Slowly Going Bald

Had a blast over the weekend at the Alamo Drafthouse's "Cougar Town" screening and shindig. Check it:

"Cougar Town" Season Three Preview Event: I Won't Back Down

Kind of a taxing episode for me. I tried to cover it in the review, but I'm not sure I got all the bones out.

"Community" 3x8: "Documentary Filmmaking: Redux"

Solid.

"Community" 3x7: "Studies in Modern Movement"

I really enjoyed this one.

"Community" 3x6: "Advanced Gay"

A very good "Community" this week. Worked for me a lot more than "Remedial Chaos Theory."

"Community" 3x5: "Horror Fiction in Seven Spooky Steps"

Really fun, inventive episode.

"Community" 3x4: "Remedial Chaos Theory"

Another phenomenal season. This is the best show I've ever had the privilege of reviewing weekly.

"Breaking Bad" 4x13: "Face Off"

OK:

"Community" 3x3: "Competitive Ecology"

Great table-setter with some awesome suspense. It's been a predictably strong season. Looking forward to the finale.

"Breaking Bad" 4x12: "End Times"

I will probably run out of ways to say "solid episode," and I will also probably run out of excuses. But for now: solid episode.

"Community" 3x2: "Geography of Global Conflict"

Holy buckets. This show blows me away every week.

"Breaking Bad" 4x11: "Crawl Space"

Solid return.

"Community" 3x1: "Biology 101"

UPDATE: Dan Harmon retweeted the review with some very kind words. I think I have to quit now.

I reviewed the season premiere of "Two and a Half Men," which was boring and crass in ways I hadn't even dared to imagine.

Rebooted "Two and a Half Men": About as Funny as a Funeral

Another great one.

"Breaking Bad" 4x10: "Salud"

Another solid hour.

"Breaking Bad" 4x9: "Bug"

Things are getting even more tense, which I didn't think was possible.

"Breaking Bad" 4x8: "Hermanos"

When Jesse described Gale as a "problem dog," I wanted someone to say, "What's a problem dog?" and then for Jesse to respond, "Nothing, what's the problem with you?"

... Anyway:

"Breaking Bad" 4x7: "Problem Dog"

Just: damn.

"Breaking Bad" 4x6: "Cornered"

Terrible episode! Wait, that's wrong. I mean it was predictably great.

"Breaking Bad" 4x5: "Shotgun"

In which I take a quick look back at the summer in TV:

Summer TV Wrap-Up: The Good, the Bad and the Downright Annoying

Fantastic episode.

"Breaking Bad" 4x4: "Bullet Points"

It's impossible to imagine an episode of this show that isn't riveting.

"Breaking Bad" 4x3: "Open House"

Solid as a rock.

"Breaking Bad" 4x2: "Thirty-Eight Snub"

The kickoff to the fourth season of "Breaking Bad" was, predictably, intense. And also pretty great.

"Breaking Bad" 4x1: "Box Cutter"

In which I take a look at five British shows available via Netflix's life-altering Watch Instantly feature.

Five British Shows You Should Be Watching on Netflix

Frankly, I'm not sure how this one came out. The bottom line is that I think awards shows are pointless in terms of being barometers of quality; artistic worth exists outside of an organization's ability to give it a statue. "The Wire" is phenomenal without codification from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Emmys: Can't Live With 'Em, Can't Cancel 'Em

Over at Pajiba, I've got a piece about how we watch TV, and specifically the ways our experience can change by watching a serialized show years later on DVD or via digital downloads.

Also, related: I'll be writing about "Breaking Bad" when it returns next month. That show is my new obsession.

The big four networks announced dozens of new series at their annual upfronts; of these, a handful look not-terrible. Those are just the numbers you deal with. Over at Houston Press, I've got a look at the series with the most promise.

Fall TV Preview: Crossing Our Fingers for Something Good

Solid end to a solid season.

"Community" 2x24: "For a Few Paintballs More"

A fun and entertaining "Community," and a solid first half of its season finale.

"Community" 2x23: "A Fistful of Paintballs"

Fun episode of "Community" last week.

"Community" 2x22: "Applied Anthropology and Culinary Arts"

Great "clip" show.

"Community" 2x21: "Paradigms of Human Memory"

Over at Pajiba, I take part in a group piece that talks about those movies and TV shows that you initially hate (or love) only to eventually love (or hate). It's a fun topic, and a healthy reminder that real criticism is a constant act of intellectual honesty.

Changes of Heart: Reexamining Art You Used to Hate (or Love)

A workmanlike episode of "Community" this week. Not great, not terrible. (It also pales next to this week's "Parks and Recreation," which was perfection.)

"Community" 2x20: "Competitive Wine Tasting"

In which I talk to Jim Rash about improv, writing, and his fear of stand-up. Nice guy, good interview.

Community's Dean: Jim Rash

A fantastic episode of "Community" this week that really worked for me. Great emotional reveals blended with skillful layers and twists. Deceptively strong.

"Community" 2x19: "Critical Film Studies"

Why haven't Troy and Abed spun off into a concurrent web series?

"Community" 2x18: "Custody Law and Eastern European Diplomacy"

In which I ask John Oliver a few questions about his stand-up. I'd hoped to do a phone interview, but his schedule only allowed for an email exchange. Still, fun to do.

John Oliver's "Vanity" Project

(And as always, I've got a column that looks back at the week in TV.)

Cute episode with killer details.

"Community" 2x17: "Intro to Political Science"

Some good jokes, but I'm starting to worry about the depths to which Pierce has sunk. He's not just a wackjob any more; he's genuinely cruel.

"Community" 2x16: "Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking"

Another good episode. The show is, as I've said many times, dependable in its quality.

"Community" 2x15: "Early 21st Century Romanticism"

Hilarious and moving episode. Very good stuff.

"Community" 2x14: "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons"

A pretty weak episode of "Community" last night, and one that also had the misfortune of airing the same night as one of the strongest installments ever of "Parks and Recreation." Not horrible, but kind of lazy and uninspired.

"Community" 2x13: "Celebrity Pharmacology"

Another quick but (hopefully) helpful post for Houston Press about great TV comedies you can see on Netflix Watch Instantly. You can also get updates from @instant_netflix and InstantWatcher.

Five Comedies You Should Be Watching on Netflix

Over at the Houston Press blog, I've got a round-up of new series premiering over the next few weeks that might not be that bad. I know that sounds horribly weak and noncommittal, but I've been burned too many times to have my hopes raised by a trailer.

New Shows for 2011 (That Might Not Suck)

For Houston Press, I rounded up a Top 5 list of the best episodes of TV from 2010. That's a ridiculously small number -- you could do a list of the best 30 episodes if you really wanted to cover your bases -- and I know that there are so many shows I couldn't list. So basically I just picked five standouts. That's the way it goes.

Top 5: Best TV Episodes of 2010

Over at Houston Press, I've got a round-up of great Christmas episodes, just in time for the holiday break.

Top 5: Best Christmas Episodes

A solid episode, if not really a funny one.

"Community" 2x11: "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas"

A predictably strong finish for the first season. I've enjoyed just about every minute of this show so far.

"Boardwalk Empire" 1x12: "A Return to Normalcy"

(Here's my weekly round-up, as well.)

A great episode that was sweet and funny but never preachy or overreaching.

"Community" 2x10: "Mixology Certification"

A great table-setter for next week's finale, with some of the best scenes of the series to date.

"Boardwalk Empire" 1x11: "Paris Green"

(And, as usual, my weekly news round-up.)

Another solid episode, with great performances by Jack Huston and Michael Stuhlbarg in particular. Hard to believe there are only two left this season.

"Boardwalk Empire" 1x10: "The Emerald City"

(And here's my weekly news round-up.)

Another fantastic episode. There were some bumpier patches earlier in the season, but the show's on fire right now.

"Community" 2x9: "Conspiracy Theories and Interior Design"

I get into more detail in the blog, but the bottom line: "Boardwalk Empire" is still a fantastic show. Best new drama of the year, hands down. Consistently exceptional.

"Boardwalk Empire" 1x9: "Belle Femme"

(Here's my weekly news round-up.)

A perfect episode, packed with humor and great character moments. Easily one of the series' best. Twenty-two minutes of pure joy.

"Community" 2x8: "Cooperative Calligraphy"

Another enthralling episode:

"Boardwalk Empire" 1x8: "Hold Me in Paradise"

(And here's my week in review column, too.)

Last night's "Community," if not a classic, was still pretty solid.

"Community" 2x7: "Aerodynamics of Gender"

You know all this already: "Boardwalk Empire" is very good, etc.

"Boardwalk Empire" 1x7: "Home"

Here's my weekly round-up, in which I talk about "The Walking Dead," the Rally for Sanity, and Newsies. Trust me.

For more about the ways we are always battling the demons of our past, here's one D'Angelo Barksdale:

Another great episode of "Community" that bent the rules but still played by them. Still the best comedy on the air.

"Community" 2x6: "Epidemiology"

We're halfway through the first season of "Boardwalk Empire," which remains the best drama currently airing.

"Boardwalk Empire" 1x6: "Family Limitation"

(And as always, here's my week in review.)

A gimmick-heavy but still very entertaining episode of "Community."

"Community" 2x4: "Basic Rocket Science"

Another great episode of "Boardwalk Empire" last night.

"Boardwalk Empire" 1x4: "Anastasia"

(And here's my weekly wrap-up, too.)

A smart, solid episode of "Boardwalk Empire" last night. Easily the best new drama of the season, even with just three episodes aired.

"Boardwalk Empire" 1x3: "Broadway Limited"

(And be sure to check out my week in review post, as well.)

Fantastic episode of Community this week. I'm amazed by the show's consistency.

"Community" 2x2: "Accounting for Lawyers"

Over at Art Attack, the Houston Press blog where I cover TV, I've got some thoughts about the cancellation of Fox's "Lone Star," and what it represents for the medium.

Thoughts on the Cancellation of "Lone Star"

A strong return for the best comedy on TV.

"Community" 2x1: "Anthropology 101"

Also, here's a great excerpt from an interview with Dan Harmon at the A.V. Club. Here he talks about the aesthetic and emotional difference between single- and multi-camera shows, and what they tend to ask of viewers:

AVC: A lot of shows like Community—30 Rock, Arrested Development, these kind of movie-style, single-camera comedies—struggle in the ratings. They’re great shows, but they’re shows that people seem to catch up with on DVD. Why do you think that is?

