Reader mail: Cable vs. network budgets, 'Grey's,' 'Defying Gravity' and more

Do to a technical snafu, I didn't get to post today's column, a reader mailbag, until just now. The main item is about how cable networks are able to produce dramas that get much lower ratings than on the networks. The short answer: cable shows are much cheaper. (And I have a few numbers illustrating that.) Click here to read the full post

The Office, "Double Date": Punch out

Quick spoilers for last night's "The Office" coming up just as soon as I test your politeness...

There were Thursdays last season when "30 Rock" was having an off night, when "My Name Is Earl" was presenting one of its lazier episodes, and when "Kath & Kim" was being... well, "Kath & Kim." And in that context, even a slightly above-average "The Office" stood out as something special. On a night like last night - when "Parks & Recreation" was as brilliant as it's been all season, when "Community" turned in a good showcase for Joel McHale, and when "30 Rock" finally remembered how to be funny most of the time - a relatively small "Office" episode like "Double Date" doesn't seem quite as impressive. (There's a reason it's the only one of the three I didn't attempt to write up before going to bed last night.)

Which isn't to say "Double Date" was bad, just that its ambitions were more modest, and that the episode didn't really know how to end.

Pam's discovery of Michael's relationship with her mom in "The Lover" led to a hilarious episode where Pam got to be loud and irrational while Michael was resembling a voice of reason. Everyone had calmed down by the time of "The Lover," and even Michael's decision to dump Helene on her birthday wasn't so much unfair (he had legitimate, well-articulated reasons, especially when you consider that he is, in fact, Michael Scott) as horribly-timed and uncomfortably-presented.

And then Pam's desire to punch Michael in front of the whole staff - and the staff's desire to see her do it - kind of fizzled. The problem, I think, is that once they set up what Pam wanted to do, there was nowhere for it to go - as Oscar noted to Kevin, there was really only one outcome (Pam hits Michael) - and even though they messed with the timing (Pam gives up, then hits him anyway after Michael tries to blame her mom) and the style (a slap instead of a punch), it was one of those things that the audience had built up in the same way the staff had, and there was no way the moment could live up to that build-up.

Dwight and Andy's subplot was a nice showcase for Ed Helms, and an illustration of how Dwight still doesn't really understand how society works, but it got repetitive after a while. I kept waiting for a twist on them trying to out-favor the other, but it was just a lot of variations on the same joke.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

30 Rock, "Audition Day": Pure evil

Quick spoilers for tonight's "30 Rock" coming up just as soon as my fontanelle closes...

I use the phrase "funny forgives a lot" in my "30 Rock" reviews when an episode fails to cohere but is still entertaining. My problem with the season's early episodes is that they weren't even funny enough to merit forgiveness.

That changed with "Audition Day," which still wasn't "30 Rock" at its peak but which had one perfect, hilarious sequence that almost singlehandedly redeemed the episode for me. Jack's bedbug ordeal leading him to be on the subway and asking for help in the same defeated, sing-song cadences that homeless panhandlers use when they deliver a speech to the whole car was the funniest moment so far of this "30 Rock" season, one of the funniest things Alec Baldwin has done on the show in a long time, and the funniest part of NBC's Thursday lineup tonight that didn't involve Ron Swanson talking about his love of brunette women and breakfast food. Just an outstanding example of a joke that was perfectly set-up and executed. (Moon Vest inching away from Jack like the rest of the passengers was the icing on the cake.)

The rest of "Audition Day" had some good moments - Kenneth hissing "Vampyr!" at the site of Jenna, Brian Williams' Jersey wiseguy character and, especially, Scott Adsit getting an unfortunately rare chance to let loose and be goofy as Pete tried to get The Hornberger System to work - and even managed to make Jenna seem human while sharing a subplot with Tracy.

But after not getting a lot of sleep last night thanks to the world champion New York Yankees, I shouldn't have been in any kind of shape to laugh as loudly as I did at the subway gag, and yet I did.

Great scene, and a solid enough episode to go with it.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Fringe, "Earthling": Broyles' war

Thursday's a busy night of TV, and I don't have a ton to say about the latest "Fringe." Glad to have a spotlight on Broyles (and while I like Lance Reddick, his smile is terrifying), and the shadow monster looked pretty cool, but the self-contained episodes still lack the snap that comes from the episodes that tie more closely into the ongoing storylines.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Parks and Recreation, "Ron and Tammy": Amour fou

Spoilers for tonight's hilarious episode of "Parks and Recreation" - and if you're not watching what may be the best comedy on TV right now, you really should - coming up just as soon as I use political savvy and shushing...

"I'm a simple man. I like pretty, dark-haired women and breakfast food. But this stock photo I bought at a framing store isn't real. Today, I got the real thing. A naked Tammy made me breakfast this morning. I should've taken a picture of it." -Ron

There have been over 100 episodes of "The Office," and now 14 episodes of "Parks and Recreation," and I'm not sure a talking head segment on either show has made me laugh as maniacally as that one did. I had to pause it at one point to catch my breath, then rewind and start over, only to begin cackling all over again. (Eventually, several co-workers wandered over to see if I was okay.)

What made that monologue work - really, what made all of "Ron and Tammy" work so well - was that Nick Offerman and the "Parks and Rec" writers have combined to turn Ron F'ing Swanson into a man who can say completely demented things with absolute certainty, as if they were the most natural thing in the world. Dwight Schrute carries himself similarly, but with Dwight there's never any doubt that he's insane. Whereas when Ron goes on about his love of breakfast foods(*), or his absolute hatred of the town library system, he sounds reasonable - even admirable.

(*) "Parks and Rec" co-creator Mike Schur says the poster, and the talking head about it, were came from a happy accident of sorts. In season one, Ron had a poster of Bobby Knight up in his office, which they had to remove for legal reasons, so the production team spent a long time combing through the Corbis image library, "just typing in things we thought Ron would like. I saw that picture of the woman holding breakfast food and thought: perfect." And then it came in handy for this episode.

