The storm before the calm.

The Holiday hiatus is the hardest part of the TV season for me.  I don't much care about the litany of holiday "specials" that they foist on us, and while the summer is it's own mini-season now, the winter hiatus is a month of reruns and old cartoons.  Thank God that we seem to mostly be going out on a bang before everything is put into deep freeze until sometime in January. 

The Glee kids took another trip to sectionals and while the episode wasn't quite as fun as last week (no Sue and no Burt - boo!), it was better than most of the season that's preceded it.  The writing is still unforgivably uneven and most infuriating is the way they change the personalities of the kids to suit whatever story they want to tell each week.  Say what you will about how selfish and annoying Rachel is, at least she's the same every week (Kurt too).  The rest of the kids are all over the damn place.  One week they love and support each other, the next they hate and plot against each other.  It's 50/50 whether you'll get Puck the badass or Puck the helpful friend. 

Santana may want to punch Rachel every time she opens her mouth, but I'd like to punch Santana every time she's on camera - open mouth or not.  We spend all this energy on the Karofsky/Kurt bullying arc but it's ok for Santana to be a mean bitch to Rachel whenever the mood strikes?  Sorry, but no.  The songs were enjoyable again this week and I love every scene that Kurt and Rachel share together (when the glee club kids graduate from McKinley, I think the show should leave Ohio and follow Kurt and Rachel to New York and watch the two of them try to make it on Broadway).  Blaine and Sam have sure added a heaping helping of CUTE to the proceedings and that helps take my mind off of some of the things about the show that fill me with rage.  I didn't even mind the Finn/Rachel/Puck stuff once I stopped paying any attention at all to Santana's involvement in it.  But the ice under this show is getting thinner by the minute so I hope the back half sucks a whole lot less than the front half did or it's going to splash right into the dark, cold waters of a season pass cancellation. 

One Tree Hill on the other hand, has found a way to be ridiculous and over-the-top while also being completely and wonderfully entertaining.  Bringing Dan back and playing up his creepiest qualities and then having him be a "good guy" in the end was fun.  The silly redneck wedding was purely throwaway and cheesy but if you didn't enjoy watching the Tree Hill gang over-do "redneck" then you are cold and dead inside.  Everything about the episode was fun to watch up to and including the completely insane ending that had Dead Ringer singing aloud in the car to a stalker's anthem as she headed back to Tree Hill to finish what she started (who let that woman out of the nut house?).  I know this show gets a bad rap from critics and...most everyone else over 21 in the world but they can all suck it because this show is what Desperate Housewives has always wanted to be but never managed. 

Thanksgiving came late to Life Unexpected and when it got there, it carbo-loaded and dropped a big pile of sad on everyone.  We haven't officially confirmed that Emma spent her best years banging Papa Baze but, come on, we all saw the looks and his ridiculous over-reaction - we know what's up.  Cate is pregnant so naturally there's lying and subterfuge followed by fighting and childishness followed by making up because that's how those two roll.  I'm ok with it - it's what we're used to.  Emma's son (I know he has a name but for the life of me, I can not remember it - let's just call him Degrassi) is no Jones, but if he wants to blackmail Lux into kissing him and dumping Tiny Teach for him, I'm totally for it. 

You know what though?  Who cares about all of this because the important thing that happened this week, is what's going to happen next week (yeah, technically that makes no sense but that doesn't make it any less true).  The police showed up at the loft looking for Cate and Ryan because they're arresting Tasha for how she almost killed the scary foster dad (and, you know, Cate and Ryan are Tasha's legal guardians) so next week we go to trial where we confirm that Scary Foster Dad molested (raped even?) Lux and beat her and all kinds of stuff.  But here's the thing you guys, Tasha really did hit the dude with a shovel and Degrassi really did witness it so even if we find out for sure that SFD was an SOB (heh), Tasha could still go to juvie.  Save Tasha!

I don't think I've said much about Terriers here but I have given it quite a bit of love on Twitter and the fact of the matter is that it is a perfect show.  Unfortunately it's a perfectly IGNORED show by most people so it's ratings have been, in a word, abysmal which is a crying shame because if it gets cancelled after how amazing that season finale was, I will cry real and heartfelt tears.  I'm reluctant to talk about what happened because if you haven't watched the show, you need to stop reading this right now and go watch every single episode of it either on the internet or download it from iTunes.  I guess I'll just say that Hank wrapped up the Ocean Beach Airport case with the help of Britt, Mark, and Laura but, wrapping up that case opened another can of worms that is exactly the kind of worm can we'd enjoy watching them sort through in season 2.  Britt dealt with his legal and relationship problems like the man that we've always known him to be.  Then, in the end, our boys sat at a crossroads contemplating their futures.  I hope they pick the future that's straight ahead because that's the future I want to find them in when (WHEN!) the show is renewed for a second, perfect season. 

You know what else is perfect?  Friday Night Lights.  When the kids on this show play a football game, I stand up and scream for touchdowns, passes, sacks, interceptions, fumbles - you name it, I scream for it like it was a live game with an undetermined outcome.  The Loins Lions won their game this week against the Racist Dickheads but that was really the least of the story.  The thing is though, I can't really tell you what the most of the story was because it's not necessarily the plot points with this show.  It's the moments.  The true-to-life little things that they just get so right - like when Coach had a heart-to-hear with Vince while he cooked bacon in his office (which...wha?), or when he sat on the patio silently listening to Vince, Luke, Tinker and Hastings talk as boys do, or when the boys shared some drunken reverie and then needed to be patched up by Jess.  How 'bout when Coach called home to tell Tami that they'd won and had a half-drunk flirty phone conversation with his half-drunk wife?  Even when Julie came crawling home after being humiliated at school by her boyfriend's wife.  That's just a partial list of the moments that the episode contained.  What will we do without this show? 

Moving back into the realm of the not-critically-acclaimed-but-still-completely-awesome, let's talk about Hellcats, shall we?  The entire episode can be summed up in three words: Marti ruins everything!  Dan is leaving town because she threw herself at him a little and then when he told her he had feelings for her and he wanted to do something about that she blew him off.  Lewis found out about Marti's indiscretion at the same time the rest of the Hellcats did because that's how Marti chose to come clean to Savannah - by telling her she was "with" Dan "physically" in front of everyone.  Gross, Marti.  Really gross.  Do I think that Savannah maybe should have cut Marti the tiniest break considering that the confession took place MOMENTS after Marti had saved her from being date-raped?  Yes.  Does that completely negate the shittiness of what Marti did?  No.  I'm not completely heartless, it was kind of sad to see Marti so distraught at the end, but I don't have too much sympathy because she brought that on herself.  She ruins everything, you guys.  EVERYTHING.