Best of the Week vol. XIV

Before I get into the Best of the Week, let me remind you that you can enter the My Boys Giveaway contest, click the banner at right to see the rules and how to enter.

Quote of the Week: A 12-year-old Ben Linus brought me chicken-salad sandwich. How do you think I'm doing? (Sayid, Lost)

Song of the Week: Making Love Out of Nothing at All – Air Supply (Chuck)

Big News of the Week: I’m Sorry Eric Cantor, You’re just a Tool: I spent a lot of time bashing Barack Obama last week, but the Republicans were quick to show that the democrats aren’t the only morons in Washington. The Republican Whip Eric Cantor not only passed the Presidents latest television interruption, but instead spent Tuesday at a Britney Spears concert.

And when you think a story about a conservative Congressmen going to a Brittney concert can’t get any stranger, he tried to explain himself. Apparently the same night as the Spears concert, the Truckers Association hosted a money raising event in the box at the Verizon Center. So not only did Cantor take in the Circus tour, he did so with a bunch of trucker. About the show, Cantor told CNN, “I hand it to the performer, she was something.” Ladies and gentleman of Virginia’s 7th Congressional District: your United States Representative!

Gratuitous Token Hot Chick Picture of the Week:



Coalition Links of the Week:
American Idol contestants keep getting criticized for their song choices, so Buzz whipped up a few guidelines to help the singers make their picks. (BuzzSugar)

Is it Vance or is The Real World: Brooklyn actually watchable this year? 11 episodes in and Vance doesn't really feel compelled to smack anyone yet. Prank yes, smack no. (Tapeworthy)

This week, Jace took an early look at the two-hour pilot of Sci Fi's new drama series Caprica, the prequel to Battlestar Galactica. (Televisionary)

Marisa's not ashamed of her school girl crush on Demitri Martin. He can totally rock the neck brace. (TiFaux)

Considering the casting of Ian Somerhalder and Paul Wesley, Matt thinks The Vampire Diaries will be as big as Twilight. Not that he's ever seen that movie. (TV Fanatic)

This week, theTVaddict.com put together our ultimate guide to TV stars on Twitter. (The TV Addict)

Free Download of the Week: Sub Pop Sampler (Amazon MP3): Most people remember Sub Pop as the record label that launched the grunge era. But the label has gotten more mellow in recent years as this sampler featuring Iron & Wine, Fleet Foxes and the comedy due Flight of the Concords. If the eleven tracks aren’t enough free for you, look at the Next Week's Pick of the Week.

Deal of the Week: TV Under $15 (The Lone Gunmen, Bionic Woman, Dog Whisperer)

Video of the Week: Despite getting a promotion, you almost have to feel sorry for Conan O'Brien. He is basically in a lose-lose situation thanks to his network undercutting him by still having Jay Leno as his lead in even when he takes over the The Tonight Show. Adn when NBC gave Leno a promo during the Super Bowl, the only commercial Conan got was a Bud Light one. But at least he can reest in the solace his ad is much better than Leno's and features the talents of Ice-T, Paul Rudd and Adam Sandler. That and he will get one of the biggest buy-outs when Leno wants his gig back.



Next Week Pick of the Week: Greek, Monday at 8:00 on ABC Family: Just when you thought Mondays couldn’t get more crowded, here comes the return of the best cable series not named Rescue Me (much more on that show next week). Considering the last season ended with Frannie coup of creating her own sorority and siphoning off most of the pledges, the new season should start off with a bang. If you forget or just want a refresher of the season finale, iTunes is letting you download it for free, as well as last season’s premiere episode, and in HD.

Contest: My Boys Giveaway and Season Three Preview

(Scooter's Note: This contest has ended. Congratulations to Emily in New York for winning the signed poster.)

This coming Tuesday (March 31) sees the return of TBS’s My Boys and in honor of the third season I have a poster autographed by the whole cast which you can see at right (click to enlarge, autographs will be added later). Answer the following question to enter the contest.

Since the show takes place in Chicago, what is your favorite historic monument or building in the city?

You can e-mail your entries to ScooterKSU(at)aol(dot)com (subject: My Boys). You can also get a bonus entrée f you link the contest; make sure you let me know you did in your e-mail where so you get credited with an entry. The contest ends Tuesday, April 7 at 11:59 PM EST. The winner will be picked at random from all eligible entries and will be contacted shortly after. Also this contest is only open to people with shipping addresses in the United States.

