Original Air Date: September 29, 2008

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.

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Original Air Date: September 22, 2008

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…

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The single-camera sitcom Worst Week revolves around entertainment magazine editor Sam Briggs (Kyle Bornheimer of Jericho), who tries his hardest to impress Dick (That ’70s Show’s Kurtwood Smith) and Angela (My Name is Earl’s Nancy Lenehan), the parents of his girlfriend Melanie Clayton (Erinn Hayes of Kitchen Confidential and The Winner).

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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Ahhh — another weekend, another Comedy Central special by someone from the Blue Collar Comedy Tour.

This Saturday night, it’s Larry the Cable Guy’s turn to simultaneously wow and disgust viewers with his sure to be at least mildly funny tales of his Morning Constitutions.

Does everyone even know what “morning constitutions” are? If you do, you might share my concern about listening to someone discuss the subject for an entire hour, even if it is during a redneck-friendly standup comedy performance.

Well, if anybody could do it, though, it would be good old Larry, and you can catch the entire event in vivid color this Saturday at 8pm EST on Comedy Central in the United States and on Canada’s Comedy Network at 10pm.

A live recording and a live DVD of the special were released in the spring and summer of 2007, respectively. So, I assume the track listing gives a pretty good idea of what to expect.

1. Bowling Shoes
2. Just Hitched
3. I Like Steak
4. Pie of the Month
5. Terrorist or Toddler
6. Gay Mafia
7. Stool Troubles
8. Shopping at Wal-Mart
9. Bed, Beer & a Blonde
10. Squeal or No Squeal
11. A Sue Named Boy
12. Poop Lasagna

Thanks to Jeanne for the heads-up.

Who needs an Emmy when you can have a Peabody Award? Although the first award gets tons more coverage and fanfare in the general entertainment industry and among the general public, it’s the second honor that seems to generate the most respect and admiration among TV-industry insiders.

That fact might have something to do with the roster of past Peabody winners, which consistently includes the best, boldest, brightest, and bravest contenders possible. The annual Emmy extravaganza can’t hold a candle to that reputation in an era where its voters consistently overlook potential nominees that seem like a shoo-in to people who know TV.

On April 2, the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, the entity that bestows the international Peabody Awards, announced the 67th annual group of winners. The lucky recipients for 2007 included several familiar shows from the field of comedy, namely the NBC sitcom 30 Rock, the Showtime dark dramedy Dexter, and the Comedy Central political-minded cable-news satire The Colbert Report. Nice, huh?

The Peabody Awards committee says the following about each of the shows:

30 Rock

Tina Fey’s creation is not only a great workplace comedy in the tradition of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” complete with fresh, indelible secondary characters, but also a sly, gleeful satire of corporate media, especially the network that airs it.

The Colbert Report

Let none dare call it “truthiness.” Colbert, in his weeknight Comedy Central send-up of politics and all that is bombastic and self-serving in cable-news bloviasion [sic], has come into his own as one of electronic media’s sharpest satirists.

Dexter

With a premise that questions our fondness for avenging heroes — a serial killer who channels his dark urges into police forensics and the killing of other sociopaths — this Showtime series is a masterful psychological thriller and a complex and ambiguous meditation on morality.

Other notable honorees are AMC’s highly praised first original series Mad Men and the phenomenal Discovery Channel 11-part nature special Planet Earth.

Congratulations to all of the very deserving winners. It’s great to see awards done right for once.

Original Air Date: February 27, 2008

NOTE: This series and recap contain very mature themes and language.

TRAVIS JUNIOR attempts to rig mailboxes with precision, French-made paint bombs to deter kids who drive around knocking the boxes down with baseball bats. He promptly drops the first bomb when he picks it up, however, unleashing waves of blue paint directly on his face and upper body — just before someone drives by in a truck and knocks down the mailbox he’s standing beside.

At roll call, LIEUTENANT DANGLE asks for volunteers at a camp for limbless children brought to the United States from landmine-rich Eastern Europe. When there are no takers, Dangle informs the team next that Burger Cousin has been robbed 11 times in the last 16 days.

