Of 'Downton' and 'The Hour' Brits, Brody, Caitlin Moran & Abe Lincoln

Cheerio and good day! I trust you all had a Happy Christmas and a bloody good time of it on New Year's . . . aw, forget it . . . there's no way I can maintain a cartoonishly dodgy British accent for the length of this sentence, never mind this entire post. Why the feeble attempt? I've come down with a terrible case of Brit fever over the past few weeks.

From a comedic literary romp through modern femininity, to a 1920s English manor, a 1950s British TV newsroom and the outstanding work of U.K. native Damian Lewis playing a U.S. war hero-turned terrorist-turned double agent in Homeland and another Londoner portraying one of the most storied U.S. presidents, I've been positively awash in English pop culture, when I'm not listening to Adele tunes that is.

Here's a little taste of the U.K. pop culture nuggets that have been whetting my whistle as of late:

The Hour

After watching and reviewing the first season of the BBC's The Hour last year, I'm now engrossed by season two which is about to wrap up its second season on BBC America. (You could watch season one and season two DVDs -- the second one is available for sale on Jan. 8 -- or catch both seasons via Amazon Instant Video.)

Set in the 1950s in a BBC television newsroom, The Hour's like a more down-to-earth, hybrid of Mad Men and a humble cousin of HBO's The Newsroom (meaning no one's a walking, talking, eloquently elitist, pompous, inhuman speech-making machine). The Hour's chief protagonists include the program's doggedly tenacious producer Bel Rowley (Romola Garai), the brilliant yet brittle reporter/on air talent Freddie Lyon (Ben Whishaw) and the ruins of the internally smoldering anchorman Hector Madden (Dominic West) who's haunted by his war time experiences.

During its sophomore season, the gang has been bustling around trying to expose an organized crime ring which blackmails famous and influential Brits who can't keep it in their pants. Color me besotted with this cool period period sans an anti-hero like Don Draper (though I'd wager that Don would take quite the shining to Ms Rowley before dumping her as he did with other smart, professionally driven women like Rachel Menken and Faye Miller).

Downton Abbey

First, a beef, which shall be written in all caps so feel free to interpret it as me yelling in a coarse manner as I knit my brow and attempt to fashion a menacing look:

WHILE TRYING TO LOCATE THE EXACT DETAILS OF THE SEASON THREE PREMIERE OF THIS SHOW, I WAS PERUSING AN AMERICAN-BASED ENTERTAINMENT WEB SITE, WHICH SHALL REMAIN UNNAMED TO PROTECT THE MORONIC, I SAW A GINORMOUS SPOILER ABOUT SEASON THREE OF DOWNTON ABBEY WHICH HAS ALREADY AIRED IN ENGLAND. THE SPOILER WAS IN THE HEADLINE. YOU NINCOMPOOPS! IN THE HEADLINE!

. . . there, now I feel a tad better as I float along on the bubbles of anticipation having just re-watched the season two finale of the Masterpiece Theater melodrama Downton Abbey and anxiously await the start of the new season this weekend. When last the American viewers left off, it was 1920 and Downton's star-crossed lovers were in a warm embrace amid the snowflakes as poor Mr. Bates sat in a jail cell having been found guilty of murder. (In fact, I think his name should officially be changed to "poor Mr. Bates." Indeed.)

As we approach the season premiere on PBS this Sunday, we Downton fans are girding ourselves to watch as a brash American blasts through the Downton doors in the person of Shirley MacLaine, playing Cora's (Elizabeth McGovern) rich, uncouth mother. I cannot wait to not only watch the proper Earl of Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) run up against American sensibilities in the guise of his mum-in-law and witness the Dowager Countess (Maggie Smith) bristle at American audacity.

While I'm hoping we see more of the rebellious, pregnant Lady Sybil (Jessica Brown Findlay) and her socialist Irish hubby, the love story between Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) and Matthew Crawley (Dan Stevens) is the beating heart of the series and I am interested in how their relationship will progress after such a protracted, tremulous separation.

