Catchup: Brotherly love is a foreign concept for FX's "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia"

     Glenn Howerton, Charlie Day, Rob McElhenny, Danny DeVito
     and Kaitlin Olson of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia"

At the climax of the Season 7 episode "Sweet Dee Gets Audited," the anti-heroes of FX's hysterical and absurd "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" conclude that what they're about to do - hosting the funeral for a baby that Dee wants to claim as a dependent but due to its fakeness she can't prove exists to the IRS - is the worst thing they've ever done.

And...whew. That seems like a rather bold statement coming from the likes of Mac (Rob McElhenny), Charlie Kelly (Charlie Day), and the Reynolds family - Dennis (Glenn Howerton), Sweet Dee (Kaitlin Olson), and their "father" Frank (comedy veteran Danny DeVito) - considering Dennis and Dee once got themselves addicted to crack so they could qualify for welfare. Considering the guys once not only abandoned Dee when confronted by an armed mugger, but actually pushed her into him as they ran away. Considering "The Gang," as they like to call themselves, once started jacking up prices at the bar and serving watered-down alcohol to underaged drinkers.

I think you get the idea. These people are among the world's worst. The lowest of low scum.

And yet, it can be so damn entertaining and hilarious to watch them screw with each other for twenty or so minutes.

"How I Met Your Mother": Twelve laughing viewers

   Joe Lo Truglio, Jason Segel, and Joe Manganiello in
   "How I Met Your Mother"

Tearing into "How I Met Your Mother" has really lost all purpose, since it's had the same, unwavering problems for a few years now and we're in so deep that nothing's going to change. But tonight's episode really ramped up both the sexism and contempt for the audience enough that I felt I needed to make fun of it. Also, it would be a shame to have no posts for November, despite promising myself I'd write a thing about my recent "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" catchup.

Perhaps I should follow in the footsteps of Pete Wells from The New York Times and write this solely in rhetorical questions. For example, HIMYM, do you actually believe that women are irresponsible human beings, unable to be tasked with the decision of determining guilt impartially when confronted with an attractive man? Is it completely logical to you that a jury, meant to reflect and represent society at large, would be made up entirely of people of the same sex? As a show that once gave us episodes as funny as "Slap Bet" and with devastatingly great performances as "Bad News," does the laugh track have to guffaw every time that Joe Manganiello shortens words? Is it really the right decision to have Josh Radnor at 38 playing a teenager when it was implausible enough to believe him at 32 playing Ted's college-aged self? And years after anyone lost interest in anyone's jobs (or their personal lives, really), what is the excuse for sending Marshall into new professional territory after having him flounder for so many seasons that isn't simply the easiness of lazy writing and time wasting?

With Angus T. Jones joining a cult, the fate of the ridiculously expensive "Two and a Half Men" remains in doubt, and I worry that CBS will be hesitant to let two of its most successful comedies go in the same year. And really, I've come to the conclusion that at this point, certain shows only exist to give Dennis Haskins a paying job. Though he did appear as the head of desserts last season, "Mad Men" was not one of them. This one is.

16 new episodes remain this season. Good lord, may they be the last 16 I ever see.

Sunday reviews: Excellent outings for "The Walking Dead" and "Homeland"

   David Morrissey of "The Walking Dead," and Claire Danes
   and Damian Lewis of "Homeland"

Wow. That was a damn good night for TV, featuring fantastic episodes from two shows I could easily rank among my favourites.

