The Office...

was actually really funny tonight. But the best part all night has been their fake More You Know PSAs that have been airing.
A few are here on NBC.com. Of the one's I just saw on the site, the Beer one is the best.

But the two that I saw during the evening on NBC were even better. One was Pam very seriously warning people not to throw out their wedding invitations that they receive so that they can actually find the wedding when the time comes. The other was Dwight telling us what to do in a bear attack.

The More You Know.

Bowling. Moms.

I was actually into the Amazing Race for the first time this season with tonight's episode. I'm loving the tasks this time. They are just totally screwing with the racers' minds. Finding a small flag as a tag in a bunch of laundry on a line in an alley in Italy? Building a statue puzzle with two extra, un-needed pieces?

Danielle and Dani needed to go. They were having fun which is my primary request of a team but in the end, they just couldn't really hack it at these tasks. And this is the ninth season of the show. If you don't know by now that once you are cast that you need to - MUST - learn to drive a stick, then I have no sympathy when that slows you down.

I wish the hippies had yielded the frat boys. That woulda been funny.

The nerds totally overthought the statue task: a hazard of being a nerd. I probably, sadly, would've done the same.

Fran and Barry. Please. Please start looking harder for clue boxes. Please? At least they had the sense not to do the physical task this time. They chose the right detour!

Finally, I'm officially embracing the silly hippies. They had me at their Bowling Moms t-shirts.

Bye Bye Buster...

Well, it's official. Arrested Development's creator ultimately chose not to continue the show. I actually am okay with this because their last episode felt very final.

In other news...Prison Break has been renewed!
Congrats Kiki! Though I would think that this means they aren't getting out anytime soon...I could be wrong though.

Wayne: No longer in Da Sewer

But I'm still not clear where he is.
Aaron found him and is speeding off with his unconscious body.
Who's after them? Is it the VP?
Is it Cumming's Patriot friends?

Meanwhile, there's a super intense interrogation scene between Jack and Audrey. Good stuff. Cuz no one interrogates like Jack - and yet it had this twinge of a couple confronting each other on infidelity that made it interesting.

I dunno. There were explosions and gas releases and gee...did Jack survive?

Apprentice - Yawn.

This show is all about the casting and they did a bad job of it this time. No one is standing out as interesting. And I'm getting bored with watching people market a sponsor.

This week it's a cruise line and one team decides to market it by making a commericial with a shipwrecked guy who finds his way on board and has a great time.

Great idea. Just what you want to think about when cruising.

The other team wins with an idea of contrasting a boring cruise versus that cruise line. But there is unnecessary internal fighting that's not intriguing in the least.

They need to shake this show up and I'm not sure that the now-promised viewer vote at the end is going to be enough to save it.

24: Wayne's in Da Sewer

I just caught up with last week's 24. Why? Because I took Tony's death too seriously and needed to "punish" them by not watching it. But I gave in what with it being on tonight and all.

Now. I'm glad I did. Because Audrey is the mole (yeah, right) and Wayne Palmer's running through the sewers! What is his rendezvous with Aaron is all about?

Ricky Gervais on Simpsons

This Sunday is the episode that the original Office bad boy wrote and voiced a character in. According to this, he will even do some Brent-like singing. Aw yeah.

P. Diddy...you had me at Ashley Parker Angel

Celebrity Cooking Showdown, people.
Who cares if they can dance? Let's see if I can withstand Alan Thicke and that Food Network lady I despise so much together in a room...

Amazing Race

For two weeks now, I've missed most of the Amazing Race. Last night they somehow ended up in Germany (see, I missed it) and I really loved the two tasks they had to do that I saw there. They had to go find a gnome in a field and then they were led to a detour where they either had to break beer bottles over their partner's head when the cuckoo clock chimed while wearing lederhosen OR learn a dance they had to do while wearing lederhosen. Either way there were silly costumes and really the luck of the draw. In the end, the mother daughter team fizzled out fastest and that seemed meant to be. Daughter was totally into it but mom seemed out of it.

I think I'm on Team Hippie now. They are the team having the most fun and not getting stressy, just looking at each task as a challenge. Plus, even though they do dumb things like running backward to the mat...they did great the German greeter dude with Phil by saying Santa. And yeah, that was actually funny.

Now I want some chicken!
(and if you're from Mid-Michigan, you know why I'm saying that...)

Barron's Dad

I'm not so sure I agreed with The Donald tonight and that's the first time this season that I've felt that way about his firing.

He got rid of Brent. Which on the one hand is understandable because he's sorta whiny and never gets a chance to be heard. He hasn't really had bad ideas but his team decided from day one to marginalize him and this week he finally got nasty with them about it. And so it makes sense in that respect to fire him.

ON THE OTHER HAND, his idea was to market the cereal as a healthy one and it was shot down. He tried to make the graphic less busy and was shot down. He wanted to present and was shot down. Why did his team lose? Because the other team latched on to the concept of selling it as a healthy cereal with a simple graphic and a clean, clear presentation...

