Week in TV: August 15-21

True Blood

- It's time to pull the cord on both the "What is Sookie, really?" story and the "What's the deal with Jason's girlfriend and her weirdo relatives?" story. They passed suspenseful a few weeks ago, and we're heading into "audience impatiently twiddles their thumbs" territory. Having read the books just means that I'm that much less interested in the overplayed mysteriousness of it all. It's answer time.

- I understand why, narratively, there's no incentive for the characters to all go to therapy, no matter how much they may need it, but I was glad to see Tara going to the rape survivors meeting this week. I like that the writers have imbued her with a new sense of perspective in the aftermath of last season and the Franklin debacle. Heaven knows, someone in this story needs to make strides towards consistently embracing logic.

- Denis O'Hare's agent must've clapped their hands with glee upon the conclusion of this episode - that last scene is one for the reel.

Mad Men

- A great episode, well-directed by John Slattery. I particularly liked the way he utilized the show's set to give a sense of layout to the new office - Pete's office, Peggy's office, the setup of the focus group, the shot down the hallway as Allison finally snaps and yells at Don, the hilarious shot of Peggy peeking into Don's office after the fight, the final shot of Peggy and Pete looking at each other through the glass wall. SCDP is finally starting to approach the familiarity of its predecessor. Slattery also got the best tandem performance from Elisabeth Moss and Vincent Kartheiser since "Meditations in an Emergency."

- There's something very satisfying about seeing Peggy make friends with other people her age who work in creative fields. Where it was once a radical step for her just to be a woman copywriter at her firm, now she has to decide whether she wants to become a radical woman in her 1965 milieu. Weiner willing, this will coincide with a decreasing interest in tolerating Don's shifty bullshit. I hope we'll see more of Joyce - I really liked Zosia Mamet in United States of Tara and The Kids are All Right. I'll also say that I loved Joey's "yeah, duh" reaction to Peggy asking if he'd heard about Malcolm X being shot. She's still got a ways to go.

- So, a Gen-X Campbell in the pipeline. I can't be the only one imagining a St. Elmo's Fire-style preppie nightmare, right?

Rubicon

A good episode, in that it stepped back from the conspiracy a bit to tell the audience more about the analyst group - a necessary, but deftly executed expository episode. The discussions among Will's co-workers reminded me a bit of The West Wing in the pure wonky delight of watching a debate play out.

Huge

- After watching the pilot weeks ago, something prompted me to dive back into Huge with a Hulu/On Demand mini-marathon. I'm glad I did - it's in the same camp (no pun intended) as other well-written, well-acted ABC Family shows like Greek and 10 Things I Hate About You. It's refreshing to see a show where the writers understand how teenagers speak and interact with one another, and that features a varied ensemble of characters without valorizing or demonizing any out of proportion.

- One of the best things about the Twilight phenomenon? Satiric fake Twilights in teen shows. The girls-bunk hysteria over "Phantasma" (about a girl who moves to a new town and falls in love with a mysterious boy...who's a ghost from the 1700s. They can never touch! It's so romantic!) was pitch-perfect and completely hilarious.

- I'm pretty sure me as a tween is encapsulated by some combination of Becca from Huge and Alex from Modern Family. As someone who once got called "that girl who reads" by a contemporary, I identify so much with the shy girl who keeps her head in a different book every day. True Confessions of Nerdy Youth: Once upon a time, like Becca, I went through a period where I wrote my journal in runes as an extra privacy safeguard. I know.

Also Watched: The Big C, Top Chef, Degrassi: The Boiling Point

Ongoing:

Deadwood, Season 3, Episodes 8-12

- A good run up to the end, though you could see the effects of the show being written without its creative team initially knowing that they weren't getting a fourth season. However, the episodes did a beautiful job of showing the sense of community that grew around the characters of Deadwood. There was something oddly touching about the scene of Al's men standing sentry in the street as Alma completes her walk to the bank post-shooting in "A Constant Throb," and the sense of grief around Ellsworth's death in "The Catbird Seat" made up for the loose ends remaining in the finale.

