Tuesday Night TV

The Shield and some catching up from Monday will come a little later. But first, the series finale of Gilmore Girls and what, sadly, is the second to last Veronica Mars ever after the jump. But first, a really awesome new Bruce Campbell Old Spice ad.

Gilmore Girls: Early in the season finale, it becomes apparent, due to Rory's awesome new job, that the graduation reenactment as planned won't go off, and the town is pissed. So Rory and Lorelai try to calm them with an impromptu version in the diner, using a menu as a prop. Babbette's reaction, "it's not how I imagined it," nicely captured most Gilmore Girls fans' reactions to the final season without creator Amy Sherman-Palladino.


But for a series finale, this wasn't a fine episode. This isn't a show based on plot twists or anything, so just ending with a bunch of nice moments between characters seemed appropriate.

Veronica Mars: Veronica and Piz are all luvy-duvy, which kinda makes me want to puke. Similarly, Logan and Parker are doing the happy couple thing. Sweet was fine on Gilmore Girls, but that's not the Veronica Mars I love.

Piz lands a big interview with a Hearst student named Apollo Bukenya who wrote a book about his experiences as a boy soldier, obviously based on Ishmael Beah. They mention early on that he'd be appearing on Oprah, and I instantly thought he was a fraud. But they took us on the whole "long lost father" detour, long enough to convince me I was wrong, then blindside me with the fact that I was right, then blindside me again. There's the Veronica Mars I was looking for..

Elsewhere:

• Veronica's taking her PI exam, I guess so that she has some protection if she gets sued while working a case. She gets a 95, and is ready to gloat about beating the old man's score, but Keith got himself a 97 back in the day.
• Keith is dealing with a series of home burglaries in the 09er neighborhoods. Pressure's on from the rich folks to get it resolved before the elections. Signs point to the Fitzpatricks, a particular security company, and possibly Vinnie Van Lowe's collusion. Vinnie also has a hilarious campaign ad.
• Mac and Max are seriously into each other, but his commitment to his cheating business at the expense of his classes has Mac worried.
• Logan and Dick are planning a surf vacation to South America. The first snag comes in the form of Parker not wanting to be apart from him all summer, but Logan ends up inviting her (a decision he immediately regrets). Snag #2 comes when Big Dick shows back up and wants to spend the summer with Dick before he heads off to jail.
• Inspired by the Apollo story, Wallace signs up to spend his summer in Africa.
• Piz passes on a summer internship with Pitchfork media so he can be with Veronica, who then ends up getting her FBI internship in Virginia. Ouch.

After the episode, we get very close to an old fashioned "If you'd like to learn more about [this week's topic], visit your local library!", but instead of the library, it's the Invisible Children website. Next week: a two hour season (and apparently series) finale.

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Tuesday Night TV

While feeling excited that Veronica Mars is in good shape for next year, I caught up on The Riches, and then started in on Tuesday Night TV. When watching Gilmore Girls, I started getting the feeling that the commercial breaks were long, so I went back and checked the times. One was over 5 minutes, another was 4:40. Whatever happened to two minutes and two seconds, Chuck Woolery? My Tuesday night rundown after the jump...

The Riches: Wayne wants to be a partner at PanCo (with keys to the executive washroom... "I want to wipe my ass with a swan!"), and Hugh won't decide til the Malloys (or Riches) have him over for dinner. So the family's in a panic to throw a buffer dinner party.


Dahlia runs into Chunky K, her cell mate from prison who killed her husband, and even though she knows she should run away, she brings the friend home to show off the house. Wayne's obviously upset, but you can tell immediately how close they were. Chunky K's not having Dahlia's luck though, renting a fold-out couch that she has to fight two pit bulls (Britney and K-Fed) for, so Dahlia invites her to stay with them. Doug is freaking out though when she doesn't seem to leave and the dinner party's coming up soon. But Dahlia thinks its their duty to spread their good fortune around, and hires Chunky K to be their maid.

At the party, Chunky K's having trouble holding it together. She has a business idea breeding rabbits for meat, and Hugh laughs in her face. Sam doesn't help matters by coming downstairs in drag. Later, holding a knife to carve the pork (a nice choice for fake Jews), she seems to have flashes of killing her husband. Chunky K throws a fit, embarassing everyone, except apparently Hugh who ends up with his face buried in K's rather Chunky cleavage snorting what I assume is cocaine.

Thanks to K, Hugh agrees to make Doug a partner, but when presented with the papers by a noticeably high Hugh, Doug has second thoughts. Dahlia says it's because they're turning into buffers. Chunky K takes off with a big wad of cash, most of it given to her by Dahlia but some stolen. And in a strange development, we learn that Nina (the Riches' neighbor) has been in denial for years about her husband's homosexuality.

Gilmore Girls: Lorelai did give Logan her blessing, though they kinda glossed over it, as Gilmore Girls often does. Logan ends up proposing at a graduation party thrown by the grandparents, and Rory says she needs time to think. This is a show about girls, but can you imagine the hell Logan's going through while she weighs her options. She thinks about it for a while but decides she likes being at a point in her life where her options are open. Logan takes it hard and ends their relationship entirely.

