TV: Thursday Edition

Mike just got Guitar Hero 3, which rocks, both literally and figuratively. So, I imagine he's too tangled up in that game to post anything here (last I saw, he was battling Lucifer himself in a rousing version of Devil Went Down to Georgia). That means the posting duties again fall on me. Let's continue the TV preview, which is technically no longer a "preview" since most of these shows have been on for a month now. Anyway, here are Thursday's must-watch shows.

Survivor: That's right, Survivor. Chortle if you must, but it remains the gold standard of the reality genre and one of the best all-around shows on TV. People who complain that it's only about losers making fools of themselves or eating rats or whatever are sorely mistaken. Nay, folks-- Survivor is the ultimate social experiment, and one of the most strategically minded game shows ever created. After a particularly good episode, such as last week's, you could have an elaborate, in-depth discussion just analyzing the various players' strategies.

For instance, in a recent episode, the two tribes switched two players each, at which point Tribe A decided to purposely lose the immunity challenge and head to tribal council so they could vote off one of the new arrivals from Tribe B. Their plan was to then throw the next immunity challenge as well and vote off the other newcomer, then head to the tribal merge and re-connect with their two former tribemates. Meanwhile, Tribe B caught wind of the plan and cooked up a counter-scheme. After winning a reward challenge that allowed them to briefly "kidnap" a member of Tribe A, Tribe B brought their former tribemate back for a day and gave him a secret immunity idol that they'd found at their camp. They instructed him to return to Tribe A, lose the immunity challenge, go to tribal council, and use the idol to deflect the votes and eliminate a power player from Tribe A. But at the same time, Tribe A abandoned its challenge-throwing plan and later ended up winning the challenge, sending a shocked Tribe B to an unexpected tribal council and foiling their carefully hatched plan.

Now try to tell me that nothing happens on Survivor.

Not only that, but the challenges always make for quality TV. In a recent season, one challenge required the tribes to have all eight members stand on an extremely tiny platform that could barely hold two people. Needless to say, it was fun to watch everybody try to squeeze themselves in without hilariously toppling over the whole pile. Classic.

Supernatural: Another of my personal top five shows, this one might be in danger of losing its spot after a sluggish start to this season. The first two seasons of Supernatural were supremely awesome. It was simply about two brothers traveling all across the country, slaying supernatural beasts like vampires and werewolves and wendigos and killer clowns, snarking with each other and rescuing hot babes at every turn. It was like the world's coolest road trip. This season, though, the show has gotten too caught up in emotional crap, and now instead of killing evil creatures in snazzy ways, they're having long, boring conversations with demons and stuff. Less talky, more killy, I say. Also, it seems every other episode is about demons, whereas there used to be a different creature every week. There needs to be more variety in monsters. (In my everyday life, it's rare that I get to use the sentence "There needs to be more variety in monsters.")

NBC's Thursday-night comedies: It's hard to find even one good comedy on TV anymore, so it's pretty much amazing that here you can find four of them at once, all on the same network on the same night. This is the best quartet of comedy shows in decades. Of the four, I'd rank The Office and 30 Rock as the best two, with Scrubs slightly behind them, and My Name is Earl slightly behind that. In any case, they're all well worth watching. 30 Rock has been pure gold this year-- seriously, I don't know why more people aren't watching-- and The Office is always reliably funny. Don't bother with Grey's Anatomy or any of that crap-- just keep the channel on NBC. At least until ER starts; then feel free to turn it off.