DH: I can speculate as to why it is. I think the answer is somewhere in primatology. We are really, really, really most comfortable feeling like we’re hanging out with about a hundred or so people, experiencing something with them, and it’s just the most comfortable thing in the world to watch a sitcom, a multi-camera one, to just slip your foot into this warm slipper that’s been molded to fit your foot after a hard day’s work. Going back to Jackie Gleason, we have that format down. That industry has now made a science out of finding the funniest, most charming people who can pull off that weird combination of Broadway performance and fourth-wall acting, even though they’re pausing for these gigantic laughs that you can hear. If you were describing it to a Martian it would sound absolutely insane, you would have no way of logically explaining why. But the answer is, it’s more comfortable. I can attest to it. I watch reruns of Seinfeld. I mean, it’s perfect. It’s just like drinking a nice cup of tea before bed. Maybe that’s a bad idea. It just feels appropriate and good.

I think that hearing people laugh at the end of a long, hard day, if you cut that out of your life… Some of us can afford to do that because our jobs aren’t as hard. And we get to think about TV for a living. We want more of a challenge. We value the TV actively, ever so slightly asking us to do a little bit of the work in our head. And I don’t want to slip into bagging on it like it’s a base craft, because obviously the good stuff is satisfying, richly satisfying to everybody. Smart people, dumb people, who cares. You’re going to catch more brains with this sort of thing that fundamentally has that going for it. It just makes people comfortable. Single-camera suggests to people that you’re a fly on the wall. You’re floating around in space; you’ve got to keep your eyes peeled for story and lessons and things. I wish there was a bigger secret to it, but I think we just like to howl at the moon with a hundred of our pack.

I'm blogging about "Boardwalk Empire" for Houston Press. I plan on writing up the whole season, and since the show looks to have better chances with viewers and critics than "Treme" did, I expect I'll be able to see it through. I really enjoyed the pilot, and think this show has a chance to be the best drama of the season.

"Boardwalk Empire" 1x1: "Boardwalk Empire"

"Glee" recently wrapped its first season, but the 22 episodes were split up into the original 13, which aired last fall, and this spring's "back nine," a group of episodes that a network will often order to give a full year to a show about which it initially held reservations. And that division in the show's first season is the root of its problem, and the source of everything that's wrong with it.

Musicals are inherently going to push the boundaries of reality more than any other genre. Some numbers have framing devices that keep them rooted somewhat in a believable story line, like a glee clubber performing on stage, but most of the numbers exist in that blurry fantasy-land unique to the genre in which people just start singing their feelings. These moments do as much to move the plot and help characters develop and express emotion as any other, but the problem with "Glee" isn't its willingness to smudge the line between reality and fantasy. It's that it no longer pretends to care about the reality.

The show's success led to a back-nine set of episodes that felt progressively gaudier, as if the show had to keep topping itself if it wanted to stay hot. As a result, all the creative energy was focused on the songs and none of it — not one blessed ounce — on the stories of the people doing the singing. The opening scene of the season finale had Will and Sue arguing in the principal's office about Sue's intrusion into the club and the principal's continued threat that the club would be shut down if they didn't ace their next show. This scene has happened so many times the first season that it has lost any ability to create drama or tension; it's just annoying. A viewer could watch the pilot, the fall finale, and the season finale and barely feel like they've missed anything, and that's bad plotting.

It's also lazy and annoying to insist that every plot about the club deal with its very survival, which are the highest stakes possible. This would be like making every episode of "The West Wing" about the president's potential impeachment; after a couple dozen hours of the same story always winding up okay, the cracks would show, and that's what's happening to "Glee." It's not that there's nothing to care about. It's that we don't get a chance to. It would be far braver and more interesting to just assume that the glee club will continue to exist, and that Sue must find some way to cope with them or harass them that doesn't involve another lamely constructed joke about Will's hair.

Are the musical numbers still good? Yes. But they're not great, and can't be until the show is once again able to establish a connection between the singing and non-singing moments. When the football players last broke into "Single Ladies," it was sublime precisely because of everything that had happened in the story to that point. The musical number was a perfect emotional extension of the narrative. Compare that with Sue's fantasized version of Madonna's "Vogue" video from this spring: lots more money and effects, and absolutely none of the joy. The show has forgotten that songs need people, not just performers.

When the producers trotted out the "Pants on the Ground" guy for the finale, I realized just how long these past 20 weeks have been. I have no idea if I'll wind up watching the show next season, but I can't imagine ever getting more or less out of it than I did this year. The manufactured drama is always the same, just with different faces. I know why people watch; I just don't know why they keep watching.

"American Idol," Week Twenty: Top 2 Perform

"American Idol," Week Twenty: Lee DeWyze Wins; Crystal Bowersox Runner-Up

My post about the "Lost" finale is up over at Pajiba. I think the episode hit some good character moments but was ultimately revealing about the creators' true desire to use smoke (ha) and mirrors to hint at an epic story and then forget it all when it came time to collect. It was a fun episode and had some good scenes, but it doesn't hold up overall, and it will probably retroactively weaken the series. As far as finales go, not on my list of favorites.

"Lost" 6x17: "The End"

My weekly round-up of TV odds and ends is up, too.

That's the end of the season for NBC's comedy block. Over the summer, I really hope someone kills "The Office."

NBC Comedies 5.20.10

Down to two contestants now, and the end of the surprisingly long 20 weeks it takes to arrive at a champion. Maybe they'll shorten the show when Simon leaves. (Yeah, right.)

"American Idol," Week Nineteen: Top 3 Perform

"American Idol," Week Nineteen: Casey James Eliminated

"Lost" is almost over, and the set-up for the finale was a typically solid one:

"Lost" 6x16: "What They Died For"

It's a shame that the seasons are almost up for these shows. I've enjoyed blogging about them as a block.

NBC Comedies 5.13.10

Well, Big Mike was sent packing this week as this season of "American Idol" took one more lumbering step toward the finish line. Only two weeks to go.

"American Idol," Week Eighteen: Top 4 Perform

"American Idol," Week Eighteen: Michael Lynche Eliminated

This week's "Lost" was packed with information that will take a while to absorb and apply. Good episode, though:

"Lost" 6x15: "Across the Sea"

This week's "Treme" was solid, and it began to hint at where the stories might eventually go.

"Treme" 1x5: "Shame, Shame, Shame"

P.S. My weekly round-up of TV news and stray thoughts is also up.

Another solid night for NBC's comedies. I flat-out loved "Community," which is the best new comedy of the year, and "Parks and Recreation" and "30 Rock" were also strong. "The Office" did as best it could, which mainly meant not making me hate myself as much as some episodes do. Small favors, you know?

NBC Comedy Block 5.6.10

Just three more weeks and the season's over. It feels like it's been going forever, mainly because there were only two or three real contenders in the top 24 to begin with, so it feels like the entire spring has been leading up to this inevitable conclusion.

"American Idol," Week Seventeen: Top 5 Perform

"American Idol," Week Seventeen: Aaron Kelly Eliminated

You know what happens when "Lost" gets closer to the end of its season: Folks start getting killed.

"Lost" 6x14: "The Candidate"

"Treme" was solid this week, and included a number of great shout-outs to "The Wire."

"Treme" 1x4: "At the Foot of Canal Street"

Also, my weekly wrap-up is live, as well.

And because it never gets old:

My latest look at NBC's comedy block. I'm really enjoying the chance to do a round-up of the programming block instead of just one show. It's not always an option, but it works great in this case.

NBC Comedy Block 4.29.10

A boring week all around:

"American Idol," Week Sixteen: Top 6 Perform

"American Idol," Week Sixteen: Siobhan Magnus Eliminated

"Treme" seemed to stumble a bit in its third episode, though as I point out, it's a tough point in the season.

"Treme" 1x3: "Right Place, Wrong Time"

(Also, I'm still doing a weekly wrap-up of TV news and commentary. Click away, and help keep me [somewhat] employed.)

I'm starting something new this week for Houston Press, in which I blog about NBC's entire Thursday comedy block instead of one show in particular. I enjoyed it more than just blogging about "The Office," that's for sure.

NBC Comedy Block, 4.22.10

This was "'Idol' Gives Back" week, meaning the results show was a charity event that tested the limits of viewer endurance even as it worked toward a good cause.

"American Idol," Week Fifteen: Top 7 Perform

"American Idol," Week Fifteen: Tim Urban Eliminated

At this point, "Lost" is starting to line up the pieces for the final showdown:

"Lost" 6x13: "The Last Recruit"

"Treme" keeps getting better:

"Treme" 1x2: "Meet De Boys on the Battlefront"

It was a slightly repetitive week for "American Idol" as the remaining nine contestants performed again, though two were sent home as a result of last week's save. (I am probably more versed in "Idol" rules than I ever wanted to be.)

"American Idol," Week Fourteen: Top 9 Perform (Again)

"American Idol," Week Fourteen: Andrew Garcia and Katie Stevens Eliminated

"Lost" gets all explodey as a way to trim the cast. Also, a good episode:

"Lost" 6x12: "Everybody Loves Hugo"

I'm as excited as any fan of "The Wire" about the arrival of David Simon's new series, "Treme." I'm blogging about it for the time being for the Houston Press, and though it's obviously too soon to make any judgment about the season's impact or effectiveness, I thought the pilot was a great introduction to the characters and a good look at where the show might go.

"Treme" 1x1: "Do You Know What It Means"

I'm getting tired of the screaming throngs of tweens in the audience:

"American Idol," Week Thirteen: Top 9 Perform

"American Idol," Week Thirteen: Michael Lynche Saved From Elimination

A really strong episode, and an important one:

"Lost" 6x11: "Happily Ever After"

Also, just because it's awesome, here's a Saul Bass-inspired version of the "Lost" opening credits:

Lost vs. Saul Bass from Hexagonall on Vimeo.

Another week, another contestant gone, and another set of awful guest performances shoved down our throats.

"American Idol," Week Twelve: Top 10 Perform

"American Idol," Week Twelve: Didi Benami Eliminated

Also, just because:

And yep, the cowboy in the "Square One" video is none other than Reg E. Cathey, aka Norman Wilson, the right-hand man to Tommy Carcetti.

This week's "Lost" was middling, but it could've been worse. Also: Why doesn't the Man in Black just turn into the smoke monster to get around the island all the time? Why actually run after people in his physical form?

