The big news of the week was, of course, the upfronts. ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and The CW all unveiled their new lineups, and in doing so killed According to Jim, Cupid, Deal or No Deal, Everybody Hates Chris, The Game, Life, My Name Is Earl, Privileged, Reaper, Samantha Who?, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Without a Trace and The Unit.

• The CW moved Smallville to Fridays and is launching Twilight The Vampire Diaries in its slot. Also, Fox 1992 called and it wants its Wednesday lineup back.
• Fox is bringing SYTYCD to the fall to keep Idol’s timeslots warm until January, moving Fringe to take on CSI, and thinks a better Dollhouse lead-in is a couple of comedies; and one of them is ‘Til Death.
• CBS is spinning off NCIS: LA and bringing back Moonlight’s Alex O’Loughlin in a new medical show. They also stole Medium from NBC and are sticking it after Ghost Whisperer on Fridays.
• NBC has Jay Leno on… every night. More SNL Weekend Update on Thursdays, and timeslot-sharing shows, like Heroes Mondays at 8 in the fall, before making room for Chuck (YAY!) in January.
• ABC sticks with Scrubs, and a Wednesday with four new comedies and four old faces: Hank (Kelsey Grammer), The Middle (Patricia Heaton), Cougar Town (Courteney Cox Arquette) and Modern Family (Ed O’Neill).
• Even more not famous former Illinois governor Rod’s wife Patti Blagojevich is joining NBC’s I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here.
• Shawn Johnson made the Olympic DWTS championship alumni association a trio.
• Despite being canceled, Earl is twit-titioning to save its life, and TBS may be interested in saving it.
• Reaper is seeing if they can go syndicated to stay alive. And with Tyler Labine starring in the picked-up Sons of Tucson, if it works things could get interesting.
• Kara DioGuardi showed up “bikini girl” on American Idol by outsinging her and out-looking-hot-in-a-bikini-ing her.

Dear TV viewers (yes, all of you),

I don’t ask a lot of you. Really, I don’t. For the most part, I’m perfectly happy to let you watch whatever you like. For some reason you seem to be obsessed with watching “stars” ball room dance. That’s cool with me. I don’t have a problem with it. Apparently, you’re not a huge fan of superior comedies, like 30 Rock. I understand it’s not for everyone, and as long as it keeps winning awards and getting renewed by NBC, I don’t really care. I wish you’d give Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles another try, but I realize that it’s a genre show and will never be a hit.

With all that said, I do have a little favor to ask you: please watch Reaper when it returns this Tuesday.

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They don’t call the show The Sarah Connor Chronicles for nothing! The past few weeks have certainly reminded us that this is Sarah’s show. Lena Heady carried this episode. Heck, she had too, she was practically the only person in it. Since Terminator has returned from (a way too long) hiatus, it has focused a lot on Sarah. I love Lena Heady as Sarah. To be honest, she’s my favorite part of the show, but even I’ve had enough at this point.

It’s time to see what’s been going on with Jesse and Riley. It’s time to give Cameron something to do, perhaps some asses that she can kick. It’s time to go deeper into the John Henry/Ellison/Weaver story. As much as I love mopey Sarah, it’s time for something else.

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After Weaver went nuts, killing everyone in the warehouse/factory and then blowing it up for good measure, it’s only natural that there would be several funerals. I just wasn’t expecting to see any of these funerals.

Loss was a huge theme this week, being paralleled with the many services for all the murdered workers, along with the anniversary of Weaver’s husband’s death. Shirley Manson continues to do a pretty good job in her role as a Terminator. She’s got the creepy, emotionless robot thing down pat, as was evidenced when she was trying to comfort her grieving daughter. I think it can all be summed up when she asked her assistant to “find her daughter and her bring her” to her. It implied that she had no idea where her daughter even was. Creepy.

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It’s nice to have Terminator back, isn’t it? It’s been a while, and I certainly hope the long lay off and the switch to the time slot of doom won’t kill the show completely. In any case, I’m going to be enjoying this final batch of episodes of the season.

This week’s episode saw Sarah waking up in the hospital with a bullet buried in her leg from the cliffhanger back in December. The really interesting part of the situation, however, were the visions of Kyle Reese that Sarah had throughout the episode. We know Sarah’s not the most mentally stable individual in the world, but this whole thing seems like the writers were borrowing from Battlestar Galactica.

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Week of January 4 to January 11

Clever, insolent, creative, irreverent; even a little twisted. I speak of the writers here at CliqueClack, and the unique posts they churn out day after day. How could we let seven days go by without highlighting some of the week’s gems?

TV’s back, baby, and so are we! Sure, we had some great content during the winter hiatus, but with actual new programming on this week, we were utter clack-a-holics.

It was a week of firsts, which I suppose is fitting with the new year and all.

• We broke the news first on the Internet, folks … the successful The Librarian mini-series franchise is coming to the big screen, hopefully to be shot later this year.
  
• Jason reviewed the first two back-to-back episodes of Scrubs on ABC, and had some good things to say about the transition. What did you think?
• Scott debuted his BBC Babble column, about all things British and on TV, of course. US shows have been greatly inspired by their British counterparts, to say the least….
• Annie debuted her Gossip Girl Virgin diary — OMG!
  
• Kona debuted Diary of a Weeds Virgin, shedding a whole new light on suburbia for her.
  
• Damages season premiere was splendidly reviewed by Jane; so glad this show is back and still intriguing!
• My Name is Earl came back, and Bill not only reviewed it, he illustrated his post. You don’t want to miss his take on Jason Lee (or The Odd Couple, for that matter).
• Psych’s first episode of the new year debuted to Brett’s favorable review.

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If you’re like me (and you really should be), you’re looking forward to the return of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. I get made fun of, but I really think it’s one of the best shows on TV right now and one of the better sci fi shows to come along in a while. Unfortunately, we all have to wait over a month, until the middle of February (Friday the 13th to be exact) for the return of the show. Luckily for us, though, the intrepid producer of Terminator, Josh Friedman has started up a weekly video podcast over at the Terminator blog. Luckily for you, I also have it embedded after the jump.
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