Some Catching Up

Catching up on House (which was especially funny) and SVU (which was typically not very funny) before Lost and everything tonight.

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: A woman turns up dead, and SVU's trying to track down his spy fiancee (Nip/Tuck's Dylan Walsh). Only he turns out not to be a spy, he's just a married guy living a double life. His lies make him the immediate suspect, but soon evidence points to his wife finding out about the affair and getting pissed. Benson and Stabler show up just in time to find the husband shot and the rest of the family dead.


One of those forensic tools they use about angles of guns (which I've always been skeptical about... if you shoot someone while holding a gun at a funny angle, couldn't you get one of these guys to say "based on the angle of the bullet, the shooter was eleven feet tall and left-handed") shows that Dylan Walsh's wound was self-inflicted. Turns out the guy was telling so many lies and couldn't control them anymore, so he wanted to just put the "reset button" of life by killing everyone he loved. Crazy. This pushes Stabler over the edge, and he gets a confession out of the guy by jamming the interrogation room shut with a chair and threatening to break the guy's neck, making this roughly the 10th time he should've been fired.

House: Foreman's still quitting, but nobody's telling Chase and Cameron why. Cameron figures he'll tell her when he's ready, but Chase is playing detective. House is unsurprisingly unconcerned, but Foreman's weirded out at the fact that he seems happier since he decided to quit.

House gets a couple in his clinic rounds who are vegans, wondering why his crap floats. He picks up three amphetamines from the pharmacy, then tells them the guy's been eating meat, and hits on the woman (Piper Perabo). Then he pounds the speed into a powder and spikes a cup of coffee. Amusingly, he anticipates Wilson's paranoia and offers him the non-drugged coffee, and Wilson drinks the drugged one. All to figure out why he was yawning. Turns out he was on antidepressants. House for some reason takes this as a challenge to his own state of depression, and volunteers to take antidepressants to prove his non-depression.

Wilson doesn't give them the antidepressants, because he's been dosing House's coffee with them for weeks. The happiness Foreman had been noticing was all Wilson's doing. But aside from helping him save the case of the week, which wasn't that interesting, it becomes a nice topic of conversation on the date he lands with Piper Perabo in the end.

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Massive Catch-up

Having already seen Spider-man 3, I don't have a movie to catch this weekend, which leaves a little extra time to catch up on TV. A whole mess of shows after the jump.


Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: Olivia has a brother pops up again, but she's lost faith in him and is now helping the Feds find him. Soon though she bails to follow leads about her father, learns a lot more, and begins to wonder if her mother was really raped. It turns out, though, that the Jersey cop who was after him in the previous episode had framed Simon, and was out to kill him after her sister, Simon's alleged first victim, killed herself. Olivia shows up just in time, and talks the cop into confessing everything, and Simon gets off entirely.


Bones: I don't have too much to say about this episode, except that if, in a case involving someone falling out of an airplane, you find that the body's been chopped up by a heavy not-too-sharp object moving really fast, and that he was struck many times almost simultaneously, how does it take you half the episode to come up with the "hit by the propeller" theory?


Law & Order: Criminal Intent: Of course one of the Law & Orders was going to rip this particular story from the headlines... diaper-wearing crazed astronauts is just too juicy to ignore. Weird though that this episode aired the same week as the Bones about an astronaut... also weird that they both used the same fake NASA-like group (the National Space Agency). I found Tate Donovan's wife entirely creepy, the way she referred to him as "the Commander." But otherwise it was a pretty forgettable episode.

Entourage: The "one time thing" concept doesn't seem to go well with Amanda and Vince, since they both are really into each other. Ari has a formerly loserish college friend (Artie Lange) visiting who has an inexplicably hot fiancee (Leslie Bibb). Turns out that he made millions on the internet, which makes Ari really jealous.

Pauly Shore wants Drama for a new Punk'd ripoff show, but Drama knows about it ahead of time, planning to act surprised. When a UFC guy argues with him over a parking space, he assumes that it's the prank and practically gets in a fight. But the prank turns out to be something else, and the UFC guy's after him. Drama goes to a fight to kiss up to the guy, but ends up in the octagon on his knees begging for forgiveness when Pauly Shore pops out and reveals that it was all a big prank. Kinda funny, but predictable.

The Sopranos: Tony is seriously strapped for cash. Gambling problems, funding Carmela's spec house, losing Vito (his best earner), and his debt to Hesh leave him in bad financial shape. Carmela closes on the spec house, but she figures it's her money, so Tony won't see any of it, leading to a whole lot of tension.