Then there's poor Mr. Bates. *sigh*

Homeland

*Warning, spoilers from season two finale of Homeland ahead.*

Brit Damien Lewis absolutely wowed me with his thoroughly American depiction of the troubled former POW-terrorist-Congressman-CIA asset-Carrie Mathison's lover-dude on the run. I'm still not sure where his character, Nick Brody's loyalties lie even after watching the season two finale twice after it grabbed me by the collar and made me say, "What?! . . . No way!"

Is Brody essentially a good guy who was truly broken by his brutal torture and emotional abuse while in captivity? Does he really want a fresh start now that his captor/collaborator is dead? Or is his just playing Carrie (Claire Danes) in order to save his hide or to perhaps attack on another day?

It was genius for the writers to allow Carrie and Brody to not only hook up again, but to afford her the chance to doubt his sincerity again (when she drew the gun on him) as well as to prove to her superiors that her instincts were spot-on when it came to her declaration that he'd been turned while in captivity. The show's premise was, by the end of the season two finale, wiped clean, like Brody had told Carrie he wanted his life to be . . . until his suicide video was released and his name was publicly tarnished.

Cannot even imagine what is ahead for season three. It's been a wild ride thus far. You can watch episodes on iTunes or on Amazon Instant Video.

Lincoln

In addition to seeing The Hobbit with our kids during the Christmas vacation (as I kept texting my husband, "How LONG is this movie?!" and was thankful I'd caffeinated up beforehand), I was fortunate enough to have recently been able to see Lincoln in the theaters as well.

Watching the excellent work of London-born Daniel Day-Lewis as he brought an American president to life, the film made politics appear to be a flesh-and-blood human endeavor, full of flawed acts and flawed people, sprinkled with compassion, righteousness and, at times, morality

Set during the small window of time when President Lincoln was attempting all manner of strong-arming congressmen -- lame duck and otherwise -- to pass a Constitutional amendment to end slavery, Day-Lewis' Lincoln was a bit full of himself, a blowhard if you will who liked to spin a yarn regardless of whether you wanted to hear it. He was also depicted as someone who was willing to use federal appointments and governmental favors as tools to achieve the larger good of liberating people from enslavement even if it meant that the Civil War went on longer.

For all the dirty underbelly of the horse-trading that goes on behind the scenes, Lincoln was humane and focused. As movie-goers observed the lengths the president had to go to force the 13th Amendment to passage so it could ultimately be ratified by the states, one could only hope that our current leaders have such noble aspirations in mind when they are forced to squabble in the mud over things like fiscal cliffs and debt ceilings.

The New York Times' David Brooks wrote an excellent column about the film, in which he said:

"The movie portrays the nobility of politics in exactly the right way. It shows that you can do more good in politics than in any other sphere. You can end slavery, open opportunity and fight poverty. But you can achieve these things only if you are willing to stain your own character in order to serve others -- if you are willing to bamboozle, trim, compromise and be slippery and hypocritical.

. . . The challenge of politics lies precisely in the marriage of high vision and low cunning. [Steven] Spielberg's Lincoln gets this point. The hero has a high moral vision, but he also has the courage to take morally hazardous action in order to make that vision a reality."

It's a must-see for anyone who longs to look at an American politician, albeit one played by a man born across the pond in a film, and feel proud.

How To Be A Woman

I devoured British newspaper columnist Caitlin Moran's best-selling, profane, butt-kicking feminist tome How To Be A Woman in a handful of days over the Christmas break. It was thought provoking, funny and fearless. Mostly, it was fearless and in-your-face. That's what I liked the most about Moran's musings as she heaped self-deprecating humor into the mix while saucily taking on issues like the asinine grooming habits of modern women, sex, sexism, porn, women in pop culture, cosmetic surgery and motherhood.

