Wednesday Wisdom- Manny's Modern Family

Glee
The ladies carried this week's episode. Sue Sylvester was not in last week's ep that much, and I felt it dragged. She brought things back to good this time as she opened with making fun of Mr. Shue and Emma's terrible lunchtime conversation. Sue then went on to hate on Glee Club in her journal later in the day before taking action by convincing Mr. Shue's wife that he was having an affair with Emma. Sue left during the middle part of the ep, but made a glorious return at the end when she announced she would be taking over as co-director of Glee Club. Great Sue ep.

There is something strangely appealing about Rachel Berry's character. Maybe it's her quirkiness, or that she's just really weird, or maybe how intensely she wants to be good at Glee, but she's drawn me in and I continue to want to see her succeed.

Modern Family
This week's episode was responsible for the single funniest scene on television this season. Manny Delgado is rising up the charts on my favorite character list. In week one he was good with his mom and step-dad, Al Bundy. Week two, he and Al had plenty of quality time together and he was even funnier. This week, his interaction with his step-sister, Claire, was off the charts funny. Claire, being a middle aged woman, and Manny being 10 years old created a fantastic dynamic (especially since Manny fancies himself as a very mature 10).

Manny- "Those cookies smell like heaven...your own recipe?"
Claire- "No, I just throw 'em in the oven."
Manny- "And added the secret ingredient of caring?"
.....
Manny- "So what is the matter Claire?"
Claire- "What?"
Manny- "You seem sad."
Claire- "It's just stuff with Alex. You know, kids stuff."
Manny- "Uggg, kids. You don't have to tell me, my school's full of them."

As I remarked immediately after the episode, another great thing about this show is all of the different combinations of relationships they will be able to go through. This week we had Manny/Claire, Jay/Phil, Gloria/Alex...When Mitchell and Cam start mixing in the pot, I can see plenty of funny dynamics. Interestingly enough, Sepinwall had the same sentiment when I went to read his blog the next day.

Gary Unmarried
So it seems that Sasha, the station manager at the radio station, Curtis, Gary's old friend that works there also, and Gary's brother Mitch are now regulars in this second season of Gary Unmarried. Great call with raising Rob Riggles' character to regular status, and this chick Sasha seems pretty good so far, but Curtis is no Dennis from season one. So if the station manager and another dude that works there are series regulars, does that mean Gary is eventually going to get the job as a sports radio host? He certainly can't take an entire season to paint the station right? I don't know how I would feel if he did get the job. It would create a completely different feel to the show and it might not be in a good way. I guess we'll see. In one final note, Tommy was back in the game with a couple good lines in this week's ep.

Survivor Samoa- Week 4

Is anyone else getting sick of Jeff at tribal council? I dislike how he pokes at people and tries to stir things up. Let them play the game! You asking a leading question isn't fair to some of the players. One of these tribal councils I feel like Russell H is gonna stand up and say "Objection! Leading!" That is my dream.

I don't understand why Galu was making such a big deal about who to get rid of between Monica and Yasmin. They're both terrible at everything, so it's not a big deal. What I don't get is why no one in that tribe is looking at the bigger picture. You guys are still way up on Foa Foa in numbers, why not try and get a strong competitor out while you have the chance. If I'm Erik and Russell S, why not try to boot John or Dave? And vice versa. As Herm Edwards would say, "You play to win the game!"

Fantasy Results

The Technotronics

W. Russell (Foa Foa)-W4 (7), Im (8)= 15
B. Russell (Galu)- W4 (7), Reward (4)= 11
Monica (Galu)- W4 (7), Votes (-8)= -1
Liz (Foa Foa)- W4 (7), Im (8)= 15
Natalie (Foa Foa)- W4 (7), Im (8)= 15
Week 4= 55
Total=158





Sweet Niblets


Erik (Galu)- W4 (7), Idol (10)= 17
Ben (Foa Foa)-
Ashley (Foa Foa)- W4 (7), Im (8)= 15
Kelly (Galu)- W4 (7)= 7
Shambo (Galu)- W4 (7), Reward (4)= 11
Week 4= 50
Total= 93





Canon Controversy

John (Galu)- W4 (7)= 7
Jaison (Foa Foa)- W4 (7), Im (8)= 15
Mike (Foa Foa)-
Dave (Galu)- W4 (7), Reward (4)= 11
Betsy (Foa Foa)-
Week 4= 33
Total= 80