All throughout "Ron and Tammy," Offerman says these completely ridiculous and/or surreal things - saying of his ex-wife "I honestly believe that she was programmed by someone in the future to come back and destroy all happiness," or describing sex with Tammy as "like doing peyote and sneezing slowly for six hours" - but there's this incredible conviction to it all that makes it seem both rational and incredibly funny. (I swear, I'm having trouble going back over my notes for this one without laughing. If this show should ever become a big enough success for someone to publish "The Quotable Ron Swanson," they need to devote a whole chapter to this episode.)

Or maybe it's just the mustache that gives him the credibility.

And where some real-life spouses can have problems connecting on camera, there were no issues between Offerman and wife Megan Mullally as Tammy. Mullally won a couple of Emmys for playing way over the top on "Will & Grace," but she shows here that she's perfectly capable of coming down to a more realistic level (as in her first scene with Leslie), then getting ridiculous in a way that still matched the tone of this show. (Mike Scully's script also gave her a few awesome lines of dialogue, like Tammy telling Ron that Leslie is "jealous of me - and the things I got to do to your body and face.")

Though Ron and Tammy dominated the episode, Leslie played an important role in the story, getting played by Tammy at first - because Leslie takes people at face value until they give her a reason not to - and then triumphing because her innate selflessness woke Ron from his stupor. (And I love that we didn't actually see what happened during the couple's final confrontation, but just saw Ron running from the building missing part of his 'stache.)

Much like last week's vendetta against Greg Pikitis, Leslie and Ron's shared hatred of the library was a funny reminder of just how small-scale this world is - Leslie's two big enemies are a 16-year-old kid and the head librarian. The Ron/Tammy ring of fire relationship overtook the library hatred for a while, but Leslie's suspicious glance at the camera crew while Tammy was trying to make nice was a perfect moment from Amy Poehler in the middle of an episode where she was largely in support of Offerman.

A great episode for an increasingly-great comedy.

Some other thoughts:

• Chris Pratt is too funny for the show to abandon just because he and Ann aren't together and he no longer lives in the (non-existent) pit, so the writers are smartly bouncing him around different jobs in and around the parks department. My favorite joke of the Andy subplot had nothing to do with the shoeshine job, or his obsession with getting Ann back, but the gag of Ann explaining that Andy used to film lots of audition tapes for "Survivor" and "Deal or No Deal," followed by a video of a shirtless Andy gutting a fish and declaring that he'd be a great contestant on "Deal or No Deal." Structurally, that's an ancient joke, but very nicely-executed.

• Speaking of the pit (or lack thereof), it seems to me that filling it in has taken a lot of urgency away from the committee. Ann, after all, never really care about a park; she just wanted the dangerous hole in the ground taken care of. It's not a big problem for the series (we've seen this season that there are tons of stories to tell that don't involve the pit), but it does open up some story possibilities - like Ann trying to back away from the sub-committee now that the problem is solved to her satisfaction. I did like her confession that she'd prefer a library branch in the neighborhood to a park, followed by her trying to play along with everyone else's raging library hatred.

• One other nice Poehler moment: the loud indignation in Leslie's voice as she asks, "What kind of lunatic would rather be Cleopatra than Eleanor Roosevelt?"

• Just as "The Office" slowly started giving personalities to people like Stanley and Kevin and Oscar, we're seeing minor characters like Jerry and Donna start to develop. Donna had a nice moment where she slowly affixed the "Told ya so" post-it to the window of Ron's office while Leslie watched. And, like Ann's nursing buddies, she clearly prefers Andy to Mark.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Community, "Home Economics": The fairly odd couple

Quick thoughts on tonight's "Community" coming up just as soon as I decide whether "Pierce, You're a B" is a catchier song than "Comfortable in My Sexuality" from last night's "Cougar Town" (answer: probably not)...

"Home Economics" was another solid episode, particularly in the Jeff/Britta/Abed story. Those three were in a rut for some of the post-pilot episodes, but they rebounded nicely in the Halloween show, and that continued here. Abed's pop culture references are just fine(*) when that's not all he's about, and episodes like this one show him being more perceptive than he lets on. Joel McHale, meanwhile, had a lot of fun playing Jeff's downward spiral, and I think the Jeff/Britta friendship (with occasional thwarted flirting) is a lot more interesting than when he was just trying to sleep with her.

(*) Goodness knows I try to work the phrase "a shadowy flight into the world of a man who does not exist" into conversation at least once a week, so I can't complain too much.

Meanwhile, Shirley got to demonstrate her struggles with being coy, Alison Brie again got to play about 75 different emotions in a single episode, Eric Christian Olsen got to come back as small-nippled Vaughn, and Patton Oswalt joined the show's increasingly awesome guest ensemble as a nurse at the student health center.

One concern: Pierce's revenge rap on Vaughn was fine, but I'd grown accustomed to the Abed/Troy tags. I don't want the show to force one if it's not there, but it's nice to have some reassuring constants in life, like the awareness that new generations every day are discovering the landmark theme song to "The Jeffersons."

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Cougar Town, "Don't Come Around Here No More": Who's the wild man now?

Quick thoughts on last night's "Cougar Town" coming up just as soon as I blow up a pumpkin...

Look, I'm easy to please sometimes. You give me an episode of a sitcom that features dudes crying as they watch "Rudy," and then has one of them acting out Andy Dufresne's escape from Shawshank, I'm going to be more or less in the tank for it.

But I think that while "Cougar Town" hasn't been nearly as good or as polished as "Modern Family" to date, an episode like this illustrates the same point I made in the previous post about last night's "MF." Sometimes, it's less about being wildly funny than it is about liking the characters on the show and being amused to spend some time with them. And I found, as Jules' secret barbecue grew and grew, that I actually quite like most of the people here - including crazy Jules herself(*).

(*) Courteney Cox is always going to play things big, I guess, so sometimes it's a matter of what you give her to play - or, in some cases, of giving her no one to play with. Seeing her freak out in the previous two episodes about her boy toy got grating in a hurry; seeing her struggle to entertain herself alone in the house all day was pretty funny. Maybe she just works better as a solo artist sometimes.