It is a breezy read that is not for the faint of heart, or those who take umbrage at profanity, say, like the Dowager Countess for example. Lady Sybil, however, would likely have gotten a big kick out of reading it.

Image credit: Amazon.

Where Have I Been? Well Let Me Tell You . . .

I have missed you, my blog-reading peeps, missed writing and musing about all the latest doings in politics and pop culture.

During my blogging absence, we've seen the beginning of the stellar second season of Homeland in all of its outstandingly taut dramatic glory. The Good Wife has been continuing to kick some serious behind with a fierce Alicia Florrick. Kelsey Grammer scared the heck out of me with his lethally volcanic depiction of a win-at-any-cost Chicago mayor on the second season of Boss. And the sinister writers for NBC's Parenthood have been conspiring with the folks at Kleenex to make me cry every week, whether it was with tear-drenched scenes of a kid leaving her parents to attend college across the country, or giving cancer to a women who has a baby, an autistic middle schooler and that college kid on the other coast.

On the silver screen, I've been jonesing to see Argo, The Master and The Perks of Being a Wallflower, but, alas, I have been about as successful getting to the movie theaters as I have been at blogging here in the last few weeks.

Meanwhile, all the presidential debates have passed us by including the one where a dour President Obama looked like someone had just spoiled the next episode of Homeland for him, the one with Governor Romney agreeing with nearly everything the president said on foreign policy and CNN's Candy Crowley having to argue semantics with the candidates when the candidates weren't busy giving off a weird, Fight Club vibe. During the second banana debate, Vice President Biden looked like the wise yet pompous uncle at Thanksgiving dinner telling the upstart nephew what's what. And then there were those binders full of women. Oy.

On the home front, the U.S. Senate race between Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren feels like a dismal snarl-fest. And, as much as I'm a politics nerd who DVRs debates, this is particular race has completely worn me out. No mas, por favor.

So where, pray tell, have I been, other than Tweeting up a storm on Twitter?

I've become a full-time assistant professor teaching writing and journalism at a local institution of higher learning. In short order, I needed to craft not just a syllabus for a writing course (I teach three sections of this course for roughly 60 students), but am creating a new course about online and social media. In addition to teaching/grading and researching/designing a course, I've been helping to advise the staff of the student newspaper two nights a week.

The other big thing that has left me with raccoon-like circles under my eyes (plus a six-week-long cold) is a non-fiction book project I've been researching for months. I'm in the process of conducting dozens of interviews as well as observing an educational process (more details on this later) three mornings a week. We're talking EARLY in the morning. In the 6 o'clock hour early. The give me coffee, STAT, kinda early.

Now that we're several weeks into the semester, I'm getting a handle on the teaching and the non-fiction project and am hoping to start blogging more about pop culture and politics, particularly about stuff like this:

Have you seen the new stills from the next season of Mad Men? Don and Megan vacationing in Hawaii. The sixth season can't get here fast enough . . . and neither can the resumption of my blogging!

Image credit: AMC via TVLine.

Leading TV Actors Ponder Their Craft & Professional Embarrassments

Reporters from The Hollywood Reporter sat down with two groups of leading dramatic TV actors who were surprisingly willing to talk frankly and openly about their work, the challenges of their craft and their own foibles, sometimes in gruesome detail.

Representing the female actors were The Good Wife's Julianna Margulies, Homeland's Claire Danes, The Closer's Kyra Sedgwick, The Killing's Mireille Enos, Mad Men's January Jones and Shameless' Emmy Rossum. Their male counterparts included Mad Men's Jon Hamm, Homeland's Damian Lewis, Parenthood's Peter Krause, Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston, Touch's Kiefer Sutherland and Boss' Kelsey Grammer.

I found it curious that the tone of the round-table discussions between the women versus the men was starkly different. Whereas the men seemed to be jovially trying to one-up each other with gross and embarrassing tales while they munched on snacks (like cubes of cheese), the women were deferential to one another and had flowers instead of food on the table in front of them. (The men are allowed to eat but the women weren't?)

