Thursday TV

Just some quick thoughts on what I saw last night while I have a few moments of free time up on campus:

Survivor: Oh man, what an awesome conclusion to last night's show. After the disappointment of no one finding Yau Man's fake immunity idol last season, the fun of watching someone hand Jeff a bogus idol at tribal council was realized last night. As soon as Jaime found the faux idol I was praying that everything would fall into place for her to foolishly play it; and lucky for us the gods smiled upon us and delivered exactly that. I guess this is karma's cruel way of punishing Jaime for her giggle-fest two weeks ago while throwing that challenge. Probst made the whole event even better with the cavalier way he threw the fake idol into the fire and proceeded to tally the votes.

As for the rest of the episode, it was a typical merge episode. Gorging at the feast, faux friendliness between merging tribes, cockiness amongst tribe who has numbers advantage, etc. It seems that the original Zhan Hus will be picked off one by one now, but when you have wild cards like Jean-Robert, Frosti, and Courtney in the mix, I'd say it's anything but a given. BTW, can a human skeleton be a member of the jury? Because it looks like one stiff wind will blow away the remaining skin and meat left on Courtney's torso. That girl is vile to look at and listen to. What's Frosti thinking nuzzling up with that. He certainly can't be doing it to keep warm.

My Name is Earl: I was actually pretty disappointed with this hour-long effort. I missed the first COPS episode that they did, so I really can't compare the two. I just thought that a lot of the jokes either fell flat or were blatantly obvious. I enjoyed having an episode that got to utilize a lot of the other Camden weirdos, but their presence wasn't enough to salvage this. I also thought from a production standpoint that it could have looked a little bit more like COPS. Instead, it just came off as a bad, neutered version of Reno 911.

The Office: I enjoyed the episode and liked the story they did, but I didn't find it to be a very laugh-out-loud filled show. It had it's moments ("I think I cut my penis on the lid"), but didn't do as much as it could with the story. I also felt that the "finer things" club could have been executed better. With the way it was done, it just seemed odd and out of place. Given that Karen became branch manager of Dunder Mifflin: Utica, I wonder if that is their plan for the spin-off, especially if they think Rashida Jones' midseason sitcom isn't going to succeed. I have high hopes for next week's episode as its going to take Michael out of the office, leaving his underlings on their own. That setup has usually yieled some great episodes in the past (Office Olympics, The Client, etc), so hopefully they'll be able to do that again.

Didn't get a chance to watch CSI yet. If anything notable happens, I'll be sure to comment on it later.