I’m still recovering from last week’s craziness, so the full week’s recommendations will come tomorrow:

Sunday, September 30

9:00 PM Desperate Housewives (ABC)

Despite never fully recovering from its sophomore slump (and neither did, IMO, Lost, the other show that saved ABC) Desperate Housewives has kept me watching in season three with the hopes that the show would find its old glory, after turning into a more-annoying Love Boat in its second season with big name guest stars who’d have no long-term effect on the characters. While the third season did improve, they couldn’t fix the damage done to most of the characters who became incredibly unlikable (due to repeatedly turning to the same flaws) and only a good mystery kept me watching. I almost gave up on this show when that that story ended, but Bree’s return in the season finale has me interested. Meanwhile, I can also hope new cast additions (including Nathan Fillion and a gay couple) will re-energize the series.

10:01 PM Brothers & Sisters (ABC)

Yay! While I hate the storyline centered around the Presidential Campaign (overall, this show has failed to depict believable conservatives), I’m eager to return to Kevin Walker, easily one of the most complex gay men on TV. (Again, that’s a low bar.)

11:30 PM Robot Chicken (Adult Swim)

Oh, wow. Did they really dare to do a mash-up of Thundercats and Mrs. Doubtfire?

12:00 AM Frisky Dingo (Adult Swim)

Goodness, last week was the gayest. episode. ever. I’m keeping my fingers crossed we get some follow-up. Even better, I love that I was the only gay blog to cover the episode.

12:15 AM Lucy: Daughter of the Devil (Adult Swim)

Last week was so hilarious with the Devil’s dildo factory and his revulsion at learning of his daughter’s enthusiasm for the factory. I expect this to be the next breakout for Adult Swim (y’know, after Frisky Dingo gets its due).

I guess in deciding not to check out Damages (the spouse hates legal dramas and no amount of critical acclaim could get me to find time for another show I watch alone) I missed these promos for It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia:

I never got excited about NBC’s Chuck. The previews felt a little tepid to me. Zachary Levy was kinda cute (though, due to the similarity of premise to Jake 2.0 my mind will keep noting that Christopher Gorham makes a cuter nerd) and I usually like Adam Baldwin but overall, I suspected my reaction to Chuck would be similar to my recent reaction to Burn Notice — I didn’t wish I could have that hour of my time back, but I wasn’t going to make an effort to catch a second episode.

After watching the pilot on VOD, my reaction matched my prediction and, learning that the series airs against How I Met Your Mother and Everybody Hates Chris, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be keeping up with this one.

There was one aspect of Chuck that could have kept me watching. It was, surprisingly, the sexy female agent that works with the title character. What the ads don’t tell you is that Chuck’s ex-roommate, the one who dies after sending Chuck the e-mail that makes him so special, was also her lover and that she seems to see Chuck as the legacy of her late loved one, thus motivating her to protect him.

I thought the new Bionic Woman would be playing with gender roles in sci-fi, by giving its heroine a dead male lover as motivation, but it looks like Chuck has jumped on that theme instead. If it weren’t out of reach of my dual-tuner DVR, I’d consider keeping up with the series to see how it plays out.

Instead of the usual pop culture blogging enjoy this video of a baby panda struggling to climb a single step.

• Attention! Paddington Bear still likes marmalade. Now don’t you feel a little less stressed for having spent ten seconds thinking about a polite, little bear in a peacoat?
• Crazy or brilliant? AC Nielsen plans a social networking site, where users will compare opinions on entertainment media (and provide free data to Nielsen). At first, I thought “Who’s goes to a marketing research company for social networking?” then I realized this could be a draw for the people who like submitting Amazon reviews and otherwise opining online. (Y’know, like I do.)
• There’s still a chance we’ll see an Arrested Development movie yadda
• Big Brother doesn’t look like it’s fading away with accusations of cheating. The thing is, this season’s viewers feel like they saw so much shenanigans on the producers’ part the slightest bit of oddness is taken as a further sham. This season was so incredibly ugly — not because of the vile people cast, but because of the favoritism observed on the producers’ part.
• “See, Alanis, irony’s not so hard to find.

Y’know, I think we should be good to Tina Fey:

Ms. Fey would sometimes troll the Internet for references on message boards or MySpace to the catchphrases she and her co-writers had worked so hard to insert into each week’s episode.

She discovered homages to “mind grapes,” a phrase Mr. Baldwin’s Jack had coined in writing a tribute to Jack Welch, the former General Electric chief executive — as in, “He squeezes the sweetest juice out of his workers’ mind grapes.” (Mr. Baldwin’s Jack believes, erroneously, that Welch’s grape juice was named for Mr. Welch.) She also found people using “blurgh,” a garden-variety substitute for curse words, and “by the hammer of Thor,” a homage to the Viking god from “some of the Harvard nerds on my staff.” (Ms. Fey has a degree in theater from the University of Virginia.)

