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.