The Last Tick of the Clock

Diminished expectations led to a feeling that 24 ended its eight-year run in decent enough fashion. The season was such a mess overall that by the time the finale kicked into gear in the last hour or so, it felt like the 24 of old: Jack’s nothing-to-lose attitude was in full force, President Logan’s duplicity was on display like never before (he literally had blood on his hands this time), Chloe’s loyalty to Jack had her wringing her hands again. The best scenes, though, involved Cherry Jones’s President Allison Taylor. Her despair and self-disgust as she came clean about her role in covering up the Russian president’s part in Omar Hassan’s assassination was devastating to watch, the honesty more gut-wrenching than any of the torture Jack doled out this year.

And what of our hero? There’s something superhuman (last week’s Iron Man-esque attack on Logan’s motorcade) and primal about him at the same time. (If this season had lasted any longer, we might have seen Jack start killing people just to watch them die.) He casually treads the line between being right and being crazy. Jack is often adamant that his actions are the result of not having anything left to lose. But I would beg to differ. He’s experienced love (granted, they were doomed affairs), and he’s got a daughter and granddaughter looking to forge a deeper bond with him. And yet these seem to fade in the background when he thinks his country needs him and only him. Even after eight seasons, I’m not sure if this is a character flaw or a flaw in the writing. One thing’s for sure, though: As the CTU drone loomed overhead at the end of the finale, beaming images back to those who helped him save the day, the look in Jack’s eyes made clear that, no matter how he tries to escape, his is a fight that will never be finished.

Eulogy for Lost

The phrase “No risk, no reward” comes to mind as I attempt to digest the exquisite series finale of Lost, and it really applies to the series as a whole. Lost leapt across all genre lines, bravely encapsulating the characteristics of action-adventure, science fiction, mystery, love story, drama, even comedy. In the end, though, it was the characters and not the strange Island goings-on that carried us home, as this season’s flash-sideways stories were revealed to be an elaborate way to join these people together as they were meant to be. Faith, in humanity and each other, won out over science, as everyone gathered in a church to celebrate the connections they made, the love that developed, the everlasting friendships that would go unchanged by death, whenever that death might come.

If that explanation doesn’t quite make sense, I’m glad. Hopefully it will propel those who have avoided or abandoned the show for fear of its density to give it a whirl in its entirety and see how richly rewarded they’ll be by the experience.

The finale delivered some wonderful scenes as characters stuck in the flash-sideways were forced together (mostly by Desmond) and made to remember their lives on the island. Sun and Jin met Juliet during Sun’s sonogram; Sayid was reunited with Shannon as Boone protected her during an alleyway fight; the delivery of Claire’s baby once again connected Claire, Kate and Charlie; Jack performed spinal surgery on Locke, after which Locke was able to walk again; and the swoon worthy romance between Juliet and Sawyer was rekindled over a broken vending machine.

There were countless callbacks to events and lines of dialogue that have happened over the course of the show’s run, none more iconic than the last shot: Jack’s eye, seen many times opening in close-up, this time closing as he takes his final breath on the Island, Ajira Flight 316 ascending overhead, taking the remaining survivors (minus new Island protector Hurley and his sidekick Ben) back home.

The episode provided a payoff that, for my tastes, is unparalleled in the land of series finales, where the pressure almost always seems to get the best of even the most talented scribes. Here, Team Darlton (exec producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse) stayed true to the heart of the show. They realized that none of the Island’s mysteries would have meant anything if they didn’t have the right group of people expressing the right set of emotions.

When you think about it, six years isn’t really that much time for a show as influential, revered, and just plain popular as Lost. Kudos to Darlton for knowing how much time they needed to get to their endgame, and to ABC for listening and respecting their creative decisions rather than letting the show fester and continue long after it had worn out its welcome. Epic doesn’t even begin to describe just how grand this series was. It will undoubtedly hold up to repeat viewings and heavy scrutinizing, and go down in the annals of television as one of the greatest series ever made. One of the phrases the characters on the show are fond of saying is, "Whatever happened, happened." What happened in the case of Lost was absolute magic.

The CW: Boring Is as Boring Does

Last and very least with their upfront presentation is The CW. To be honest, I’m surprised that, after four seasons of steadily declining ratings, joint partners CBS and Warner Bros. haven’t just pulled the plug on this unnecessary network. Changes are coming to every night this fall, not that it’s likely to make much difference when all is said and done.

Moving to Monday night won’t do much for 90210, which should have been cancelled after its low-rated first year. At 9pm, The CW’s inexplicable love for Gossip Girl continues, despite the fact that few watch and the show has lost any buzz it once had.

Two bubble shows make up Tuesday night, with One Tree Hill returning for what will likely be its final season. At least Life Unexpected, which follows at 9pm, has some critical support going for it, even if viewers have yet to find it.

New show Hellcats, about a college student (Ashley Tisdale, High School Musical) who loses her scholarship and joins the cheer team, is the latest entry being asked to hold a respectable amount of its America's Next Top Model lead-in on Wednesday nights. We’ll see if it lasts longer than The Beautiful Life: TBL, High Society, and Flygirls did this season.

The network’s only real hit, The Vampire Diaries, stays on Thursdays, where it will be paired with new spy show Nikita. If Vampire can carry its success to season two, it just might provoke viewers to stick around for Nikita, which will doubtless be compared to Alias.

For the first time in its short history, CW schedules all-original scripted series on Fridays, though this particular pairing will be short-lived. It’s been announced that Smallville is entering its final season, and the same is probably true for Supernatural, which is already going a year longer than its creator initially planned.

If things don’t start looking up for the network, it might be time to admit defeat and fold. There’s nothing truly unique on their schedule, nothing that you couldn’t find being done better somewhere else.

CBS Fall: Cautiously Aggressive

CBS finds its fall schedule pretty evenly divided between shows staying in their current slots and shows being shuffled around. Three out of the five new series being introduced are directly in the network’s wheelhouse of crime dramas, leading to the question that gets asked every season: How much longer can CBS milk the popularity of a genre that should have peaked a few years ago?

Half of the Monday night schedule remains intact, with How I Met Your Mother, Rules of Engagement, and Two and a Half Men (with a richly rewarded Charlie Sheen now garnering $2mil per episode) from 8-9:30pm. Mike & Molly, a new comedy from Two and a Half Men creator Chuck Lorre about a teacher and a cop who meet cute at an Overeaters Anonymous meeting, gets the net’s most coveted comedy lead-in. The remake of Hawaii Five-0 caps things off at 10pm. Alex O’Loughlin, having already tanked in Moonlight and Three Rivers, gives it another go here. If this one doesn’t work, perhaps CBS will admit that their love affair with the actor has been unrequited by America.

Tuesdays are a carbon copy of this year: NCIS, NCIS: Los Angeles, and The Good Wife. Given that this lineup finished well ahead of the competition last fall and held up reliably when American Idol entered the picture in the first quarter, keeping things status quo is a wise decision.

Survivor moves to a new night for the first time since its second edition way back in 2001. The Wednesday 8pm slot remains relatively weak in terms of competition so expect Survivor to still be able to finish first in the hour. Criminal Minds follows, then at 10pm, Jim Belushi and Jerry O’Connell are The Defenders, Las Vegas attorneys who pull out all the stops for their clients. It’s being billed as a “comedic drama,” and could be an odd fit with the gruesome Criminal Minds (not to mention that the last thing any of needs after eight years of According to Jim is another Jim Belushi show).

