Friday, May 20, 2011

Lily Pregnant; Adrian Lonely; Axl a Lifeguard

by Amy K. Bredemeyer

Reviews & Commentaries for "scripted" shows this week include: Simpsons, The Secret Life of the American Teenager, House, How I Met Your Mother, The Middle, and South Park.


Sunday:
The Simpsons "500 Keys" (S22E21): Lisa plays the violin in the band part of the opening. [cool.] The couch gag is just words where all of the items should be instead of the actual drawings. [different.] Homer finds a wedding cake shop that takes back cakes when weddings are called off and buys one. [very random.] There's traffic, so he takes the "suicidal moron pass" where he drives like a maniac to keep the cake steady. [The few seconds where they lean out the car window to give the German bicyclists the right of way were amusing.] Maggie locks herself and the cake in the car when they get home. The family goes through a drawer of keys, but Maggie gets out on her own. Bart uses a mailbox key, Homer uses one to get into the Duff beer factory (and subsequently goes to drive a blimp). [I didn't get that thing he said as he flew away though... coming back younger as others age?] Lisa takes a key marked for the school, and ends up using it on a door marked "Banned Band Books" that leads to a room of nice equipment. [I enjoyed the Endgame reference.] Everything in the room is fake and is for five classes in one room. Homer decides to drink and text while flying the blimp, and barely escapes like five accidents. Lisa takes Skinner and a bunch of kids down to see the room, but it ends up being just a bookcase of "banned band books." Bart finds a key for a window-washing scaffold, and moons various floors as he ascends, plus saves someone trying to jump off the roof. Bart wins a key to the city for that. [which amuses me.] Skinner takes the key from Lisa, and the superintendent is there as well... conspiracy in the works! Lisa thinks about Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys to solve the problem, while a police blimp is trying to pull over Homer. [Interesting pick at Cirque du Soleil.] Lisa goes to a key shop (where the clerk knows her family by the shape of their key) [hilarious] asks for a reproduction of school key from a photo (when she was leading the group to it, the school paper snapped her photo). Lisa goes back to the bookcase, breaks through it, and comes across the hidden room again. She sees someone writing "the children are on bus 23" on the chalkboard. [really? not a whiteboard? Haven't those been pretty standard for ten years now?] There's a pick at Chief Wiggam not being able to touch the ground when Marge's toy goes by him, a thief sneaks past him, and he drops his hat and pen. Lisa tells Bart about the mystery, who brings her to see Nelson. Nelson tells them that bus 23 once went on a field trip across an ice bridge and never returned. Homer flies by, so Bart and Lisa hop on the blimp and ride toward where the ice bridge would be if it was winter. Lisa falls out of the blimp and finds the bus underwater, all of the kids still inside. Bart manages to fly the blimp, courtesy of video game preparation. Lisa discovers that all of the kids on the bus are really mannequins. The toy knocks over a tree and breaks. Turns out, Otto left the message on the blackboard, and was the driver for the ice bridge trip. [why would he be writing the message on that specific day? he wasn't around for any of the other Lisa scenes...] Way back when, Skinner got a grant to make the school better... he cashed the check but the money got ruined in the laundry. So they built the fake room and put the mannequins in it to make it look like they made the school better, and when they went to return the mannequins, Otto had the accident, leaving a bus of mannequins underwater. [loved the orchestral rendition of the theme song in the closing credits!] 
[Season Finale May 22nd]


