Week in TV: August 22-28

True Blood

- Annual exposition dump! Sookie's part fairy! (As she so succinctly put it, "fucking lame." Hopefully, the inclusion of this plot point so early on in the series relative to the books means that the writers want to bring in those storylines where *spoiler alert!* fairies are less "fucking lame" and more "psychotically violent" and "doing terrible things to everyone, but especially Crystal.") Crystal's a were-panther! Hoyt loves Jessica and Jessica loves Hoyt!

- I like that the show has used past series regulars this season in sparing cameos - Michael Raymond-James (Rene) in a dream sequence two weeks ago, and then Michael McMillan this week. It was a perfect brief scene - Reverend Steve taking the opportunity to offer a televised "told you so" in the aftermath of Russell's on-air meltdown.

Mad Men

- Last week saw the return of Ken Cosgrove, this week Smitty. It's interesting that we're getting little hints that the splintering of Sterling Cooper set into motion by the events of "Shut the Door. Have a Seat." was followed by an exodus of personnel. Where did everyone else end up? I'd love to get an update on Paul Kinsey, just because you know his pompous ass had to seek out some new place to be as smug a hipster as he wanted to be.

- Lesli Linka Glatter is becoming the Queen of the Machine among Mad Men's directors, adding to the classic "Guy Walks into an Advertising Agency" with this episode's Honda subplot, including the hilarious shot of Peggy riding the motorcycle in circles around an empty soundstage.

- I didn't mention it previously, but I love that Deborah Lacey (Carla) has been bumped up to recognition in the opening credits. She frequently makes Carla seem like the most responsible, competent and professional adult among Mad Men's overgrown children and functional alcoholics. Her role remains small but vital; for all of Betty's hyperbolic whining about Don, it's striking that she didn't care to find the time to accompany Sally to her first session with the psychiatrist.

Rubicon

I think I'm going to let this one move to the background until its season wraps up - I'm liking it so far, but the conspiracy feels so dense right now that I don't feel like I can offer a coherent opinion from week to week. Hopefully the remaining weeks will give me time to start to distinguish between all the different conspiracy-mongering old white men - they might as well be called Shadowy Cabal Member A, B, and C for all I can tell them apart.

Degrassi: The Boiling Point

The end of this daily summer run was a little anti-climactic - there's only so much you can do when you've been teasing a lockdown for the past two months. I think the set-up for the upcoming fall season worked well, though. Making the demand for change Snake's idea - putting it in the hands of the franchise's longest-running character - optimized the dramatic potential of it as a cliffhanger. I'm intrigued to see how the show shifts once it returns, and that renewed sense of excitement in a show is rare.

Also Watched: Huge, Top Chef

Ongoing:

Sons of Anarchy, Season 1

I've mentioned this before, that I started watching SoA when it first aired, but it fell by the wayside with the start of the school year and the rest of the tv season. Also, as an Undeclared fan from back in the day, I couldn't stop hearing this every time Charlie Hunnam does an American accent:

But I've so enjoyed the other shows I've crossed off the list in the past couple of months that I wanted to tackle another one, and with only two thirteen-episode seasons, I figured I'd have just enough time to catch up before the new season starts. And I'm glad I did, because it's my new most favorite thing ever. This season was a bit of a slow starter out of the gate, but once the insane ATF agents came into play, then everything just started clicking. One marker of a really great show for me is still enjoying it even after I've been spoiled on major plot points. (I read too many TV writers, it happens.) I was still riveted by the season's final episodes, even though I already knew about Donna's tragic fate.

- Gemma Teller Morrow may be one of my new favorite television characters. That scene with Cherry and the skateboard was amazing. Move over Cat Deeley - Katey Sagal is the new face of Things that are Wrong with the Emmys.

- I could rave about all the actors, so I'll just try to limit myself to a few: The Now-Obligatory Deadwood-related Excitement! Dayton Callie! Remains Awesome!; having grown up in Northern Virginia means that I've seen Remember the Titans approximately 50 times, and it always seemed like Ryan Hurst should've been way bigger after that movie, so it's exciting to see his work as Opie; did someone say "Inappropriate Crushes on Men Old Enough to be My Father"? Because, hellooo Kim Coates.

