The Office returns for its sixth season on Thursday, September 17, at 9pm ET. Catch up on everything that happened during the fifth season with the five-disc boxed set, which contains all 26 episodes and numerous features, including webisodes.

The Office DVD: 5 discs, 26 episodes, $59.98 list price

The Amy Poehler newcomer Parks and Recreation isn’t even a proper set, with just one disc holding all six episodes from earlier this year. If you enjoyed the first season, the series will be back for a sophomore run the same day next week as The Office, but at 8:30pm.

Parks and Recreation DVD: 1 disc, 6 episodes, $29.98 list price

Also in stores is Worst Week, CBS’ adaptation of the Britcom The Worst Week of My Life. Since the show didn’t make it past the one-season mark, however, it won’t be returning to the tube.

Worst Week DVD: 2 discs, 15 episodes, $29.98 list price

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Weather Girl hits theaters in the United States on July 10, but you can preview it right now in the stills after the jump. Also, learn more about the indie comedy in the earlier post Sitcom Stars Storm Theaters July 10 in ‘Weather Girl’ and at the movie’s official Facebook page.

NOTE: Click each smaller image below for the larger version.

 

 

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Tonight (June 6), CBS will air “The Party,” the 16th and last new episode of the rookie comedy Worst Week. The network officially canceled the sitcom last month, although viewers and industry watchers saw it coming long before that.

Since the summer is almost here, some networks are doing a bit of seasonal cleaning to get rid of the residue left behind by all the series they just canceled last month or earlier. The good news for us TV fans is that we now get the chance to say a final goodbye to some of the axed shows we enjoyed despite their fate.

Worst Week had a proper first-season finale back in February, but tonight’s new episode wasn’t originally included in the freshman run for whatever reason. During “The Party,” bumbling Sam loses his pants *and* his dignity — again — while going all out to make Dick’s birthday party perfect. Catch the episode at 8:30pm ET.

Can’t remember or don’t know what Worst Week is about? Then take a look at the following series preview video CBS put together before the show debuted in the fall.

Long story short: the premise revolves around Sam, a well-intentioned but chronically klutzy man who continuously rubs his significant other’s parents the wrong way while trying to impress them before marrying their daughter and having their grandchild.

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Judging from the title “The Epidural,” it’s safe to guess that it’s baby time for Sam and Mel. Yet, before the big arrival, Sam manages to wind up at the wrong hospital after Mel calls him with the news she’s in labor and he misunderstands the name.

Worst Week hasn’t been renewed for a second season yet, but the show’s chances are more good than bad. I personally find it just mildly entertaining, but it pulls in decent ratings, no doubt thanks to its hugely popular lead-in Two and a Half Men.

Speaking of which, that Top 10 comedy — or should I say television’s only Top 10 comedy — will be rejoined by its more rambunctious lead-out Rules of Engagement when the David Spade sitcom opens its third season on March 2 at 9:30pm EST.

Worst Week airs Mondays on CBS at 9:30pm EST.

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The gimmick casting of note is the appearance of The Hills cast members Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt on How I Met Your Mother, along with additional guest stars Kendra Wilkinson, the Playboy Playmate from The Girls Next Door, and Kim Kardashian of Keeping Up with the Kardashians.

CBS is billing all of the guests as reality stars, but considering the female cameos, I thought the casting was going to have something to do with a wet-dream sequence for Barney. Turns out, Marshall comes down with a case of reality-star haunts, which is much less predictable and likely funnier.

The rest of tonight’s new comedy programming follows.

The Big Bang Theory
The Killer Robot Instability

Penny’s observations about Wolowitz’s romantic life (or lack thereof probably) depress him enough to cause him to lose interest in a future fighting robot competition. Fighting robots actually sound fun. [8pm, CBS]

How I Met Your Mother
Benefits

Ted and Robin designate themselves “friends with benefits” to improve their roommate situation, and reality-tv stars badger Marshall from the pages of his magazine. [8:30pm, CBS]

Rita Rocks
Old Friends

Facebook allows Rita to regain contact with an old friend. [8:30pm, Lifetime]

Two and a Half Men
Thank God for Scoliosis

Charlie and Jake compete to gain the attention of a waitress, while Alan tries to dampen his attraction to his receptionist. Carol Kane (Taxi) guest stars as the receptionist’s mother. [9pm, CBS]

Worst Week
The Article

After unintentionally interrupting Angela’s visit with her gynecologist, Sam writes about the experience to get over it, but his work is found by the wrong person. [9:31pm, CBS]

NOTE: All times are Eastern Standard Time.