The Big Bang Theory moves to Thursdays at 8pm, where it will be paired with the new comedy $#*! My Dad Says. Theory has really taken off this year and will almost definitely win the time period, probably siphoning more viewers away from NBC’s comedies in the process. $#*! My Dad Says, based on a Twitter feed and starring William Shatner, should settle in nicely as well. Since CBS hasn't aired sitcoms on the night in what could be decades, leaving the rest of the night unchanged is smart, with CSI: Crime Scene Investigation leading into The Mentalist.

Medium gets bumped up an hour to kick off Fridays, followed by CSI: NY on a new night, and new police drama Blue Bloods starring Tom Selleck, whose Jesse Stone movie franchise pulls in strong total viewer counts but is decidedly older-skewing. Look for much the same with this new show, though I expect CBS will still have no trouble winning the night overall once again.

Saturdays continue with two hours of Crimetime Saturday repeats and 48 Hours Mystery, while Sundays will consist of 60 Minutes, The Amazing Race, the return of Undercover Boss, and a new time slot for CSI: Miami, a lineup that should be poised for a strong second-place finish in the fall (behind NBC’s football game).

When it comes to cancellations, CBS really cleaned house, letting go of Cold Case, Numb3rs, The New Adventures of Old Christine (which could find a new home at ABC), Gary Unmarried, Accidentally on Purpose, and Ghost Whisperer (also an ABC possibility). CBS is definitely a network that knows where its strengths lie, but you have to wonder how long it will be before the crime drama corner they’ve painted themselves into becomes a trap from which they won't be able to escape.

ABC's Fall Schedule: Ordinary but Effective

Stability is the keyword for ABC this fall as the network leaves many of its strongest performers exactly where they are right now.

Sundays will still be home to America’s Funniest Home Videos, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Desperate Housewives, and Brothers & Sisters. It was thought that EM:HE and B&S would find themselves in other time slots, particularly the former, which has deteriorated to a shadow of its previous dominance. And at this point in its run, the network may have thought B&S too vulnerable to shift it away from the night, the only time period its ever known.

Mondays are the same as well, with a two-hour Dancing With the Stars again paired with Castle. Given the quick failure of sitcom Romantically Challenged, ABC may finally have given up on trying to launch a comedy out of Dancing, a wise move considering the boost that the lead-in has provided Castle this year.

One of the fall’s most anticipated new shows will jump start Tuesday: No Ordinary Family, in which Michael Chiklis plays the patriarch of a family that crash lands on an island only to discover that they now have superpowers. Obviously, the network is hoping they’ve found the next Lost, but they need to be careful not to set expectations too high lest they end up with another FlashForward instead. Dancing With the Stars: The Results is next, followed by Detroit 1-8-7, which sounds almost exactly like Homicide: Life on the Street but in a different city.

ABC Comedy Wednesday returns to fill the 8-10pm block. The Middle moves up a half-hour, followed by new entry Better Together, about three couples from the same family who are in very different stages of their relationships. Modern Family and Cougar Town stay put in the 9pm hour. The Middle has grown over the course of the season, but asking it to start the night may be too much. And while Modern Family is a bona fide hit, Cougar Town hasn’t quite proven itself yet (it’s been saddled with airing opposite the second half of the American Idol results show for months). 10pm has The Whole Truth, another legal drama from Jerry Bruckheimer, this one giving an in-depth look at how both the prosecution and defense work a case. It stars Rob Morrow (Numb3rs), and could be just as forgettable as last year’s The Forgotten.

It’s all relationships all night on Thursdays as newcomer My Generation joins Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice. My Generation takes a documentary-style approach as it follows a group of former high school classmates who return ten years later to their hometown of Austin, Texas. Unless this show has some major critical support behind it, look for it to exit early. Though not the ratings powerhouse it used to be, Grey’s still gives Practice a much-needed boost and continues to bring in the important 18-49 demo. Plus, like Brothers & Sisters, it may be too long in the tooth to move to a different night.

Feel-good 2008 Fox reject Secret Millionaire got picked up by the Alphabet last year and will finally air Fridays at 8pm. New drama Body of Proof, where Dana Delany plays a neurologist cum medical examiner, follows, and stalwart 20/20 remains at 10pm. There’s no real flow here, going from reality to drama to news, but give ABC credit for keeping the lights on on a night that many feel will become the new Saturday over the next few years. Speaking of Saturday, college football will be back to fill the night in the fall.

In general, ABC doesn’t look to have the strongest crop of freshman shows. With the exception of No Ordinary Family, they all seem rather generic and nondescript. But with a trove of returning shows that should have relative sustainability, it almost doesn’t matter whether the new shows succeed or not.

Fox Fall: A Coupla Surprises

With the exception of Saturdays, which will probably be home to Cops and America’s Most Wanted until the end of time, Fox’s fall schedule is almost completely devoid of reality programming, with a trend toward a scripted renaissance that seems to be echoing throughout broadcast TV.

House kicks things off again on Mondays at 8pm, followed by Lonestar, a new drama from Party of Five exec producers Chris Keyser and Amy Lippmann (where have you guys been?) that uses Big Oil as the backdrop for the story of a man living two lives. On paper, Lonestar doesn’t sound like the kind of show that’s going to set the world on fire, but the solid lead-in and creative pedigree might turn this one into a minor sleeper hit.

Tuesdays are comedy night, with Glee shifting up an hour to give some support to new half-hour entries Raising Hope and Running Wilde. Raising Hope comes from Greg Garcia (My Name Is Earl) and centers on a ne’er-do-well whose family helps him out with his baby daughter; look for plenty of wacky old lady shenanigans courtesy of Cloris Leachman. Arrested Development alums Mitch Hurwitz, Jim Vallely, and Will Arnett (who stars along with Keri Russell) created Running Wilde, in which Arnett tries to woo childhood sweetheart Russell, with everything seen from the viewpoint of Russell’s preteen daughter. Glee may not be strong enough for Fox to launch new shows out of yet, and it’s been a long while since the network found success with a sitcom outside of Sunday night, but you have to give them credit for trying something different.

Wednesdays see the return of Lie to Me, a bit of a surprise renewal considering how long the network kept the show on hiatus this season. Hell’s Kitchen, the only other unscripted hour on the fall schedule, keeps the time period warm until midseason. This is perhaps not as aggressive as Fox should be in the middle of the week, but it’s a tandem that should fetch them a decent enough number of viewers.

Bones and Fringe remain exactly where they are on Thursdays, though Fringe had better start holding more of the Bones audience if it hopes to keep this plum time slot.

Astoundingly, Fox is taking another stab at programming scripted fare on Fridays, with returnee Human Target and summer holdover The Good Guys—which has a preview this Wednesday before moving to Mondays in June—being the recipients of this dubious honor. The network has performed better on the night with reality shows such as Kitchen Nightmares, so it will probably take a miracle for either of these to make it into 2011.

The aforementioned Saturday lineup stays the same (no word, though, on what will replace the cancelled Wanda Sykes Show in late night), as does Sunday, where NFL post-game show The OT will be followed by the Animation Domination block of The Simpsons, The Cleveland Show, Family Guy, and American Dad.

All in all, this actually could end up being a fairly solid fall season for Fox. The mass appeal of the new shows may be questionable, but the net has done its best to protect them behind some of their more established series. As per usual, the network also put out its proposed midseason schedule, which shows that American Idol will once again take its place on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. And as per usual, I won’t give the rest of that midseason schedule a second thought since so much of it is completely dependent on Fox’s assumption that their fall lineup could be anything but perfect.

Fall 2010: NBC Likes Writers Again

With NBC announcing so many of its new series pickups over the last few weeks, there wasn’t much to be decided but the actual placement of its shows on the fall schedule. The network got a head start on its official upfront presentation, which takes place tomorrow, by making said schedule public today, probably so that it doesn’t have to share as much Monday evening/Tuesday morning headline space with Fox, which also announces its fall plans tomorrow. The key observation: After last fall's Leno debacle created less real estate for scripted shows, the network has done an about face and scheduled dramas across the board, Monday through Friday at 10pm.

