This Week in Television - Sept. 19-23, 2011

The Playboy Club
The pilot was entertaining enough that I'll continue to give this show a chance, but it did feel like an hour-long brag-o-mercial about how Playboy was so revolutionary for empowering women, blacks, and homosexuals. Clearly there is some embellishment from Hef as he imparts this to us in his narration. Eddie Cibrian sounds way too much like Jon Hamm to avoid Mad Men comparisons, but I thought Amber Heard was good (or she just entranced me with her beauty?) and I find murder cover-up stories interesting. It will probably get canceled as everyone inevitably boycotts it for not being as good as Mad Men, so I guess I'll stick with it until then.

Glee
Well, the premiere wasn't too bad but it's likely downhill from here. At the end of last season I expressed concerns that it would be lame for Sue to be nice to the glee club, and I'm happy to see that she hates them again. Very happy. I also kind of liked the idea of Rachel and Kurt being humbled by people who are better than them, because their egos have always been too big. Zizes leaving the glee club was a good idea, because judging by her one and only solo song, she was never able to sing, and not in the same way that the actress playing Sugar in this episode was obviously trying to sound bad. Quinn's "reinvention" felt like typical high school soap crap, but then that's normal for Glee. At least this episode didn't heavily focus on the student romances.

New Girl
As reflected in the promos, Zooey Deschanel was really the only funny part of the show, but that's fine with me. I mean the other characters are clearly trying, but with comedy being so male-oriented I think it's perfectly fine to have a funny woman and three unfunny guys. And I think every household (or group of friends) should have a douchebag jar.

Survivor: South Pacific
I didn't see any evidence that Mikayla is as Brandon described, but then it's only episode two and there hasn't been much coverage of Mikayla. So far Coach is keeping the samurai and dragonslayer talk to a minimum, which makes him less funny but more respectable. Not holding my breath, though.

Up All Night
I liked this episode's depiction of stressing out over wanting people to like you. Sometimes we forget that you don't really need to try in order for someone who is already accepting to like you. Also I enjoyed Chris using "being ironic" as an excuse to have bad taste.

Community
Biology, eh? I'm interested to see what they'll do with that. The Pierce thing was wrapped up more quickly than I thought it would be, but I think a little role reversal with Jeff becoming Pierce was the way to do it, and I'm sure it will continue to pop up here and there throughout the season. The 2001 sequence was awesome, as well as "Cougarton Abbey" and "Inspector Space-Time". And it was cool to see Jim Rash added to the opening credits; I guess we get more Dean this year!

The Office
Really enjoyed the barrage of reveals at the beginning. Andy as manager feels like he's just a milder version of Michael Scott, though I guess the biggest difference is that he's less likely to be obliviously offending people. I don't know if this will be permanent, but I got a laugh out of the new opening credits, where Ed Helms mimics Steve Carell's statue-straightening at the end but accidentally knocks it off the desk. They had a lot on their shoulders, figuring out how to reformat the dynamic with Carell gone, but I think using Andy was the smoothest transition, as he is the most similar to Michael, and Robert California's odd genius provides opportunity for everyone to react to it in ways we haven't seen. At first I thought he was just using the list to mess with everyone, but it did have a point and his "winners, prove me right, losers, prove me wrong" speech was actually very fair. Don't know if I liked the subplot with Pam crying at everything, because crying isn't always that funny unless you're Troy on Community, but the payoff in the tag was kind of cute.

Parks and Recreation
Poor Ann and her penis-filled inbox. Perd Hapley's generic, non-committal interview with Leslie was hilarious. I saw it coming that Ben knew Leslie was running and they had to break up, because it's just the logical solution. But maybe if she wins then they can date again, since they wouldn't be working in the same department anymore. And it's always fun seeing "Woodsman Ron", though I think it was partly an excuse to have him in a beard to disguise the fact that his mustache hadn't completely grown back after Nick Offerman shaved it during the break (it looked weird in the opening scenes).

Fringe
So it looks like it wasn't just Walter crossing over that set everything in motion, but also saving Peter, because it sounds like the observers were implying that he was supposed to die in both universes. I guess that was already apparent a long time ago. But given what we've seen mirrors do on this show, it's almost like the visions of Peter in reflective surfaces are showing that he's over in the other universe. It's also looking like Olivia and Lincoln might hook up, which would be a setup for Peter returning and finding them together, turning the tables after the Peter/Fauxlivia relationship while Olivia was away. Which is a worse excuse, "I thought she was you" or "I forgot you existed"?

Hero of the Week: I think the first hero award of the season goes to Andy Bernard from The Office, for sticking up for his co-workers and impressing Robert California. Go get 'em, Nard Dog!

Douchebag of the Week: And our first douchebag is Schmidt from New Girl. He already has a jar proclaiming him as such, but also he did bother me.