Francine and Stan are in luck when Hailey ends up dating Stan’s body double, Bill. Yes, it is freaky to see someone who looks exactly like Stan to be kissing Hailey, but you just have to go with it, I guess.

I haven’t seen enough episodes of American Dad to say whether or not all of the episodes are poorly written, but it’s hard to really be surprised by the plot developments. Neither this episode nor the previous one delivered anything that could be considered surprising.

The closest thing they came with was all of the adult talk. Hailey repeated talking about “doin’ it” was very grating and was more uncomfortable than funny. Isn’t this supposed to be a funny show? I think this will be my last review. I find it hard to come up with anything good to say about Seth MacFarlane’s second major animated series.

Rating: 4.5

Steve was quite surprised to learn that his own friends were the ones who put up the website. Steve ended up attacking them, but the fight was cut short when a few others wanted in. By “a few others,” I am referring to all of the jocks and cheerleaders, of course.

This episode was quite predictable and really never featured the Smith family with the sole exception of a five second scene which was meant solely for the purpose of including them in something. It felt strange to have an entire episode devoted to one person like this. I don’t consider this to be a very good episode due to its writing. It was boring, predictable, and never gave the family much to do.

Rating: 5

All we knew up until this point was that Sam was very sad when Dean went to hell, but I don’t think we expected for Sam to be so self-destructive. We watched as Sam started drinking and taking any type of risks to save Dean. Sam didn’t care whether anything happened to him and there were times where Sam was just totally letting his guard down. Jared Padalecki did a great job playing this side of Sam that we’ve never seen before and it was one of his best episodes yet.

The relationship between Sam and Ruby came up in this episode and the story played itself off very well. Sam and Ruby teaming up didn’t seem cheesy and the story played itself off pretty perfectly. I don’t know if we saw Sam sleeping with Ruby coming, but that worked well also. The writers have definitely given Ruby something more than her just being a demon. They’ve basically made her human. You can see her show sadness, anger and happiness unlike the rest of the demons, and it’s obvious that she really does care about Sam. Could the two actually have a relationship? Probably not, but for now, I’m kind of pulling for them.

Mark Rolston as Alastair

Dean and Sam trying to save Anna, a girl who could hear angel was just as interesting as the flashbacks. It did emit a whole Joan of Arc vibe, but it worked. It feels like there’s more to Anna than we’re being told because there has to be some reason why she’s able to hear angel’s voices. The demons were after her and one of them manages to find her. The demon that found them was named Alastair and apparently Dean knew him from hell. Just from this one encounter it really does have us intrigued about what Dean went through exactly down in hell, because it seems like they really did a number on him. It was a bit of a bummer that they lost Ruby’s knife again and now the only weapon they really have against the demons is Sam’s power which unfortunately isn’t working the way he wants it too.

From the flashbacks we get a real sense of who Ruby is and Dean does too. It was a another good moment when Dean gives Ruby his version of an apology. Once they were able to get the girl to safety, it looked like they were going to be attacked by demons again until Castiel and Uriel showed up wanting to kill her. The cliffhanger could have been stronger, but it definitely left us interested in the reason for why these angels want her dead, especially considering that Anna seemed like such a nice girl.

There was really only one problem with this episode and it’s that Genevieve Cortese’s acting simply isn’t strong enough in my opinion. The episode was so good and giving Ruby so much depth lessened the blow, but I still couldn’t help but see Katie Cassidy in the role doing the lines much better. Don’t let this deter you from watching the show, because it’s really a minor problem. Other than that, the episode flowed along greatly.

Next week we get to find out why the angels want Anna dead and there better be a good reason. This episode was another great one to add to the season. There were great performances from our two lead actors and the writers did such a great job of coming up with a believable story for us to follow. We’re coming up to the half-way point of the season and it’s amazing how great this season has been. Hopefully they keep the great pace when we enter the second half of the season.

Rating: 9.8

The beginning of the episode featured an interesting moment. We know very little right now about Dr. Jacob Hood, but we got to see him in a moment where he was asked by a beautiful woman for his phone number. I don’t consider Hood to be a geek in the normal sense, but I’d consider him a person who wouldn’t find it particularly easy to converse with a woman, but he seemed to do just fine here and really surprised me.

