Television Of The Weak: Mommy Lives On Tuesdays Now, And She's Bigger Than Ever: UPDATED

This week--and for now, this is where Television Will Live, we've got 24, Dollhouse, House, Damages, The Mighty Boosh, Lost, The Celebrity Apprentice, American Idol & Survivor. With the Witzke, The West, The Brady, The Engelman, & The Brownstone.

24 - "12:00AM - 1:00AM"

You know, if we're gonna go all-crazy-stunt-casting this season, with the stoner from Dazed & Confused backing up the snake food from Anaconda while Glenn Morshower (the cop from The River Wild?) gets saddled with his skankiest assignment yet, why can't they bring in Morgan Freeman just to yell at the Joint Chiefs when they start questioning the orders of Prezzy Jones? All you needed him to say was "John Doe has the upper hand!" and, like California before them, everybody would have stayed away from here.

Okay, if that reads like reaching, it is, because there isn't much to say about this episode. Last night's 24 wasn't 24, it was 24 Remix, a screwed and chopped version of last week's episode, where Tony 2.0 teams up with somebody who isn't so sure about Jon Voight's plan to start an American civil war from a stormtrooper compound in Virginia, and we watch Tony carry around a suit-full-of-dead-man until he can ditch him to do some wetwork. No problems there--Tony can kill nameless mercs as well as Jack ever did, and it's been too long--two or three episodes, at least--since the audio stylings of Sean Callery (171 episodes and counting!) were accented with the glorious overdub of a man's neck cracking so hard you start to wonder if the skull should be dangling from the jugular.

*If it matters to you, the answer to "How Jack Bauer will survive being dosed with a weaponized kill-em-all", has something to do with his daughter, who hasn't seen her post-24 career take off the same way Agent Baker did. (Sorry Daniel Dae Kim, but fuck Lost. You'll always be Agent Baker to me.)

Dollhouse - "Needs" by Matthew J. Brady

You know when the opening scene of an episode sees Echo showing up at Agent Ballard's house to give him some "special information", that it's going to turn out to be a dream sequence, even before she tells him that he has something she needs and they start having sex. As the series continues, I get more and more bored of that entire storyline. But luckily, it's almost ignored this episode, in favor of a plot that sees Echo and several other Actives wake up, having seemingly regained their true personalities, if not their full memories, and attempt to escape the premises. It's an interesting premise, especially given that we've seen flashes of memories and personalities surface from these supposedly blank-slate characters over the series, so they could well have "reawakened" for real. But no, it's all part of a game, or training exercise, or something, as we learn fairly early on. The truth turns out to be kind of dumb, in that it's a pop psychological way for them to get "closure" on whatever their subconscious needs them to.

But in the meantime, it makes for a pretty exciting plot, as the Actives try to figure out where they are, what's going on, and how to escape. Echo ends up almost killing Topher, which should be nice for people that find him especially annoying (I'm starting to settle into that camp), November (Ballard's zaftig girlfriend, who kind of gets shoehorned in here, since we've barely seen anything of her as an Active) gets to mourn her dead child, Sierra gets some revenge on a guy that wronged her, and Victor gets to mack on Sierra. The best parts are the ones that involve the latter two characters, serving to highlight the horror that is being perpetrated on these characters. They're basically slaves, but possibly even worse, since not only are they being held against their will, they're also forced to perform actions and feel emotions that are wrong. The higher-ups like Olivia Williams state that they voluntarily signed up for this to get out of trouble or to escape sordid pasts, but in at least one case, they were forced into it by someone else. It's a really dark concept that underlies the sometimes goofy escapades that the series engages in.

And it looks like, despite myself (and Eliza Dushku's still-poor acting skills), I'm developing some affection for the show. It can be a lark, but it's starting to show a desire to explore the underlying morals of the concept, and while some plots are pretty stupid, the writing can also be pretty sharp. Looks like I'm on board for a while longer, at least.