It's still a bit weird that the male characters are funnier and more well-rounded than the women(**), given the show's subject matter, but after being disinterested for the last few weeks, I found last night's episode to represent a show I would enjoy watching regularly.

(**) Or is this a gender identification thing? Ladies in the audience, what say you?

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Modern Family, "En Garde": The cutting edge

Quick thoughts on last night's "Modern Family" coming up just as soon as I charge my phone...

"Modern Family" has very quickly reached a level of likability that makes me happy I've watched episodes even when I don't laugh a whole lot. "En Garde" was far from the funniest episode they've done - though it had some good comic beats, like Cameron freaking out over the orange slices, or Jay saying "Duuude" to Manny, or Jay and Gloria's increasing horror at what Manny was doing to his opponent(*) - but I've grown to enjoy spending time with these people, and to get a goofy smile on my face when I see moments like Claire and Mitchell acting out their ice skating routine, sans skates.

(*) I actually think I would have enjoyed the punchline to the fencing story more if I didn't spend several minutes wondering if Mo Collins was hustling Jay and Gloria so they would get Manny to throw the match. I feel like I've seen that beat too often on a lot of sitcoms, and was relieved in the end that "Modern Family" didn't go there.

I do have a couple of ongoing issues, though. First is that Phil needs to start demonstrating that he's not an utter moron in every aspect of his life, and soon. I suppose it would just make the Michael Scott comparisons even more obvious, but I was hoping it would turn out that Phil had conspired with Luke to sing the praises of the house and help close the sale. Instead, Phil was (at first) as ignorant about it as everything else. (In fairness, I did laugh at him saying Luke was gonna drink your milkshake.)

Second is that I'm losing patience with the heart-warming voiceovers at the end of each episode. I appreciate that a lot of the show's broader appeal (as opposed to something like "Arrested Development") is that it's clear these people, for all their quirks, love each other. And I have no problem with warmth in my sitcoms. Some of my favorite moments on "The Office," or on "Frasier" or "Cheers" or any other comedy I've loved, have come on those occasions where the writers set the jokes aside for something a little sweeter. But there's plenty of warmth in these episodes without Jay or Claire or whoever having to spell out the moral of the story for the audience at the end, and it's starting to feel both obligatory and forced.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Friday Night Lights, "After the Fall": Where's Wallace? Where's the boy, String?

Spoilers for tonight's "Friday Night Lights" coming up just as soon as I find my inner pirate...

"Don't quit on me. Don't quit on yourself." -Coach

The season four premiere climaxed with Coach taking one for the team - accepting the public humiliation of a forfeit to protect his eager but inexperienced players from further injury.

A forfeit is a big deal in the show's world, and "After the Fall" doesn't shy away from the ramifications of it, from the "QUITTER!" signs on the Taylor lawn to the team staging an unofficial mass walk-out to protest Eric humiliating them right along with himself. They may have been spared any more physical pain, but this is mortifying for all of them. And it's made worse because Eric - who does not like to share his thought processes with his players under even the best of circumstances - won't explain why he did what he did, and because these kids barely know Eric(*) and therefore don't implicitly trust him the way the Panthers might.

(*) Even Landry was a scrub who was so far removed from Coach that Eric thought his name was "Lance" for the better part of three seasons. And speaking of which, did I miss a moment in season three where he finally started calling him by the right name, or was an opportunity missed here by having him suddenly switch to "Landry"?

As the school year begins at both Dillon high schools, and as Eric and his threadbare coaching staff try to recover from the opening game fiasco, "After the Fall" has to deal with some of the usual logic holes that come up a few times a season on "FNL" (not even counting that time Landry went on a three-state killing spree). For one, it's awfully convenient that the Lions would have a bye in the very second week of the season, at the exact moment when the players have all quit and Eric needs extra time to get them back together and practicing.

For another, it feels like the vast majority of the students at East Dillon didn't exist in this show's universe until the writers came up with the redistricting idea and needed a bunch of poor and/or black kids to attend the other school. We know from Smash's family that Dillon had some low-cost housing, but the vibe at both East Dillon high and in the projects where Vince lives was far seedier than anything we'd seen in the show's first three seasons.

But if the east side of town sometimes feels as if it sprung up magically during the hiatus, its existence is allowing the show to deal with race and class in a more ongoing manner than in the past. It wasn't a coincidence that nearly every player who walked out on the team after Eric's rant last week to Angry Necklace Guy was black (though several black players, like Vince, stayed). Eric has had black players, even stars, on his teams in the past, but the one we got to know was Smash, who was laser-focused on being a pro football player one day, and who therefore was willing to put up with whatever Coach dished out if it would make him better. Most of the kids at East Dillon are not only coming from a very different cultural place than Eric, but they have no real organized football experience (if they did, they'd have been gerrymandered into the other district), no apparent interest in a long-term future in it (even Vince joined the team to get out of trouble with the cops) and perhaps no interest in indulging the histrionics of your average Texas high school football coach.

By the end of the episode, it looks like both sides are willing to learn more about the other - Eric recognizes he made a mistake in giving money to Vince's mom, and Vince gets the team to show up for the special practice - but this isn't going to come easy for anybody.

But if the Lions are still a mess, at least Eric gets an unexpected windfall when Buddy tips him off to the existence of the phony mailbox, which Tami uses to get stud running back(**) Luke Cafferty transferred to East Dillon. I imagine there will be some direct confrontations between Eric and Joe McCoy before the season's out, but for now it's damned entertaining to watch Mrs. Coach take it to evil Joe, calling his bluff about getting previous Panther titles voided in front of all the other Panther-loving boosters. In the end, the situation is a mess for all involved - Joe loses his star tailback (and possibly some face with the boosters), while Tami gets blamed for screwing with the Panthers - but it's sure not dull to watch.

(**) Luke's status is another one of those things you just have to accept. If the kid is as all-world as we're told - so revered by Panthers fans already that the student body roundly boos Tami, that the boosters are all in a panic about losing the kid to the ghetto school across town - wouldn't we have met him before? Riggins was only the tailback last season because Eric didn't have anyone better after Smash graduated, and Luke acts like he's never met Eric or the non-Mac assistant coach before. And I really don't want to have the show claim he's a freshman. Not only does Matt Lauria look at least 25, but with the show almost certainly coming to an end after next season (the end of the two-year DirecTV extension), there doesn't seem to be a need to play games anymore with what grade the kids are in.

