Dollhouse, "Stop-Loss" & "The Attic": Caroline's army is here to stay

There are a lot of things to say about last night's "Dollhouse" double feature. But after a long and draining week, I'm not the guy to say those things. (Though I will offer up one thought in the comments, about these episodes' relationship to "Epitaph One.")

So what did you guys think?

Dan LeBatard, go to your room!

While I posted my whole Best of the '00s package of lists last Friday, Fienberg has slowly been working his way through his list of his favorite 31 shows of the decade, one a day since the start of December. (And at much greater length, and with more thought, than I gave any single show on my lists.)

Proving that we are not, in fact, the same person, Dan has a bunch of shows on his list so far that appeared nowhere on any of my lists. And today, he paid homage to the one show I couldn't figure out how to include in any of my lists, short of contriving a "Best Sports-Related But Non-Sports Programming of the '00s" list just so I could salute ESPN's wonderful "Pardon the Interruption."

Fienberg and I disagree vehemently on the merits of Dan LeBatard as guest-host (I'm of the opinion that LeBatard is the one fill-in who, particularly on days when it's him and Tony together, brings the show somewhere into the quality neighborhood of a Tony/Wilbon episode, whereas Fienberg claims to turn off the set when he hears the word "Bam!"), but overall, he says a lot of things I would have said about the only show I watch every weekday.

So go read that, and at the end there are links to all his previous Best of the '00s entries.

Merry Chrismukkah to all, and to all a good weekend

So on Twitter yesterday, one of my followers said, "How much does it suck that we don't get a Christmas episode of Chuck?" And given Josh Schwartz's flair for holiday episodes on "The OC" (which gave us not only Chrismukkah, but great episodes built around Thanksgiving, New Year's and, I believe, Arbor Day) and the fact that "Chuck vs. the Santa Claus" was one of season two's highlights, I am a bit disappointed, yeah.

(I asked Schwartz if he had any springtime holidays in mind to compensate, and he said, "Yeah, Pesach." I think he was joking, but how much would an episode set at Lester's seder table rock?)

Which brings me to my question for you on a very slow day of the week before Christmas (and the last full day of Chanukah): what's your favorite December holiday-themed episode of a TV show, and why? I'm not talking about specials like "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" or even "A Charlie Brown Christmas," but an episode of an ongoing series that happens to deal with Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, New Year's, etc.

"I'm on the radio EVERY DAY!!!!!"(*)

(*) Can you identify, without Google, the context of this particular "Frasier" quote?

Mo Ryan has posted the second and final part of the chat she had with me and James Poniewozik over pizza(**) in late October. (Part one, focusing mainly on "Lost," is here.) This one has us discussing "Mad Men," "Dollhouse" and more. No spoilers for anything that hasn't already aired, and in fact the "Mad Men" discussion took place before that season ended.

(**) Damn Poniewozik (or one of his Twitter followers) for coming up with the much better subject line "Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place" for his own post on this discussion. Damn them!

Now, if that's not enough Sepinwall gab for you for the day, or if you want to hear the mellifluous tones of my voice, I'm scheduled to do a couple of radio interviews today, one traditional, one online.

I'm supposed to be on WNYC's "The Leonard Lopate Show" from 1 to 1:20 p.m. today, where New York Magazine critic Emily Nussbaum and I will be talking about the year and decade in TV. (And if you haven't yet read Emily's piece on the greatness of TV in the '00s, you should.)

Then at 3:40, I'm scheduled to be a guest on Mediaite's "Office Hours" live web show, to discuss similar but not identical things.

So the opportunities to read or listen to me bloviate about the state of TV at the end of the decade are plentiful today.

Friday Night Lights, "In the Bag": Don't fence me in

A review of tonight's "Friday Night Lights" coming up just as soon as I swaddle and shush...

"I'm offering you all I got. This is not just about football. Think about that." -Coach

Now that Matt Saracen has placed Dillon in his rearview mirror, the latest episode of season four focuses on the characters who are still stuck in town, and focuses on new bonds being forged or old ones being strengthened.