By the way, the question was raised as to why that fabled sixth episode was so important, and it seems that it wasn't the specific plot of that week that "changed everything", but it did see the point where Joss Whedon gained some more control of the show and began developing it a bit more, going beyond a "mission of the week" structure to explore the characters and concept. It hasn't been completely free of bumps, but it looks like the show is finally on the right track.

The Mighty Boosh - "Journey to the Centre of the Punk" by Sean Witzke

The Mighty Boosh is yet another great export that's being brutally mishandled by well-meaning Americans. The Boosh is kind of a children's program for stoned adults and music nerds - perfect for Adult Swim, you'd think. But runtime and standards and practices have forced some drastic cuts to a show that is family viewing in the UK. And rights issues have apparently forced them only to show season 3, and at one in the morning. Basically they're screwed even though it's got crazy crossover potential. For the unfamiliar - the Mighty Boosh is kind of the damaged child of the Muppet Show, Monty Python, Scooby Doo, and Kenan and Kel. Or Flight of the Conchords but by giddy drug addicts instead of awkward hipsters. It's very funny stuff, and it's the rare BBC show that the non-geeked out masses approved of. It's not the League of Gentlemen, it's not even the IT Crowd. It had a chance!

This episode is like Fantastic Voyage, only about punk vs. jazz. And lots of jokes about Vince finding himself sexy. Well, maybe it's easier to just say what was cut out of the Adult Swim airing of this episode - Vince singing - "I did a shit on your mom I did a shit on your mom I did a shit on your mom and she rather liked it, I did a shit on your dad I did a shit on your dad I did a shit on your dad and he rather liked it I did a shit on your shit I did a shit on your shit I did a shit on your shit, irony completed". It was the best joke in the whole thing. The appeal of this show has always been a kind of standard buddy comedy - the nerdy depressed guy (Howard) and the vain fashionable guy (Vince) arguing for extended periods of time. What made it interesting was the commitment to being apologetically silly (stupid costumes, sci-fi and fantasy plots, talking animals), and doing awesome songs while they were at it. But most importantly - it's one of the rare shows that lived and died on really specific rhythms - like Python, cutting it up for American tv completely throws it off it's game. And rather than simply take things out, Adult Swim has edited things in-scene and in-conversation, and most fucked up, in-song. When I originally watched this episode, I was on the floor laughing. With this version, I chuckled a few times. It's a testament to how much this show works in moments and quick bits of dialog, and how much of a snakepit editing comedy must be. Even so, Adult Swim is fucking this up. Next week America gets introduced to Rich Fulcher as Bob Fossil, and nothing will ever be the same. Because he'll slice you, and learn how to slice others.

House – "Simple Explanation"

This week we were treated to what the producers may as well have called A Very Special Episode of House, the way they promoted it using a strategy of “Once in a Lifetime. An Episode of House Comes Along. That is So Mind-Blowing to Your Fucking Mind. That Nothing Will Ever Be the Same. For You. In Your Life. Ever.” Now, bear in mind that House normally lives and breathes by being a show that is generally better than you’d expect it to be, given its CSI-in-a-Hospital set-up. Mostly, it achieves this in two ways: In the hypnotizing performance by Hugh Laurie in the lead role, and by making his character unafraid to kill a baby or two along the way. In that respect, it could easily be a purely episodic show, where none of the show’s events would have consequences that lasted beyond the end of the episode. That’s really what it wants to be. For as many recurring storylines as House has trotted out—and they’ve tried romance, death, death in romance, switching up the romantic partners, and bringing in a cop obsessed with bringing House down because he’s a drug addict—they always inevitably return to the show’s original premise: Curmudgeonly doctor with a bad leg leads team of experts in diagnostics department, and is always right. When House started treating himself with methadone earlier this season, the producers couldn’t even tease that story out for more than an hour before returning to neutral. And that’s fine. All we, the viewers, really need is to watch Hugh Laurie’s House psychologically abuse his fellow doctors and let some people die so that others may live.