So we already knew Vince and Becky, who now gets to live in dangerously close proximity to Tim Riggins And now we know Luke, who's this ultra-polite, eager-to-please kid who seems to feel as bad about lying to Tami as he does at having to go to East Dillon. And we've met Jurnee Smollett as Jess, whose bike gets hit by the Landrymobile 2.0. And with Landry and Devin and Julie all attending East Dillon (Julie by choice, in a decision I suspect she's going to regret if the schools academic program is as pathetic as its athletic program), our new locale is fully-populated, with JD as the only kid we know who's still at West Dillon. It's going to take a while to get to really know all the new characters, and to see how all these pieces fit together, but so far the reinvention of the series seems to be going pretty smoothly.

I just wish there was a way to more easily integrate our two Panther alums. Saracen in particular still feels like he's off in his own show. While I like the idea of Riggins turning into an acolyte of Coach's - Taylor Kitsch and Kyle Chandler were both terrific in the way they showed how happy each man was to be in each other's familiar company after their recent setbacks - I remember how quickly the show squandered the potential of Jason Street: Assistant Coach, and I hope they have a better plan this time around.

But like I said last week, I wouldn't want to have to say goodbye to Tim Riggins, particularly when he and Billy keep providing the funny, as they did when Tim told his brother, "Billy, would you pass me that violin, please? You're hoggin' it!"

Some other thoughts:

• I loved the closing line of the episode, because as soon as Eric and the kids started throwing jerseys into the fire, I said to myself, "This is a team that's so poor Eric didn't have an extra hat to give to his new assistant coach. How's he going to get new jerseys?" Thankfully, the writers were thinking this, too.

• Anyone want to set the over/under on when Angry Necklace Guy shows up on the practice field, chastened, and asks Eric if he can re-join the team?

• Richard Sherman the artist was played by Hey It's That Guy! John Diehl, whom I'll always think of first as Cruiser, the guy in "Stripes" who had the dumbest reason for enlisting. (As a "Shield" fan, I'm also obligated to point out that he played Assistant Chief Gilroy.)

• Meanwhile, Jess' father was played by Steve Harris, best known for "The Practice," but who will always hold a special place in my heart for being on the receiving end of this John Munch rant from the pilot episode of "Homicide." (Clip's audio-only, alas.)

• Still one more guest star note: the weird dude talking to Coach at the gas station was Texas Tech football coach Mike Leach. He follows on the heels of last week's cameo by Raiders cornerback Nnamdi Asomugha as the cop who introduced Eric to Vince.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Sons of Anarchy, "Fa Guan": Evil will always triumph because good is dumb

Spoilers for tonight's "Sons of Anarchy" coming up just as soon as I deputize the nomads...

"Jesus, Gemma, when does this settle? When does it stop?" -Tara
"I don't know, baby." -Gemma

I had the pleasure of watching "Fa Guan" and the show's next two episodes over this weekend, and it should tell you how mind-blowing the next two(*) are that I would call this tremendous outing easily my third-favorite of the bunch.

(*) Next week's episode is 56 minutes long without commercials, and will run 90 minutes with from 10-11:30 Eastern. So be prepared for longer-than-normal commercial breaks.

I have one complaint about "Fa Guan" (which, per Kurt Sutter, is Chinese for "The Judge") that I want to get out of the way first, which is that it seems like the writers are making things a bit too easy on Ethan Zobelle. I get that he's a criminal mastermind, that the club doesn't have all the information we have (like the attack on Gemma) and also that he has the good fortune to be going after SAMCRO at the perfect moment when the club is distracted by the Jax/Clay beef. But it felt like there were too many moments in "Fa Guan" where Jax or Clay ignored the possibility that Zobelle - who has caused them so much trouble already and seems to be attacking them on a different front each week - might be behind any of their porn problems. And then for Darby, who just found out he got screwed over by Zobelle, to go to Caracara accompanied only by Ethan's goons... well, I know (as Frank Pembleton put it) crime makes you stupid, but that stupid?

And yet, if I could put my frequent cries of, "Why aren't you thinking it's Zobelle?" aside, "Fa Guan" continued the season's riveting downward spiral for SAMCRO. The series began with the club's gun factory burning to the ground with people inside, and now the porn factory has suffered the same fate, possibly taking Chuck and/or Darby with it. And Jax, consumed with his hatred of Clay, and frustrated that things in the club are getting worse, not better, takes the radical step of deciding to go nomad(**).

(**) Next week's episode will explain a little more about how being a nomad works, but keep in mind that Happy was a member of the Tacoma charter who went nomad so he could be closer to his sick mom in Bakersfield. He hangs a lot with our charter, but he's not a voting member.

Though Jax is wrong to blame Clay for the destruction of Caracara, you can see his anger and self-loathing grow throughout the episode, starting with that devastating visit to Otto in jail. Kurt Sutter did a really nice job playing Otto's bitterness towards the club - the very quiet way he said, "You should go, Jax" spoke volumes about how angry he is, and yet how hard that is on him, since the club is all he has left - and I loved the way they left the glimpse of the wheelchair until the final shot of the scene, like an added punch to the gut.

Things only get worse as Clay tries to use Luann's murder as an excuse to shut down Caracara and flex his own muscles as club leader, and while Jax calls his bluff - for the second time in a week daring an enemy to shoot him - neither the fight in jail nor Gemma's potluck dinner nor Bobby's pleas for healing has done the least bit of good in repairing this rift. Though Jax isn't nearly to blame for Luann's death as Clay is for Donna's, hearing Clay accuse him of getting someone's wife killed was perhaps one indignity too many.

And then there's Clay's ongoing campaign to bind Opie to him by appealing to the big man's violent side, which ties into Tig's increasing post-Donna aversion to the dirty work. That comes to a head in that harrowing sequence at the judge's house, with Opie making things too personal as he screams, "Look what you've done to your family!" while Tig - knowing all too well what he did to Opie's family - practically goes fetal.