With Vito gone, his kid's doing the goth thing (Phil says he looks like "a Puerto Rican whore") and acting out. His mother wants a fresh start somewhere else, and money to move there from Tony. Given the money issues, Tony's desperate to straighten the kid out somehow. But it doesn't work, cause for some reason the kid ends up taking a Count Dooku in the shower after gym class. Tony advises her to send him to a (much cheaper) camp for troubled kids.

Penn & Teller: Bullshit!: I was two episodes behind, so two weeks ago they covered immigration. They talked about some interesting stuff. Apparently, just as many illegal aliens enter the country legally and stay after their visas expire as sneak across the border. They rather amusingly hired a group of illegal immigrants to build a fence like the one proposed for the Mexican border, and then had them go under, through, and over it. It took eight hours to build, and 5 minutes to get past.

This week's episode was on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The ADA's statistics count 51 million disabled people in the US, which is one in six. It includes people who have trouble with money or using the phone. That seems kind of messed up, though the braille on the drive-up ATMs is quite funny. Penn & Teller as Libertarians obviously also don't like the idea of the government telling people what to do with their own private property, and generally legislating niceness.

House: A kid about to donate bone marrow to his brother develops an infection, so the race is on to find and cure the infection before his brother's leukemia kills him. The plan is to keep him cold to make the infection worse so they can figure out what it is faster. But that turns out to backfire, forcing the infection into the son's heart. Foreman's still dealing with losing a patient last week. House thinks he has Steve Blass disease, and is actually trying to be patient with him, which is pretty un-House-like.


House is still keeping Hector, Wilson's ex-wife's dog, and it's causing him lots of problems. It gets into his vicodin stash, chews up his cane (forcing him to get a sweet new one with a flame decal). But when he eventually gives the dog back, he seems sad to let it go.

They finally track down what was causing the son's infection, and this is where the episode took a crazy left turn that I didn't get. Foreman straps the now-healing son to the table and without anesthetic (because he wasn't well enough), starts extracting bone marrow even though it sounded excruciating. It works, both kids are going to get well, but Foreman doesn't like that he's "becoming" House, and gives his two weeks notice.

Smallville: And old fashioned mystery at the Planet. Lana gets shot, and gets medivac-ed to Smallville for some reason. But what was she doing all dolled up at night, out with Lionel instead of Lex? Jimmy's fascination with old movies and a blow to the head send us into an extended black & white film noir fantasy/dream sequence. There were some nice touches, using the back projection and sped up film during the car chases, the old timey wipes to transition between scenes, cigarette smoke pouring into every frame (I'm surprised they can even do that).


Since most of the episode was spent in fantasy land, very little was devoted to the actual goings on. Towards the end, they worked in Canadian-filmed TV staple Richard Kahan, a plug for Sprint, let Clark save the day, and reveal the plot behind the attempted murder, which was entirely uninteresting. But the fantasy sequence was fun enough that the episode wasn't a waste of time.

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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

April's a television lull... Gilmore Girls, the Law & Orders, and Veronica Mars are all off, so it's just House and The Shield tonight. Spoilers for last night's episodes past the jump:

House: Two cases running in parallel this week: Old lady gone wild is about to get down to business with a hooker when she passes out, and House and Cuddy try to stop a quickly spreading illness on a plane.

On the flight, people are puking all over the place. I've seen Airplane! about a thousand times, so my immediate thought is that it's the fish, and they'd better find someone who knows how to fly a plane. And look out, House agrees with me! Sadly, the pilots had the chicken or something, so House and Cuddy don't get to play Striker and Elaine (yes, I'm going to keep making Airplane! jokes). But the fish theory goes out the window pretty quickly, and they're leaning towards meningococcus, which is bad news.

Back at the hospital (it's a big building with patients, but that's not important right now), with House gone it's up to Wilson to treat our crazy old lady (who may or may not speak jive). The hooker brought her in, and since they've been telling everyone they're friends, our prostitute keeps getting guilted into hanging around. We get our usual dose of only partially intelligible medical jargon, and eventually just as about they're about to cut into the old lady's brain, they discover that her neighbor's house was being fumigated, and there was a vent pumping poison into her home.

On the plane (a big pretty white plane with red stripes, curtains in the windows and wheels and it just looks like a big Tylenol), House figures out that everyone conversion sydrome, a totally fun non-disease, except for the original patient, who's really sick. House's theory is that he's a drug mule with a burst condom full of heroin inside him. Since they flew out of Singapore, that would make this guy pretty stupid, as they have especially harsh drug laws there, with possession of more than a half ounce of heroin leading to mandatory capital punishment. Also, I think House is secretly upset that all that good smack is being wasted on this guy's instestines. But just as he's about to cut in to search for the drug-filled condom, House picks up on another symptom and determines that he has the bends.