If you would like to double (or triple) up your chances of winning, I have noticed the good people over at Give Me My Remote and Pass the Remote are also running the same contest.

As for the show itself, the third season My Boys starts right where they left out at Bobby’s estate the day before his marriage to the nanny, Elsa. You may remember Bobby coming to PJ’s room the night before the wedding only to find her with his brother. Now something big happens in the first episode that I am forbidden by law to talk about which basically takes up the whole episode so there really isn’t anything I can say about it except the guys engage in a lengthy, and very funny contest that provides many of the episodes best line.

By the second episode, PJ has found herself a new beau except she has decided to keep it from her boys, and even Stephanie, which naturally doesn’t sit well with them. They decide to go undercover and of course hilarity ensues (just not as much as when the Nerd Herd had their stake out when Anna got a new boyfriend). And later in the season, the new relationship is put to the test when he joins PJ’s board game decathlon team. Check out below for a preview of the premiere:




My Boys airs Tuesdays at 10:30 on TBS. You can stream select episodes of the show over at TBS.com. You can also download previous seasons of My Boys on iTunes.

Previewing Locked Up Abroad

Remember back in the nineties where there was that kid that got caught spray painting graffiti in Singapore and it got national headlines because the government wanted to give him six lashes and even got referenced in songs by Ice Cube and “Weird Al” Yankovic? Well imaging they took Michael Fay’s trials and tribulations and made it into a series and you would get Locked Up Abroad premiering Wednesday April 1 on the National Geographic Channel.

What is cool about the show is that it is entirely told through the stories of those who lived through the ordeals who provide the narration and those are the only voices you hear aside from the occasional line from the actors reenacting the situation. The stories range anywhere from kidnappings, to home invasions, to those locked up in a prison.

The later is what you will see tonight as two British citizens get caught with cocaine going through a Peruvian airport. And if you have seen previous episodes, this will be a familiar story as this isn’t the first drug mule story the show has profiled (and looking forward to future episode synopsis, it won’t be the last). What sets this case apart, and dudes take note, is that only one of the travelers was aware that they were transporting drugs as the chick offered up a free trip to Cuzco and didn’t let him in on her extracurricular activities landing them both in prison. And to add insult to injury, the male prisons are much worse than the female ones.

You know things don’t go well for the guy when he says, “Sarah’s not only destroyed my life, she’s also destroyed my faith in humanity.” Ouch. I don’t think there are much harsher words in the English language he could have said. And you see the twist at the end of the episode you will completely understand why he says that.

Oh, and have I mentioned that there is gratuitous nudity in the premiere? Unfortunately not the kind I enjoy. Check out a clip (that does not have gratuitous nudity) below:



Locked Up Abroad airs Wednesday at 10:00 on the National Geographic Channel.

First Impressions: Better Off Ted

Whoever said that you can’t judge a book by its cover is a moron. If you see Fabio on the cover you are getting some chick-lit porn, if it is draped in the American flag it is going to be political. In fact, if you are unable to judge the book by its cover, whoever came up with the cover art should be blacklisted.

With that said, everything I needed to know about Better of Ted, I learned from the title because if that is the best title they could come up with, it is doubtfully they could come up with twenty minutes of funny. So I watched Gary Unmarried instead last Wednesday (I do understand the irony considering my initial premise) but ended up giving it a try after all of the Arrested Development comparisons.

Which I could see if Arrested Development was void of anything funny. Of course it wasn’t. Just because they pluck Lindsay Bluth-Fünke and have a narrator that routinely breaks the fourth wall does not make a strong comparison. The big difference between the two shows is that, despite all the bad things they do, most of the Bluths were still likeable whereas the Better Off Ted cast are annoying at their despicable doings save for the two scientist. But still I rarely chuckled at any of their antice where the Bluths were good for at least two you have to rewind because you missed something because you were laughing too hard moments.

Now maybe the biggest problem was they burned off many of their jokes in the advertisements that the channel ad nausea (I had the same problem with The Big Bang Theory) but I would still Sheldon Cooper over the lab rats Veridian Dynamics. And on Wednesday at 9:00, I would even take Louis Brooks over them.

