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It’s nice to have the kids back after a lengthy hiatus. The laughs were good in this episode, especially Marshall questioning whether the past tense of “provide” is “provode,” and NPH’s great Letterman impression (complete with shattering glass) during the final scene [Update on 3.21.07, watch an extended version of this scene on MySpace; NSFW].

Though what I found most enjoyable was that a sitcom (where the golden rule is to never change) actually had me believing that Ted would move in with Robin and that Lily and Marshall would live alone (and give Ted’s room to Barney so that he’d be closer to the bar). Of course this was never going to happen. It can’t happen. Like any sitcom, there’s too much of an emotional investment in the apartment. Still, for most of the episode I thought that it certainly could. Thanks to some clever slight of hand, a story about Barney stealing Ted’s furniture eventually morphed into Ted and Robin realizing they’re happier living apart.

Interesting sidebar question: can you think of any sitcoms where the principle location changed during its run? The only one I can think of would be The Mary Tyler Moore Show — she moved apartments a few seasons into the series run.

Watch “Moving Day” via Innertube at CBS.com

The brilliance of March Madness on television is that there’s no padding. The Super Bowl is a four hour game stretched over two weeks of nonsensical coverage. The World Series can be up to seven nights in October. Seven nights that admittedly are hard to watch if you aren’t personally invested in the teams. Don’t even get me started on the NBA playoffs — almost THREE months of padding.

March Madness is different because its relentless. Over the course of the next 24 hours, 32 basketball games will be played, and for anyone who hastily filled out a tournament bracket each and every one of those games is important. As a TV event, it translates to a fevered rush of statistics, replays, and buzzer beaters perfectly assembled to hold your attention over two days. No other live sporting event can capture the shear volume of competition delivered in this tournament.

I, frankly, can’t get enough — despite the fact that my bracket is all ready a complete disaster.

As the month progresses, the intensity wanes, especially as people realize their shot at that office pool money slipped out of their grasp long before Penn was eliminated. Still, there are enough games being played we’re rarely just strung along. By the finals the hype is either a natural byproduct of the two teams facing off, or is simply nonexistent.

Plus, when the tournament comes to a close, the baseball season finally gets underway.

Watch opening round games on your computer via CBS Sportsline

Last night I had the rare opportunity of watching all of my Monday night television actually on Monday night. This was great for many reasons, not the least of which being I could finally go to sleep at night without my Sensory Deprivator 5000 covered in stickers reading NO SPOILERS! (because, really, the last thing you want while trying to get a good night sleep is ’spoilers’).

I have the full rundown after the break…

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This past weekend my half-roommate and I were watching some old episodes of Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared. Those two shows succeeded for many reasons. Like The Office and Arrested Development a lot of the praise should be placed squarely at the feet of the cast. Judd Apatow may not have ever figured out how to create a television show that wouldn’t get cancelled, but he has developed a keen eye for actors and casting. Along with Seth Rogen, one of his greatest finds was Jason Segel, who played Nick on Freaks and Geeks, Eric on Undeclared and is currently seen as Marshall in the exceptionally charming (and often downright hilarious) How I Met Your Mother.

While watching last night’s HIMYM something struck me about Segel and his presence on the show: it’s solidly underwhelming. This isn’t to say that he isn’t great on it. He plays the character as good as anyone would, but that’s just it: anyone could play that character. Well perhaps not anyone. Tom Sizemore, for example, would be horrible in that role. Marshall needs to only be adorable and lovable. Segel can pull this off in spades, but it hardly utilizes his most significant asset: his bizarre and sometimes freakish intensity.

What’s funny is that his three most significant roles have all been essentially the role of “Boyfriend.” The difference with his Marshall character is he’s madly in love and that love is being reciprocated. In Freaks… Nick loved Lindsay more than Lindsay loved (or even liked) him. In Undeclared Eric loved Lizzie to the point of obsession all while she was in the process of dumping him. Jason Segel needs that edge. He can deliver the creepiest and most hilariously penetrating stare you’ve ever seen. It’s a silent and completely internal performance. Which is all the more fascinating when paired against these over-the-top moments of compulsive energy (like Nick singing “Lady” to Lindsay in his parent’s basement or Eric manically assembling valentines at a copy shop for Lizzie).

How I Met Your Mother has given Segel some room to show Marshall’s crazier, more intense, side (last week’s episode featured a great sequence where he blackmailed a seven-year-old out of his pudding cup). Unfortunately, more often than not he’s being relegated to the silly — not a terrible fate, but in a cast as great as theirs its a shame he can’t let loose more often.

