This Week in Television - Apr. 26-30, 2010

Glee
Yes, Glee, I get it: be proud of who you are and don't try to be something else. I suppose we're eventually going to get episodes about each individual character learning this lesson (Sue had it last week after her Madonna makeover), but it's getting redundant. The show already has an after school special feel at times, but they could at least offer different messages instead of firing back the same one all the time. But it was cool to see Kristin Chenoweth come back, and Sue's line to Kurt and Mercedes ("How do you two not have a show on Bravo?") was classic.

V
I don't buy that Chad was going to have an aneurysm. The V's used it to gain his trust, and it clearly worked because after his supposed healing he stopped trying to challenge Anna.

Happy Town
New series! Since I don't currently watch anything on Wednesdays (Lost and Glee were both moved to Tuesday), I decided to check it out. There were parts of it that didn't work for me (anything that took place in the high school and some of the domestic scenes), but I was intrigued enough by the weird and mysterious occurrences. I understand that it is hard to create characters audiences can immediately bond with in a pilot episode so I will give it more time, but at the moment there aren't any characters I can say I care about except for Merritt Grieves (Sam Neill) and Sheriff Conroy (M.C. Gainey), and that's only because they're the most interesting. Anyway, I'm going to propose a very early theory, but I sort of hope it is wrong because it would be too easy: Grieves is the magic man, but never actually does any of the killing himself. Sheriff Conroy is the one who killed the man in the cabin at the beginning, but he doesn't remember it because Grieves has some sort of mind control over him via his wedding band, which is why Sheriff went to chop his hand off during his hypnotic rant. However I have no clue what Chloe has to do with anything.

Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains
This show is starting to piss me off. The Heroes continue to stupidly place their trust in the Villains and screw up seemingly solid plans, and as a result I worry more and more that Parvati might win again. As I've pretty much made clear already, I am wholeheartedly against this because becoming the first person to ever win Survivor twice would ultimately make her more arrogant than Russell Hantz and Richard Hatch (hey, same initials!) put together, and I just don't believe in rewarding someone with her personality for any reason, ever.

Flash Forward
So now Janis is a good guy after all? I guess I'll have to go along with it, she was cool and it was disappointing when she was supposedly a rat, but if she's going to be a double agent I don't understand why she can't tell, say, Mark, and get his cooperation to help deceive the people who are trying to deceive the FBI so that she can gain their trust for the CIA. LOL Olivia has a stalker.

Parks and Recreation
An episode about Ron, who hates meetings, having to do 93 meetings in one day (or "a blood-soaked, nightmarish hellscape", as he calls it) can do no wrong. It was also a good contrast to Leslie's enthusiastic reaction and then her having to pile them back onto him due to her emergency gazebo situation. Also funny seeing April's kind (and wholesomely corny) parents and her clone-like sister.

The Office
I was with Pam in that Donna was interested in Michael, but only because of their interactions in a previous episode (where Michael became "Date Mike"). Had this been her first appearance I would have assumed otherwise. Jim and Pam aren't as likable when they're disagreeing with each other, but it does make the relationship more real.

30 Rock
I remember when I said the most disturbing 30 Rock ending was Frank dressed as Liz and kissing her cheek as she drooled uncontrollably, but this one may have topped it by having Jenna make out with her own impersonator. Also enjoyed Liz being "married" to Don Geiss's peacock, because it worked as a character joke pertaining to her continuing relationship misfortune.

Fringe
This week's episode was heavily advertised as being "the musical episode", but I would hardly call it as such seeing as how there are only about 3 or 4 quick moments where a character sings a few bars of a song, and then stops. Nothing in the entire episode would actually qualify as being a musical number. But since there was instrumental music in the background for most of the episode, I guess they thought they could get away with that label. Aside from that it was kind of interesting, using a film noir style for Walter's fairy tale and having things parallel the events from the series's actual plotline. But overall it was a very unnecessary episode.

Hero of the Week: Ron Swanson from Parks and Recreation, simply for uttering the words "blood-soaked, nightmarish hellscape", because that is the awesomest phrase ever used to describe something mundane.

Douchebag of the Week: Parvati from Survivor for the hat trick. She didn't really do anything this week, but there were no other candidates and I just plain despise her. I was hoping she'd go before Amanda.