Greek: Questionnaires, Hand Stamps, & Reba

Greek: "Move On Cartwrights"

Solid episode. Clark Duke is still a revelation.

It's a matter of record that I'm not a big fan of Rebecca, but she gets the quote of the episode:

Rebecca: "I will pay anyone $200 to take this tray up to Cappie's room and watch Reba with him. We're on season 5!"

I love it when Greek name-drops random TV shows. Just some bullets for this episode:

• Casey: "B.P.H."
  Ashley: "Before Paris Hilton?"
  
• Dale: "I was voted 'most like to have the opportunity to become impure but have the supreme self-control not to' three years running in high school."
• Wait, Evan's not the Omega Chi president? Who is this Dino of whom they speak? Evan's seriously not the president? Why does he seem to be in charge of everything? Wow, I seriously forgot all about this.
  
• Ha ha, Casey so set Rebecca up. She knew hanging with Sick Cappie is a miserable experience and sent Rebecca right over. Ha. On Monday nights after watching an hour of Gossip Girl and an hour of Greek, I feel like I'm becoming a master manipulator.
  
• I can't believe Rusty sent Emma a questionnaire about music. Eeesh. His battles with the white board were funny.
  
• Angry Girl (I don't remember her name) is wearing seriously high heals for someone who seems to not care anything about what people think of her.
  
• Dino! He does exist! But since when? And why does he let Evan do his job for him?
  
• I enjoyed the scene of Evan and Casey yelling at each other while stamping people's hands really hard at the party entrance. Evan getting all bent out of shape about how Casey was hand-stamping was funny. And, darn it, now I'm apparently a Evan/Casey shipper. How did that happen?
  
• Dale: "I believe in science and Creationism, Rusty. My mind is a powerful instrument."
  
• Whoa, Evan kissed Frannie. (Not too surprising since I think they showed us that clip in a preview a month or so ago.) I am impressed that she actually rebuffed his advances though.
  
• I'm not happy with Evan and Casey's "let's be friends" stuff. Now Casey's got an awful lot of "friends" who she's in love with.
  
• As much as I like Cappie, I'm kind of enjoying this Cappie-deficient episode. It gives some of the other characters an opportunity to shine.
  
• Whoa! Seriously short skirt on Angry Girl! This girl confuses me.
  
• And in a twist we saw coming miles away didn't see coming at all...Rusty and Angry Girl are the real match with potential. Whatever; that's fine with me. I still think Dale needs to get himself a girlfriend though.

I'm nervous about the clip on the promo for next week's episode where Rebecca is saying to Cappie, "I think, maybe, I..." The way I see it, that can go one of two ways:

"I think, maybe, I am just using you to make my dad angry." (YEA!)

or

"I think, maybe, I am in love with you." (Noooooooooo....)

(photo: abcfamily.com)

Gossip Girl: She's Coming Undone

Gossip Girl: "Desperately Seeking Serena"

Just to begin with a tie-in to The O.C. (which we all know I like to do as often as possible), episode 15 of season 1 of The O.C., "The Third Wheel," prominently featured Oliver, a newcomer/outsider whose drug problems and neurosis wreaked havok for episodes, broke up Ryan and Marissa, and generally pushed fans to the brink. Now episode 15 of season 1 of Gossip Girl is prominently featuring Georgina, a newcomer/outsider whose drug problems and neurosis promise to wreak havoc for episodes and seem likely to break up Dan and Serena. What remains to be seen is if Georgina will become as intolerable as Oliver was.

So far, I'd say that she's fairly solidly less annoying than Oliver. I'm not convinced yet that she's fantastic or all that interesting--in a show with Chuck and Blair, it's hard to carve out some new territory as a likeable villian. Michelle Trachtenberg did ok. I thought her first few scenes were a bit weak, and I did begin to wonder if maybe Mischa wouldn't have done a better job (which, honestly, is not like wondering if Glenn Close or Cate Blanchett would do a better job). I thought, though, that Michelle did better when Georgina began to get really evil.

And, evil Georgina was. With Oliver, we always suspected he was a psycho villain, but we didn't get any conclusive proof for several episodes, but Georgina flat out roofied Serena in her first episode! Yikes. Slipping your friend a date rape drug...that's showing your true colors.