All this brings us to "Simple Explanation"—the episode of the year, as far as House’s producers are concerned. Get those Emmy statutes in the molds! After the introduction of the patient-of-the-week (Meatloaf! …Er, played by Meat Loaf), there’s a bit of “Hey, do you know where Kutner is?” “No. Do you know where Kutner is?” in the diagnostics lounge. Foreman and Thirteen go to Kutner’s apartment to see why he hasn’t shown up to work, break in, and find that he’s shot himself in the head. With a Glock? And they try CPR anyway? This ain't a Remington. It's a fucking Glock. C'mon.

The writers and producers spend the rest of the episode slapping each other high-fives. They’re totally stoked about Kutner’s suicide, because the character didn’t have any obvious reason to kill himself, wasn’t outwardly depressed, and didn’t show any warning signs. They’re stoked that Kutner was a generally likable dude, and that no one—not the characters or the audience—saw this coming. But most of all they’re stoked at how perfectly symmetrical it is that House, who typically has a logical and medical answer for every problem he comes across, has a question he will never find a satisfactory answer to: Why did Kutner do it? So the only breaks in the cynically maudlin tone of the episode happen when, in one of the hugest suspensions of disbelief that House (the show) has ever asked us to make, House (the dude) becomes “convinced” that Kutner was murdered, and makes some jokes about CSI. Of course, the producers ignore the fact that this is well-trodden ground in TV drama. Omar Epps participated in the exact same storyline on ER, for chrissake! My personal favorite suicide episode—Homicide: Life on the Street’s “Crossetti,” featuring Clark Johnson acting his ass off—also features a character convinced that the suicide victim was murdered. Tucker's is that one where Norm Macdonald re-enacted Budd Dwyer's suicide to open his never-picked-up pilot Back To Norm.

By the by, you may be thinking to yourself: “Wow. They killed off Kal Penn’s character out of nowhere. I wonder if he got fired or quit. Maybe he was being a total d-bag on set, and slipped one too many pencils down Olivia Wylde’s thong.” Nope. He’s going to work in the White House. What's more fascinating about the whole White House thing is how it didn't really become widespread public knowledge until after Kal Penn's character was killed off on a television show, which--and you don't need to be a conspiracy nut to connect the dots--means the White House was working in tandem with the producers of a television show to ensure that their press release schedule didn't grossly interfere with the American people's time spent watching said show.

Oh, and Meat Loaf was in it. That might have worked, but Meat Loaf should have looked, trembling, into Cameron's eyes and, in response to her liver-for-love proposal, said, "I would do anything for love."

"But there's no way that bitch is getting my liver."

Survivor – "One of Those Coach Moments"

Survivor typically has a 4-6 episode window in the middle of the season to launch from a run-of-the-mill season to an exciting season. The first handful of episodes tend to oust cannon fodder—people who haven’t had much in the way of character development, or those with too much character altogether (like this season’s Psycho Sandy, who didn’t know what a “pace” was and rode a person from the opposite team like a bucking bronco during one of the challenges)—and the last few episodes tend to be like the inevitable final moments of a long chess match, when you know who’s going to win but you have to play out the last moves anyway. So, the episodes where there are twelve to seven people left are usually clutch. Unfortunately for Survivor: Tocantins, we’re in episode 6 and we’re still saying goodbye to cannon fodder (this week, the blonde model). It’s no secret that at least a small contingent of the TFO TVotW crew loves them some Survivor, but the amount of updates on this season here on out are going to depend on how much the action picks up—otherwise, it’ll be a little bit like reporting each week on how well my goldfish are adapting to their new home. First report: HORRIBLY.