Monday:
House, M.D. "After Hours" (S07E21): We open with a girl breaking into and hotwiring a car. She speeds along, and we see that she's severely injured. She wrecks the car, gets out, and continues on foot, making it to Thirteen's apartment. Thirteen tries to get her to go to the hospital (if she dies at Thirteen's apartment, Thirteen could receive manslaughter charges). She's afraid to go to the hospital because she'll be arrested. Thirteen promises she won't take her to the hospital. Meanwhile, House is talking with a hooker at his place, and loses his drugs trying to impress her with his strength. Thirteen is trying to diagnose her friend. Foreman comes home to find Taub with a girl, who promptly leaves. Turns out, the girl is pregnant. [and I had predicted we'd see Taub get his wife pregnant...] Back at Thirteen's, the woman has lost her blood pressure and pulse in one arm only. Thirteen calls Chase, and asks him to pick up a portable ultrasound and bring it to her apartment "because she has a clog in her pipes." [I had to ask my husband how that would work, LoL.] House shows up at the lab and finds out that the rats got tumors from the medication that he's taking. Cramps and stiffening were the only symptoms. Chase figured out that Thirteen has a medical reason for needing the ultrasound, since she's not wet. [good call, Chase!] Thirteen tells Chase that the girl is her friend from prison, Darrien. House does an MRI on himself. Chase gets the assisted suicide story from Thirteen. Darrien has hepatitis C. She showed Thirteen the ropes in jail. Darrien is starting to go numb. Taub and Foreman are at a strip club, and Foreman tells Taub he'd be a crappy dad. [ouch!] Thirteen and Chase remove a bunch of blood from Darrien's arm, and she regains feeling. Thirteen calls in an order for an IV and Chase goes to pick it up. House cleans his bathroom floor, pops some pills, and preps his leg for surgery in his bathtub. He shoots himself with a bunch of needles [numbing himself?], then scalpels his (bad) leg. Back to Thirteen, who talks to Darrien about why she turned back to drugs. The girl simply says that she came to Thirteen because she was a doctor, not a shrink. Back to House, who is using a magnifying glass and cauterizing some tissue and pulling out a tumor. [His setup is really well thought out!] He goes for the second (there appear to be three), but the pain is killing him and he is trembling. He calls Wilson, who iss asleep. [It's interesting to have an episode take place outside of the hospital.] Taub asks the girl giving him a lap dance what she'd do if she was pregnant. She doesn't answer. Taub is worried about a mole on the girl's thigh. Darrien is hallucinating. House calls Cuddy, who is asleep, though Rachel is watching cartoons. Chase is worried about bleeding in the brain, but Thirteen insists that they keep Darian there. Thirteen beats on Chase, then he fights back and takes Darrien to the hospital. Cuddy shows up at House's and he claims it's "not an emergency." House admits he was hoping to do a bypass, and asks Cuddy to find and remove the remaining tumors. Chase drives Darrien and Thirteen to the hospital and devises a plan to get a fake name for Darrien. Cuddy drives House to the hospital, with Rachel in the front seat. [yikes!] Darrien was a cop way back in the day. [her teeth are dirty.] Taub gets tossed out of the strip club, but wants to wait for the girl to come out, since he's convinced that the mole was asymmetrical. Foreman can't convince Taub to leave, so he takes a cab and leaves. Chase ascertains that Thirteen keeps all of her promises. There's no bleed in Darrien's brain, and she's shivering. Thirteen calls House for advice, not knowing he's downstairs waiting to be seen in the ER. He gives them some ideas. Taub is trying to get up the nerve to call Ruby (the pregnant girl) from his car, and also considers calling Rachel (his wife), but goes through with neither. He talks to the stripper when she comes out, but she pulls a gun on him. [dang!] She leaves. Thirteen tries to look up the cop shooting the kid on the internet  to figure out when Darrien started taking drugs (and, therefore, contracted hep C). Darrien is in a coma, but Chase and Thirteen think they figured out the problem. House asks Cuddy to be in the surgery room, since he trusts her, and she reluctantly agrees. [awww. cute moment.] Darrien comes out of her coma, turns out it was parasites. Thirteen told on Darrien at some point, since she's now handcuffed to the hospital bed and there's a cop standing guard. [I don't get why they told on her.] House looks like he has both legs in tact, and Rachel wants to play with him. Cuddy suggests that they write him a letter. [strange moment.] Taub goes to the hospital to talk to Ruby, and tells him that he wants to have the baby. Thirteen breaks down in front of Chase, and he asks her to coffee. In the morning, Foreman points out that he missed a call from House. The others wonder where he is. House wakes up with Wilson next to him. Wilson reads House the letter from Rachel. Wilson tells him that he has to change. [interesting episode overall... too bad everyone wound up at the hospital, I liked the events taking place elsewhere for a change.] 
[Season Finale May 23rd]