- I've got other shows in the pipeline, but I wouldn't be averse to someday taking on John from Cincinnati. Certainly this new acquaintance with the David Milch oeuvre makes me more interested in checking out Luck when it comes along.

Rewatched:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 2, Episode 17, "Passion"

- Now that I've finished my month-and-a-half race through Buffy's entire run, I can pick and choose among the reruns aired daily on Logo. In retrospect, this may be my favorite episode of the series. I had enjoyed the show up until this point, but this was the first one that I watched where at the end I couldn't wait to start the next. The episodes I liked best were the ones that clearly demonstrated the stakes involved in challenging whatever villains were at hand - a necessary part of building tension over a 22-episode season is talking (a lot) about the threat, but the moments where that threat really lands are the best. "Passion" is an exquisitely tense episode - it's clear that the newly de-souled Angel is going to do something terrible, just not where or when. The episode's use of a particular piece of vampire mythology - the need for an invitation into a home - only heightens the sense of creeping menace. (It's in episodes like this that you can really see what Stephenie Meyer lost in discarding traditional vampire mythology for Twilight - if I were doing work on either one, I'd definitely try to remark on the polar opposite ways the whole "vampire boyfriend watching you sleep" thing works in this episode and that universe.) The scene where Giles discovers the horrifying tableau set up at his house is one of the series' best. By adding a familiar face to the list of Angel's terrible deeds, the show dramatically underscored the stakes involved in him losing his soul, which would resonate through both Buffy and Angel.

- I'll probably talk more about Bones once the regular season starts, but I will say that watching Buffy and Angel has made me appreciate Bones more. Bones managed to find the happy medium between David Boreanaz's performances as good Angel and bad Angel - Booth is driven and principled, but also has the joie de vivre that makes Angelus kind of fun, even when he's being evil.

5 New Shows I'm Excited About This Fall

Boardwalk Empire (HBO)

The promos for this show make me want to jump up and down screaming like a teenager who's just spotted her favorite heartthrob. I'm a sucker for lush period detail. It looks like HBO's "Not so fast, AMC! Watch your back, FX!" bid for new original cable programming dominance in the 2010s.

Lone Star (Fox)

I don't think I talk too much about how much I love soaps, but: I Love Soaps and I have a special place in my heart for primetime soaps. This simultaneously looks like a throwback to old-school classics like Dynasty and Dallas, and like its own unique contemporary show.

Undercovers (NBC)

As an Alias fan from back in the day, I'm probably part of the core audience NBC is aiming for in advertising this show as being "from" J.J. Abrams, though he's not the showrunner. Even if he's not that involved, I'm still excited to see a major network throw its support behind a show like this with black leads. And who knows, maybe they can get Carl Lumbly in there somewhere as, like, someone's super-awesome spy uncle or something.

Raising Hope (Fox)

Greg Garcia showed a particular flair for depicting the human capacity for tacky behavior on My Name is Earl, and it looks like he's returning to the well here. (If he wasn't doing this, he'd probably be an ideal writer for Showtime's upcoming remake of Shameless.) Beyond the premise, I'm really intrigued to see Garrett Dillahunt and Martha Plimpton do comedy - I've only ever seen them in dramatic roles (in Dillahunt's case, predominantly killers and/or sociopaths).

Hawaii Five-O (CBS)

I don't really have any interest in CBS's determination to make Alex O'Loughlin happen (he seems likable enough, I guess, but if this tanks too then I think maybe CBS should re-evaluate their strategy), but as a card-carrying nerd I'm super-excited to see Grace Park and Daniel Dae Kim get more work. Plus, while I prefer more serialized shows, I always love to add a good procedural to the mix.

