[Televisionary]

What did you think of last night's episode of Community ? This week marked another go on AOL Television's Skype Second Opinions, where I connected via Skype to ramble on for a few minutes about this week's episode of Community ("Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas"), which included stop-motion animation, sad quick Christmas songs, actual humbugs, a gorgeous (seasonal) theme song, a trip to Planet Abed (where the atmosphere is 7 percent cinnamon), Christmas pterodactyls, the best Lost gag anywhere, and so much more. (You can read my advance review of "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas" from earlier this week over here .) You can watch the video in full over here at AOL Television or right below. Community returns with new episodes in January.

And that's how you do a pitch-perfect episode of Friday Night Lights . I've been on the writers' case this season for the handling of the Julie Taylor storyline, or more specifically from the, er, swerve it made into the territory of cliche. I can only hope that it was a case of taking a shortcut to get Julie to the here and now as quickly as possible because the ramifications of Julie's actions have proven infinitely more exciting and provocative than the actual commission of her affair with married head TA Derek Bishop. This week's fantastic episode of Friday Night Lights ("Swerve") delivered an installment that offered a look at the sacrifices and frayed bonds of family, contrasting the fallout from Julie's transgression--and its effects on Eric and Tami--with the way that Vince handled his own plight, turning to Ornette for help out of a terrible situation. The way Ornette may have handled Vince's situation might not have been what Vince had i

There's something both innately comforting and deliciously off-kilter about this week's stupendous Christmas-themed episode of Community ("Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas"), which uses the stop-motion animation of holiday classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer to offer an imaginative and emotionally resonant episode that explores the true meaning of Christmas (or any holiday, really). Community has thrived at both satirizing and embracing certain comedic tropes, twisting them together into a malleable and winning format in which anything and everything is indeed possible, from a zombie attack to an all-out paintball war, transforming broadcast network comedy into an infinitely elastic form. In this case, it's quite easy to accept that the Greendale gang would be portrayed as plasticine personages, as the episode unfolds from the perspective of meta-embracing Abed himself, who claims to have woken up that morning seeing everything in stop-motion animation. R

Ah, how the child becomes the parent. Last night's sensational and heartfelt episode of Community ("Mixology Certification"), written by Andy Bobrow and directed by Jay Chandrasekhar, brought us Troy's 21st birthday and took the group out of the study room for a night of debauchery that gave us a glimpse into Shirley's dark past, Annie's home life, Troy's state of mind, and Abed's, um, love of Farscape . Now in its second season, Community has proven that it's adept at conflating genres and smashing expectations about what's possible within the confines of a broadcast comedy: it's a workplace comedy, thriller, horror survival story, romantic comedy, mystery, buddy comedy. An episode jam-packed with jokes and sight gags can give way to an episode like this one, that's higher on the heart quotient and lighter on overt humor. And that's a Very Good Thing for a thoughtful and contemplative episode like this one. The series' innate

"Julie Taylor is a slut!" Let's be honest about this: we all knew that Derek Bishop was bad news and we all knew that it would come to this, a screaming match in a crowded college setting in which his wife railed at Julie for sleeping with her husband. Or at least, it's what I've suspected--and dreaded--for some time now. I've been upfront about my dislike for Julie Taylor's storyline this season and the way that her college experience, summed up by her relationship with doctoral candidate/TA/fry bread-addict Derek has veered sharply into cliche, which is something that Friday Night Lights doesn't typically do. Julie's arc thus far this season has seemed to be the means to an end: the way to get Julie back to Dillon without her just dropping out of college, despite her ambition and her smarts. Enter the crazy wife of Derek, with a well-timed rant (even if I found it hard to stomach that this PhD candidate would mispronounce "cliche") and

Twitter should be a tool for audiences to interact with the talent behind their favorite shows—instead, anonymous users heap abuse onto writer-producers for ruining "their" shows. Over at The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Twitter's TV War," in which I speak to Community 's Dan Harmon, Bones ' Hart Hanson, and Grey Anatomy 's Shonda Rhimes about the complicated relationship between access, privacy, and angry fans on the social networking platform. I'm curious to know what your take is and whether you side with showrunners or fans. What happens when the dialogue turns ugly? Head to the comments section to discuss.