Rory's graduating, and the entire town apparently wants to come, but tickets are in short supply, so somehow town outrage snowballs into planning an entire graduation reenactment in the Stars Hollow town square, but I guess that's not until next week.


Luke decides to reciprocate the sentiment from Lorelai's karaoke serenade and gets her a gift, but overhears Lorelai try to downplay the significance of it, and is completely crushed. They have an insane conversation when Rory was thinking about Logan's proposal that was one of those about-one-thing-but-really-about-another conversations that only happens on TV.

Veronica Mars: Desmond Fellows, played by Paul Rudd, is the guitarist from a band called My Pretty Pony, whose lead singer died ten years ago. He plans to play a benefit concert for Piz's radio station by playing along to old tapes of background vocals, but the tapes disappear, so Veronica's on the case.


Desmond's a hilariously (more on that later) drunk has-been, who Piz almost gets back into songwriting, but a news report comes on showing his old band, and he goes right back to Behind the Music downward spiral. So will they find the tapes, allowing him to continue to suckle at the teat of past glory, or somehow fix the guy and have him do a concert of original material and turn his life around?

Well it turns out to be both. They find the tapes, arrive at the show, but call Desmond from outside and tell him they won't get there in time, so he'll have to fill. He plays his new stuff and everyone loves it, for an atypically happy ending for Veronica Mars.

Still, Paul Rudd is possibly the best guest star the show's ever had. And they gave him a lot of great lines:

• He calls Piz "Fez," "Plax," "Pez," "Puz," and "La Paz."
• "Anyone ever tell you you look like a fiesty, young Barbara Eden?"
• "How old are you, Monica?"
• Veronica: "What are you taking pills for?" Desmond: "Eh, you know. Life."
• Piz: "Brought to you by Wrigley's Extra gum." Desmond: "Wait, their leftover gum?"
• "Oh yeah, all the old hit. You bet."
• The entire Beatles conversation with Keith, especially "I used to know a rent boy from Oslo who called himself that."

There was also a bunch of relationship crap. Mac broke up with Bronson, probably to be with Max. Veronica continues to push Piz away and then be inexplicably forward. Logan gets all jealous of Piz. And Deputy Leo is back, and again a deputy.

The one development that wasn't relationship-y but was really awesome, is that Keith's opponent in the Sheriff elections is going to be Vinnie Van Lowe. I'm excited about that one.

The Shield: Vic's on the warpath after learning that Guardo didn't kill Lem. He visits Antwon (Anthony Anderson, one of the many awesome recurring guest stars on the show) and threatens him with everything under the sun, but Antwon is mostly proud at how Vic thinks he's a supervillain.

Vendrell is trying to push the blame back on Guardo, saying that Hernan is lying, but he pushes a little too hard. And for the first time Vic and Gardocki are thinking Shane might have done it. They count 73 grenades that they picked up before Lem's death, and will check that count against the number in the bomb squad locker. But they find 73 in the locker, and are terribly relieved. But Vic gets a hold of the lab report and Kavanaugh's confession, and when he reads it, he gets a look on his face like he's been kicked in the nuts. Gardocki later informs Vendrell that they need to meet at the site of Lem's murder to walk through the lab report and check it. But Gardocki isn't coming.

Vendrell shows up and its just him and Vic, and Vic knows everything. Considering the matters at hand, the words they exchange are surprisingly calm. But Vic makes one thing crystal clear: if he ever sees Shane again, he will kill him.

Guardo's girlfriend who the strike team kidnapped comes in asking Dutch about Guardo, Salseda, and her time in "protective custody." So Dutch and Colette are now suspecting Vic in Guardo's disappearance. They get Vic into the interrogation room without telling him who's in there, but he covers his ass pretty well. Dutch and Claudette are still suspicious, but as usual they have no real evidence.

The strike team catches a case where a city counselor's daughter is murdered. Turns out she was trading sex for drugs, which would be ugly for the counselor (and the barn, since he controls the purse strings). They find the guy who did it, and Vic convinces the guy to come up with a less racy story to confess to in exchange for a shorter sentence. And for his efforts, the counselor's going to try to pull some strings to keep Vic on the job.

Despite not just flipping out like he often does, Michael Chiklis' performance was really strong. It's hard to believe what we saw could be considered understated, but given the chair throwing, vein popping Mackey we've seen lately, it was relatively understated.

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Catching Up

Not only did I not catch HBO's Sunday lineup and crash early Monday, but I didn't get a chance to watch anything Tuesday night at all. I blame the government. So I'm going to be playing catch up all week. The Riches, Gilmore Girls, Veronica Mars, and The Shield after the jump.

