teevee thoughts

- I have decided that My Name is Earl sucks. Therefore, Earl Hickey has been banished from my Tivo for good.

You ever have a show that you'd like to like, and you get a Season Pass to it on Tivo, but it just keeps building up on there because you really don't want to watch two, then three, then four, then five episodes of it? That's My Name is Earl. It constantly set up potentially funny situations and resolved them without a funny payoff; plus, I got a little tired after the millionth "rednecks don't understand something the audience understands, like golf or gay people" joke.

- The Office is starting to run like a well-oiled machine... that needs oil... to run well.

Yeah.

Anyhoo, each and every episode recently has been strong, and there's this sense of momentum being created. Not many television shows have a season in which there are absolutely no weak spots; in which one gets the sense that the series is becoming something special (or, at least as special as a T.V. comedy can be). The Office is on that kind of run right now.

And no, I don't give a shit how much better the original was. So don't bother telling me.

- I just got the first two seasons of Arrested Development on DVD, thanks to some Amazon.com Christmas gift certificate action from my Uncle Jimmy. They'll be nice things to have once the show has been officially ground into dust and forever forgotten.

- A moment of silence for The West Wing. Its first few seasons were among the best ever to be produced, for any show. Hopefully that's the way it will be remembered...