Damages - "Look What He Dug Up This Time"

And so Damages draws to a close, with promises of more bullshit change-up-the-plot at the last minute crazy to come. It's obviously a show with some kind of meat and muscle casting department behind it--Season 2's crew was a beast of a thing, with rare-to-television players like William Hurt and Tom Noonan showing up and ably filling the holes left by a...god, I can't believe I'm saying this, but a career-best performance by Fucking Ted Danson and the always-superb Zeljko Ivanek, who were hired to cover all the holes that Glenn Close couldn't patch up herself in season 1. Season 2 also contained a sterling performance by Timothy Olyphant, a guy I'm comfortable enough in my sexuality to admit I'll never be able to be objective about, because Holy Christ Timothy Olyphant is sofuckinghothowcanamanbethishot, that kind of thing. And that's not even covering the women! Marcia Gay Harden taking every opportunity to remind America how special ladies can be when they don't pump themselves full of bovine bacteria, only pausing in her seduction of thousands to win every battle but her last. Glenn Close, chewing on the furniture, screaming, crying and sputtering, exploding at imagined and made-up offenses, tearing apart the lives of those she cares about with her lazer eyes so that she can build a better house of cards for those who hate her to live in. Plotting further along the curve than an Al Swearengen or a Habib Marwan, imagining a world where everybody, all of them, are Out To Get Her All The Time--jesus, she'd be a shark at cards. You'd bet your house, you'd lose it all. And then, of course, there's Rose Byrne.  I mean...Rose Byrne!

...and there's where you run into trouble. Sure, she had some better moments in Season 2 than she did season 1, and while most of those were in the adorable romance between her and Timothy Olyphant, a guy who spent almost the entire season having to play both "The guy falling in love with Rose Byrne" as well as "The guy who is going to eventually have to shoot Rose Byrne in the back of the skull with a glock that he keeps in a massive gun cabinet." (Oh, and because the people who make Damages are some kind of crazy assholes, everytime Timothy Olyphant did something sketchy and weird, like play with his death cabinet of guns and newspaper clippings, there was a heavy metal guitar riff played over the dialog. That's not a joke. That's For Reals.) But beyond the romance, Rose Byrne is just out of her depth here. It's not the woman's fault that she can't steely-eye her way through scenes opposite a berserk Glenn Close, and it's not her fault that the Damages script writers are most likely to change her motives and intelligence level to fit with the various turns and twists of their seat-of-pants plotting style--but it's not like those writers are on screen for the viewer to be irritated/bored/consumed with disdain by. No, what we end up with is Rose, and Rose: you're punching way beyond your weight class. The best thing that can happen with next season, the thing that won't, but should, happen, is for Glenn Close's final prediction "She'll be back" to be utterly, absurdly wrong. Then we can get down to business: 30 minutes of Glenn and her demonic attempts to bring down the world around her, and the remainder handed off to Timothy Olyphant, who can just take showers and shoot people for all I care.

And I care a lot.

The Celebrity Apprentice - "Does This Show Have Titles?" by Sarah Engelman

I have no idea why this is happening, Celebrity Apprentice, but please don’t stop. It hurts me, I hate it, but please don’t stop. This season has been bursting at the seams with WTF?! moments but this episode leaves me dumbfounded. “Midgets?” Really? On both teams? Step right up ladies and gentlemen and view the celebrities losing their fucking minds!

The challenge this week was to create a viral internet video for ALL, whose slogan for their new line of concentrated detergent is “small and mighty.” Could this have been a social experiment conducted by the producers to see if they could get the contestants to reveal an even uglier side of themselves? I want to believe so, but the intention doesn’t matter. It happens. They go there. Both teams immediately decide to exploit little people to sell their video.

First, the new Kotu, which now includes Clint Black, Joan Rivers, Khloe Kardashian, Natalie Gulbis and Hershel Walker (who is absent for the first half of the challenge): After an initial whirlwind of arguing the team seems to settle on one of Clint’s ideas, a juvenile joke involving masturbation made even funnier by the addition of a little person. Yay! Production begins with the ladies barely able to contain their laughter as they order a little person from a casting agency. Even if I was ok with the use of a little person as the butt of a joke, which I’m not, hiring the person to act out your joke is not part of the joke.