With "The Walking Dead," I place more emphasis on "could" since I don't think I've really liked an episode of the show since the season 2 premiere. Last year I found that much like the creatures who threatened our heroes, "The Walking Dead" became very stagnant and slow moving, thinking what it was doing was enough to be effective...and it wasn't. With the reputations of critical darlings like "Mad Men" and "Breaking Bad" preceding it, AMC's zombie hit attempted to reach that level of storytelling and character development, and for the most part failed. I longed for the days of season one when the show was just running around and shooting zombies - a show I could at least enjoy as a guilty pleasure. After a season finale I didn't hate last year, I came into the third season with renewed optimism but still some reluctance to forgive, and this week was a major step in the right direction. I've spent two weeks yearning for a return to stories focusing on Andrea and Michonne, and having long grown tired of Rick and the gang's wacky misadventures, how refreshing it was to watch an episode where they are reduced to but a passing mention from one handed Merle, of all characters. More importantly, how refreshing it was to be introduced to new characters on this show who didn't make me want to stab my eyes out. David Morissey's mysterious "The Governor" (just "The Governor," never his real name) piques some serious interest, certainly more than the blink-and-you'll-miss-them prisoners from last week. I almost convinced myself I wanted to see more of them, and by the time they were dead I couldn't care less. Instructions for next week, writers: take us back to Woodbury, and shows us more of the Andrea/Michonne relationship. Also, I'm in no rush to see Rick and his soul family again. But I doubt you'll be interested in taking me up on that last bit.

"Homeland" continues to be a televisual force of nature with tonight's episode "Q and A," in which Carrie and Brody have an hour long conversation that simultaneously wins Claire Danes and Damian Lewis next year's Emmys. Holy. Crap. I was on the edge of my seat during most of the interrogation scenes, but no more so than in the second half of the episode when Carrie turns off all the cameras and gives Brody the "Wouldn't it be nice to stop lying?" speech. Have you ever seen such outstanding acting it actually wanted to make you pull your hair out? After tonight's episode, I can say that I have - weird as that may be. Whenever I discuss "Homeland" with my brother, the question we usually come back to is "What now? How does the show possibly continue into a second season? How does the show finish season 2? How does the show go into season 3?" After Brody's arrest last week, the question was never more prevalent. And tonight's answer of immunity for Brody in exchange for his help in unravelling Abu Nazir's plot is going to make for one hell of a second half for what is already a fantastic sophomore season. Then, we come to Kim Bauer and her cougar  Tyra and Landry's 12 state killing spree  Dana and Finn's hit-and-run. Already people online are comparing those fondly remembered subplots to tonight's adolescent antics, and while I'd like to think those people are wrong, there's too much evidence to suggest this doesn't spiral out of control (especially considering enough of the creative team behind "24" is now working here). Prove me wrong, kids. Prove - me - wrong! Still, all in all, a phenomenal episode. The funny thing is, given how absolutely exceptional Danes and Lewis are, it's almost plausible that they could turn around and top this next week. But to ask that would be greedy, because tonight, we got "Q and A" - one of the best television episodes of the year.

Emmys 2012: Did the voters watch more than three shows this year? (No, not really)

   The team from "Homeland" accepts the Emmy for Outstanding
   Drama Series at Sunday night's 64th Primetime Emmy Awards

They say the easiest way to win an Emmy is to have already won one, and last night's 64th Primetime Emmy Awards crowned very few new winners. The television academy's favourite new drama series "Homeland" took home a number of trophies on the drama side, but "Modern Family" once again undeservedly dominated the comedy awards, winning every category they were nominated for (it's still so very pleasantly weird they didn't get a nomination for comedy writing). Below are my thoughts on each individual winner as well as some notable moments on the telecast, plus the results of my post-nomination predictions. (Spoiler: I did poorly, as usual)

Season 3 of "The Voice" transitions from unwatchable to legitimately maddening

   From left to right: Miranda Lambert's husband, former Mousketeer,
   massive tool, half of Gnarls Barkley, and the short haired guy from
   Maroon 5.

This fall, NBC launched a new sitcom called "Go On", in which widowed sportscaster Ryan King (Matthew Perry) is forced into a handful of "coping with loss" therapy sessions with "Community"-esque misfits before returning to work full time. And Ryan isn't ten minutes into his first session when his sports background takes over and he decides to turn the various losses and pains suffered by the group's established members into a bracket-style tournament that the Tyler James Williams character dubs "March Sadness".

But this parade of sob stories fighting to win over a jury of one's peers isn't unique to "Go On" - in fact, the ridiculous, over the top sob stories on the new season of "The Voice" consumed a third of the primetime hours on NBC this past week.