This is not the club that Jax knows and loves. This is not who Jax's best friend wants to be. And yet this is what everything and everyone around him is becoming. Is it any wonder he just wants to hop on his bike and head for parts unknown?

Some other thoughts on "Fa Guan":

• Keeping things all in the family, this episode was co-written by Liz Sagal, one of Katey Sagal's younger sisters. Liz and identical twin Jean spent a few years co-starring on the '80s sitcom "Double Trouble." (Here's the two of them in a short promo.)

• Outside of Don Draper (or insert name of your favorite "Mad Men" character here), does any character on television smoke as much as Jax Teller? That nicotine habit leads to that great moment right after Opie flips out on the judge, as Jax and Opie stand outside on the porch, just smoking and thinking about how they got to this point.

• Unser's story acquires more pathos, as we find out that his wife bailed on him during his cancer treatments, but he manages to use that news to help out Gemma by inviting her to join him at a revival service. And note the return - looking somewhat the worse for wear - of the homeless girl whom both Gemma and Jax met last season. I'm not exactly sure whether she's supposed to be real, or a ghost, or an angel, or a symbol, or just Sutter exercising a bit of literary license, but I can handle a little magical realism (if that's what she's about) in these very brief, occasional doses. Even bikers (and their old ladies) need a little help now and then, right? And Katey was her usual stellar self at showing Gemma's reluctantly to let the music and the mood of the service wash over her. (Side note: I'm perfectly happy with my inherited religion, but if I were ever of a mind to comparison shop, presence of a gospel choir would be high up on the priorities list.)

• Maybe I'm just trying harder, or maybe my confession a few weeks ago that I couldn't understand Chibbs helped lift some kind of mental block, because he made perfect sense to me in this one. Interesting to see Tara getting in deeper with the club, by helping out Chibbs (telling him how to lie so he could stay on the critical list) on her own turf at the hospital.

• Hale's also getting in deeper with the club than he might have ever planned, choosing to let Clay take out Darby's meth lab rather than doing it himself. Hale still means well, and I believe him when he says he intends to go right back to attacking the club as soon as the greater evil of Zobelle is out of the way, but why do I have the feeling that this is how Clay and Unser's relationship began several decades ago?

• One other plot nitpick: early in the episode, Clay's on the phone with SAMCRO's lawyer, Rosen (played in previous episodes by Tom Everett Scott, but unseen here), who apparently says he can get the charges from the church assault dropped because the video was inconclusive and the church members don't want to testify. But isn't there still the rather large matter of the Sons being caught red-handed by the cops while carrying a bunch of illegal weapons? And wouldn't respectable Ethan testify rather than let his new enemies walk?

• God, Ryan Hurst is just sensational, whether in an explosive scene like Opie flipping out on the judge, or a much smaller one like Opie's reaction to being kissed by Lyla. He's so sad, and so reluctant to get involved with another woman this soon after Donna's murder, yet you can tell how much he needs this.

• Things could be (a bit) worse for Otto, I suppose: he could find out that Bobby was having sex with Luann (which Bobby admits to Jax was "a little scary").

• Half-Sack's boxing skills, not mentioned since midway through season one, come in handy when he punches out one of Darby's goons during the raid on the meth lab.

• As the reluctant judge, Hey, It's That Guy! Michael O'Neill adds a new item to the list of acceptable occupations for which he may be cast. Others include cop, FBI agent, CIA agent, special forces soldier and, possibly, stern private school headmaster or stuffy dean.

• Is Neeta a 24-hour nanny? Or does Abel just nap a ton? Jax and Betty Draper either have outstanding child care or very well-rested babies, I think.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

'V' review - Sepinwall on TV

In today's column, I review ABC's remake of "V," which debuts tonight. Didn't love the pilot, but didn't hate it, either. Will give it a few weeks (at least through the end of its November run, before ABC pulls it off the air until March) to win me over. Don't think I'll be doing a separate blog post tonight, so feel free to discuss it here.

UPDATE: Bumping this up so those who watched can talk about it here. Click here to read the full post

30 for 30, "Without Bias": Everyone's tragedy

Some quick thoughts on the latest "30 for 30" documentary coming right up...

In a way, these "30 for 30" films are almost idiot-proof. The stories that have been chosen have, so far, been so inherently interesting that it almost doesn't matter how the filmmakers have chosen to tell them. I didn't really love Mike Tollin's take on the USFL, but then a lot of you commented that you were just happy to see all that footage.

Kirk Fraser's "Without Bias" feels like another example of that phenomenon. Fraser tries to stuff at least two hours of movie into a 50-minute bag, the end result being a film that jumps around too much among too many sub-stories, and that has to be guided by too many talking heads...

...and yet, I care, because it's obvious how much Fraser, and all the people who get a chance to talk in the film, cared about Len Bias. He was so important to so many people, and if you're the right age (and I confess I'm a couple of years too young to fit in this group), I understand that his death was every bit the major, unsettling even that everyone describes in the film.

The problem is that there are so many potential stories you can tell about Len Bias - cocaine use among athletes (college or pro) of the period, the impact on his family and friends, the way his death altered the fortunes of the Celtics (which Bill Simmons has written about many times), the ripple effect it may have had on the War on Drugs - and rather than just pick one and tell it all the way, Fraser tries to give a little time to them all. The segment on the night of Bias' death, and its immediate aftermath, is both the longest and the best part of "Without Bias," but so many other parts of the movie - the mandatory minimum sentencing material in particular - feel underfed.

Still, many of the sound bytes and images from the movie have stayed with me in the week since I watched it: the composure of Mrs. Bias, the regret of Tribble ("Why did we have to be stupid enough to do drugs?"), the eloquence of Michael Wilbon (which is easy to forget if you just watch him on "PTI" every day, as I do) and, especially, the TV interview about Jay Bias's murder, where the dad talks about "the eulogy that he would give for Len Bias," then stops himself when he realizes what he's just said (and what a horrible double-burden has been visited on his family) and tries to fight back tears.