Freecell Makes Me Wanna

Mick (Foa Foa)- W4 (7), Im (8)= 15
Brett (Galu)- W4 (7)= 7
Marissa (Foa Foa)-
Laura (Galu)- W4 (7)= 7
Yasmin (Galu)- Votes (-32)= -32
Week 4= -3
Total= 69

Tuesday Tidings- Melrose Place Mystery

90210
Let's begin with the most important scene of this week's ep...Naomi's meeting with the guidance counselor. Umm, how come that wasn't Kellly telling Naomi what to do with her future? You have a perfectly capable guidance counselor that will bring in the viewers in Kelly Taylor, and instead you use some nobody. Interesting move. Are they getting rid of Kelly on the show? Because that would be a mistake. At least Jackie Taylor was back in full force this episode. But during Naomi's meeting with the no-name counselor there was a fantastic moment. When Naomi told her what she wanted to do after high school, she stated that she was going to go to the fictitious California University because she was a legacy. It doesn't get much better than that. The same made-up college that old gang all went to is getting some love in the new 90210. My only wish would be that this whole crew ends up going to the CU Condors' rival school, Southern California University instead. That would be a nice switch up.

Melrose Place
Another lackluster ratings night for Melrose (1.6 million), but it continues to keep my attention because of a couple of interesting characters and I nice murder mystery storyline. Ella continues to impress me with her charming personality towards her friends, as well as how scared she is and the lack of confidence she shows about where she was during the time of Sydney's death. Speaking of Syd's death...the murder mystery plot is a good way to keep the audience's attention until viewers get a relationship with the characters. My question is, what will happen after they figure this whole thing out? I hope it is not like what happened after the first season of Desperate Housewives. After season one of Housewives, it immediately went down hill because the mysterious aspect of it was completely gone. I feel like the lives of these characters may be able to hold up without the murder story, but it may not. Oh and it will probably be canceled by then anyway.

Monday Musings- Guest Gossip Girls

House
Lets start with a quote from Alan Sepinwall's review of the episode.

He said, about the two hour season premier that "rather than revitalizing my interest in the show in general, it's elevated my interest in House himself and made the other characters and the medical mysteries feel even more superfluous than before."

I agree whole heartedly with Mr. Sepinwall's comments. I was unbelievably pumped for this season of House after the premier saga that took place at the mental institution. It was all House, all the time. Now that we are back in the flow of what the show has always been, I've lost all excitement. Whoah, another crazy medical story that they're going to try and figure out! It's getting old for me. And the other characters? My God, Foreman is terrible. I won't even be sad to see Cameron leave. And I'm sure Chase will turn back into the lame excuse for a character he was as a regular pretty soon. My expectations have dropped dramatically in the last two episodes.

Gossip Girl
For me, this week's ep was just an exclamation point on how good the start to this, the third season has been. It seems that, behind what I assume is Josh Schwartz's mind, the show has transitioned very nicely from high school to college (or not college). I enjoyed the hiccups everyone was having as they left high school and had to learn to deal with the troubles of college in NYC, or not wanting to leave as is the case with Serena.

Quick notes on those not in the main storyline...Jenny was actually tolerable in the ep, as her teaming with Chuck brought her closer to his personality. The little that Nate was in this week's ep (which is a travesty) was fantastic. He's so believable as a character. As he sits at the table waiting for Dan to ask out the extremely famous movie star, played by Hilary Duff, he is beside himself at how ridiculous it is that Dan has no idea who she is. Then once Dan leaves with her, he gives the fist pump and in a sigh of relief exclaims, "oh my God." This dude is real sweet. And then we have Serena, who was TERRIBLE as always.

My biggest knock on this show used to be that I didn't like many of the characters, especially the girls. To start this season they have packed a punch, bringing back Georgina, bringing in Joanna Garcia as Bree Buckley and now Hilary Duff as Olivia Burke. Olivia's character was fantastic. No matter how many shows or movies I see it in, the story line of a famous person pretending to not be famous, is great every single time. It's completely played at this point, but I still enjoy it. Here's what makes this an acceptable plot...If I were to see Kristen what's her name from the Twilight movies on the street, I would have absolutely no way of recognizing her. I don't know how long Duff is staying on, but I'm hoping for it to be a while, 'cause she was great.

Sunday Speculations- Entourage Goes Terminator

Curb Your Enthusiasm
When I watched the 3-4 minute preview of the Seinfeld cast discussing their experiences on this season's Curb I got really excited. They talked about how well it turned out, but what else was I really expecting? That they were going to say that the end product didn't turn out that well? Not likely. But still, it got me real excited. How did the first Seinfeld-esque Curb episode go? I loved it. It's similar to how just mentioning Brandon and Dylan in the new 90210 makes it that much better. At the beginning of this week's ep Larry just starts mentioning Jerry and story ideas for George and I got giddy.

