Undeclared is the best show about school ever made. Cliqueclack Flashback = DONE.

Judd Apatow’s quickly-canceled college follow-up to his quickly-canceled high school series, Freaks and Geeks, was released my junior year of college. I hadn’t seen Freaks and Geeks at the time, so I had no idea who Seth Rogen, Jason Segel, or any of the other now-familiar faces in the cast were. I just knew that it was the funniest and most painfully-realistic portrayal of college life that I had ever seen.

The cast looked, dressed and sounded like actual college students– not 30-year-old hookers, which is a feat that has not been accomplished since. The guys were odd looking– a fact that was freely mentioned, and even the hot girls looked like normal hot college girls, not model/actresses. It was this realism that allowed the writing to shine and allowed the viewers to identify with every single thing these people were going through.

Read the rest of this entry »

Amy Poehler is on fire.

She broke through last year with an Emmy nomination, which was just about unheard of for a cast member of Saturday Night Live, and then she ended up with a sitcom of her own from the makers of The Office. Parks and Recreation wasn’t exactly a world beater last year, but it’s back for a second season on NBC. That’s not all though! Amy is also working double duty, co-hosting SNL’s Weekend Update Thursday during its limited run this fall.

Read the rest of this entry »

Summer reruns are starting to wind down, in favor of original programming. You have new episodes of Burn Notice, Royal Pains, and So You Think You Can Dance. If watching shows you’ve already seen is more your style though, there are still some pretty good offerings.

• At 8:00 on NBC, why not make it an Arnett night? Will Arnett is guest starring on 30 Rock, followed by the pilot of his lovely wife, Amy Poehler’s show, Parks and Recreation.
• At 9:00 on the CW, you can catch Supernatural, “Family Remains.” A kid gets kidnapped through the walls! That’s crazy!
• At 10:00 on CBS, you can catch up with The Mentalist. In “Flame Red,” Jane investigates the murders of some National Guard members.
• Also at 10:00 on NBC, is a really disturbing episode of Law & Order, that deals with rich Manhattan families buying Haitian children to act as their servants.

Make sure you subscribe to our mailing list to get daily updates on what’s notable and new on TV, and follow us on Twitter for more of the same and other news!

I’m going to be real with you guys for a minute. Outside of DVDs for my Virgin Diaries, I haven’t been watching a lot of TV lately. So maybe that explains why two of my clips this week never even aired on television, and the other two are from Jimmy Fallon. Look, I work with what I have, people. Regardless though, these clips are really funny, so enjoy!

Emmy Comedy Actress Roundtable

Okay, so this is kind of cheating since it technically wasn’t on TV, but this Hollywood Reporter roundtable, with current Emmy-nominated comedy actresses, is amazing. These women are obviously hilarious (except for Mary-Louise Parker, who just seems kind of scared), so there’s that. But more interesting to me are the tales of ageism in Hollywood. They all concur that TV is much more forgiving, but these women – who are all in their late 30s to late 40s – have a much harder time when they go out for film roles. Not only did Christina Applegate get passed over for a magazine cover because they don’t put women “over 35″ on, but both Sarah Silverman and Amy Poehler were asked to audition for the part of Jonah Hill’s mother. These ladies are all hot. We live in a crazy world, people.

Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t know if you cowboys have heard, but there’s a new show in town, goes by the name of Parks and Recreation. Stars that blond chick from Saturday Night Live? Yeah, that’s the one.

Here at fictional CliqueClack headquarters, the job/responsibility/privilege of who’s going to write up this show has been going around like a hot potato or a really technologically advanced version of the Nose Game (which, I would like to add, still solves a great number of disputes in my household). But as the newbie around here, I’ve decided to step up and not touch my e-nose. Hold on to that hot potato. Burn my metaphorical hands a little.

Another awesome writer of ours, Aryeh, wrote up a great open letter on why the Michael Scott Paper Company should have been the new spin-off. Sadly for Aryeh, this week has shown us why, exactly, such a dream is impossible (though I won’t spoil anyone waiting to read our inevitably mind-blowing review of this week’s episode). In this post, Aryeh makes a great point that he completely didn’t mean to make, but is true — Parks and Recreation is suffering from what I like to call “younger sibling syndrome.”

Read the rest of this entry »

I just remembered gravity… and the squishiness of all my manly bits. – Leverage premieres on TNT

So I don’t know why, but when I saw all of the commercials for Leverage, I wasn’t interested at all. I think it may have been the ads themselves: After seeing them practically every day, I still couldn’t tell you what the show was about. Maybe it was Timothy Hutton that I found off-putting, since he looks like a battered wife. I’m not sure what’s actually happened to him, but he looks like someone beat the crap out of his face and he’s wearing makeup to cover the bruises, but the swelling is still there, and you notice, but you don’t want to say anything because you don’t know what the actual deal is, and, well anyway, I heard good things about the show, so I checked it out. It’s pretty good.

Read the rest of this entry »

(Season 34, Episode 11)

Here we are at the last episode of 2008, the big holiday episode. Saturday Night Live was good enough to leave us all a little surprise for the holidays: a big pile of turd! Seriously, there was barely anything funny going on here. It was a real shame, especially considering that it was Amy Poehler’s final episode as a cast regular. I have to imagine that we will see her again from time to time doing Hillary Clinton; after all, she is leaving to do a sitcom on the same network.

If you can endure the pain, come listen to me bitch about this stinker….

Read the rest of this entry »