Sheesh…Thursday nights are really tough.

What I watched:
Ugly Betty
Grey’s Anatomy
ER

What I watched during commercials of other shows:
Survivor (You’re a real visionary, Mark Burnett - your social experiment lasted two whole episodes!)
Celebrity Duets (What, no more Jai Rodriguez?)

What I recorded:
My Name Is Earl
The Office
Six Degrees
Shark

Ugly Betty

I think Ugly Betty is the only show other than Six Degrees (or 6 Tiny Circle Up and To The Right, as I call it), which has been crammed down my throat since July. All of the sociopolitical controversy (”Is it mean to call Betty ‘ugly’ in this cold and cruel world and will her fictional mistreatment result in eating disorders and invisalign braces for a new generation who has never heard of Carol Seaver?”) and awwwwww-ing aside, I thought it was a super-fab show.

Caleb Nichol and Dean Hess have relocated from The O.C. (Side note: anyone else notice Brothers & Sisters ripped off Caleb’s death-by-pool storyline last Sunday? Anyone else even see the show?) to super-fab Manhattan, where they run super-fab Mode magazine and are trying to keep the claws of the wascally Evilmina from taking over the magazine while…the actual editor-in-chief is off having some plastic surgery done by McSteamy, but everyone else thinks she’s dead. I think that’s the premise - but I kept getting distracted by Salma Hayek’s nurse uniform and Hilda’s ever-present “Ask Me About Herbalux” button to take it all in.

Anyway, the whole “just because you’re beautiful/ugly on the outside doesn’t mean you’re beautiful/ugly on the inside” premise fortunately, began to play itself out by the end of the first episode. I don’t think I could’ve handled much more Betty humiliation past last night.

The great thing…Dean Hess and Betty seem to be teaming up to squash Evilmina and her bitchy assistant - feels almost like more of a super-fab comic book than a telenovela…but then again, I don’t watch Univision all that much…and I suspect ABC is trying to milk more than 13 episodes out of this.

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Grey’s Anatomy

You know, and it pains me to say this, I wasn’t all that excited about last night’s episode. Maybe it was the post-Ugly Betty letdown - I was so invigorated and inspired by Betty’s moxie and can/will-do attitude that it was annoying watching everyone at Seattle Grace. Oh boo hoo Cristina, Preston’s a mama’s boy and his Alabamamama doesn’t like you. Wah. Meredith has two hot men fawning over her - what to do, what to do. Wah. Guy has a brain tumor. Wah.

When McMuffin turned Meredith’s house into Kitchen Stadium, I wanted to yell at her, “Everyone’s got problems!” then find Cher to slap her and say, “Snap out of it! Shiva’s over! Even if you’re Catholic!”

I did like the lung cancer patient getting her sugar, booze and freak on before deciding to go back to the hospital for the surgery, though. I told CU that honestly, even if we’d never done it (and if we never would), most women I think at one point of another, have wondered what it would be like to pick up some hot guy in a bar and “meet him” in the bathroom.

And…dating? In 2006? What a quaint idea. I think my grandma mentioned the word “dating” once when we were talking about the good old days and the mimeograph and buffalo nickels. Oh…and Callie? No way those panties were yours. If George had as much carnal knowledge of you as he claims, he’d know that too. Now, go back to canoodling over Seattle’s Best with The Chief.

Finally, best scene of the night - McSteamy interrupting Addison & Derek’s official “our marriage is dead” declaration, clad in nothing but a towel and a cloud of…hee…steam. I squealed. Rob Corn, your direction is perfection, my man…and I don’t mean that in a Bruno Tonioli sort of way.

ER

What can I say…only a few weeks have passed for our second favorite group of medical professionals, but enough time has passed where I couldn’t remember Gallant’s first name when I was waxing poetic about how sad Neela looked. “Um…I forget…um…Gallant died not too long ago. That was his name, right? Gallant?”

I guess the folks over at NBC decided they didn’t have enough hot interns to entice their residents, so they went and made John Stamos into the World’s Oldest Intern since…Abby Lockhart. Watching all of these 30 and 40-something interns inspires me. Maybe I should go back to medical school. Nah, I can’t…I’d be too embarrassed trying to have sex in the supply closets and on-call rooms.

Speaking of Abby - it really bugged me how they kept toying with my emotions. The baby’s dying, the baby’s stable, the babyohmygodthatmachineisbeepingfortheloveofgodcalladoctor and then finally, they make it sound like the kid died - and then we cut to her loving on her new son and all of a sudden - 40 years of mother/daughter angst is gone - just like that. Wha?? Guess they had to tidy up that subplot so Sally Field can go finish out three more episodes of Brothers & Sisters before it gets cancelled. Then she can come back and play Meddling Grandma some more.

In other news, Sam killed her ex last week and avoided all repercussions this week, Pratt & Morris are attendings and Carrie got fired! Now we just need a little more music by The Fray and the show will be set for the rest of the season.