The Office 814 Review- He's A Man On A Mission

Kevin- "I do deserve a vacation. Sometimes Batman's gotta take off his cape."

Like most of The Office's eighth season, "Special Project" wasn't all that hilarious. Unlike most of The Office's eighth season, though, it showed some purpose, which kept things interesting.

Said purpose begins and ends with the titular project and what it did to focus Dwight Kurt Schrute. The beet farmer has been funny all year long, but it wasn't until he took the reins of this project, and got his team into the conference room, that things really started to fall into place.

It was just fun. It was fun watching Dwight finally managing. And not only managing, but managing a team that took him seriously as their leader. Even Jim, who didn't fail to mess with Dwight about showering together in Florida earlier in the episode, couldn't help but jump on board the Dwight train once the former Assistant to the Regional Manager started appreciating his team's ideas.

So now the group will be split, with Dwight and his minions enjoying the fun and the sun of Florida, while the rest of the crew stays in chilly Scranton, Pennsylvania. Seriously, though, with Dwight, Jim, Stanley, Erin and Ryan away from the office, I can foresee a problem.

To read the rest of my review of last night's The Office, head over to TV Fanatic.

The Office 814 - "Special Project"
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30 Rock 606 Review- I'm Female Lutz!

Tracy- "Let's prepare for the adventure of a lifetime! And then after we watch Fievel Goes West, we're gonna get you some action."

There are inevitable pros and cons to airing a one-hour episode of a sitcom. Some stories that wouldn't have the chance to develop fully in 30 minutes get to do so with the extra time. Then again, there are others that either drag on or are unnecessarily added due to the doubling of episode length.

30 Rock's super-sized "Hey Baby, What's Wrong" featured both of these pluses and minuses. Jenna and Pete dealing with the former's case of the yips, and Tracy and Frank helping Lutz be a dirt bag, were basically perfect examples of plots that would have been hurt by 21 minutes of run time.

With Jenna, we were able to diagnose the problem, watch her struggle through it and then fix it in a very well-paced funny story. The return of Dr. Spaceman, with his assumption that there is no field of medicine that deals with the brain, and finding out that Jenna has two more nemeses*, also added plenty of laughs.

*Count them now: Abigail Breslin (1), Flo at Progressive Insurance (2), and Gina Gershon (3) from "Today You Are A Man."

Without the added time for Tracy and the gang, we would have missed out on either him and Frank talking about the hilarious things they do to pick women; watching them try to get Lutz to do said atrocities; or Lutz hitting on Liz outside an Ikea and eating Swedish meatballs. Each of those layers of the story was funny.

To read the rest of my review of last night's 30 Rock, head over to TV Fanatic.

30 Rock 606 - "Hey Baby, What's Wrong"
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One Tree Hill 905 Review- Dan Scott Started The Fire

Chuck- "Chuck Scolnik has never been more disappointed in you."

We came into "The Killing Moon" wondering what had happened to Nathan Scott. By the end of the hour, though, I had no better explanation of who took him, or for what reason, than when we started. Did you?

Dan did set his diner on fire on purpose. We know that. The question remains whether or not we should believe him when told Haley that all of his intentions were good. If so, he's just an old man that is trying to get closer to his family, and I can respect that. If he's lying, that would be a horrific character arc for Dan Scott.

Apparently Haley thinks he's lying, as she ended the episode with a call to 911. Not enough credit is given to Bethany Joy for her wonderful work on One Tree Hill, so I will take this time to shower her with praise for the fantastic job she did of portraying the worried wife.

Haley started out in a bit of denial, then began to worry, then seriously freaked out. At each point, Galeotti made the necessary changes in her demeanor, and had me believing every step of the way that she was seriously worried about her husband.

To read the rest of my review of last night's One Tree Hill, head over to TV Fanatic.

One Tree Hill 905 - "The Killing Moon"
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Justified 304 Review- Each Our Own Devil

Boyd- "Don't you know, you're jumping out of the frying pan into the fire?"

Better "The Devil You Know" than the devil you don't. The episode title of Justified's fourth chapter of the year took on a bit of a literal meaning as Boyd's right-hand man, Devil, attempted to make waves within Harlan County corruption before meeting his untimely death.

As is usually the case, the popular idiom also took on its figurative meaning in a couple of fashions over the course of the hour. The most prevalent being Devil himself choosing to side with the devil he didn't know - Mr. Quarles - over the devil he had known forever, Boyd Crowder.

Devil probably would have been better off sticking with the low pay of the Crowder clan. If he just kept on doing what he has done over the years, it is pretty safe to say that Boyd never would have harmed him. He's straightforward that way.

