TVSquad

(S04E03) As a native and resident of New Jersey, I was very offended by this episode.

Actually, that's not true. As most Jerseyans will tell you, we have a sense of humor about our state and make fun of it all the time. But when outsiders make fun of it, boy... watch out.

Ted Mosby's the worst kind of New Yorker; he moves there from some other part of the country, rides a subway or two, has a dog at Papaya King and thinks he has the right to make fun of the B&Ts (Bridge & Tunnelers) who love visiting New York but would rather live in their (slightly) cheaper and quieter homes in the suburbs. We've seen Ted unleash his wrath on the Garden State in the past, but now his dislike of my home state came back to bite him in the ass... in the form of a pretty blond doctor.

(S02E05) The game of time-travel chess continues. It seems that whenever Sarah and the gang foil one Terminator plot, another two crop up in its place (or they fulfill some sort of objective from Skynet and bring things one step closer to Judgement Day).

Observations from tonight's episode:

How did Reese get the credentials to teach at the military school? I know being from the future gives one access to certain information, but it seems a stretch.

(S07E06) Week three did not get off to a great start down at Dancing With The Stars HQ. The ten performances we were expecting had been reduced to nine. It seems that while training on Friday night, Misty May-Treanor suffered an injury that would keep her from performing as part of the top ten.

I could go into detail about that right here, above the jump, but I've chosen to be as annoying as the producers of the show, and drag it out until the very end of the post. So, we'll get to that later. Along with Misty's story, we also have a look at how the rest of the couples dealt with tackling the Viennese waltz and the jive. I'll also give you my guess for what it all means for Tuesday's big results show.

(S03E04) A lot of people have said in the comments that it appears as if I don't like Heroes. Believe me, that's not true. I'm actually a huge fan of the show. As a huge comic book junkie for more years and dollars than good sense will allow me to admit, the potential and general premise of this series is tremendously exciting. And the fact that it achieved such mainstream success right out of the gate was nothing short of astounding.

However, just like you'll tell your wife whom you love more than anything else that she has a piece of lettuce stuck in her teeth, I'm not going to just put on rose-colored glasses and pretend that every scene, line and moment of each episode is solid gold. If I see lettuce, I'm going to call them on it. Because the way I see it, it's just lettuce. It doesn't change how wonderful and beautiful she is in the slightest. It's just a little thing that needs to be taken care of because it's distracting me and it doesn't really fit the whole look her face is going for. Kind of like whatever's going on with Mohinder.

New York magazine has reported that the Saturday Night Live team is brainstorming some way to involve the real Sarah Palin in one of the upcoming "Weekend Update" episodes. Word is, she might play Tina Fey in a spoof of her American Express commercial. Granted, this will gain Palin some of those much needed cool points with the comedy crowd, but I'm having trouble picturing this actually coming to fruition. It's fun enough trying to picture what the writers would put her through, because they haven't made any attempts to hide how they feel about her.

Here are the new TV DVDs, in stores tomorrow.

Wow, this is quite a list of shows this week, though I think the only one I'm definitely going to buy is the second season 30 Rock set. Maybe the Three Stooges set too. Those are good sets to have. I'm tempted to buy the complete series set for Speed Racer because I remember it from my childhood, but I have a big suspicion that my memories would be better than the show itself.

• 30 Rock - Season 2
  
• The Beverly Hillbillies - Season 2
• Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern - Collection 2
• Brotherhood - Season 2
• Corner Gas - Season 5
• Doctor Who - The Brain of Morbius and Trial of a Time Lord
• Full Circle with Michael Palin
• Ghost Hunters - Season 4, Part 1
• How I Met Your Mother - Season 3
• Johnny Cash & Friends - Christmas Specials
• Martin - Season 5
• Midsomer Murders - Box Set 11
• Mission: Impossible - Season 5
• The Munsters - Complete Series and Family Portrait
• Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares - Vol. 2
• Robot Chicken - Season 3
• The Sarah Jane Adventures - Season 1
• The Simpsons - Season 11
• The Smurfs - Season 1, Vol. 2
• The Three Stooges Collection - Vol. 4: 1943-45
• South Park - The Cult of Cartman
• Speed Racer - Complete Series
• Speed Racer: The Next Generation - Vol. 2
• Wagon Train - Going West

You know that scene in the movie When Harry Met Sally, when Meg Ryan is in a New York deli and simulates having an orgasm? Then Estelle Reiner looks over and says to the waiter, "I'll have what she's having."?

Well, that's how a lot of actors in Hollywood must be feeling about actor Steven Weber -- "I'll have what he's having!" -- because he's been on a hot streak going from role to role to role, TV series to TV series. The latest is his landing a juicy part on Desperate Housewives.

The former Wings star will be playing Julie's lover, her college professor who's a serial monogamist, having been married three times. Susan, reportedly, is going to freak out about her daughter getting serious with a guy who's old enough to be her father.

This role is being slated for just one episode, so far, but you never know. He could turn out to be Susan's son-in-law down the road.

• At 5, TBS has the Rays/White Sox game, followed by the Red Sox/Angels game.
  
