This was the first of the three episode arc I ended up watching.  Looking back now, it was a really wonderful episode.  I was just a little confused by some of the major changes that had taken place in the two episodes I missed.  Elliot begins to fall for Keith.  Their favorite patient takes a turn for the worse and isn’t going to recover, so a grief counselor is called in to help her accept the inevitable.  Both Cox and J.D. think the counselor – played by Dave Foley of “Newsradio” and “Kids in the Hall” – is a moron.  But they end up going through the five steps of acceptance just as much as their patient.  And for the first time, Cox really begins to treat J.D. as an equal.  Not as funny as their quirkier episodes, not as moving as their more touching episodes, it was still a beautiful look at the characters dealing with the pain of death in the midst of life.

Once again, a sitcom has captivated my attention and interest.  Not too bad, considering it’s a form I’d completely written off a few years ago.  But “Sons & Daughters” is yet more proof that there’s still life in the American sitcom.  A single-camera show, sans laugh track, “Sons & Daughters” is a partially improvised comedy about Cameron Walker and his insane family.  In the first episode, we find the family preparing for their mother and step-father’s twentieth wedding anniversary.  The day of the party, Wendell – Cameron’s step-father – confesses to Cameron that he’s thinking of leaving his wife.  Cameron isn’t quite sure how to handle this information and begins to talk it over with his wife and his sister, even though Wendell asked him to keep quiet.  The show isn’t quite as over-the-top as “Arrested Development” could be, but its subtle comedy warms the cockles of my heart.  Plus, I loved the moment Cameron’s children drew a Hitler-mustache on their racist great-aunt.

I was honestly a little under-whelmed by the prospect of a special two-hour night of “24.”  Don’t get me wrong, I like the show.  I just wasn’t expecting a terribly momentous television event.  By the end of the first hour, I felt justified in my apathy.  Sure, we keep moving right along with the story.  The terrorists try to release some nerve gas in a hospital.  Jack shoots a woman in the leg.  Rudy’s missing keycard is starting to become more of a plot-point than just a minor inconvenience.  But by the end of the first hour the only thing I was glad of was the fact that we were one hour closer to finishing the season.  However, they pulled it out for the second hour of the night.  What an intense and shocking episode.  Terrorists breach CTU?  I mean, I know we’ve had moles in place before, but terrorists have never had the guts to launch such a major attack on the anti-terrorists themselves.  And when poor little Carrie got herself killed by the baddie, I knew things would start to go downhill.  I just didn’t know how bad it was going to get for our heroes.  Everyone’s trapped in a couple of rooms Chloe was able to seal against the nerve gas.  Kim is back (sans cougars) and Jack has to try and keep her and Audrey alive for the rest of the day.  Tony’s awake (have I ever told you that Tony’s my favorite character on the show?) and trapped in the medical wing.  And (SPOILER WARNING) poor Edward died.  It was maybe the most emotional moment on the show since the second season when the old CTU director sacrificed his life to save everyone.  Edward dying while Chloe watched on – helpless to save him.  It was touching and heartbreaking.  And the final time clock was silenced in respect for the dead.  Beautiful.

Now that the American version of the hit BBC series “The Office” has finally come out from under its progenitor’s shadow, they’ve really hit their stride.  Sure, every once in a while it’s a little too over-the-top – like when Michael and Dwight toss the football back and forth in the main office room and Dwight tackles Ryan the temp – but it’s still a vast improvement on most of the sitcoms out there.  In this episode, Dwight has to make a speech for several thousand corporate employees.  Michael tries to give him some pointers (tell jokes and keep them entertained), but it isn’t until Jim directs him to speeches of the world’s greatest dictators that he finally flourishes.  Michael’s disappointment in discovering that Dwight is a better speaker is really sad and poignant.  Jim can’t quite deal with all of Pam’s wedding preparations, so he books a trip to Australia during her wedding.  Will this be the incentive she needs to break up with her jerk of a fiancé?  I doubt it, but we can always hope.

Here is “Earl” at its sweet, zany best.  When Earl realizes he didn’t pay taxes, he adds cheating the government to his list.  But the task of paying back the government turns out to be more difficult than he anticipated.  The woman at the federal building refuses to accept his money.  He drops a check in their suggestion box and they send it back to him.  He tries to fill a pothole but a police officer makes him stop (he isn’t an authorized contractor).  He volunteers to work on a chain gang but is mistaken for a prisoner and sent to solitary confinement.  Finally, he and Randy climb to the top of a water-tower in the hopes of being fined.  But it’s the brilliant moments of whimsy that really made this episode.  The white supremacists on the chain gang sing “Beauty School Dropout.”  Randy and Earl give a stirring rendition of “Believe it Or Not,” the theme from “The Greatest American Hero.  It’s moments like these that make “My Name is Earl” one of the year’s great comedies.