My favorite parts of the discussions:

• January Jones said that people she sees on the street give her grief for Betty Draper's bad parenting.
• Jones said appearing as "fat Betty" during the fifth season of Mad Men was a pain in the neck due to all the prosthetics she had to wear.
• Peter Krause admitted to once suffering from sudden gastrointestinal problems while acting on stage in a play.
• The Good Wife, Julianna Margulies, struggles with being the "good girl" on her show's set even when she doesn't think she needs to be there all the time, particularly for scenes where she has no lines. Her quote seemed very Katherine Heigl to me, almost a cry for help: "There are days when . . . I had worked until midnight and then I had to go and shoot something else at five in the morning. I looked at my husband and I was like, 'This is why Judy Garland was on pills. I can't keep this up. I need a pill!'"
• Jon Hamm was once told he'd never make it as a TV star.
• Damian Lewis related an anecdote about getting injured on stage -- sustaining a wound that required multiple stitches -- during a sword fight with Ralph Fiennes yet he continued to act as he bled profusely from the face.

 I completely concur with a person who posted a comment on YouTube after the interview with the panel of women who said that this was a fascinatingly interesting discussion, a model for what these types of discussions should be, as opposed to the vacuous fluff that passes for interviews these days.

'Homeland' Season 2 Promo Promises Answers

"The answers are coming . . . Brace yourself."

I have no idea how the geniuses behind the Showtime drama Homeland are going to possibly top their first brilliant season. And this trailer for their sophomore season raises expectations sky high.

This show is like the anti-The Killing, which I've stopped watching because I got so fed up with the series and because of the botched season one conclusion. Homeland scribes have deftly figured out how to combine suspense and tension without leading viewers on or patronizing them with insulting red herrings.

My fingers are crossed that when they've got good stuff in store for us when the second season starts on September 30 and we again see Claire Danes' spectacularly complex Carrie Mathison and Damian Lewis' eerie Nicholas Brody. Mandy Patinkin as the curmudgeonly Saul Berenson is pretty awesome as well.

Random Good Reads/Views: Women in Media, ‘Homeland’ Finale, What’s Eating the Grinch?

Joanne Bamberger, aka Pundit Mom, clued me in to this provocative and eye-opening speech by Megan Kamerick, a former president of the Journalism & Women Symposium, about how women’s voices are disproportionately absent from news stories and features, despite the fact that women constitute over half of the population.

“Stories by female reporters are more likely to challenge stereotypes than those by male reporters,” Kamerick said.

“Women are more likely to be defined by their body parts,” she said, showing a cover image of Wired Magazine of a woman’s naked chest, noting that women rarely appear on the cover of Wired unless they're sexualized.

Image credit: Showtime

On that Homeland Finale

*Warning spoilers from Homeland finale*

Homeland showrunners told New York Magazine’s Vulture that they originally anticipated that Sgt. Nick Brody would only appear in the first season.

“I think when Alex [Gansa, his co-showrunner] and I first conceived the series, it seemed obvious that we couldn’t take the show with Brody as a character beyond the first season. But then we realized how rich that mine was and how much more there was left to get out of it,” Howard Gordon, the other Homeland showrunner, told New York.

“Brody’s surviving the finale was very much in doubt,” Gansa said. “We really talked about it both ways. Ultimately we felt there was more to tell in the saga between Carrie and Brody, in that relationship.”

Now there are some who thought the finale was a cop-out and they didn’t like it in the least. I was surprised at the abruptness of its tonal shift when Brody attempted to blow himself up, only to have his explosive vest malfunction. He fixed it, was ready to try again, but hearing his daughter’s pleading voice on his cell phone (prompted to call him by Carrie Mathison) persuaded him to go another way and later rationalize to Abu Nazir that he could do more damage by working within the system rather than just killing the folks in that bunker.