"Lost" 6x10: "The Package"

Would I watch "The Office" if I wasn't being paid to? I'm not sure. I don't look forward to it the way I do "Community" and "Parks and Recreation." I'm just getting worn down by the show's unending march of pain.

"The Office" 6x21: "Happy Hour"

This still makes me laugh, though:

(I find myself unable to think of anything else to use as a headline this week, though I should probably try to find something different in the future instead of just counting down how many contestants are left. Then again, that would at least help me keep an eye on how little time the season has left. I need that light at the end of this tunnel.)

"American Idol," Week Eleven: Top 11 Perform

"American Idol," Week Eleven: Paige Miles Eliminated

A really solid episode of "Lost," and an interesting look at the core of the show's cosmology:

"Lost" 6x9: "Ab Aeterno"

A sporadically cute episode, but mostly a filler installment.

"The Office" 6x20: "New Leads"

Because of a technical glitch, my blog post about last week's "Idol" elimination didn't run, though my posts about the contest eps did here and here. (Lilly Scott wound up going home, which though she's more talented than some who stayed, her cover of Patsy Cline's "Crazy" was out of her vocal range, and it showed.) Anyway, this week was the first round of performances and elimination for the top 12 finalists, and the show stepped it up a notch in terms of technical glitz and soul-scarring guest performers. Dig it:

"American Idol," Week Ten: Top 12 Perform

"American Idol," Week Ten: Lacey Brown Eliminated

If this recap feels a bit more cursory than my others, that's because I did it at the end of a five-day stretch covering the South by Southwest Film Festival. I'll have more on that later, but for now, here's the latest from Craphole Island:

"Lost" 6x8: "Recon"

I do like the slight joke of the title: Sawyer's doing a recon mission, but it's also "re-con," to con again. Wordplay!

Still, a solid episode. Always good to spend time with Henry Ben:

"Lost" 6x7: "Dr. Linus"

Some solid moments in this week's two-part episode, but even so, I think the show is nearing the end of its creative life. And that's okay.

"The Office" 6x17-18: "The Delivery"

This show is as much an endurance test for the viewers as the contestants. Every step of the process is simultaneously made to feel like the biggest moment in the season and just another step on the road to the real drama. It's everywhere and nowhere. I'm looking forward to May.

"American Idol," Week Eight: Top 10 Guys Perform

"American Idol," Week Eight: Top 10 Girls Perform

"American Idol," Week Eight: 4 Singers Eliminated

I know it feels like this blog is turning into a giant repository for "Lost" and "American Idol" recaps, but I swear, things will change soon. I'll be at South by Southwest, and have some other pieces kicking around. But for now, well, I'm up to my eyes in TV recaps. I hope you like them, and choose to stick around:

"Lost" 6x6: "Sundown"

This week sees the beginning of "American Idol" proper, with live performance shows and elimination episodes. It's late February; the season runs into May. I have no idea how I will make it.

"American Idol," Week Seven: Top 12 Girls Perform

"American Idol," Week Seven: Top 12 Guys Perform

"American Idol," Week Seven: 4 Singers Eliminated

Kind of. Anyway, a fun episode.

"Lost" 6x5: "Lighthouse"

A solid episode. Always good to see the real Locke tooling around again:

"Lost" 6x4: "The Substitute"

"American Idol" is now wrapping up its Hollywood Week in typically slow fashion. By the end of this season, I'll be exhausted from all the fake-outs and postponed reveals.

"American Idol," Week Six: Hollywood Round, Part Three

UPDATE: "American Idol," Week Six: The Top 24 Are Announced

Better than last week's, that's for sure:

"The Office" 6x15: "Manager and Salesman"

Last night's "Lost" was a decent episode, but mainly a set-up for that final reveal.

"Lost" 6x3: "What Kate Does"

This week saw the beginning of the major cuts that will winnow the group down to 24 semifinalists, with a final winner being crowned in, let's say, April 2012.

"American Idol," Week Five: Hollywood Round, Part One

UPDATE: "American Idol," Week Five: Hollywood Round, Part Two

Last night's "The Office" was flat and boring and not nearly as good as the preceding episodes of "Community" and "Parks and Recreation." It reminded me of how Jim and Pam were jerks for a while a couple seasons back. Here's hoping the show gets its groove back soon:

"The Office" 6x14: "Sabre"

"Lost" is back for its final season, and I'll be recapping it for Pajiba, because I'm just that obsessive.

"Lost" 6x1: "LA X"

This week wraps the major audition phase (it's hard to think of the season as just one very long audition), and as such, there's a kind of finals week sense of boredom and waiting for something to happen.

"American Idol," Week Four: Denver Auditions

"American Idol," Week Four: The Best of the Rest

It's not even to the first round of real cuts yet. We're still in cattle calls.

"American Idol," Week Three: Los Angeles Auditions

"American Idol," Week Three: Dallas Auditions

Over at the Houston Press, I finish my two-part look at the Conan-Jay showdown and what it really means.

Click here for the post.

And for those who missed it, here's his farewell speech:

I waited a month for a new episode of "The Office" and got a clip show. Meh.

"The Office" 6x13: "The Banker"

This season of "American Idol" kept on rolling with more bad singers, good singers, and seriously deluded people. (Also, in re: the art for this post: You're welcome.)

"American Idol," Week Two: Chicago Auditions

"American Idol," Week Two: Orlando Auditions

Over at the Houston Press, I've got a blog post that tries to pin down what's happening with the late-night wars and where the wheels came off the wagon. It's mainly a chance to work through stuff I'll explore more with a follow-up post next week, after (if rumors are to be believed) Conan O'Brien leaves "The Tonight Show" this Friday.

Click here for the post.

I've started blogging about "American Idol" for the Houston Press. I'd thought my time covering "Dancing With the Stars" was a long stretch, but "Idol" runs into May, by which point I'm sure I'll be half-mad from immersion in America's biggest and maybe weirdest TV show. But for now, on with the recaps:

"American Idol," Week One: Boston Auditions

"American Idol," Week One: Atlanta Auditions

For a year and a half now, I've been replaying a conversation I had with my friend's father at the friend's wedding. We (the wedding party) had been pressed into service to set up tables and chairs and place settings for the rehearsal dinner, and though I can speak for no one else, I did my level best to do as little as possible. Once we were done, though, the father chatted me up briefly about my career, knowing that I was a copy editor by day and a freelance film and TV critic on nights and weekends. He decided to ask me about the disparity between critical consensus and box-office tallies; basically, he wanted to know how I could presume to act as if I was in the know when I'd expressed displeasure for a movie that had grossed billions.

I can't reconstruct the dialogue with much accuracy, but I do remember being surprised at his casual glee in asserting that I probably wasn't tuned into the right frequency if something I trashed could make so much money. I didn't know what to say just then, and honestly wasn't in any position to begin to wrap my mind around an actual discussion of the issue; I still had a full weekend ahead of me. But I've been thinking it about it ever since, and I finally figured out what I should have said to him:

I know what I'm talking about.

Does that mean, though, that I know all I need to know, or will ever know, or want to know? No. I am constantly trying to learn more, read more, understand more, etc. Does it mean that I was born with the ability to understand art in a way he never could? Of course not. That'd be ludicrous to suggest and against the whole idea of being a critic, which is to get people interested in and excited about movies they might not know about or might have dismissed the first time around.

But I do know what I'm talking about, and it's falsely modest to pretend otherwise. If I'd had my wits about me then, I'd probably have talked to him about communities of informed judgment, the groups of educated doers in a given field that pass down knowledge and skill through generations. It's similar to an academic field, like mathematics: Every new student isn't reinventing formulas, but being ushered into the world of learning that's been there for thousands of years. Movies are the same way. You start out reaching for anything and everything, and you learn and read and study and analyze and eventually understand, and then that becomes the foundation for the next phase of your learning. The things I bring to the table now are things I wouldn't have known to do five years ago, and they'll seem childish in another five. You're constantly growing, but that doesn't make you ignorant.

I'd also have liked to point out that he's the same, and everyone is. He's a minister, and if I asked him for his opinion on a spiritual matter or scriptural passage, one for which he'd be able to bring his life and study to bear to help me — if I asked him that, and then ignored him because five friends with no training said the opposite, he'd likely be frustrated with the fact that I chose to let a crowd dissuade me from something counseled by a more learned individual. I'd be right to want to get multiple opinions, but misguided to count his as less than or equal to that of someone who lacked the depth of understanding really required by the situation.

That's one of the reasons why I trust some people's analysis of movies more than others. It has nothing to do with personal relationships and everything to do with the fact that they know more than most people (certainly more than me). Quality has nothing to do with reception. A good work of art is a good work of art, whether it's seen by millions of people or just a dozen. And because I trust people who have studied, who have clawed their way to a position of education and reason, and because I am on that path myself, I have to put more faith in their analyses than box-office returns. It's not because I discount the will of the people (at least, not wholly); it's because I know what I'm doing. I ask you to trust me, and see what you think.

Seriously, everyone needs to be watching "Parks and Recreation." Good first season, great second one.

Over at the Houston Press' Hair Balls blog (no, I don't know why they call it that), I take a moment to reflect on the best and worst Christmas specials ever made. Feel free to berate me for any glaring omissions.

The Best and Worst Christmas Specials of All Time

Maybe not as great as "Christmas Party," but still pretty good.

"The Office" 6x13: "Secret Santa"

A great wrap for the first 13 episodes, and a packed set-up for the rest of the season. I'm already looking forward to the show's return in April.

"Glee" 1x13: "Sectionals"

Incidentally, this is how bad the crop is with the local Fox affiliate. The show's masked in widescreen so people like me, with old-school tube TVs, can see the whole thing. But the Fox network here broadcasts it in full-frame. You can actually see it snap from widescreen to full-frame at the beginning of the episode, so the sides of the picture are cut off. Every week. It happens with other shows, too, but I don't watch Fox that often. This is annoying, and I know that I'm probably one of the few who notice it, but I don't like having to watch a show where people have conversations with characters who have been cut almost entirely out of the frame. I guess I'll have to wait until I get the DVDs to really experience the show. Thanks, Fox 26, for sucking so consistently:

This week's "The Office" was one of those episodes you don't enjoy, you just try and survive. I barely did:

"The Office" 6x11: "Scott's Tots"

Finally! Tons of plot and action, and one of the best musical numbers in weeks:

"Glee" 1x12: "Mattress"

[I have no idea how many posts I'll do in this series, or how often I'll write one, but I just couldn't resist creating it.]