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: August 1-7

True Blood

More Action Tara - I'm particularly impressed by her dogged refusal to forgive Bill for leaving her at the mercy of Franklin and the Mississippi vamps (in addition, as of this episode, to nearly killing Sookie). This season has dragged a bit with the plot-stretching between the more over-the-top sequences - like this week's detour to wherever Sookie went in her blood-free coma (Fairy Heaven? Fairy Purgatory?) - but I'm optimistic about the coming weeks. It looks like most everybody's returning to Bon Temps and Denis O'Hare is really dishing out some scenery-chewing fabulosity, so hopefully the run up to the finale will be as wonderfully crazed as it was last year.

Mad Men

- Man, even for Mad Men that episode was grim. I love that the episode drew on the show's past - Glen Bishop returns to offer Sally the sympathetic ear she's been craving since even before her parents' divorce, Freddy Rumsen gets back into the game with his former employees, newly sober but feet still firmly planted in the prior decade, and the Christmas party recasts Sal's Lee-Garner-placating firing as establishing a dangerous precedent for the men in charge of SCDP. It makes the show's universe feel more lived-in and cohesive, and respects the audience's ability to engage intelligently with the show without being too "hey, check out our righteous continuity" about it.

- The A.V. Club did a great Q&A recently about distracting actors, a concept to me that is particularly relevant in period television. Some actors just don't blend into the Mad Men milieu - they read as too 21st-century, or I've seen them in too many other things - Nora Zehetner (Don's indulgent neighbor), for whatever reason, is one of those for me.

Rubicon

I'm reserving judgement for a few weeks - right now, it's intriguingly oblique, but that could quickly turn into "frustratingly mysterious" depending on how long it takes for the show's conspiracy to unfold.

Friday Night Lights

If this season finale was any indication, next year I'll be drowning in tears when FNL comes to a close. While I liked the new characters introduced this season, I loved that "Thanksgiving" drew upon some of the show's best-established relationships - Matt and Landry, Tim and Billy, the Taylors - for the grandest emotional beats of the finale.

Ongoing:

Deadwood, Season Three, Episodes 5-7

- It feels like Deadwood added a few too many new characters in the third season (I like Brian Cox, but the theater troupe is not working for me) but I'm a big fan of Cleo King as Aunt Lou and the way that she infuses her performance with subtle code-switching based on Lou's varied interpersonal relationships.

- Speaking of distracting actors in period shows, something about Omar Gooding showing up really threw me. I guess I just watched too much Wild & Crazy Kids back in the day.

Star Trek: The Original Series, Season Two, Episodes 1-4

I watched all of the first season in a week-long binge last year right before the movie came out, and this week finally decided to start back up.

- A lot of the Star Trek 2 speculation seems to have focused on which classic villain might get a reboot with the new movie's altered timeline, but I'd really like to see them give the ass-kicking 21st-century makeover treatment to Christine Chapel. An assertively reimagined Chapel could make a great foil for McCoy and/or Kirk.

Also Watched: Degrassi: The Boiling Point, Covert Affairs, Top Chef, So You Think You Can Dance

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

Mood Music XXXIII

I've been focusing my attentions on knitting, crocheting and thesis-editing of late, which leaves less time for the frequency of posting I was able to maintain in June, though I'd like to post more at least in the weeks before classes start for me again. It rained yesterday, which made today a welcome respite from the unceasing oppressive heat that's dominated this summer. I've been driven a little mad by cabin fever (or whatever its AC-surrounded summer equivalent is) so I was happy this afternoon to go run some errands with the window rolled down and the Who blasting. Taking the road in my new car, it was the first time I felt really happy about driving since the accident I was in at the beginning of June.

Week in TV: July 18-24

True Blood

TB is one of those shows that's difficult to assess mid-season - they keep so many balls in the air at once that it feels premature to comment on any one specific storyline until they conclude. However, two delightful things of note about this episode: Jessica working at Merlotte's and Jason becoming a faux-police officer.

Degrassi: The Heat is On

Simultaneously a solid kick-off to the new summer format and great unofficial sign-off for the remaining members of the show's original cast. Spinner and Emma's sudden Niagara Falls wedding shouldn't have worked nearly as well as it did, but Shane Kippel and Miriam McDonald sold it with an easy chemistry and I think both characters had been sufficiently established over the past decade as a bit impulsive and as serial monogamists in love with love. Also, a new Great Moment in Music Supervision: the choice of Ke$ha's "Your Love is My Drug" as the soundtrack to Fiona's drunken meltdown, like the tacky cherry on the drama sundae of her creepy relationship with her brother.