After meeting with ALL’s conservative executives the team feels their direction is off and they should scrap the plan. Everyone except for Clint, that is. What follows is a mess of dissent when Clint decides to use his idea anyway, completely takes over the project, ignores Joan like it’s his special power and leaves the ladies with nothing to do but eat lunch, read catalogues and nap. And when it turns out the actor they’ve hired doesn’t have acting chops, Clint decides to play the role himself, further irritating the ladies because, you know, without the little person the joke isn’t even funny anymore. Its way too late for salvation by the time Hershel arrives, but he does offer this nugget, “Everybody think their baby’s the prettiest, no matter how ugly the child may be.” True, Hershel. True.

And Clint’s baby sure is ugly. The script is bad. The acting is bad. The directing is bad. The editing is bad. Of course the whole concept is bad. The only mildly redeemable aspect of this video is the hot model in her underwear, but even that wouldn’t make me want to watch it ever, ever again.

Over in the new Athena we have Melissa Rivers, Annie Duke, Brande Roderick, Tionne Watkins and Jesse James. After some initial refusal (why did you cave?!), Jesse agrees to get scrubbed down in a Laundromat by midgets wearing ALL costumes. They’ve decided to go with the word midgets because it gets more hits on the internet than little people. They also decided to ask the actors outright what they prefer. Brilliant. Maybe that’s what inspires them to include a clip of the actors cursing and tearing off their Oompa Loompa style costumes in disgust at the end of the video. All I can think is “How is this happening?! Why can’t these presumably smart and talented people see that they’re being total dicks?!” I don’t know the answer, but it sure does make for good TV.

One of the more incredible scenes plays out like this is… An earnest and jovial Jesse James high-fives the 3 actors, gathers them up in a bear hug, tumbles to the ground with them, stands, gives a big thumbs up and says, “See ya, guys! Thanks!” Cut to Jesse saying, “I just treat em’ just like they’re anyone of my other friends. You know they’re exactly the same as us, they’re just that big.” (Holds hand at knee level.) Now, I like Jesse and I don’t think he’s trying to be a dick. But just like when I was visiting my mother in some little tweaker town in California and heard “I don’t care what color she is, Tina Turner has great legs,” some things just make you sound like an asshole.

Athena also had a meeting with ALL’s executives and also thought maybe they should skew more conservative, but then they also said fuck it, midgets are funny and that’s what we’re going with. And almost everyone, especially guest judge Perez Hilton, thought Athena’s video was a hilarious success. Even Kotu couldn’t contain their laughter when they saw it in the boardroom. So success, right?

Not according to the ALL executives who thought both videos where horrible and offensive failures. Duh. So Trump decides to fire a member from each team, and I’m pretty sure I know exactly who’s going home; Clint and Melissa. But, as Khloe foreshadows, anything can happen, “’Cause he’s Donald Trump!”

Athena valiantly sticks together, and Melissa says she’s ready to take responsibility as the team captain. However, someone has made a fatal error. Trump first compliments and then fires the hell out of Tionne because she was stupid enough to voluntarily come back to the boardroom. What? Oh, no! I heart Tionne!!! Ugh. This episode is really messing with my emotions.

Then, everyone knows Clint is getting the axe on Kotu, but turns out Trump has another bug up his butt. Khloe earned a Young Hollywood Merit Badge in the form of a DUI before coming on the show and the Trumpster didn’t know anything about it. She revealed this nugget to him sometime in the last week and now she makes him sick. Delicious. I don’t hate Khloe at all, but I’m not as attached to her as Tionne, so I enjoy this surprise attack. Get her Trumpy. Get her real good. In the end I’m left feeling uncomfortable, embarrassed, anxious and a little gassy. All in all, damn fine episode. Please oh please oh please do something even more offensive and bat shit crazy in the coming weeks! I love feeling superior to Celebrities. Xoxo!

Lost – "Whatever Happened, Happened" by Zeb L. West

Is it possible to know a character too well? After seeing each Islander’s checkered past, dirty laundry, moral laxity, and outright hypocrisy, I have to admit… sometimes I just feel sick of their shit. Like watching an Uncle fall off the wagon again, or hearing your cousin is pregnant, but this time by a different father! It can start to feel like a Maurey Povich recap. During this episode, I found I was getting irritated with Jack.