I love movies and TV. I have a pretty healthy respect for language. I don't think those two should be mutually exclusive. From time to time, though, I notice weird grammatical quirks that I can't ignore.

"In the Shadow of Two Gunmen" is the two-hour opener of the second season of "The West Wing," and as I've said, it's a wonderful episode. There's a scene in the second half where Josh is waiting in the airport to fly home for his father's funeral when Jed Bartlet, still just a presidential contender, shows up to comfort him. It's a moving scene, but there's a moment that always jars me:

The emphasis is mine. Creator Aaron Sorkin is a gifted writer, but he's no stranger to grammatical slip-ups that masquerade as teachable moments. (Josh's lecture about the proper use of "an historical" instead of "a historical," which is actually kind of wrong, comes to mind.) I don't wanna get into double negatives and litotes; I just think we should untangle the sentence to see what it actually says.

First, let's just flip the negative in the first half and see what happens. The new sentence would be, "If you lose this election, it isn't going to be because you didn't try hard enough." The joking implication here would be that if Bartlet loses, he'll have to share some of the blame. No one will be able to accuse him of not trying hard to lose; this is what Josh would be saying if this were his dialogue. This meaning seems to fit with the tone of the scene and Josh's gentle admonition to Bartlet, who is on the verge of flaking out on his acceptance speech just to see Josh off at the airport. This new sentence would have Josh jokingly telling Bartlet that Bartlet's doing a solid job at throwing the game, and that if he loses the election, well, it won't be because he didn't try, meaning it will partially be because he did try.

But that's not what Sorkin wrote. He wrote, "If you don't lose this election, it isn't going to be because you didn't try hard enough." (Again, emphasis mine.) That reverses the meaning of the first half of the sentence, making it in effect: "If you win this election, it isn't going to be because you didn't try hard enough." Which would make sense from an electoral perspective, I guess — if Bartlet wins, it will indeed be in part because of the effort he put forth — but it's not at all the meaning Josh and Sorkin need. Josh is kindly telling the president to get it together, that his behavior runs the risk of losing the election. Bartlet's appearance at the airport has Josh half-worried that Bartlet will blow the acceptance speech and the nomination; it wouldn't make sense for him to weirdly commend Bartlet on his work so far in a convoluted way.

The sentence, as written and spoken, is wrong. For it to make grammatical sense, and for it to click with the tone of the episode and scene, it should be: "If you lose this election, it isn't going to be because you didn't try hard enough." Oh well.

"Glee" was cute enough this week, but definitely felt like a filler ep:

"Glee" 1x11: "Hairography"

I honestly didn't know if this day would ever come, but it has: This season of "Dancing With the Stars" is finished.

"Dancing With the Stars," Week Ten

"Dancing With the Stars," Week Ten Results

"The Office" 6x10: "Shareholders Meeting"

A pretty cute episode, with some fun songs and moments:

"Glee" 1x10: "Ballad"

The end is so, so close now.

"Dancing With the Stars," Week Nine

"Dancing With the Stars," Week Nine Results

Ever since the first time I worked my way through "The Wire," it's never been far from my mind. In terms of story, structure, theme, acting, execution, and every other measurable parameter, it's the greatest TV series in American history. That greatness applies to its scope, too, as well as the shadow it casts over a landscape littered with lesser competitors.

Over at Pajiba, our resident video editor has put together a fantastic compilation of the 100 greatest quotes from the series. It's a noble endeavor, worthy as much for what it includes as for the fun debates it can spark over what got left out. Here's what I wrote about the series and its love affair with language:

"The stories are sprawling, epic, Greek-tragic ruminations on the nature of American conquest and the sacrifices made by the people at the bottom of the ladder on behalf of the ineptitude of those at the top. What’s more, the dialogue is this thick gun-blast of hardened profanity, street slang, police argot, and the undeniably Shakespearean pleasures of hearing gifted orators hold forth on the tilted battle between good and evil."

Take a look:

You know the drill by now: "The Office" is great. "FlashForward" is abysmal. Onward:

"The Office" 6x09: "Murder"

"FlashForward" 1x08: "Playing Cards With Coyote"

A solid little episode. It was good to shift the focus to Artie for a while. Hopefully the other side characters will eventually get some more love, too:

"Glee" 1x09: "Wheels"

Aaron Carter got kicked off "Dancing With the Stars," as was inevitable. I also laughed a little when his profession was listed as "singer," since "unemployed pseudo-vocalist" would probably be more accurate.

"Dancing With the Stars," Week Eight

"Dancing With the Stars," Week Eight Results

It was another solid night for "The Office" and another typically awful night for "FlashForward." I really can't believe the ABC show got picked up for a whole season. Then again, watching it is like watching "CSI" or something in that it's a window to a world my friends and I don't often visit, i.e., the world of crappy TV. It's an interesting reminder that many viewers only set their bar so high when it comes to TV series.

Anyway:

"The Office" 6x08: "Double Date"

"FlashForward" 1x07: "Already Ghosts"

Also, here's a fun clip someone reminded me of the other day:

Michael Irving finally, finally got kicked off the show this week. Still, I can't believe there are five "stars" left. If that means five more weeks of competition, I'm flying to L.A. and murdering them all.

Also, I think it's pretty clear from the photo that if you aren't watching this show, you are MISSING OUT BIG TIME MISTER.

"Dancing With the Stars," Week Seven

"Dancing With the Stars," Week Seven Results

Here's this week's write-up of "The Office" for Houston Press:

"The Office" 6x07: "Koi Pond"

Also, in a move that surprised no one, "FlashForward" sucked again:

"FlashForward" 1x06: "Scary Monsters and Super Creeps"

I'm not surprised that Melissa Joan Hart was sent packing, but really, how is Michael Irvin still in this? I think he's got something on the judges, or he threatened them with a blade.

"Dancing With the Stars," Week Six

"Dancing With the Stars," Week Six Results

This week's "The Office" was another great one:

"The Office" 6x06: "The Lover"

And OH YEAH: "FlashForward" was actually fun this week:

"FlashForward" 1x05: "Gimme Some Truth"

This week's "Glee" was back to form, and though I'm getting tired of the way the episodes seem to alternate between quality and something decidedly less so, it's still one of the most enjoyable shows on the air.

"Glee" 1x08: "Mash-Up"

This week's "Dancing With the Stars" featured, among its typical horrors, a tribute to Michael Jackson. The whole thing was achingly bad.

"Dancing With the Stars," Week Five

"Dancing With the Stars," Week Five Results

This week's "Glee" was a pretty weak episode of nothing but filler. Disappointing.

"Glee" 1x07: "Takedown"

The episode also made shameless use of auto-tuning and echo effects in literally unbelievable ways. But at least that reminded me to see if a new installment of "Auto-Tune the News" had been released, and sure enough, it had. So here you go:

It was another glorious week on Dancing With the Stars. Seriously: Who watches this? Is it only, as one reader suggested, addled mothers?

"Dancing With the Stars," Week Four

"Dancing With the Stars," Week Four Results

Heck yes I got a little misty. You know you did, too:

"The Office" 6x04: "Niagara"

Related: Dustin wrote a really sweet piece about Jim and Pam as a relatable, realistic couple. Check it out.

Oh yeah: I'm still blogging about FlashForward, which for the past two weeks has squandered the momentum built up in the pilot. What a sadly weak show. I hope it can turn things around:

"FlashForward" 1x03: "137 Sekunden"

This week's Glee was a really solid episode, with some of the most fun performances yet:

"Glee" 1x06: "Vitamin D"

Tom DeLay, that old sweaty bastard, quit "Dancing With the Stars" because of stress fractures. I didn't think he'd make it all the way, but I'd hoped to have at least two more weeks of the guy. Now I just have to watch Donny Osmond. THANKS TOM.

"Dancing With the Stars," Week Three

"Dancing With the Stars," Week Three Results

Here's this week's write-up of "The Office" for Houston Press:

"The Office" 6x03: "The Promotion"

I should also here admit that I'm really looking forward to the wedding episode next week. It's possible I got a little choked up at the commercial.

Oh yeah: I'm also blogging about "FlashForward," which is still fun, but I'm waiting for it to get great.

"FlashForward" 1x02: "White to Play"

Here's the latest "Glee" write-up for the Houston Press. I thought the episode was weaker than the previous week's, but still had some good moments. Now that Rachel is finally back in the glee club, here's hoping that's where the focus will be.

"Glee" 1x05: "The Rhodes Not Taken"

Here are this week's Dancing With the Stars posts. Did I use the image of Kathy Ireland because she's the one who got kicked off, or just to get you in trouble for reading this at work? You'll have to click to find out!

...Kathy Ireland gets kicked off. But please read the posts anyway. I need to keep the traffic up so I look like a viable hire. Gracias.

"Dancing With the Stars," Week Two

"Dancing With the Stars," Week Two Results

More from Houston Press:

"The Office" 6x02: "The Meeting"

Oh yeah, I also wrote up "The Vampire Diaries." It's horrible.

Over at the Houston Press, I've started blogging about "Glee." Get your choir on:

"Glee," Episode 4: "Preggers"

And just in case you can't wait for it:

I'm going to blogging about TV for the Houston Press, and while I'm still debating whether to link to every entry in a post here or just promote the bigger ones, I figured I'd promote the first few. Also, I'll be covering a wide range of shows, so while that means I'll get to write about "The Office," it also means I'll be talking about "Dancing With the Stars." Yeah. Last night's episode of "DWTS" was my first, and as insane as I'd thought it would be, especially watching Tom DeLay do pelvic thrusts to "Wild Thing."

If you want to know more, read on:

"Dancing With the Stars," Week One, Part One

UPDATE: "Dancing With the Stars," Week One, Part Two

UPDATE: "Dancing With the Stars," Week One Results

One of the easiest bombs to lob as a professional critic is to demean a film or TV series as "manipulative." This is also one of the most misleading and unthinking ways to attack a work of art. One of the goals of a good story is to evoke emotion, to stir up in the viewer feelings of joy or sorrow or empathy or any one of ten thousand; the fictional narrative is constructed specifically to manipulate you into that state. What we really mean when we call something manipulative is that it is falsely manipulative, i.e., the situations that unfolded to arrive at the given conflict or resolution felt forced, or cheap, or predictable, or dumb, or in any way unbelievable. Good storytelling makes the scripted feel surprising, and it makes the inevitable feel crafted by fate.