Degrassi: The Boiling Point

So far, the show seems to be benefitting from the switch to a more serialized format. It makes the ensemble feel more cohesive. After a few years of awkward transition from the original cast, they've finally started to recapture the ethos of Degrassi at its best.

Covert Affairs

So Anne Dudek's character has to turn out evil, right? Like Francie on Alias? They can't just waste such an awesome actress on only being the protagonist's sibling who nags her about balancing her priorities, right? RIGHT?

So You Think You Can Dance

I think when this season concludes, dancer injuries will make it impossible to objectively assess the success or failure of the All-Star format. It remains to be seen in the coming weeks a) whether everyone can stay healthy and b) whether anyone can derail the Kent Boyd Express. It probably says a lot about this season that I'm more interested to see what they do for the remaining "Meet the All-Stars" segments, since no two dancers yet to be profiled have a routine in common. It seems unlikely that they'd bring back Ivan, Sabra, Melissa and Legacy to dance with their former partners, but a fan can dream, right?

Top Chef

It's a little heavy-handed and obviously works best with the whole DC setting, but it's kind of surprising that more reality shows don't use the Cold War as a thematic construct for competitions. Isn't creating paranoia out of thin air what reality contestants are all about?

Friday Night Lights

For never having been a regular cast member, Brad Leland is really an MVP for FNL. Though Buddy sometimes comes across as a buffoon, you could feel the emotion underscoring his conversation with the coach about taking his Panthers ring off. Michael B. Jordan, Matt Lauria and Jurnee Smollett have admirably served the show's new settings, but it's those moments that acknowledge FNL's path over the past few years where it really shines.

Ongoing:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel

- Finished the final season of Buffy and the penultimate season of Angel. I liked Buffy's focus on the Slayer mythology, though its feminism was a bit self-conscious where in the past it felt more effortless. I had some misgivings about the show returning to Sunnydale High, but ultimately it served as an apt setting for the final battle. Angel's fourth season was appealingly dark compared with its predecessor, but I could've done with less cult-y mind control in the run-up to the finale. You know intellectually that the show's not going to end with "And then everyone in the world was in thrall to the villain! The End!" Stories like that just turn into a waiting game.

- Series finales always make me cry. It's probably one of the lamer things about me. Dollhouse being the first Whedon property I watched meant that it was impossible to read any Internet discussion of the show without getting spoiled on practically every major character death for every other show. In this case, though, knowing what to expect didn't really make too much of a difference.

- It seems like Buffy's network switch from the WB to UPN limited the potential for crossovers between the two shows, but I feel like there should be more communication between the two groups of evil-fighters. ("We're totally dealing with an apocalypse here!" "OMG, us too!") This came out glaringly in Faith's exclusion from the Buffy narrative until relatively late in the game. (I'm glad, at least, that Faith points out at the beginning of "Dirty Girls" that being in prison made her less "secure" and more "a sitting duck.") An evil power is trying to wipe out the entire line of Slayers and Watchers - wouldn't the semi-retired Slayer and her ex-Watcher, now with 75% more badassedness, be first on the list to alert about that?

- We seem to be getting to the point where Whedon starts doing a little repertory-building, casting Nathan Fillion and Gina Torres as villains in multi-episode late-season arcs on Buffy and Angel respectively, which must've happened fairly shortly after the cancellation of Firefly.

- I'll probably stick a toe in apiece on the Season Eight comics and the existing academic scholarship on Buffy. (There's a whole online journal! Called Slayage! How could I possibly resist?)