Serena doesn't seem to be handling the Georgina situation as well as she could be. For example, if you're going to have Chuck (Chuck!) call Dan and make up an excuse for you, you definitely need to at least at some point find out what the excuse was before you talk to Dan the next day. One of the funniest lines of the night was Blair teasing Serena about her "stomach migraine."

Hmm, it's a sad day when Serena is rapidly becoming the most pathetic person on a show that includes characters like Nate and Vanessa. To be fair, Nate is making great strides to remove himself from the running for that title. His mopeyness quotient is absolutely plummeting. He made a few funny comments. And he is now repeatedly thinking about people other than himself.

I don't even want to talk about Jenny.

And then there was Blair and her campaign against Nelly Yuki, which was pretty great. Nelly Yuki herself was actually pretty great. The students as this school are certainly as strange breed. The girl may be a National Merit Scholar, concert pianist, Sorbonne student, etc., but the poor girl didn't stand a chance once Blair came after her. I also really liked Nelly's boyfriend Todd. He was hot--maybe Blair should date him.

Highlights:

• Dan actually got to be funny for the first third of the episode. His story about striking out during a T-ball game was great. "The ball was on a tee!"
• Chuck and Blair look like citrus today. Yikes--Chuck's jacket is very, very orange. And Jenny's yellow tights are also quite bright. It looks like neon is in on the Upper East Side.
• Dan (when Serena covers his eyes and kisses him): "Oh, Chuck, I had no idea you felt that way about me."
  Serena: "Good to know you're still a little bit funny." (Tell me about it...)
  Jenny, when you're wearing neon yellow tights and someone still gives you his phone number, you'd better take what you can get.
• It's not a good sign that Lilly van der Woodsen, Blair, and Chuck all can't stand Georgina. It's not like any of those people have a strict moral code of conduct.
• Dan: "I've been wondering where you were. I've been waiting for you."
  Chuck: "You mean all your life?"
• Dan: "Serena, don't take this the wrong way, but you sound just like this jackass we know."
• Is it just me, or are Dan/Chuck interactions crazy-hot?
• Well, I guess the way to make me like Nate the best of two people is to put him with Vanessa.
• I thought Dan was supposed to be smart; I don't think he needs to be freaking out quite this much over the SATs.
• Nate: "Oh, you said 'punk'? You had me at 'lesbian.'" (Wow, Nate's being funny--have we slipped into an alternate universe?)
• Does Vanessa even go to high school? Wouldn't she have needed to preregister to take the SATs?
• Izzy: "You never did tell us how you got Todd to play along."
  Blair: "Isabelle, what are you doing later tonight?"
  Izzy: "Not Todd."
  Blair: "I guess I'm going to have to come up with something else then."
• I want to explore the alliance between Dan and Blair!!!
• Chuck! Yellow pants! Purple cardigan!
• Georgie seems pretty mad...what did she and Serena do last year? At this point, it seems like if it were anything less than killing someone, it would seem anti-climatic.
• Now Georgie's trying to mess with Dan. But we knew that already...
• Hazel (I think that's her name) gets a good line next week with: "It's pretty hard to party after the gay-bomb drops."

(photo: cwtv.com)

Great Moments In Television: Now and Again

Now and Again was an awesome show that was canceled well before it should have been. It was exciting, emotional, smart, sexy, and heartfelt. I have never ceased to be proud of myself for discovering this show, and I still miss it.

I don't think I have yet mentioned on the blog that I think Margaret Colin is beyond awesome and how elated I was when she turned up on Gossip Girl. (Seven months ago, if you'd ask me to pick the coolest set of TV parents imaginable, there's a fairly good chance I'd have come up with Margaret Colin and John Shea, so congratulations, Blair Waldorf.) And while I'm glad that Eric Close has found steady work on Without A Trace, that show definitely doesn't fully utilize his talent and extreme hotness. A supporting cast of Dennis Haysbert and Heather Matarazzo (and guest star Chad Lowe!) isn't bad either.

So, here's a clip from one of my very favorite episodes of this much-beloved show. The best part is from around 3:30 into the clip until about 6:30. But stick around to hear about the girls in data processing. (A very cool person uploaded the entire episode to YouTube, so you can watch the whole thing in segments as well.)