Oooh I love to hate you, I love to hate you...

Ah, I think I watched all these shows...
Shows we hate to hate

Don't Forget: Prison Break

Your assignment this evening is to watch Prison Break on Fox.
Kiki will lead the discussion about this show some time afterward.

Chocolate Bear

Finally on Scrubs this week, JD got the best of the janitor.
Indeed!

The Office: Online

Whatever your feelings about MySpace (and I'm conflicted), it's rather interesting to find that many of the cast members of The Office have MySpace sites. Some are "by" the characters, some seem to be actors' personal sites. What a weird wiggly world the Internet has become.
http://www.myspace.com/pambeesley
You can go from their friend links to the others...
BJ, Meredith, Toby, Angela, Kevin, etc.

The one for Dwight disappeared so don't know what's up with that.


In other Office news, it appears as though they'll be airing "webisodes" this summer on nbc.com.
Of course, it won't be Mac friendly so someone will have to tell me all about them.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Alright, Edgar is gone and we have to move on. Chloe has her moments of sadness and despair and Jack is his usual sympathetic self and bellows at her to get back to work. They have this whole convoluted thing where Jack can hold his breath long enough to get to a room with a computer that when shut down will save what's left of CTU. But once Jack gets there, he can't get through due to the security bars on the false wall. Yeah, I don't know either.

Curtis and his chemical unit take twice as long to return to CTU as promised. THey are still not there by the end of the episode.

The Hobbit ends up sacrificing himself in order to get to the computer and save all of CTU.

The President pretty much lets the VP take control. Homeland Security takes over CTU.

Jack's heart is broken when Kim tells him she can't be around him because when she is, bad things happen (Duh). Jack is so not in a good place because of this and only Audrey seems to care.

And then my heart breaks: Tony decides to grab a syringe full of something and take out Henderson who he thinks is comatose. Of course, Henderson is someone who Jack learned everything from - including how to fake a coma/death. As Tony has second thoughts, Henderson's eyes open, he grabs the syringe, injects Tony and takes off.

The episode ends with Jack in tears as Tony appears to be dying in his arms.

I'm officially not able to watch this show. I'm surprised I'm able to write this much about it. Tony! Edgar, maybe but NOT TONY!

Things not to do before bedtime

I will never again watch the last episode of season 1 of 24 right before bed again. Why? Because after watching all the action of that memorable episode (I hadn't watched it in four years and could still remember details from it), I dreamed of Tony and Jack and Chloe (who wasn't even in season 1).

Not good dreams either. I'm not sure why they were staking out my parents' old neighborhood but they were. Don't know why they were driving the A-Team van either.

Man what a great episode. Between the drama of the Palmer marriage disintegrating and the action of Jack and the Drazens, you don't need the Nina/Teri storyline to make it good - but there it was. And this time it still didn't work when I yelled "TERI Don't go looking for NINA!!!!"

The Race: Brazil Style

Last night on the Amazing Race, the team you wanted to get kicked off, what with all the annoying whining and such, went home. So that's all that mattered.

I think I would have chosen making the ethanol over the rope climbing.

I'm trying to adore the senior couple, as it is habit to do, but they complain a bit about getting kicked off instead of paying attention to the task at hand. And they make poor choices. They should have done the ethanol, too.

Frat boys or whatever they are annoy me. I'm over their bustling hormones. It's to the point that i'm convinced they are sleeping together and over compensating for it with extreme heterosexuality.

I'm not sure if any team is one to root for just yet.

Scrubs; Just Aight

Last night on Scrubs they did a five stages of grief thing. I enjoyed the Dave Foley guest starring role. But it really lacked the wacky, especially compared to the season thus far.

Was that really two hours?

Tonight 24 was on for two non-stop hours of corruption, torture and death. And it ended without it's typical clock ticking...you know that means bad things. Bad Bad things.

Tony woke up and demanded to know how Michelle is doing. Of course everyone "protected" him by not telling him the truth so he had to escape from his room and look up Michelle in a database and see that she died. He's sad. Much later, he asked Buchanan who was behind it and was told it was Christopher Henderson.

The President got the cold shoulder from First Lady who tried to snuggle up to Aaron. Mike put the kibosh on that one right quick. Russian president seems to be figuring out that First Lady knows more about what is going on that day than she and the Wimp are letting on...but Wimp tries to cover. And he gets more paranoid and ansty. VP, who just happened to be the bad guy in Twin Peaks so I kept wanting to hear that weird jazz they played, arrives and he's even scarier than Wimp. Mike gets the First Lady to at least act forgiving of the president so that she has more influence over him than the VP and I get more and more scared about what is probably the reality of politics in Washington.

The Hobbit calls his sister from holding to ask for his key card back. Instead her evil boyfriend tries to sell it to the terrorists and gets them both killed.

Curtis gets sent on a wild goose chase at a hospital that wasn't really a target of the gas and saves the day there.

Jack tracks Henderson to his house. His wife tries emotional blackmail to make him stop going after Henderson but that stops the minute Henderson refuses to reveal anything - even after Jack shoots his wife. Jack! You naughty boy!