Monday nights continue to be anchored by Chuck, a marginal success at best, but a show that has proven reliable for the network on what has become a tough night for them to gain traction in recent years. Progressing with an action theme, NBC welcomes two new dramas, The Event (regular guy gets embroiled in the U.S.’s biggest conspiracy ever) and Chase (Jerry Bruckheimer show about U.S. marshals tracking fugitives). It’s always a risk scheduling two unproven shows back-to-back, and the network takes a chance that audiences will be just plain fatigued if they stick around for all three hours.

Tuesdays stay exactly as they were this spring, with The Biggest Loser leading into Parenthood. This is an extreme vote of confidence for the recently-introduced family drama, once again being given the benefit of one of the net’s highest-rated lead-ins.

Wednesdays see Law & Order: Special Victims Unit sandwiched between two freshman dramas: J.J. Abrams’s high-profile Undercovers and the latest entry in the L&O franchise, Law & Order: Los Angeles. SVU had a hard time in the 9pm slot last fall so it’s a bit surprising to see it moved there again, especially when it’s made some recent strides to get back on track in its current 10pm slot. As with Mondays, the network could be asking too much of audiences if they expect them to stick around for two hours of Law & Order, not to mention that another spinoff may be seem as unnecessary overkill at this point. Undercovers, about married former spies who get pulled back into the espionage game, is a question mark; Abrams’s name alone may not be quite enough to sell a series (witness Fringe), but the concept, along with what will likely be an aggressive marketing campaign, will probably ensure some healthy initial sampling.

The network sticks with a two-hour comedy block on Thursdays, with sophomore Community leading into 30 Rock, followed by The Office and newcomer Outsourced, about an American company with a call center in India. Then at 10pm, it’s Love Bites, a romantic anthology series that will feature two new stories and one ongoing story (with My Boys’ Jordana Spiro and Ugly Betty’s Becki Newton) each week. There’s nothing here that indicates NBC will suddenly see a spike in viewership for these decidedly niche comedies, and it seems like it’s been decades since an anthology series worked. (Parks and Recreation, by the way, will be held for midseason.)

This year’s midseason entry Who Do You Think You Are? returns to Fridays at 8pm, sharing the time slot with School Pride, a reality show that doubles as an outreach project as communities attempt to fix their troubled public schools. Dateline NBC continues at 9pm, and Jimmy Smits’s Outlaw has the misfortune of capping off the evening. Given NBC’s inability to launch a drama in the Friday 10pm time period of late (anyone remember Inconceivable or Medical Investigation?), look for Outlaw—which comes from Conan O’Brien’s production company and has Smits playing a former Supreme Court Justice turned private lawyer—to be one of the season’s early casualties.

Saturdays will be the wasteland they have been in recent years, with drama repeats filling the schedule. And as always, Sundays in the fall are reserved for NFL highlight/pregame show Football Night in America and Sunday Night Football.

Out at the Peacock are Heroes (which some had speculated might get a chance to wrap things up with a shortened episode order or even as a two-hour movie, the latter still apparently up for discussion); both of its medical dramas, Mercy and Trauma; and the original Law & Order, which was unceremoniously dumped last week with no notice to give producers the chance to craft an actual series finale after twenty years on the air. That last decision just goes to show that no matter what NBC tries to do to change its fate, they're never afraid to make a move destined to piss off loyal viewers.

FNL on NBC: Just Watch!

A quick reminder that NBC begins running season four of Friday Night Lights tonight at 8pm. The beautiful thing about this season is that, with Coach Taylor taking a job at East Dillon High and new characters being expertly introduced, it's a perfect fit for longtime fans and newcomers alike. Tonight's episode sets the groundwork for a season that does what FNL has always done best: mix heart, humor, controversy, and a good dollop of gridiron action into an irrestible stew of emotion. Thanks to the cost-cutting agreement between NBC and DirecTV, which has first run rights, we're already guaranteed another (likely final) season, so tune in tonight with the assurance that you won't be robbed of the show's brilliance after this current batch of thirteen episodes.

Conan the Tactitian

More than three months after prematurely signing off as host of The Tonight Show, Conan O'Brien broke his contractually mandated silence last night on 60 Minutes. Proving that just because you’re funny doesn’t mean you have to be a jerk, a subdued O’Brien refused to give in to interviewer Steve Kroft’s repeated attempts to get him to say something nasty about Jay Leno, though he did laugh at the prospect of Leno having been screwed over. (O’Brien is barred from saying anything disparaging toward NBC, but it’s unclear if that extends to Leno as well). All he would say was that he would have handled the situation differently, perhaps gone off to do something else instead of reclaiming the desk from a man he’d wished well just months earlier.

Among some of the more noteworthy quotes from the interview: On why he ultimately stepped down as host: “It started to get toxic.” On whether he was forced out: “If they wanted me to leave, it worked.” On any lingering hard feelings toward Leno: “Jay’s got The Tonight Show, I have a beard and an inflatable bat, and I’m touring city-to-city.” O’Brien says he’s happy with the decision he made, even if he disagrees wholeheartedly with NBC’s assertion that the network was losing money during his short-lived stint. This was a more serious, introspective Conan than we’re used to seeing, temporarily trading in his absurdist humility for a more down-to-earth version. He ended the interview by assuring fans that he’s doing just fine. Why wouldn’t he be? He’s captured more headlines than ever before, and in six months time, he’ll be back on the air at TBS, hosting a brand new show that will be seen Monday through Thursday at 11pm, with lower expectations (and a younger audience) than NBC could offer. That’s not to say he wouldn’t mind translating some of the respect he’s garnered into a few million more viewers.

House: Good Medicine

Another change-of-pace episode, another winner for House last night. This time the hospital was on lockdown after a newborn went missing. As Cuddy searched for the baby, the doctors, paired up and scattered throughout the building, were forced to confront their fears and regrets. Chase and Cameron officially said goodbye to their failed marriage; Taub and Foreman took some of House’s painkillers and hallucinated their way through each other’s personnel files; Wilson and Thirteen played a game of Truth or Dare, with Wilson being the butt of Thirteen’s many lies; and House sat with a dying patient (guest star David Strathairn) and continued to mourn letting go of the woman he met while in the mental hospital.

When given the chance, one of the things that House does so well is allow its characters to stretch, to reveal sides of themselves we (and, perhaps, they) don’t know exist when they’re trapped in their lab coats. Last night, we saw buried insecurities come to the surface, unvarnished honesty heal old wounds, and, just to show that these people don't always have to be medical robots, even a little bit of fun. (Note to producers: Give drugs to Omar Epps’s deadly dull Foreman more often. He’s never been better than he was in this episode.) Judging by next week’s promo, it’s back to business as usual for the diagnosticians. But increasingly, House is breaking its patterns, and, in season six, doing something few series are capable of as they age: improving.

A Hopeful Revolution; 24 Ticks Down

In 2008, Huntington, West Virginia, was cited in a government survey as being the unhealthiest city in the nation. Enter British chef Jamie Oliver, determined to make a difference here the same way he did in his home country: by instituting a new menu in the city’s schools. This time around, the process is being documented for the purposes of a worthwhile new reality show dubbed Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution (ABC, Fridays, 9pm).

