Here’s the deal, folks. Not that anyone is around to read this shit, but who knows? Maybe someone stumbles across this weird corner of the blogosphere and is moderately curious about these things …

I’m still around. I’m still watching TV. I’m still overwhelmed with opinions that no one particularly wants to here. But I’m going to get pack to posting it all here. I’m just going to apply a new methodology. There has to be a better way and I may have figured something out.

Enough for now … more to come … soon.

Maybe.

But enough about the weather.  Let’s talk the only hotness that counts, namely the good looking lads and lasses that are currently appearing on your television screen.  Because, honestly, if you have any sense at all, you’re staying inside where the heat won’t give you a fucking stroke.

We’ll start with SYTYCD (aka “So You Think You Can Dance?”).  Last week we met the top 20: 10 guys, 10 gals.  First the guys … uh … probably a good looking bunch.  Don’t care, couldn’t say.  But as for the gals, that’s another story.  I’m not going to spend a lot of time on details here either, but note for the record that one of those gals is an actual pole dancer.  She also dances for Cirque de Soliel … you know the weird circus high wire act with all the weird bendy and sometimes naked stuff.  Then there is the belly dancer with the absolutely stunning eyes.  I’m not kidding … she has amazing eyes!  The rest of her is pretty nice too.  But the cream of the crop is a pair of jaw-dropping cute blonde BFFs from Utah.  I have to stab myself in the eye each Wednesday to remind myself these girls are only 18 … only metaphorically of course.  If my wife is going to make me watch this shit, I reserve the right to admire the scenery.

But enough of the pretty dancing girls.  Oh … and guys.  Right.  Whatever.

If you’re looking for good looking television, you must be watching the USA Network.  I don’t think you can get a show on that network unless the leads are smoking hot.  Case in point, the dynamic duo of Covert Affairs and White Collar.  Both shows air on Tuesday night and both feature insanely good looking leads (and a pretty darn cute supporting cast as well).

Matt Bomer plays Neal Caffrey–a good looking (okay, I’ll admit it, extremely good looking) con-artist–on White Collar.  He dresses sharply and has an over-abundance of both style and attitude.  And the boy is a true charmer, an essential job skill if you want to be a con-man I’m guessing.  He spends most of his time catching bad-guys for the FBI and doing his level best to stay on the right side of the law himself.  White Collar is a pretty good show and one you can jump into without feeling like you’re missing a whole lot.  If you get the chance, however, I do recommend cozying up with Neal and the previous seasons of White Collar now showing on Netflix.

Which brings us to Covert Affairs.  Y’all remember Coyote Ugly, a modestly successful movie from the 90′s about hot young women dancing on the bar in a bar called, you guessed it, Coyote Ugly?  No matter if you don’t recall the movie.  All you need to know is that it starred Piper Perabo.  She was nice to look at back then and, honestly, she is even nicer to look at now in her role as Annie Walker in Current Affairs.  Back then, she was cute.  Now …

Wow.

Annie is a novice CIA agent with a knack for finding trouble.  Well, is there any other kind of CIA agent on television?  She is equal parts sweet and spicy.  But Annie’s most endearing quality is that she often gets in over her head only to win the day on sheer guts and gumption.  That’s right … I said gumption.  She’s a lot like True Blood’s Sookie Stackhouse … without being naked all the time and no fairy powers.  And no accent.

But I’ll get to Sookie and True Blood later.  I don’t want to leave anyone with the impression here that I only watch television for the hot chicks.  In fact, I only rarely even use the term “hot chicks”.  But I do watch television for pleasure and part of that includes an attractive cast of characters.  There’s a reason after all networks almost always build shows around good looking leads.  I would simply like to acknowledge their efforts where appropriate.

And, honestly, the only reason to watch shit like SYTYCD is because of the smoking out dancers.  Okay … some of the dancing is pretty cool too, but who would seriously give a damn if those dances were being performed by short fat guys and girls with no cleavage?

Creepy damn aliens (at least two varieties), giant spacecraft and wicked weapons, gritty bad-ass rebellious humans, and absolutely no socio-political commentary to be found anywhere!

Awesomeness abounds.

Go ahead, bicker among yourselves.  Excessive paranoia and a healthy dose of self-doubt?  No problem.  Threaten each other with violence … everybody is equally well armed (all praise the NRA!).

Just remember which way to point those guns with the aliens rain hell down on your heads and I’ll go to bed happy.