While it’s been fun to see Jack’s status flipped by having Sawyer in the alpha role, his hangdog attitude feels fairly tedious at this point. He chooses to test the ‘will of the island’ by abandoning his Hippocratic Oath and refusing to come to the aid of young Benjamin Linus. The expected result of this experiment is that Ben should survive either way. If he exists in the future, then no one’s actions can supersede the inevitable. He also has fairly unsatisfying ex-girlfriendy interactions with both Kate and Juliet that just make him look like a schlub. How far our hero has fallen!

This week’s episode picks up right in the aftermath of Ben being mercilessly gunned down by Sayid. While it’s ironic that they spent the previous episode building the Iraqi up to be the ultimate cold blooded assassin only to have him fail to kill his target, I guess that’s showbiz. Newly endowed with mothering instincts, Kate has an attack of conscience which results in a plan to sneak the injured boy to the Hostiles (who Juliet seems to believe will have some mystical cure for bleeding chest wounds). Richard Alpert is there to receive the young mastermind, and ominously explains that Ben will ‘forget this ever happened, and his innocence will be gone – he will always be one of us’.

Miles plays a nice straight man to Hurley as they explore this very question, and our big hairy comic reliever tries to wrap his mind around the paradoxical implications of the time travel. If Ben was shot by Sayid, then why doesn’t he immediately recognize him when they meet in the future? Although this stops Miles in his tracks, the viewers get a little ahead of the characters, because all of this time travel only serves to explain why future Ben knows so much! And I’m still not sure why Miles offers to let Hurley shoot him, since he vehemently explains that any of them can die in the present moment. Seemed like a funny way of completely contradicting his point.

The episode focused on Kate, but mostly just to deliver her reasons for coming back to the island and to reveal the whereabouts of Aaron. While it’s been great learning the motivation for each Oceanic Six character’s return to the island, Kate’s seems the strangest. While all signs have pointed to her returning for Sawyer, the reason she stated to Carole Littleton was that she was returning to find Claire. In the flashbacks Kate has buddy’d up to Sawyer’s jilted ex-lover/apprentice Cassidy, in some kind of conman-hating first-wives club. Cassidy rakes Kate over the coals about nabbing Aaron in order to fill the void that Sawyer left, which is the catalyst for her returning the boy to his grandmother. Although Aaron is consistently adorable, I feel they’ve kept him a bit in the background so that Kate’s inevitable abandonment is a little easier to swallow.

In the episode’s most intriguing scene, Kate bends to the child’s demands for milk, and stops at the grocery store (only to discover that the controlling little bastard now wants a juice box!). Since the audience knows that Kate is bound to lose Aaron somehow, this scene is rich with tension. Will she ditch him at the grocery store? Will he be kidnapped by Ben and used as leverage to get her to return to the island? Will he be devoured by a four-toed black-smoke-breathing polar bear in the snackfood aisle? Or will he just simply be returned by a creepy blonde woman?

Next week’s episode promises plenty of drama, as future Ben awakens to wreak havoc once more!

Things I’m wondering now: What has become of Daniel Faraday? Where will Sayid end up, now that he is off the chain? Is Locke going to beat the crap out of Ben once he wakes up? Why does the statue only have four toes?!

American Idol – Top 8 Perform

American Idol started out this week with a handful of the weird-ass non-sequitors that have come to define the show. First, Ryan Seacrest introduced each of the contestants as “Born. With a dream. Of becoming a superstar.” I’m guessing he didn’t run that one by the fact-checking committee. Shortly after he announced, “This...is American Idol,” they cut to a shot of a tall, pale, bald dude sitting in the audience, staring blankly at the stage. The camera lingered there for a while. Perhaps this bald man is the Nick Carraway of American Idol, there as a cipher representing the audience. He’s doing a fantastic job. Seacrest than announced that the night’s theme would be “Songs from the Year the Contestants Were Born,” which he used as an excuse to show baby photos of the judges, and to make an unfortunate “wooji wooji wooji” sound. Upon revealing Kara’s baby photo, Seacrest mentioned, “It looks like you just made a poopy,” and the audience cheered. Kara retorted, “It looks like Simon was baby-sitting me,” which she was incredibly proud of saying, and the audience cheered even more. What the fuck is this show about again?