Naturally, an outsider showing up to change the system doesn’t sit well with some of Huntington’s residents, and the local radio host isn’t helping matters by spewing his anti-health food stance on the air. There is resistance from the community and the school, the latter having its hand forced by imperfect USDA guidelines and tight budgetary restrictions. Some of the conflict, though, does come off as a bit manufactured. It’s hard to believe that the cooks who run the kitchen at the elementary school—don’t dare call them lunch ladies—would really be so averse to making kids healthier, even if it means they have to work a little harder. Or that they could deny that the processed food they serve (pizza for breakfast, mashed potatoes that harden like cement) is not good for them.

The kids aren’t necessarily helping the situation, either. They’re less than gung ho about the menu changes; much of the fresh food Oliver prepares is left on their trays. Speaking of which, for a town struggling with a fifty-percent obesity rate, it seems to me that those trays could be much smaller. Even when Oliver is handing out healthy food, it still looks like it’s in too high a quantity, and the fact that much of it ends up in the trash can anyway only makes things worse.

There are times when Oliver feels like a British version of hyperactive Extreme Makeover: Home Edition host Ty Pennington. He pulls stunts such as dressing up like a pea pod or having a year’s worth of fat delivered to the school parking lot. (Thankfully, no one gives him a megaphone.) But you certainly can’t fault his intentions as he comes across the Atlantic with the hopes of making a small ripple in a very big pond. His passion and emotion are clearly evident as he attempts to help a community that seems largely uninterested in helping itself. One of Oliver’s demonstrations perfectly sums up what he’s up against: showing kids how chicken nuggets are made, the tykes are disgusted to learn that it’s the leftover parts of the chicken—bloody bones, skin, fat—that are ground up and shaped into patties. But dressed up with a little batter and deep-fried, they still have absolutely no problem eating them.

Something I’ve been having a hard time swallowing is the current season of 24, an absurd mess whose last episode had me rolling my eyes and laughing out loud countless times. Let’s see, there was Chloe pulling a gun on an NSA agent because no one was listening to her; a rookie CTU field agent who defied orders and ran out into the open during a gunfight to save a wounded comrade, only to end up getting killed himself; Dana strangling a parole officer and hiding him inside a vent at CTU headquarters; and, seconds later, learning that Dana is yet another CTU mole (she must be the eightieth in the show’s history).

Mercifully, Fox announced yesterday after weeks of speculation (including rumors that the show would move to NBC) that this will indeed be 24’s final season. Star Kiefer Sutherland said in the press release, “While the end of the series is bittersweet, we always wanted 24 to finish on a high note, so the decision to make the eighth season our last was one we all agreed upon.” Obviously, he’s been working on a different show than I've been watching, because this hardly constitutes going out on a high note. Unless the back half of this season does a complete about face, this will 24 going out at its absolute worst.

There’s no question that this is one of the most groundbreaking shows of the last decade, changing the way serialized stories are told. It was also instrumental in changing how programmers schedule this type of show, giving way to nonstop, repeat-free airings over a shorter time period. Which is why it’s so sad that 24 has to end on such a creative low. A movie franchise is imminent (a script is already being worked on that would have Jack Bauer battling baddies in Europe), so this definitely is not the last you’ll see of 24. Let’s hope that, in its current form, the writers are able to pull things together just enough to make this season more than the atrocity they’ve weaved so far. After 192 hours, loyal fans deserve at least that much.

Breaking's Back

Compared with what we’re used to seeing on the absolutely brilliant AMC series Breaking Bad (Sundays, 10pm), last night’s third-season premiere was relatively quiet. Guilt and retribution were at the center of the episode, in which we saw the repercussions of the midair plane collision that capped off last year.

Walt (Bryan Cranston, who also directed the episode) is a mess, though somehow he claims that he’s happy in his marriage when wife Skyler (Anna Gunn) confronts him with divorce papers. Seems she’s at least partially figured out what Walt has been up to all these months (she thinks he’s been dealing marijuana). In a last ditch attempt to keep her from leaving him, he tells her some of the truth, confessing to being a meth manufacturer, but conveniently leaving out the part where he’s either killed someone himself or simply been on hand as he watched someone die. Guess the guilt wasn’t eating at him that badly.

Meanwhile, Jesse (Aaron Paul)—whose girlfriend was one of the people that Walt stood idly by while she took her last breath—is suffering from an avalanche of guilt. He supplied his newly sober girlfriend with the drugs that killed her, causing her grief-stricken air traffic controller father to neglect his duties and send the two planes into the same flight path. Jesse has proven to be a paragon of recidivism in seasons past, so his stint in rehab likely won't leave him cured, especially with the deaths of 170 people on his conscience.

If the episode didn’t offer up one of the show’s trademark out-of-left-field surprises, it ultimately didn’t matter. The dialogue is so crisp and the actions are so sincere (even if they are oftentimes completely messed up) that they test your ability to feel empathy for this group of extremely flawed characters. “Look on the bright side,” Walt tells a gymnasium full of distraught students in a rambling speech about survival, this is “just the fiftieth worst air disaster.” Far from consoling, but oh-so-typical of this wonderfully deviant series.

Midseason Roundup

The Marriage Ref (NBC, Thursdays, 10pm): The perfect example of why I don’t like to judge a show based on just one episode. The preview that NBC aired after the Olympics Closing Ceremony was horrendous and painful to sit through. The second episode improved considerably, but by the third episode, which featured Ricky Gervais, Larry David and, of all people, Madonna, the show had won me over. It’s a simple concept: married couples bicker over something petty (e.g., pampering a pet iguana, not being allowed to use the dining room table), celebrity panelists debate the merits of the argument, and host/referee Tom Papa decides who’s right. Jerry Seinfeld is an executive producer and will sit on the panel occasionally, though the show was actually better when he wasn’t there. Gervais and David, who joked about doing a sitcom together, were golden, and who knew Madonna could be funny? I went into this show with the lowest of expectations (especially after that awful preview) and have been pleasantly surprised. Considering this is one of NBC’s Jay Leno Show replacements, the comedy bar has more than been surpassed.

Parenthood (NBC, Tuesdays, 10pm): Oh, how I wish I could sing the praises of the latest offering from Friday Night Lights executive producer Jason Katims. Don’t get me wrong; it’s a good show, but I wanted it to be great and it hasn’t come close to that yet. Granted, we’re only two episodes in, so there’s still hope. Part of the show’s problem is that it has too many balls in the air, something that’s a boon for FNL but a bit of a detriment here. Craig T. Nelson and Bonnie Bedelia head a clan that includes so many sons, daughters and grandkids that it’s sometimes hard to know which kid belongs to which parents. Among the story lines: Sarah (Lauren Graham, almost completely transcending the tics that she worked to perfection on Gilmore Girls) and her teenage kids move in with her parents; Adam (Peter Krause, typically fine) and wife Kristina (Monica Potter) learn that their son has Asperger’s Syndrome; and Crosby (Dax Shepard) finds out he has an illegitimate son he never knew about. The cast is top-notch, and the writing effectively acknowledges that dealing with family can be the most trying thing we may ever do in our lives. This show definitely has the blueprint for success; now all it needs to do is get out of its own way and build something magical.

Undercover Boss (CBS, Sundays, 9pm): There’s been some criticism that this show, which sends executives from companies such as 7-Eleven and Waste Management to the ground floor, is too good to be true. On some level, I agree with that. It does seem rather suspicious that we have yet to see an employee who has a major gripe with the company. How is it that trash collectors and deliverymen seem happier to be doing their jobs than I am? What’s their secret? It is interesting to see what goes on behind the scenes at some of the country’s most famous businesses, though I’m unsure how long this novelty will prove to be entertaining. Already renewed for a second season—it’s this year's highest-rated new series—this seems like the kind of show that will get tired after a while, not unlike Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (you’ve seen twenty home restorations, you’ve seen them all). Besides, with so many people watching, how can the producers possibly keep this ruse going for long?