I'm glad I watched this one. I just wish it had been more focused - or else a whole lot longer.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Big Bang Theory, "The Cornhusker Vortex": The football whisperer

I know people want a "Big Bang Theory" post each week, but I don't have a ton to say about last night's solid but unspectacular episode, save that I've started to prefer episodes that shake up the character pairings over ones like this that has the more standard alignment of Raj with Howard, and Leonard moving back and forth between Penny and Sheldon.

Talk about it if you want, though. What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

How I Met Your Mother, "Bagpipes": A lover, not a fighter

Quick spoilers for last night's "How I Met Your Mother" coming up just as soon as I get you to call me A-Sep...

It's interesting: when Ted and Robin were together in season two, the show occasionally did stories about the state of their relationship (particularly towards the end as they were doomed). More often(*) it felt like just a fact of life, while the stories usually focused on other characters, or on Ted and/or Robin stories that weren't specifically about them dating.

(*) With the usual caveat that it's been a while since I've watched most of those episodes, and that memory can re-write history to suit your whims. And in some cases, it's a gray area; the Robin Sparkles plot from "Slap Bet" was partly about Ted's concern that his girlfriend was keeping a secret from him.

Season five, on the other hand, has been checking early and often in on how Robin and Barney are working as a couple. And for the most part, it's worked. With Ted and Robin, the issue was that they were a couple who wanted different things, which is only funny to a point. With Barney and Robin, it's two people who don't really want or know how to be in a relationship, but who like each other too much to not be in one. So the potential for comedy about it has been much greater, and paid off well in an episode like "Bagpipes," which put them in contrast to ultra-functional Marshall and Lily.

"Bagpipes" had a lot of distinctly "HIMYM" comic touches - Future Ted substituting bagpiping for sex (plus, bagpipes often just sound funny), a throwaway Slap Bet between Ted and Marshall (paid off immediately so that Thomas and Bays don't have to answer even more questions about future slaps), Barney imagining himself as Lily's husband (and then Marshall's epic fail at restating Barney's imagined argument) - and would have worked for just being silly. But I'm also curious to see what basic relationship hurdle the writers place in front of Robin and Barney next.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Curb Your Enthusiasm, "Black Swan": Stone guilty

A bit hung over from last night's World Series game, and I have a full plate today at the office, so no time for a full "Curb Your Enthusiasm" review. I didn't love "Black Swan," but it was a good example of a type of "Curb" episode we haven't had a lot of this year, in that Larry was in the right for most of the episode (other than what happened to the swan, obviously), but circumstances, other people's reactions and Larry's own innate abrasiveness kept making him into the bad guy. Plus, in a nice role reversal, someone else got to use the stink-eye lie detector on Larry - and it was just as (in)effective.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Mad Men, "The Grown-Ups": Watching too much television

Spoilers for the penultimate episode of "Mad Men" season three coming up just as soon as I take you to see "Singin' in the Rain"...

"The Kennedy assassination is very well-trod territory, and I just don't see myself adding (anything) new to that." -Matthew Weiner, at the end of season two

Weiner, like any artist, is allowed to change his mind, and so season three wound up not only including the Kennedy assassination, but confronting it head-on. But after seeing the finished product - the first episode of season three I've found truly disappointing - I can understand why he was initially reluctant to do it.

On the one hand, this is a series about the social change that came in the '60s, and so you can't not deal with Kennedy's death in some way. It would feel like either a cheat, or simply a glaring hole in the narrative. But on the other, Weiner was right that the assassination itself, and how people learned of and reacted to it, has been told so many times that there simply wasn't a lot that he (in a script co-written with Brett Johnson) could add to it.

With season one's episode about the Nixon vs. Kennedy election, or season two's Cuban Missile Crisis finale, the show took the approach of showing that even in the midst of a presidential election, or the potential end of the world, people were still caught up in the drama of their own lives. But even more than the Cuban Missile Crisis (which was an abstraction - the threat of something happening, rather than something actually happening), Kennedy's assassination was such an enormous event that it took over everyone's life for a little while. And many people spent those tumultuous days doing exactly what Pete and Trudy, and Betty, and the gang in the kitchen at the wedding - and characters in so many other JFK-era dramatizations - did, which was to sit in front of the television and try to process all of the bizarre, horrible things that were happening.

In the end, I don't know that Weiner had a choice, either about doing an episode about the assassination, or about showing the characters largely being passive, frustrated observers to it all.

But if it was necessary, it wasn't very satisfying to watch - watching a TV show about characters glued to their TV sets feels particularly slothful - and it felt even more unsatisfying coming on the heels of the astonishing second half of last week's "The Gypsy and the Hobo." "Mad Men" tends to go back and forth between telling larger stories of the '60s and smaller stories of the characters - and, at its best, stories that combine the two - and the shift from the important (to us) but (to the world at large) small moment where Betty learns the truth about Dick Whitman to the more sweeping yet (to our characters) remote story of JFK being killed was jarring. Since I realized when this season was set, and certainly since I saw the date of Margaret's wedding on the invitation(*), I've been waiting to see how "Mad Men" would deal with the assassination. But now that we're here, I find myself wishing they had pushed it off for a bit so we could have seen more of how Betty was dealing with this new information, and what the state of the Draper marriage was before Betty decided to end it.

(*) I'm not usually a good prognosticator, but I was pleased to see that I was right in assuming that Roger would stubbornly go through with the wedding, that it would be sparsely-attended, and that most of the guests would be miserable. Margaret's wailing, "It's all ruined!" reaction to the assassination was a nice reminder that not everyone was so devastated by the death itself.

Now, the fact that Betty's willing to walk away from Don (and into the arms of Henry Francis) should more or less tell you what the state of the marriage was. But we closed "The Gypsy and the Hobo" on a somewhat hopeful note: Betty hadn't asked Don to leave, wanted to go trick-or-treating with him and the kids, offered him the last bite of her sandwich, etc., while Don seemed relieved to have the burden of the secret lifted. Then the Drapers are largely invisible in this one at first (Don and Betty don't appear at all, alone or together for the first 10 minutes), and then they're dealing with reactions to Kennedy's death, and then Betty's eyeing Henry at the wedding. It's clear from their reactions to the kiss on the dance floor - Don looks hungrier for his wife than ever before, where Betty is lost in thought and a bit puzzled - that they're moving in different directions, but I think an opportunity was missed to show Betty going from Point A (interested in saving the marriage) to Point B (recognizing it as a lost cause).