How I Met Your Mother  "Challenge Accepted" (S06E24): GNB is ready to tear down The Arcadian. Ted and Barney both want to be the one to push the “demolish” button. Robin makes a joke about both of them being bad at finding buttons (and even worse at pushing them). Zoey has gotten some 22-year-old drug-dealing roommates. [sucks.] She wants to get back with Ted. Marshall misspelled “detail-oriented,” so he had to print out more resumes. [hahahahahaha.] Lily gets sick from the soup she ate, and she doesn’t want Marshall to get food poisoning as well (they've gotten it from that place before). So, Lily calls Marshall [in class. Yikes! I hate that!] and then when he doesn’t answer, she takes off running to warn him. When she gets to him, he’s on his third bowl, and she’s on her third round of vomiting. Ted has to choose a light bulb, and he’s freaked that he’ll pick a bad light bulb for 50,000 sockets. [well, that IS a lot!] Lily is upset that Marshall told the gang that she had food poisoning… "for stomach stuff, you’re supposed to just go with 'under the weather.'” [LoL] Marshall gets a call to interview with a dream company, but he’s worried he’ll throw up during it… seeing as he’s three hours behind Lily’s illness. Marshall tries to prepare for the sickness to come early by putting on an adult diaper, saran-wrapping the inside of his briefcase, and tying pads to his knees. [love how Lily vomits like a velociraptor.] Ranjit drives Barney and Robin to Brooklyn to stop Ted from getting back with Zoey. [love it when Ranjit makes an appearance!] Barney and Robin question why people would get back together when things were bad. Robin tries to explain it as love, and Barney agrees. They get to the intersection that Lily heard, and there’s a coffee shop there NAMED “Intersection.” [hahahahaha.] Marshall’s interview ends moments before 6pm, which is when he thinks he’ll start puking. But then, he's allowed 20 minutes to ask his own questions. Robin tells Ted that he can’t go back to the familiar because it’s comforting. We get a “psych” from Ted on how he met the kids’ mother. [had me going for a second, I'll admit.] Marshall is upset that he’s having a crappy year. He ends up not ever puking. Barney lets Ted push the button. Turns out, Lily isn’t sick from the soup… she’s pregnant! Barney runs into a girl he slept with previously, and asks her for coffee… saying he’ll call her. Robin looks on with sadness. We close with Barney as a groom, asking for Best Man Ted’s opinion on a tie. [and we're left to wonder if he was marrying Robin, the girl we just saw, or someone else completely...]
[Season Finale]