Minute to Win It (NBC, Sundays, 8pm): About as disposable as TV gets. This game show challenges contestants to perform seemingly simple tasks (empty a tissue box with one hand, bounce a ping pong ball across three plates into a fishbowl) in one minute or less as they attempt to win a million dollars. Like Deal or No Deal, you’re left wondering why the whole thing is so drawn out. The first half of last night’s two-hour premiere (I confess, that’s all I could get through, and yes, I know I’m contradicting what I said earlier about The Marriage Ref) only had six games yet managed to fill an hour of prime time. If you do the math, that’s about fifty-four minutes of filler. Host Guy Fieri certainly sells the enthusiasm, though that's hardly enough when everything moves so slowly. I don’t know about you, but I prefer my TV to have a little more substance than watching some guy bob his head hard enough to make a pedometer register.

Oscar at 82: In Need of a Facelift

I'm not sure why, but somehow I ended up watching many of this year's awards shows, from the Critics' Choice Awards to the Golden Globes to the Screen Actors Guild Awards to the Film Independent Spirit Awards. So by the time last night's Oscars came around, I had already seen the same winners give the same acceptance speeches several times over. With this being such
a predictable year, at least in the acting categories, the producers of the Academy Awards telecast had their work cut out for them in order to make the evening slightly entertaining. Unfortunately, all they were able to muster was just that: a slight entertainment.

Hosts Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin should have made the proceedings light and breezy. Instead, many of their jokes fell flat, such as Baldwin calling the Oscars the "biggest night in Hollywood since last night." Really? This is Oscar level humor? I found myself wishing that Neil Patrick Harris, who opened the show with a musical number and has in less than a year become an awards show staple, had stuck around and worked the same magic he displayed at the Tonys and Emmys. Martin and Baldwin's monologue was a lot of "Hey, there's [fill in the blank]," as they ribbed some of the celebrities in the front rows. There were a few light chuckles, no real gutbusters, and George Clooney, ordinarily such a good sport, was decidedly unimpressed with the shenanigans, sitting as he did for most of the night with a glower on his face.

Outside of a dance routine inspired by the nominees in the musical score category, and performed by a mix of former contestants from So You Think You Can Dance (telecast producer Adam Shankman is also a judge on that show) and a mind-blowing troupe called the Legion of Extraordinary Dancers, there wasn't a lot of energy in the room. Ben Stiller tried to spice things up, coming out on stage in full Na'vi regalia. A Paranormal Activity spoof with Martin and Baldwin in bed together was easily the night's funniest bit. As far as acceptance speeches went, Best Actress winner Sandra Bullock's was by far the most engaging; she honored the woman who gave her permission to follow her own path, showed genuine appreciation for her fellow nominees, and had fun with Meryl Streep.

With the exception of director Kathryn Bigelow's historic win, the rest of the major awards were a lot of been there, done that. Mo'Nique, Christoph Waltz, and Jeff Bridges (who can drone on like nobody's business) have another trophy to put on their shelves. And The Hurt Locker now bears the distinction of being the lowest-grossing film to ever win Best Picture, which means that most of the audience couldn't have cared less that it actually won.

Back to the show itself, though, it's amazing to me that after 82 ceremonies, Oscar hasn't found a format that truly works for it. I thought they were on to something last year when they presented the awards as a story, detailing the moviemaking process in the order it actually occurs rather than the hodgepodge we get most years. Is it too much to ask that, for just one night out of the year, the people responsible for captivating us on the big screen give it their all to make sure that their most prestigious awards ceremony is as satisfying as it can be? If you ask me, Oscar needs to fire his agent and look for better representation elsewhere.

Thank You, Vancouver (and NBC)

A two-week televisual vacation in Vancouver came to an end yesterday with the final two competitions of the XXI Olympic Winter Games—a grueling 50km cross-country skiing race and the host country’s glorious and oh-so-important overtime defeat of the United States to take the gold in men’s ice hockey—and the Closing Ceremony capping things off at BC Place, the indoor stadium that housed the magnificent kickoff festivities sixteen days prior.

If the Games’ launch was an austere tribute to Canada’s history, their close was more a celebration of its ability to laugh at itself, beginning with a mime-aided callback to the mechanical problems that kept the cauldron from being lit as intended in the Opening Ceremony. (Speed skater Catriona Lemay Doan finally got to put her flame to use.) There were giant Mountie statues on display, floating moose, inflatable beavers, and appearances by William Shatner, Catherine O’Hara, and Michael J. Fox. Yes, the Vancouver Games went out with tongue planted firmly in cheek.

Not to be forgotten, though, were the emotional highs and lows these Olympics produced. Injury-plagued Lindsey Vonn’s scream of pure relief after she won gold in the downhill. Apolo Anton Ohno’s winning three more medals to become the most decorated American Winter Olympian ever, doing it in a sport (short track speed skating) that is defined by its unpredictability. Figure skater Joannie Rochette’s strength and courage, taking to the ice just two days after her mother’s death and somehow delivering a bronze medal-winning performance as the world shared in her grief. Moguls skier Alexandre Bilodeau finally getting the monkey off Canada’s back, winning the first of what would become a Winter record fourteen gold medals on home soil, something the country was unable to do in two previous tries (Montreal in ’76, Calgary in ’88). Of course, I’m barely scratching the surface here; so many wonderful, unforgettable stories emerged from these Games.

NBC once again did an admirable, if predictably jingoistic, job covering this massive event. Bob Costas remains the consummate host and is arguably the best interviewer in the business today, able to cut through the bull when necessary but also be playful with guests when appropriate (his interview with the enormously personable Vonn on Saturday was a hoot). Some cost-cutting measures were evident: The network relied on the world feed for certain events, such as ski jumping and cross-country, leaving many of the decisions about what we were shown out of the NBC director’s hands. At least all the talent was on site this time, unlike in Beijing, where some events were called by announcers watching monitors back in Saturday Night Live's empty New York studio.

The network’s contract to broadcast the Olympics ends with the London Games in 2012. Bids are forthcoming for future broadcast rights, and ESPN is believed to be eager to put in a hefty offer. But I hope NBC is able to keep the Olympics. Soft returns from Torino in 2006 have since been supplanted by much larger audiences in Beijing and Vancouver. NBC even became the first net to beat American Idol a couple weeks back, thanks to a night that featured a quartet of American Olympic idols, including snowboarder Shaun White’s gold medal halfpipe run.

If nothing else, the Olympics add an automatic air of prestige to a network that has shown itself largely incapable of creating shows that might have the same effect. For a little more than a fortnight every two years, NBC is guaranteed to make the kinds of headlines it wants, ones that don’t end with a punchline.

The Week in Review

The first full week of the February sweep period was bookended by major sporting events: the Super Bowl last Sunday and the Opening Ceremony of the XXI Olympic Winter Games last night (more on that later). The football game was decent enough, but can we please get over our alleged love affair with the commercials? In this DVR era, product pitches are normally something we fast-forward through; why should that be any different on Super Bowl Sunday? Is a house made of beer any funnier or easier to sit through than the excrutiating ad in which Megan Mullally sings “Turn the Tub Around?” And while I'm at it, the cute factor on that E-Trade baby has definitely reached its nadir, too. The only ad that resonated with me was Google’s, which charted the arc of a relationship from the first date to the birth of a child. It was captivating in its simplicity.