Greek: Flashbacks and a Myriad of References

Greek:

"Freshman Daze"

It figures Greek picks the night Gossip Girl comes back to bring out the truth behind the "bing." But now I'm ready to graduate from the high school soap and spend a little time in college.

Tonight's Greek was a very interesting episode. Probably not the most entertaining ep of Greek ever, but definitely a good one since we now have the back story pretty well hammered out. To summarize: Cappie and Evan have known each other since childhood because they attended the same camp. Upon arriving at college, Evan talked Cappie into rushing a frat, and only got into his top choice Kappa Tau (!) because of his affiliation with Cappie. Which leads us to the issue that's been nagging us for weeks:

The Kappa Taus call Evan "Bing" because he was half way between a "bid" and a "ding." Yep, I would never figured that one out. It doesn't help that I've never heard of a "ding" before. Of course, I have a Bachelor's of Arts degree in English and I didn't get Frannie's Of Mice and Men reference either, so my self-esteem is a little damaged right now.

Meanwhile, the Cappie/Casey/Bing triangle had been going strong since the moment Casey met the two boys. After Cappie stands Casey up for the ball, Evan offers to take her, and then Cappie finally shows up and a major beat down (a "snafu" according to Casey) takes place between the now ex-BFFs. Hmm, a fancy party and a fight...how delightfully like The O.C.

Other observations:

• Ugh, Rebecca's back. I thoroughly enjoyed the lack of her last week. Although, she did temporarily win me over with:
• Frannie: "Isn't Casey doing a great job?"
  Rebecca: "Beats our last president."
• Cappie: "Listen to the name, Spitter, it's a ball...like a testicle. I don't want to go to a testicle!"
• Kind of gutsy of Evan and Cappie to drink beer in their freshman dorm room on the first day of college with the door to the hall open. I think even my lackadaisical RA would have noticed that.
• "Hot-man-istan" was stealing from his host family. Ha. And putting it in his "fanny-pack-istan."
• Ashleigh: "Do you have any brothers or sisters?"
  Casey: "Um, not really." Ha.
• Casey's starting to look nuts with her anti-Frannie mantra. This seems to me like it might be an Oliver situation a la The O.C. season 1 when Ryan maintained that Oliver was nuts until everyone started to think that Ryan was nuts, only for Oliver to then really turn out to be nuts.
• Dale's "USAG Ball." Oh nooo.... "It's going to be a sin-free evening filled with non-alcoholic drinks, line dancing, and subtle prostilitizing."
• I loved the Dale flashback of him pushing the kid who was converting to Catholicism.
• Did you catch Cappie's extremely astute passing reference to the Jonestown massacre? Wow, that kid really is smart if he's whipping out allusions like that. Nicely done.
• Ahh! Look at Beaver's long, flowing blond hair! And how great is it that he got his nickname because he chewed a baseball bat. I was definitely expecting something worse.
• Evan: "Cappie was already a monster; I just pointed him toward Tokoyo."
• Props to Greek's attempts to recreate the pop culture of 2006 with the Grey's Anatomy spoof, "I Believe in a Thing Called Love," etc.
• Rusty: (explaining his search engine prowess) "I use a lot of Boolean navigators." (Wow, how crazy is it that I've had to Google four different things from tonight's Greek? This isn't Lost, people!)
• I like Casey's red dress.

Well, after this episode and its flashbacks, I've definitely been pulled much further into the Casey/Evan camp than I've ever been before. In the flashbacks, I actually felt sorry for Evan. Aside from his beyond iffy facial hair, 2006 Evan was pretty great. I guess we'll see how great 2008 Evan is next week when Casey maybe tries to get him back.

And, best of all, it looks like we'll get more Dale next week! Wohoo! I was wondering how long it would take for us to see Dale enter the dating world.

Gossip Girl: Yogurt Fights, Custom Valentino and Dirty Packages

Gossip Girl: "The Blair Bitch Project"
"Gossip Girl here..." How lovely are those three little words? Especially when they're said by Kristen Bell's gorgeous, snarky voice. Welcome back, Gossip Girl!

I must say that this was the first post-strike debut episode of any show that hasn't disappointed me at least a bit. (The first episode back of The Office was fabulous, but that one was already written before the strike, just not filmed...and the second episode was not great.)