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ABC Family

Greek

• Second half of first season (12 episodes) premieres on March 24
• Complete first season will have 22 episodes
• RENEWED for a 12-episode second season on February 14

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Original Air Date: February 20, 2008

NOTE: This series and recap contain very mature themes and language.

Every officer in the Washoe County Sheriff’s Department is called to a local high school, where there’s a pipe-bomb scare. Luckily for everyone around, the Sheriff’s Department has a hi-tech bomb robot that was made all the way in France — so it’s gotta be good, right? Uhhh…

The robot goes inside and does its thing, making the area safe for citizens again. Unfortunately, nobody knows how to speak French to communicate with the hunk of metal. So, after it’s done with its work inside the school, the robot rolls directly towards the officers, guns blazing, while they either dive for cover or run for their lives.

The female officers are in the women’s locker room at work in the next scene, which doesn’t deter LIEUTENANT DANGLE from coming in at all. Maybe it’s because he’s gay or because he’s their boss or because he just has an itty bitty towel draped around his own body, but the ladies don’t seem to care about him seeing them standing around in various stages of undress either.

Dangle has news. He asks the officers if they remember how his father abandoned his family before his mother killed herself, leaving him to live with his uncle Frederick. Well, his father moved to Chicago then and started a black family, and he just learned his father is now dead. He also has two black siblings who live in Chicago — ERIC (Guest Star Gary Anthony Williams) and BETHANY (Guest Star Aisha Tyler) — who are coming to town for the reading of his father’s will.

The female officers think Dangle is excited about the prospect of getting his hands on some money. But, wait … there’s more. To avoid coming across like a “creepy, weird, gay guy” (and that’s a direct quote, not my words), the lieutenant wants one of the female officers to pretend to be his girlfriend.

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Original Air Date: February 13, 2008

NOTE: This series and recap contain very mature themes and language.

All of the deputies are psyched because it’s the day they get to sell delicious Coconut Nut Clusters to help support the Sheriff’s Athletics League. Although DANGLE reminds everyone that the door-to-door sale isn’t a competition, whoever moves the most candy will get two free tickets to a local production of Our Town.

JONES and KIMBALL make the first candy stop. But, when they identify themselves as officers from the Sheriff’s Department, whoever’s in the house starts complaining about “pigs” and shoots a rifle through the door, scaring the officers away.

Later at a lewd call, Dangle and TRAVIS JUNIOR investigate a neighborhood weirdo who’s luring children to his house. The perp does a number of questionable things with the kids, such as blindfolding them and telling them to feel around; letting them ride on a mechanical horse, then dousing them with water from a hose, and posting the resulting videos on YouTube; and allowing them to hunt for loose change in his apron pocket, which is deep enough to reach his crotch. The officers determine the guy is guilty, and they bring him in, handcuffed by whatever’s poking through the inside of his apron pocket.

After Dangle and Travis Junior do a little public service announcement describing Coconut Nut Clusters as the ultimate treat, Jones and Kimball, her arm now in a sling, make their next stop at another suburban house. The man who answers the door seems thrilled because, he claims, he has quite a sweet tooth. He invites the officers inside and asks if they’ll take a check for the entire box of candy.

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Original Air Date: January 16, 2008

NOTE: This series and recap contain very mature themes and language.

The fifth-season premiere picks up right where the fourth-season finale left off, in WIEGEL’s hospital room after she had the baby and declared she knows who his father is.

It turns out that GARCIA wasn’t stealing DANGLE’s would-be husband. Instead, he’s there to arrest both men after producing a document that states same-sex marriages are illegal in Nevada.

At the next morning briefing, Dangle tells Garcia they now have to communicate through his attorney. The good news is that after staying in their jail, Dangle can confirm it’s an effective deterrent. Wiegel then tells everyone present that although she used a sperm bank, the father of her newborn son is in the room. When she still doesn’t reveal who it is, though, Dangle asks if she’s going to hold that over everyone’s heads like some kind of weapon. Wiegel hadn’t considered that strategy before, but since Dangle has mentioned it…

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