Sunday Night TV

Bunch of stuff on, highlight for spoilers:

• Simpsons: A few ok moments. I thought the home schooling was too easy a joke, which they didn't do much with. Bart's therapy storyline didn't do much for me either. Some decent jokes, but a below average episode, I thought.


• Family Guy: So I love Airplane! One of my favorite movies ever. While doing a parody of a parody move seems kinda silly, I loved it.. mostly cause of the music. It's also nice to see Quagmire get a story that's not entirely about being a perv. And Peter's redneck story was weird, partly cause The Simpsons had just done a blue collar comedy joke earlier in the night. Weird. The callback to the Goodfellas "gimme my money" joke was nice, too.


• The Winner: So I'd caught two episodes online earlier, but somehow neither was the pilot. I missed the whole hypochondriac element, and there were some real laugh out loud moments in this one. Two of three episodes were reasonably funny... it's not the greatest of sitcoms, but definitely entertaining. Rob Corddry carries it with his performance.


• Battlestar Galactica: So... wow. Good episode, but I'm shocked they'd kill off Starbuck in a weird "not afraid of death anymore" suicide. Is she a cylon? Why the shot of her grabbing the ejection seat lever? Is she just dead? Were the visions supernatural or just her being crazy? Did Katee Sackhoff just ask for too much money in contract talks? I don't watch promos or read spoilers, so any of the above could already be widely known to be true or untrue. Either way it's fun to think about it. I dig characters dying. But only if it's handled right. If she stays dead or comes back in a non-stupid way (which is hard), it's all good. If she comes back in a stupid way, I'll be pissed.
  
  Overall, it's been a good week for women going nuts... Las Vegas, Friday Night Lights, and now BSG. Also, I guess Sci-Fi will continue pimping the bonus scenes, and I will continue watching them cause I'm a sucker.

On the Tivo: Nothing.

I guess American Dad is off while The Winner blows through its six episode run? Also caught Talk Show with Spike Feresten on Saturday since there was no SNL. I really love getting the guests into the scripted bits (this one involved Jason Alexander and a straitjacket). It'd be nice if this lasted into the summer, when SNL's on hiatus.

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Saturday Night TV

No new SNL last night, so I checked out the competition (no plot, so no spoilers):

• MadTV: This show still doesn't make me laugh. That is all.

• Talk Show with Spike Feresten: I've checked it out a couple times before, and I can't imagine it will last long, but there's something incredibly likable about the show. Totally awkward interviews, amateurish across the board, but the writing is top notch, and it sort of has the feel of early Conan O'Brien shows. Like Conan, Spike Feresten is a writer by trade (most notably for Seinfeld) and his jokes are often self-deprecating. Also like Conan early on, he brings plenty of energy to everything, but he is not entirely comfortable when not on cue cards. But if given enough time to grow into the role like Conan did, he could really be good at this.
  
  The comedy bits are pretty good (not surprising given Feresten's writing experience), and featured Newsradio writer Joe Furey, which is nice to see. It's also kinda cool that they like to work the guests into the comedy. This week's guest, Melinda Clarke, did a "Head On" commercial parody, and read a series of jokes about what would've happened if her Seinfeld guest star appearance (on an episode Spike wrote) had lead to a relationship behind the scenes between her and Jerry. This isn't great TV, but it's not bad. If you've got nothing to do and SNL is a rerun (or you just don't like it), it's worth checking out.

SNL's back new next week, hosted by The Office's Rainn Wilson, so that should be worth checking out.

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