This Week in Television - Nov. 15-19, 2010

So apparently FOX is moving Fringe to Fridays at 9 in January. Translation: FOX hates the crap out of Fringe and wants to create an excuse to cancel it. You're stupid, FOX. In other news, Community's Christmas episode in a couple of weeks will be done in stop-motion animation. If that show was a woman, I would marry it.

Glee
Gwyneth Paltrow was another good choice for a guest star, although seeing as how glee club is an extra-curricular activity and not a class, realistically they would just cancel the meetings until Mr. Schue got back, not insert a substitute teacher (even if Kurt did ask her and it wasn't the school's doing). Actually I would've preferred that as a storyline, the kids get all pent up and crazy with no glee club for them to musically release their emotions, driving Sue to hatch a wacky scheme or something. No, wait: PRINCIPAL Sue. Booyah!

Survivor: Nicaragua
Clearly the only people Jeff Probst ever respects are the ones who can win the challenges. It really wasn't necessary for him to rag on the yellow team, and once again I have to point out that as host of the show he's supposed to be unbiased. And it looks like the players themselves hate smart people because Brenda's exit makes Sash the only smart one left. At this rate, Fabio will end up in the finals simply because he's the dumbest, and then the jury of smart people will vote for whoever is with him instead.

Community
This was a great episode, but I will say it felt a little bit different because Britta, Pierce, and Shirley were barely in it and Community is usually about the group dynamic. But Jeff was right that he never learns: we know he faked his degree and that cost him his lawyer job, and then he tried to get test answers from Duncan and was duped, and here he tries to fake a credit and gets busted, but we probably haven't seen the last of cheater Jeff. All of the ridiculous conspiracy stuff and fake shootings were awesome, as was Troy and Abed's blanket fort, complete with Turkish District and Natural History Museum.

30 Rock
I love computer voices - the less human-sounding they are, the funnier they are - and while Jack's voice wasn't as funny as those generic computer voices, it worked because of the choppy intonations of different words and the things it said. However Pete came off as needy, gullible, and a suck-up when he showed enthusiasm for "Jack's" invitation, and it felt out of character to me. Well, maybe not the needy part, there is a lonely side to him because he doesn't like spending time with his family and thus he probably spends most of his leisure time alone. Liz's storyline kind of reminded me of the episode with the teamster subs.

The Office
Once again The Office coincidentally does the same joke as a show that aired immediately before it: pranking someone using voice recordings. Again, I'm not saying one stole from the other, but airing last puts The Office at a disadvantage when this happens. And I think the only time I really laughed at this episode was when Michael said he wasn't sure how Creed came to work at Dunder Mifflin. Ryan is a tool and we don't really need an episode with him in the foreground, and Dwight's Hay Place was actually kind of boring (although it was cool to see Jack Coleman show up as a possible love interest for Angela, and Kevin getting lost in the maze was mildly amusing). WUPHF is almost like a Michael Scott idea because it's the kind of thing that is stupid but can almost seem brilliant if you think about it a certain way. It could be convenient to access all of someone's social networks and contact media at the same time, sure, but doing that then makes all of those accounts redundant because WUPHF would be the only one you need, and if it's the only one you need then it doesn't serve its own purpose of accessing multiple communication methods. But hey, Twitter is even more useless and that caught on. The Office hasn't been as good this season, but I intend to stick it out... mostly out of loyalty and sentimentality.

Fringe
I think emotionless masks are creepier than "scary" masks, so The Candyman stuff...might have been effective if I'd seen it as a kid. This was a good episode for Broyles though. Up to this point his character development has been fairly thin, and in a way I guess it still is since this was Alt-Broyles (Foyles?), but it's something for Lance Reddick to do anyway. Loved the ending, too. Things are coming together not-so-nicely for the Olivias.

Hero of the Week: Olivia from Fringe, because when Peter got the call I audibly went "Yesss!" And because she probably knows that Ronald Reagan wasn't in Casablanca.

Douchebag of the Week: Ryan from The Office. Again, he was very much acting like Michael in that he has no business plan and is just trying to get by on presentation alone and the appearance of his self-imposed frat boy "coolness".