Here are some other highlights from this busy week:

House: The series broke with tradition once again, this time taking us into the workaday life of Dr. Lisa Cuddy, and giving the estimable Lisa Edelstein a chance to shine. We watched her try to hash out a deal with an insurance company (loved the scene where she confronted the CEO during his fancy business lunch), deal with an employee caught stealing drugs, worry about her baby, and wonder why her boyfriend is making bets with House about their sex life. Brief appearances by House and his team showed just how small a part they play in Cuddy’s stressful, predominantly administrative career. And if Cuddy’s world doesn’t always provide the dramatic backbone that House's or Wilson’s does, it’s still always nice to get a breather from all the (mostly incorrect) diagnoses laid out in a typical episode.

Lost: ABC’s promos promise that “the time for questions is over.” So why do I feel like the first few episodes of the show’s final season seem to disagree? There’s a whole new tribe of Others, we still don’t know how anybody was able to survive the hydrogen bomb blast, and Jacob was killed before we ever found out what the Man in Black’s (a.k.a. the Smoke Monster) beef with him was. Now I know we’ll get all the answers we want eventually. I was just hoping for more to be revealed early on, doling out bits of information slowly instead of hammering us with it all at once at the end. I still have complete faith that the writers know what they’re doing, even if this week’s Kate-centric episode felt more like wheel-spinning than story progression.

Nip/Tuck: With only four episodes left, the writers took the opportunity to really get inside the heads of their extremely damaged lead characters. Sean and Christian sat down with a therapist and, over the course of several sessions, tried to figure out why they’ve maintained their toxic relationship for as long as they have. For once in its outrageous existence, the show finally seemed like it was ready to get real, and for forty-five minutes it did. The last quarter hour, though, spoiled everything, with the docs' therapist getting shot in the face and the episode veering into the unnecessarily eccentric territory it knows so well. Who do these two think they’re kidding? There’s no chance of a happily-ever-after for lives as debauched as theirs.

Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains: The 20th season got underway and, having already seen how everybody plays the game, the twenty returning contestants had a greater camaraderie off the bat than any previous season, even ones that have featured all-stars. When you assemble the best players, you get balls-to-the-wall commitment, as evidenced in the very first challenge, wherein Stephenie dislocated her shoulder (medical staff popped it back in and she continued as if it were nothing) and Rupert broke a toe. Arriving at the Heroes camp, the tribe quickly caught four chickens, led by past winner Tom, most famous for slaying a small shark in his original season. Good ol’ boy J.T. is willing to trade on his hero designation if it helps get ahead in the game, while Russell—a quick turnaround from the last edition—is still trying to prove that he’s Survivor’s GOAT (Greatest of All Time). The Heroes ended up losing the first immunity challenge, undone by a puzzle, and Sugar was the first one sent packing. Not wanting the Heroes to get too down on themselves, host Jeff Probst spurred them on with thoughts of “getting even.” As if there’s any other way to play this game.

XXI Olympic Winter Games: Last night’s Opening Ceremony of the Vancouver Games was dedicated to Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili, who died Friday morning when, during a training run, he flew off the track and hit a pole. In a sad reality, Kumaritashvili, ranked 44th in the world, will undoubtedly receive more notoriety in death than he ever would have participating in the sport he loved. (Ironically, the country of Georgia also made grim headlines on the first day of the Beijing Games in 2008, the day it launched a military attack against Russia.)

With the bar set so high by the sheer majesty and minute precision of the Beijing opening, what could the city of Vancouver do to compete? Their ceremony was understated and beautiful in its own right, with a wonderful use of light effects, rich colors, and projection technology combining to take spectators on a tour of Canada’s provinces. An ice block cast on the stadium floor broke apart to reveal a pod of spouting whales below. A troupe of dancers frolicked through a forest of trees made of tapestry while Sarah McLachlan sang. There was a rousing fiddle-and-tap-dance routine inspired by a night out in Newfoundland spent under the influence of a grain alcohol called screech. A lone aerial acrobat movingly flipped and twirled through the prairies, set to Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now.” A slam poet provided a look at what truly defines Canada. And k.d. lang delivered a stirring rendition of “Hallelujah.”

The evening was capped off by the only noticeable malfunction of the entire ceremony. When it came time to light the cauldron, four pillars were to rise from the center of the stadium; only three cooperated. It did nothing to mar what had come before as hockey great Wayne Gretzky, NBA baller Steve Nash, and skier Nancy Greene lit the torch. (Speed skating gold medalist Catriona Lemay Doan was to have lit the fourth section but was left standing with nothing to do.) All in all, a terrific start to what should be an exciting two weeks. Let the Games begin!

Caprica: Wouldn't Want to Live There

I had mixed feelings about the recently departed Battlestar Galactica remake for much of its run. With few exceptions (Boomer shooting Adama, President Roslin’s cancer, the final five realizing they’re Cylons), I oftentimes felt like the show was purposely trying to keep me at arm’s length. So dense, so complex were the story lines that at some point I simply gave up trying to understand what was going on. Unlike a show like Lost, where even if you’re confused by the mythology you can still get involved in the characters’ backstories, BSG spent so much time nattering inside its spaceships that the whole enterprise was an exercise in claustrophobia.

Watching the two-hour pilot of Syfy’s new prequel Caprica (Fridays, 9pm), I was relieved to find that the show was going to be allowed to breathe… kind of. Plenty of scenes are set in the bustle of the titular city, but an equal amount take place within a boxed-in virtual world, thereby recreating the cloistered feeling that BSG seemed to revel in. Fortunately, the story—Daniel Graystone (Eric Stoltz), Caprica’s version of Steve Jobs, harnesses his dead daughter’s virtual spirit and puts it inside the body of an early Cylon model—makes the show more accessible than BSG, at least when it stays with this part of the story. True to form, though, Caprica is not content to merely focus on its technology, introducing mafia elements, terrorist subplots, and theological debate that are more distracting than illuminating.

The pilot dealt quite effectively and uniquely with themes of love and loss, searing emotion seemingly setting the tone for what was to come next. But subsequent episodes have waylaid that emotion in favor of the aforementioned plot strands, rendering the show inert. Stoltz and Esai Morales (whose daughter also died in the same blast that killed Graystone's girl) share a great energy in their scenes together, with Stoltz especially strong as a man blind to what his technological advances are actually doing to society.

One thing the writers of both BSG and Caprica have never really incorporated in their work is a sense of humor. They fail to recognize humanity’s ability to find something to smile about even in the darkest hours, instead choosing to depict a dour world where everything is deadly serious. I guess that only makes sense when, given the self-importance of the subject matter, both shows are also guilty of taking themselves way too seriously.

24: Time to Call It a Day

It pains me to say it, but 24, one of the most influential shows of the past decade, has lost its mojo, to the point where last night I gave serious thought to never watching it again. Really, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. By the time a show gets to season eight, it’s usually on its last legs creatively anyway, a fact that is even more understandable with a show like 24, so structured yet so narrow in its storytelling capabilities.

This season, in an attempt to breathe new life into the series, it’s changed locations again (to New York from D.C. last year) and has added some familiar faces to the cast (Freddie Prinze, Jr., Mykelti Williamson, Battlestar Galactica’s Katee Sackhoff). None of this has done much to energize the show, though. Prinze, Jr. and Williamson have made virtually no impression on me yet, while Sackhoff is saddled with this season’s obligatory ridiculous subplot. It seems her character, Dana, isn’t who her CTU co-workers think she is. A fresh-out-of-prison ex is threatening to expose her secret, all the while leaving viewers rolling their eyes and waiting for the next scene featuring our hero, Jack Bauer. (With so many moles in CTU over the years, you'd think someone would do a better job vetting these people.)