The Riches: Returning from the funeral, Hugh is flipping out over his missing money, and Wayne's been missing for two days, making him the prime suspect. To avoid suspicion, he says he was gone recruiting a rich investor. So the Malloys go looking for a mark. And they find one in an ex-baseball player/ex-con. Hookers, fast cars, statutory rape, and a sex addict. Cael thinks this guy is the greatest guy ever. Dahlia goes undercover at a sex addict support group with him ("Well the co-pilot was there too"). It takes... oh, about a half a second to hook the guy in ("Good thing I'm ambidextrous!") by playing to his addiction. Very sensitive.

They convince him that Wayne is Dahlia's ex, and that he's about to close a huge business deal that'll make him "richer than God," and he falls for it in a second. The one problem being that they need extra people to pull off the con, so they have to recruit some amateurs who make the whole situation extra stressful, but they pull the con off without a hitch. They managed to steal $500,000, but they're giving it all to PanCo.

In the end, when Wayne says next time they should keep the money and run, he and Dahlia come to the scary realization that they can't run, that they've settled in as the Riches and this is their home now. Best Wayne moment: "You know when you keep something in a hedge? Well, imagine a fund... hedge... uh...."

Gilmore Girls: The season finale isn't far away, and it sounds like it'll be aired before anyone knows the fate of the show, which sucks. It's always best for a show to know it's going to be canceled ahead of time so they can wrap things up nicely. Anyway, on to the show. They totally fooled me with a dream intro, showing Rory in a Chilton uniform made me think I was watching a rerun. Rory's freaking out about her future, having passed on a great job to hold out for a New York Times internship, and the Times later turning her down. I love that Rory had a birthday party at the Mark Twain house, since I didn't grow up too far from Hartford, and as a kid, that was the only museum type place that I thought was cool.


Lane's kids have some sort of lullaby thing playing a little baby version of "Boys Don't Cry," which is very cool in a Lane sort of way. Zack got a gig with some band touring over the summer, and they've agreed to take him and Lane and the kids. But Lane realizes she can't go, with two babies. But even though Zack wants to bail entirely, she insists that he go.

Lorelai takes Rory to a karaoke bar to cheer her up, and after a pretty awesome Culture Club cover by Kirk, Lorelai takes the mic to sing for Rory's gradutation, doing a pretty darn good rendition of "I Will Always Love You." So naturally, Luke walks in mid-song, and it takes on a whole new meaning. They're really laying it on thick lately. Perhaps my favorite moment of Luke and Lorelai's relationship happened in this episode, involving Luke's hat. Lorelai was all excited because she had given him a blue hat, which he hadn't worn since they broke up, but suddenly he was wearing it again. She thought this was a really big sign and was all excited, but in the end, we learn that Luke had dropped his other hat in the dishwasher.

We end on a cliffhanger as Logan gets a job in San Francisco, and asks for Lorelai's permission to propose to Rory. She looks horrified and the credits kick in before she gives an answer. I didn't care for the cliffhanger, but it was a pretty good episode. It's definitely past its prime, but the show's been a lot better lately than it has been the previous year and a half or so.

Veronica Mars: Finally, it's back! A local restaurant owned by Arabs is vandalized, and the owner comes to Mars Investigations to hire Keith, but since he's busy getting his sheriff on, Veronica takes the case. She not only catches the vandal, but she helps the father learn about his daughter's Jewish boyfriend and learn to accept it and get a disturbingly anti-American immigrant deported.

A 19 year old got loaded at a bar owned by Rescue Me's Chief Jerry (Jack McGee), walked outside, and got hit by a car. He had a bad fake I.D., but Chief Jerry doesn't even really care, so Keith is trying to crack down on ID checking. But his deputies mysteriously turn up nothing. Keith visits Chief Jerry's bar again, and finds Wallace and Piz there, checks their IDs, and immediately recognizes Veronica's handiwork (she hooked them up in exchange for them testing drinks for roofies at the frat party a while back). So he gets them to go to a bar with really awful fake IDs (John Bon Jovi and Biggie Smalls) to check on the Deputies, and cans the ones who don't catch it.

A bunch of relationship-y stuff happens later on. Logan's throwing a party for Parker, and Veronica has to act like a grownup and pretend to be over everything and go and be happy. Logan seems really happy though which makes her feel worse and feel even more guilty for feeling bad. Mac's still with Bronson, but it sounds like things are not all that great. She ends up on a couch at the party with Max, the test-selling hooker-loving geek we've seen a few times this year, and they seem to hit it off. Finally, Piz grows some cajones and makes a move on Veronica, which shouldn't have worked but did. It felt forced and stupid.

A fairly interesting case and the usual dose of wit and Lebowski references made it an ok episode, but I'm hoping for a little more for the rest of what hopefully isn't the last season.

The Shield: Gardocki shaved! Just one of several shocking moments this week.

Colette puts strike team on the machete massacre earlier in the season. Hyatt takes the lead and other new guy Julien is helping out. He's got a lot to learn about the strike team, and Vic isn't a great teacher but Hyatt is an excellent mediator, knowing both Vic and Julien's point of view. Dutch can't keep his mouth shut about Hernan, and spills the beans to Hyatt. They head out to Hernan, who tells them not only that the machete murders weren't Salvadoran, but that Guardo didn't kill Lem.

