Week in TV: October 10-16

Boardwalk Empire

Best episode yet, and a great episode for fleshing out previously underserved characters in Margaret, Gillian and Chalky. In some reviews I've read, people have found the scenes highlighting Margaret and Chalky somewhat heavy-handed, but then I don't know what period television they're watching where such moments are "expected" or "obvious." Maybe it's just years spent in history classes where people feel compelled to excuse "the way things were back then," but I think it's important to showcase resistant voices in media like this. Thinking critically about the past helps us understand then and now, and if this is the kind of writing that BE's going to continue to employ, then I'm in for the long haul.

Rubicon

I'll be honest, I really didn't think they would ultimately have the terrorist act seen through to completion, but I think that doing so distinguishes Rubicon from every other show airing right now. The whole season has gradually ratcheted up the tension in a glorious slow burn; many shows are daring, but few do so without also being showy. I'm on pins and needles waiting to see what happens in the finale - now that that tension has culminated in an explosion, what do the characters do next?

Mad Men

- Unusually low-key penultimate episode, at least as far as this show goes, which makes me a little concerned that something crazy is going to happen tonight. Like, both Sterling and Cooper keeling over dead or something. A plot point like Don publicly rejecting tobacco work represents a dramatic shift in the show - Lucky Strike is the client that forms the backbone of the pilot - but I think it would be uncharacteristic of Weiner to have some new savior show up in the finale. Most of the storylines feel right now like their implications are designed to play out in the long-term rather than the short-term - an exciting feeling after a finale, but an unnerving one beforehand.

- I usually like the oblique collection of out-of-context quotes that fill the "Next Time on Mad Men" teasers, but I wish that if they'd only been pulling from past episodes that they'd used the prior season finales rather than selections from this season. Not because I haven't liked this season (I definitely have) but because the past three finales are among the show's best episodes. A teaser with, say, Don's carousel speech and Peggy in the hospital from "The Wheel," Peggy's confession and Don's righteous smackdown of Duck from "Meditations in an Emergency," and various company-heist hijinks from "Shut the Door. Have a Seat." would actually get me excited about next week. As it is, I have to say I'm more intrigued to see how Rubicon closes out their season.

- This is mostly unrelated, but I really hope that somewhere among the lead-up to the Broadway arrival of the How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying revival we get a picture of Robert Morse and Daniel Radcliffe together. Just because I'm pretty sure it would be adorable.

Chuck

- I'm not dreaming, right? This season has been mad boring thus far? I'm sure a lot of outlets will blame it on Chuck and Sarah being together, but the problem is not their relationship as much as it's the fact that they never stop talking about their relationship. There's a rational level of insecurity involved in any new pairing, but I think we passed "rational" sometime in Season Three's back six and now we're veering off into "grating". All I know is when 8 on Monday rolls around, I increasingly want to watch 90210 live and time-shift Chuck instead of the other way around.

- I know I should probably be offended by the incidences of obvious product placement, but there's something so blatant about the way they mention Subway that it just makes me laugh.

Glee

- Now that's how you use a song from A Chorus Line.

- When the characters were reviewing their summer vacations in the premiere, did we somehow skip over Artie's lobotomy? Or are we supposed to believe that breaking up with Tina prompted some sort of dramatic break with rational thought? Where he seemed essentially smart, though occasionally misguided last season, now he just seems like he's taken leave of his senses. (The football thing stretches even the bounds of Glee's universe. Rules or not, there's no way that a school system lawyer wouldn't intervene in the interest of liability there. I'm pretty sure the apprehension of being sued transcends hyper-reality.) I just wish that he could've had a serious, low-key discussion with Brittany about the implications of losing his virginity instead of condemning her for manipulating him with her slatternly ways.

Sons of Anarchy

- I was struck in this episode by the difference between the ceremony involved in accepting or dismissing a member from the club and Jax's cursory break-up with Tara; I don't think SoA's ever before delineated quite so clearly the status of women in the club's milieu. I'm interested to see where Tara's path takes her now; I suspect that like Bill and Sookie on this past season of True Blood, she and Jax may be more interesting apart than they are together. It's not classy, but I'd love to see Tara totally lose her shit.

- Where's Wendy in all this kidnapping rigamarole? If I recall correctly, when last we saw her she was headed for a halfway house to become accustomed to sobriety. To some extent, it makes sense that they wouldn't tell her what's going on, in a variation of what kept them from sharing the news with Gemma for so long - don't alarm the recovering addict. But it would be nice if they'd mention her every once in a while, even if it's just to say that they're continuing to keep her in the dark.

Undercovers

Just what I was hoping for - oblique references to mysterious secrets! There may be hope for this show yet.

Hellcats

Perhaps the most pleasant surprise of the new crop of shows this fall, at least on the networks. The pilot was a little obnoxious, but Hellcats has actually turned out to not be terrible - its recent episodes have bestowed its main characters with decent development, and though it's depiction of both college cheerleading and the life of a pre-law student may not be 100% "accurate" in a real-world sense, the show does know its universe and communicate its ins-and-outs clearly. Special credit to Ashley Tisdale, who may be one of least broad actors to come out of the Disney/Nick machine in a while.

Terriers

Whenever I'm watching Sons of Anarchy and catch ads for Terriers, I'm struck by how mismarketed the show seems. The commercials highlight the goofy vibe and amiable banter between Donal Logue and Michael Raymond-James, and if I wasn't watching the show I think I'd think it was pretty lightweight. Since the third episode, though, the show's been tempering that goofiness with some serious doses of darkness that make the show unique, and very, very good. That last scene with Hank and Katie was heartbreaking, and the kind of scene that makes you realize that you've become totally invested in a show's characters.