You can stream episodes of Better Off Ted over at ABC.com. You can also download the show on iTunes or though Amazon Video on Demand (see below):

You Don't Know Fear Kid, You've Never Worked with Sam Raimi

Bruce Campbell is a national treasure even if most of the nation doesn’t know who he is despite appearing in all three Spider-Man movies (granted he played three different characters). But he was part of my formative years thanks to Army of Darkness and The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. Really, if the MTV Movie Awards were still hip and relevant, they would have giving him, or at the very least Ash, the Lifetime Achievement Award.

It is the cult like following that is the basis of My Name Is Bruce where Campbell plays the title character, himself. His exaggerated version of himself is a callow, egomaniacal hack who is hated by his co-workers, his ex-wife, and his agent (Ted Raimi in one of his three roles). The only people that don’t hate him are his legions of fans, but he’s working on alienating them too. But it is one zealous fan who just so happened to unleash the Chinese war deity Guan Di that figures the one person that could help him would be the star of Evil Dead and Maniac Cop 2.

But when the fan kidnaps Campbell, he goes along with it thinking it is an acting gig set up by his manager. And then the hilarity ensues. One drawback of My Name Is Bruce is the fake real life Bruce doesn’t exactly live up to the humor or wit of his onscreen version like Ash. And you wish for more catchphrases that you come to expect from Bruce characters. But this movie makes up for it in the terms of musical numbers and has plenty of in-jokes for the hard core Bruce fans and a few cameos from Evil Dead alums.

The big draw to the My Name Is Bruce DVD are the extra like the behind the scenes documentary that is almost as long as the movie itself. There is also a behind the scenes look at the movie within a movie that Bruce is filming, as well as a trailer for the fake flick included.

My Name Is Bruce gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.

Previewing Heckle U

I may not have had a very good first weekend, but I can rest in the solace that I am beating Bachalk Obama. For those of you going through some March Madness withdrawal, staring at your clock hoping it is Thursday already, you will want to check out CBS’s new online series Heckle U. It is a mocumentary following two hecklers who couldn’t make it as athletes or even mascots. It stars Owen Benjamin (The House Bunny) as Chance, Kirk Fox (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) as Darrell, and featured Tom Arnold (Soul Plane) as Lou the Bartender. I laughed more during the first episode than I did during certain network sitcom debuts recently. Head over to CBS.com to see the first episode and check out three heckling rules presented by the duo below.










Please note Scooter McGavin or anyone at the 9th Green in no way endorses Head and Shoulders and did not receive any monitory or shampoo-type compensation from posting the banner above, but if anyone at Head and Shoulders is reading this, they are not above accepting any.

57 Channels and Only This Is On vol. LXXII

The Big Bang Theory: Episodes that have Sheldon and Penny together for a lengthy portions never disappoint and this was no exceptions. Leonard walking in on them singing was the best. You can stream current episodes over at Innertube. You can also download The Big Bang Theory on iTunes.

I Love Money 2: God bless Bones, trying to convince morality ton a French stripper. Of course he had no chance. Which begs the question, why does such a religious guy go on a reality show to try to date New York? You can also download I Love Money on iTunes.

Gary Unmarried: Wasn’t that the same teacher that beat the crap ou of Gary the last time we saw her? I guess she likes dudes who can take a punch even if he were two timing them. You can stream current episodes over at Innertube.

Lost: When everybody initially thought of Sun when it was mentioned that someone saw the pilot row off with a woman I scoffed thinking she had to have warped with the other and was stuck somewhere with Sayid because there was no way they could explain coherently why Sun didn’t flash but the other did. And of course I underestimated the absurdity of Lost.

But after racking my brain I actually came up with a theory as to why some people warp and some do not. Here it goes: Those born on the island do not warp. Now if you remember back to the season premiere everyone assumed that Miles was the baby of the Dr. Candle, but what if it was actually Sun?

Now there are some holes in my theory namely why doesn’t Ben not flash if he were born off the island and if the baby wasn’t Miles then why did he get a nosebleed before, say, Juliet. But it does sorta solve the why isn’t Locke warping in that he was “reborn” on the island. You can stream current episodes over at ABC.com.



My Name Is Earl: Holy Betty White sighting! And who knew she was such an evil witch? Granted it took me most of the episode to finally realize that yes, that was her. You can stream current episodes over at NBC.com. You can also download My Name Is Earl on iTunes.

Friday Night Lights: Poor Lyla, to learn that her father lost her college fund and to add even more insult, he lost it during a meeting in the Landing Strip while destroying the joint. But if she somehow finds her way to college next year, I may be okay if Madison joins the cast next year. You can stream current episodes over at NBC.com.