I admit I was a bit let down when the credits rolled on this finale. Then I slept on it. Why was I let down, because Brody DIDN’T kill people? I didn’t want him to kill people. I didn’t want to see the glorification of a suicide bomber. When I woke up the next morning and thought about what the Homeland writers had done – turning a would-be lethal protest into something more subtle in the form of working within the system – I decided that the writers took the harder and more intriguing road. In the world of 24, things were always blowing up, even nuclear bombs. Sure, seeing a bomb go off is dramatic, but seeing people wrestle with their conscience, with right and wrong, with loyalties and with consequences is so much more interesting.

Later in the New York interview, Gansa, who noted that Brody’s suicide video is still missing, added:

“[Brody] flipped the switch, which satisfied our feeling that this is someone who would go through with what he decided to do, and then it opened up the possibility of redemption after the fact, when he fixes the vest and almost goes through with it for the second time. We all like Brody now, and we want him to be redeemed, and we kind of got to have it both ways.”

What’s Eating The Grinch?

In honor of the Christmas season, I’m going to direct you to an essay in McSweeney’s by Robb Fritz which dissected what was really bugging that mean old Grinch and discussed how the green being used his happy-go-lucky dog Max as his “put-upon canine slave, made to dress up as an unconvincing reindeer with one heavy faux-antler roped onto his head.”

“There’s no indication that the Grinch, unlike Scrooge, is a wealthy, malevolent, card carrying member of the 1%,” Fritz wrote. “He’s more just a finicky grump who hates it when his downstairs neighbors have late night parties, ostensibly because the noise keeps him up, but maybe just possibly because he hasn’t been invited.”

Image credit: Showtime.

About These Golden Globe Nominations . . .

Normally, I’m all amped up about the Golden Globe nominations because they combine both movie AND TV awards, which I like because the nominations usually help me determine which movies I’ll make a point to see in the theaters if they're not on my Must See list already. And because, as a TV critic, I watch a lot of TV, I’m genuinely interested in which shows and Hollywood folk get nominations. There’s usually some sort of discernible trend that you can glean from the nomination list.

Except for this year where, the general consensus seems to be, there’s no rhyme or reason to the nominations. And, given that AMC's Mad Men isn’t eligible this year because they haven’t aired anything in 2011 (thanks to prolonged contract negotiations), the fact that ABC's Modern Family hasn’t been having its best year and Friday Night Lights is now off the air and got blown off by the Hollywood Foreign Press anyhow, I don’t quite feel as invested in who’s going to come home a winner as I normally am.

Nevertheless, let’s delve into the good and the bad of the nominations, shall we?

TV

Good:

Homeland and Boss accolades. Showtime’s Homeland, about a CIA agent (Clare Danes) who is convinced that an American POW has been turned and is a sleeper terrorist, has been a wildly intense ride and I’ve loved watching it intelligently unfold. (Did you know that the guy who plays Marine Sgt Nick Brody – Damian Lewis – is English? Elevates his acting skills even more in my eyes.) Both Lewis and Danes, plus the show, received Golden Globe nominations It was also great to see Starz’ Boss, plus its lead Kelsey Grammer, snag Golden Globe nominations as well. While some folks may think that Boss, about the vicious, crooked big city mayor Tom Kane, can be a bit ham-fisted and bloviating at times, I sincerely enjoy it.

I was also happy to see Amy Poehler get nominated for her clever, quirky depiction of Leslie Knope on NBC’s Parks and Recreation. This fourth season has been loads of fun as she decided to become political and run for city council.

Bad:

The bulk of the nominations in the TV category, however, were a mystery to me. For example, why all the love for HBO’s Enlightened starring Laura Dern? I have tried to watch this show. Watched the first three episodes. I was thoroughly unmoved. Didn’t like it one iota. Yet Dern got a nomination as did the show for best comedy. Huh? Parks and Recreation and ABC's The Middle are heads and shoulders funnier. This is a head scratcher.