Devil's attempt at defecting to the devil he didn't know was exactly what got him in trouble. Who is to say what would have happened if he had made it out of Boyd's grasps safely, and ended up working for Quarles? Would he have had a similar fate? Most likely, but he didn't know that. Again, he doesn't know Quarles the way we do.

To read the rest of my review of last night's Justified, head over to TV Fanatic.

Justified 304 - "The Devil You Know"
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The Voice 202 Review- I Want The Line

Lewis Jacobs/NBC

Maybe it's because we haven't had time to get annoyed by the coaches, or maybe it's simply that Adam, Blake, Cee Lo and Christina seem to be having such a genuinely fun time together, but The Voice returned with a second night of Blind Auditions that was just as entertaining as Sunday's season premiere.

Between the coaches goading each other to turn around for less than stellar acts, Blake taking bows after being told he's good looking, and even Cee Lo's ridiculous reading glasses, there was a lot of fun being had in those giant red swivel chairs.  My favorite, though, had to be Blake's admission that the contestants were getting "fooled by flash and boobs" in reference to Christina getting chosen a number of times early on.

Like Sunday night, the talent kept pouring in over the course of this two-hour event, as each coach picked up two more team members before the night was through. How do the teams stack up? And how are the judges doing at convincing the contestants to pick them? Let's take a look.

Team Christina
Jesse Campbell
Chris Mann
*The Line
*Lindsey Pavao

Christina continued her hot streak from Sunday, picking up the first audition of the night in The Line. The country duo of Hailey and Leland from Nashville chose Xtina over all three of the other coaches after their version of "American Girl" blew them all away. I enjoyed them a lot, and their harmonies were great, but I definitely would have wanted to hear Hailey sing by herself before turning around. Since they're a country act, I was surprised that they chose Christina over Blake, but it was also surprising since he turned around immediately.

To read the rest of my review of last night's The Voice, head over to TV Fanatic.

The Voice Season Premiere Review- To Turn Or Not To Turn

The Voice was extremely refreshing when it debuted a year ago. It was a new twist on the singing show genre, which at that point had grown extremely stale thanks to the same old same old from American Idol and America's Got Talent.

After skipping Talent again this summer, suffering through the Idol copy cat that was The X Factor this fall, and then snoozing through the Idol auditions for a few weeks now, The Voice once again reinvigorated my enjoyment of singing competitions with a stellar start to the second season.

It all starts with how great and sort of revolutionary the blind auditions are. The coaches facing away from the contestants, them having to make that decision on whether they want the singer on their team, and then the performer actually getting to choose which coach he wants to help him/her win the title... it all adds up to an entertaining hour of television, something that is very difficult to say about the audition rounds of any other singing show on television.

It also helps that the coaches are all charming and completely comfortable in front of the camera, and that everyone singing in the blind auditions can at least carry a tune.

To read the rest of my review of last night's The Voice season premiere, head over to TV Fanatic.

Quiet Poolcast- Fringe and Justified

In hopes of turning this into a weekly thing over at TV Fanatic, I got together with T-Time to practice a podcast this weekend. We discussed the recent happenings on Fringe and Justified, before delving into a few other shows with The Name Game and The Power Rankings.

Here's a timeline of the podcast so that you can skip by shows you don't watch.

Fringe: 0:00 - 12:00
Justified: 12:10 - 20:30
The Name Game
Chuck: 21:20 - 22:50
Suburgatory: 22:50 - 24:30
Once Upon a Time: 24:35 - 25:45
Treme: 25:45 - 27:10
The Office: 27:15 - 28:00
The Power Rankings
Game of Thrones: 29:20 - 31:05

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The Office 813 Review- Call Of Fatherly Duty

Dwight- "That baby is a Schrute, and unless somebody taught Mose sex, that baby is mine."

The eighth season of The Office has had a difficult time telling funny stories. The humoursly awkward moments we used to get from Steve Carrell have turned into boring awkward moments with Ed Helms.

Thankfully, the show has survived on a few hilarious characters - notably Kevin and Dwight - garnering laughs simply based on their hilarious personalities.

That was no different in "Jury Duty," as Kevin was on fire with his disturbing accounting family tree, calling the baby fat and "Little Kevin," and buying the kid Call of Duty.

While Kevin rarely has much more than a few lines of dialogue per episode, Dwight continues to be a leading player... until he possibly spins off his own series next year.

To read the rest of my review of last night's The Office, head over to TV Fanatic.

The Office 813 - "Jury Duty"
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