This is great.  “Lost’s” producers are finally catching up on all the characters they’ve neglected for most of the season.  This time we get to hang out with Claire and find out what really happened to her when she was kidnapped last season.  She thinks her baby may be infected with a horrible disease so she has a psychologist hypnotize her in hopes of learning more about the missing weeks of her life.  This is the first time a flashback sequence has been directly tied into the episode’s plot.  It was a nice variation in their typical format.  And finally, we’re given some of the answers we’ve been waiting for.  Of course, this is “Lost.”  Every time they give us an answer, they give us about twenty new questions.  We now know that the Others seem to have a decent chunk of technology at their disposal.  And we know that the “bearded man” doesn’t have a beard at all – he uses a fake, theatrical beard.  Hm.  I’m sure there’s some significance to this revelation; I just don’t what the significance is.  Anyway, it was another great episode.  And it gave me hope that they really will give us all the answers by the end of the series.  I just don’t want to wait.

Okay, now this is everything an episode of “24” is supposed to be.  Wow.  I am so impressed that the writers are figuring out how to continually keep the season’s landscape changing and shifting.  Just when I thought they were going to keep Rudy in control for the rest of the season, the disgruntled CTU employees stage a mutiny and break the real boss out of holding.  I’m still not sure why Jack thought that this corporation he was investigating had anything to do with the terrorists, but it looks like he was right.  He ran into his mentor (played by Robocop), the former head of CTU who has now crossed over to the dark side and tried to kill Jack.  On top of everything else, terrorists attack the Russian president’s motorcade (with the First Lady still inside) and the President refuses to stop it.  But CTU finds out and warns Secret Service so they’re prepared.  Everyone’s banged up but alive – well, if you don’t count the nameless Secret Service Agents who died.  And everyone’s favorite minor character – Aaron, the head Secret Service Agent – got to see some real action in this installment, and even though his car was blown up he got to take out a few terrorists and save the life of the First Lady.  Great, great, great episode.

Wow.  This is the “Battlestar Galactica” I have come to know and love.  Just when you think you know where the show’s going, just when you think you know who you’re going to care for and side with, the creators take a huge left turn and take you totally by surprise.  The human-Cylon baby is born, but the President doesn’t want it raised by her Cylon mother.  So the mother is told her child is dead, providing one of the most heartbreaking scenes I’ve seen on the show yet.  The child is really put in the care of a young woman who is sworn to secrecy – but somehow I think that’s not going to happen.  And in a major twist, we get to see what life is like for the Cylons living on the humans’ abandoned home-world.  In a society of uniformity, two Cylons who lived among humanity for quite some time have a hard time adjusting.  Number 6, the spectral figure haunting Baltar, is now a hero of the Cylons, but finds herself haunted by a spectral Baltar.  Something strange is going on here.  And Sharon, the Cylon who shot Adama, still can’t think of herself as a machine.  So the two women aspire to find a way to bring peace to the galaxy.  Wow.  I’m so excited to see where this series goes.

Okay, this week’s episode more than made up for last week’s predictable (if still adrenaline-pumping) installment.  In the first few minutes, we get the mid-level baddie killed off by his boss, and their government contact (the guy we all thought was behind everything) gets a hit put out on him.  Little Rudy/Samwise Gamgee is cranky and decides to put Jack in custody for disobeying his orders and saving a mall full of innocent civilians.  But the one man who can help them find the nerve gas will only speak to Jack and so Jack goes rogue for the fourth or fifth time this season.  The government guy turns out to not be quite as evil as everyone thought and gives Jack the information he needs – not before he gets himself killed, though.  The information is kind of a letdown.  It’s just some company that Jack is going to go check out next week (where he’ll undoubtedly kill off a few more bad guys).  But the real kicker happens when the head terrorist calls the President and demands that he give them the Russian President’s route to the airport.  Weasely McGee agrees and sends the Russian President and his wife off to their death, but not before the First Lady (fully aware of her husband’s less-than-honorable decision) gets in the car with them – ready to die if her husband doesn’t do something to stop the insanity.  That, my friends, is a cliffhanger.