Dr. Jacob Hood (Rufus Sewell, Left) and his FBI handler, Rachel Young (Marley Shelton, right)

This case ended up being fairly straightforward with Jacob Hood and Rachel Young tracking down all of the children and trying to find those involved. Sadly and predictably, the woman at the autism center ended up being involved with the bizarre surgeries which endangered the lives of the children. She lost her life in a very violent, explosive manner.

She wasn’t alone, however. A surgeon with an autistic son was the one who was responsible for all of this. He experimented on the teenagers to prepare for the work on his own four-year-old son.

Eleventh Hour always seems to tug at your heart. Whether it’s the reasoning behind the illegal, immoral surgeries or the way the families are impacted by their autistic child, emotions are always in play.

I continue to like the way Rachel and Jacob interact on the show. Neither of them is as stiff as they were in say the pilot. Still, Jacob’s a boring guy, having to explain so much of the medical stuff to Rachel (which is also meant for the viewers). It really slows things down even though it is entirely necessary.

Rating: 7.1

The episode starts well enough with Butters bursting into Mr. Mackey’s computer class, where the kids are all secretly playing video games, claiming that he found vampires in school. After learning that kids are pretending to be vampires, Butter decides to avoid being grounded by becoming a vampire and thus (for some reason) ungroundable. The Goth Kids, meanwhile do anything they can to try to make preppy kids stop dressing like them so their two groups will stop being confused by adults.

I will admit to not being familiar with the Twilight franchise, but there was no biting commentary in this story. Or wild humor. It felt like the guys were tired of playing in their stacks of money and decided to go through the motions of what would be a good premise and then let someone fill in the rest. The groups war never escalates in a direct manner, Butters actions feel like an incomplete story, and the main boys are wholly absent except for a nice scene in which Vampire Butters tries to feed on a sleeping Cartman, who assumes Butters is coming onto him. Butters’ father has also lost a lot of his comedic edge by being turned into some weird angry man ready to punish Butters for anything – what happened to the man with the secret gay lifestyle or just walked by calling Butters a bad little bear?

What hurts most is that this episode serves as the finale until March, making its whimpering conclusion even more of a letdown. That’s supposed to hold us over until spring? This was a season that felt largely hollow, and while not everyone can be perfect all the time, this was a show that had built quite a legacy in the past several years. The once biting satire and gut punching seems to have turned into weak slaps in the vague direction of issues anymore. The Olympics weeks later, Indiana Jones months later, High School Musical which is such a non entity in the lives of South Park’s target audience and now a non-Twilight vampire story? Snore.

Unlike the story ending Hot Topic torching and victorious speech from the Goth Kids, I am left wondering what is going on in the South Park offices because for the first time in twelve years I’m not really counting days until 13.01.

Rating: 5

Desperate Housewives is really moving plots along fast this season, because right from the beginning, Lynette learns that Ann is pregnant with Porter’s child. Lynette goes to confront her and Ann’s husband walks in to overhear everything. It turns out that Porter wasn’t joking around when he said that Ann’s husband was a psycho because Lynette comes back to the house to see her husband literally kicking her. It was another disturbing scene and it seemed worse then when Kathryn was getting abused by her husband. At least Lynette isn’t letting her anger about the whole Porter situation interfere with her compassionate side because if she would have left Ann inside the house, it would have been given Lynette a bit of a dark side we don’t want to see.

Gabby comes back home to see Ms. Hildebrand on her couch and back in her life. Apparently Carlos losing his job was only temporary because Carlos announces that he got his job back already and now Ms. Hildebrand has put them in her will. At first it seemed like Hildebrand had some ulterior motives and while she definitely does, they don’t seem as hideous as they were before. She just seems like a old lady who wants a family. Sure she should be trying to make decisions about where the children go, but at least all these decisions do seem to be in the best interest of the children and it is a really good school. It’s also cool to see Gabby stand up for something other then money. It shows that she really does care about her family and that her girls are really important.

James Denton, Dana Delany, Teri Hatcher

Julie comes back with a new boyfriend who is almost the same age as her mother. Sure Susan freaked out, but I don’t think we were. Julie always had to be the adult when it came to her and Susan’s relationship, so her going with an older guy wasn’t that big of a jump. Julie’s cynicism of marriage also isn’t a big jump either; she makes a good point about how it never worked out for Susan. She even makes an even better point about how Mike was the love of Susan’s life and even that didn’t work out.