Vendrell gets the crap kicked out of him, and now that Heist is canceled, Mara is back. He got jumped because of Tilly, and Mara finds out and pitches a fit. With the guilt he's carrying, he doesn't care much about the beating or Mara, but Tilly calls his cell and Mara answers, so she kicks him out. He goes on a bender snorting ground up Oxycontin (can you do that? I'm drug-ignorant), and wanders back home, confessing to Mara that he killed Lem, in what would've been an awesome surprise had they not put "I killed Lem!" as the first three words of the commercials that ran during The Riches (thanks, FX!)

Dutch is still on the rape, and a concerned father shows up. Or is he a concerned father? The second he showed up, I thought he might be the guy, and Billings gets the same idea shortly after. They come up with a B.S. excuse to talk to him in interrogation, and one of the victims IDs his voice. He claims to have done it to generate publicity about runaways in the hopes of getting his own daughter's case re-opened. Or something. He was creepy. And he molested his own daughter, just to make it that much weirder. And thanks to the press coverage, he finds out that his daughter's dead.


Carl Weathers makes a return appearance, offering Vic a little off-the-books work that may be a preview of his life after retirement. Since Arrested Development, I have a hard time taking Carl Weathers seriously. I keep expecting him to say "Baby we got a stew going." It wasn't a very important storyline, except I think to make Vic appreciate his job a little more, and to provide a little dark comedy with Weathers' partner's incredibly gross treatment of drug dealers.

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Tuesday Night TV

Sweet, my sources (in the form of a commercial on the CW) inform me that Veronica Mars returns from hiatus next week. Gilmore Girls, House, and The Shield after the jump.

Gilmore Girls: Lorelai goes back into Luke's and it's awkward. Her jeep is pronounced doorknobs (as in "dead as a..."), so she has to bike to work and look for a new car. But this turns out to be a good excuse to try to reconnect with Luke since he knows cars and she doesn't. And she drives her kinda nuts with her car shopping technique, but in a way that finally gets them past their polite awkwardness. And they really do share some nice moments.


Jackson crashes with her cause he's never had the chicken pox and his kids have it. Sookie seems convinced that he will drive her nuts. And he ends up somehow killing Lorelai's doll house. In addition to that sucking, Sookie still hasn't forgiven Jackson for his deceitful non-vasectomy. But this little tragedy finally gets them talking about it, and they seem to be on their way to getting past it.

Paris gets into all her law/med school choices and freaks out twice. Once in celebration, and then in a very negative "what am I going to do?" manner. And she dumps Doyle as part of her second freak out, wanting to make sure she doesn't make her grad school choice based on him. This starts a whole career vs. relationship thing that at least starts the audience questioning whether Rory and Logan will work out. But like every other storyline this episode, it ends up bringing them closer together as Doyle decides he will be the one to sacrifice and will follow Paris anywhere. And in the last scene, Rory gets her rejection letter from the New York Times internship she was hoping for.

A few funny parts, a little bit of Kirk, which is always my favorite, and the story was kinda nice. One of the better episodes of the season.

House: A three-card monte shill suffers from Aboulia, the inability to exercise will. A crack pipe sends them down the drugs/toxicity road, but that's a dead end. Foreman's new theory is lymphomatoid granulomatosis. So they give her radiation targeted at her immune system, but it turns out she has an infection, and they just destroyed her ability to fight it off. Foreman took the lead on this particular case, and takes the whole basically killing this woman thing pretty hard. I can't say I find any characters besides House, Cuddy, and Wilson all that interesting, so a Foreman-centric episode is kinda dull to me.


Mel from Frasier plays Wilson's ex-wife (#2), who, along with the budding Wilson/Cuddy relationship/friendship, gets a whole thing started where House may want to sabotage them or feel guilty about ruining Wilson's previous relationships with his... unique personality traits. Despite involving my three favorite characters, I am not enjoying this arc and I'd kinda like to see it end, especially since it takes away from House's time ridiculing patients and coworkers.

The Shield: Vic's replacement, Kevin Hyatt, arrives. Claudette tells Vic she wants to expand the strike team and will try to keep him on, but that was just a lie to get Vic to behave for his last few weeks. Vendrell's still feeling guilty over Lem and lashes out at the new guy, which jeopardizes Vic's imaginary chances at sticking around. But with Vic on his best behavior, Hyatt's actually impressed with the way he works.

Dutch and Billings catch a rape case. Billings' inappropriateness just keeps getting funnier ("I love the smell of underage sexual assault in the morning... I didn't mean that the way it came out."), which is difficult considering how nasty the rape case is. She was drugged and raped, but sometime before had "Go Home" carved into her stomach. Two more victims leave them with a serial rapist on their hands, and he's getting more violent with each victim.

The pile of bodies from the season premiere finally comes back up. A contact of Acevedo's says it's from a new Salvadoran gang and he gets the case reassigned to to the barn, since Hyatt comes from INS and might be best equipped to handle the case. The slow moving nature of this story probably means it'll last the whole season, and possibly into next.

