Monday, April 09, 2007

Thank God I'm Here

Wow, I went away for a week, and it took me three times to get the password to get into Blogger correct.

For all who haven't been able to make a TV decision over the past week because of my quasi-vacation, both of you can rest easy now. Hopefully, you were able to catch the season premieres of "The Sopranos" and "The Shield" as well as other favorites.

I realized after I left that I failed to plug The Masters all weekend, so I hope no one missed the golf tournament on account of this blog.

Anyway, the title of today's posting isn't so much that I'm happy to be back at work as it refers to the new NBC comedy show "Thank God You're Here" (NBC, 9 p.m.) Hosted by David Alan Grier ("In Living Color") and Dave Foley ("Kids In The Hall"), the show involves improvisational sketch comedy.

With pretty big names like Bryan Cranston, Jason Alexander and others, the guest comic is introduced in the comedy sketch with the line "Thank God You're Here." The comic has little clue as to his/her role in the sketch, so they have to hit the ground running. At the end of the night, Foley gives the winning comic a trophy for the best sketch. The show is getting a brief tryout in the "Heroes" timeslot on Monday before moving to Wednesdays in place of "Friday Night Lights."

MONDAY'S BEST BETS: TV's current longest-running sitcom, "The King of Queens" (CBS, 9:30 p.m.) celebrates its 200th episode tonight as the show winds down with its final few episodes before disappearing into the world of syndication permanently. It anchors a night of first-run broadcasts with "How I Met Your Mother," "New Adventures of Old Christine" and "2 1/2 Men," as well as a new "CSI: Miami" at 10 p.m.

"24" (Fox, 9 p.m.) also airs tonight. I'm trying to lay off the criticism of this show, I really am, but even most critics and die-hard fans are finding the plots to be wearing thin. Take last week. They go to all of the trouble to wake Pres. Palmer out of a coma to stop a nuclear strike; after a tense session that involves a challenge to his Presidency, which he wins, Palmer decides to go ahead with the strike anyway. Say what?!? (Never mind the fact that 10 minutes out of a coma, Palmer is able to resume his duties. My mom was once in a coma and it took her a month to get out of bed. Guess she was just lolly-gagging).

The other thing that struck me about last week's episode was that the Russian terrorist CUTS OFF HIS OWN ARM to get rid of the bug that CTU has implanted in his arm. He manages to do said act in about five minutes, then starts running around an amusement park. He does said action in order to help the other terrorists in his gang. But five minutes and countless pints of blood later, he GIVES UP the other terrorist. One would have thought he might have betrayed the other terrorist before cutting his arm off, but hey, that's just me. (BTW, my dad had his leg amputated last year and it took longer than five minutes. And my father, the big wuss, needed anaesthesia and was laid up for several weeks afterward. Evidently, my parents would make lousy "24" characters.)

Reality TV strikes in a big way on ABC, first with "Dancing With the Stars" at 8 p.m., followed by the new series of "The Bachelor" at 9:30 p.m.

"The Riches" (FX, 10 p.m.) is also new, though I have to admit, I gave up on this series last week.

8 comments:

Phillip Ramati said...

Apparently, we are having technical difficulties with the comments section, so if you are trying to post, please keep trying.

Anonymous said...

I know you don't watch Weeds on Showtime, but do you know when the new episodes/season will come on? I thought it was going to be in April, but I have not seen any promo's for it. Just wondering, it's my favorite show.

And as much as I love 24, last weeks episode was a bit all over the place. As if they are not sure of the direction they want to take. I just hope tonight is better.

Phillip Ramati said...

Unofficially, it's 8/13/2007. Showtime will air 15 episodes beginning this summer. The source is tvrage.com and not on Showtime's Web site, so I don't know how true that is.

When and if Showtime makes it official, I'll let you know.

Anonymous said...

No, seriously, thank God you're here! You were missed :)

Phillip Ramati said...

It's great being loved! :-)

Phillip Ramati said...

From Zodin2008, via e-mail:

No one will likely see this now but I tried posting about 35 times yesterday morning but I will keep it short: glad to hear you gave up "The Riches"...I was going to try to watch last week's episode yesterday and save last night's but I decided to cut bait.


I am going to say firmly that I will never watch anything with Minnie Driver again; she was truly horrifying she was so bad on this show and along with the older son character, ruined this show for me.

As for "24", I will say this again, do not go back down the road of ripping it to shreds--and I am sure you hated the show again last night (though continue to watch) but until you start ripping to shreds stuff like "Idol", I won't put up with a constant "24" rip.

And let me add that I thought last night's episode where Jack took down Fayed and the the 'swerves' was awesome and classic "24". Loved it.

Phillip Ramati said...

Last night's 24 did have the best line of the series, as Ricky Schroeder surveyed Jack's handywork and said, "Damn, Jack!"

As for the nukes stuff, I didn't know how they'd drag it out for another seven episodes, so the Audrey twist was a nice change of pace.

But what about Logan? The series' most popular character (after Jack and Chloe) get stabbed in the neck four episodes ago, and we hear nada. What was the point of bringing him back?

And why did Palmer have to lie about the nukes to his own cabinet? Even if I can swallow the game of chicken he was playing by launching a nuke, there was no need to lie to his staff about it (unless he knew the TV audience was watching).

Anonymous said...

(this is Zodin2008)

I thought the Wayne Palmer swerve was great and made me like the character a 100X more. Who care how realistic it was? Give that up already, phillip...just enjoy the ride. Geez.

I also loved Doyle's line of "Damn, Jack". That was, sadly, Schroeder's best work.