30 Rock

- I can't believe this is the first time I've wondered this, but something about the use of the TGS sketches in the live show brought it to mind: Does SNL exist at 30 Rock's NBC?

- While I like Jon Hamm a lot, I've never really found Drew terribly funny, and I think his ad (in both versions of the show) was the most SNL-esque moment of the show just in distance from reality. Later in the evening I saw one of those Allstate "Mayhem" ads with Dean Winters, and thought how much funnier it could've been with an ad from Dennis instead.

Also Watched: How I Met Your Mother, 90210, Gossip Girl, Raising Hope, Detroit 1-8-7, Caprica, Modern Family, Cougar Town, Top Chef: Just Desserts, Law and Order: LA, Community, The Office, Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice, Degrassi, Gigantic, Law and Order: UK

Week in TV: September 5-11

Rubicon

- The structure of this show is starting to remind me a bit of the first season of Mad Men. No, not because they're both on AMC. Remember how in the early episodes of Mad Men all the different twenty-something guys at Sterling Cooper seem like interchangeable shmucks, and then as the season moves on you start to really get a sense of what distinguishes Pete from Ken from Paul from Harry? We're moving out of the interchangeable shmuck phase for the folks at API. I'm particularly growing attached to Miles - Dallas Roberts infuses him with so much twitchy paranoid energy - and Kale, whose verbal smackdown of Will's less-than-fully-thought-out snooping in Spangler's office was a highlight in an episode full of great two-person scenes.

- In the spirit of what's probably Annie Parisse's best-known role, she has to be more than a silent neighbor, right? I'm pretty sure she's too well-known an actress to play someone negligible.

Mad Men

- And this is why AMC should continue to shower Matthew Weiner with cash. At least once a season Mad Men pulls out an episode that, like this one, is so riveting that I end up watching the 11:00 repeat too just because I feel like I can't bring myself to move from the couch once it's done. It's a show that's always had a good handle on thematic and plot continuity, but this episode managed to pull together so much about Don and Peggy and their respective histories and their relationship with each other and their relationships with a multitude of other characters that it'll probably stand as one of my all-time favorite episodes of the show. It's redundant at this point to say that Jon Hamm and Elisabeth Moss should submit this episode for Emmy consideration next spring (and, who knows, I wouldn't rule out there being another amazing episode in the pipeline for either one of them; it's been a good season) but: seriously.

- Gorgeous, quiet goodbye for Anna Draper. Her appearances were rare, but I'll miss her.

- For the emotional wallop this episode packed, it was also unbelievably funny. I particularly loved Pete's fleeting look of panic as he saw Peggy and Trudy exiting the bathroom together. As if Peggy would just suddenly lose all sense of discretion and be like, "Well, I know when I was pregnant with Pete's baby..." Also, Roger's memoirs are comedy gold.

- How great is Mark Moses? Seriously, I'm one more quality Mad Men episode away from being talked into picking up Desperate Housewives again.

Sons of Anarchy

- The first episode I've watched live and unspoiled, and shaking for an hour afterwards was totally worth it. So, RIP Deputy Sheriff David Hale (I assume. I mean, I guess anything's possible on television, but that head wound looked pretty grisly and this isn't a show that's afraid to kill people off.) and a round of applause for Tayler Sheridan. He was a unique presence on the show, not only as the rare law enforcement official both dedicated to taking SAMCRO out and to using legitimate means to do so, but also as a Charming-bred contemporary of Jax, Opie and Tara. I was always intrigued by that part of Hale that couldn't seem to completely let go of the image of the kids he grew up with. It's a credit to the writers and Sheridan that I ultimately feel sorry for Hale, that he'll never get the chance to even try to implement change in Charming.

- It's a small continuity detail, but I love that Jax's patches still look all wonky. It's a subtle reminder of the fact that from "Balm" to "So," we're only talking about days, not weeks, and that there's a lot of remaining emotional fallout yet to be fully dealt with. This season's got a lot of rich veins to tap into, and I can't wait to see where it goes from here.

New Shows:

Hellcats (CW)

Fantastically manic pilot, that seemed to cycle through the plots of what most shows would use to constitute their first four or five episodes. There's a decent number of actors I like in this, and I think they elevate the material just enough to make it appealingly cheesy/campy, rather than straight-up terrible. (Todd VanDerWerff's A.V. Club review really hits the nail on the head there.) I love to have a few CW shows sitting on the DVR for when I drink my coffee on the weekends, and this show seems ideally suited to that purpose.

Terriers (FX)

I never watched The Shield, so I come at this one as just a curious viewer, rather than as a Shawn Ryan evangelist. (It seems to be one of those things where critics in the know can't resist making comparisons, like The Wire and Treme, but hopefully that impulse will dissipate as the season progresses.) I liked it a lot, especially the easygoing chemistry of Donal Logue and Michael Raymond-James. It seems like Terriers will have a lot of the same charm that the first season of Veronica Mars had, simply in sitting back and watching slightly unorthodox PIs do what they do.

Nikita

A solid, enjoyable pilot. The winning presence of Maggie Q in the title role and the genuinely surprising twist ending lifted it a few steps above "generic spy show" and convinced me to tune in again, at least for a few weeks. (However: Can the Alias pilot be required viewing for anyone planning a young-lady-spy show these days? Normally, the similarities are easy to write off, but Nikita had a doomed fiance named Daniel whose tragic untimely death at the hands of her nefarious employers turned her into their sworn enemy? Come on, people. At least call him "Steve," or something.)