There was nothing for NBC's Friday Night Lights for its final season – which finally netted them some Emmy love this year. There was no Rescue Me (FX) for its last season when it finally got its act together. Men of a Certain Age was blown off as was NBC's Parenthood (Peter Krause was very good this year). Nick Offerman’s Ron Swanson on Parks and Recreation is one of the funniest characters on TV. How could he have been ignored . . . again?

Film

Good:

The Descendants was a solid, unexpectedly moving film and George Clooney, ever the suave bachelor in real life, played a schlubby, distracted husband and father perfectly.

The Help, also nominated for best drama, was entertaining, in spite of the fact that many critics savaged it as a white hero version of the Civil Rights era, and I disagree with those critics. Viola Davis, nominated for best actress, delivered a solid performance.

I still want to see Moneyball and The Ides of March, all of which were also nominated for best drama.

Leonardo DiCaprio, who was nominated for best dramatic actor, was very good as J. Edgar Hoover in J. Edgar, even if the movie itself was wildly uneven, seemed to lack a unifying theme and featured some very bad face makeup.

On the comedy side, I saw both Bridesmaids and Midnight in Paris – was enthralled with them both – but am really pulling for the very funny Bridesmaids as I’d like to see more comedies like this one in the theaters instead of mindless, insulting dreck. Ryan Gosling – who was nominated in two categories – was surprisingly engrossing in the sweet, smart flick Crazy Stupid Love. Can’t comment on him in The Ides of March because I haven’t seen it yet.

Bad:

Nada for Melissa McCarthy who stole Bridesmaids with her utterly brave performance. Not a smidgen of love for the final installment of Harry Potter, which was wonderful. Margin Call, a powerful film about the genesis of the 2008 economic crisis, got a grand total of zero nominations.

Full list of nominations is available here.

Which nominations did you applaud and which ones puzzled you?

'Homeland' & 'Boss:' The Best Shows on TV Right Now

If you get Showtime and/or the Starz Channels, do yourself a favor, start watching Homeland, starring Claire Danes and Mandy Patinkin, and Boss, starring Kelsey Grammer in a role that’ll make you say, “Frasier who?”

Both shows are unpredictable. Both of them have shocked and intrigued me and left me craving more. Intelligent and challenging, they are two of the best dramatic offerings you’re going to find airing right now.

A half dozen episodes into Homeland, here are a few of the things viewers have witnessed:

• A Marine sergeant, who’d been held hostage and was tortured in Afghanistan for eight years, was discovered by U.S. troops, after a CIA agent had been told that a U.S. POW had been turned by the enemy and would be used as a tool to hurt Americans.
• That CIA agent, Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) set up surveillance in the home of Marine Sgt. Nick Brody where she obsessively watched all the intimate goings on in his house for several weeks, including relations with his wife Jessica (Morena Baccarin who was the alien leader on V), who’d presumed her husband was dead and took up with Nick’s best friend.
• Brody has been secretly reciting Muslim prayers on a prayer rug in his garage and having flashbacks of being held at gunpoint and forced to beat a Marine colleague to death.
• Carrie has serious mental health issues that she’s hiding from the CIA and from her dodgy mentor Saul Berenson (Mandy Patinkin) who seems to have a murky past of his own.
• Brody’s lead torturer, who has affiliations with a terrorist group, was apprehended and Carrie’s supervisor allowed Brody to speak with him. Shortly thereafter, the torturer committed suicide with a razor blade. It was assumed that someone slipped him a blade. Carrie suspects Brody.
• Brody beat the heck out of his former best friend Mike who had become romantically involved with his wife Jessica and later, Brody had drunk sex with Carrie in a car.

 Folks who’ve seen the next new episode are raising expectations to lofty heights. I can’t wait.

