TVSquad

Attention, TV Squad readers, my friends and fellow television fans, it's time to announce the winner for The Excellence in Outsourcing Award, that is, the foreign actor who possesses the best American accent. There were many worthy nominees, but the overwhelming winner was House, MD himself, actor Hugh Laurie. That Englishman, one of her majesty's loyal subjects, has been making us all believe that he's just a Jersey boy. As Dr. Gregory House of Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, he sounds like he was born in south Jersey, spent his summers in Asbury Park, and is as much a Garden Stater as Bruce Springsteen and Tony Soprano.

(S02E02) I think a better title for this episode would be "Outsourcing--Where's the Outrage?"

As we all know, many jobs in the United States, mostly in the computer programming and telemarketing sectors, have been outsourced to foreign companies, mainly to India. Outsourcing continues to be a hot topic in this country, and I think it would be safe to say that the majority of American workers abhor the idea of an American-based company outsourcing American jobs to another country in order to save on labor costs and increase their own profits. I'm sure there are plenty of people who say outsourcing is a good thing, but I haven't been able to find them.

(S17E17) I thought Family Guy's recent reference to the Great Space Coaster was esoteric, but I think The Simpson's reference to Mac Tonight, a short-lived mascot created for McDonald's in the late 80s, may have topped that.

It's been awhile since I've seen this show running on all cylinders as it did last night. When I watch these shows for review I usually have a pen and paper sitting next to me so I can jot down lines of dialog and other things to write about, but the jokes kept coming so fast I finally gave up and, you know, just watched the show. The opening gag with Lenny having his skeleton exposed by nuclear waste was somewhat of a letdown, since that gag has been used numerous times already, but it was quickly followed by a short film about the joys of outsourcing, which pretty much made up for the lackluster opening gag and set the stage for the rest of the show, which was almost pitch perfect. I loved the reference to those old Calgon commercials when one of the workers in the film, lamenting his job, pleads, "Outsourcing, take them away!"