Week in TV: August 8-14

True Blood

Always good to see everyone getting back in Bon Temps - the out-of-town storylines aren't bad, but they make the seasons feel disjointed week-to-week. It'd be nice to see Bill and Sookie decide to spend some time apart and then actually do that for a sustained period of time, but I guess there's always Season Four. Hopefully, Alan Ball and his writers will put a bit more temporal distance between seasons three and four - when you step back and consider that it's maybe two months from the beginning of the first season to now, everything feels kind of crammed together. More space in the pacing could really make the show feel less...frantic.

Mad Men

- I'm sure that this is the kind of episode that a certain contingent of Mad Men fans despise (the kind who think the show would be better with Betty gone entirely) but I kind of loved it, though it was definitely meandering plot-wise. A big factor is the degree to which I love Anna Draper - she's probably my favorite of the show's range of tertiary characters. Don's been acting like such a sleazy lush recently, and Anna represents such a fresh breath of air as the woman who "knows everything about [him] and...still love[s him]."

- A standout episode for Jared Harris; Don and Lane drunkenly watching the Japanese monster movie was one of the funnier things I've seen on TV in recent months. And I'm intrigued to see how the dynamic between Joan and Lane continues to play out; their irritated sniping at one another played like one of those things that becomes significant in retrospect once you reach the end of the season.

Degrassi: The Boiling Point

The new format has worked well, and hit a high point this week with the "My Body is a Cage" two-parter, which featured the show's best-executed storyline in years. (I keep meaning to mention how much I love that they've switched to contemporary song titles.) Utilizing the daily structure well, the writers did a good job in past weeks of slowly integrating Adam as a new student and then focusing episodes on his being transgendered. Jordan Todosey deserves serious acclaim for her performance as Adam - she frequently kept the story emotionally grounded and kept it from veering too deeply into after-school special territory. (Seriously, whatever the Canadian equivalent of an Emmy is, she deserves at least a nomination.)

So You Think You Can Dance

- A satisfying conclusion to an underwhelming season. Though both Kent and Lauren were solid throughout the season, I think Lauren showed just a bit more skill and versatility across the different genres. I won't write too much about what I think the show needs to fix, but I will link to an Entertainment Weekly online piece that clearly addresses some of the show's most pressing problems.

- I didn't comment on it in the relevant week, but as I watched the Top 4 show back again, I was really struck by Adechike's "where I came from" package. The producers behind the show could have pushed his "story" so much more - I mean, "young black urban male finds himself through dance, with assistance from the High School of Performing Arts"? That's, like, 1/6 of the plot of the original Fame - it is literally cinematic. I try not to be a conspiracy theorist, but being the third-best guy in his season puts him in the same company as All-Stars Pasha, Mark and Ade, and it never seemed like he was getting a comparable level of respect or admiration from the judges.

Rewatched:

Pushing Daisies, "Pie-lette" and "Dummy"

From one of those moods where boredom conspires with Netflix Instant Watch - I own the DVDs, but they're on loan to a friend. Things I forgot I missed about this show, in no particular order: Digby, all the pies, the coroner, and the way Jim Dale says, "The facts were these."

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

Decided to give it another watch, since The Collected Works of Joss Whedon seems to be the summer's overarching project. It's interesting that there's not really any dancing in Dr. Horrible - it's not absolutely vital to all musicals, but most do have some. I'd love to see the kind of eye he might bring to a feature musical, since the big ones these days seem to be guided by choreographer-directors (Shankman (who choreographed the famous Whedon-directed Buffy episode "Once More with Feeling")/Marshall/Ortega). The part of my heart devoted to wishing fervently for a big-screen take on Company thinks Whedon could do a good job with it - cynical/funny is sort of his sweet spot.

Also Watched: Rubicon, Top Chef

Week in TV: July 25-31

True Blood

Fantastically gory, with special merit for the excellent new badassedness of Action Tara. And with shapeshifter dogfighting, Sam's messed-up family finally becomes as interesting as the rest of the active stories. Hopefully the latter half of the season will grant Sookie a degree of perspective and a renewed sense of self-preservation, since she's been behaving as though she doesn't have any sense at all. I don't want to become one of those people who harps on the differences between the books and the show, because I do believe that the show has distinguished itself as its own distinct entity. However, I do think they could introduce some more of the essence and tonal beats (and timeline spacing) of the books alongside the characters they've started to bring in. In the books, especially the later books, Sookie has a very clear "better the devil you know" sense of what her relationship is with the vampires in her life - for all of Sophie-Anne's foibles, Sookie recognizes that she allows her to live her life in Bon Temps where other monarchs would force her into service. There's no sense of a comparable sort of recognition in the show, and I think Sookie's character this season has suffered because of it.

