2. Glee – Everybody loves the musical numbers and the satire and the villainy of Sue Sylvester, but this week Glee put its heart on its sleeve with some authentically sweet scenes. And it wasn’t any of the various adorable couples who make the episode stand out – it was Sue and her sister. Viewers learned earlier this season that Sue has a sister, Jean, with Down’s Syndrome, and this week we got a rare glimpse of her humanity as they shared a couple of scenes. We got to see Sue and Jean interact, and it was sweet and genuine and completely free of cynicism. And Jane Lynch managed to sell these scenes just as well as the scenes where she mocked high school students for their boring sex lives. We’ve missed you so much, Glee.
3. Justified – This FX show, based on characters created by Elmore Leonard, has been absolutely fantastic. Anything that gets Deadwood’s Timothy Olyphant back in a cowboy hat to round up lawbreakers is something we want to see. And the fact that the cast includes The Shield’s Walton Goggins and Lost’s M.C. Gainey puts it over the top. Luckily, they haven’t squandered this great cast – the scripts have been consistently fun and clever. This week was a special treat for Deadwood fans as guest star W. Earl Brown appeared as the gunman in a hostage situation. Yeah, we got to see Seth Bullock and Dan Dority together again. As one of the year’s best new shows, Justified doesn’t need to invoke Deadwood to win our love, but we’re glad they did.
4. Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job – It’s hard to explain this live-action comedy series on Adult Swim, and frankly, we’d look foolish if we tried. Sunday’s episode was the series finale, and Tim and Eric went out in their own inimitable style. With special guests like David Cross, Ben
Stiller, Fred Armisen, and Paul Rudd, they brought yet another episode of music, surrealism, and discomfort, climaxing when the entire cast died from drinking tainted breast milk. And while they’ve got a spinoff featuring John C. Reilly’s Dr. Steve Brule premiering in a couple of weeks and a Billion Dollar Movie in the works, we’re still going to miss the Awesome Show. Uncle Muscles, the Married News Team, Spaghett’, famous comedians faces superimposed on the bodies of small children, Tairey Greene, PepPep, Jim and Derrick, and all the rest – we’ll miss you crazy bastards. And we’ll miss the big star cameos which revealed that they either have a better sense of humor than we realized, or else didn’t know what was going on. Yes, we mean you, Ted Danson and Jeff Goldblum. Great Job!
5. The Colbert Report – For the last couple of weeks, our favorite fake pundit has been airing a new feature. According to Colbert, “Stephen Hawking Is Such An A-Hole”. Yeah, Colbert has a beef with the smartest man on Earth. We’re not exactly sure why, but it’s darned funny. In this week’s installment, Colbert found Hawking’s views on time travel dangerous and un-American. We’re kind of hoping this is leading up to an appearance by Dr. Hawking, possibly in an “Even Stephen” segment.