Knock-knock. It's been a while since we've had an episode of Chuck that focused on Chuck Bartowski's better half, Agent Sarah Walker. We've been given slivers of Sarah's backstory--it was only last season that we learned her true name (that would be "Sam" for those keeping score)--but the enigmatic spy who has stolen Chuck's heart has remained largely an international woman of mystery, her heart encased in stone until Chuck came around. But does Sarah love Chuck for the man he is or the man that she thinks he could be? And with the Intersect out of commission for the foreseeable future, what does that mean for their own? This week's episode of Chuck ("Chuck Versus Phase Three"), written by Kristin Newman and directed by Anton Cropper, did not disappoint on that front, giving Yvonne Strahovski the perfect showcase for her skills, both in terms of silently emoting and kicking butt. While the action led Sarah (and Casey and Morgan) to far-

Fringe fans aren't the only ones concerned by the midseason schedule unveiled this evening by FOX, which includes the move of American Idol to Wednesdays and Thursdays in January . The move means that the reality juggernaut, which has seen its ratings deflated somewhat of late, will now air opposite NBC's cult comedy Community . But it's not time to send in the save our show letters just yet. Creator Dan Harmon, reached by Televisionary on Friday evening, had this to say. "My reaction: We have nothing to worry about," Harmon told me. " American Idol has a totally different audience. They like popular things." So there. Viva Greendale.

What did you think of last night's episode of Community ? This week marked another go on AOL Television's Skype Second Opinions, where I connected via Skype to ramble on for a few minutes about this week's episode of Community ("Conspiracy Theories and Soft Defenses"), which included a vast array of conspiracy theories, an incredibly sprawling blanket fort (village?), gunfire, confessions of true love, Dean Pelton, lessons, Professor S. Professorson, fake night school courses ("Learning!" "Reading?" "Introduction to Basics"), and more than I could possibly fit into this wee paragraph. (If you couldn't guess, I loved this week's episode.) You can watch the video in full over here at AOL Television or right below. In two weeks on Community ("Mixology Certification"), when the study group convenes to celebrate Troy's birthday, they realize he is actually turning 21 and decide to hit the bars; Jeff and Britta inge

After last week's Julie Taylor-related catastrophe, I was extremely pleased that this week's episode of Friday Night Lights ("Keep Looking"), written by Bridget Carpenter and directed by Todd McMullen, fell back into the pattern of greatness that the series is known for. This week's episode offered an examination of the often contentious relationship between fathers and sons, summed up in the juxtaposition of Vince's struggles with his ex-con father Ornette and Buddy's attempts to drum some tough love into his angsty teenage son Buddy Jr. In this case the dynamics were flipped on their head, with Vince struggling to determine whether he could trust his father, and laying down the law now that he's reentered his and his mother's lives. While his mom is happy to dwell on the more rose-colored memories of the past, Vince can't let go of what his father's absence meant to the family, the missed birthdays and moments, and the fact that he blame

I always find it disappointing when an episode of Chuck fails to live up to my expectations and this week's episode ("Chuck Versus the Fear of Death"), written by Nicholas Wootton and directed by Robert Duncan McNeill, definitely did not live up to the momentum created in the wake of "Chuck Versus the First Fight." I'm sure it wasn't helped by the fact that the series took a week off between installments but this week's episode also seemed all the more weak in comparison to the previous episode, which set up some new subplots and a potential new direction to the overarching mythology. This week's episode... felt more than a little like filler. Way too much weight given to a flimsy Buy More plot involving this week's Greta, Summer Glau, who had little to do other than prance around angrily, flick open a knife concealed in a thigh holster, and eat some product placement. If I'm being brutally honest: it wasn't a good use of Glau at all