Bree’s story might have been the weakest storyline out of the bunch again. I’m kind of tired of all these plots involving Bree’s new book. It’s leaving her little time to participate in any personal plots. This all seemed predictable with the hard-as-nails lady wanting to get the dirt on Bree, only to change her tune by the end of the episode.

We finally got to see how psychotic Dave was when Dr. Heller comes to Wisteria Lane. When Dave finds out, he kills him. It was unexpected considering that it was in an open place with lots of people, but that just goes to show you how psychotic Dave is. This episode seemed to confuse us a little about who Dave is going after. On one hand, they tried to keep it a secret by having Dr. Heller not say any names, but then at the end, Dave saves Mike from the fire and tells him that he’s not done with him yet. Does this mean that Mike is his intended target or is he just using Mike to get to his real target?

For now we’ll have to assume that the target is Mike, but the writers have really been weird about this whole thing. It was interesting to see Dave turn out to be the big hero, especially considering he was the one who started the fire in the first place. It was interesting to watch the club burning and seeing who was going to get out and who was going to stay. The show toyed around with us a couple of times during the fire scene by making us believe that Jackson was going to die, then that Mike was going to die and what was up with so many people getting knocked out from the crowd. From what we can see, it looks like all the main characters got out okay, but there are six bodies still left in there. It’ll be interesting to see if any of these six are important characters or just minor characters that we don’t know.

So Porter ended up being arrested for setting the fire, even though there wasn’t really any proof at all. I thought this was a good episode, but it loses points for spoiling the ending in the beginning and the build up to the end wasn’t all that interesting. Now we just have to see what the fall out will be from the fire in the next episode.

Rating: 7.6

It was great; this episode continues from where the last one left off with Tom finding out that Porter is having sex and Lynette seeing Ann leave Tom’s garage. The writers made Tom and Lynette finding out the piece that the other didn’t have fun, with Lynette thinking Tom is cheating and Tom thinking that Lynette knows about Porter’s affair and so relaxed about it. There were some great laugh- out-loud moments here and it’s something that there hasn’t been much of this season.

Lynette took is pretty well aside from the fact that she beat up Ann, but she took it as well as we probably thought she would. We’re not sure if Ann is using Porter or if she truly is in love with him. The writers have done something like this before when Gabby was sleeping with John, but for some reason that was exciting and fun. The Ann and Porter relationship is more depressing and somewhat confusing because we’re not sure what Ann’s ulterior motives are, if there are any.

Bree might have had the most boring plot of the whole episode which involved her and Orson having sex in the kitchen and some boy that they had to fire getting the tape and threatening to post it online. Everything felt forced from the boy being fired in the very beginning right off the bat, and it seemed only to serve as a way for Lynette to find out. What made it a little weird is that Lynette was worried about this getting out, but we weren’t it didn’t seem as bad as Lynette made it out to be. However, Lynette overreacting about the smallest thing definitely fits her character. It’s too bad we didn’t get to see Andrew in action to see exactly how he got the kid to turn over the tape though, because we haven’t seen Andrew in action in quite a while. It wasn’t horrible stuff, but it definitely wasn’t all that interesting.

Gail O’Grady as Anne Schilling, Felicity Huffman as Lynette Scavo

Gabby and Carlos have taken up with Ms. Hildebrand who is being weirdly generous to the family by letting them stay at her house and use her servants. It’s been three days and she already feels like Gabby’s family is her family. You can’t help but feel bad for her though. It’s obvious that she’s just lonely and for the amount of money she was willing to pay Carlos, you would think that Gabby and Carlos would just kind of go along with it. We do admit though that Ms Hildebrand was getting a little out there with the whole having the kids call her Grandma, but she’s an old lady. It’ll be interesting to see how Carlos and Gabby’s life is going to affected after the phone call that Hildebrande made to Carlos’ job. This will put the Solis’ at a much worse place then they were before.