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Considering the fact that neither show is posting impressive ratings, the pickups seem to demonstrate a new reality in the current climate of sluggish viewership: nurture the shows with potential to perform better in the future, or at least hang on to those shows you already have in the stable to keep your schedule free of holes.

Less-than-stellar average ratings of about 6 million (Kath & Kim) and 7.4 million (Gary Unmarried) viewers aside, both sitcoms have demonstrated the ability to not only retain all of the viewers from their lead-in — My Name Is Earl in the case of NBC and The New Adventures of Old Christine on CBS — in key demographics, but also build on their predecessors’ audience in certain age brackets.

In addition, CBS has also ordered three more episodes of Monday night’s Britcom adaptation Worst Week, which brings the series to a freshman total of 16 episodes. It has averaged 9.9 million viewers for each episode, in (large) part thanks to its ultra popular lead-in Two and a Half Men. Since Rules of Engagement will likely return in the winter to air in the 9:30pm, post-Men time slot, the shorter season makes perfect programming sense.

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I’m sensing possible issues ahead for Worst Week because the second episode is nowhere near as funny as the series pilot. Hopefully, the difference is just a fluke.

Realizing he’ll probably never make any headway with her father, Sam decides to focus all of his energy and charm on Mel’s mother Angela instead. The idea is to get her to like him so that her approval will somehow rub off on her husband Dick. First things first, though, such as getting over the vomit in the vase incident (Mel’s morning sickness) and walking in on Mel’s sister Sarah while she’s using a breast pump.

After he clears those hurdles, Sam makes the fatal — at least for the pet — mistake of feeding Dick’s beloved pet birds the avocado he can’t admit to Angela he hates. So, instead of just coming clean when she serves him an omelet loaded with the stuff, he decides to pretend to like it and sneak the food to the birds later.

Mel gives him the bad news about effect of avocados on birds too late to save one of them. The death sends Sam right to the pet store, where he — surprise! — runs into Dick, who also stops by to run an errand.

Unable to pick up a replacement bird with Dick right there, Sam goes back to the Clayton home. Fortunately, Mel helps him get off the hook later when Dick realizes one of the two birds is missing by telling her father she mistakenly opened the cage and it flew out the window. This lie finally allows her to witness the look Sam has been saying Dick gives him all the time but that she’s never seen before. Dick throws one her way after the bird news.

Sam’s bad luck still isn’t over, however, because he later becomes determined to give the dead bird a proper burial. While he’s out on the lawn at night alone, he comes across a dark male figure trying to get into the house. Immediately remembering the string of local robberies Dick mentioned earlier, Sam jumps the guy and rushes to break the news to the Claytons that he’s caught the robber.

After everyone runs to the lawn to see the criminal, Sam gets yet more bad news. Although the man he subdues is black — something the Claytons obviously aren’t — he’s also Mel’s brother David. We’ll certainly be learning more about that during the third episode.

And with this middling episode, Gary Unmarried officially becomes the best new sitcom of the season, in my opinion.

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Dukakis is set to guest star on the episode called “The Ring” as Melanie’s paternal grandmother June Clayton. That would make her the mother of intimidating judge Dick Clayton, so hopefully her appearance will explain a thing or two about her son’s sour disposition.

But, of course, Worst Week is mostly about bumbling Sam. That’s why the plot centers around him losing the invaluable wedding rings that belonged to June’s own grandparents when she gives them to him and Melanie for their upcoming marriage. I wonder if Sam will find the jewelry before the judge rips him a new one with his steely glare alone. Hmmm…

Although “The Ring” is currently unscheduled, it will likely air this fall.

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If the premiere episode indicates what’s to come, CBS definitely has a new hit comedy in Worst Week. The best part is the lead character Sam Briggs (Kyle Bornheimer), who is so not the totally clumsy buffoon promos led me to believe he is. Instead, Sam is a normal guy, whatever that means, with a decent life who happens to have the worst luck in the world whenever he’s around his girlfriend’s parents.

