This Week in Televison...

So I don't usually write daily recaps of my favorite shows, but this week was freaking awesome for me! Not only were there amazing episodes of Battlestar Galactica and The Office, but I got Gossip Girl, Grey's Anatomy, and Lost back as well!!! I felt the need to gush a bit, so here are this week's highlights!


HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER: I just discovered this show this season (at the excited insistence of Heather) and it is really great. This week featured another flashback into Robin's past as pop singer "Robin Sparkles." In addition to another painfully bad music video, we were treated to THE BEEK (that's James Van Der Beek aka Dawson Leery, for those of you not in the know) as her former Canadian paramour! Bad accent, beer gut, hair loss....so awesome! These are the kind of roles he should be playing - much more fun than that sanctimonious ass, Dawson! Also, BARNEY AND ROBIN!!!!! OMG! They have some good chemistry! Here's hoping they don't ruin it! Also, loved Marshall's concept of "revertigo," and Lily, unaware, reverting to her pathetic gangster self.


GOSSIP GIRL: How I have missed this show! When we last saw these deliciously devious kids, Blair was overthrown as Queen B by frenemie Little Jenny Humphrey after her sorted sexual past with boyfriend Nate and his best friend Chuck was revealed to the entire student population. This week's match-up had Blair conniving to expose Jenny's poverty to her rich friends. Little J came out on top, but only after stealing a designer gown (twice), and pimping Nate out to win back her place. I'd watch out for Blair - this is gonna be a nasty, drawn-out cat fight and I can't wait for the day Blair crushes Little J into dust!

In other stories, Chuck was creepy and slimy to the extreme (and dressed in one of his most ridiculous ensembles yet, see left (the character's not even gay, which makes his wardrobe even more hilarious)), but quite cutely giddy to have a new family. Too bad that was ruined when Serena accused him of sending her lewd presents designed to get her in trouble. However, the final trump was on Serena when she learned the gifts were from the ominous "G" - even Chuck looked nervous at this revelation, although it served to form a tentative truce between the soon-to-be-step-siblings. Can't wait for next week when more hellfire is gonna rain from the sky with the arrival of the much dreaded Georgina!


THE OFFICE: There were a lot of things I loved about this episode. First, it was good to see all of the Officemates, with special screen time given to Stanley and Toby. In what may be a first, Toby got a genuinely great awkward and laugh-out-loud moment from me with his lingering hand on Pam's leg, followed by his mortification, decision to move to Costa Rica, and spry escape over the fence. That alone was worth the price of admission! But there was also crazy, coke-head Ryan, happy to hang out with Michael and Dwight, dancing like a spaz, making frequent trips to the bathroom, rubbing his nose, looking like shit....it was awesome, and about time, drug-addled or not, that we finally saw that prick loosen up. (On a negative note, why do the writers insist on drawing parallels between Michael and Jim? I'm cool with all the other mistakes Jim made this episode, he does not need to be perfect, but why must he make the incredibly Michael-like guffaw of assuming the cleaning staff only spoke Spanish? That felt all kinds of wrong. I'm sure it can't be readily assumed that all janitors in the Scranton, Pennsylvania area are Mexican. It would be fitting for Michael to think so, but not Jim.)


GREY'S ANATOMY: My love for this show was seriously waning this season, but they finally churned out a pretty great episode. It was nice to see Izzie back on point after the tragic miscalculation of Gizzie - I was worried the writers weren't gonna be able to rehabilitate her, but she was amusingly crazy this episode and she and George regained some of their great friendship snark! George wasn't as whiny and pathetic either! The Mer/Der drama was minimal, and for once she didn't make the case ALL about her love life, and didn't seem to be pathetically waffling throughout the episode. There was a nice moment between the Chief and Alex, and boy does Mark look delicious with a little trim on that goatee! Also, as if it needed to be mentioned, Bailey kicked all kinds of ass, and the competition between the residents for the sparkly pager was a great idea - theses characters are most amusing when they are competitive!


LOST: Yes! I love that this show is giving us some answers! At least we understand why Sayid is working for Ben in the future (although the validity of the enterprise is of course questionable - aren't all things Ben?), but would he really go as far as to help take out Penny??? I don't think so, at least not based on the Sayid I see now, especially given his current closeness with Desmond, so maybe that will cause some shakeups in the Ben/Sayid dynamic. Here's hoping, because would I hate for one of favorite characters to be chained irrevocably to the most repulsive. Great action sequences this week, and glad Jack finally knows the truth (I think?) about the Boaties and their motives. And Hurley with the baby = adorable! I admit to letting out a little SQUEE!!! (By the way, I totally geeked out over the title of this episode - "The Shape of Things to Come" - because isn't that what Hera represents on Galactica? I just thought it was an awesomely strange coincidence, or maybe my mind is just a little too Galactica obsessed right now!)


BATTLESTAR GALACTICA!: This show is really bringing the goods this season. First up, last week's episode featured the emergence of Cylon Tory the badass, and boy is it creepily scary to watch her turn off her humanity like that. SHE AIRLOCKED CALLY!!! I've always hated Cally (perhaps the only series regular I have never warmed to, and have never had sympathy for - what a whiny brat!), but that was a seriously fucked up way to die! Although I'm glad to see her gone, she was so alone and destroyed and unwanted throughout this episode, that when she was killed so mercilessly, it elicited a loud gasp from me!

Roslin, the dying leader, is also going all kinds of hardass lately, and while I still feel sympathy for her, it's weird to watch a character you've always trusted become unrelatable, and terrifying in her logic. (A wonderful TWoP poster noted that her new chemo-inspired wig is very Admiral Cain - does that draw some scary parallels or what!?!) This week's episode had Chief and Tigh going through some very weird and destructive Cylon-related meltdowns (and Tigh's involves bedding a Six! Ahhh! Crazy!), Adama being sweetly forced to confront the reality of Roslin's mortality, and Baltar becoming a Christ-like religious figure. Really raises some interesting and uncomfortable questions about religious fanaticism and what the Cylon religion may allow it's followers to excuse themselves for (i.e. destroying humanity, Tory putting Cally out the airlock, etc.) There are also some interesting arguments to be made (not by me, but I'm sure Jacob, the AMAZING TWoP recapper, will explain in his recap of this episode) between Roslin's religious faith and the "cult" of Baltar's! Also, in the most awesome moment of the episode, ChipSix actually physically lifted Baltar off his feet and served him up to the guard punching his lights out! How did she do that? Is she actually an angel or a physical entity!?!?!?! Whatever the reason, it was amazing, and eerily reminiscent of the Fight Club scene where Edward Norton fights himself! Wowza!

Coming up, mutiny on The Demetrius!!! I wanna see how Starbuck handles that, especially if it means a decent storyline for Helo and Athena, who haven't yet had a moment to shine, and who apparently left their hard-won daughter, Hera, alone on Galactica. WTF!


Wow! That was some good TV! And I didn't even mention my guilty pleasures including a cat fight on the Rock of Love II: Reunion, the return of bisexual Tila Tequila in A Shot at Love, a trip to Rome on Top Model, Andrew Lloyd Webber week on American Idol, and, I'm ashamed to admit, the tragically awful Real World: Hollywood, in it's 20th season! I know, these shows are all crap (oh, the shame!), but I have to admit, they have their bizarre attractions. Maybe I'll just blame my addiction on the strike: if they hadn't taken away all my good shows, I never would have been sucked in! That's my story and I'm sticking to it!