Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Doctor... doctor... glad I'm not sick.

First links first: today's column starts out with a fairly dull but obligatory item about Super Bowl ratings, so I would suggest you skip ahead to this page, which has Greg Daniels talking about getting Ricky Gervais to write an episode of American "Office," not to mention Rob Thomas talking about how he hopes to smuggle every single line from "The Big Lebowski" (with the possible exceptions of "No one fucks with The Jesus!" and "This is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass!" and "Shut the fuck up, Donnie!" and...) into the scripts for "Veronica Mars."

As I wrote in yesterday's column, the parallels between "Scrubs" and "House" are getting pretty spooky, and I noticed another one when I rewatched the first "Scrubs" last night with Marian: both shows tonight had castmembers doing impressions of other castmembers, Elliot as J.D. and Cuddy as Stacy. (This is also the second time they've transformed Elliot into another character, counting her stint as a half-Turk a few weeks back; assuming they intend to turn her into every other regular before the end of the season, I look forward to Sarah Chalke's Cox impression.)

"Scrubs" is so on its game now that I laughed just as hard at episode one as I did when I first saw it last week. I hope somebody finds a way to stick Donald Faison's dance and lip-synch to "Posion" up on YouTube, because as soon as that was over, Marian ordered me to give the episode the hallowed Save Until I Delete status on the TiVo. I love that Ted now has two different bands, and though I'm not a guitar expert, it sure looked like he was getting the fingering right on "More Than a Feeling."

Mandy Moore was much better playing a different character here than she was playing herself on "Entourage." (Best praftfall: slamming her head into the restaurant table and then hoping J.D. didn't see it.) The second episode wasn't quite as good as the first, in part because they didn't go all the way into making this Carla's episode. As I remember, when other characters have taken over the narration, the episodes were mostly told from their point of view; here, they even cheated and snuck in some J.D. narration in the cafeteria. Episode two did have the line of the night, though: "Don't listen to her, Brown Bear! Your body's fierce, like Taye Diggs!" Loved Lando and the nicknames for J.D.'s exes (Tina TwoKids, RumpleFugly, Mole Butt) and the comatose hungover Jordan. On the other hand, Christa Miller's increasingly opaque face was extra-disturbing when she was pretending to be 29.

Very funny "House," too, though the patient was even more besides the point than usual. Highlights: "I can hear you caring!," House counting down the seconds until the end of Foreman's reign of terror and House's "I love you" to get the swab from a jaw-dropped Cameron. Not really sorry to see Stacy go; I thought Sela Ward worked well as a professional foil for House, but they dragged out the Unresolved Sexual Tension for so long that I just stopped caring. Frankly, I'll miss Currie Graham as Stacy's pissed-off husband more than her.

Haven't gotten to "The Shield" yet, but took in the weekly dose of "Gilmore Girls." Meh. The Friday Night Dinner fight last week was so genius that this couldn't help but feel like a letdown. I like that Lorelai and Luke actually seemed to enjoy each other's company this week, but the lies they keep telling each other are getting increasingly stupid. Meanwhile, Rory continues her transformation into the female Cosmo Kramer: she steals a boat, drops out of school for a semester and betrays one of her best friends, and she falls ass-backwards into the editorship of the Yale Daily, a professional newspaper job (and how's she going to have time for both?) and the sweetest apartment on campus. Next thing you know, she's going to convert a gay guy into heterosexuality. Stay away from her, Michel...

1 comment:

AndyW said...

What about "Love Monkey" getting cancelled? It was getting better as the ratings got worse. It would have been a better fit on NBC.