It’s clear from the start that our alien invaders in Falling Skies have the firepower to lay waste to the entire planet.  Therefor, the big mystery here, is why they have yet to do so.  Theories range from classic Twilight Zone (To Serve Man) to Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  I favor the latter, or something like it, meaning these aliens need our bits for some purpose other than stocking the larder.  Regardless, this is the central mystery that provides the backdrop to Falling Skies … not that I care.  I’m from the XBox generation, afterall.  Just nuke some more aliens, dammit!

Alien death is often slowed up by interpersonal conflict between the principals, including Noah Wylie and his family of emo-boys, but I supposeTNT doesn’t have the budget for wall-to-wall alien-busting effects.  I imagine, should I put my mind to it and use some of those brain-cells not yet burned out by various video games, I could probably find some kind of allegorical parallels to the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, but I just as soon not.  I can’t even spell Afghanistan without help.

The aliens are bug-eyed bastards that deserve to die.  That’s all I need.  As long as Noah and the boys can set aside the pseudo-drama long enough to take care of bidness, count me in.

The aliens are coming, boys!  Lock and load!

Wait … don’t shoot!  That’s just Larry Hagman …

What am I saying?  Fire at will!!

Falling Skies airs Sundays on TNT at 9/8 Central.

Let’s start with this … I watch way too much television AND I write a blog no one reads on the topic.  That’s just nuts.  I need help.

What I don’t need is couples therapy.  Any time I have a disagreement with my DVR, I always win.  No therapy needed there.

But that is the long way around to a quick “thumbs up” for USA’s new buddy copshow, Common Law.  The basic premise here is to take the old standby conceit of two cops who don’t get along and making them partners.  Now mix in couples therapy to help our cop-buds work our their issues.  Hey, while we’re at it, let’s turn the therapy sessions into group therapy!  Yeah!  That’s gonna be tons of funny!

Actually, it kind of is.

The only thing remotely original in this mix is that someone had the idea to combine all of these ideas into one mix at all.  Buddy cops that don’t get along.  Buddy cops that are clearly opposites.  Couples therapy for a little bromantic flavor.  One cop is a street smart, good lookin’, smooth talking black guy and the other, naturally, needs to be white, uptight, and dresses just right.  But also clearly good looking.  I could run down a list for you of all the movies and/or television shows with exactly those ingredients in various proportions–from Lethal Weapon to Starsky and Hutch–but there isn’t much point.  You’ve seen them all and you know the cliches.

The thing is, it does kind of work.  You learn to enjoy these guys and the relationship they have, dysfunctional as it may appear to be.  Of course the relationship is hardly dysfunctional at all in that these two always get the bad guy in the end.  It is the USA Network after all.

Watch it.  Enjoy it.  Laugh a little either at the antics on your screen or at the fact you’re perfectly willing to buy the bit in the first place.  Either way, it might just be the sort of therapy you need.

Common Law airs Friday Nights on USA Network at 10/9 Central (which somehow translates to 11p Mountain time).

R&I (my abbreviation but feel free to use it) is returning after the usual season ending cliffhanger.  That usually means one or the other of our leading ladies has been shot and her life hangs in the balance.  This season is different in that the shootee is neither ‘R’ nor ‘I’ (nor any other main character) but Isles’ gansta daddy.  So it’s the gal-pal friendship between the leading ladies which is knocking on death’s door … only everyone knows it really isn’t.  Just like you can’t kill of either the ‘R’ or the ‘I’ in the title, it would also be disaster to bump off the ‘&’ part.  In other words, the ladies will bounce back by episode two or three, but certainly no later.  The secret of this show isn’t the pot-boiler plots or mind-bending mysteries … it’s all about the charisma.  And that charisma is alive and kicking.

The success of Franklin & Bash also hangs on the charisma of the leads.  There’s no real cliffhanger to resolve this season–other than the show getting renewed in the first place after a moderately successful freshman run.  The cases they work on are inconsequential, little more than setting up our frat-boy lawyers to bend the rules, act out in court, and work their magic.  Hey, someone has to do it now that James Spader and William Shatner have closed up shop over at Boston Legal.  The show has a habit of slipping appealing guest-stars into those cases, as either lawyers or clients.  In the first three episodes this season we get Kevin Neelan, Seth Green, and Cybil Shepherd.

Lawyer shows and cop shows come and go almost entirely at random.  It is equally random any time one of them sticks.  Happily, two good ones have managed to stick to Tuesday nights.