Tellyman 10.2

Dwight's Ed Truck robot statue from The Office

It was a rough week for television viewing for me. While I was able to watch everything, it was only thanks to Media Center dutifully fulfilling its, err… duties. I had to work late pretty much every night this week, so I was playing catch up all week and now that I am caught up, I can bore you with my thoughts.

This week’s How I Met Your Mother was weak, until the end. The end made it worth it because you thought for the entire episode that Ted Moesby, Architect was dogging Robin after their first fight. Barney started off the episode by telling Ted that he should advertise the fact that he is an architect since chicks think it is hot. Ted tests it out by chatting up a girl at the bar and Barney is actually right. The episode then follows Ted, Marshall and this girl for the rest of the night with Robin and Lily hot on their trail.

Come to find out at the end that it was Barney passing himself off as Ted for the night. Another classic Barney moment that regular viewers were sure to appreciate and further reason you need to watch this show. It would seem that Ted and Robin aren’t zooming as close to Splitsville as the previous episode would lead you to believe, but we know she’s “Aunt Robin,” so the suspense continues on… and actually, I don’t really care. It was a fun concept to get the show going, but who really cares at this point?

Studio 60 followed another excellent episode of Heroes — read this week’s post — on NBC. This episode features the gang accidentally stealing a comedy act and trying to make it right for the West Coast broadcast. Come to find out they owned the bit after all, but that’s not as fun for comedy. We also get another healthy dose of the Matt and Harriet sideshow, which is proving to be better than I thought it would be, Sorkin be damned! What are your thoughts JPo? Are you coming around?

Friday Night Lights continues to impress on Tuesday and their well done sports/football cliches continue to flow. I say that in a good way, but honestly, let’s do something original at some point soon, yeah? So far, I feel like I am watching Varsity Blues. I didn’t see the film of the same name on which this series is based (I have a hate-on for Billy Bob), but I have to imagine everything is pretty similar. I’m probably not cutting enough slack with only two episodes in the can. I’m still going to keep watching though because this is still good stuff.

Veronica Mars is on the trail of the rapist, or not. All she ends up finding is an illegal, “medical” mary-jane stash in a sorority house. Wallace out foxes Logan in an experiment for Sociology class. Keith escapes the Fitzpatrick brothers in the dessert after he traps the one after him and the other shows up to seemingly kill his older sib. Overall, not as good as the first episode, which wasn’t all that good. I guess only 13 episodes have been ordered, so if they don’t pick it up soon, then it may finally get cancelled.

Tuning in to Jericho this week reveals more about Mr. Hawkins and family and further points at him being part of the domestic terrorist group responsible for the bombs. It would appear that Jericho may be a rally point for other members to make their way to post bombing. I’m curious to find out the motivation behind this group, but the rest of the show is getting hard to watch. I don’t believe that this town would be functioning as well as it has and having power restored next week won’t help.

I only got to watch two shows in HD this week due to working late pretty much every other TV night. Yes, feel bad for me! Those two shows were Lost and The Nine. I already added my thoughts to Ed’s post for this week’s Lost episode, “The Glass Ballerina.” As for The Nine, I am already real close to giving up on it, but I feel like I’ll regret it at some point if I do. I’m going to watch next week, but the bubble may burst soon. With Kidnapped already axed and both Jericho and The Nine on the bubble, Wednesday is in danger of going from my most busy TV night to my slowest.

Smallville has Clark encountering the first escapee of the Phantom Zone. The escapee turns out to be an intergalactic version of Batman’s villain Poison Ivy with more clothing. We get our first chance to see Jimmy Olsen get himself into trouble and “CK” rescue him. Lois meets Oliver Queen and does her best foot-in-mouth Lois moment in a while. Of course, since she is slammin, Queen forgives her since she’ll attend Lex’s costume ball featuring the in-show music video appearance of The All-American Rejects, who suck by the way. I guess they are continuing the theme of *major* bands showing up to play in Smallville like Remy Zero played prom in Season One. Next week looks to be better as we get a look at Green Arrow in action.

My rose colored glasses are starting to clear up. My Name is Earl is nowhere near the show it was last year. I feel like they are trying too hard this year. Wait a minute, I wrote that last week, didn’t I? Yeah, I did. I am struggling to remember a funny moment or line. Amy Sedaris, who I am not really a fan of, did an okay job as the *young* cat lady that Earl wronged and Randy took a liking to, but other than revealing in the end that she was treating Randy like a cat, where was funny? They need to get back to having some good list items soon and don’t fall into the trap of having guest stars provide the comedy.

The Office came thru with another good episode featuring Michael trying to get the staff to join in his mourning the passing of his former boss — Ed Truck was decapitated by a truck — and then a little bird. Steve Carell continues to shine bright this year and Rainn Wilson is approaching last year’s Dwight levels. What I did not say last week was that even though Michael can be a total ass sometimes, he’s also a pretty good boss too and that’s why his breakdown of Dwight was so good.

As for this week, Michael finding Dwight trying to stuff the dead bird into the soda can was excellent. It would seem that Pam is emerging from Jim’s shadow to start wreaking havoc in the office all by herself. She passed off Million Dollar Baby as a grief story and got the gang to join in, has Michael get her coffee — with cream and sugar — in the opening and writes, and delivers, a nice eulogy for the dead bird.

The Stamford side story has the Jim and Karen romance growing with Jim trying to find a bad of chips for Karen when their vending machine is out. Back in Scranton we have Roy trying to re-spark a romance with Pam. I’m with Ed, these four are on a collision course for later this season.

No quotes this week because a lot of them were too long and I don’t feel like writing them out. Okay, I’ll do one… Michael did say, “You can’t get diseases from a bird.” Yeah, and he also said, “there’s such a thing as good grief. Just ask Charlie Brown.” There, that’s two. Happy!?

Finally, I checked out this season’s Deleted Scenes for The Office — thanks Joe — and the one for “The Coup” was extremely good with more Call of Duty 2 and Kevin pulling a Creed by checking out Pam’s cleavage. You know what, maybe longer episodes of The Office and shorter episodes of Earl would make for a better hour.

Seeing as how NBC has three new shows that I can’t stop watching, plus The Office, I’d have to say they are winning the race so far this year.