This came home as I rewatched the latter half of the second season of "The West Wing" recently. It's revealed in the first season that President Bartlet suffers from a relapsing-remitting course of multiple sclerosis, but the disease is kept secret from the staff and the world at large. The second season of the show becomes increasingly about Bartlet's decision to run for re-election, which would break a promise he made to his wife out of deference to his illness to limit himself to one term, but creator and writer Aaron Sorkin isn't about to make Bartlet's m.s. some clunky weight around the neck of a great story. In other words, though the disclosure of the disease to the public is unavoidable and destined to become an important part of the re-election arc and the rest of the series, Sorkin isn't going to employ some sitcom-level hijinks in which Bartlet's yakking about his m.s. treatments on the phone when some aide accidentally picks up the extension and hears all about it. To have the revelation come out that way would feel arbitrary and stupid and unoriginal, and it would feel that way because (a) it would be all those things, and worse, but also (b) that would rob the viewer of seeing a realistic, natural story play out among a stable of smart characters. No, Sorkin does the best and only available thing: He has someone figure out the secret.

It's impossible to understate just how vital this is to the integrity of the series, the characters, and the viewing experience. Sorkin's political drama moved fast and quick, running on adrenaline and wit and pure unfiltered hope. (For more of my gushing over the show's second season, click here.) It was a smart show about smart people, and to have such a major plot development left to less graceful devices would've been out of place. What's more, these characters had spent two seasons proving their worth, devotion, and intellect, and there could be no better way to honor that than to have one of them — communications director Toby Ziegler — discover the president's secret by just sitting in his office and thinking about the various clues (the president's reluctance to discuss re-election, the vice president's posturing) scattered around him. Toby blasts the president for his behavior, but coming as it does on the heels of his discovery, it doesn't play out so much like self-righteous thundering as it does legitimate anger. The show is honest to its emotions, and that's what makes it such worthwhile viewing. Any series can be a soap, but it takes real skill to make something this intelligent and nimble and captivating. And smart.

I've been rewatching "The Wire" over the past month or so, reflecting on the work as a whole even more than I did my first time through, and I've come to realize that one of the show's many strengths is the way it creates nuanced characters without forfeiting its moral compass. This sounds easy, but it's incredibly hard to do, and pulling it off requires work.

One of the easiest and most popular ways to describe really well-made movies and TV series is also one of the most misleading. Faced with an army of finely drawn characters, especially on a long-form drama like "The Wire" that plays out over several years, it can be tempting to make a claim along the lines of, "There are no good guys or bad guys." It's not that this statement is evil; it's just that it fundamentally ignores the larger complications of great storytelling and places dangerous limits on the art in question.

That's because in a great story, there are still good and bad people, but these people occasionally do things at odds with their basic moral make-up. Omar is a bad, vicious man, a killer and thief not often given to remorse, but he feels genuine love in a relationship. Lester Freamon is a good, decent police, but he's not above burning a political figure for the hell of it. Herc is a brutish and dim officer, but when internal affairs comes calling, he takes the heat for his department and spares two other officers any punishment. Etc., etc., etc.

That's the glory of nuance, and what turns a good story into a great one. Good and bad aren't eliminated, but co-exist within a character. Saying that no one in the story is good or evil is wrong-headed, and it's unfair to just how complicated the fictional world actually is.

Ever since I started to try and form coherent thoughts on why people see bad movies, I've found myself examining a tangential problem: namely, that a lot of people don't know what they want from filmed entertainment in any medium, or even why they particularly respond to certain TV series or movies. There's nothing inherently wrong or evil about this; it's just the way most everyone operates, trusting a vague combination of gut instinct and unexamined reaction to tell them they like or dislike a given story. But I think it's important to think about what you respond to, and what you want to respond to, and what you see others respond to, and how all of those and more can change and affect each other.

I've always been drawn to story and character, falling in love with the movies or series that create the most convincingly drawn universes or arcs or populations. But I've realized those related but disparate areas can be traced back/up to a broader concern for honesty above all else. I love all sorts of movies and shows, but they all either reflect an honest view of the world as it can be understood by those living in it or else construct different versions of that existence that still function under relatable and realistic character motivations as well as respect an internal consistency, refusing to violate their own rules.

Just coming to that conclusion, and learning from it, and knowing how to express it, and what it means to say it, where to look for its evidences, took years of watching and writing and thinking. It just did. The simple and ugly and cruel-sounding truth is that some people think about these things, and some don't. As an example, though Roger Ebert isn't quite what he used to be, he can still hit something out of the park when he tries because he has spent decades thinking about what he loves and why he loves it.

But it's also important to realize that loving honesty, as broad as that sounds (and, well, is), doesn't mean limiting myself to mumblecore or documentaries. It means respecting all brands of storytelling that respect their characters and viewers, and that make an attempt to be honest in their machinations. All fictional stories are plotted, but the good ones make the planned feel natural. For instance, Die Hard operates pretty clearly in the realm of the fantastic, but its enduring appeal comes from the way it creates a likable hero who exists in a heightened world but behaves with a recognizable rationality: He sweats, bleeds, plans, regrets his sins, hopes for a better life, tries to do right. It's my favorite action movie for its style, pacing, story, and originality, but also because of the way John McClane just makes sense on an emotional level. Hold it up against a Michael Bay movie and you can see that not all movies, even actioners, are cut from the same cloth. All explosions are not created equal.

From the other end of the spectrum, too, are the stories whose honesty takes such strong root in the real world that their stylization or lack thereof only enhances that relatability. There's no mistaking the heightened, precisely designed Rushmore for the real world, but it remains one of my favorite films (if not the favorite) for its absolutely honest portrayal of youth, confusion, heartbreak, and the sweet damnation at the core of the human condition that says not only do we suffer, but that we can survive more than we knew. It is true to its characters and their motivations, offering a specifically fictional version of honest and true feelings and events.

That commitment to honesty can have added impact when it informs all aspects of the film or series. One of the (many, many) reasons that "The Wire" is the best television show ever created is the way in which it just shatters the standard for verisimilitude in filmed entertainment. Every moment serves the greater story, every character is sharply drawn and beautifully nuanced, and every fragment of dialogue feels plucked from the mouths of the men and women who lived the lives that inspired the stories on the screen. It is honest to a fault, honest to its heart, and honest above all things. It is recognizable as a perfect story not because it defines quality but because it adheres to the definition passed down through all art, to hew as closely as possible to the beats and rhythms in the heart and soul of every viewer, and to make a made-up world feel like it's right outside the window. I look for honesty because that's what's worth seeking.

DrawMuh

CahMehDee

MissTurHee

SciFi

A pretty decent clip show:

Click here for the review.

Also, because I got laid off from The Hollywood Reporter on Wednesday, this will be my last review for them for a while. So, there's that.

Eh. Canadian and dull:

Click here for the review.

Man, I missed Conan.

Click here for the review.

Lightweight but still entertaining. A fun little summer show.

Click here for the review.

A good little TV-movie about Churchill and World War II:

Click here for the review.

From Mike Judge, I expected a little more.

Click here for the review.

Jesse James doesn't come off as the sharpest knife in the drawer. This is not a total surprise.

Click here for the review.

Man, when "Lost" went to a white screen, I just sat there, wondering how the hell I was going to survive until 2010 (!) to see what happened.

Also, in re: Locke, I gotta say: It feels good to be right. I don't do a lot of major theorizing about the show, but that one clicked with me back during "Dead Is Dead."

And finally, because I am a nerd like this, I am already planning my headline theme for next season's write-ups.

Click here for the recap.

A cute, energetic, funny show with lots of potential. (I hope I was able to convey that in the review; space constraints are killer at work, and 425 words is a "longer" review, which for anyone that knows me is a cruel, cruel joke.)

Click here for the review.

The first half of the season finale of "Lost" was, predictably, awesome:

Click here for the recap.

I wrote the feature package at work for the 100th episode of "The Office," which included a story about the series and an interview with Greg Daniels. (Daniels, who's a dry and very funny guy, also worked on the fantastic and underrated "King of the Hill.")

Click here for the story.

Click here for the Q&A.

"Lost" keeps barreling ahead, adding one more solid episode to an already strong season:

Click here for the recap.

Think about it.

Not good.

Click here for the review.

I have a theory about John Locke. Could be unbelievably wrong, but it's still a fun theory. Plus I make an epistemology joke:

Click here for the recap.

My bottom line for the review: "A dull thriller that might impress your grandmother."

Click here for the review.

My bottom line for the review: "A dull thriller that might impress your grandmother."

Click here for the review.

A pretty solid comedy.

Click here for the review.

My first TV reviews for The Hollywood Reporter are now live. First up is the season premiere of FX's "Rescue Me." Click here for the review.

I also take a look at Comedy Central's "Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire," which is just bad. Click here for the review.

Another solid episode:

Click here for the recap.

Also, the Barracks' library is apparently just littered with genre titles from the 1960s and '70s.

Click here for the recap.

[For the forgetful or learning impaired, be warned again that there are of course spoilers ahead.]

Bad TV shows air all the time. Most TV is bad, and there's only so much that can be really gained from wasting ink, pixels, or breath complaining about how much "Two and a Half Men" sucks. There's no surprise there, and the arguments are almost too easy to make. But when a good show — indeed, when a great one — tumbles from its former glory and spends its last few moments gasping in a gutter unimaginably far from the heights from which it launched, then it's necessary and imperative to talk about what happened, and why. That's how "Battlestar Galactica" ended the other night, with a sputtering fall across the finish line, and I greet its resolution not with applause or joy but with the sad commitment of watching a family member finally succumb to a terminal disease. Things used to be so bright and almost transcendent, but this last season has bludgeoned the joy from the series and turned it into an exercise in how to take a fascinating fictional universe and leave it in ruins.