Rewatching:

Freaks and Geeks - "Tricks and Treats"

I flipped to IFC's re-aired episode of Freaks and Geeks after True Blood ended on Sunday. It's a bit odd - they're airing the episodes as they are on the DVDs, so even though it's on TV the act breaks don't lead to commercials. "Tricks and Treats" is probably sort of in the middle of the pack for me if I ranked the episodes of F&G, but I think that even when I'm seventy years old, I will still find Martin Starr in drag as the Bionic Woman hilarious.

Mad Men

Started with "The Fog" and went up through the season finale.

- It's interesting to watch Mad Men again after a season of seeing Alison Brie on Community. Obviously, the styling helps, but Brie also pitches her voice lower and carries herself differently on Mad Men. I love Trudy - she's so clearly determined to make the best of her marriage with Pete, no matter how much of a doofus (or sexual-assaulter-of-neighbors'-au-pairs) he is. He's going to live up to his potential if it kills her.

- Some characters grow on me upon rewatching - I'm genuinely interested to learn more about Henry Francis and Lane's cranky wife - but Suzanne is simply not one of them. The whole "Look at me!/Don't look at me!/How dare you look at me with your lustful thoughts!/Take me, I'm yours!" deal got really tiresome really fast.

- So, Kristoffer Polaha's on Life Unexpected, Anne Dudek's on Covert Affairs, and Betty is presumably moving to Casa Francis, which I assume is somewhere around Albany. Have we seen the end of Francine and Carlton?

- Two all-time favorite moments: Roger's mother calling Jane "Margaret" in "The Color Blue" and Joan breaking the vase over Greg's head in "The Gypsy and the Hobo"

- The "The Gypsy and the Hobo" - "The Grown-ups" - "Shut the Door. Have a Seat." triptych may be my favorite sequence of episodes of the show's entire run. It's much easier to see the plots and characters moving towards the major developments of these episodes when you watch the season back all in one go, but they still feel exciting and revelatory. Perhaps most important, they make you feel like the show's writers have much more to share with its viewers. Starting tonight!

Week in TV: July 11-17

True Blood

The show keeps so many stories going at once that it's difficult to comment on them while they're still getting to whatever crazy place they're going. It'll be interesting to see whether True Blood's fanbase will splinter as the show adds more elements from the book series it's based on. As a fan of the books, I'm glad to see the casting decisions they've made, but the landscape does seem to be getting a bit crowded.

Warehouse 13

Much of Syfy's original offerings tend to be a little too goofy in tone for me, but I was compelled to watch due to the presence of guest stars Jewel Staite and Sean Maher, formerly of Firefly. Maybe it's just because I have a big softy shipper heart, but I wish more shows would utilize actors with previously established chemistry. This episode certainly proves that they can have a beneficial impact on less-than-sparkling material - it wasn't bad, it just felt sort of rote. Still - Sean Maher: Remains Dreamy.

Covert Affairs

I don't know whether being an Alias fan made me more inclined to like or dislike this show, but I didn't think it was too bad. The action sequences were well-executed, and the exposition wasn't too clumsy as far as pilots go. It's always nice to see a show use an actor well, and they seem to have really capitalized on Christopher Gorham's innate likeability in a role that could be grating otherwise. USA has sort of perfected the Serviceable One-hour Procedural That's Good but Not So Good It'll Change Your Life, and I could see adding this to the slate for the summer just because I like having new things to watch.

So You Think You Can Dance

Hopefully the major injury stretch of this season has concluded and the show will finish strong. It's good to see them move away from the heteronormativity the judges have exalted in seasons past and introduce more same-sex pairings for their routines. I'm intrigued to see how the all-star format plays out as the contestant pool dwindles in the coming weeks.

Top Chef

Nice to see the show head into Virginia for this week's Elimination Challenge - it's a complicated state, but it's beautiful, too. It made me want to find a farmer's market and try to cook something inventive.