Jackson and Susan embark on their second first date and it’s sort of cute watching them start over and learn new things about each other. The whole no sex rule that Susan comes up with benefits Jackson who apparently is a painter, but had been blocked, and without having sex, he’s finally able to draw again. It’s surprising that Susan didn’t get mad or anything, but kind of cool that she understood; and I’m sure the painting had something to do with it. The Jackson and Susan relationship is solid so far and it’s coming off pretty well, but we’ll have to see how Susan handles it when she finds out that Kathryn and Mike are sleeping together now.

Last but not least we had the McCluskey sisters digging up stuff on Dave, by calling his doctor. The doctor doesn’t divulge any information, but seems really uneasy about where Dave is. This didn’t get a lot of time, so it wasn’t that much of a distraction, but for now, the whole Dave thing isn’t as important as maybe it was a couple of episodes ago.

This episode had all the things that we love about Desperate Housewives. While it had it’s flaws, it’s probably one of the best episodes since the first episode. It also feels like the writers have returned the show more to the sex, lies and secrets type of show, than the watching the adults parent their kids and forcing the kids into scenes. We know the kids are there and it’s good to see that the writers don’t have to keep letting us know that.

This was another good episode and hopefully the rest of the season can go just as well as this episode was.

Rating: 7.8

Later at The Bronze, Xander is being teased about his manhood and he tries to prove that he is no virgin. He tries to get Willow and Buffy to help him impress the guys but Buffy spots Angel and floats to him like a dog craving water. He warns her that danger is coming and he has the wounds to prove it. It looks like he got in a fight with wolverine! Back in school the students are wondering where their bio teacher is. They find him stuffed somewhere with his head chopped off! Buffy was not pleased with this and went to Giles for help. He and the gang went through many different scenarios but nothing concrete. Then something strange happened. Xander formed a crush on the new sub Ms. French, played by Musetta Vander. This teacher is beautiful and it seems she has a thing for young men. I wished she was my bio teacher in high school!

Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy Summers

During one of Buffy’s hunts, she came across the vampire that attacked Angel and noticed that he was afraid of someone. The vampire tried attacking Ms. French but backed off in a fright. Buffy knew something was off about her if vampires were afraid to attack her. She did some investigating and found out that the teacher can move her head back like The Exorcist. She came across that by accident of course. After giving the information to Giles, he realized that she may be some form of an ancient insect that rapes men! It has a good reason of course. It needs their special babies to fertilize her eggs. This thing is a major freak!

Buffy tries to warn Xander but like any other horny boy that is hot for the teacher, he doesn’t listen. He wishes that he did because once captured, one of the other prisoners informs him of what she can do. First she lays her eggs and then she mates with you. During the mating, she proceeds to bite your head off! Yeah, that’s not a good way to lose your virginity.

Buffy figures out her plan and rushes to save them. Too bad she got the wrong address and doesn’t know where she lives. She does a very smart thing however and uses the clawed vampire to sniff her out. It works and she finds her home. The clawed vampire escapes and almost kills Buffy but she gets the upper hand and stakes him in the heart.

Buffy arrives in the nick of time and saves the two boys. She goes to town cutting up the freaky insect and shows how much she really cares for Xander.

This episode was decent at best. The pace was slow and the acting seemed flat. Anthony Head and Sarah Gellar didn’t seem much into this episode. Maybe it was because Nicholas had a lot of screen time. He performed well and he proved that he can hold an episode on his own. Other than his performance, everyone else didn’t give it their all and you could tell. This is one of those episodes that you can skip. You wouldn’t be missing much!

Rating: 5.0

In “The Damage a Man Can Do”, Dexter brings Miguel farther into the world that he’s never let anybody see. Miguel brings Dexter another target who’s been killing people to pay off his gambling debts. Miguel wants to do this one himself, so Dexter decides it’s time to teach Miguel the code. This was all interesting stuff, watching Dexter teach someone like his dad taught him. What made the moment more interesting was the look on Miguel’s face and the way he’s taking all of this in so well. Jimmy Smits does an amazing job with his character and he often doesn’t even need words to draw us in.

