363: Things I missed in 2011

Pete Campbell and his bitchface

(delayed; due 2012)

The crew of the Enterprise

(endlessly delayed; due 2013)

Jack McCoy and the 27th precinct

(cancelled)

Snow.

362: Tumbling Downton

via whatisaweek-end on Tumblr

Lovely late-19th century sketch of Highclere Castle, which plays the role of Downton Abbey.

The second season starts airing on PBS's Masterpiece Classic on January 8th! Huzzah!

346: Happy Valentine's Day, No One

I realize we're nowhere near Valentine's Day, but I just stumbled across this old 30 Rock clip, and it's still delightful:

345: Christmas at Downton

The Downton Abbey Christmas special looks awfully exciting.  Murder trials!  Punching!  Snow!  But will it ever air in this country?

342: Cold outside

I haven't seen most of the Sing-Off Christmas special, but this was darned cute:

339: Harrowing

I admit it: I made an impulse buy today.

via TeeFury

 Because seriously, I can't not buy the $10 shirt featuring the only Boardwalk Empire character I still like.

Appropriate graphic:

335: Unsolicited sharing

Unexpected TV crushes from the last 365 days

Corey Stoll (Detective TJ Jaruszalski, Law & Order: Los Angeles)
Jack Huston (Richard Harrow, Boardwalk Empire)
Tobias Menzies (Brutus, Rome)
Alan Cumming (Eli Gold, The Good Wife)
Matt Bomer (Neal Caffrey, White Collar)

Although, honestly, I should’ve seen that last one coming.

328: The Butterball Hotline

Possibly my favorite Thanksgiving clip ever, and certainly the best from The West Wing.  President Bartlet calls the Butterball hotline:

Happy Thanksgiving!

327: Soft on Turkeys

On the day before Thanksgiving, allow me to share my second-favorite Thanksgiving storyline from The West Wing.  This is from season two's "Shibboleth":

Allison Janney is a national treasure.

325: I don't even

This is the sort of thing that happens when you spend too much time thinking about what would happen if the Doctor met characters from your other favorite shows.

The body was fresh. At least, that was Lanie’s best guess. “Drained dry,” she told Beckett. “As far as I can tell, your victim’s got no blood.” An officer pointed out a man among the looky-loos and said he’d asked to speak to the lead detective. Beckett followed the uni to the tape line and gave the guy a once-over. Tall, white, thirties. Unruly hair. Brown pin-striped suit, long trench coat. Sneakers. Interesting.

“You’re in charge here?” he asked as she approached. He had a London accent.

“Detective Kate Beckett. Who are you?”

"I’m the Doctor,” he replied, as though it meant something. “Tell me, Detective Kate Beckett, do you have a bloodless murder victim in that alleyway back there?”

Beckett narrowed her eyes. “How did you know that?”

“Because somewhere in this city, there’s a Plasmavore hiding in plain sight, just waiting to drain someone else dry. You’ll never find him with fingerprints or forensics, and if you don’t find him soon, the Judoon will sweep in, and believe me, you do not want them scanning first and asking questions later. You need an expert, Detective. You need me.”

Beckett laughed. “In this job, Doctor, I can believe a lot of things, but that line of bull you just fed me? Not one of them.”

The stranger looked grave for a long moment. Suddenly, a wide grin lit his face. “Oh, we’ll see about that, Kate.”

322: Beware the Ides of March

Yup, just blasted through season 1 of Rome while alternately a) chatting with friends who were also watching it, and b) feeling gross and running a fever after my flu shot.  It's basically a show about the most British Romans you ever did see, navigating the wretched wasteland of the past.  It's also sometimes a show about how much the Roman gods love Titus Pullo, and go out of their way to let good things happen to him at the unlikeliest of times.  It's a well-written series in which you know that no one will ever be happy, and most of the characters will die in horrible ways, but damn if you don't just want to find out what happens anyway.

Highly recommended.  I'm starting season 2 this weekend.

319: Coppers

Law & Order: UK proves that every show, no matter how serious, should have a blooper reel.