Danny's back on duty and looks out of shape, taking Tina's place because she transferred out to be the "new face" of the cops, with her face up all over posters, or possibly to get away from Dutch's advances. And for the first time this season, Julien has a significant story development, with him being added to the New and Improved Strike Team(tm) starting next week.

The 19ers have a small faction who want out of the gang life, and all it does is make them targets. Vic makes it his mission to take care of these kids, somehow identifying it with a dream Corrine has about Lem. He almost manages to save the leader, but he dies when they get to the hospital. Vic loses it in a wall-punching, chair-throwing meltdown in front of the strike team, the new guy, and Claudette. I wasn't buying into the whole Corrine dream thing, but Vic's meltdown was really well done and left the episode off on a great, if heartbreaking, note.

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Lots of Catching Up

Almost caught up, I'll probably manage to just catch up in time to fall behind again Sunday night. Past the jump are my thoughts on last week's Gilmore Girls, House, The Shield, the last two weeks of Penn & Teller: Bullshit, and some Acceptable TV clips from the past two episodes.

Gilmore Girls: Logan is crashing with Rory and Paris since he's all no longer living off his father. Rory interviews with the Providence Journal, and she's feeling all grown up businesswoman-y, but as soon as the interview high fades, she starts stressing over getting the job. Then when she ends up getting it, she's stressing over whether to take it or not. After a Logan/Lorelai heart to heart, and then a Logan/Rory heart to heart, she decides to pass to go after her dream internship at the New York Times.

Logan and Rory come home to Stars Hollow for the Spring Fling. Maybe I'm crazy, but a hay bale maze actually sounds fun. I raced my brother through a real live maze (made of wood rather than hay bales) once in Ft. Worth, Texas, and a good time was had by all. Except that I lost. But while people seem to enjoy the Stars Hollow maze, it's mostly there for a cheesy metaphor for Luke and Lorelai to get lost but then find each other.


Any episode with Kirk wearing a giant minotaur head and stilts has to be pretty good (if only he could've done both at the same time) and I'm glad that we're finally making progress towards the inevitable reunion of Luke and Lorelai.

House: Hey, Carla Gallo from Undeclared, and that guy from Grandma's Boy and Art School Confidential. And I love a good Casablanca reference.

So a little girl has JRA, they think, meaning her immune system is attacking her joints and eyes and other stuff. Then she has a stroke. This means her blood is too thick, which actually caused the JRA symptoms, but they don't know why. An inspection of their house reveals some bloody clothing, so they suspect abuse, perform an exam, and find a series of cuts in her genital area. This is turning disturbing like an SVU episode. Then they figure out that she's somehow hit puberty.

The sick girl's brother has a crush on Cameron, and she seems to be using his affections to mess with Chase, which is kinda bitchy. But the crush turns out to from the same early onset puberty. And in the end, it all turns out to be cause of their father's "male enhancement" cream. If that could seriously cause something like this, how is it even legal?

House's clinic hours were pretty useless this week, despite that guy's cameo, but there was a pretty funny side story about Wilson and Cuddy, and I love that House watches wrestling. It's sorta like his soap operas, except homo erotic. With the exception of House messing with Wilson, the episode was pretty lame, I thought. Probably the least interesting of the season.

The Shield: Dutch and Billings catch a robbery/murder with some guys boosting ephedrine from a pharmacy. Billings says they make a good team, that his strengths are Dutch's weaknesses, and accuses Dutch of both arrogance and insecurity (and he does manage to show both pretty frequently). Dutch manages to ditch the pharmacy case onto the strike team (or just Gardocki, who doesn't have a personal day available to go help kill Guardo) because he wants back on Lem's murder. He floats the name of a guy named Hernan, who sounds all super scary, but it turns out that Hernan is an undercover Fed. But for now, Dutch is stuck babysitting the case. The same people hit a second pharmacy, and I think the pharmacy manager was the secretary from Andy Barker, P.I..

Officer Tina, who's been under Dutch's tutelage for a while, practically has an orgasm when she sees Gardocki knock a suspect around. And then later when the bust a related drug ring, she roughs a guy up herself, and then almost jumps Gardocki. She still seems to stick with the detective lessons from Dutch, but when he brings her over to check out his case library, she seems to be on to the fact that he just wants in her pants.


Guardo calls in about the kidnapping, and Vic threatens to rape and kill the girl over the phone while Guardo listening. I'm not sure it's just a threat, either. They arrange an exchange, but Guardo still thinks it's a ransom, so he's worried about protecting the money, while Vic is just planning to blow in and kill the guy. When Vendrell brings the kidnapped girlfriend back home, she says she's pregnant. So now by killing Lem he's also going to orphan an unborn child. He really can't handle the guilt, and when they abduct Guardo, Vendrell looks like he's just barely going to talk Vic out of killing the guy, but then Vic turns around and shoots him.