• At 8, ABC has a new Dancing with the Stars, then a new Boston Legal.
• CBS has a new Big Bang Theory at 8, followed by new episodes of How I Met Your Mother, Two and a Half Men, Worst Week, and CSI: Miami.
• NBC has new episodes of Chuck, Heroes, and Life.
• FOX has a new Sarah Connor Chronicles at 8, followed by a new Prison Break.
• At 8:30, ESPN has Monday Night Football, the Vikings vs. the Saints.
• Also at 8:30: Food Network has a new How'd That Get On My Plate, then a new Unwrapped.
• At 9, USA has a new Monday Night RAW.
• At 10, TNT has a new Raising The Bar.
• Food Network has a new Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives.
• MTV has a new episode of The Hills.

Check your local TV listings for more.

After the jump, the late night talk show listings.

Looks like CBS has a hit on its hands.

The Mentalist, the Tuesday night Simon Baker drama, has just been given the green light for a full season. The show is averaging 15.4 million viewers an episode, which is great considering it's in its first season and there are 22 other police procedurals on the network right now.

But The Mentalist is a bit different than those shows. This show runs completely on the personality of Baker, even if he does have a team of investigators that he is part of. The show is really counting on Baker to sell this character, to be charming and intelligent and funny and all that. Plots and scripts can take a show to great places, but if the lead character doesn't work it can really tilt a show out of balance. Baker makes this character work.

I don't know if the rumors about View host Elisabeth Hasselbeck going to Fox News Channel are true or not (Hasselbeck and the show deny it), but at this point I wouldn't blame her one bit.

Hasselbeck has had a lot of battles on the show with her co-hosts, from Rosie O'Donnell months ago to Barbara Walters. But today was the day I actually felt bad for her. The group was talking about the election, and how nasty the election could soon get in the final few weeks (Joy wasn't on the show today, so it was Elisabeth, Whoopi, Sherri, and Barbara). After playing the funny debate sketch from Saturday Night Live, the women discussed Governor Palin's attack on Barack Obama over the weekend, linking him to Bill Ayers (probably a desperate gambit by McCain but a fully legitimate one, I believe). Now, this has been brought up before, most notably by George Stephanopoulos in a debate and also by Hillary Clinton if I remember correctly, but the McCain campaign is bringing it up again.

So when the women discussed it, you can pretty much guess what happened.

Just five episodes into Entourage's long-awaited fifth season, and HBO has already pulled the trigger on a sixth. This morning the pay cable network announced that a sixth season of the popular comedy is in the works with a summer 2009 premiere planned.

So far, season five has seen Vince and the gang head into a downward spiral as he tries to rejuvenate his career in the wake of his last poorly received film, Medellin.

Even though I've seen plenty of positive reviews of the new season (I even gave it one), I still have a bit of an issue with HBO renewing the show. It's not that I disagree with a renewal, but I'm not so sure the timing is right.

On KryptonSite, the producers of Smallville have written an open letter to all the fans of their show. This letter is about the potential upcoming spin-off or complementary series of Smallville called The Graysons, about the life of Dick Grayson and family before he put on the tights and became Batman's partner.

What disturbs me most about this letter is the fact that they mention a season nine of Smallville. Can't they let this series die already? They lost Lana and Lex. Clark is currently working with Lois Lane at the Daily Planet (despite his lack of college education) and rather than a reference to the town he grew up in, Smallville is now a reference to Clark himself. What more can he do without actually becoming Superman?

I admit to a curiosity regarding what sort of storylines they could run in the show to accomplish this goal. I suppose that alone would keep me watching, even though I believe it should end this season.

On this Monday morning, we've got three copies of How I Met Your Mother - Season Three on DVD for three lucky, random commenters. The DVD is available in stores starting tomorrow.

To enter, leave a comment below before 5:00PM Eastern, Friday, October 10 simply telling us why you'd like to own this DVD set. As always, we'll randomly choose three winners amongst the eligible entries. Some other details:
Click here for complete Official Rules.

It looks like more period dramas (such as The Tudors) are headed to pay cable. And this time, "Booth" will not refer to a character on the TV show Bones.

Kevin Bacon will be executive-producing The Booths, a period drama about the Booth brothers, the most infamous of which, John Wilkes Booth, went on to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln.

It sounds like an interesting project. I do like historical dramas, but I'm always disappointed at their tendency to sacrifice historical accuracy for the sake of drama. Of course, when it's good drama, nobody seems to notice.

The nicest thing about being Kevin Bacon, other than being a famous actor, must be that it takes the fewest amount of steps to be in a Kevin Bacon movie for that Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game (the total number of steps would be, I believe, zero). One can say with surefire honesty that Kevin Bacon has been in all of Kevin Bacon's movies.

(S02E10) This seemed an oddly structured episode, with the emphasis more on Betty than Don, with a splash of Pete and Kinsey thrown in. The idea that life was simpler in the old days, should anyone still think that adage applies, is disproved with every hour of Mad Men that unfolds.

For Betty, the impending death of her father has shaken her to the core. A series of strokes has led to dementia and when Don accompanies Betty to visit him in her childhood home, she has to come to grips with not only the fact that he's slipping away, but also be reminded that nearly every vestige of her mother has also gone.