The highlights of tonight's episode were definitely Chuck and Blair. Not that that's surprising anyone at all. I love how GG's pilot set those two up as the show's villains and now they're the ones I really care about.

Jenny is a complete fool to go up against Blair. Actually, I'm beginning to think that Jenny's just a complete fool in general. Blair really didn't need to go to all the trouble of staging the fake surprise party to bring about Jenny's demise--Jenny imploding all by herself. But, Little Miss Materialism just doesn't learn, and an hour later she's pimping Nate out to get her spot in the cool group back. She is making it virtually impossible to feel sorry for her. Seriously, are there no other girls at her school who she could be friends with? There must be better options.

While I still like them, I am a bit over Dan and Serena. Dan has become so preachy--he has kind of lost his sarcastic edge that was so adorable and Seth Cohen-y. He's too busy being Jenny's dad. And Serena has become awfully shrill and bubbly--which was not how she started out either. Let's see if the return of the mysterious "G" will shake these two up a bit and get them out of their rut.

Highlights:

• The episode began with a lovely ode to Breakfast at Tiffany's...which probably would have been a lot more exciting if we hadn't already seen them filming it over a month ago. GG certainly loses its sense of surprise when we've seen paparazzi photos of all its outdoor scenes months in advance.
• Blair's maid: "You have bad dream, and you're sleeping with your chocolate."
• Ugh, I would not want to share a bathroom with Chuck. I'm actually surprised he's smoking pot in there and not primping. You know it takes some serious preparation to rock his look.
• Serena: "I am not your sister. I don't have any of your DNA, nor do I ever want to."
  Chuck: "Then I suggest you get new hand towels." Eeeeeew!
• Everyone's hair looks different. The across-the-board different hairdos really call the supposed "3 week break" into question.
• Wow. I still can't believe Jenny threw yogurt on Blair. That's unacceptable. She's lucky Serena didn't kick her ass right there.
• Why would Serena encourage Blair go to dinner with the people who threw yogurt on her 6 hours ago? It's pretty obvious they weren't suddenly just being nice to her.
• Chuck should be an event coordinator!
• Lilly: "Don't put your dirty package on the table."
  Chuck: "If I had a dime for every time I heard that..."
• Blair with the plate of Rice Krispie treats was awesome.
• Serena: "Who treats you like that?"
  Eric: "Guys at St Jude's, girls at Constance, Suk at the Korean deli on 75th Street." Eric's always got a few good one-liners (which is kind of surprising, as he was the suicidal one).
• Why does Butter serve martinis to 17-year-olds?
• Wow, even Chuck's afraid of "G." That's not a good sign.
• You know what I liked about this episode? No Vanessa.

What does Georgina has on Serena? Did Serena kill someone? And, the more important question... which skeezy Chuck comment was best: the one about the hand towels or the package? ;-)

photo: cwtv.com

Greek Wars

Greek: "War & Peace"
Well, it's the last week for me to savor not being forced by the television PTB to chose between my favorite high school soap and my favorite college soap. Greek and Gossip Girl airing at the exact same time? Come on. That's completely unfair. Add to that the fact that Bones--which I would totally watch if it ever aired in a time slot in which it weren't competing against at least one of my favorite shows--is now on at the same time. And so is Dancing With The Stars...but, yeah, I guess I don't really want to watch that.

Ack! And Wildfire is coming back at 9 p.m. in two weeks! Yea! Chris! Junior! Matt! The wind turbine! (If the wind turbine is not mentioned in these last few eps, I'm going to be peeved.) I'll admit it; I'm pretty excited for the Junior/Matt horseback fist fight. But, holy too-much-of-a-good-thing TV night! Suddenly Monday is the new Wednesday (which was the new Thursday).

Anyway, tonight's Greek was pretty good. It contained some interesting developments: Frannie's back, Lizzy finally left, Rusty and Calvin's friendship took a hit, the two frats forged a tenuous cease fire. The main two downsides to tonight's episode were the very little girl/boy interaction and the complete and unacceptable lack of Dale. (There was also, mercifully, a lack of Rebecca, so thanks to whoever gave us that gift.)