And the episode wraps up with news that Claudette has found a new strike team guy. Not a new addition, but Vic's replacement for when he retires in a month. Another good episode. A bigger role than usual for Billings and Gardocki, which is nice, but whatever happened to that murder scene they found in the season premiere? It seemed like that was going to be the season's big investigation, but then completely disappeared. Also, Danny and Julien seem to be relgated to background characters this year. But it's all ok, because the Lem/Guardo/Kavanaugh stuff has been very entertaining.

Acceptable TV: I was an entire week behind, so I checked out last week's stuff on the website as well as this week's content. Both were fairly weak, but Operation Kitten Calendar 3 last week and The Highfiver this week were both good.





Penn & Teller: Bullshit: Oh boy, the circumcision episode a while back was the grossest thing I've ever seen, but this was a close second. The theme two weeks ago was the detoxification movement, so they showed us someone actually getting a colonic, with the little clumps of crap coming out. Nasty. The look on the guy's face was priceless, though. You could tell he immediately regretted the decision to go in there. But the episode ran with the idea that we've seen quite a few times in the series: don't take medical advice from anyone but a doctor. Especially if they're telling you to buy $43 cans of maple syrup or charging you to stick stuff up your ass.

The second episode was about demonic possession and exorcism and stuff. This touched on an issue that's always bugged me. What kind of an idiot would worship Satan? Believing in the Christian devil means you also believe in the all powerful and benevolent god of Christianity who offers eternal life in paradise in exchange for faith and being sorry when you screw up, so they decide to go with the one who offers eternal torture. Sure. The guy with his pendulum that answers questions about demons was hilarious. I feel awful for those people that buy into this stuff though. I felt worse when we learned that one exorcist is a public school teacher, and that another tells kids that their imaginary friends are demons.


And now I'm left with only Entourage, The Sopranos, two Jerichos, and Smallville to watch.

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Tuesday Night TV

No Veronica Marses, no Laws & Orders, so a very light Tuesday, TV-wise. Highlight for spoilers:

• Gilmore Girls: Three generations of Gilmore ladies head off to Mia's wedding in a semi-bonding road trip, but all those issues of Mia's surrogate grandmotherness pop up again. And after naming Luke Godfather, Lane has her babies. Not terrible, but nothing interesting going on at all.


• House:: Kurtwood Smith is Dave Matthews' father? My initial reaction was hoping Matthews spends most of the episode in a coma, cause I'm not thrilled at the idea of him acting. But he wasn't half bad. And Kurtwood Smith was pretty great.
  
  Plot-wise, I was worried we'd have a half season of "House has cancer," but House's plan to get high by faking cancer was awesome. And the case of the week was interesting too, you can't help but feel for the father with a very difficult decision, and any time someone buttoning their shirt is an uplifting moment, you know something's going right.
  
  One thing I'm not sure I get was Dave Matthews' savant-ness. Being able to replicate what House played on the piano seems right in line with that, but instantly composing the next few phrases of House's piece? At least in other movies with savant types, that kind of creativity is well out of their reach. Obviously, watching medical shows (and Rain Man) doesn't make me an expert on the field, but that didn't jive with what I thought I knew about those types of conditions. Anyone smarter than me know the answer to that one?
  
  House adding the clapping to the "I Don't Like Mondays" intro was hilarious, as was his fake patient name (Luke N. Laura).

On the Tivo: Black Donnellys, which I'm still debating.

Hey, contestant from the Search for the Next Pussycat Doll in the commercial, dressing like a prostitute isn't women's empowerment. I certainly respect your right to dress however you want, and thoroughly enjoy it when an attractive young lady dresses provocatively, but I'm pretty sure that NOW won't be holding a luncheon in your honor for it.


Also a programming note: South Park's season premiere is tomorrow (Wednesday) and The Sarah Silverman Program is on right after instead of its usual Thursday time (to try to pick up some of SP's viewers).

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Tuesday Night TV

No House, American Idol fever is sweeping the nation (except for everyone I know), but still plenty going on. Highlight for spoilers:

• Gilmore Girls: Logan's business goes bust and he instantly turns back into his former jackass self. So if the series wraps up this year, not everything might be all happy happy. But the rest of the stuff is headed in happy directions. Luke and Lorelai had a bit of a moment, Rory had a meeting with a New York Times guy (A.J. Abrams is a weird choice of names... maybe he was late to coffee cause he was Lost?), Lane is going to have her twins, and Sookie will shoot out a kid before long, too. And a decent amount of Kirk, but he wasn't as funny as normal. Blah episode, as they mostly all have been this year.


• Veronica Mars: Sadly, this is the last episode for a while. The reality competition show "Who wants to be an anonymous dancer dressed like a harlot in a crappy pop group?" also known as The Search for the Next Pussycat Doll will be taking VM's timeslot. But I was super excited about this episode, expecting the Dean's murder plot to be wrapped up.
  
  So the Dean shows up at Hank and Mindy's hotel room, which we already knew but Keith just found out, and threatens to divorce his wife and ruin Hank's career. The thing that stuck out here is the random mention of Landry bedding random co-eds... it could be that this was just a character detail, but it felt like it might be significant.
  