I just left the first post-merger bureau meeting to learn that NBC had announced its midseason schedule, complete with a few scheduling shifts (cough, Parenthood ), a third hour of comedy on Thursdays (along with a renewal for 30 Rock , when it all goes pear-shaped), and a few missing series as well. ( Love Bites and Friends with Benefits , I'm looking at you.) And, most importantly, a announcement about the long-delayed return of Parks and Recreation , which returns to the schedule on January 20th in a new timeslot of 9:30 pm ET/PT, right after The Office . (About time it got this plum timeslot as well.) I'm off to an interview but I'm curious to know what you think about the new schedule, the musical chairs, and the return to Pawnee. Head to the comments section to discuss. The full schedule can be found below, along with the official press release from NBC. NBC ANNOUNCES NEW MID-SEASON SCHEDULE UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. – November 15, 2010 – NBC today made several mid-seas

If you missed last night's episode of Community ("Cooperative Calligraphy"), written by Megan Ganz and directed by Joe Russo, you missed out on not just a hilarious and accomplished installment but the very best bottle episode ever to air on television. The search for Annie's missing pen transformed the group into separate individuals, as paranoia and suspicion ripped our community asunder, accusations and frustrations rearing their ugly head as the gang shut themselves into the study room to figure out what fate befell that gel-grip purple pen. It wasn't about the pen, of course. It was, as I said in my glowing advance review of "Cooperative Calligraphy," about the way in which something insignificant can become something monumental, how a mountain can be made of an anthill, how a pen can become the thing that divides a group. The pen, in this case, is most definitely more powerful than the sword. (And especially scissors, proven here.) By stripping t

I'm just going to say it upfront: I'm hating Julie's storyline. I always like to give Friday Night Lights the benefit of the doubt when it comes to storytelling (except, maybe, for the murder conspiracy storyline in Season Two ), but the weakness of the current college plot for Julie Taylor (Aimee Teegarden) was all the more apparent this week when it was juxtaposed with the strength and grace of the storyline for Vince (Michael B. Jordan). This week's episode of Friday Night Lights ("The Right Hand of the Father"), written by Patrick Massett and John Zinman and directed by David Boyd, attempted to balance the two plots, as well as a third about striving to be a better person in light of last week's disastrous party and the drunken behavior of Maura (Denise Williamson) but it didn't quite all come together for me in the end, due to the lackluster nature of that Julie subplot. Which is a bit of a disappointment, as Jordan's Vince delivered some po

It's said that in a murder investigation, there are no secrets. The lives of everyone, from the victim to those around them, are laid bare under the harsh light of scrutiny. If you're concealing something, it will come out. The same holds true for a different sort of investigation, this time surrounding a missing purple pen belonging to Annie (Alison Brie) on this week's genius episode of Community ("Cooperative Calligraphy"). While the episode is ostensibly about the quest to track down this errant stylus, it's the bonds of the study group that come tumbling down when the finger of suspicion is pointed at each of them. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the very best bottle episode ever produced. For those of you who don't know, "bottle episode" is a technical term for an episode of television that's produced in one single location. It cuts down on the bottom line (something studios like quite a lot) as there aren't additional sets, loca

Sci-fi auteur Abrams' latest TV show, Undercovers , has gotten the axe at NBC. Over at The Daily Beast, I take look at what went wrong and why TV needs a fully-committed, not watered down, Abrams in my latest feature, "Is J.J. Abrams Too Big for TV?" Do you agree with my assessment? Did you try to watch Undercovers ? Do you miss the days of Lost, Alias , and Felicity ? Should Abrams be more committed to these television endeavors even as his feature film career skyrockets? Or is it a case of over-committing, audience expectations, or creative partnerships? Head to the comments section to discuss.

Hmmm, did you see that coming? While I teased some details about this week's fantastically serpentine episode of Chuck ("Chuck Versus the First Fight") in my advance review last week (which you can read over here ), I was especially careful not to spoil that particular bait and switch, lest it ruin what was a rather masterful plot twist this week. Morgan, here thrust into largely the same role that Chuck was way back in Season One, claims that first fights set the tone for the entire relationship and his rubric can be applied to relationships in general. In fact, the way that the final conflict in this episode plays out might hold the key to unlocking--or at least gaining some understanding--about the ways in which Mary Elizabeth Bartowski operates. Her frosty exterior belies a true emotional core, one that's not tied up in whatever elaborate ruse she's involved in at the moment. So now that the episode has aired and I can get more specific with my thoughts with