Once Jerry, Jason, Julia and Michael it just got better and better. A couple of interactions between LD and the cast got me going. The first was when Jerry told Larry that he had shifted his view on Reunion Episodes and their conversation turned to "Shift, no shift, shift, no shift." Classic. When Larry had lunch with Jason, I thoroughly enjoyed when he kept making fun of George, because we all know that George was always supposed to be Larry.

My highlight of the ep was when Larry had to think about the two consequences for his decision to either save the NBC presidents' life or not. His first dream sequence is having a great time on the set of Seinfeld as he begins to win back his ex-wife. Then we get to the moment that should have made everyone laugh hysterically. His second dream sequence was him walking up to the casket at the NBC presidents' funeral, putting his hands up in the air and smiling. Unbelievable!

Entourage
This week I felt thoroughly satisfied with the Entourage season finale. The two characters I care about, Johnny Drama and Ari, had story lines that were both humorous and heartfelt. Ari foreshadowed his big moment by saying that he was going to go Terminator on Terrence's building after he bought the agency. Sure enough, after buying out Terrence, Ari walked through the halls with a paint ball gun, shooting everyone and telling them they were fired. Now Drama, on the other hand, was basically giving up on his acting career and the self-loathing was fantastic. After giving it one last ditch effort in his audition for the new Melrose Place, he had peace with himself. Then he was given new life, when the studios decided they wanted to create a whole new show for him. I felt really good for him in that moment. And we won't talk about the terribleness that was E's engagement and Turtle's breakup.

Mad Men
Note to Matthew Weiner: Nobody cares about Pete Campbell's life. I hate to say it, but I think I'd rather see a Peggy Olsen storyline than spend another terrible week in the life of Mr. Campbell. With no Roger in this week's ep, the women of Mad Men had to carry the load. Betty and Sally Draper were terrific. Why does Betsy know Italian? I don't know but I liked it. Her little charade with Don outside the hotel was fantastic. Sally shows both sides of her in this episode. She lays down the pain on her brother Bobby, before showing the sweet, shy side when Don comes home.

The Cleveland Show
I like Family Guy as much as the next guy. American Dad can do it for me at times at well, but why would you spin-off of Family Guy with a terrible character? To be fair, there aren't many good minor characters on Fam Guy. Peter, Stewie, Brian and Chris are all good, but Quagmire, Cleveland; these guys aren't the ones you should base a whole show around. As far as the other characters on Cleveland's new show go, the only one I'm finding myself laughing at thus far is the Big Brown Bear. His accent is quality comedy for me.

Poolies Watch- Seinfeld Award

The comedy show category is very deep. It may not be good depth, but it is depth none the less. Last year's Seinfeld Award was a three man race, between The Office, 30 Rock and Curb Your Enthusiasm, and it's looking very similar through the beginning of this season. In somewhat of a surprise, I like Curb the best of the three so far (30 Rock hasn't started yet).

Locks
30 Rock
Curb Your Enthusiasm
The Office

Then we have five shows that I feel extremely comfortable about giving nominations to come May. Family Guy was here last year, and will remain. Eastbound was as well, but we're not sure if the second season will come out in time for this season's awards. The Disney shows have made their mark on the Quiet Pool this summer (after Miley took the world by storm with her MTV acceptance speach). Modern Family is the only new comedy show that has proven to be a worthy candidate.

Best of the Rest
Eastbound and Down
Family Guy
Hannah Montana
Modern Family
Wizards of Waverly Place

The final two shows that I currently have as nominated are Gary Unmarried and Rules of Engagement. Through two eps of Gary, it hasn't looked as good as last season, and Rules won't be on until mid-season. If any other shows prove they deserve a nomination, look for these two to be the first to go.

Hanging On
Gary Unmarried
Rules of Engagement

I have five shows that are chomping at the bit (is it pronounced champing and spelled chomping?) to get nominated for this year's Seinfeld Award. Community is new and has showed promise. Sonny is good but not great. I've watched South Park from time to time and always hear good things. Ted and Philadelphia, I have gotten mixed reviews on, but are hear because of the good things I've heard

Outside Looking In
Better Off Ted
Community
It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia
Sonny with a Chance
South Park

SNL- Ryan Reynolds and Lady Gaga

I really didn't think it could get any worse than last week's dud of a season premier, but I believe it did. This Saturday's show was nothing but blah, blah, blah for me.