(see also: Criminal Minds' gag reels)

311: Look at all this paper

Carrie Preston as Elsbeth Tascioni on The Good Wife makes up for all the soapy melodrama with Alicia's life.  She has trouble with technology, appreciates cupcakes, and wants her parking validated.  She also likes that color on you.

(Also-also, I love that Carrie Preston is married to Michael "Ben Linus" Emerson in real life.)

309: Somebody stop me

Downton meets Boardwalk.

No, really, I don't want to talk about Photoshop, Downton Abbey, or Boardwalk Empire.
Or what I do with my spare time.

308: "I'm a soldier."

Look, I don't want to talk about my Photoshop problem or my weird fascination with Richard Harrow on Boardwalk Empire.

Okay?

300: Everything is better in noir.

If the first episode of Downton Abbey were a film noir.

Otherwise known as "misuse of Photoshop"

287: White Collar

Because I don't watch enough television (HA), I started watching the first season of White Collar this week.  Three episodes in, it's the perfect blend of drama and comedy, and a cross between the buddy-cop show, straight up procedural, and Burn Notice-style crime caper.  I love some fun, creative criminals (e.g. Danny Ocean, Michael Westen) who get to be the protagonist instead of the elusive bad guy, and man does Neal Caffrey ever fit the bill.  It doesn't hurt that Matt Bomer is ridiculously pretty:

click for source

 Of course, the FBI gets to be fun and very competant as well, which satisfies my procedural crime drama-loving heart.  It helps that Tim DeKay is so lovable as Agent Peter Burke, and that the chemistry between DeKay, Bomer, and Tiffani Thiessen (as Burke's wife) is great.  It's a fun show that fits right into the USA Network stable of light-hearted procedurals with a twist (the aforementioned Burn Notice and Covert Affairs, for example).

The only problem now is the length of the waitlist to check the DVDs out of the library.

279: Interest-ing

Let's talk about a new fall TV series.  Of the shows I've checked out (New Girl, Pan Am, Person of Interest, part of Suburgatory) Pan Am is the winner in terms of quality (after two episodes), and I still have hope for New Girl, in spite of literally cringing at some of Jess (Zooey Deschanel)'s antics.  But I'm most interested in the world and mythology of Person of Interest.  A show about preventing violent crime in post-9/11 America using stolen information from a government threat-assessment computer?  A J.J. Abrams project with Lost veteran Michael Emerson as one of the stars?  I was all in from the get-go.  The fact that Jonathan "Brother of Christopher" Nolan, co-writer of The Dark Knight, is the creator is just icing on the cake.

Person of Interest's Reese (Jim Caviezel) and Finch (Michael Emerson)
via TV Fanatic

Here's the short version of the premise: in the wake of 9/11, a rich genius computer programmer (Michael Emerson) built the U.S. government a Big Brother machine to identify potential terrorist threats.  The machine, however, identified all potential violent crime, so the "irrelevant," small-scale crimes are disregarded -- and sent to the programmer, Finch.  He gets a list of Social Security numbers of people who will be involved in crimes, either as a victim or perpetrator.  Finch recruits an ex-CIA agent, John Reese (Jim Caviezel), to do the boots-on-the-ground work of preventing these crimes using a combination of technical savvy and old-fashioned brute force.

Much more under the jump. (I started rambling. Whoops.)

276: Grenade

Yeah, I like The Sing-Off.  What of it?

270: Empire

via We Heart It

Boardwalk Empire is back, and along with it one of the creepiest, most unnerving characters out there -- not to mention interesting -- Richard Harrow, played by Jack Huston.  On a show like this one, where the plot crawls along at a snail's pace and I tend to zone out and just marvel at the sheer amount of atmosphere, I always have to pick a character whose scenes I watch attentively, so I know what's going on with at least one person.  It looks like Harrow's the one this season: between his sweet/creepy scrapbook of happy family pictures and his connection to the small faction trying to undercut Nucky Thompson's bootlegging business, it promises to be an interesting season for ol' Tin Man here.