And we wrap things up with House asking the hot stewardess if she's "handicap accessible," Wilson asking out the prostitute who he doesn't know is a prostitute, and Cameron dumping Chase because he likes her too much.

Cool episode. I liked the two cases running side by side, House was amusing as ever, and we're (hopefully) getting to the end of the Chase/Cameron relationship drama while possibly starting up a much cooler one between Wilson and a "lady of the night."

The Shield: All sorts of stuff going on in the opening few minutes. The evidence Kavanaugh plants gets them a warrant for Vic's arrest, and Vic finds out that Guardo's hiding in Mexico. Claudette's been captain for about ten minutes, but according to Acevedo she's getting screwed by neighboring districts. Plus, a Mexican jail is releasing tons of prisoners who are likely headed to Farmington.

Dutch and Kavanaugh, still waiting for Vic, interrogate Vendrell. He helps plant the idea in Dutch's head that Vic's being framed. Dutch namedrops Occam's Razor and Chatton's Anti-Razor (I'm on fire with the informative wikipedia links tonight) to the lovely Officer Tina, and begins to investigate conspiracy theories. But of course Kavanaugh gets wind of it and tries to get Dutch off the case. Dutch and Claudette, though, are starting to piece together what Kavanaugh's up to. They bring Emolia into interrogation without Kavanaugh present, and break her in a hurry, forcing Kavanaugh to confess. He tried playing Vic's game, but he obviously isn't very good at it.

After Vic spends the whole episode hiding from cops and on a wild goose chase to do a favor that'll get him Guardo, he decides to just abduct his girlfriend and get Guardo to come to LA to pay a ransom. Vic's hard core quest for revenge has Vendrell feeling even guiltier, since he knows they're chasing down an innocent (in this case) guy, and pursuing him so strongly that they're putting themselves at risk.

Random other happenings: Danny passed the Sergeant's exam, but will have to sit on a waiting list for an open position if she doesn't come back from maternity leave right away... and does Kenny Johnson get paid every time he appears as Lem in the previouslies? Cause I suspect that he'll be in them all season long.

Now that I'm pretty sure the Kavanaugh storyline's done, I think we'll get a little more focus the nasty murder that popped up last week and was only mentioned in passing tonight. But for now, Vic's only concern is finding Guardo. "Every second he gets to breathe and Lem doesn't is unacceptable." Not as good an episode as last week, but still pretty intense.

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Wednesday Night TV/Catching Up

I'll be playing around with a fancier method for hiding potential spoilers over the next couple days, but until I get that figured out, more spoiler highlighting:

• Lost: If you've ready my review of Shooter, you probably already think I'm a perv, so no harm done with me saying this: tonight's Lost episode was really hot with all the lesbian overtones. And it's hot every time it rains on Kate anyway. Good times. Not only were Kate and Juliet handcuffed together (cat fight!), Kate did quite a bit of bonding with Cassidy in the flashback.
  
  
  I've never found Kate's backstory all that interesting, but this week's story provided a nice accompaniment to the aftermath of her attempt to rescue Jack.
  Right there at the end, when they were saying goodbye, there was seriously a moment where I thought Kate was going to lean over and kiss her.
  
  Sawyer can't have been that good of a con artist, could he? You'd think two useful skills in the con game would be spotting someone else's con and getting people to like you. Still, as with just about everything involved with Hurley, it was a pretty amusing storyline. And I would happily use some Dharma generic A1 sauce, but not on pork!
  
  It's interesting to have Sawyer taking on a leader role, but with Jack, Sayid, Kate, and Juliet on the way back, they'll have to take their time if he's going to really establish himself as a leader. More importantly though, will they try to relocate the castaways to the Others' village? Protection from the smoke monster, houses with real roofs and beds, a foosball table... what's not to like?
  
  Overall story-wise, "Welcome to the wonderful world of not knowing what the hell's going on" was a great line, and we didn't learn much about anything going on this week (except that it sounds like Cassidy wasn't lying to Sawyer about having a kid... or if she was, she's really dedicated to the lie). Two new questions: where the hell did the others go, and did they leave Juliet behind to punish her or is she still working with them to infiltrate the crash survivors?
  
  This was not up to the excitement level of the best episodes of this season, but still pretty entertaining. Those who demand big answers every week probably didn't care for it, though, unless they're like me and easily distracted by Evangeline Lilly.