Quick review: NBC's "The New Normal"

     The cast of the new NBC comedy "The New Normal"

The upfronts trailer and early ads for NBC's new Ryan Murphy-created comedy "The New Normal" did not exhibit promise. There might be a more obvious thematic trend in the actual content of these new fall shows that I'm overlooking, but right now it seems like this season is seeing a lot of very talented and/or funny actors working on some real duds of shows. While traveling in the U.S. over the holiday, I took advantage of Hulu to watch a couple of pilots before they air on TV, and "The New Normal" was one of them. Rather than write up a specific review, I've copied and pasted a message I sent to a friend on Facebook describing all the things I didn't like about the show, most of which were reasons that I both abandoned "Glee" after its second season and didn't watch a second episode of "American Horror Story".

My reaction to "The New Normal" immediately after viewing:

Wasn't a fan of The New Normal. It's somewhere between meh and bad. Typical Ryan Murphy problems - serious tonal issues and at times unearned sentimentality. The old lady character from the ads is the main character Goldie's grandmother (because everyone in their family gets knocked up really young - Goldie is in her late 20s and got knocked up at 15) and she's basically Sue Sylvester, over the top for cheap laughs and you can already tell she's only gonna get worse. It's half unfunny sitcom and half lecture on tolerance.

One of the problems I have with Modern Family is that it seems far too often that Mitch really can't stand Cam but it's played as "oh that crazy Mitch and Cam, they're such a couple" like we're supposed to find it cute or endearing. This couple is kind of the same thing. Bryan is the "Cam" of this couple but kind of more of an unapologetic dick. But again, I think we're supposed to find it endearing that he means well, which is really cliched. He's recording these videos for his unborn child and cries at just the thought that the kid might call him daddy, and then when he's meeting with the guy from the surrogacy services all he wants for the child is that it will be blonde and thin.

Also, not to totez spoil this show for you, but this pilot ends on a goddamn cliffhanger re: whether or not Goldie (that's her actual name) will be impregnated from the artificial insemination. Can't think of another comedy that's ever done that. Cheap ploy to get people back for week 2. NICE TRY RYAN MURPHY BUT KTHXBAI.

Sigh. Oh well. My hopes weren't high, so this feels about right. I just so want NBC to have success with a good show. Fingers crossed for "Whitney" to become a surprise sophomore hit!!! Except...then I guess only the first part is true. Anyway.

Didn't end up finishing Fox's "Ben and Kate", but hopefully I can do that tonight and write up something about it tomorrow.

Greg Daniels promises a good final season for "The Office" - do I believe him?

Note: This has been a work in progress since last week, so a little bit of the wording is off re: dates. "Tuesday" refers to last Tuesday, August 21.

On Tuesday morning, I took a fun trip to the dental surgeon to have my wisdom teeth removed. Meanwhile, as I was enduring a good deal of pain, somewhere in California, Greg Daniels was relieving a great pain of mine by announcing that the upcoming ninth season of NBC's "The Office" would be the last for Scranton's paper pushers.

I fell in love with "The Office" pretty quickly back in the summer of 2007. Within no time, I suddenly found myself quoting the show constantly and anxiously awaiting the premiere of the fourth season. To my sadness, the show hit a rough patch and slowly but surely has become a pale imitation of its former brilliance. In this writer's opinion, seasons one, two, and three are near perfect; season four has a batting average of about 2/3; season five is probably about half, and has the four or five "Michael Scott Paper Company" episodes carrying it; season six is largely forgettable outside of the Jim and Pam wedding and baby episodes; season seven saw a great sendoff for Michael Scott, and was decent considering how much of the show was broken by then; and last year's eighth season was pretty much horrible.

So I would say that going into the ninth and final season, I am the least cautiously optimistic than I've ever been in the second half of this series. Greg Daniels, who helmed the show during its brightest years, is returning to help send Dunder Mifflin off into the sunset. And he's promised the following changes (courtesy of OfficeTally.com), to which I've attached my opinions.