TVSquad

(S04E15) Do you remember what you were doing on May 16, 2004? Think hard, it's important. Seriously, that information could determine exactly how you feel about tonight's episode.

On May 16, 2004, The Sopranos aired an episode called "The Test Dream." Tony, reeling from an impending separation and problems in Mafia-town, went a little funny in the head and spent most of the episode engaged in the longest, most weirdly symbolic dream sequence in the history of television (until, that is, the show broke its own record two years later). If you remember, fans of the show were pretty angry; my father, for instance, shot out his screen, Elvis-style.

Anyway, I'm going to guess that you either loved that episode or hated it. How you felt about it probably informs how you felt about tonight's House. My own feelings about it are simple...

Sissy Spacek is set to star in Pictures of Hollis Woods, a Hallmark Hall of Fame TV movie based on the book by Patricia Reilly Giff. The movie tells the story of Hollis Woods (Jodelle Ferland), an artistic twelve year old girl who is adopted by an art teacher, Josie (Spacek), who cares for Hollis. Josie's trouble with remembering things gets worse and worse until Hollis is faced with the task of caring for her. Alfre Woodward plays the social worker assigned to the young girl, who is taken from foster home to foster home before ending up with Josie.

Ann Peacock (The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) wrote the screenplay. Tony Bill (Untamed Heart, Flyboys) will direct. The movie has been greenlit, though no premiere date was mentioned.

Spacek was last seen on television, I believe, in the TV movie Last Call, about the final days of writer F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Western Digital has released its new DVR Expander, which lets you record up to 300 additional hours of standard definition or 60 hours of high definition television programming.

If DVR Expander sounds to you like a fancy name for a 500GB external hard drive, you're right. But this particular model has been designed for and tested with the Scientific Atlanta 8300 PVR, deployed by cable companies across the country.

Basically, the DVR Expander should work with any PVR that has an eSATA port. That should include the Series3 TiVo. Although TiVo hasn't officially enabled the use of the eSATA port on Series3 units, hackers have found it's not too hard to turn it on. We see no reason why the Western Digital hard drive wouldn't work.

The DVR Expander is available now for about $200.

(S17E20) Last night The Simpsons revisited a lot of familiar territory, making this episode not one of the best of the season, though there were a few good moments.

The title, which I didn't catch right away, is a reference to the film Regarding Henry in which Harrison Ford contracts amnesia. Marge gets dizzy on cleaning products and passes out, smacking her head on a stool and causing her to briefly lose her memory. Fortunately for her children and neighbors everything comes back to her. What she can't seem to remember is Homer, which is especially bad news since there doesn't seem to be any real logic behind why they were together in the first place. All of Homer's quirks which she might have once found endearing now seem weird to her.

The episode had some decent "throw away" gags, such as Homer painting an homage to the '74 Oakland A's on his curb instead of his house number, and Dr. Hibbert asking Marge how many fingers he's holding up before revealing he's actually holding up severed fingers from a jar. I can't fully dismiss an episode that made me laugh out loud more than once, but the basic plot trod upon a lot of old ground, such as Homer and Marge becoming estranged, Homer being kicked out, and, of course, Homer finally coming to his senses and proving his devotion to Marge. This same story has been told before with slight variations, and I'm sure we'll see it again, as the relationship between Homer and Marge has been, since the first season, one that isn't without its blemishes. In that regard, my minor gripe isn't that they've been here before, but that they've done it better.