Middle of the Road

It's the middle of the week, and thanks to some network schedule restructering, I can breathe a sigh of relief. When Glee comes back in two weeks, I won't have to gnash my teeth over the fact that I'm missing both L&O: SVU AND Modern Family. PRAISE THE LORD! Plus, thanks to the fact that USA plays its shows on the regular as repeats, I won't have to worry quite so much about missing Mary and Marshall in In Plain Sight.

In Plain Sight came back this week after a hella long hiatus, and even though it had the requisite "here's what you forgot from last time" intro, I still felt like I would have benifited from an all day marathon of the previous season. What gives, USA? Help a viewer out a bit. Anyway, at least the major things were in order, and got resolved. Mary got shot, she's recovering but well enough to go around kicking ass, she's still with her fiance, her sister's still with the guy from Alcoholics Anonymous, and her house got fixed up. In the season opener, we get a witness who used to hustle and gets tied up in some mess. Turns out it's actually his son and his stepson who end up messing with some low life scum causing the double team of M and M to come running to the rescue. I'll be honest, I didn't pay much attention to the witness case this week. The dad seemed like he thought punching, shooting and then asking questions were the best ways to approach a problem, while the kid got the crap beat out of him by the low life and his thugs.

It was much more interesting to watch Marshall slip back into his smart aleck mode, irritating the hell out of the leader of one of the gangs in order to get him to cough up the name of Mary's shooter. His one request that Marshall never come near him again in exchange for the name was hilarious, a lot funnier than Mary chasing after her morbidly obese shooter lumbering away with a teeny Chihuahua in his arms. I thought the latter would be more dramatic, but it came off slightly weird.

Here's hoping the second season shapes up with a really good storyline.

I CANNOT wait for Modern Family's freshman season to finish. Why's that? I love the show, and want the DVD in my grubby fangirl hands ASAP. It's sassy and hilarious, but unlike most comedies where there seems to be an underlying hatred of one another, this clan clearly loves each other even if they don't fully understand their quirks. This week was Phil's birthday, and the poor guy just wanted an IPad...and possibly a surprise party. Claire fell asleep on the couch when she was supposed to get in line to get one at the Apple store, and spent a majority of the episode desperately searching for one. Littlest Dunphy, Luke managed to snag one through his dad's "geek" friends, by lying about his father's health. Gloria and Manny pretended to be awful at chess only to whup Jay's butt at it later, and in an "aw shucks" moment, Jay and Gloria resolve to quit playing their increasingly competitive game because one of them will inevitably lose and end up moping. The confessional scene that follows is all the more hilarious because it's so relatable. Gloria admits that she could have beat Jay in two moves, and Jay thinks he would have had a chance. Mitchell was paranoid about his lack of self defense skills, tried and failed to properly master the Jiu Jitsu tips his father tried to relay to him, and ended up in the silliest little fight outside the Apple store where Claire was in line. Cameron spent the entire episode spying on a couple of neighbors via the baby moniter's wacky signal in the driest story of the three families, finally interfering and setting things right.

This week SVU was crazy. Flat out crazy. The first case was a dummy one, dealing with a serial killer who seemingly resurfaced and was quickly caught and convicted. Case closed. The one victim who wasn't really killed by the suspect turned out to be the actual focus this week, centering on a trio of retro fab actresses as former mistresses of a matress selling mogul. The cop who was a rookie and on their case ended up being the delusional killer. Sometimes I think I know where this show is going and then it veers off in a completely different direction. That's all and well, but it has a tendency to pile on the batshit so the drama becomes an afterthought. Take a clue from Original Flavor SVU, next week's episode looks like it gets back to the nitty gritty of a case minus the guest star extravaganza.


And on that note: ONE DAY TILL FRINGE RETURNS! HUZZAH!


Also: God, I really hope ratings were good enough for Southland to return for a third season and then some. Give it a chance TNT! It's such a good show, on all fronts!