  Hank claims an alibi that he went to buy smokes, and that an anonymous woman (who they're very careful not to show, so you know it's important) can confirm it, if only we knew who she was. Tim the TA guy looks all kinds of guilty when the cops show up to arrest Landry, but when Landry asks for help, Tim is all over helping him, and Veronica agrees to help him out.
  
  While they follow the smoking lady lead to a bunch of strippers, Mindy cashes in insurance and buys a boat, looking super guilty. The stripper turns up and Landry gets released, V&T find the recording of the pre-murder phone call (and a rather amusing second one of Landry dumping on Tim). And Landry takes off, turning up on Mindy's boat.
  
  Veronica and Tim, or rather Ms. Crockett and Mr. Tubbs, start chasing down leads, and soon discover that the mystery stripper turns out to be the mother of a hoodlum on whose juvie board Landry served.
  
  Crockett and Tubbs show off some rather insane knowledge of license plates in trying to track down a cabin, but Keith out-sleuths them with street smarts and traces them to Cabo. When he shows up on the boat, Landry admits to trying to cover for her, swapping the Dean's keyboard with Botando's, and that he accidentally killed her.
  
  This seems all too easy. Tim takes over Landry's class, Veronica becomes the TA. And... as the resolution seems to go on too long, Tim starts talking, I got the feeling he was about to out himself as the real killer. Veronica picks up on the fact that Hank never had time to call the fake stripper, finds the bug in her phone, Tim says something he couldn't know, and there we are.
  
  Some Logan/Veronica/Parker drama was thrown in, too, and... who cares? One of my favorite moments, possibly ever, was when the stripper asks "Do we look like we smoke?" and Tim thinks carefully before saying "yes."
  
  Not an entirely unpredictable end to the mystery, but still, a fun ride. After last week's Lamb shocker, I'm cool with a few less surprises. Plus, we close on a nice Keith/Veronica moment.

Still on the Tivo: L&O's CI and SVU.

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Tuesday Night TV

Highlight for spoilers:

• Gilmore Girls: Did I miss a scene? They had a long walk for gas to Naugataugatuck or whatever New England-y sounding town they had to get to, and I was thinking "wow, those shoes look like a bad choice to walk in," then they cut straight to Friday night dinner. A stressful Friday night dinner, but one that featured the best line the show's had in a long time: "Golf is really more like Richard III, you know? They're all hunched over." Lorelai and Emily had some nice scenes, but I'm not sure I buy mopey Richard. Even post-heart attack, he seems too proud to sloth around like that. Logan's story was kinda funny though. "Hey buddy, you're completely broke, ruined. In old movies you would have no clothes and be pictured wearing a barrel with shoulder straps. Oh, and happy birthday!"

• Veronica Mars: Three different plots going at once:
  • Coach mystery: Oh hey someone, I think on Televisionary, mentioned the peanut allergy as a possibility. It's probably a bad idea to mention Caged Heat in front of an ex-cop and his hot prisoner daughter. Great to see Vinnie Van Lowe back, even if his appearance is mostly pointless. The jealous husband thing had to be a red herring, just cause there were no clues to that at all in the previous episode... but doesn't Doctor/Patient confidentiality still apply after death? And I was sorta right (edit: I thought I mentioned it here last week but I guess I didn't) that the assistant coach having more dialogue than an extra normally should turned out to be sorta significant.
  
  
  • Dean mystery: Holy crap, Lamb died? I'm not sure how the whole Richard Greico thing ties in. And who bugged the professor's phone if Veronica and Keith didn't? Vinne Van Lowe? I'm confused about a lot of things, but it's blissful confusion. I love this plot... but I hope it wraps up soon. It seems a lot more complicated, at least to me, than the past extended mysteries. I think one episode dedicated to the Dean's murder to wrap things up should do it.
  
  
  • Non-mystery stuff: The scavenger hunt seems like a really bad idea. Mostly cause I can see kids drowning trying to get to that buoy. But I was glad to see them not win, I don't know why.

• Law & Order: SVU: I hate it when they get hot guest stars, cause inevitably something awful happens, and I feel kinda creepy for finding them hot. This week, Ashley Williams (sfw), who is stupidly cute and usually seems kinda fun/goofy. But fun/goofy doesn't really apply since here she lost her baby, got accused of killing the baby, then hung herself. Creepily, still cute. So then it turns into a custody battle after the biological abusive father shows up to challenge the drug mule compulsive gambler ex-husband. The second half was pretty dull. But have they written Munch and Finn off this show? I don't remember the last time I saw either.

On the Tivo: L&O: CI, that History Channel Star Trek thing.

Caught a commercial for regular L&O, and they're "ripping from the headlines" the OJ If I Did It book. Remember when it was unpredictable, gritty, and original?