Harry appears in this episode too, trying to convince Dexter not to let Miguel know about the code. Imaginary Harry has been against Dexter’s friendship the whole season and it was fun watching as Dexter kept ignoring his father’s advice and continued to make his own decisions; it’s as if Dexter is going through his teenage rebellion phase now. There were some snags which almost led to Dexter pulling the plug on the whole operation when Miguel is recognized. It seemed somewhat impossible that Miguel wouldn’t be recognized and it’s also a bit naive of Dexter to have someone who is so well known assist in a killing. Miguel has a talk with Dexter and tells him about the Dark passenger that resides in him and it’s like someone is finally talking to Dexter’s heart.

Surprisingly the killing goes well and Miguel does the deed. There was a good amount tension right before, because Miguel’s face looked like one of shock when he realized the whole set up that Dexter has to go through, so there was doubt on whether Miguel would do it or not.

Michael C. Hall as Dexter and Jimmy Smits as Miguel Prado

The skinner case got more interesting when Debra gets a tip on who the skinner was, only it ends up being the guy who gave them information on who the skinner was. By the time Debra and Quinn figure it out though, Debra discovers that the skinner has him. I’m hoping that Anton isn’t gone, because he’s likeable and it would just be really messed up to have Debra dating the killer first season, then being overly paranoid second season, and now losing the man she loves, who wasn’t a killer, in third season.

Oh and by the way, Anton apparently has been working as a C.I. for no reason when it’s revealed that Quinn’s just kind of been stringing him along. This little plot seemed to be a way of casting doubt on Quinn and while we can admit that he doesn’t play by the rules, we’re not ready to admit that he’s as bad as Yuki made him out to be. It’s also nice to see Angel in a functioning relationship and all his worrying is turning out to be one of the more cheesier things about this season, but it works. Let’s also hope that La Guerta takes Ellen’s advice and goes and has some fun. La Guerta did have a brief thing when she tried to get back her position last season, but other than that, we haven’t gotten to see a fun side of La Guerta. I mean even Dexter had Lila last season.

In the end it looks like Harry might be right about Dexter setting something in motion that he won’t be able to stop as we saw Miguel head over to Ellen Wolf’s house in what we can only assume is to kill her. It’ll be interesting if Miguel starts to go off on his own, because then Dexter would most likely have to make a choice about whether to take him out or not. The relationship between Dexter is endearing, but scary at the same time because Miguel we never really know what Miguel is going to do next. We’re getting close to the end of the season and we still have the skinner case, Miguel’s actions, and Dexter still has to get married; so we’re definitely looking to see how all of these plots get advanced in the next episode.

Rating: 8.3

Don’t get me wrong; the second season premiere has it’s funny moments and even introduces a new character to the show with Dee and Dennis’s father Frank (Danny DeVito). The relationship between the three is every bit as messed up and the same as the relationships between the four friends. Danny DeVito fits right in with the rest of the cast and it’ll definitely add to the show this season. Hopefully, they will use him sparingly and we don’t have to see him in every episode.

Even though this episode was titled “Charlie gets Crippled” I was still shocked when Dennis backed over him with the car. So we have Charlie in a wheelchair the whole episode; he goes to the strip club, where the strippers give him free lap dances and hang out with him. Frank tags along with him though, but seems to stealing all of Charlie’s thunder and it’s not just fooling around with the strippers they picked up, he literally seems to be copying Charlie, but doing it better. For some reason Charlie being handicapped gets the other three to pretend like they’re handicapped. Mac and Dennis both pretend to have Polio, which if they were smart knew that it’d be pretty rare nowadays to get it. Even though Dee pretended to be disgusted at the idea, she herself pretends to be handicapped too, walking on crutches and really nailing the walk.

Click on the image to buy Seasons 1-2 of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Sunny in Philadelphia loves to take on controversial subjects and they did it again with taking on the whole handicap subject. The problem was that while there were funny moments the story itself was a bit weak. It also didn’t feel like this episode took it too far with the topic; it just felt like they could have done a lot more with it.

There were so many plots in this episode that there wasn’t enough time dedicated to the good ones. I would have liked more of the Dee and Dennis arguing over dad’s stuff, but that and Frank giving his money away just started to seem like a non-topic by the end of the episode.

There were lots of things to like in this episode and it was good, but after last season I think my expectations were just a little too high. I’m still looking forward to the rest of the season though and I have no doubt there are some good episodes ahead. It should be interesting to see what new topics Sunny in Philadelphia decides to attack.

Rating: 7.5