A few episodes into Boss, a brutal, profane examination of raw political mayoral power at the epicenter of an old school Chicago machine, we’ve seen: 

• Kingpin Mayor Tom Kane (Grammer) violently grab and twist the ear of a supporter whose underling had made things difficult for one of the mayor’s landmark public projects. Later, the underling who’d gone on TV and caused problems for Kane presented the mayor with a gift box wrapped with a tidy bow. Inside the box? His ears, indicating that he’s now listening. Kane chucked the ears down the garbage disposal in his kitchen sink. 
• Kane is suffering from a degenerative, fatal disease (Lewy Body Dementia) that will compromise his mental functions, cause hallucinations and confusion, as well as affect physical functions. He's been buying drugs from a drug dealer in darkened parks to try to treat curtail his symptoms.
• The neurologist who diagnosed Kane has been assaulted and threatened by a Kane henchman after a pesky newspaper reporter came to visit her and asked questions about the mayor’s health. After that same reporter confronted the mayor’s wife about the neurologist, Kane’s goon demanded that the doctor take her son and flee the city. Immediately. 
• One of Kane’s key staffers has taken to having brazen, risky, adulterous sex in hallways and stairwells of public venues with a young, charismatic, Kane-backed candidate for governor who has a wife and two young children.
• There’s a strange side-story involving Kane’s estranged minister/addict daughter Emma and the icy reaction Kane’s contact with Emma elicited from Kane’s estranged wife Meredith, with whom he no longer shares a bed. 

Between Homeland and Boss, I’ve been left wondering where they’ll take me next.

Notes on Pop Culture: Assessing the New TV Season

The fall TV season starts in one big, mad rush as the networks simultaneously release their new and returning shows in a short period of time. It’s hard to figure out what’s worth your time and what’s not. Already, The Playboy Club (which I hated), Charlie’s Angels, Free Agents, How to Be a Gentleman (none of which I never watched) have been cancelled. Other new shows are still on the bubble.

As for returning shows, there’s been a mixed bag, ratings-wise, with some disappointing and others waging a strong showing.

Here are some of the shows that I have seen, liked and plan to stick with:

Modern Family: My beloved Modern Family had a precarious beginning to its third season. I wasn’t all that big on the dude ranch episode and the Manny-sells-wrapping-paper episode was only so-so, with Phil and Luke’s weirdly violent YouTube basketball moment being the highlight. I was starting to worry that my favorite comedy, which has been showered with love and golden statues, was losing its touch.

Then came this week’s episode and it hit on all cylinders. Claire’s going to run for town council because she’s ticked that the town won’t put a stop sign up at an intersection in her neighborhood. This has tremendous, clenched Claire potential. Cam’s sanctimonious take-down of the dad who he thought had brought two young children to see a violent movie, only to learn he and Mitchell were in the wrong theater, was priceless social commentary and Phil’s accidental bruising of Luke and his drugging of Alex were pitch perfect. Throw in Luke’s sudden savvy and I’m hoping the writers are in the groove once again. More of what we saw this week and less of Cam yelling, "Stella!" in suburban streets.

Up All Night: It was this past week’s episode of the Will Arnett/Christina Applegate freshman comedy Up All Night – I reviewed it here on CliqueClack TV -- that solidified for me the conclusion that this show is a keeper. Although it focuses on new parent experiences that have been covered many times before by many different shows, Up All Night always seems to put its new, fresh spin on the subjects. (Its major weakness is figuring out what to do with Maya Rudolph, but they improved upon her character this week.)

For example, we’ve seen new TV parents struggle with neighbors partying and being really loud while the parents are trying to sleep and they know their baby’s going to be up soon, or the baby can’t get to sleep because of the noise before, but the way Arnett’s Chris and Applegate’s Reagan coped was much different. In a piece for Modern Mom I compared Up All Night to thirtysomething, which aired a bazillion years ago. In thirtysomething, when the Steadmans’ neighbors were having a loud party, Michael ran outside to the front stoop and fruitlessly shrieked at them to turn the music down while standing there, lamely, in his boxers. In Up All Night, Chris called police about the noise his neighbors were making, but after he provided his name, he and Reagan feared the neighbors consider them uncool so they quickly got dressed and ran across the street to the loud party and pretended they’d been there all along.