Kim finally arrived at CTU (so you just knew CTU was not safe for long!). She has PonyBoy from the Outsiders with her, now all growned up with a goatee and a major anger for Jack. Jack brings back Henderson to interrogate. Kim won't forgive Jack but agrees to hang around until Jack is available to talk more. Edgar sends non-descript CTU agent on the trail of some ventilation problem - that's caused by a terrorist who has the Hobbit's reconfigured key card. Of course she's killed. When Buchanan tells Hobbit that his sister is dead, Hobbit pieces together it was the key card and the realize that there's a terrorist in CTU (gasp!). Lockdown is ordered just as Edgar discovers the body of non-descript underling but not the gas he's left behind on a timer. The gas is released from the outside in so escape is not an option. They manage to seal off three rooms, including medical (trapping Tony with the man who killed his wife: Henderson) and the situation room (at my office it's the large conference room but I'm thinking of renaming it...). Chloe, Buchanan, Kim, Ponyboy, Jack and Audrey make it into the seal.

Edgar does not.

Oscars

I was overall not very entertained by the show itself but I'm ok with the winners. Best surprise was that Crash actually won. I didn't see many of the nominated films this year but Crash was one of the ones I did see and one that I would endorse everyone should see so it seems appropriate that it won. Also, the way the co-screenwriter and co-producer of Brokeback Mountain behaved so self-importantly during her acceptance speech for writing made me cheer out loud that she didn't win. I'm all for making movies that are anti-homophobic - believe me, I am - but dude, it's a western where two men fall in love. It hardly makes the social statement of a film like Crash. (Ok, I guess I should see it but the whole western cowboy thing turns me off; if they were gay astronauts, I'm there.)

Meanwhile, it's talked about every year and was even made fun of during the telecast but why oh why do they cut off the winner's speeches? There is positively no excuse to cut off the winners of the Best Picture, of all categories. Yes, she thanked her financiers and perhaps we could care less about that but it's still the biggest award of the whole show and the woman got cut off! Awkwardly.
That's just wrong.
If anything, get rid of the red carpet thing ahead of time with BIlly Bush and give the award winners more time.

It's funny until someone has a heart attack

Paula Dean's at it again. With screenshots and everything, the woman is out of control in her butter craze.

The Hobbit Goes Haywire

Oh 24 fans, that was a doozy, no?

Where to begin? President Wuss finds out his wife joined the deadly motorcade and as usual, DOES NOTHING ABOUT IT. It was an uncomfortable hour of watching him twitch and try to justify his motives. Any character that makes Mike "I pushed a woman down the stairs a few seasons ago to keep her quiet" Novick look good is just awful. Bad President. BAD!

Jack and Audrey continue to work covertly on a lead. And that fans, brings us to the wonders of 24 and why we love it so: this lead is all about someone we never met, but heard about in season one. One of the very first (if not the first) patented violent Jack Bauer outbursts was because of this guy. He now works for a company that made the nerve gas but swears he's innocent (just like in season 1 when he was "innocent" - albeit offscreen - but Jack's inability to believe in him caused tons of trust issues at CTU, primarily with Tony). He acts like he's helping Jack and leads him to a sealed bunker. Were you also chanting at the screen "JACK DON'T GO IN THE BUNKER!!!"??!?!?

Back at the motorcade, First Lady is super nervous because her hubby is letting her die.

And then at CTU, Lin's respect issues have made him into a paranoid tyrant. As Audrey, Chloe, Edgar and Curtis try to follow up on leads - including one that warns of what will happen in the motorcade - he clamps down harder and harder. Finally Curtis steps in as agent in charge (or something) and declares a section 112 (kinda like what Klinger wanted on MASH - dude's cray-zay!) and Lin's hauled off into custody. Next week, we can tell by the boxes at the end, will be about the Hobbit in Holding.

With Buchanan back in charge, the motorcade is stopped and turns around but not before the terrorists try and take them out. In what has to be the most armored limo in history, the Russians and the First Lady (not to mention AARON!) are being firebombed. Aaron appears to be dead (NO!) but in a moment of silence, opens his car door and kills every last terrorist in sight. He's alive! He's AWESOME! AARON RULEZ!

All are relieved at the saving of the Russians and the First Lady (and AARON!) except the President who whines that it means the terrorist BIG GUY will now kill 100's of Thousands.

And Jack. He's left in the bunker by his former CTU boss who leaves him with a bomb. But Jack's smarter that that y'all. Jack immediately rearranges all the furniture to save himself and survives the bomb. While this ex-CTU guy slips off as an obvious bad guy.

Next week: Kim's back? Really? And Tony too!

The Race is Back

I love me some Amazing Race. I missed most of it last night so I'm wondering how others who may watch it feel about it. I liked that hippies and nerds were in the Top 4. I was annoyed by some screaming women. And as a rule, I dislike racers who worry so much about elimination that they lose focus on the task (I'm talking to you, couple who've been married 40 years).