The TV Chick

I am super thrilled to introduce a new weekly column by my awesome writer, Sarah Maines. You may remember her super funny (you had to find humor somewhere) reviews of The Secret Circle and now she will be writing about her favorite moments of the week with some amazing snap shots and captions (hence the title). I laughed out loud at a lot of these snap shots and I know you will, too!

I know I’m not the only one that cries every week while watching Parenthood (I’ve almost gotten to Friday Night Lights status where I tear up during the theme song), and this season all of those tears have been because of Monica Potter. Be honest, you look at that polaroid to the left of this and want to cry because you feel so bad for Christina Braverman. It’s ok, you’re not alone. When we found out that Christina had cancer last week, I was a little worried that this show had gone a step too far. Cancer seems like one of those plots that a lesser show would turn to after they ran out of ideas. The Bravermans have already suffered enough, but my worries about this story arc were more than assuaged this week. Monica Potter is knocking this one out of the park. The scene where Christina tells Adam that she “doesn’t want a solution, [she] just wants him to listen” when she’s scared? There must have been some crazy dust storm in my living room at that moment. Every time Monica Potter comes on screen she is perfection, and it’s time the Emmys took note.

Look, we all know that Animal Practice is not a great show. It’s just not, but we all need to acknowledge how fantastic Crystal the Monkey is. SHE IS A LEGEND. Someone needs to give her an animal Emmy (I know those don’t exist, but if they did…well, she probably would have already won one. Have you seen her IMDB?!) If you checked out of Animal Practice after the pilot, no one blames you if you did, I’m here to tell you that it might be worth 22 minutes of your life every week to watch Crystal the Monkey’s acting. This monkey has range. This entire paragraph sounds like one really long joke, but I promise I’m being (mostly) serious. Let me just list for you the range of emotions Crystal plays in this week’s episode: She paints a splatter painting, gets angry when a human tries to sell her painting, becomes depressed after the painting is gone, then gets happy again after her painting is returned. Oh, and she knows how to Tebow. Enough said. The rest of the show might be kind of a mess, but the creators knew what they were doing when they wrote a monkey into this show. America wants needs to watch a monkey pretend to be a doctor. Well, actually, the 1.4 rating it got this week, shows us that America really doesn’t want that. If anything, this has shown the writers of Community that Annie’s Boobs should be given a little more to do this season after Animal Practice gets canceled.

There are pretty much only two reasons I watch Castle, and one of them is the Castle/Beckett romance. After 4 long seasons, they finally got together and it is glorious. Moonlighting curse be damned! The first 5 minutes of Season 5 were pure awesome. The rest of the episode was a continuation of Beckett’s mother’s murder mystery…blah blah blah, cop stuff, blah blah. I know this is a crime procedural, but come on, writers. Give the people what they want! [Ed. Note: Sarah's original caption here was "How was the sex?" but she thought it might be a bit too much. I loved it very much but we stuck with her first caption.]

Let’s all take a moment to mourn the inevitable death of another quality Shawn Ryan show. R.I.P. Last Resort’s premiere ratings. We might as well enjoy it while we can, and this pilot was top notch. The sheer ambition of a show like this should be celebrated. The lead character launched a missile at his own country! And delivered a badass, heart-wrenching monologue to his crew! Who knows if Ryan & company can sustain the premise, but it should be fun to watch them try.

Schmidt is the best. End of story. He threw himself a “re-branding” party to celebrate the fact that his penis is no longer broken. And then followed that up in episode 2 with a complaint that Jess is cooking a frittata in a sauce pan. “What is this, prison?”