Eric learns to place some trust in Vince over the gun situation, and Vince responds in kind. Julie leans on Landry and an extra-curricular overload to get her over Matt's abrupt departure. Landry realizes that the long distance thing with Tyra ain't happening and makes his move with Jess. After Becky's dad shows up briefly and turns out to be every bit the waste of a paternity test that Papa Riggins was to Tim and Billy, Tim steps further into the role of father figure for Becky, much as she'd like him to be interested in her in a different way. And Luke gets his dad to see the value of the football team in his life just an accident with the repaired fence and the cattle may sideline Luke from that team for a while.

And if Luke is out of commission, that's going to put even more of a burden on Vince - is the wildcat really the wildcat if one guy's taking all the snaps from center? - and his tenuous but growing relationship with Coach.

As I discussed around this point last season, one of the drawbacks of the 13-episode order, when combined with the show's desire to give its outgoing characters multi-episode send-offs, is that some storylines wind up with a lot of blanks left to be filled in by the audience. Vince's story here felt like it was either missing some pieces from his perspective, or else was designed to be told mostly from Eric's POV. In other words, Coach doesn't know if Vince has a gun at school, or why, or whether he's sliding back into the criminal life that landed him on the team, and therefore, neither do we. And if that's the plan, that's fine, but I'd like to get inside Vince's head more as the season goes along. We know from "The Wire" that Michael B. Jordan's good enough actor to carry whatever they want to throw at him here, and with Luke potentially sidelined and Landry a scrub-slash-kicker, the only other good active Lion that we know might be helpful, fry-mooching Tinker.

Landry has less time to work on his kicking game, as he winds up a one-man support system for Julie, who's still struggling to deal with Matt's departure, then hit harder when she learns that she (currently) comes in behind Grandma and Shelby on Matt's priority call list.

There was a time early in the series where I would have lumped Aimee Teegarden in with Taylor Kitsch and Minka Kelly as the cast's obvious weak links. But Kitch is now an indispensable part of the show, and it's been a long time since Teegarden hasn't been up to the challenge of a script. (Kelly? Well, at least the writers figured out how to write around her limitations.) Julie's reaction to hearing that Matt called someone other than her, and her trembling trip to the podium during Academic Smackdown!(*) were wonderfully played. We've been so focused on Matt's departure that it's easy to forget the girlfriend he left behind; this episode made forgetting Julie impossible.

(*) Vince McMahon has taught me that the word Smackdown! must be both capitalized and accompanied by an exclamation point. Who am I to argue with the man who made stars of the likes of Haku and The Brooklyn Brawler?

Of our four new characters, Becky has been the least integrated into the world as a whole. Other than her brief, currently on hold flirtation with Luke, she's appeared almost exclusively with Riggins. But even if she's still on the outskirts of the series, it's hard not to feel sympathy for her after an episode like this one, and also to see how complicated her relationship with Tim is going to get. She's crushing on him madly; he's not interested. Becky worships her daddy; Tim sees the guy as an exact replica of his own deadbeat dad, and while he's not necessarily wrong, it's clear Tim's taking out some anger towards Walt when he picks a fight he knows he can win with this guy. And by shattering Becky's illusions about her dad, Tim might chse her away (not in a way he intended), or he might make her lean harder on him than ever.

Lots going on here. Lots of characters in flux, and lots of potential for the latter half of the season.

Some other thoughts:

• Because there are so many new and old characters to service, and because Adrianne Palicki wasn't available to stop by this season the way Minka Kelly did, our closure (for now) on the Landry/Tyra romance has to come via a one-sided phone call. But it felt right to me (even if the show/Landry maybe waited too long to make that call), because as good as Tyra could be at times, and as much as she cared for Landry, she also was desperate to get the hell out of Dillon without looking back, and she has a history of treating Landry badly even though he went on a five-state killing spree for her that one time. So while it makes me sad that she didn't even have the courtesy to write a "Dear Lance" e-mail or text message, I buy that she would have moved on with her life and tried not to look back. (Or that she looked back but didn't have the heart to tell Landry it was over, possibly out of fear that he might kill her.)

• We've established a pattern by now that Billy Riggins is both none-too-bright and a little too eager to try on a life of crime when his finances get tight. So I can buy that he would let himself get drawn into Angry Necklace Guy's pitch about turning Riggins Rigs into a chop shop, and this could potentially tie Tim to Vince down the road, when for now the only new character he has a relationship with is Becky. But season two has made me incredibly wary of this show dabbling in crime, you know?