Weiner apparently said in one of those "Inside Mad Men" features on AMC's website that Betty originally planned to move herself and the kids permanently to Philadelphia, and only went back to Don after the lawyer's advice was so depressing. In that light, Betty's emotional journey makes more sense - the Dick Whitman revelation was only a temporary blip in her desire to get the hell away from this man who's always been like a stranger to her - but in terms of what's been shown on the screen, rather than explained in an on-line footnote, I wanted more middle. I wanted to see how, if at all, Don and Betty's interaction changed after this news, to see how Betty viewed her husband now, how Don acted at home, etc., and aside from their brief moment in Gene's room in the middle of the night, there was no time for that with all the JFK drama unfolding.

And I wanted all of that because it feels like the relationship has now passed a point of no return, so we're never going to get a chance to see this in the future. Betty has now declared her desire to end the marriage twice, and while she took him back once, it would be tedious if the show kept breaking them up and putting them together again - especially since Betty only really took him back the last time because she was afraid to have the baby alone.

And that in turn raises a troubling question about what happens to Betty going forward. Betty has only ever figured into the story as she relates to Don, and we've seen this season with Joan and, especially, Sal, how easily characters who don't work at Sterling Cooper and/or don't have relationships with characters who work there can fall off the map. If Betty follows through on her plan to end the marriage, where does that leave her in the larger story? Will we have random, disconnected subplots about what Betty, Henry and the kids are up to? Or will the reality of Henry turn out to be so different from the fantasy of him that Betty will run screaming back to Don, and have Don (yawn) take her back?

I'm a little under the weather, so in the interests of both coherence and my health, I'm going straight to the bullet points to discuss everything else:

• Because Pete and Betty have so much in common as people (which I talked about at length in my review of season two's "The Inheritance"), their stories often tend to move in parallel. So in the same episode where Betty decides she's finally fed up with being Mrs. Don Draper, Pete has had enough of being at Sterling Cooper. I liked how Lane spelled out the difference between Ken and Pete's approaches, and how Pete - who always tries too hard at everything because he doesn't know how to be a real boy - doesn't understand why his approach is less appealing than Ken's. How do you suppose he'll react, though, to the idea of working with Duck should he find out that Duck is with Peggy?

• Whenever someone asks me if any character on this show is actually happy or well-adjusted, I always point to Kenny and his haircut (as Pete describes Mr. Cosgrove), but I guess the downside to that is that the writers don't have the time or interest in crafting stories about someone who isn't disappointed in his life or at any kind of personal or career cross-roads. Ken stories in the first two seasons were usually about how other characters reacted to him (Pete being jealous about the short story, Sal having a crush on him), and this year, we haven't even seen that much of our new Senior Vice President of Account Services.

• Carla Gallo makes her first appearance since the season's fourth episode as Peggy's roommate Karen, and it's clear from their conversation that the two are every bit the mismatched disaster they seemed back when Peggy was trying to sell herself as "fun" in their initial meeting. I liked Karen's confusion at learning that Duck was unmarried - "Oh. Then why are you with him?" - since to her (and, based on reactions to the first Peggy/Duck episode, to much of the audience) the relationship makes no sense if it's not a simple affair.

• And if I was Peggy, I would want to get as far away from Herman (Duck) Phillips as I possibly could. He's turned her into his new addiction - cajoling her to blow off Kurt and Smitty (his "a couple of homos" joke was half-right) for a nooner, inhaling cigarettes while waiting for her, and unplugging the TV so that news of Kennedy's shooting wouldn't get in the way of their sex. Fortunately, you could see alarm on Peggy's face when he put the TV back on - not only about the news itself, but about the realization that he tried to keep it from her until after he did his business.

• This week's episode was directed by Barbet Schroeder, probably best known for directing Jeremy Irons to an Oscar in "Reversal of Fortune" or, to lesser acclaim, sending Jennifer Jason Leigh after Bridget Fonda in "Single White Female" (another story of female roommates who probably shouldn't have been). I particularly liked the way he shot the moment where Betty emerges from the lady's room and sees both her husband her potential lover standing in front of her, as if both she and we aren't sure to whom she'll approach.

• I'll give Roger Sterling this: he may be selfish, and childish, and a boor, but the man gives a good speech. His introduction for Don at the 40th anniversary dinner was terrific, and his toast at the otherwise disastrous wedding reception was even better, finding a way to make the decision to go through with the ceremony seem noble, rather than stubborn.

• There was a lot of discussion after last week's episode about whether Roger, when dismissing Annabelle as The One, was thinking of Jane, or of Joan. I'm not sure it's either one - I think Roger's probably too cynical to believe in a greeting card concept like The One - and I still think he never would have been happy marrying Joan (she's too strong-willed and has too much baggage for him), but it was clear last week, and even more clear here, that she matters very much to him. She's the one he wants to talk to at the end of that awful day, not his drunken child bride (who, in one of the funnier lines of the episode, complains that she won't ever get to vote for Kennedy), nor his ex-wife (though it's clear from their phone call tag team on Margaret that they still can operate on the same wavelength from time to time), nor his drama queen daughter. And Joan still cares about him, too, just not enough to always indulge his neediness.

• While Walter Cronkite's reaction as he reports the official word of JFK's death is the most famous TV image from that day (and one of the most famous of all time), I thought it was a nice touch that the secretaries changed the channel in Harry's office from CBS to NBC, since Huntley/Brinkley were the more popular news team of the period.