Mad Men

- 1964 and 1965 were such major years for civil rights, this has to be the season the show stops being polite and starts getting real with race, right? It's easy to point to political advancements - the Civil Rights act in 64 and the Voting Rights Act in 65 - but there are also social and cultural shifts happening that would be impossible to ignore, particularly for an agency selling itself as being on the cutting edge. A lot of reviews I've read have wondered if the show will directly acknowledge Beatlemania, but it's also the heyday of Motown - the Beatles frequently traded number ones with the Supremes. Sidney Poitier won his Oscar in 64, and at this point was on his way to becoming a marketable star in his own right in a way a black actor had never been before. Add this to the increasing visibility of the civil rights movement on television - for example, Fannie Lou Hamer's speech for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party at the Democratic convention the summer before this season starts - and it seems pretty clear that this is the time for Mad Men to venture beyond elevator operators and maids.

Don and Roger specifically cite Pete's recognition of the potential in marketing to a black audience in "Shut the Door. Have a Seat," and it would seem to be a rich well to go to if SCDP continues hurting for clients. What the show really needs, in my opinion, is a black Rachel Menken - it doesn't have to be a woman, though that would be pretty awesome - a client who comes into the agency with a forthright manner, a clear sense of what they want and no illusions about the personnel. The show sketched Conrad Hilton so vividly last season - why not do something similar with, say, the Johnsons (or a New-York-based contemporary)?

- Joan got an office!

- Aaron Staton stays in (though no sight of Ken in the premiere), Michael Gladis and Bryan Batt leave. (While Jared Harris and Kiernan Shipka get bumped up to regular cast member status. It's astonishing how much older she looks, just in a year's time.) With Lucky Strike still a major client of the firm, it's sadly unlikely that we'll be seeing Sal again anytime soon. I'm intrigued to see how Ken comes back into play - I believe he was the highest-ranking person left at Sterling Cooper after the events of the finale, so presumably he stayed there, but I wonder if the creative elements of his character (short story-writing and such) that the show has introduced in the past will come into conflict at all with McCann's allegedly soulless way of conducting advertising.

- It's a small thing, but I love that Don did bring Allison over to SCDP to be his secretary. Compared with, say, Lois and Jane, she was like a shining beacon of competence in the third season.

Degrassi: The Boiling Point

Two favorite characters getting spotlights this week, which is always awesome: Riley, who is such a tormented wayward soul, and Claire, who rocks because a) she's smart, b) she's willing to be a voice of reason where there frequently is none, c) she's way better than her lame, nutty sister, and d) she never lets the opportunity to tell Jenna what a man-stealing ho she is pass her by.

Friday Night Lights

Vince's story got a little too Boyz N The Hood there for me, but Michael B. Jordan and Jurnee Smollett made it work on the emotional side. All in all, a pretty smooth penultimate episode, what with all the piece-moving that needs to happen for the finale.

Ongoing:

Deadwood, Season 3, Episodes 1-4

- As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, there's a lot of shows I'd like to watch or revisit now due to Deadwood. The terrific slow burn Timothy Olyphant does in these episodes made me regret missing Justified when it aired earlier this year. One for the Netflix queue.

- It wasn't as bad as the second season's "Al passes a kidney stone" story, but Alma's pregnancy woes just made the show's depiction of nineteenth-century frontier medicine *that* much ookier.

- Janie Bryant's received a lot of press in the past few years for her work as a costume designer on Mad Men - it makes sense, as the fashions of the 1960s are easier to incorporate into twenty-first century wardrobes than those of the 1870s - but her work on Deadwood is gorgeous too. Joanie's top hat with the long trailing scarf may be one of my favorite accessories on either show.

Also Watched: Intervention, Covert Affairs, Top Chef