Right out of the gate, Danny Gokey hedged on the night’s theme by doing a version of “Stand By Me” from 1980. Supposedly, he didn’t sing it badly—the chintzy 80’s R&B arrangement didn’t help him much—but he still doesn’t have much personality. Because he is a sociopath. When Paul heaped the typical praise upon him, Simon laughed at her before saying, “I can’t stand you.”

Pretty Boy Kris Allen and Lil Rounds re-enforced the notion that no good music came out of the 80’s. Kris sang Don Henley’s “All She Wants to Do is Dance” surrounded by about seventeen audience members. This is the second week in a row that someone has been positioned in the audience, and it’s not a good look. It made Kris look like he was holding a be-in in Golden Gate Park instead of performing on the biggest show on television—then again, that’s sort of AI’s amateurish MO. Kara called Kris’s performance “jazz funk homework,” which I’m sure Don Henley would have been flattered by, since no one in the history of music has ever accused him of being either jazzy or funky. Lil Rounds basically did a predictable Tina Turner impersonation and was justly lambasted for it by the judges. Lil is our downward spiral of the season, and hopefully the voters will keep her around long enough to see how desperate she’ll get.

Why, oh why can’t we vote for Anoop Desai’s parents for American Idol? Watching Anoop sing Cyndi Lauper’s “True Colors” was painful. Around the Top 11 or so is when all of the contestants become parodies of themselves. Anoop is the guy who thinks he can be a total cheese-dick one week, and then turn around and sincerely sing “I see your true colors just like a rainbow” without there being some sort of disconnect. Scott is the guy who normalizes every song to have the same exact sound and structure. Kara commended him for “coming out and playing the guitar.” I mean, I could have come out and played the guitar.

Allison Iraheta and Matt Giraud may be the most telling about American Idol as a whole. Allison is the most consistently good singer left on the show, and she still gets very little respect from the voting audience—though, this week, the judges loved her. Matt Giraud is such a full-blown poser, as you can tell by the derby resting on his head, tilted over one eye. The producers love him. Tivo cut off Adam Lambert’s performance for me, but I can kinda imagine what it was like, so let’s just say it was awful.

UPDATE!

After pretending for a long ass time that they were going to "save" him, America decided that they had reached the limit of how interested they were in Scott MacIntyre. He even teared up while singing. But here's the thing: he teared up while singing VERY BADLY. See you later, asshole.

-Matthew J. Brady, Zeb L. West, Sean Witzke, Sarah Engelman, Martin Brown & Tucker Stone, 2009

Comments

[Paul C]

Bob Fossil! Bob Fossil! Bob Fo -

"Note To Self....I Hate Whites"

[David Uzumeri]

Oh thank Christ, I thought I was in the only viewing household going "COME ON, MEAT LOAF! YOU'D DO ANYTHING FOR LOVE, AND YOU *WILL* DO THAT!" the entire episode.

[David Uzumeri]

And as much as I enjoy Lost, Kate has really flown completely off the map of conceivable character motivations. Why the Hell did she ask Jack not to ask her about Aaron ever again when she showed up at his house a few episodes ago to fuck his brains out out of nowhere? It's not like the kid was captured, she just *did the right thing* for once.

You know that line in As Good As It Gets where Jack Nicholson's character is asked how he writes women, and he says he takes a man and then takes away reason and accountability? I think that's pretty much how they're writing Kate at this point.

[Tucker Stone]

I turned to Nina during that scene to quote the 'Loaf and immediately felt so goddamn ashamed. I was so ashamed that i almost left her hanging until I looked over and she had her hand up. That's right. I got an old school, just like a 4th grade fool, "High Five" for that joke, and Marty was nice enough to let me include it in his write-up.