• In his toast, Roger suggests that relative kids Margaret and Brooks are taking care of the adults, rather than the other way around, and while that's not really true (for Margaret, anyway), it was nice to see Sally immediately move to hug her mother upon news of the president's death. To a girl Sally's age, the death of a president isn't entirely real or relevant, but the pain of her mother was, and she reacted to that. Also, note how she (and, for that matter, Bobby) was painfully aware that her mother didn't in any way reaction to Don's presence in the kitchen on Monday morning?

• Don and Peggy, two peas in a pod: both wind up at the office because it's the only real home they have. And gold star to those of you who pointed out that the AquaNet commercial was supposed to evoke the Dallas motorcade, which the storyboard made very clear. Peggy's going to have a lot of rewriting to do over the next week.

Finally, I should warn you that this is the last episode of the season that I'm getting to see in advance. While AMC has sent out previous episodes for advance review to many critics, Weiner decided he wanted to keep the finale totally under wraps. So I'll be watching it live on Sunday night like the rest of you - and that, obviously, means that the review will not be posted right after the show ends on the East Coast the way it has all season. My plan is to do what I do for "Lost" finales, or for the later episodes of "The Sopranos" after David Chase also cut off the critics, and just stay up to write, but it may be a while. So don't lose any sleep waiting for it - and please don't send e-mails or post comments in other threads asking when the review will be done (or, worse, discussing the finale itself).

Keeping in mind the usual commenting rules (no spoilers, including talking about the previews, play nice with others, make an effort to read other people's comments so you're not asking the exact same question that's been answered six times already, etc.), what did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Bored to Death, "The Case of the Stolen Sperm": Who's your daddy?

I'm too busy watching the World Series to write much about tonight's penultimate episode of "Bored to Death" season one. After last week's George/Ray breakthrough, I was disappointed that the two had so little shared screentime tonight, but at least "The Case of the Stolen Sperm" had one of the show's funnier faux-noir storylines so far, with some nice guest work by Jenny Slate (filmed before she was cast on "SNL") as the stoner from the food co-op, and some good Schwartzman/Galifianakis teamwork throughout.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

White Collar, "Threads": Who's wearing the hat now?

I want to write a bit about tonight's second episode of "White Collar," but this cold/flu bug is barely letting me string sentences together. So I'll just say a couple of quick things: 1)I'm confused as to why they ditched Matthew Bomer's Rat Pack wardrobe so quickly, as that was one of the more distinctive things in the pilot; 2)Natalie Morales replaces Marsha Thomason as the junior FBI agent, presumably so there can be some sexual tension with Cafferty; 3)Nice to see Tiffani Thiessen worked into the story a little, though they can't do that every week in that way.

What did everybody who's a little more coherent think? Click here to read the full post

Grey's Anatomy, "Give Peace a Chance": Eeeny-meeny diaper genie

Fair is still fair. I said last week that I wouldn't be blogging "Grey's Anatomy" regularly so I could focus on the good stuff and not dwell on the parts I don't like, but that I would pop in to talk about episodes I particularly liked, and this is two weeks in a row of that.

I don't know if Ellen Pompeo's quasi-maternity leave and Katherine Heigl's temporary hiatus to film a movie forced Shonda Rhimes and company to focus more on straight-up medical drama and less on romantic angst and light comedy, or if this tonal shift was planned all along, but I really, really like it. While the dating and comedy are what distinguished "Grey's" from other hospital shows, its most reliable element has been when it just deals with the medicine with a minimum of frills, and "Give Peace a Chance" was another good example of that. And I've found Derek a lot more interesting as super-surgeon than I ever did when he was just the object of Meredith's desire.

Plus, the episode gave me an excuse to use that subject line. Click here to read the full post

30 Rock, "Stone Mountain": Good for a few chuckles?

Quick thoughts on last night's "30 Rock" coming up just as soon as you come to see my cover band...

I had dinner with fellow TV critics James Poniewozik and Maureen Ryan the other night, and Mo asked me why I was being so hard on "30 Rock" lately(*), especially compared to a show like "How I Met Your Mother," which can offer up its own clunkers and, at its best, isn't in the same comic stratosphere as "30 Rock" at its best. And I told Mo that the difference is that "HIMYM" creates an emotional engagement with its audience, so that I actually like the characters and enjoy spending time with them even in the episodes that aren't particularly clicking. There was a time where I felt some affection for Liz Lemon, but Tina Fey and company have taken the show in an all-zany, all-the-time direction - maybe not "Family Guy" with better writers, but not that far off - and while that's fine when the jokes are landing, when they don't land, as they haven't for most of this season, then it's a lot more frustrating than watching a not-very-funny episode of "HIMYM" or "The Office" or "Parks and Recreation."

(*) And I should say that I feel like I've been hard on "30 Rock" pretty much since it came back from the writers strike late in season two. They've done some brilliant shows, and also some uneven shows with brilliant things in them, but I don't want to get labeled as a backlash-er when I've been saying this stuff for a year and a half.

In particular, I want this "real America" storyline to go away, immediately. All the jokes about it feel angry and uncomfortable, like Fey has had a lot of bad meetings with the real-life versions of Jack Donaghy of late and wants to vent. It feels like watching those episodes of "Designing Women" where everything would grind to a halt so Dixie Carter could deliver a long rant about whatever was bothering the head writer that week. Fey and company have tried to leaven the anger a little bit with fart jokes and Jack beating up Jeff Dunham's dummy, but overall they need to let go of this.

Tracy's Rule of Threes subplot had a couple of funny moments ("Can you get me on Charlie Rose?" and Tracy not knowing Jimmy Fallon), but there weren't enough to carry another mediocre season four episode.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, "The Gang Wrestles for the Troops": I have come here to chew bubble gum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubble gum

When I wrote my column about "The League," I said that "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" tends to bat around .333 for me, but tonight's wrestling episode (complete with Rowdy Roddy Piper and his bucket of chestnuts, Rickety Cricket briefly being triumphant and the guys once again composing songs that the masses can't appreciate), coupled with last week's Green Man vs. Philly Frenetic brawl, has the show on a very funny streak at the moment.

Or maybe I'm just happy that Piper's appearance gives me an excuse to quote from, and link to, this scene.

What did everybody else think? And does anybody want to weigh in on "The League"? Click here to read the full post