The Secret Life of the American Teenager
"Loose Lips" (S03E22): Grace's mom made shower invitations for Adrian. [which are fairly ugly.] Amy and Grace struggle to figure out who to invite. Alice "has a bar mitzvah to go to." [haha.] Adrian admits that she has no friends. So, she wants to invite enemies - people who think she deserved to get pregnant or made fun of her. Adrian invites Zoey, who slept with Ricky. Then, she calls out names of other girls that Ricky cheated on her with, but they all decline, including Zoey, who simply says that she doesn't want to get her a gift. [harsh!] Amy is upset about how so many girls slept with Ricky. [how did she not already know??] Amy backs out of the shower. Grace tries to get Adrian to apologize, but Adrian more or less admits that she only wanted Amy to throw a shower for her because she wanted to rub it in her face that she's having a baby with Amy's old boyfriend, just like Amy had a baby with her old boyfriend. [bleh. drama.] Adrian then blames it on Grace that she and Amy should have been able to come up with an invitation list without her, since she now feels bad that she has no friends. [yeah. okay. you don't expect that.] Madison and Lauren heard about the situation and go to talk to Amy about it. Lauren and Madison tell Amy that Adrian had sex with her stepbrother during Amy's shower. Madison and Lauren say that Amy shouldn't have agreed to throw a shower in the first place, and that she should have tried to come up with people to invite on her own... and that everything happened because Amy is "too nice." [whatever.] Lauren admits that she'd confront Adrian if the girl wasn't pregnant... Adrian walks up and demands that she say it anyway. Lauren and Madison try to claim that they were upset they weren't invited to the shower, but Adrian sees through that. [duh.] Adrian complains to Ben that Amy made her cry since she pointed out she has no friends. [omg. whatever. sucks to be you, Adrian. and you know it!] Amy confronts Ricky, and suggests that Adrian is still in love with him. [Ricky's hair today reminds me of Brandon Walsh's, haha.] Ben asks Ricky to stay away from Adrian. Ricky tells Ben that he should stay away from Amy. Ben tells Bunny what happened between Amy and Adrian. Bunny gets into it and wants to stop the fight before it snowballs. Ben and Ricky argue about what Amy and Adrian's motivations were for what they did. [I think Adrian tried to be rude, and Amy honestly didn't know who to invite.] Grace's mom thinks there should still be a shower. She suggests that Grace invite the other majorettes. [it's a place to start!] Amy tells Anne what happened. Grace's mom calls to talk to George [remember, they were married once], and it seems that Anne has a man coming over to her place as well. Grace asks Tom who Adrian's friends are, but he doesn't have any ideas. [not sure why he'd know, either!] Tom says that Grace complains too much. Tom says that he's still in love with Adrian. [heh. hadn't thought that was going to be the case!] Tom says that Grace has sex with every guy she dates, and she gets upset. Grace finds out that her mom was talking to George. Grace's mom grounds her for thinking that she'd cheat with George just because she'd cheated on George. Ben shows up at Amy's to ask him to make up with Adrian. Ben suggests that Amy invite Alice, and Amy tells Ben about Alice's lie. Amy then tells Ben that Adrian's only pregnant because she was trying to get back at her old boyfriend. Now, he's marrying Adrian, but she's still trying to get back at her old boyfriend and everyone else he's slept with, including Amy. Ben asks Amy how she got pregnant, and says that she never took the responsibility that Adrian has. [somewhat of a good point...] Ben asks if Amy really loves Ricky, who has slept around, or if she just wants to justify getting pregnant by him in the first place. [wow. this show is totally becoming a soap opera!!] George tells Ben to leave. George goes to Leo to ask him to talk to Ben. Leo suggests that it might be partly Amy's fault, since everything started down this path when Ben fell in love with Amy. [also a good point. Ben could've had a great future.] Leo begins to confront Ben, but Henry and Alice show up. Ben confronts Alice about the bar mitzvah, and she says that Henry and Ben are her only friends, so she doesn't want to go to the shower. [how many people at this school can count their friend on one hand?!?!!?] Ben mentions everything that his family has given to Alice over the past ten years, and makes Alice cry. She mentions that she doesn't think he should be getting married. Henry tries to make a joke, and Alice leaves. The guy Anne is seeing is someone from HS. George goes to see Grace's mom [I can never remember her name is Kathleen!] and she brings up the fact that George wouldn't go to counseling way back when. She admits that she cheated on him because he left his socks around all the time, and she felt like his servant. She cheated on him with the guy who sold her more socks. [figures.] Jack goes to Grace to talk about Adrian's shower, and tries to tell her it's her own fault. Jack questions whether Grace is really Adrian's friend, or if she's still not over how Jack cheated on her with Adrian. Grant shows up, overhears, and leaves. Ashley gets upset at Amy for not inviting her to Adrian's shower. [and she genuinely is upset.] Amy mentions that Ricky wouldn't sleep with Ashley, and Ashley says that she called Adrian... who was talking to Ricky. Ashley is still upset (from months ago) that Amy said that Ricky couldn't be attracted to her. Ricky confronts Adrian about what she did in the hallway, and suggests that she be nicer to people. [good.] Ricky tells Adrian that she needs to get over her insecurities, and asks her to go talk to Amy. Adrian tells Ricky that Ben was at Amy's... and we end there.    