• South Park: Hare Club for Men, bunny Popes, Vatican ninjas, hippitus hoppitus, Bill Donohue (who I actually thought was supposed to be Karl Rove at first), a good Pope hat joke, and exploding peeps. For an episode with almost no Cartman, this was quite good. I'm not sure how many people were aware of Donohue and his shenanigans as part of the Catholic League, but let's just say I'm not a fan, so I appreciated that element.

• House: A fairly Cuddy-centric episode. With House debating a vacation, she sees a little bit of herself in a woman in her 40s having complications with her pregnancy. So she takes on the House role, ignoring most people's opinions, and successfully employing a crazy strategy.
  
  
  More Chase/Cameron relationship stuff... I'd really like to see this sort of end badly and blow up. Or at least somehow resolve soon. House doesn't do happy sweet cute love stories... or at least it shouldn't.
  
  I was thinking House's attempts to go on vacation were a mask for something along the lines of the fake cancer thing, especially when he went into the decompression chamber (I think that's what it was anyway), which I thought might've been prep for a fake medical condition or to serve some other purpose. But doing it all to get people off his back so he could park on the couch, pop vicodin, and watch the Travel Channel was just as good.
  
  Best House line: "I know you can't talk so I need you to look petrified if you consent."

Still to watch: Friday Night Lights, Bones, Jericho.

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TV Catch Up

With nothing but repeats Thursday night (except an Andy Barker, P.I. that I'd already seen online), I had hoped to catch up on even more stuff, but I ended up mostly catching up on sleep. Highlight for spoilers:

• House: Tricky with the opener, since we usually see the case of the week person in the sequence before the credits, but it turns out to be a dream House was having about having his leg blown off in Iraq or something. But it turns out we did see the case of the week person, because House was dreaming about the guy before he even got the case, giving us two mysteries: what's wrong with the guy, and why is House having psychic dreams about him?
  
  
  Hugh Laurie has such a convincing American accent that it was only from his IMDB page that I learned he was not from the US of A. But sitting in the tub with those somewhat grandmotherly glasses on, he looked as British as a tea-drinking soccer hooligan with bad teeth.
  
  House became obsessed with the idea that the guy was a model or in a movie (possibly porn) or on TV. I kept thinking "Of course the guy's been on TV, he's Riley from Buffy!" But no fourth wall jokes for this show, it turned out he dated Cuddy once several years ago.
  
  House also has some of his own medical issues this week, in the form of difficulty urinating. While I can't imagine how bad any of it must be, I have a hard time imagining that not being able to pee more than a few drips is that much worse than a self-administered catheter. That scene was brutal. Plus, it reminded me of the even more brutal Deadwood kidney stone removal scene. Yikes.
  
  And they're playing up the Chase/Cameron relationship even more. While I'm not sure about the storyline, there's something really hot about the normally reserved Cameron being all "I know I'm sexy and you can't resist me."


• Bones: Hooray, more of Wyatt, Booth's therapist. This week, he does a little couples counselling for Booth and Brennan, deciding that it wasn't her feelings for him that kept her from taking off with Sully. Hopefully it was the fact that he was a crappy character and seriously reduced my enjoyment of the show. Anyway, this immediately solved the tension between the two, which seems odd, but I'll buy it. The cool part was that Angela thought he was full of it. Convinced that they're nuts for each other, she confronts Mr. Fancy Pants shrink with her own theory, and they share an awesome scene at the end. If they hadn't spent most of the season hooking up Angela and Hodgins, I'd hope they'd hook her up with ol' Gordon, cause that would be tons of fun.
  
  
  As for the case, a grave robber breaks a water main, and bodies from all over the cemetery float up, so Bones & Co. are called in to identify and re-bury them, but shockingly they discover a murder victim buried amongst the old corpses. Some stuff happens, and the priest quickly admits his guilt. Easy confessions on TV are always lies to cover for someone, so as soon as the priest said he did it, you knew it was someone else. But I was stumped as to who, so I was pleasantly surprised with the resolution. The administrator lady, "practically raised" by the old priest, is a great unexpected fit, and there were enough characters floating around with possible motives (the possibly abused kid and the grave robber kid) that it was still a mystery. But there's no way her confession holds up in court, right? A priest asking questions with no cops around, any decent lawyer gets that tossed. I like how shows without lawyer characters ignore stuff like this.
  
  I'm kinda surprised that they'd make a lead character in a fairly popular TV show both an atheist and a jerk about it. Seems like that might alienate the 90% of the world that believe in some sort of god.

Still to watch: Friday Night Lights, Jericho.

The original Law & Order comes back for the first new episode since sweeps, and Acceptable TV returns for its second episode on VH1 at 10. Too late to vote, but you can still check out last week's sketches on the Acceptable TV website.