Jack himself, played with all the right fits and starts by the reliable Kiefer Sutherland, is given far too little screen time this year. Sucked into a plot wherein a visiting foreign president (he’s from a fictional Middle Eastern country whose name I can’t recall, but I know it ends in “stan”) is being targeted for death in the middle of a peace accord with the U.S., Jack just can’t so no when he thinks the world needs him. Of course, in typical 24 fashion, it turns out that the president (Anil Kapoor, the game show host from Slumdog Millionaire) is being set up by his own nefarious brother. And it doesn’t end there: there’s a nuclear weapons trade involving some Russian baddies, leading to a whole subset of characters we don’t care about, despite their bad accents.

There’s just too much inconsequential filler in this season of 24 to keep me interested. The scenes without Jack seem, more than ever, blatantly designed to kill time so that he can travel from one location to another. At least in past seasons, the subplots were generally interesting, Kim’s infamous run-in with a cougar notwithstanding. No such luck this time around. (On a side note: can someone please explain the appeal of Mary Lynn Rajskub's eternally peeved Chloe? After so many seasons, her one-note act has gone from tiresome to intolerable, yet she continues to be popluar among fans.)

Aside from a few nifty explosions in the opening hours and the shock of seeing Renee (Annie Wersching), undercover with the Russians, saw off a man’s thumb, this season has been nothing but lackluster, no longer delivering the intensity that used to be innate. The writers have obviously grown complacent and I, unfortunately, have grown bored.

Globes Broadcast Less Than Golden

When the highlight of your Golden Globes evening is watching stars and interviewers alike try to maneuver through a sea of umbrellas on a rain-soaked red carpet, you know you’re in for a long night. (Kudos to the ever-amenable George Clooney, by the way, who not only went sans cover, but stood in the rain signing autographs for fans in the bleachers).

Perhaps it was the pall cast by last week’s earthquake in Haiti or maybe the dampened dresses inside the ballroom. Whatever the reason, this was easily the most subdued Globes ceremony I’ve been witness to and likely the most downbeat awards show in general this side of the post-9/11 Emmys.

Even Ricky Gervais, ordinarily a reliable producer of gut-busting comedy, was off last night. No one is better at putting a few cracks in the ego-filled room while still managing to crack said room up. Other than a wickedly funny joke at Mel Gibson’s expense and the requisite knocks at NBC, Gervais largely spent the night plugging his various DVDs, which got more annoying than funny each time.

Airing live across the country for the first time in an attempt to make audiences think the show carries as much weight as the Oscars didn’t make much difference, either. By the time next week’s Screen Actors Guild Awards come around, nobody will remember who picked up a Golden Globe anyway.

And just who did walk away with a prize? Film winners included Avatar and its director James Cameron (was it just me or did Up in the Air director Jason Reitman look downright pissed when Cameron's name was called?), The Hangover, Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side), Robert Downey, Jr. (Sherlock Holmes), Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart), and Meryl Streep (Julie & Julia). Streep gave the night’s best speech, honoring her late mother for giving her the means to be generous and humble in the face of the world’s realities, and delivering what may have been the night’s funniest line: “I want to change my name to T Bone,” in reference to T Bone Burnett, the winner in the Best Song category.

The TV side was fairly predictable and leaned heavily toward series from Showtime and HBO. Toni Collette (United States of Tara), Michael C. Hall and John Lithgow (both for Dexter), Chloe Sevigny (Big Love), Julianna Margulies (The Good Wife), and Alec Baldwin (30 Rock) earned trophies, while Mad Men and Glee took series honors. (Glee’s award should have gone to Modern Family, in my opinion.)

The broadcast itself was not done any favors by its director, routinely cutting to cameras that were whipping around or managing to find the wrong person when a name was read. The Globes are famous for serving alcohol, and even Gervais was guzzling a beer on stage. But that doesn't mean the man in charge of what the audience is seeing should be allowed to drink, too.

A Monday Night Logjam, Plus Conan O'Brien Speaks Out

In the new year, Monday is quickly becoming not only one of the busiest nights on TV (with 24 and the new Life Unexpected yet to take their spots), but also one that offers up its share of quality programming, as evidenced by last night’s crop of noteworthy episodes.

Men of a Certain Age: Moving beyond what was a slightly bumpy start, this TNT show has made great strides in recent weeks, delivering its best installment yet last night. Ray Romano’s Joe spent the hour cajoling buddies Terry (Scott Bakula) and Owen (Andre Braugher) with the details of the first blind date he’s gone on in twenty years. From an awkward IM session that had Joe pulling his pants down in his office to a black eye sustained while faking a leg cramp staged to ward off premature ejaculation, Joe’s tale was funny, poignant, and relatable to anyone who’s ever suffered the nervous pangs of a first date. It’s nice to see that this worthy show is finding its footing.

How I Met Your Mother: Five years and 100 episodes on, we finally got a glimpse of the titular matriarch. Kind of. We saw her foot, and at this point, we’ll take it without complaint. Turns out that Ted’s eventual wife is the roommate of the graduate student (guest star Rachel Bilson) he went on a few dates with. He hasn’t actually met the Mother, but he did accidentally leave behind that yellow umbrella we’ve seen a few times over the years. If that weren’t a big enough deal, this centennial episode also had plenty of Barney in it as he tried to bed a hot bartender who can’t stand guys in suits, leading Barney to a fantasy musical number in which he sang the praises of his sartorial standby. It was a joyous moment in a show that is often filled with them. Let's just hope it doesn't take another hundred episodes for us to see the Mother in all her splendor.

The Big Bang Theory: Having written this show off as a one-joke pony early in its run, I’m glad I gave it another chance last season. It still relies too much on that signature joke (have one of the nerds say something nobody at home could possibly understand, causing us to laugh not at the joke itself but at the fact that we don’t get the joke), though its characters are so earnest and sincere in their utter cluelessness when it comes to human interaction that it becomes funny despite itself. Case in point: a woman was actually interested in Sheldon (Jim Parsons, wonderful in medium-sized doses) last night, to the point where she was practically throwing herself on him, yet he could not have been the wiser. Big Bang is at its best when it doesn’t make its viewers feel like morons for not being brilliant physicists themselves.

Chuck: How great is it to have Chuck back on NBC's schedule? That’s a rhetorical question to anyone who’s ever basked in the glory of this underrated gem. While it too can get a little nerd-intensive sometimes, the show’s real strengths lie in the tumultuously endearing relationship between Chuck and Sarah. Their feelings for each other go beyond will they/won’t they; it’s more can they/should they with these two, given that the CIA forbids agents to get involved and they can’t seem to decide what’s more important, their mutual love or their desire to serve their country. The spy-jinks are amped up this season as well, with Chuck now equipped with a mega-powered version of the Intersect, chock full of skills ranging from dance to music to kung fu to surgery. But no matter what kind of trouble our heroes find themselves in, it’s always the quieter moments that keep this terrific show centered.

On a separate note, Conan O’Brien has issued a statement to address his feelings about the NBC late night debacle. In it, the Tonight Show host laments the position he has been put in, having his hand forced only seven months into his run. “I sincerely believe that delaying The Tonight Show into the next day to accommodate another comedy program will seriously damage what I consider to be the greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting… I cannot participate in what I honestly believe is its destruction.” O’Brien expressed concern for Jimmy Fallon, whose show would also be affected by the changes NBC has proposed, and said that he has no other offers on the table. The statement doesn’t go so far as to say that O’Brien is quitting, though he minces no words in saying just how disappointed he is by this unfortunate turn of events.