“I should be embarrassed that I was doing this,” she said. “But to see anything at all was thrilling.”

And make an effort to throw around 30 Rock catchphrases more often. I’ll start by referring to product placement ads as “PosMems” from now on… It’s a cooler term, anyway.

Okay, hearing Kalinara jump at the idea of a Martian Manhunter comic where J’onn runs a dating service reminded me of one of the goofy ideas I had a while back… After watching the pilot for the Fantasy Island revival — where Madchen Amick played a shape shifter who’d pretend to be various women in the fantasies of Mister Rourke’s guests — the idea for “Titans of Mercy” flashed through my head. Basically, the series was Touched with an Angel played out with Lilith, Raven and Mirage. It would never sell in the Direct Market, but it was a fun idea to throw out from time to time.

Okay, so we checked out the latest Ken Burns doc The War last night. It was very good, for the most part, though I totally understand the controversy over the lack of Latino and Native American people.

However, as the show (effectively) examined the stories of Asian-Americans, I started to get a tad annoyed by the background music which came from some sort of Japanese instrument. I probably wouldn’t have been bothered by it, except that there were points when you can’t help but notice it. Just as I was starting to let out a grumpy sigh, my partner next to me snapped out “What’s with the music? Aren’t they American?”

When white people spoke about the internment of Japanese-Americans, they often talked about how they saw their Japanese-American neighbors as Americans and not foreigner sleeper agents. That point got undercut by the background music that accompanied most of the Japanese-American speakers, which emphasized their foreign-ness. I understand that some of those speakers may have played those instruments, being second generation Japanese-Americans, but, overall it gave the segment a tone that undercut the point Burns’ seemed to be making.

Still, I’m hoping that, later in the series, Burns takes a look at the story of Iva Toguri, it’s a sad tale that deserves to be better known.

Every season, there are a batch of upcoming, new shows that are so ambitious that they look equally likely to succeed or fail spectacularly and this season is no different, except that, this time, some shows are looking weak from scrutiny.

	1. Viva Laughlin
	Oh, I love the idea of a show in a Vegas-ish setting that looks like a TV version of Moulin Rouge (dear TV pundits, stop comparing it to Cop Rock — Cop Rock foolishly had original music ever week, Laughlin is smartly less ambitious) but the ads have played down the musical aspect of the show (probably because TV pundits keep bringing up Cop Rock) leaving this show looking like a lackluster drama. I’m afraid this will be the kind of show that’s too ambitious for CBS.
	Debuts October 21. Airs Sundays on CBS.

2. Aliens in America
At first, I enjoyed the clips I saw for this series — a punchline that starts with “Honey, you know what Bill O’Reilly said about…” is always good for a laugh. However, as summer went on and I started to read criticisms that the Pakistani character was stereotype-driven, I started to realize that the white characters were also broad stereotypes of “fly-over state” residents. It doesn’t help, either, that Scott Patterson was added to the cast over the summer — I liked Patterson in Gilmore Girls, but I can’t imagine him in the role of the father. It’ll be interesting to see how I react to the show overall, but this one has faded for me.
Debuts October 1. Airs Mondays on The CW.

	3. Death Note
	I’ve heard plenty of good things about the anime adaptation of one of my favorite manga series, but this version will be the first time I try to expose my partner to the franchise. You know how things go when you’re all excited over a franchise and finally get someone else to watch it with you…
	Debuts October 20. Airs Saturdays on Adult Swim.

4. Bionic Woman
This series sounded so exciting on paper — a revival of The Bionic Woman from a producer of the show that gave us characters like Lauren Roslin, Kara Thrace and Sharon Valeri and Sharon Agathon. More exciting, early talk of the show said it would be a metaphor for women’s roles in the workplace. Sadly, I found the pilot quite boring and even Katee Sackhoff couldn’t relieve that boredom. This will get a few samples, thanks to my partner’s continued interest, but it needs to improve quite a bit.
Debuts September 26. Airs Wednesdays on NBC.

	5. Cane
	Cane is another show that sounds so exciting on paper — a family melodrama centered around a powerful Latino family with Polly Walker — who chewed enough scenery she probably had to diet to make up for it — along for the ride. Unfortunately, like with Viva Laughlin CBS’ promotion of the series has been pretty tepid, suggesting that what sounded promising on paper didn’t work out in the show or that the network doesn’t get the best parts of its shows.
	Debuts September 25. Airs Tuesdays on CBS.