What have you been watching this week? (w/e January 22)

I’ve a big pile of stuff to watch, including Spartacus, Life Unexpected, Aristotle’s Lagoon, Wallander, The Deep End, Empire of the Seas, episode 2 of Human Target and Cage Fighting Women (should I avoid any of them?), but I have managed to shift some of my backlog and watch a few other shows too:

  • Community: Last week’s episode was a welcome return to form, complete with all sorts of the usual fourth-wall breaking meta-fun that we’ve grown to expect. Loved the idea of ‘the character reboot’. Jack Black actually proved to be an entertaining cameo as did Luke Wilson‘s surprise appearance at the end. Excellent work, and glad to see Community proving to be so good again.
  • 30 Rock: A two-parter last week, the second of which proved to be quite bad; the first was quite good, though. That’s as much as I remember
  • Being Human: A slightly shaking start to the second episode, but by the mid-point it was back on season one form again and there were some truly scary moments with Annie. I’m a little erked they went for the traditional horror route of praying upon female fears of being attacked, by they handled it as well as could be expected.
  • Archer: More on that in another entry
  • Cougar Town: Not seen this week’s, but last week’s was really very good – the show’s hit its stride now and it’s doing character development and plot progression well
  • CSI: Last week’s was a little so-so, despite the presence of Dr Jekyll, although that actuary was scary; this week’s was very odd – who knew golf was so mixed up a sport?
  • Supernatural: A good iteration of the standard “are our heroes really mad and been dreaming everything the whole time?” plot that surprised with more or less every turn. Glad to see it back.
  • Modern Family: Another great episode last week. The Chaz Palminteri guest appearance worked well. Glad to see Phil not being such a spanner for once, but disturbed to see Julie Bowen now making similar facial expressions to my wife.
  • Leverage: A much better episode this week and nice to see a US show that has the IRA as a bunch of criminals blowing up nail bombs, rather than a bunch of freedom fighters. Not great for any of the characters except Nate though.
  • Burn Notice: A good return for the show, and Tyne Daly’s guest appearance was used well. We also get a decent bit of insight into why Michael does the things he does now, and Sam got to be used for something other than laughs. But who is the fake Brit on the phone?
  • House: Quite fun, quite sad and with some great House and Wilson moments.
  • Chuck: Phew. A good episode, but (spoiler)everything’s back to the status quo again

But what did you watch?

As always, no spoilers unless you’re going to use the <spoiler> </spoiler> tags, please. If you’ve reviewed something on your blog, you can put a link to it here rather than repeat yourself (although too many links and you might ge

Author

  • Rob Buckley

    I’m Rob Buckley, a journalist who writes for UK media magazines that most people have never heard of although you might have heard me on the podcast Lockdown Land or Radio 5 Live’s Saturday Edition or Afternoon Edition. I’ve edited Dreamwatch, Sprocket and Cambridge Film Festival Daily; been technical editor for TV producers magazine Televisual; reviewed films for the short-lived newspaper Cambridge Insider; written features for the even shorter-lived newspaper Soho Independent; and was regularly sarcastic about television on the blink-and-you-missed-it “web site for urban hedonists” The Tribe. Since going freelance, I've contributed to the likes of Broadcast, Total Content + Media, Action TV, Off The Telly, Action Network, TV Scoop and The Custard TV.

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