The X Factor Semifinals Review- Who's Feeling Good?

In the semifinals of The X Factor's first season, we - you guessed it - faced the music. The final four contestants sang two songs for America's vote, and they did a pretty darn good job competing for the final three spots in next week's finale.

The best part of the night might have been when Steve Jones read some random fans Tweet that stated, "L.A. Reid...more like L.A. Rude." Then again, maybe the best part might have been one of the performances. Let's see how the final four did...

Round one was the Pepsi Challenge with songs picked by America.

Marcus Canty "I'll Make Love To You" - This song seems ridiculously inappropriate for this setting. He absolutely murdered the vocal, though. Like I've said a thousand times already, he belongs in the mid-90s, and this Boyz II Men performance proved that. One question, who was that random girl in a red dressing dancing in the background? Simon makes a good point that the song wasn't changed at all from the original.
My Score: 7/10

Chris Rene "Fly" - This is really the song America picked? I'm sorry, Chris. It's nice to see all of his friends joined him on stage, but he's really not getting to do much with this chorus. He kills the original verse within this madness. There is such great originality from him every single time.
My Score: 7/10

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

Chuck Exclusive- Scott Krinsky Expounds on Evolution of Jeff Barnes

There have been many highlights in the early part of Chuck's fifth and final season. One of my personal favorites was seeing an almost normal Jeffrey Barnes after he stopped breathing in the fumes from his van during his nightly sleep.

Apparently I'm not the only one. Scott Krinsky has enjoyed the change in his character, telling me over the phone: "I think it's great that [Jeff] finally gets to have a little growth. We get to see another side of him that we really haven't seen before."

The difference between the spacey, flaky Jeff we knew for four seasons, and the one Captain Awesome helped develop by telling him to stop sleeping in his van, is so immense that it causes laughter just by listening to Krinsky's normal talking voice on screen.

The actor also enjoys the change for reasons of character development, though.

"When he was younger, Jeff had all of this potential, so it's really great to see what he's like when he snapped out of it," Krinsky said.

To read the rest of my exclusive with Scott Krinsky, head over to TV Fanatic.

Terra Nova 110 Review- Son of a Son of a Taylor

Lucas- "How is the great Commander? Has he walked on water yet?"

Anyone who has watched the first 10 episodes of Terra Nova knows that it is not brilliant television. The acting isn't all that great, the dialogue has been awkward and the series took a while to figure out just one kind of show it wanted to be.

All that said, "Within" was the third straight episode in which I have more positive things to say than negative ones. Sure, that may be because the problems with each outing tend to be similar week in and week out, and nobody would want to read about that time and time again, but if Terra Nova gets a second season by FOX, I think it's heading in a decent direction.

Let's start with the best of the best. Ashley Zukerman was fantastic this week as his Lucas Taylor finally got a bit more screen time. He was a pretty great villain in this hour, with his character proving to be creepy, funny, smart and emotional. Zukerman combined all of that into the best performance we've seen on this show to date.

Between constantly referring to Skye as "Bucket," wanting to take out his father for what happened to his mom and destroying all of those nobodies with a sonic wave, it's just a shame that it took until the 10th episode to introduce such an interesting character to a series so lacking in them.

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

Terra Nova 110 - "Within"
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Homeland 111 Review- Come To Life

Carrie- "You wait, you lay low and then you come to life."

Those words, uttered by Carrie Mathison in her fit of manic insanity during "The Vest," like most of what she said during that stretch, were absolutely brilliant.

Yes, the plants in the garden are definitely going to live by Carrie's law, but she was also correct in metaphorically comparing said plants to Abu Nazir and his terrorism plot. Ironically, and unfortunately, it also worked to explain Carrie's bi-polar disorder and its effect on her job with the CIA.

As sad as it was to watch Carrie spiral out of control, it was just as entertaining to watch her work (mostly the demand for the green pen), and just as interesting to realize that she was nailing Abu Nazir's plan down to a "t."

What she was missing, however, was the "i," as in Issa. The only missing ingredient from Carrie's timeline, which Saul so perfectly organized on the wall, was the period of mourning after Nazir had lost his son. If she could have only put the pieces together that Brody was just as heart-broken as Nazir, maybe this whole thing could have been solved.

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

Homeland 111 - "The Vest"
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Weekly Comedy Rankings- Ronny the Rat

It was extremely hard to rank episodes two through nine for me, as all were good but not great. This will be the last rankings for a while as both NBC Thursdays and ABC Wednesdays are done for 2011. The Weekly Comedy Rankings will be back in full force come 2012.