Wednesday:

The Middle "The Bridge" (S02E23):  Brick is afraid of crossing bridges so they end up getting a speeding ticket while trying to make a bargain dinner. Sue wants to be at the pool on opening day, but Frankie says they have plans that day with Aunt Edy. Frankie concedes and moves the family plans. [very understanding of her!] Axl wants to be a lifeguard for the summer, but he's up against a Donohue. Mike and Frankie try to take Brick over the bridge, but he freaks out and they get a ticket for an illegal u-turn. [haha. figures.] Sue claims she needs a new swimsuit, though she has a pile of them. Once she mentions that it's a two-piece that she needs, Frankie says they'll get one. [again, very understanding.] Frankie tries to cross the bridge on foot with Brick, who doesn't budge. She tries multiple tactics, and they spend several hours there, and Brick admits that he's afraid the bridge will collapse. [Axl's "career plan" was pretty funny.] Frankie takes Sue shopping for a bikini, and Sue freaks out over every option. Frankie tells her about the Cathy comic strip and how all women loathe swimsuit chopping, but a salesperson says the same nice things to Sue and Sue believes the woman. [haha.] Mike works with Brick on the bridge thing... he waffles between patient and pissed. Axl gets the lifeguard position because the Donohue kid decided to study for a geometry test instead of the lifeguard test. [DARN FUNNY.] Sue and her friend don't want to take off their shirts at the pool. Mike and Frankie try again to get Brick to ride in the car across the bridge, but he sneaks out the back door when they drive across. Six months later, [in a strange flash-forward moment...] Brick walks across the bridge, and agrees that he'll walks in the future, but still not ride in a car over a bridge, so it's not a perfect solution.
South Park "T.M.I." (S15E04):  [soda at lunch!!?!] Butters opens with a spoof on Schwarzenegger's illegitimate child. [thank you, South Park, for bringing back commentary on things happening right now] Cartman walks in, throwing a fit over the fact that the boys' penis sizes are posted in the hallway. Turns out, the numbers (all under 3.0) are really how much the kids have grown in height since last year. Cartman decides to re-measure everyone's penises himself and post them to make sure it's accurate. Cartman pretends he's 13 inches long. [snicker snicker.] The poster goes up and Cartman gets called to the principal's office. Cartman questions the first poster, and it's explained to him that those were height differentials, and that he has an anger problem. Cartman and his mom go to see a therapist, who tries to figure out what triggers Cartman. Cartman ends up getting the therapist's wife to commit suicide when the guy makes him angry. [...and this is why Cartman freaks me out.] The school has a meeting with the parents about what happened, and Stan's dad goes to the 4th grade class... and ends up talking about a better way to measure penises. [you're kidding me, right??!?] Cartman goes to an anger management group, and there's a tea partier in the room who epitomizes the stereotypes. Stan's dad is out, and a real doctor comes in... with a different formula. [oh for crying out loud!] Randy comes back and they get into a fight. Randy is sent to the anger management class. The anger management group goes to a FedEx where they take hostages, claiming they have issues with liberals, Jews, the Surgeon General, everyone. They want to see Obama's real birth certificate, too. They are surprised to find out that FedEx is not related to the federal government. [haha.] Butters is home calculating his TMI ("adjusted penis length" in this episode), and his mom walks in. Butters gets angry about how he has a "micro-penis." The world ends up changing the scale of small-average-nice to accommodate those with small measurements... and all becomes well pretty quickly.
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Off season/Coming Up:
Switched at Birth (Monday, June 6th at 9pm)
Hot in Cleveland (June 15th picks us up at Season 2, Episode 11)
Futurama (Season 6, episode 14 on June 23rd)
Melissa & Joey (season 2 starts June 29th, 8pm)
Terra Nova (premiering in September)  
Mr. Sunshine (Canceled. we saw nine episodes.) 
The Paul Reiser Show (Canceled. we saw two episodes.) 
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