I’ve got a ton of errands to run this morning, but before I do I needed to go ON THE RECORD as saying last night’s halftime show at the Super Bowl was easily the best ever. This is saying a lot as by definition this is a musical presentation that is suppose to appeal to the widest possible audience they can manage, meaning if you do book The Rolling Stones they’re only going to play Satisfaction, Jumpin’ Jack Flash, and Start Me Up. If that isn’t the problem then its a matter of being so unbelievably cheesy its hard for any music fan stomach (look everyone, it’s a surprise appearance by Billy Ray Cyrus!).

Prince was amazing for reasons that included, but weren’t limited to, 1) his ability to play guitar solos like no one else, 2) the fact that it was pouring rain, 3) the visual of him soloing in silhouette so that it looked like he was doing something WAYYY different, 4) he played a Foo Fighters cover(?!), and one more… what was it? Oh yeah. Because he’s god damn PRINCE.

VIDEO OVER AT STEREOGUM

ONE: Did anyone else find the judging round of last night’s Top Chef to be a bit of cop out? Sure, Cliff would have been eliminated reguardless of his Tami/David-influenced prank/ouster, and yes, the contestants had cooked better than they had all season, but surely one of those four could have done more. Elia could have not broken that chocolate heart. Marcel could have not had such a ridiculous haircut. I don’t know, Sam is still alive so I’m happy.

TWO: Tonight, either the real or fake Stephen Colbert will be appearing on The O’Reilly Factor AND culture warrior Bill O’Reilly will be appearing on The Colbert Report. Tune in and watch a cartoon character debate a human (but you won’t know which is which). [8:00pm FOX News Channel, 11:30pm Comedy Central]

THREE: According to the AP, CBS is annoyed they went to all this effort to attract more viewers than any other network and yet still can’t get people to talk about their programs at the water cooler. To fight this the network has decided to focus more on “BUZZ” (I’d have suggested “Zazz!”). Says the article:

CBS is annoyed by the lack of attention paid by the industry, critics and awards shows to series like “NCIS,” which has done particularly well since this past summer, and “Criminal Minds,” which was starting to beat ABC’s “Lost” head-to-head. CBS is airing a “Criminal Minds” episode directly after the Super Bowl to drum up more public interest.

That’s also true to a lesser extent for “Jericho,” the new serial about nuclear survivors that has done well despite some critics judging it the least likely fall series to succeed, said Nancy Tellem, CBS Paramount Network president.

“It is very, very frustrating to know you have hit shows and fantastic actors with story lines as challenging as any others and somehow we can’t break through,” Tellem said.

-David Bauder AP

Yes, who’d have thought that the the whims of the American populace might not coincide with critics? News flash: when Americans are grouped together, we start to get kind of stupid.To counter this, the network is planning for some buzzworthy fare for next fall, including “a musical about a low-rent casino owner, a series about a swinging couple set in the 1970s and a show about an exorcist,” says Nina Tassler, CBS entertainment president.

FOUR: Last night I finished watching the first season of the BBC series Spaced, which aired between 1999 and 2001, and is utterly fantastic. The series, which is notable to fans of “Shaun of the Dead” as the same people were involved, was the culmination of a decade’s worth of Generation X-influenced culture. The basic premise plays along the lines of Three’s Company but that’s where the similarities end. Spaced, instead, is a kinetic, hilarious, explosion of twenty-something laziness. The filmmaking (and the comedy) is as ADHD as its characters, but unlike The Family Guy and other such copycats, Spaced always has a purpose in its insanity. Spaced is the type of program you would expect a vintage Kevin Smith to make if he were more ambitious.

It’s hard to ignore the CBS/Viacom synergy while watching the new “reality” show Armed and Famous, which premieres Wednesday night at 8pm on The Eye. After all Viacom owns VH1, a network that is more than happy to group together five people who were once celebrities, put them in police uniforms and let them loose on a midwestern town. In fact, its hard to imagine they hadn’t all ready aired that show (and its live reunion special). But they didn’t. Instead, it was picked up by CBS, a network that loves cops as much as the next guy, but who has never really had much experience with trough-feeding “celebrity” spectacles. I would actually go as far as saying Armed and Famous is the most bizarre scheduling decision of the year (which, probably, isn’t really saying all that much).

Here’s the pitch: Erik (Ponch) Estrada, a now-boring Jack Orbourne, Wee-Man from Jackass, WWE champ Trish Stratus, and what appears to be a woman wearing a La Toya Jackson mask all go to Muncie, Indiana (Gooooooooo EAGLES!), train with the Police Academy, and then join actual officers out on patrol — protecting the burb’s fine citizens from… um… themselves(?).

Yes, this is television entertainment at its finest.