1. Community
2. The Office
3. It's Always Sunny
4. Parks and Rec
5. The League
6. Happy Endings
7. New Girl
8. Mod Family
9. Suburgatory
10. Last Man Standing
11. Family Guy
12. Rules of Engagement

I gave my MVP to Charlie Kelly, who was fantastic in every moment that he was infatuated with that cool guy at the reunion. He's having a great season, and may have passed Dennis for MVP of It's Always Sunny with this episode. My funniest moment also came from Sunny. When they revealed that Mac's real name is Ronald McDonald, I absolutely lost it. I couldn't think of a name that would have worked and would have been funnier than that. Bravo.

Chuck 505 Review- Hammered Hacking

Chuck- "Do you remember why we started Carmichael Industries to begin with?"

Morgan- "The corporate discount on the pinball machine right?"

In "Chuck Versus the Hack Off" two characters felt like they were getting sucked back into something they had tried desperately to get away from in the first place. Chuckles didn't like getting back into the business of working for manipulative CIA head honchos, and Radzinsky* was deathly afraid of getting back into the evil tech device game.

*The character played by Eric Lange was not important enough to be referred to by anything but Radzinsky...the actor's character on Lost.

Thankfully, it looks like neither character will have to deal with such issues ever again. Radzinsky will likely head back to his naked yoga cult in the woods, while Chuck will never have to take another order from the likes of Decker...unless technology advances to the point that a man can get blown back together by a reverse bomb.

Stepping back to the here and now, "The Hack Off" was a great hour on its own, but was an even better example of how Chuck is killing it to start its final season. Fedak, Schwartz and company have weaved the long-running arcs of these characters' end games with funny, action-packed, interesting episodic stories pretty darn perfectly over the first five episodes.

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

Chuck 505 - "Chuck vs. the Hack Off"
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The Office 810 Review- Self-Prankervation

Nate- "You had me at clookies. I can't wait to find out what they are."

The Office has knocked Christmas episodes out of the park in the past, so a high bar was set for "Christmas Wishes. It didn't live up to the original "Christmas Party" or last season's "Classy Christmas," but it was certainly one of the funnier outings of season eight.

There were a lot of things that make up a good Office episode at play here. Jim and Dwight were in a pranking zone, there was a whole lot of Erin Hannon, Andy Bernard wasn't ridiculously annoying, and of course, there was an amazing montage/air band rock out set to TSO's "Carol of the Bells."

Dunder Mifflin has done holiday music well in the past - Angela's "Little Drummer Boy" comes to mind - but nothing like this. Between Kevin and Jim receiving a cookie jar and a vasectomy pamphlet as gifts, Erin pounding shots with Phyllis, and Creed, Nate and Gabe joining Dwight on air guitar, air keyboard, and air bass, respectively, it hit on all levels. Great montage.

Not only were Jim and Dwight back to doing what they do best, pranking, but it wasn't the same old song and dance. No, no, Jim and Dwight were pranking themselves, which made it that much funnier. Whether it was Jim reading his credit card info aloud - leading to Dwight buying $200 flowers for Pam - Dwight putting a porcupine into his own drawer - leading to him calling the animal by name - or Jim drawing devil horns and a beard on a picture of CeCe but then backing down so Dwight wouldn't get fired... these two were on fire.

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

The Office 810 - "Christmas Wishes"
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The X Factor Top 5 Results- Shocker!

The X Factor went from five to four tonight, eliminating one more contestant before next week's semifinals. After listening to performances by two people who would be in the Over 30s group on this show - Lenny Kravitz and Mary J. Blige - Steve Jones and the gang got to the results.

In no particular order, it was revealed that Josh Krajcik, Chris Rene, and Melanie Amaro were safe for another week. Not a huge surprise here, as Marcus Canty is always a bottom dweller and Rachel Crow finished with the least amount of votes from America.

That's when things got interesting. Both contestants sang songs from Top 11 week. Marcus was great with his second performance of "I'm Going Down," but Rachel was ridiculously awesome in her second outing with "I Would Rather Go Blind." I gave her a 9/10 and touted Rachel "BEST OF THE NIGHT" with this song a couple weeks ago, and she might have been even better here. There was just so much emotion in the performance as she feared elimination.

As always, it next went to the judges. Let's see what they decided...

To read the rest of my post on The X Factor's Top 5 Results show, head over to TV Fanatic.