The entire season was one example after another of aborted storytelling and cheated narratives, but things really began to take a turn for the worse in "The Ties That Bind," which shoehorned too many subplots into one episode, one of which followed Cally from her discovery that Tyrol was a Cylon to her attempted escape with Nicky to her murder by Tory. The whole thing occupies maybe 20 minutes of screen time, and though it's an interesting idea that plays on the mercurial loyalties of the crew to each other, it's a horribly botched execution that mangles what should have taken multiple episodes to unwind. The writers and producers could have mined Cally's fear of and prejudice toward the Cylons and how she struggled to reconcile that with her unwavering love for Tyrol, which would have deepened Cally's character and put a specific face on the general atmosphere of paranoia between humans and Cylons. But none of that happened. She was killed and mourned in a cheap memorial that betrayed everything that had come before.

That's pretty much how the series finale played out, too: as a series of solid ideas ruined by execution, with creator/writer Ronald Moore clumsily swinging a wrecking ball at something that had once towered over the rest of the television landscape. The series began as a sharp, well-rendered examination of what it means to live in a just and free society; what it means to live morally when there are so few people left that laws can barely be enforced; the role of religion in government and vice versa; the slippery slope of the military-industrial complex; etc. But it ended with a suicide mission to save Hera, a human-Cylon hybrid whose importance is never fully explained or sold to the viewers. Cavil believes her genetic code contains the keys to Cylon salvation, now that they've had their resurrection hub destroyed, and her blood did beat back President Roslin's cancer for a while. But Adama never managed to make his decision to save Hera convincing, mostly because her value was never firmly established. Yes, the theory of her relevance was constantly pushed, like when her abstract doodles turned out to be the sheet music to the "Galactica" universe's version of "All Along the Watchtower," whose notes can be turned into mathematical equations that plot the course to Earth. (As embarrassed as you are to read that, I felt even worse typing it.) But Hera was always a thing, never a person; she never said a word, just sat there looking beatific and trying to look like she wasn't a randomly invented plot point that suddenly had to become meaningful.

What's more, the flip side to Hera's existence as a narrative place-holder is that the Galactica's final mission wasn't one to save Earth (or New Earth), or defeat the Cylons once and for all, or to rescue their own society. It was to do something that just didn't carry as much emotional weight. The effects and presentation were still fantastic, despite the fact that the Cylon Colony existed on the edge of a black hole that was mentioned and then dropped. (Regular readers will now how much I hate it when movies or TV series break the Chekhov's gun rule.) But the sequence couldn't hold a candle to Adama's decision to ride to the rescue at the beginning of Season Three, when he jumped Galactica into atmosphere above New Caprica and launched a Viper barrage to save the imprisoned colonists. That earlier scene had better action and suspense precisely because it was anchored to a greater emotional outcome, namely, the survival of humanity. How would that have changed if Hera had been left behind? Starbuck already knew the jump coordinates, or arrived at them without again consulting the child. What purpose did she serve?

Similarly, almost nothing was gained by the flashbacks to Caprica before the fall, unless someone out there really wanted to see Adama puke on himself again. The characters' personalities weren't advanced in any way — Tigh still likes booze and strippers! No shit! — and whatever sense of destiny or fate for which Moore may very well have been striving was smothered under the weight of a bad soap opera. The only revelation about those scenes was Gaius Baltar's shame in his blue-collar father and how that pushed him to change himself, a moment that actually came home with tender resonance when he was striking out for a homestead on New Earth and broke into tears when confessing to Caprica Six that he did indeed know a little about farming. (I'm still too frustrated to begin to address the way Starbuck up and disappeared, having apparently been a corporeal projection of her own consciousness created after her death on Earth and whose sole purpose was not, as had been foretold many times, to lead humanity to its destruction but instead to guide them to a new home. Gah.) It's accurate moments like that one that made the finale so disappointing, and have soured me on the ending. The show got close to greatness, but wound up breaking my heart and making me actively upset about its resolution. Only love could inspire such displeasure.

And oh, that resolution. Having the surviving members of the human race wind up in our collective past was a nice touch that underscored the cyclical nature of the series' mythology, but though that also meant that the cycle of war they tried to break had pretty obviously failed, Moore rammed the point home by skipping forward 150,000 years to modern-day New York. Head Six and Head Baltar, who are apparently angels working on behalf of God (who doesn't like His name), are roaming the streets and casually commenting on our decadence and (over-)dependence on technology. Moore seems to be setting the series up to continue in perpetuity, as Baltar and Six say that the planet looks just like Kobol and Caprica before their falls, but he's also delivering a horribly simplistic indictment of current tech, whether he means to or not. As Baltar and Six walk away in slow-motion like, I don't know, Neo and Trinity, the camera pans to take in the neon indulgences of Times Square before transitioning to — and this was jaw-dropping — a montage of our own robots dancing and smiling as they become ever more "humanized." I could barely believe what I was seeing. The structural parallel between society's entanglement with technology and the blurred line between human and human-like has always been a fantastic and well-explored theme for "Battlestar Galactica," but to reduce it to a clip of a dancing robot set to Jimi Hendrix's "All Along the Watchtower" was laughable and pitiable and just damn embarrassing. (I'm guessing the song's presence is meant to convey that in every permutation of human society, someone writes a vaguely trippy song whose notes can be converted into three-dimensional coordinates leading to a new home world, which is kind of a disappointing way to explain the song's use in the series.) Everything epic about the show had been rendered flat and unmoving, and everything complex had been pitifully reduced. The only glimmer of hope is The Plan, a forthcoming "Battlestar" TV-movie that will purportedly reveal the Cylons' plan and shed new light on the events of the series. I pray and plead that the movie will do what it can to restore the show and its characters to their former heights; I can't let them go out like this. So say we all.

[For reflections of happier times, or at any rate more interesting ones, I've got a piece about the series' first season, a look at the third season finale, reflections on the current season before it sank into the abyss, and one of my all-time favorite online transcripts.]

I really want the time traveling to drive someone insane. Not just send them into a bloody-nosed coma and kill them. I want them to go full-bore bonkers.

Click here for the recap.

You're going to want to run back to her. Don't do it. Just wait and see what happens. Plus, Juliet is way less crazy.

Click here for the recap.

It won't go well.

Click here for the recap.

Bad cake, Jack. Bad, bipolar cake that just wants to screw you to forget about her missing son. You need to be okay with that, because she's not worth the orange juice, man.

Click here for the recap.

Halbey: if leoben and bin linus are in a room playing poker
what happens
Me: zero sum game. constant bluffing assures that no one will ever take the entire pot
Halbey: i'd watch that one-act play
Me: kate and starbuck in a crazy-off. who wins?
Halbey: starbuck
we don't even know if she's a human being
that's how crazy she is
kate can fight to survive or whatever but kara doesn't give a frak
plus she is the only possibly nonhuman alcoholic i've heard of
besides tigh i guess
plus kate is stringing along two already-messed up guys in jack and sawyer. i guess she did get that one guy killed. but starbuck is leading along the son of adama and also the caprican equivalent of lebron james
i think your crazy quota has to be higher to pull that off
jack v lee in a "grim face bc i have the weight of the world on my shoulders" stareoff
Me: hmm
jack, but barely. he's had to be the leader, whereas lee keeps finding ways to be no. 2
Halbey: who felt worse about their infidelity
Me: jack
lee was always starbuck's bitch
Halbey: boy that's the truth. i think jack also regrets his prostitution experiment more too. wasn't bai ling a hooker?

I mean seriously, when that dude's arm got ripped off, I kinda yelled.

Click here for the recap.

Also:

My apartment manager is asking the tenants in my complex to call him with the number of their parking spot; he's in the process of compiling an updated list of who parks where, and he doesn't want to accidentally double-book a parking spot for someone new. So, for maybe the first time since coming here, I noted mine and my roommate's spot numbers.

Mine: 4.
My roommate's: 23.

I guess what I'm saying is, if I come unstuck in time, don't say I didn't warn you.

"Battlestar Galactica"
Hera
Chief
Sam
Gaeta
Brother Cavil
Caprica Six
Col. Tigh
Natalie Six
The Final Cylon (also here by name)
Tory
Adm. Adama
Laura Roslin
Tom Zarek
Gaius Baltar
The Hybrid
Leoben
Starbuck
D'Anna
Apollo

"Firefly"
Mal Reynolds
Zoe
Kaylee
The man they call Jayne
Inara
River
Simon
Wash
Shepherd Book
Mr. Universe

"The West Wing"
Toby
Ainsley
Donna
Sam
CJ
Bartlet
Josh

"Friday Night Lights"
Saracen
Riggins

And I have only scratched the surface. (There are, for instance, accounts for a lot of "Mad Men" characters, which caused a bit of a scuffle last fall.) This kind of phenomenon needs to be talked about, or at least used as fodder for graduate research.

Her: Do you watch "The Big Bang Theory"?
Me: [with dismissive but not unfriendly laugh] No.
Her: Oh, that's right — Tim said —... Are you artsy?
Me: Do you mean "discerning"? Then yes.

As a result of the cutbacks that are being felt at print and online outlets everywhere, I've been cut from my position as a freelance TV columnist at the Willamette Week. I've enjoyed being able to write about the good and bad things I've watched over the past 18 months, but sometimes these things just end.

Also, even though the column has been edited to say "Dallas murder police officer," the original draft just said "Dallas murder police." You know I love the Bunk.

Anyway: Click here for the column.

"There's really nothing like seeing a guy realize he's not done yet. Usually it goes the other way."

There was never any doubt that I would buy the newly issued 10th anniversary set of "Sports Night," Aaron Sorkin's half-hour sitcomish drama/serious comedy that ran for two earnest and (for me) life-changing seasons on ABC from 1998-2000. I already own the original set issued a few years ago, but the folks at Shout Factory (who were also behind the "Freaks & Geeks" set) engineered a nice box that adds a few commentaries and featurettes. The series was Sorkin's first foray into TV, and that freshness brimmed over into the plots, the beats, and the general rhythm of the show. But the series will always stand out for me because it's the first one I ever really and truly loved, and I pined for it in the way only a 16- or 17-year-old could, full of love and sadness and a belief that I knew pain and that I was somehow being born into the world of adult drama by regularly tuning in to watch a series the lives of the anchors and production staff of a cable sports show. If we measure a given series' (or film's) impact in our lives by the way it meshes with our worldview, then we love even more those stories that actually shape that worldview, hew it out of rock and fear and youth and give us something greater than what we're seeing; that somehow give us access to the great emotion behind it all, that sense of falling and becoming that's as powerful as it is fleeting. There are a host of other shows I love for those reasons or ones that are awfully close, but "Sports Night" was the first.