Ongoing:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel

Getting to the tail end of what has become Whedonbinge 2010, completing Buffy Season 6 and Angel Season 3. Both seasons had somewhat underwhelming villains - Buffy got more compelling when the writers placed misogyny at the root of Warren's particular beef with their heroine, but it took too long to get there, and I don't think there was ever a time watching Angel when I found Holtz anything but tiresome. And as far as Angel goes, I also never really felt invested in the whole Connor storyline. This may be a casualty of watching the show years after the fact, when you don't have the week-to-week pacing of a normal airing schedule, so the baby feels even less important than the characters you've spent dozens more episodes caring about. Also, while I think Julie Benz was really good as Darla, David Boreanaz never quite sparked with her in the same way he did with nearly every other actress he's played against. Before this turns into a paper, I'll add that while I wish both shows could have lasted longer, I'm kind of glad that neither Firefly nor Dollhouse got to the point where Whedon & Co. thought it would be a good idea to add an annoying teenager to the show. I can understand why fans back in the day had issues with Connor - if I didn't already like Vincent Kartheiser from Mad Men, I'd probably be even less inclined to accept Angel's turn in events.

Deadwood

Wrapped up the second season, which ended with an unbelievably well-executed run of episodes. I was following the show, but wasn't really sure whether I liked it or not until I got to the finale and realized how much I enjoyed spending time with the characters. Deadwood is becoming one of those shows that makes me love all the actors and want to dive into each one's filmography as if I don't have other things I'm supposed to be doing with my time.

Rewatching:

Mad Men

Because I'm a nerd, I like to do a bit of a rewatch before a new season of a show I enjoy starts up again. I decided to start with the Season Two finale, "Meditations in an Emergency," and move on from there. For a minute, I thought about starting with "The Mountain King" because Anna is one of my favorite tertiary characters in the Mad Men universe, but then doesn't it just make sense to go back to "The Jet Set" and then before you know it you've rationalized your way back to the pilot. And I promised my DVDs to an interested party, so I just stuck with the finale. I got up through Season Three's fourth episode - "The Arrangements" - by Saturday.

- It's interesting to see how differently episodes play when there isn't a week-long buffer between them. I remember the season feeling like it was moving slowly up until "Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency" but both "My Old Kentucky Home" and "The Arrangements" were much better than I remembered. Of course, it's easy to recognize how important the characters introduced in "Kentucky" are when you know how the season ultimately plays out, but it's also a good, low-key showcase for Elisabeth Moss and Michael Gladis. Rewatching "The Arrangements" made me really interested to see what they end up doing with Sally this coming season - it often felt like they didn't quite know what to do with Gene, but I love the quiet scene where he tells Sally that her relationship with Betty doesn't always have to be dictated by Betty's craziness.

- I'm a fan of Bye Bye Birdie going back years and years and I really love the way it was used in the early section of Season Three. (I may actually have shrieked aloud when the opening chords played at the beginning of "Love Among the Ruins" when I originally saw it last summer.) The film actually adds an interesting layer to what's already a complex but brief scene in "The Arrangements" when Sal explains, and ultimately acts out, the Birdie-based commercial to his wife. I didn't notice before, but the negligee that Kitty wears in a futile attempt to seduce her husband is nearly identical to one that Janet Leigh wears in Birdie. In fact, it's one of the few moments directly acknowledging adult sexuality in a super-chaste film - Dick Van Dyke's character finally casts off the shackles of his former status as a mama's boy and embraces his fiancee, expressing a desire to get married as quickly as possible so they can shag already. Essentially the opposite of what happens in the Romanos' tragic bedroom - I'm still blown away by Sarah Drew in that scene. I don't know how intentional it was (I'm disinclined to believe that Janie Bryant does anything by accident - I highly recommend the Mad Style posts on Tom & Lorenzo for a more in-depth analysis than I could ever hope to attempt) but my over-analytical academic mind loves it. You can see around 2:10 in the trailer below (I swear, it looks greener in the actual movie) and compare with the clip and decide whether I'm crazy or not.

- The dream ballots didn't need any more augmenting, but yet another guest actor deserving of acclaim is Aaron Stanford, who's so hilarious as the deluded, super-rich Jai Alai enthusiast mired in daddy issues who SC takes on as a client in "The Arrangements."