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Tuesday Night TV

Got kinda busy tonight, so I only watched GG and VM. The Tivo will be backed up for a while, I bet. And the 31 Days of Oscar might turn into 131 days for me - they're really starting to pile up. Highlight for spoilers:

• Gilmore Girls: We continue this week with the "Logan good, Christopher bad" thing, plus a dog funeral storyline. Rory was all fascinated with Logan's newfound awesomeness, but Tucker Colbertson, who sounds like a satirical bowtied TV news pundit but apparently is the handsome new TA, shows up and Rory does everything short of sniffing his hair when he's not looking. But I think having seen the Luke/Logan mess, she feels the need to confess to Logan, who continues to be super cool about everything. The funeral arrangement of "My Heart Will Go On" was surprisingly touching (I know, I'm a pansy), and Lorelai starts to get all choked up. Kirk returns for about a minute, then leaves and won't be seen for another 5 episodes, which is a crime.
  
  Connecticut has a 12% sales tax? That can't be right, can it? It was 5 or 6% at the Friendly's in Enfield about ten years ago. And my Tivo put the last two minutes of GG in the Veronica Mars recording, which had me pretty worried that the end of VM will get cut off. But it turned out ok. I might've missed a second or two of the closing GG dialogue, though. In any case, it's nice to see the Christopher marriage thing wrapping up, since that's a good sign that the show will end this year. They have to end it with Luke and Lorelai together, and if they'd waited longer to break up the marriage, the Luke thing would've felt super rushed.

• Veronica Mars: Occasionally, they do make Dick seem like... not a dick. He's trying to help Logan out, though there's always a touch of dick/Dick in everything he does. "You're not still looking for the fire, right?" has to be the best line of the show. But he ends up ditching Logan with the younger sister of a young lady he's trying to bed, and the sister plays About a Boy (or girl) to Logan, and starts get him out of his rut, until an amusingly awkward elevator scene sends him right back rutward. But a final bit of sympathy for her has Logan back to normal-ish.
  
  Wallace is back (at the expense of all of Veronica's other college friends, who were absent), and since the coach hates Mason, who should be starting instead of him, Wallace is starting. At least until his coach turns up dead. The coach's son pulls a Matlock defendant: he finds the body, gets himself covered in blood, and flees the scene. At least he didn't get his prints on the murder weapon first. Mel Stoltz gets brought up as a potential suspect to Keith, who's on the case, and I get the impression Stoltz is the mystery dude who met with the Dean to get the frats back on campus. But Mason instantly becomes a suspect too when he steps forward as a witness against the coach.
  
  Who on earth was the guy in the top bunk in Josh's cell? He's obviously important... and probably in some way involved in the escape. I was weirded out at how generous Veronica was with the coach's son. Normally she's suspicious of everyone, but she's baking cookies for him? And I guess the kid escapes, having already eaten the cookies, and the cops find the hollowed out book, so they assume she baked a cake with a file inside it or whatever.
  
  The suspects in the Dean's murder seem to be down to Mrs. O'Dell, her son, and Landry. I love how they're consistent with the small parts... in this case, two hotel employees return. Including Ratner, who gives the Mars crew a hint ("two guys arguing") that the dean showed up there that night. I like the random Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang references, cause that movie rules. Also, I'm pretty sure if my daughter went to a college where the Dean and basketball coach were murdered, and a serial rapist went nuts... I might pull her out of there.

On the Tivo: House, both Law & Orders, 5 old movies and counting.

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Last Night's TV

Tuesday has been the most crowded TV night forever... fortunately (sort of), Dirt sucks, so unlike most of the year, there's nothing on F/X for me to want to catch. Highlight to reveal spoilers:

• Gilmore Girls: Weird episode. Party predictable... you could see a mile away that Luke would show up and Christopher wouldn't, Emily would obviously be her normal bitchy self then break down and show real emotion in the end, and Suki would make food. Still, the Logan end of things, I don't care for really. And the whole dissolution of the Lorelai/Christopher marriage seems to be happening way too fast.

• Veronica Mars: Started off with a half naked Veronica getting out of bed. Pure ratings stunt, and I love it. Yowza! A little progress in the Dean murder (seems like the TA's out, since he's secretly investigating, and they seem to have tossed the Dean's son in as a suspect) and not too much relationship drama (my least favorite part). The mystery of the week was fairly interesting. Sweet episode title (There's Got To Be A Morning After Pill). What I really appreciated was that the preacher father was a good man. I'm not a Christian, and I have as much distaste as anyone for nutjob fundamentalists, but most Christians are good people. And too often, Hollywood makes them all into Jerry Falwell. And as usual this season, the vast majority of supporting characters were nowhere to be seen. Wallace, Mac, Piz, Lamb, and Parker were all absent.

• Law & Order: SVU: Seems like they're only doing a lot of episodes lately that focus on only one of the detectives, and this is no exception. Stabler gets knocked out in a fight early on (was that Goldberg? I'm not a wrestling fan), so Olivia runs the whole show. In one of the more standard L&O franchise plots, a giant corporation is screwing over poor people, but their lawyers are so good, there may be no legal way to make the corporation pay for it.
  

Still parked on the Tivo: House, L&O: CI.

Lost comes back tonight, so hop on your favorite forum full of crazies and make wild speculation, analyze minute details in single frames, and don't get too upset when nothing ends up happening.

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