[James]

"Although Aaron is consistently adorable"

What? That kid's the creepiest little thing on two legs, man. He's The Omen 2009.

[Sharif]

Zeb,

I can't believe it's taken you this long to be irritated by Jack. He's consistently a pain in the ass. Nothing has changed except that he's being more passive about it. Any character development that keeps him backgrounded is a plus for me.

[David Uzumeri]

At this point, Sharif, I wouldn't mind too much if Jack's character developed into a corpse.

[seth hurley]

I enjoyed Tony bringing the Snuka once again to more Starkwood cannon fodder & that he took the time for a Commando-style "armor up" montage.

I hope Jack can eat a big bowl of stem cells & get better in the next 7 hours so he can throw Voight into the volcano that is at the heart of his subterranean liar.

[Zeb L. West]

@Sharif @David - In the first Season audio commentary, they talked about how their plan was to kill him off in the pilot! (Maybe they regret it now that he has become a whiny and useless little beta male)

@James - The picture of him on Lostpedia is particularly disturbing: http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Aaron But c'mon, he's just such a hurf durf little towhead- how can you not love him? I think it's only his resemblance to Hailey Joel Osment that makes him creepy... with his dead dead eyes...

[Zom]

Sean, unless you know something I don't, pretty sure that The Mighty Boosh has never been considered family viewing in the UK.

The first time I ever purposefully sat down to watch the show I was struck by a powerful wave of deja vu, the second time I sat down to watch it I was certain that I'd seen it before but weirdly I couldn't remember anything about the plot.

Turns out that I had sat in the presence of (not watched) quite a few episodes of the first two seasons when they initially aired (late on Friday nights) but was so pissed every single time that my booze addled brain hadn't absorbed a fucking thing.

It is for reasons not unlike this that I have recently given up drinking.

I love Lost too, Dave. That said, Pin over on Barbelith recently described it as a machine designed with the sole purpose of making Jack cry - can't fault his thinking there.

Lost=solved

[Matthew J. Brady]

Man, I really need to watch Damages sometime. It sounds pretty nuts. I don't know about Timothy Olyphant though; the only things I can recall seeing him in are The Girl Next Door and Die Hard 4, neither of which were very good. Maybe I'll come around on him when I get around to watching Deadwood.

Also, Celeb Apprentice seems pretty demented, but I doubt I would be able to actually watch it. Or maybe I would, I dunno. But that second picture up there looks kind of like a scene from the video for the Beastie Boys' Intergalactic.

[Sarah Engelman]

You know Matthew, I was absolutely certain I'd never get through an episode of Celebrity Apprentice. Much like I was sure I'd hate From G's to Gents. I was wrong. I love both shows, and I'm not ashamed. There must be so many things I just don't know about myself. And isn't that exciting? (Now I stare out the window at this snowy/sunny day and contemplate my life.)

[Tucker Stone]

On the flipside, I tried to watch Celebrity Apprentice--man, that shit is 2 hours long! You gotta be kidding, ain't no way in hell I'm watching no 2 hour long reality show with Clint Black. On a Church Sunday, no less!

And yes, the Olyphant has about the worst nose for script-picking when it comes to flicks--Scream 2, Go, Girl Next Door, Hitman, Die Hard 4.0--god, he does some crap. But Deadwood is the shit, and he's a force out of heavy metal hell in Damages.

But really, it all comes down to this: the dude is seriously incredible to look at. He is a very sexy man.

[Sean Witzke]

Zom - in the A Journey Through Time And Space doc I saw they made it seem like it wasn't intended as such, but a lot of families were watching it, and they showed hundreds of kids lined up for signings at a record store. That might be me misinterpreting something. My screw up.

And Timothy Olyphant is a sex go, let's be open about it. I haven't seen Damages yet, but after watching the Glen Close season of the Shield I've completely turned around on her, and it does sound pretty badass.