on and drugs him. Mohinder's looking to do a little experimenting first, then shoot him, but Sylar's way too powerful. The episode ends with a confrontation between Peter and Sylar, something my friends and I have been discussing for a while. Will Peter absorb all of Sylar's powers at once? Will the super hearing be crippling to him the way it was to Sylar at first? Will Peter's invisibility and super healing, which Sylar can't get without eating his brain, be the deciding factor? It should be exciting. But I don't watch the promos, so I really don't know what to expect. Speaking of promos...
  
  NBC completely sucks with their promos. Great, Spider-man 3 footage coming up, we get it. But there is no god damn reason to show clips from later in the episode in the last frame of the commercial break right before the show starts back up, meaning its impossible to avoid. They first show a clip of Simone standing up and saying "are you gonna shoot me again?" Given that Missy Peregrym is on her way there, I assumed it was her as a shape shifter, and hey, thanks for ruining that. Then the show the back of Linderman's head, which looked eerily like Malcolm McDowell, who doesn't appear until the absolute end of the episode. The second one wasn't so bad of a reveal, but still... some of us want to be surprised by the surprises!



• Andy Barker, PI: Episodes available online here. Minor spoilers for the first two episodes: So as the promos suggest, Andy Barker, incredibly boring accountant, shows up at his new office to find that it used to belong to a private eye, and a client shows up looking for an investigator. The plots, at least in the first two episodes, are straight out of cheesy 70s cop/detective shows. And they're surprisingly engaging. Joining Andy are the owner of a video store (Tony Hale - Arrested Development's Buster) who provides a lot of jokes with his movie snobbery, an Afghani restauranteur who became fircely pro-American after 9/11 to keep business, and the geriatric former occupant of Andy's office, who is easily the funniest character. He uses all the classic noir detective slang and basically seems stuck in the 40s, to amusing effect.
  
  Overall the show isn't great. Andy Richter Controls the Universe is one of my favorite shows ever, and this isn't nearly as good. But it's fairly funny and the stories so far are decent. The weak support NBC's giving it means it's doomed to failure, though. But good for them for putting the series up online for fans to enjoy. I'd say it's worth checking out if you're an Andy Richter fan, or if you liked those old cop shows.

On the Tivo: Black Donnellys, not sure I'm watching it.

I'm still upset at the NBC promos. Oh well. The first of many Veronica Mars-less Tuesdays tomorrow.

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Monday Night TV

Been looking forward to Heroes a lot since last week, so right to it:

• Prison Break: So... we don't get to hear the tape? Bastards. And they leave us with the cliffhanger with C-Note hanging himself. The show would let him die, but I think they might also let the rope break. That it's not predictable is one of the only things it has going for it.
  
  I don't get why they take the tape to a judge or blackmail rather than to the media. No matter how powerful the super secret people are, a massive swell of public opinion would lead to an impeachment, and the next prez would pretty much have to pardon Lincoln.


• Heroes: So Eric Roberts, in an office that really kinda resembles Arvin Sloane's from the old SD6, recruits Bennett to join his... whatever it is. And Sulu is one of them, as is Dr. InvisiWho, who was Bennett's original partner. And he's ordered to kill him, which obviously doesn't go quite right, given that he's still alive in the present. But given how his group seems to handle things, it's definitely now apparent that they're evil. Bennett seems to want to put his family first, though, so he's not entirely evil.
  
  In the present, all the action is in the hostage crisis. I might've missed something last week, but I have no idea where the Wireless chick is in all this. Though I guess her powers might not be all that useful. Anyway, Nuclear Ted goes nuts, so Parkman has to conspire with Bennett to
  keep him calm, but Eric Roberts shows up and screws it all up. Ted goes Nuclear, and in a scene reminiscent of the end of X3, Claire gives him a tranquilizer, comes out looking like Linda Blair from The Exorcist, thereby exposing her powers to Eric Roberts. So Bennett blames the Haitian and sends Claire and the Haitian off to hide, gets himself shot and his memory wiped to they won't blame him. Good times. This leaves Parkman with "the company," so he's kinda screwed. And Nuclear Ted will apparently be under constant sedation.
  
  Was that Missy Peregrym (sfw) as Bennett's next partner? She's amazingly hot, that'll be a great addition to the cast.


• The Black Donnellys: So, as I mentioned when I watched the first 2/3 of the pilot online, I thought that was ok. But the last 20 minutes lost me. Occasionally in a Roger Ebert review, he'll remark how way, way, way too many movies spend the whole movie building up tension, and then when things could get interesting, they just have a shootout and end it. I felt like Tommy is the smart one, but he's in a corner so he's going to compromise his morals, make some kind of deal with the devil to save his brothers. But bang, bang, bang, the end. Yawn. I'm 50/50 on trying out the second episode.

On the Tivo: Everybody Hates Chris.

