- "Saturday Night Live" After sucking for about ten episodes in a row, SNL Saturday came out with its best top-to-bottom show since, well, the last time Jon Hamm hosted. Did the writers suddenly become funnier? Nah, I think it was all Hamm. That guy's damn talented, just as good at comedy as drama; I can see him becoming a huge, huge movie star within the year.
- "Big Love" It's still very entertaining and watchable, but this season is clearly not up to the level of last year, mostly due to the insane story arc that has Bill running for elected office (in addition to running a home store, a casino, and a church- yes, he has more jobs than wives.) They're really turning him into a villain in the later seasons, and that's in some way admirable. Bill the politician made his friend take the fall for his own transgression? Who would do such a thing?
- "Damages" After the show's second season got away from it, big time- trying to squeeze three years worth of plot into one- the show seems to be back in form in the third season, even if it is stealing the entire Bernie Madoff story verbatim. Still, I'm loving Martin Short as a sleazy lawyer - in the funnyman-goes-serious-on-"Damages" tradition of Ted Danson and Darrell Hammond- and Campbell Scott is doing great too. Plus, Rose Byrne is no longer starved down to a size zero- she appears to have grown to a 1 or maybe even a 2.
-"Lost" As you may have gathered from its complete lack of mentions in the past five years, I've never watched "Lost," although I've decided to watch the final season, because, why the hell not? I want to be able to participate in my co-workers' hours-long dissections of it. I posted the question on Facebook and several people tried to talk me out of it, pointing out that I should go back and watch the whole series on Netflix/Hulu. Yea, due to recent events in my household, I've got a feeling that's not happening. It's on as I type and I'm going to watch it later.
- "24" Here's a show that really should go off the air very soon- they're completely out of ideas at this point, other than changing the city every year, and the nationalities of the villains. But how exactly are we supposed to tell all these evil Russians/Germans apart? There's about 10 of them. The Katee Sackhoff stalker plot is pretty terrible too- and why is she wearing cocktail dress while working at CTU? Then there's Renee, Johnny Utah-style, using her real name while undercover. And yes, if Jack spent the rest of the season undercover, with a German accent, as "Meir," I might actually be interested. But that seems to be over.
Posted by Stephen Silver at February 2, 2010 09:59 PM