Chris and Reagan are two cute, wannabe hipster parents who are simply exhausted and to whom you want to give a giant hug.

The Good Wife: Untethered from the responsibility of actually having to be a martyred, betrayed wife any longer, I’m really digging the new Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies) who's enjoying her illicit love affair with her boss Will Gardner. She seems to have developed a confident bounce in her step, loving her role as the public “good wife” who’s really having fun being bad. Adding Lisa Edelstein (formerly of House) to the cast and moving Eli Gold's political consulting work inside Lockhart Gardner were strokes of genius.

Homeland: The pilot episode of this Showtime terrorism/spy drama, Homeland blew me away. Who knew that Claire Danes, Angela Davis from My So-Called Life, could convincingly play a CIA agent with a drug problem who suspects a former U.S. POW, now regarded of an American hero, is a double agent for the enemy? Episode two is still sitting on my DVR awaiting a Saturday night viewing with my husband. If you miss 24, Homeland is for you.

Shows In Between:

Grey’s Anatomy: After a very strong seventh season, Grey’s Anatomy’s eighth season has been a disappointment thus far. We’ve seen the main character, Meredith Grey, become estranged from and practically shunned by her husband because she messed with a clinical trial of his, got fired (then quickly rehired) and then, as a result, the strained duo lost custody of their adopted daughter. Derek Shepherd has been transformed into an utterly unlikable, pompous character.

Owen and Cristina have been struggling with Cristina’s decision to abort their baby when he wanted to keep it. Though he’s trying to be supportive of her, it’s obvious that something’s shifted between them, and not just the fact that Owen has become chief of surgery after Richard took the fall for Meredith. These two have been among the few bright spots this season.

Last week’s episode was told from the men’s point of view and was, frankly pretty demeaning toward the male characters as it showed them stereotypically fighting over women and work, making erectile dysfunction jokes and wielding hammers and drinking beer as a way to cope with all that was bugging them. This week’s episode – which I reviewed here -- focused on a penile transplant and used the groundbreaking surgery as a clunky, clumsy metaphor for all sorts of things, from April Kepner’s virginity and Miranda Bailey dumping one guy for another, to Avery standing up for himself in the face of public ridicule from his mother.

After last season, I was expecting more than stunts like the transplant and men using power tools. I look for some emotional resonance when I tune into this show and I know it's something Grey’s can deliver.

Parenthood: There have been several heart-in-your-throat scenes in the third season of Parenthood, notably the scene where Alex said goodbye to Kristina and where the pregnant single gal who pushes the coffee cart around Julia's office turned down Julia's request to adopt her child, then, a few episodes later, changed her mind. (I reviewed that episode here.)

Adam looking for work and deciding to take a chance with his family's future by working on his brother's passion project is an intriguing idea, as is moving forward with having Julia and Joel adopt. But many of the other storylines have left me flat: Jasmine and Crosby dating other people and running into one another is thoroughly boring. Sarah dating the English teacher again hasn't gone anywhere. Amber trying to be bohemian and living in a rat-infested hole seems cliched. Zeek starring in erectile dysfunction commercials is just, what's the word . . . awkward.

It’s been a very uneven season thus far for Parenthood, which has been a letdown because the show has, in the past, seemed willing to delve deeply into issues, like Max’s Asperger’s or Alex's poverty for example. I think my problem with this season is that the episodes have been overstuffed with tons of storylines so they seem a mile wide and an inch thick. I like it better when they keep things simpler. However I’m not giving up on the Bravermans yet.

Still on my DVR awaiting my attention, the latest episodes of: Suburgatory, Homeland, The Middle, Parks and Recreation and The Middle.
What new/returning shows have you liked thus far this season?

Image credits: CBS and ABC.