"I want you to trust me, just once, when I tell you that you have three 7s and I have a straight."

Sorkin's series was always about the lengths the characters would go to just to save each other from being alone, often/especially in a bigger sense than just a romantic one. In the first season's "The Hungry and the Hunted," Jeremy receives what's known around the office as "the call," the characters' emotional recognition of one of their own and their offer of trust and friendship. It sounds incredibly corny to write and almost impossible to pull off, but Sorkin's heart never left his sleeve, and the episode served as a meta-call for what it wanted in its own viewers. Here is a place, Sorkin seems to say, where people will put their guard down for 22 minutes at a time. I'd never seen that before, and certainly not with any kind of actual effort put into the characterizations. Sorkin was fascinated by the way people are forced to trust each other in relationships, walking right up the blind edge and jumping. Jeremy calls Natalie on her habit of ending relationships before they begin to avoid emotional risk; a year late, Sam tells Dana basically the same thing as he ends his temporary gig at the station. The Dan-Rebecca arc of the first year mined the same territory, from the obvious moments about tearing down walls made of pain to sweet ones set to the strains of "Sloop John B." The stories placed such a premium on acceptance and connection, but Sorkin did it with a sense of genuine humor and warmth and honesty that made everything feel real.

"Sometimes it's worth it, taking all the pies in the face. Sometimes you come through it feeling good."
"Yes."
"And how was your day?"
"Sometimes you just stand there, hip deep in pie."

But the show was also wonderfully funny, the first time Sorkin could begin to work out the kinks in the joke rhythms he carried over into "The West Wing" when it began on NBC during the second and final year of "Sports Night." Yes, the lives of the characters are taken seriously, and not immune to melodrama — the Casey/Dana/Gordon triangle gets awfully tangled and punchy toward the end of the first season, and let's not even get into the whole choreo-animator thing — but Sorkin's humor helped ground the characters. The second season's "The Cut Man Cometh" is a fantastic example of a series hitting its stride, from the writing to the acting to the sharp editing that moved the humor beyond what you'd expect from a typical half-hour show. This clip of the second half of the episode is amazing: Dan's signoff at the very end is still a perfect kicker, and the first few minutes of the clip are just flawless.

"Look, things are gonna be a little rough for a little while, but Lou, I want you to keep your head in the game. We'll come out the other side of this no problem."

More than anything, though, the show was unapologetic in the way these characters were a broken but unshakable family unit, a group of people dealing with stiff industry competition and financial hardships and an uphill battle to do what they loved that they still fought with everything they had. Dan Rydell's emotional breakdown over the course of the second season wasn't just a way to grow the character: It forced the show's world to choose between pulling together or pulling apart, and seeing the character who most often had been the family's moral center begin to veer off course was startling in its effect and heartbreaking in its ultimate resolution. He appears at the office seder to say, "It seems to me that more and more we've come to expect less and less from each other, and I'd like to be the first to start bucking that trend. We need each other badly. Badly. I need you all badly." It was a kind of callback to a speech he gave Natalie more than a year before after she was assaulted by an athlete, saying at the time, "No matter what you decide, you've got friends. And this is what friends gear up for." The series was also the place Sorkin began expressing his belief in the idea of fighting a good fight despite (or because of) losing odds: Jeremy references the line from The Lion in Winter about how when a fall is all a man has left, "it matters a great deal," which was Jed Bartlet's whole thing on "The West Wing." The show was sweet and sad, proud to walk through life wounded if that's what it took to stay honest. When I watch it, I still see its flaws — the network-mandated laugh track in the first season; the over-dependence on certain joke structures; the "Thespis" episode in general — but even those shortcomings remind of what it was to watch it the first time a decade ago, to find myself drawn into a new world that ran for two short years but that was allowed to go out with a strong and genuine resolution that makes you feel that the characters are still out there, that their world is still turning.

Jeremy's hunting experience:

Dan's apology:

Isaac and the Confederate flag:

Casey learns the names:

Over at the Willamette Week, I take a look at "The Life & Times of Tim," which so far is the only fall comedy that's actually made me laugh.

Click here for the column.

Over at the Willamette Week, I take a look at the excessively horny and just kind of weird goings-on of "Entourage."

Click here for the review.

In a lot of ways, I don't have anything new to add to the juggernaut that is "The Wire," David Simon's uncompromising, engrossing, and completely fantastic series that's nominally about the lives and misdeeds of a group of Baltimore detectives but is more accurately a Greek tragedy about the decline of the American empire and that decline's fallout in urban environments. Coming late to the party and seeing a show only on DVD and only after it's ended its on-air run is always a bittersweet experience: Even as you revel in the glory of a show that's new to you, you're hit with the knowledge that you could have been watching it week to week, or month to month, or holding out each year for that hallowed day when the show, your show, returned. But then, absorbing the show on DVD offers that rare pleasure of instant gratification, with each episode's viewing determined not by the whims of the network but only by how fast you're willing to burn through the series.

I began the series one summer night, and viewing it consumed the next several weeks of my life: Rented movies sat unwatched on my shelf, and I was glad that the other shows I cared about had yet to return for their fall seasons. (Although I have not yet begun to process the eventual disappointment that will set in when I return to watching [even admittedly good] pop TV shows after spending the summer with Baltimore's finest.) Watching a series like that always lets you fall in passionate love with it, like reading a genuinely engrossing novel, and Simon and his critics have all talked at length about how the show is in many ways a visual novel, presenting a definite arc and structure with each chapter, whether it's the drug trade, the port unions, politics, education, or the media. Every season is connected, but each one also has a definitive end, a moment where the story concludes. I quote my sister in regard to the show's unflinching introspection: "Simon’s epic is a tragic one, and he’s not content to end the best series in the history of television on a light note. He’s too let down by everything, especially the newspaper industry. But it’s real, and unflinching, and it tells the story of what really is going on in America’s cities."

Everything about "The Wire" is superb, and a lot of the love I (and others) feel for it can I think be traced to one of the tenets of how I view art and film and life and criticism and everything in the first place. When I was a kid, I had just a raging temper problem, lashing out at my family with a regularity that would've driven weaker parents to give up. One of the things my father drove home on the occasions I was lectured (and these were many): "It's not what you say, it's how you say it." His point was one about the way in which anger manifests itself in speech and personal interaction, and while he was right, that maxim has come to mean so much more. A lot of TV series that receive critical attention or success with viewers are lauded for their content, when what's actually being applauded is the idea of the content. In other words, people sometimes don't make a distinction between the story and the way in which it's presented. It doesn't matter how nuanced the performances are in, say, an arc about a father condemning himself to save his son; for some people, the fact that the story exists in the first place is enough to excuse anything from lack of polish to whole great swaths of broad characterizations that leave you with caricatures of people pretending to say things no one would ever remotely say. Look at Don Draper; look at Jimmy McNulty; you will know the difference.

Anyway, here are a few clips. They're spoiler-free and, as such, pretty random, but still enjoyable:

The tale of Snot Boogie:

Bunk teaches McNulty about trace evidence:

"It always starts with something true":

Avon reflects on the game:

McNulty and Bunk reconstruct a crime scene:

me: there's one of these next to my office on the sidewalk:
(sends link)
Sis: nice
me: yeah
kind of a cool jab at, you know, change
i mean, the business sucks right now, completely
still, nice to see someone keep swinging
Sis: seriously
me: like, watching Wire 5 makes me want to be a reporter, but an old one 30 years ago
some old guy who won't even use a fax machine
Sis: right, totally
it makes you sad that you missed the boat
me: yeah
work some small-town rag, know everyone at the hall, flirt with secretaries, where's my hat janet i've got a meeting
Sis: :)
me: "you tell the mayor he can put an egg in his shoe and beat it! we've got the exclusive!"
[goes maybe a little overboard]
Sis: hehe
i want to work at your newsroom
me: we don't have a lot of dolls, but if you're thick skinned enough, we could use you
Sis: ok
i promise i won't get my skirt in a knot
me: do it and you're out on your keyster

First up, over at the Willamette Week, I take a look at the tribute to bloated pomp that is the Olympics. It's basically 17 days of sports smothered by horribly cloying human-interest stories.

Click here for the piece.

Second, touching on a subject I only glanced upon in the column, I can't get over how much the viewing public is willing to put aside in re: China's wild abuses of human rights in order to pretend to give a shit about Michael Phelps. In the spirit of that, here's an online transcript:

slackeer33: (sends link)
sad
me: lame
plus some of the fireworks were digitally done for home viewers
slackeer33: whaaaaat
me: (sends link)
slackeer33: "this is actually almost animation"
hahaha
me: yeah
lame
slackeer33: china is just ridiculous
me: yeah
fake fireworks, oppression, human rights abuses, trying to make it rain
slackeer33: i liked how they opening ceremonies highlighted environmental responsibility and all that harmony and concern for future generation stuff.
yeah. ok, china.
me: haha
yes
harmony IN FIERCE ACCORDANCE WITH YOUR GOVERNMENT
slackeer33: haha yeah
we kept joking during the gymnastics about how the mistakes would cost them a lot more than just a low score
"i have shamed my family. i will have to throw myself to my death promptly after completion of this rotation."
me: now that i would tune in for

Over at Pajiba, I take my third and final turn in our group look at the best 20 seasons of TV in the past 20 years with another modern classic, the first season of "Battlestar Galactica."

Click here for the piece.

• I end every conversation by bumping my fist with the other person's, saying, "Us."

• When my boss asks after an absent coworker, I describe him/her as being "in the wind."

• I classify all calls received as pertinent/non-pertinent.

• I leave early so I can be home in time for "106 & Park."

• I shoot people if they piss me off.

Over at the Willamette Week, I examine "Generation Kill" and its emotional similarities to "The Wire."

Click here for the column.

P.S. I'm only in the third second season of "The Wire," so if anyone posts spoilers about later seasons they will be hunted down and thoroughly beaten. And I will whistle "Farmer in the Dell" all the while.

P.P.S. But it's great to see Ziggy again.

Jonathan Grubbs is making T-shirts.

You should all order one.

I mean, I could give you the whole runaround about how struggling artists need support, and how he's got a kid on the way, and he's got that shrapnel from Nam — all true — but really, they're just fun shirts.

So order one.