Let's see what garbage we had last night...Obama, Monologue, Celebrity Family Feud, Porcelain Fountains, Deep House Dish, Weekend Update, Crime Dancers, International Masterworks and the Bubble Dresses. Wow that was almost every sketch of the night!

There were only two sketches that would not have been cut by Matt Alby if he were the head writer at SNL.

First: Mostly Garbage. Jason Sudeikis was fantastic in this commercial parody for dog food that was made of, you guessed it, mostly garbage. Just like Will Ferrell's Dissing Your Dog, back in the day, Mostly Garbage was fueled by the comedic value of people thinking that dogs are human. Sudeikis promotes the fact that dogs will eat most everything, including garbage. While he laughs at the disgusting stuff his dog eats, I laughed with his performance.

Second: Digital Short- On the Ground. Now this was a classic Digital Short! We are back to where we need to be with these things, taking something ridiculously small and turning it into an epic event. Andy slow-raps his way through his daily events. All of which end with him throwing something on the ground in a demeaning fashion. The absolute best part was at the kid's birthday party..."Some poser hands me cake at a birthday party. What you want me to do with this, eat it? Happy birthday to the ground! I threw the rest of the cake too. Welcome to the real world jack ass..." Unbelievable.


Finally: A few words on Lady Gaga. After her first performance, I felt the same way I always have about her. A complete freak that doesn't have good songs. Then came the second performance. She began by posing as Saturn, the planet, and singing (can you call it that) some terrible song. But then something very strange happened...she sat down at a piano, with her giant rings getting in the way, and broke out a fantastic ballad. Was it some sort of combination of completely new material and Poker Face? I don't know, but her voice sounded great. And she seemed really normal in that moment (if you ignore the huge silver rings hanging around her body).

Next up, Drew Barrymore. Oh boy.

Thursday Thoughts- Phil Knight's In the Community

Flash Forward
In a show like this, with such an grandiose theme, I feel it is so easy to think it is really good. I have so many positive thoughts about where it's going, but I fear that it might lead to disappointment down the road. Like what happened with Heroes. After listening to Bill Simmons podcast with Alan Sepinwall today, I agreed whole-heartedly with Alan, who stated that Lost had no idea where they were going through season three and then set an end date and has been unbelievable since. Let's hope the creators of Flash know where they are going. A show like this makes you ask so many questions about the overarching story lines. Why did this flash forward happen, and what was it really? But then, if it's anything like Lost, maybe this one flash was a smaller cog in a much larger picture of the world.

Note: I'm going to be calling the main character, The Dude. The Dude's flash was of him doing the investigation. On his wall of evidence are the things he's going to find between now and six months from now. Pops asked the question, "why not stop doing the investigation in order to stop the chain of events from happening?" A good question, but in the grand scheme of things, some people probably had positive flashes. The Dude is better off doing the investigation so that they can figure out the intricacies of the phenomenon. And then he goes and burns up the bracelet his daughter gave him...interesting.

Immediately before watching this week's ep, I was watching 24 season four. In the ep, 8-9 PM, Dina Araz is taken behind a wall and shot...or was she? Less than an hour later, I'm watching her call Harold on the phone to tell him exactly when he will be murdered, March 15, 2010.

The Office
Great cold open with the Jim/Dwight dynamic back in full force. It's sad that it never came back the rest of the way. I loved the Jim/Michael storyline this week for one reason...Michael. He was hilarious as always, but Jim was acting really lame when as he tried to be a reliable co-manager. Whenever Jim gets so serious it reminds me why I can never nominate the guy for an award. He's funny only some of the time. On a different note, I feel they have really been misusing Creed in the past couple seasons. Early on this guy was dynamite. Recently he hasn't been that funny. The material they gave him in this week's ep, saying "how come we haven't ever...?" to Meredith. Just terrible.

Community
First off can we give some love to Phil Knight back on the comedy night done right lineup? He was the best thing about Kath and Kim last season, and now that K&K is gone, I'm glad to see Phil getting some love on Community. He was classic as Robin Williams' character in Dead Poets Society. He was much more over the top and much funnier. After Jeff kisses Britta at the end of this week's ep, Phil exclaims a big, "Woweeee!" and then frolicked off the to climb a tree.

Even better than Phil Knight this week, was Chevy Chase's lesson on how to sneeze like a man. His wide variety of sneezes, and reason why you would need them all, had me cracking up the entire time.