Once we meet that austere and humorless couple, however, it becomes all too clear why. For instance, although Sam has been with their daughter Melanie (Erinn Hayes, The Winner), aka Mel, for two years, they still snidely refer to him as only her “friend.” It’s completely understandable, then, why telling them Mel is seven weeks pregnant and they intend to get married is such a big deal requiring precise timing.

So, how many things can go wrong to make this a worst week as Sam and Mel prepare to deliver the big news to her parents? Read on…

In honor of her father’s 65th birthday, Sam is supposed to meet his girlfriend Mel’s family at 9pm for desert after a party at his job.

Sam’s drunk coworker Nicky, who apparently flirts with him all of the time, gets hammered, and Sam calls a cab to share instead of letting her drive home drunk.

Nicky repays Sam for his good intentions by vomiting on him in the cab, causing the driver to kick them out six miles from Nicky’s home.

Sam takes a shower at Nicky’s house after he walks her there in a rolling garbage can, but he quickly finds she has no towels anywhere.

While looking for something — anything — in her bedroom to dry off with, Nicky wakes up, sees him bucknaked, and jumps to the conclusion he’s trying to sexually assault her.

Kicked out with no clothes on and threats of calling the cops hanging in the air, Sam ties on a bright green trash bag like a diaper and takes an $80 cab ride to Mel’s parents’ house.

After asking Mel’s father Dick Clayton (Kurtwood Smith, That ’70s Show), a judge who obviously can’t stand him, to pay for the cab, Sam accidentally pees all over Mel’s mother Angela’s (Nancy Lenehan, My Name Is Earl) marinating goose when the lights go out and he mistakenly thinks the kitchen is the “powder room.”

Then Dick comes into the kitchen and slips and falls on his back when he steps in the pee on the floor from Sam’s “spill.”

Dick and Angela return from a trip to the hospital with the news that Dick has a concussion, just as Sam playfully tells their daughter he’ll punch her in the face after she admits she once pooped on the laundry room floor to make him feel better about the goose catastrophe.

Of course, Dick doesn’t think that’s funny, and after saying so, he heads out, where he becomes weak and falls to the ground in front of a funeral home.

The undertaker lets Dick rest for awhile and calls the Clayton home to tell them Dick is there.

Sam answers the undertaker’s call and misinterprets the news as Dick having died.

When Mel and Angela ask him to identify Dick’s body at the undertaker’s, Sam spots Dick’s glasses near a covered corpse and assumes the body is the judge. He doesn’t realize Dick left earlier when he felt better.

Back at the Clayton home, Angela blames Sam for Dick’s “death,” so he can’t refuse when Mel asks him to call Nairobi to break the news to her brother David.

Unfortunately, David’s on a cell phone and the connection is bad, which forces Sam to yell over and over, louder and louder that Dick’s dead, which upsets Angela again.

Mel then sends Sam out to buy her mother more Valium, and Sam almost immediately hits Dick’s car as he’s driving home.

When Sam drags an unconscious Dick into the house after the judge’s airbag knocks him out in the accident, Angela assumes it’s the corpse from the undertaker’s business. That’s why she screams and faints when Dick, still groggy, suddenly starts talking.

You’d think that was the end of the bad luck since it’s certainly enough. You’d be wrong, however, because although Dick and Angela prove they have a remote sense of humor when they laugh (almost inaudibly) about the recent events, fate still isn’t done with poor Sam.

He wants to tell Mel’s parents about the pregnancy at last, but she suggests he do a little something to erase some of his bad luck from their memory first. The opportunity arrives shortly when the power goes out again.

Sam rushes to the basement and even manages to get everything back on. Unfortunately, he sets his candle down in the dark to tend to the fuse box, and it ignites the nearby painting of Dick that Angela specially commissioned from a renowned artist who took a year to complete the work.

Bummer! So, Sam remains deep in the doghouse at the end of the pilot.

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Unfortunately, in addition to being sincere, Sam is just one of those cursed people whose presence creates catastrophes wherever he goes. That’s why it’s a good thing he has pregnant Melanie by his side to support him as he repeatedly attempts — and fails — to win over her reluctant parents before they get married.

CBS ordered 13 episodes of the series executive produced by Matt Tarses (Scrubs) and Jimmy Mulville (Whose Line Is It Anyway?). In addition, Emmy Award winner Adam Bernstein (30 Rock) directed the pilot. A clip follows the jump.

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