Over at the Willamette Week, I look at the number of game shows being remade from Japanese formats. This sketch, both in content and tone, turned out to be weirdly prophetic:

This is a shirt that The Sis sent me as a birthday present. I think it's proof that she understands me, and that she'd make a good vice presidential candidate for the Adama '08 ticket.

Over at the Willamette Week, I examine the colossally flawed "Last Comic Standing," and why it can't do anything but suck, and who's to blame.

Click here for the column.

Over at Pajiba, it's my turn at bat again in our continuing survey of the best TV seasons of the past 20 years. We've bumped the roster from from 15 to 20, which should carry us through the summer and allow us to write about some favorites that we just couldn't pass up. This one, however, was always on the list. My struggle wasn't to decide whether to write about "Veronica Mars," but which season to write about. For reasons I hope I make clear, I went with the first.

The piece can be found here.

"Lost" ended its fourth season doing what it's done all year: Kicking ass and completely entertaining you. What's more, I broke a personal record with this summary, which clocks in at 9,306 words. You've been warned.

Click here for the recap.

And because this is my last recap of the year, here's a gratuitous shot of Evangeline Lilly dedicated to my dad and, well, most American males. Sleep easy, fellas:

Including my note at the end about the upcoming schedule for "Lost," this recap came in around 4,900 words. I can't tell whether to be proud I went so long or disappointed I didn't hit the 5K mark.

Click here for the recap.

[This is a much longer and fundamentally different version of a column running today in the Willamette Week. Also, you should know that this version was written, obviously, shortly after the first episode of the season of "Battlestar Galactica," and by now the wildly disappointing third episode has already aired and we've already moved well past that to seeing Tyrol shave his head and Gaeta get his leg blown apart. But them's the breaks with publishing columns in a weekly paper.]

• "Battlestar Galactica" has always existed in a state of permanent change. A glance at what's transpired over the first three seasons is almost jaw-dropping for the amount of pure plot that the series has packed into about 50 episodes. The series is ostensibly about the remnants of the human race on the run from the cyborgs that annihilated their home worlds and everyone on them, but it's really about the price of humanity and what it means to live with your mistakes, which is why instead of spending an entire season on potentially lengthy arcs — the settlement on New Caprica, or the whole damn civil war when President Roslin and Apollo go galloping off to Kobol and drive a wedge between the military and the government that threatened to derail everything — the series often finds a way to wrap these stories in a handful of episodes while (a) preserving their emotional ramifications and (b) getting everything close enough to normal so that the cycle of change and reconciliation can start all over again.

• The fourth-season premiere, "He That Believeth In Me," in true series fashion, managed to live up to those expectations of growth/challenge even as it managed to broaden the larger story's impact, which is no small thing to do this far into a show, especially since this season will be the last. The episode continued to explore the religious and moral and societal problems facing a people whose numbers are just small enough — 39,000 and change — that they could conceivably implode under the weight of trying to remain upright. Everything on the series has always been about shades of gray, and about doing the best you can in compromising situations, and searching for hope and victory amid despair and chaos.

• For instance, the fact that four of the "final five" Cylon are members of the Galactica crew (except for Tory, who was already pretty expendable and whose confirmation as a Cylon is impactful in that she's the aide to President Roslin but otherwise unimportant because she's a pretty fringe and unlikable character) is amazing on so many levels that it can only be called perfect. Col. Tigh, who's always been the most adamant anti-Cylon voice and who killed his own wife because she was aiding and abetting the robotic alien force of whose ranks he is now a horrified member; Sam Anders, who was stranded on Caprica and led a guerilla squad against the Cylons until Starbuck returned to rescue him; and of course Chief Tyrol, who's gone through this whole thing before when he and Boomer were together only to find out she was a Cylon. The entire concept of betrayal and denial doubles back on itself over and over.

• Which is part of the point: The Cylons were created by man and then rebelled. They have always been mankind's greatest mistake, the decision that led to catastrophe, and in essence the series has been about the survivors running from the physical versions of their own screwed-up lives, of the wrong choices they can never stop making. But the identity of some of the final Cylon models brings that home even more, and it raises a series of killer questions: What does it mean to be human? How much control do I/we have over my/our actions? What is it about someone that makes us love them, and how much of whatever that is is beyond our ability to regulate as far as our feelings are concerned? At what point does the person we love stop being that person we love? Yes, the Cylons wiped out most of humanity; that's gonna make for some bad blood. But what does it mean when we become them, and not in the abstract way where we both resort to similar methods of warfare, but actually physically are our enemies?

• And man, there's no other show on television regularly grappling with tough theology. Baltar's Jesusian appearance and ascendance to cult-like leader were one thing, but the plot involving the sick boy and his anguished mother were deeply religious. When the mother asked Baltar why the one true God didn't want her son to live, she wasn't doing it in that facetious manner of unearned weariness that's commonplace on TV drama; she actually wanted to know why this was happening. She believed; she needed help in her unbelief. And of course Baltar's prayer over the sick boy one night, angrily asking God why a boy who hadn't been alive long enough to sin against his creator was being made to suffer while Baltar himself walked as always free. Baltar's encounter later with Six was another moment of reckoning, as Baltar was held at knife-point and pierced not for the boy's transgressions but for his own lack of moral fortitude. And yet Six — if you act on or at least play along with the assumption that the Cylons can somehow influence Baltar's life and surroundings — granted him a reprieve from death and called his bluff. Now Baltar will have to confront his own feelings about his willingness to be sacrificed, and whether they're real, and what it would mean to act on them.

• Tying religion into the whole human-Cylon issue: Starbuck's apparent resurrection is the first time the characters have to deal with something truly fantastical. Everything else that's happened to them has a vague sense of rationality underpinning it; hell, even the magical jaunt to Earth in the caves of Kobol seems normal compared with this. The Cylons are robots; Vipers run on fuel; water is wet; etc. Everything in the "Battlestar Galactica" universe is usually pretty understandable, but this time, the characters can't avoid the fact that the only thing guiding them for now is their faith. Apollo believes Starbuck is who she says she is, and that she's been to Earth and back; others aren't so sure. And Starbuck is broken by her inability to convince her friends of her humanity, something she's always taken for granted and never thought she'd have to verify. All she can do is tell them who she is; it's up to them to believe her. That's why the script did its best to quietly underscore her human nature: Aside from Adama's (warning) shout of "Starbuck" upon her return, she was almost exclusively referred to as Kara throughout the episode.

• Which is the whole issue. The Cylons are now among the crew of the Galactica, fully aware of what they are and unable to know what will happen to them next. The characters used to ask themselves, Will we survive? But for those coming to grips with their true nature, they face an even tougher question: Do we want to?

I discovered this last night and got an unapologetically geeky rush (click the image for a larger view):

The folks over at Watch "Veronica Mars" used a blurb from my obit of the show as a pull quote at the top of their home page. Thanks to whoever did that, and you should know I'm doing a piece about the show next month over at Pajiba as part of the ongoing guide we're calling "The Best 15 Seasons of the Past 20 Years."

Also, I would probably have failed Richard's test. I would've grabbed the knife, the comic book, and the baseball glove.

Click here for the recap.

There haven't been any posts since the last recap because life and the real world have been all kinds of hellishly busy. Plus this one was written in a state of defiant fatigue, if that makes any sense. Anyway:

Click here for the recap.

I mean, the guy used to just be conniving, but know it turns out he's got extensive weapons training. If I were on that island, I like to think I'd eventually side with Jack, but it would be interesting to hang out with Ben for a week or so and start some real trouble.

Click here for the recap.

Logline: Follow two affable men in their 20s as they hang out with Ted Danson.

Plot: My friend and I just hang out with Ted Danson and his famous friends. The goal isn't to crash parties, but rather to just get some drinks and shoot the breeze. The episodes would be largely plotless, or at least, there wouldn't be any inherent drama greater than figuring out what I'm going to wear to any given social event, or whether we can use Ted's influence to get free stuff, like food or services. That's pretty much it.

Title: "Danson With the Stars"

Over at the Willamette Week, I talk about HBO's John Adams. I could sum it up for you, but that would rob you of the joy of reading it for yourself.

Click here for the column.

Over at Pajiba, I take a look at the second season of "The West Wing."

I watched a few episodes from that season again in preparation for writing the piece, and I'm not at all ashamed to say that I choked back tears several times during "In the Shadow of Two Gunmen." I always do.

This is the last recap for a while. When the show returns, I should be able to return to my practice of making episode-specific references in the headlines on this blog, since by then my friends who are catching up with the series on DVD should be up to speed. (And far be it from me to point out that reading blog posts about a series you're watching seems illogical and unavoidably spoilerish.)

Anyway: Click here for the recap.

My second and final trip to this year's Paleyfest was for the "Friday Night Lights" panel. The rush for the stage was stronger than it was after the Apatow panel, and there were even more collectors there, hordes of people with DVDs and Sharpies who had this weird habit of calling the stars by their first names to get their attention. Still, it was a fun night. And damn if Connie Britton isn't something else, you know?

Also: Seeing Tyra Collette play volleyball on the screen in the Cinerama Dome is an experience I can only describe as transcendental.

Anyway, click here for the full write-up.

I attended the Paleyfest panel last night called "The Comedy World of Judd Apatow and Friends," which despite the vaguely dopey title was a fantastic, hilarious evening. Plus I got my picture taken with Paul Feig. When the panel ended, collectors made a controlled rush for the stage to get things autographed — you would not believe the way some of these bring a Buffalo Bill-level of fervor to collecting autographs — but I headed for the man in the brown suit, dapper and amiable and looking like the nicest math teacher you will ever have. It wasn't that I was overly starstruck, but I couldn't figure out how to thank him without running through every cliche in the book: I'm a big fan, I loved the show, etc. How do you tell someone that the story they made hit you in a place that's indescribably important? And that their work in a way made that place possible within you?

Anyway, I had a good time.

Click here for the full write-up.

But damn, what a good episode. The first season of "Lost" is still its best, as well as being one of the more solid seasons of TV in general in recent years, but the fourth year, and the latter half of the third, are close.

Click here for the recap.

I don't quite know what I can add to this video, other than to say I laughed to the point of tears at the proverbial money shot.

Just watch it.

And what the hell, here's another good one from last night:

Apparently even just mentioning characters names in the headlines of blog entries can send people over the edge when it comes to perceived spoilers, but you know I'd never spoil you, baby. I'm 'a take care of you.

Click here for the recap.