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Monday Night TV

Highlight for spoilers:

• Prison Break: Interesting to see the warden back, though I'm not sure I buy that quick a turnaround. I had no idea Ixtapa was in Zihuatanejo (or possibly the other way around), probably a Shawshank Redemption reference that fanboys spotted a year go. The smoking doctor... I mean, I'm sure free clinics are crappy, but that seemed over the top. But you do feel sympathetic for C-Note. But on the topic of sympathy, I didn't really need that T-Bag flashback sequence. I like him better as just crazy with no real explanation. Sometimes the bad guys are better off bad. Sarah screwing over Kellerman was kinda funny. But how telegraphed was the warden letting Schofield out of the deal? Really I liked this one. I've mostly just been sticking with it because the first season was good and I wanted to see it end, but this was a pretty exciting episode.

• Heroes: Putting a scene before the previouslies was kinda cool. And I know that wireless actress from something. But there's so much crossover, I have no idea how to compose my thoughts in any way other than a random list:

• I've enjoyed the "maybe Claire's dad is evil, maybe he isn't" thing, and him giving Isaac a gun is great in that it works both ways (kill him cause he's a good guy or kill him to save the world?).
• 
  
• Sylar was doing a great job selling Mohinder on how helpful he was, but the creepy "I can feel them"/destiny speech was a pretty bad idea on that front. And I have no idea how he's supposed to cover the fact that every powered person they meet gets killed by Sylar.
• 
  
• Holy crap, when Peter gets cornered he turns into Superman.
• 
  
• I had no idea Parkman's wife was played by an Aussie actress, but the second she got upset her accent became obvious.
• 
  
• Has Stan Lee ever had a cameo that wasn't "hey, look at me!"
• 
  
• But that went from lame to awesome in a heartbeat, with Parkman, Nuke-boy, and wireless chick showing up at the Bennett's, and the confrontation between Isaac and Peter.

• Studio 60: When Matt said Samuel Taylor Coleridge I thought Rime of the Ancient Mariner was his most famous. "Water, water, everywhere but not a drop to drink"? That's pretty famous. And Jordan's practice baby was totally ripped off of Newsradio, when Joe gave Lisa an electric infant as a wedding present. "When you're practicing nursing, don't put it on high." As usual, the best moments come when Timothy Busfield is on screen... the baby beheading was hilarious. Also, aren't all paramecia single-celled?
  
  
  At first I was weirded out at Matt's reaction to the concept of guys discussing how they wanted to have sex with Harriet, cause that's just how guys tend to operate. It was obviously inappropriate to do at work especially in front of a woman, but not shockingly so. But then yeah, the church-themed debauchery was pretty wrong.
  
  Sounds like this might be it for Studio 60. Not a great ending point, not a great show. If they've got anymore episodes in the can, I hope they show up over the summer or online or something. As frustrating as it's been, I still keep feeling like there's something there.
  

On the Tivo: Everybody Hates Chris.

Wow, Blades of Glory. That looks awful and hilarious.

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Last Night's TV

I'm loving Heroes more and more, and caring less and less about the shows I watch before and after. Spoilertastic beyond this point (highlight to read):

• Prison Break: Oh, at least we're headed somewhere. I'm glad Bellick's out of prison, cause that storyline was headed nowhere. Sucks to lose Haywire, but I think that had to happen, both because it was silly that the stupidest of the bunch had lasted longer than a lot of the brighter ones, and because it gives us another excuse to show how evil Mahone is. Which we have to see at least once per episode.

• Heroes: The NCC-1701 license plate on Hiro's dad's car was a nice touch. But mostly I didn't care for the Hiro storyline. Though I guess I'd been wondering what his friends and family were thinking when he took off for New York at random. And how he could afford to. So that explained that. And I still don't care that much about JessNikka and her family. But the Sylar action was quite cool, and Invisible Dr. Who is a great addition to the cast. The big reveal at the end (which was promoted in a creepy way with the high school cheerleader "Who's your daddy?" thing) was actually kind of predictable, but it makes sense. The only other candidate was Linderman.
  

• Studio 60: It's becoming more and more romantic comedy, as they randomly pair off characters. I had thought there was some real chemistry between Darius and Lucy, but I guess the black guy/white girl romance thing still freaks out the networks. So they stick her with Tom, and Danny and Jordan and Matt and Harriett. If the show somehow gets renewed (doubtful), they can start breaking them up and swapping around. Matt and Lucy, Danny and Harriett, Matt and Jordan, Lucy and Jordan (for sweeps).

Still parked on the Tivo: Everybody Hates Chris.

Studio 60 will be taking a break in March to make room for The Black Donnellys, which seems to be an Irish family/organized crime drama. I'm guessing it was greenlit somewhere around the time The Departed started getting buzz.

Also at that time, 30 Rock will be off for a bit for Andy Barker, PI to air 5 episodes. This one involves Andy Richter as an accountant who rents office space that used to belong to a private eye. When clients come in asking for investigative work, Andy decides it sounds like fun and just goes along with it. Sounds like a fun premise. If Andy Richter Controls the Universe is any indicator, Andy Barker will be awesome, watched by no one, shuffled around in the schedule enough that even hardcore fans don't know when it's on, and finally canceled.

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