In his monologue last night, Jay Leno said, “I take pride in one thing. I leave NBC prime time the same way I found it: a complete disaster.” You have to wonder, if this is the way Leno feels about the network that has supported him for nearly twenty years, even now to its own detriment, why does NBC continue to show such allegiance to him? It has been said that late night audiences simply use TV as a sleep inducer. Couldn’t that mean that more people simply found that they were able to fall asleep more soundly with the unfunny Jay on in the background than they are with Conan, thus accounting for Leno's higher Tonight Show ratings? I guess at this point, NBC will take all the eyeballs they can get, whether they’re open or not.

NBC in Trouble: Do Peacocks Shrug?

After months of speculation, NBC finally seems ready to admit that its experiment in torture also known as The Jay Leno Show—now averaging between four and five million viewers a night—just isn’t working. While no official changes have been announced, Variety is reporting that the network is about to move Leno back to his old 11:35pm home after the Winter Olympics come to a close. In one scenario, Leno would only do a half-hour show, focusing mostly on a monologue, with The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien to follow. If, however, O’Brien decides that he doesn’t want to be pushed around by the network that announced his succession of Leno five years in advance, Leno would take back Tonight and O’Brien would have to look elsewhere for work. Similar to what happened with Leno before he ultimately re-signed with NBC, O’Brien may have prospects at Fox or ABC, though those prospects would be greater if he wasn't finishing behind both Nightline and Late Show with David Letterman in total viewers.

All of these changes may be too little, too late for a network in freefall. Taking Leno out of primetime will open up five hours of programming that NBC is in no way prepared to fill. They are being aggressive in ordering pilots, but any series that come out of that group won’t be ready to air before the fall. Does this mean more episodes of Dateline NBC and reruns from the Law & Order franchise in the meantime? Probably. The network can also raid its cable siblings’ lineups and put on repeats of, say, a Bravo reality show or USA’s Burn Notice. Honestly, I’d rather they wait out the season with Leno at 10pm than throw on any old thing they can find as filler; at least Leno would be new. Dumping Southland a few months back suddenly looks even more boneheaded than ever. If there’s an upside to any of this, it might be that those who don’t subscribe to DirecTV may no longer have to wait until the summer to enjoy the brilliant fourth season of my beloved Friday Night Lights.

10 for '10

Last New Year's, I made a list of the shows you could look forward to in the early part of the year. While my predictions weren't all that sound (all but one of the new shows I picked—Fox's Lie to Me—has since been cancelled), that's not going to stop me from doing it again this year. What follows is a list of the ten shows, new or returning, I think will be worth your time in the months ahead.

1. Parenthood (NBC, premieres March 1, 9pm)—Originally scheduled to premiere in the fall but delayed due to actress Maura Tierney’s treatment for breast cancer, the series, from Friday Night Lights executive producer Jason Katims, finally finds a slot on the schedule with Gilmore Girls’ Lauren Graham filling in for Tierney. It’ll be interesting to see if Graham can rein in the kinetic style she honed to perfection on Gilmore to play a more subdued character. The show’s going to be saddled with a tough time slot opposite Two and a Half Men/The Big Bang Theory, 24, and Dancing with the Stars, so it’ll likely have to stand on quality over quantity when it comes to viewers tuning in.

2. Life Unexpected (The CW, premieres January 18, 9pm)—There are shades of the kind of show The WB used to do so well in this drama about a girl named Lux (Swingtown’s Britt Robertson) who is fed up with the foster care system and goes looking for her biological parents in order to become an emancipated minor. The judge who hears Lux’s case decides it would be best for her parents (Roswell’s Shiri Appleby and Mad Men’s Kristoffer Polaha) to share joint custody of the teenager, leading the trio to become the family they never allowed themselves the chance to be. That description sounds almost sickeningly sweet, but then so did the loglines for Felicity and Everwood and just look at what wonderful shows they were. If The CW can reclaim even an ounce of that old WB creative magic here, it could pay some serious dividends.

3. Lost (ABC, season premiere February 2, 9pm)—By the end of May, we’ll all know what’s up with that wacky island. Exec producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse have their work cut out for them if they’re going to satisfy loyal viewers who have spent the last five years trying to piece together all the clues that have been so delicately doled out. Expect the roar to be positively deafening if they don’t pull it off, but I have complete faith that the ultimate answer will be as thrilling as the entire journey has been.

4. Southland (TNT, premieres January 12, 10pm)—The cable net is going to re-air the seven season one episodes (with added scenes) of this gritty cop drama, which got better each week, plus the six second-season episodes filmed before NBC pulled the plug last fall. Season two promises to focus more on individual characters and have less of an ensemble feel than season one did. If that means more screen time for the wonderful Regina King, so be it. It’s too soon to know whether TNT has intentions of producing new episodes of its own. At the very least we get another chance to see these fine actors in a show that, by all accounts, they have great passion for.

5. Spartacus: Blood and Sand (Starz, premieres January 22, 10pm)—It says a lot when a network is so high on a show that it greenlights a second season before the first one has even started. Such is the case with this swords-and-sandals drama from exec producer Sam Raimi (Legend of the Seeker). Generally I would say this type of show isn’t for me—I seem to be the only person who thought the movie Gladiator was dull and overrated—but how can you deny such an extreme vote of confidence in a television climate that is exceedingly cautious?

6. Undercover Boss (CBS, premieres January 7, approximately 10pm; thereafter Sundays at 9pm)—Never in a million years would I have guessed this would be the show CBS chose to air after the Super Bowl. This is another case of a network being certain that it’s got something good. As the title suggests, corporate executives get a bird’s-eye view of their employees when they work alongside them anonymously. CBS thinks they’ve got the next big reality franchise on their hands; they could just have a variation of Wife Swap. Either way, I know I’m intrigued.

7. Sons of Tucson (Fox, premieres March 14, 9:30pm) —When their real father goes to prison, three young brothers hire a con man (Reaper’s Tyler Labine) to assume his role. Something incredible begins to happen as this decidedly unconventional group of guys gets to know each together: they become a family. The concept straddles the line between hokey and hilarious, and the whole thing will likely hinge on Labine’s performance. This could be the show that finally gives his smarter-than-I-look shtick the spotlight it deserves.

8. Romantically Challenged (ABC, premiere date TBA)—What would you sacrifice to be with Alyssa Milano? That’s the question on the table for Shawn (newcomer Josh Lawson) as he struggles with his feelings for Rebecca (Milano), a woman who has two kids and an ex-husband. I won’t hold the fact that it comes from Family Guy exec producer Ricky Blitt against it, especially when it features the drolly hilarious Kyle Bornheimer, last seen on the unfortunately short-lived Worst Week. Fingers crossed that ABC’s decision to trim the episode order from thirteen to seven is not an indication of the show’s quality, but merely a symptom of the network’s already full midseason slate.

9. Archer (FX, premieres January 14, 10pm)—With It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia bringing in record ratings in its just-completed fifth season and the winning new comedy The League coming back for season two, FX finally seems to have gotten a handle on its problems in the comedy department. They look to add to that success with Archer, an animated spy series that combines the irreverence of Sunny with the twisted sensibility of an Adult Swim cartoon. A preview episode in September got good notices from critics, so expectations are high for this one.

10. Winter Olympics (NBC, February 12-28)—If you’ve watched NBC for even a minute at some point over the last year, you know that the Vancouver Games are coming. Gross promotional efforts should not detract from the fact that the Olympics continue to be one of the world’s great unifying forces. For two weeks every two years, we have a common goal of peace in the interest of sportsmanship. The Olympics go far beyond who wins and who loses; it’s about the experience. And that experience can be just as awesome for the viewer as it for the athlete.

Most of these picks are made on gut feeling alone. I've not actually seen any of the pilots so it's impossible to know for sure whether they'll be good or not. But as a critic, I always hope for the best. And I've no doubt that you, as a viewer, do the same. Happy 2010, everyone!