I just can’t for the life of me figure out who is going to be tuning in? Criminal Minds fans trying to kill an hour? Seems unlikely. Perhaps I’m not the person who should be commenting on this as I watch little CBS to begin with (How I Met Your Mother and Letterman, really), but from my point of view the last thing a CBS audience member is looking for is change — especially if that change involves a show whose sole draw would be a scene where we get to see La Toya Jackson tasered. CBS has gone to great lengths to insure that its audience knows what it’s getting: procedurals. Outside of Survivor and The Amazing Race (two reality entries that do a decent job of elevating the bar) CBS doesn’t seem to be interested in storylines — and especially not high concept celebrity tomfoolerly.

Now then, you move Armed and Famous to VH1, and while you still have a pretty crappy show, at least someone will watch.

The original plan was to post something about NBC’s Thursday night comedy line-up and/or the premiere of Scrubs‘ sixth season. And while I tuned in for everything after My Name Is Earl, I don’t know, there just didn’t seem to be anything too remarkable worth commenting about. What were we expecting? Was NBC suppose to go from being a fourth-place network to A#1 in those two short hours? Hardly. It should be noted, however, that last night’s The Office was written by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, a fact that seemed to slip by just about everyone until the opening credits rolled (or maybe just me — when no one is around I do like to call myself “everyman”).

Instead, I’d like to take this time to highlight some television goings on that most people all ready know:

• Ben Karlin is resigning as the executive producer of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. A reason for the departure has yet to be released, though in the long tradition of powerful people resigning their posts we can only assume he “wants to spend more time with his family.”
• Michael Sera (aka George Michael Bluth) has been hired by CBS to produce content for Innertube, the companies online video portal. The show will be called The Good Life, and will be about television producers because it seems to be the only thing anyone in the television industry seems to know anything about these days. Still, good news to see our boy making good– even if what we’ll be seeing will be really small, grainy, and buffering.
• For the industry-junkies out there: I read an old New York Times Magazine article the other day from the summer of 1997 about Jamie Tarses. She’s, more or less, who the Jordan McDeere character on Studio 60… is based. The story itself, from what I’ve heard, helped play a role in her ultimate demise at ABC. She was also the executive who put Sports Night on the air. You can read the Times article HERE, but you have to pay for it.
• I did end up finishing season four of The Wire this week and plan to write about it over the weekend. Quick questions: while I know that most people who read this site DON’T watch The Wire (your loss, suckers), I’d rather not spoil it for those who do. So, let me know in the comments if you’d rather have me wait to post my season-wrap-up until after it airs on HBO, or if I should post Monday after its put On-Demand? The decision is yours and yours alone. UPDATE: a The Wire MUST READ.

I just got around to watching this week’s How I Met Your Mother. Hilarious. When it was over I was convinced it was the single funniest episode of television I’d seen since the season started, but there’s no need to downplay the numerous other great gems from the season, both here and on The Office. Regardless, great or the greatest, if you didn’t catch this week’s episode, check it out on Innertube. It’s called “Slap Bet,” and is well worth anyone’s 22 minutes.

If you did see it, mosey on over to the Robin Sparkles MySpace page for some added entertainment.

Related: if you had to choose between being slapped in the face ten times in a row by someone, OR getting slapped in the face five times but having the slaps spread out at the slappers discretion from now until eternity, what would you choose?

On this day in “Television Awkwardness”…

• In 1978, Howard Cosell turned to Keith Jackson during a Monday Night Football match up between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Indianapolis Colts, commented on the Eagles’ running game, then proceeded to lick his ear.
• In 1992 the KXAK-Channel 14 News Team in Akron, Ohio, starred blankly at the camera for the entire 30-minute, six-o’clock newscast after their prompter failed, followed by the complete electrical breakdown on any tool used to get them off the air.
• And in 2006, Michael Richards apologized for being an asshole while appearing, via satellite, on The Late Show with David Letterman.

And that has been “This Day in Television Awkwardness.”

(Seriously though, I only made it about half way through the “apology” before I couldn’t take it anymore and fast-forwarded. GOOSECHILL!)

If you’re going to watch television online, you’re best served over at ABC.com. None of the networks can really give you a completely satisfying experience in watching their content online, but ABC comes the closest. CBS’s Innertube, on the other hand, has a fairly ugly interface but takes things a step further by uploading original content. One new series, whose pilot was recently added is The Papdids.

The Papdids is basically Borat, but focuses on a whole family who has moved to the US from India. I watched about seven minutes before turning it off. I assume the show was produced for actual television, but couldn’t cut it– I suspect this will become a trend. On its surface, the show is “technically” funny, and perhaps it would have been actually funny if not for two specific aspects: 1) Borat came out last week and couldn’t be more ingrained on the consciousness of America. Watching anything remotely similar comes off as hacky no matter how departed the material may actually be– in this case, little separates the two. 2) There’s something about Kazakhstan. Borat, as a character, works because no one really knows anything about Kazakhstan and thus Baron Cohen can make a complete backstory without anyone (aside from the Kazakhstanis) knowing any different. The Papdids on the other hand are from India. India is a huge country. There are a billion people there, many of whom work for American companies. Buying this family as clueless foreigners is not only unbelievable, but borderline racist. Unlike Borat, The Papdids aren’t exposing America’s racism, as much as making American as uncomfortable as possible. The joke is on the family, not on us. At least that’s the impression that it made before the first act break.