• And what are we to make of the final scene, with Tim and the renamed Skeeter stopping by a large piece of ranching property for sale? Is Tim going to take the Riggins Rigs cow and start his own cattle operation?

• As we see, West Dillon (formerly Dillon High) has its own Smackdown! team, so how did Landry the chess club nerd not know about it?

• Barry Tubb, who plays Luke's dad, knows a thing or two about TV ranching, as he played a supporting role in the original "Lonesome Dove" miniseries and the "Return to Lonesome Dove" sequel.

• When we met Glenn at the start of season two, I wondered if the writers were going to have him throw himself at Tami while Eric was still commuting to and from TMU. Two seasons later, he finally does it, fueled by booze and tequila and a blue ribbon award for West Dillon, which clearly has as many academic advantages over East Dillon as it does athletic ones. Tami's response to this, both in the moment and the next day (after Glenn has an attack of liberal guilt and says, "It's like I mouth-raped you!") was yet another example of how great this woman is under pressure.

Just a reminder, this is the last original episode to air until January 6, in the usual timeslot, Wednesday at 9 p.m. on DirecTV's 101 Network.

What did everybody else think?

When TV critics attack

A few weeks ago, I met in New York with Mo Ryan and James Poniewozik to enjoy some fine pizza at John's in Times Square. While we didn't manage to create a TV show the way that Joss Whedon did over pizza that time with Eliza Dushku, we did talk a lot about "Dollhouse" and a host of other TV nerditry, and Mo recorded and transcribed the whole thing. The first of three parts, focusing mainly on "Lost," is up today, and Mo will post the other two tomorrow and Friday. (I'll link to them then.) And just enjoy the fact that I can be every bit as rambling and tangential and non-grammatical as my interview subjects.

Chuck season 3 is... awesome

So, Chrismukkah has come right on time in the Sepinwall household, where I just finished devouring a care package of the first five episodes of "Chuck" season three. (In case you missed it, NBC released the new key art poster yesterday.)

The short version: if you're somebody who bought a Subway sandwich on the night "Chuck vs. the Ring" aired, or if you somehow hate sandwiches but love "Chuck" anyway, or if you're just a fan of TV shows that are both fun and awesome, then you'll be pleased with what "Chuck" will have going on when it returns on January 10. I'm typing this blog post with a goofy smile plastered across my face, and I suspect it's not going away for a while.

A slightly longer, mostly spoiler-free (save for some premise and guest-casting stuff that spoiler-phobic creators Josh Schwartz and Chris Fedak have been fine putting out there) take coming up after the jump...

So Chuck now knows kung fu, and a whole bunch of other cool spy stuff, but the essence of "Chuck" hasn't changed. It's still a show about an ordinary guy who has stumbled into life as a spy, and his new superpowers aren't reliable enough to suddenly turn him into another Captain Awesome. (Awesome, meanwhile, is struggling to deal with his brother-in-law's secret identity.) He's still Chuck Bartowski, for good and for ill, and while his abilities and position in spy world have evolved, they don't take away from what made the show so entertaining in the first place. (At the same time, he gets to be just assertive and competent enough on occasion that it could sway people who've said they would like the show if the lead was less of a wimp and/or bumbler.)

The guest casting remains top-notch, with good use of the likes of Vinnie Jones, Armand Assante and Brandon (Superman) Routh, to name just three of the familiar faces who pop up in these early episodes. The music's pretty kick-ass, too, both the ironic stuff (Emmett Millbarge's taste in power ballads is about what you'd expect), and the usual Schwartz/Alex Patsavas indie rock selections. (Jeffster!, alas, does not perform in any of these five episodes, but I'm sure that's coming.) There's action, and comedy, and romance and the usual buoyancy we came to expect from the show last season. We lose Anna Wu for budgetary reasons, alas, but Morgan, Jeff and Lester all pick up the slack nicely.

Looking forward to discussing this all in more depth on Jan. 10 and 11 (don't forget: three episodes are airing over those two nights, in a "24"-style roll-out), but just in case anyone was worried that the show would somehow lose its mojo after a late season run that featured stuff like Jeffster! crashing a wedding and Casey kicking ass with a radiator, don't freak out. It's the show you remember, just with some occasional tactical upgrades.