Things to Watch - Jan 12

Football! Or...movies, movies, movies.

8:00 - CBS - NFL AFC Divisional Playoff: Jaguars at Patriots
8:00 - ABC - Pearl Harbor
9:00 - FOX - NEW America's Most Wanted
8:00 - HBO - Norbit
7:00 - TNT - Titanic
8:00 - A&E - Die Hard with a Vengeance
9:00 - SciFi - Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
8:00 - AMC - Hunt for Red October
8:00 - Vh1 - High Fidelity
8:00 - Encore - The Rock
8:00 - EncDrama - The Cider House Rules
8:00 - TCM - Bridge on the River Kwai
8:00 - FLIX - Blown Away
8:00 - HBOCom - Tenacious D in: The Pick of Destiny
8:00 - Showtime - Clerks II

What I'm TiVo-ing:
I will of course be watching the Patriots game.

More after the jump...

Things to Watch - Jan 11

8:00 - CBS - NEW epsidoes of Ghost Whisperer, Moonlight, and and Numb3rs
10:00 - ABC - NEW 20/20
8:00 - NBC - NEW episodes of 1 vs. 100, Friday Night Lights, and Las Vegas
8:00 - CW - WWE Friday Night SmackDown
9:00 - HBO - Snakes on a Plane
8:00 - SciFi - NEW Flash Gordon and at 10:00 a NEW Stargate Atlantis
10:00 - Discovery - NEW Fight Quest
9:00 - USA - NEW Monk and Psych
10:00 - E! - NEW The Soup
8:00 - Showtime - Lucky Number Sleven

What I'm TiVo-ing:
Not of a fan of much on tonight, but I'll be recording The Soup, and maybe watching 1 vs. 100.

More after the jump...

30 Rock - "Episode 210"

What a send-off into the writers' strike. This episode of 30 Rock (Episode 210 as it will forever be known) was the last to be produced before the writers went on strike. Now that The Office is done, as well as 30 Rock, the two funniest shows on television are on indefinite hiatus. That leaves, like, American Gladiators as the reigning funniest show on TV.

I have to confess: A little more than a month ago I had never seen an episode of 30 Rock. So I went back and watched all of them. In like a week. And I quickly realized why this show had been getting so much praise.

I watched this episode with someone who also had never seen an episode of 30 Rock before, and I don't think this episode was very indicative of just how funny it is. The impression that they came away with was, "What a weird show."

And that's the feeling I got for this episode. Weird. It just seemed a little more off-the-wall than usual. It was really funny, don't get me wrong, but just a little over the top. Especially with the surreal musical number ending.

Jack is meeting with German TV executives while Lemon and Jack's girlfriend C.C. wait for their appointment to see him. Yes, C.C. makes appointments to see Jack. Lemon is his "11 o'clock" and C.C. is his "11:10."

Liz wants to grow up and do something with her money, so Jack and Jenna advise her to invest in Real Estate. Jenna apparently bought up a bunch of land in New Orleans' Ninth Ward after Katrina and is now leasing it to the gov't for a prison. (You know, that actually isn't that bad of an idea!)

Liz puts an offer down for a nice apartment, but has to meet with the co-op board first. In an extended metaphor, the co-op board acts as a way for Liz to remind herself of how terrible she is at dating, as she has to try to convince them why she is right for them. In a very awwwk-ward interview, she wears a very revealing dress and makes a complete fool out of herself. ("We have a lot of things in common...um, we're all white!") Liz then goes on to get drunk on Reds and Whites and drunk-dial the co-op board. She leaves like 20 even-more embarassing voice-mails with the board ("I've moved on...I bought a whole bunch of apartments. I bought a black apartment.)

Meanwhile, Jack and C.C. are having to deal with their long-distance relationship. They decide they have to meet halfway on things, and so Jack has C.C. meet him at the literal half-way point: a hick mining town in Pennsylvania which is the exact distance from their offices in NY and DC. While they are meeting, C.C. accidentally misses a congressional vote on legalizing whale-torture (it passed by one vote!) and Jack had to put Lemon in charge of meeting the with German TV executives of the channel NBC wanted to buy. Liz mixed up her German words for "buy" and "sell" and sold NBC to zee germans instead. Oops! Jack and C.C. decide their careers are more important than their relationship. With Liz upset at her own apartment misfortune and Jack upset at his, they realize together that they really can't have it all in life, in a moment of deeper introspective commentary.

Back at 30 Rock, Tracy Jordan got Kenneth hooked on coffee, who doesn't drink hot liquids because its the devil's temperature. He spent the whole episode whacked on caffeine and it was pretty un-funny generally. He decides to leave NY because he let his mom down: "I've become one of them. I've been Sodomized!"