Elsewhere on Innertube, CBS has uploaded the entire seven episode run of Smith, the quickly canceled heist-drama staring Ray Liotta. Of the seven episodes that were created only three were broadcast. As a fan of the show, it sucks that it didn’t last long enough to find an audience, but its nice to know that the web can be used to keep those unseen eps from the dumpster.

I’ve been watching The Class since it launched in September based on the combined strength of the first three episodes, which I watched all at once. Since then, I’ve discovered that those three episodes had used just about all of the comedy allotted to this by-the-numbers sitcom from the Internation Joke Distribution Fund.

Today, while catching up on DVR’d content I was about 12 minutes into this weeks The Class, when I stopped, pressed pause and realized that, in fact, the show I was watching wasn’t funny. You might remember this phenomenon from comedy classics as The War at Home and According to Jim.

So I’m cutting the fat. The Class is no longer part of my regular viewing habbits.

Tonight I sat down and watched a rerun of CBS’s hit comedy, How I Met Your Mother. It was the Halloween episode from last season. I hadn’t seen it before, so it was new to me. The episode was funny, as usual. Though I’m watching and there was a moment in the show that struck me as unprecedented in the history of the 3-camera sitcom.

First it must be noted that How I Met Your Mother is barely a three-camera show. Sure its shot as such, but a lot of the humor is created in the editing room. It isn’t just a barrage of one-liners and quips.

That being said, the noted scene took place at the bar. They’re sitting at a booth with two people on each side. The booth itself is perpendicular to our view through the camera. Anyway, the character Ted approaches the booth and says hello to the gang. Here, the camera cuts to a reversal where we’re now looking from behind Ted toward the booth. What we see is a wall on the other side.

I found this endlessly fascinating. This suggests that when we, the audience, are watching the show normally, we’re apparently staring through what is actually a solid wall. Growing up on sitcoms we’ve all become accustomed to how the universe works. When people sit at a table, they only use three sides. When they sit at a couch, they’re facing the camera. Apartments are crazy big. But this notion that we’re actually suppose to be looking through a wall is totally new to me. I guess I’ve always assumed that on the other side of that plane (being the cameras sight-line) was more room. At the bar set it was just more of the bar. This apparently isn’t the case. Deep down I actually envision that all three-camera sitcom characters live in a world where every room they enter is only half-decorated. We see that half, but on the other side of the camera lies a barren, concrete and steal exposed nothingness. It’s too bad this, apparently, isn’t the case.

Here’s what I wrote in my notebook while watching last week’s episode of Smith:

The week-to-week with Smith isn’t as visceral as the pilot, but its still classy and avoids a lot of the trappings of most television dramas. Also, Virginia Madsen is great. I wish her role were bigger, even if her character isn’t particularly interesting… yet.

Maybe it was the ellipsis before the word “yet” that put the final nail in the coffin. For those who haven’t heard, Smith was put on immediate hold, and pulled from the network’s line-up. This week a rerun of CSI: Miami will be placed in its timeslot.

Likewise, Kidnapped on NBC is being pulled from its prime, Wednesday night position and buried on Saturdays for the rest of its 13-episode stay of execution. Had shows like last season’s Reunion not left a bad taste in viewers mouths (a taste that smacked of both ‘unresolved pre-cancelation plot-lines’ and ‘bad acting’), one could have expected Kidnapped to get the Smith treatment as well (immediate, unrelenting termination).

Breaking news!!!! In case the Smith cancelation was leaving you, like me, brokenhearted, I was just informed that Fashion House is still on the air and being broadcast six nights a week.

For those readers out there playing along at home, you might remember my post on the new NBC series Kidnapped from last month. In it I mentioned how I’d love to see a series on television with absolutely no dialogue. All plot movements would be powered by the characters action’s, not by their words.

Why would this type of show be necessary? Because too often in television (specifically “thriller” or “suspense” television) you find yourself getting wrapped up in the story and — dare I say — sitting on the edge of your seat, until a character opens his or her mouth and says some of the most ridiculous nonsense you’ve ever heard, thus killing your buzz and reminding you that, yes, you are alone and sitting in your underwear on a Saturday night watching television.

Thank god for the new CBS’s drama, Smith. There’s more by clicking below…

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