This Week in Television - Jan. 11-15, 2010

Heroes
Geez, Peter, you could have explained things to Emma first and THEN smashed her cello. Since when is Peter the "shoot first, ask questions later" type? Fun Fact: Inspector Gadget also plays the cello!

Kids in the Hall: Death Comes to Town
I always thought of Kids in the Hall as the Canadian Monty Python, the way the castmembers play every character they can, including the women. The tradition continues here, except this time it's a linear series rather than sketch comedy. It reminded me of the group's only film, Brain Candy, which is to say that it is kind of amusing but not as funny as the original sketch comedy series. The best part of the episode was the Mayor of Shuckton, played by Bruce McCulloch (who was always one of the funniest castmembers), and unfortunately Death took him down. I liked their take on Death though, having Mark McKinney portray him as a kind of seedy junkie who turns departed souls into dust and then snorts it. I didn't laugh out loud much during the episode, but I was definitely amused and entertained, so I'm going to keep watching, if only because it's nice to have The Kids back.

Fringe
Two episodes this week. The first was an unaired episode from season one, and it was actually a little dull so I won't say anything else about it, except that it was cool that they decided to air it. The second was much cooler - I like the idea of altering everyone's perception of something instead of altering the thing itself. As I said before, the second season has been awesome and most of the episodes have just been knocking it out of the park in terms of cool ideas and continuing storylines.

Parks and Recreation
I didn't even know Will Arnett was going to be in this episode, so that was a cool surprise. Ron's storyline was also fun, because the combination of the name Jean-Ralphio with that ridiculous hairstyle and Tom's personality equals comedy gold.

30 Rock
Double 30 Rock this week too! James Franco and his Japanese body pillow were funny, although also kind of sad because it's based on reality - I've heard there actually are some lonely guys out there who are very much in love with those things. Kenneth trying to work a computer was hilarious (it's not THAT easy to accidentally take a picture of yourself and then accidentally make it the desktop wallpaper and send it to everyone in the address book). Most of the time I find Jenna's character more annoying than funny, and she was mostly annoying in this episode too, except when filming her scene on Gossip Girl where she died of old age at 41 and was recalling all of the things she's experienced in her "long" lifetime, like Windows 95. And yes, Kenneth's haircut is an insult to lesbians.

Kenny vs. Spenny
Who do black guys like more (part 2)? Well, I was right about Kenny's plan, but I thought Spenny was going to win it. I wasn't expecting the video footage to look as incriminating as it did, and I think Spenny may have helped it by going overboard in his KKK roleplay. I do like that the one guy said he was choosing Kenny not because of the video, but because just hanging out was more fun than Spenny's "racial retreat", which is exactly what I said last week.

Overall rating for this week's shows: A