Gladys Knight happened to be the guest on TGS that night, and so for no other reason than that, the entire cast of 30 Rock inexplicably broke into an extended spontaneous song and dance to the tune of Knight's "Midnight Train to Georgia." It was all very-surreal and kind of unlike 30 Rock, but it was enjoyable. And Kenneth missed his midnight train to Georgia because he misread the schedule.

Interestingly enough, the writing staff of TGS didn't appear once in this episode. Hmm...

God, I'm going to miss this show...

More after the jump...

Celebrity Apprentice - Week 2

Episode 2: In which Gene Simmons is an asshole.

Celebrity Apprentice is not the best show on television. Its not going to win any awards, or garner huge ratings. But, during trying times such as these, we make lemonade with lemons, or something like that.

At about 9:30, my friend watching the show with me turned to me and said, "It's only 9:30? I feel like I've been watching this forever." And so it was that this episode was pretty boring. But not entirely uneventful.

As The Apprentice relies on sponsorship and product placement to survive, this week featured both a Macy's executive and a Pedigree dog food executive to tell the teams they needed to make a commercial about adopting dogs. Trump asked the contestants who likes dogs and Lennox Lewis and Tito Ortiz raised their hands. Trump was like oh I bet you like big dogs or something and Lewis was like no, I like cats.

THE Gene Simmons and Telemundo exec Nely Galán were chosen as the Project Managers. Nely's team met with the Pedigree exec to hear exactly want he wanted. He told them exactly what he wanted and then they proceeded to ignore it.

Gene Simmons and Hydra chose not to meet the exec and went right to the studio to record the commercial. Simmons made Stephen "20 Years of TV Experience" Baldwin the director of the commercial, essentially making him the project manager. During filming, Miss Ivanka Trump came in to check up on Team Simmons. Instead of stopping what they were doing and paying attention to the person who would ultimately wind up having a say in firing them, Simmons told her she would have to wait until they had time to deal with her. Then when they did finally talk to her about their commercial, Simmons said something condescending to Ivanka along the lines of "Being a member of the female sexuality I of course expect you won't go and tell the members of your sisterhood about what we are doing here." He really is a pig. I'm surprised Father Trump didn't fire him right there for talking to his daughter like that.

The women's team did some bickering, and messed up stuff. Their idea was to have talking dogs telling stories instead of, you know, the "celebrities" that they are telling the stories. They also decided to only use the voice of one of the most famous supermodels of all time, instead of putting her on screen.

The men sort of clicked under the direction of Orson Baldwin. Gene Simmons told everyone on the team that only he and Baldwin were allowed in the editing room, because everyone else was worthless. While editing, the rest of the team had the AUDACITY to barge into the editing room and see the commercial that they would ultimately be fired for. Gene Simmons put them in their place and sent them out of the room. How you tell UFC Champion Tito Ortiz and Lennox Lewis to get out is beyond me, I guess Simmons is more powerful than I realize.


During the presentation, the Pedigree exec confronted Simmons about why he didn't meet with them. Best scene of the show: Gene Simmons tells the exec that a great writer "Son Shoe" (He was trying for Sun Tzu) said something in The Art of War about how the battle is fought on the battlefield not in the boardroom or something I dunno. Piers Morgan corrected his pronunciation of Sun Tzu and Simmons was like "Oh I was using the more traditional Mandarin." It was Hilariously awkward.

The men actually made a decent commercial, showing a bulldog playing around with a ball and then in a kennel. Trace Adkins' "voice of God" provided the voiceover talking about like the heart of champion or something and then they pulled back to show Lennox Lewis holding this bulldog puppy and grinning from ear to ear. It was actually heartwarming.

In the boardroom, Trump made Simmons half-heartedly apologize for offending his daughter and didn't seem nearly upset as I thought. He wound up firing Gymnast Nadia Comaneci for not having the heart of a winner or something businessey sounding like that. The apprentice is getting really predictable and dull, and this episode was a prime example.

However, Jennie Finch is still on the show. And while this is like the second episode in a row she literally didn't open her mouth, she still looked amazing, and thus I will keep watching Celebrity Apprentice.

More after the jump...

Things to Watch - Jan 10

9:00 - CBS - NEW episodes CSI and Without A Trace
8:00 - ABC - NEW episodes of Ugly Betty, Grey's Anatomy, and Big Shots
8:00 - FOX - NEW episodes of Are you Smarter than a 5th Grader and Don't Forget the Lyrics!
8:00 - NBC - NEW episodes of My Name Is Earl, 30 Rock, Celebrity Apprentice, and ER
10:00 - VH1 - Premiere Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew
10:00 - BRAVO - Premiere Make Me A Supermodel
9:00 - FOXNEWS - LIVE Republican Presidential Debate
10:00 - A&E - NEW The First 48
10:00 - MTV - NEW Run's House

What I'm TiVo-ing:
Tonight I will be watching Grey's Anatomy, 30 Rock, Celebrity Apprentice, Celebrity Rehab, and the Republican Presidential Debate.

More after the jump...