Television recap (May17-23) and Housekeeping

A quick recap of the season finales of The Office, 24 and How I met your Mother. Then, a recap of the series premiere of Glee and finally some blog changes/housekeeping.

How I met your Mother- HIMYM always does a great job of blending the literal with the metaphorical, but this finale took it to a whole new level with "The Leap." Will Robin and Barney leap into something new together? Will Ted leap into a new career direction? The Robin and Barney thing goes mostly unresolved save for a great confession from Barney, Robin "Mosbying" Barney and some hot kissing, but for the most part we are exactly where we were before. Ted gets beat up by the goat that we have heard about since season 1. The goat caps off a horrible year for Ted and he decides to change directions and becomes a college professor, which is where he will eventually meet mother. I thought the episode was perfect. Marshall was funny, Lilly was mothering, Robin and Barney were funny and charming together and Ted was in the center of it all. I can only imagine 2 or 3 more seasons of this show, so I am glad they are progressing and I can see all kinds of hot girls parading around Ted's college professor life.

24- The final two hours somehow managed to be very exciting, even with Jack Bauer not able to do too much. I wanted a stronger final confrontation between Jack and Tony, but with Jack nearly dying, how much more could I have wanted. Of all the season finales 24 was the only one that actually brought tears as Bauer was lying on his death bed with a new friend at his side. I liked that Kim Bauer actually was proactive and helped get herself out of her situation and any chance to watch Elisha Cuthbert run on my television is a win in my book. The episodes had nice shootouts and a nice chase and some very solid acting, especially from the President as she had to make a very hard decision about her evil daughter. I was glad to see Agent Pierce get something heroic to do and I am hoping he will be kept on next season when the show moves to New York. Overall I felt like this was a pretty great season of television's most ridiculous action show.

The Office- I missed it last week, so I had to catch it on-line this week and I am so glad I did. How great was this finale? How sublime was Steve Carrell in this episode? He captured all of the things about Michael Scott that I like. He was awkward, but it was not forced, but most of all he was romantically wounded and Carrell sure knows how to play that! Wow. However, in true The Office style we also get the silly sub-plot of a Volleyball tournament where Corporate becomes the villain and Scranton becomes the hero for all branches. But mostly, we watched Jim get all big faced and happy at some news we did not hear, but we know what it is. I loved how they shot that scene and how wonderful John Krazinski was in that moment. Jim and Pam have become one of the most endearing television couples because the show avoids the usual sitcom drama and this was a really nice pay off.

Glee- I had no idea this show was going to be an hour long, so that concerned me right off the bat, but the energy and the optimistic attitude displayed for the hour really made the show shine. It was a bit uneven and sure, it had some stereotypes, but overall I found myself really enjoying the show. I could do without the wife and her idiosyncrasies, and Jane Lynch who is usually hilarious feels trapped by the network television standards and the principal is not nearly as funny as the show wants him to be, but Lea Michelle makes up for all of it. She is so incredibly gorgeous, energetic and shows a flare for comedic timing. Of course, the real key of this show is the music. Every week it is going to have to make songs interesting and fresh and the premiere did a great job of showing a great variety of songs. We got Amy Winehouse's "Rehab", some show tunes and the big winner was Journey's "Don't stop believin.'" I am on board for now and plan on being on board for the long haul, but I am not a fan of waiting until the fall to catch the next episode.

Housekeeping

With the regular television season gone and with summer here, I am going to slightly tweak the blog and hopefully with no papers to write, I will be able to properly keep it up, but remember there is only one of me. From now on things will look as follows:

Sunday- Lists. This will give me the whole weekend to work on them. I will also take requests here for any lists anyone wants to see.

Monday/Tuesday- The summer movie season offers me enough new movies that I should be posting at least one review each of these two days, but probably more than 1 per day. This week I am going to try and knock out 3 a day, but I might have to put off a few for next week.

Wednesday- This is still a wild card day that will include album reviews, DVD reviews, random reviews, essays or random movie thoughts.

Thursday- I am going back to work on watching Robbie's list of movies released before 1990 for "Throwback Thursdays." I have enough free time now that it should not be a problem.

Friday and Saturday will be off days for now. I am not sure what else I could possibly fill this blog with, but am always open to suggestions. The current grading system and the television recaps were both ideas from readers, so if you have a way to improve it please let me know.

I am going to try and do a better job of linking to the blog, as well. I will link to it every day from Twitter (username: KyleHadley), I will link a few times a week from Myspace bulletins and then I will probably link from Facebook on weekends.