It’s weird.  There’s so much wrong with this episode – so much not to like about it – that I never would have thought it would be one of the more interesting episodes of the season.  One the one hand we have the main storyline with Apollo and Starbuck aboard the Pegasus, trying to figure out what’s happened to a group of lost pilots.  The Pegasus’s new commander is pretty much an idiot.  But we all know what’s going to happen, don’t we?  The commander is going to sacrifice his life in order to make up for his mistakes (he is a man of honor, after all) and save the lives of his crew.  That part of the story was pat and predictable.  However, the rest of the episode – the subplot – was what I’ve come to expect and adore about this revamping of a staple of 70’s sci-fi cheese.  It’s getting close to election time and the President has strong support.  But a girl sneaks aboard Galactica to have an abortion.  Even though abortion had been legal before the war had started, the President begins to see that if they don’t start having children soon; humanity will die off.  So even though she believes in the freedom to choose, she chooses to outlaw abortion.  And in a real twist, Baltar – the villainous Vice-President being influenced by the enemy – chooses to run against the President and support the right to choose.  This is “Battlestar’s” strength – going against conventional wisdom and asking hard questions, then trying to sort through all the mess in between.

It’s about time they gave Sayid something more to do than look like a crazy-man wandering through the jungle.  It was nice to see more of his back-story and find out what it was that turned him into the hardened and ruthless torturer he is today.  I don’t know if I buy the whole “Iraqi-Soldier-Trained-To-Torture-By-American-Soldiers” thing, but I guess it works.  I do wonder about this new arrival to the camp.  Is he really an ‘other?’  Or is Sayid mistaken?  I hope they don’t jerk us around too much on this one.  And just when you think you’re going to like Sawyer again, he goes and crushes Hurley’s tree frog.  But, I have to say, if a tree frog was making that much noise and waking me up from my mid-afternoon nap, I’d probably crush it too.

This season has been so hit and miss up to know that it was nice to see an episode that was just fun.  And even though there was a lot about the episode that didn’t work, it was so much better than most of the season that I’m not really complaining.  Clark gets to team up with a teenage Cyborg and tries to keep him from falling into the hands of a group of evil scientists.  I wish Cyborg was here to stay, though.  He was so much more compelling than a lot of the regular characters have become.  Especially with the whole Clark-Lana relationship disintegrating before our eyes.  Speaking of which, I thought they had broken up three or four episodes ago.  I’m really getting tired of the producers jerking us around like this.  It’s getting ridiculous.  If it wasn’t for the fact that Lex has finally turned over to the dark side, I’d be through with the series altogether.

We’re almost halfway through this season of “24,” which means I start to lose interest.  It happens each and every season.  Although I have to admit, so far they’ve kept me glued to my seat.  But whenever they start introducing meaningless relational subplots, I start getting bored.  Let’s get rid of this midlevel bad guy and move on to the next stage of the story.  It’s starting to get repetitive – Jack almost finds the nerve gas, Jack doesn’t find the nerve gas.  Let’s move on already.  Okay, I’m done ranting.  This was still a fun episode.  And Jack the superhero even gave up his gas mask to give to a little girl.  How sweet and touching.  But you know his decision to go against his bosses is going to come back to haunt him – again.  I just hope they can follow last season’s strong leading and keep me hooked for the next sixteen episodes.

If you didn’t get it when the series started, the creators of the new and improved “Battlestar Galactica” are commenting on our own current war on terror, using science fiction to discuss their themes and issue a little more freely.  The parallels are frightening and fascinating.  But the thing I really like about the show is the way it’s able to ask difficult questions about morality without ever descending into easy answers or cheap sentiment.  A few episodes ago we met a militant anti-war faction in the fleet.  And then last night’s episode takes an entirely different perspective.  Rumors have begun to circulate among the civilians that the military is harboring a Cylon agent.  So in a quest for revenge over the death of her husband, guest star Dana Delany takes hostages aboard a recreation ship.  She wants the Cylon agent handed over to her and her friends, or she’ll start killing the captives – including Apollo and Colonel Tigh’s wife.  The ensuing debate is a fascinating discussion of compromise and (as the title implies) sacrifice.  I will be a little frustrated if they spend too much time in upcoming episodes on the love triangle which seems to be forming between Apollo, Dee, and Starbuck.  But if that’s the worst thing this series does, it will still be better than all but a handful of the TV shows out there.