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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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TV Catchup

Quick catchup on some Tuesday stuff, with more to come... highlight for spoilers:

• Law & Order: SVU: I'm normally not bothered by the wrongness of the crimes, but that candlestick was huge... nasty. Between the lame Jersey accent and the newfound portliness, I didn't recognize Cary Elwes until the episode was almost over. It was a decent episode, but damn I hate when the commercials ruin stuff like that. The suspect dying was a huge twist, and happened like... 40+ minutes in. But the commercial was "I'm ruling the death a homicide/You know as well as I do Elliot would never murder anyone." Would it kill them to advertise the drug angle, the mob angle, the nasty crime angle, or anything other than the one that would ruin the surprise?

• House: I never get tired of House being an asshole to his patients. And Cuddy. I feel like I've seen the whole Darkman can't feel pain thing on medical shows many times before, but I can't think of an example.
  
  All the doctors standing around watching House operate (and the girl leaning forward looking into her open stomach) was a cool scene. And the camera phone was a nice touch And if Chase is offended by being microwave pizza, I'd happily step up..

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Last Night's TV

A little catchup, plus last night's viewing. As always, spoilers. Highlight to reveal:

• Law & Order: CI: Well, cutting straight from the L&O "...these are their stories..." intro to Under Pressure (most overused soundtrack song ever? Or is it Baba O'Reily?) and some guys in 18th century garb about to duel made me think the Tivo somehow switched channels mid-recording. But then the cut to a sniper, so at least I know it wasn't a period drama with weird music choices. Xander Berkely is a pretty good actor, huh? He should be in more stuff.
  

• House: So was the wheelchair bound woman just messing with House, or is she a lesbian? Either way, I hope she hangs around. Despite only a few lines, she was pretty likable. And a few episodes ago, House had quite a bit of sexual tension with a little person, now with a woman in a wheelchair. I could definitely see him having a thing for... atypical women. I liked the case of the week. It's cool to see a solution end up being much more simple that everyone expected it to be. Also, this episode reminded me that I use the word "gyp," and never remember that it's derived from an ethnic stereotype. So I should stop that.

• Bones: I liked the scenes with Booth and the shrink. Replacement partner guy, though? Not so much. And it looks like he'll be back for more. As soon as French Stewart popped up in the credits, I was worried. Partly because he's not the kind of actor you want to see in a drama. Ever. But mostly because anytime someone that famous shows up, you know they're going to play an important role. And when they show up for half a second early on and aren't heard from for 30 minutes, you know they're probably going to be the key to the case. Most likely the murderer. But on the plus side, he wasn't nearly as bad as I thought he'd be. At least he didn't do the eyes half closed 3rd Rock from the Sun thing. Oh, and Hodgins' line about getting caught in a pornado? Excellent.

• Lost: Sweet reveal at the beginning with the Miami skyline. Overall a pretty great episode. I can't say I cared all that much about Juliet, but now I'm warming to her. A few really cool parts. I liked that Ben wakes up mid-surgery. And when Tom explains how it happened, I pictured Jack like Bones from Star Trek: "Dammit, Tom, I'm a spinal surgeon not an anesthesiologist!" The octopus hatch thing was new, and it seems to be where they condition people with music and crazy film montages. Eventually, that'll make sense, I'm sure, and it'll be as clear as an azure sky of deepest summer. I thought the "tell me the story I told you" thing was incredibly lame. I get that they needed some way that she could easily lie without the others knowing, but the 2 minute speech for emotional impact was forced. And she told the story while she was still on dry land, which was just a little stupid, since Juliet could've shot Kate in the face as soon as she got off the radio. And I've always loved the spontaneous car accident... Meet Joe Black is still my favorite, but this one was up there (even if it was just like the one Nip/Tuck did this season), especially cause of the sinister possibilities
  
  We did get some fun guest stars. Zeljko Ivanek, Deadwood's Robin Wiegert, a visit from William "Ethan" Mapother, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's Rob McElhenny, and Nestor Carbonell. I hadn't seen Nestor Carbonell for a while... I first remember seeing him in Muscle, one of the original WB shows that was sort of a daytime soap opera spoof, like Soap. He later popped up in one of those bad NBC sitcoms that was sandwiched between good shows, (maybe Suddenly Susan?), then as Batmanuel on the live action Tick. But then nothing memorable for a few years, and now he's in Lost and Smokin' Aces one right after the other. He was surprisingly good in both, especially since I had previously only thought of him as a comedic actor with a gimmick accent.

Still parked on the Tivo: Friday Night Lights, Knights of Prosperity (which I'm getting close to dumping).

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