The episode, of course, contained it's share of witty one-liners and pop-culture laced quips. Best quotes and observations:

• Rusty's haircut looks good.
• Poor Ashleigh wakes up at 4 a.m. since Lizzy makes them go to bed at 10 p.m. That's rough.
• The show sure seems to like throwing around that Ben Bennett kid's name an awful lot. I wonder if it's an inside joke of some kind.
• I think Spencer (Casey) looks prettier than normal in this ep.
• Whoa, how many people are in Omega Chi? In the house raid scene, it looked like several hundred. Spraying fish oil and hot sauce from water guns...eew.
• Casey: "We as ZBZ kittens are wondering when we will be ready to be weened from your, uh, teet."
• Count me on Casey's side. I am also very skeptical of kinder, gentler Frannie.
• Frannie: "I want to come back to ZBZ."
  Casey: "I want Jessica Simpson to stop putting out CDs, but you can't always get what you want."
• I'm surprised how quickly and thoroughly Ashleigh fell for the jerky nerd. Ah, I guess it was a Travis hangover thing. I loved Casey's "Jason is Travis in a nerd suit."
• That Evan--still rocking the tie. That's class.
• Poor Rusty. He repeatedly tries to change the system and it keeps biting him in the butt, yet he keeps trying it anyway.
• Rusty: "And then what? You and the brothers are going to go club some baby seals?" Ha, with that mopey mug of his, picking on Rusty does seem akin to clubbing baby seals.
• "Evan Longoria." Ha! That's a good one.

Ooh, looks like Greek is pulling out all the stops for its first head-to-head battle with GG: a Casey/Evan moment, Cappie punching Evan, a Casey/Cappie moment, a Rebecca gets what's coming to her moment. Wow, that's pretty undeniable.

So, Greek or Gossip Girl? That is the question. Last fall, I'd have side unequivocally for GG, but my love of Greek has reached new heights this spring. It's going to be a tough choice.

Ryan Hansen: Hot Step-Dad in 90210

Some interesting buzz in the TV world is that Rob Thomas, the creator of my beloved and revered Veronica Mars, has three different pilots picked up for next season: a reprise of Cupid, a spin-off of 90210, and a remake of foreign series Outrageous Fortune.

My take on this is that it's a good thing. It takes us several steps closer to my dream of someday having either Josh Schwartz or Rob Thomas create every show on television. My one reservation is that Rob is not going to have a whole lot of time to write us a Veronica Mars movie while he's writing three hour-long TV series. And, personally, I still want that movie.

Some of the best news of all is that Kristen Bell is in talks to star in the Outrageous Fortune show. That's great because KB is fantastic, and I know that Rob can utilize her talents in a much better way that Heroes has done/will do.

The good news about KB's possible casting made me think that Rob should focus on getting some of the other VM actors on his three shows. Surely there must be something for Wallace to do--my heart aches when I see him in Hot Pockets commercial. And I'd love to see Weevil resurface too.

But, my most awesome idea is that Ryan Hansen needs to have a role on 90210 as the really young, hot husband of somebody's mom. How great would that be? He could be the Ashton in an Ashton/Demi-type relationship. And, of course, all the high schoolers would be in love with him, and all kinds of inappropriate things would happen. It would be amazing.

Please, Rob, you know I'm right about this.

Greek: Knitting, a Tire Swing, and a 16-Year-Old Animal Shelter Volunteer

Greek:
The big question of the night: will we find out what "bing" means? The answer: no!

Evan wasn't even in this episode. Oh well, it looks like the frat wars next week may bring out some answers. And most importantly, frat wars look funny. I enjoy the Cappie/Evan antagonism more than I enjoy that of Rebecca/Casey.

I don't think this episode was quite as good as last week's. It was nice, though, that Rusty was actually a focal point. He sure has some lazy-ass pledge brothers. I guess that's the sort of people the Kappa Taus attract though. It was nice that the show acknowledged that Rusty has spent way more time hanging out with the frat's upperclassmen than with the other pledges. He certainly has gotten plenty of special attention from Cappie over the last year. I'm glad that Rusty and the other boys worked everything out.

As for Casey/Cappie/Rebecca...I gotta say I wasn't feeling the Cappie/Rebecca chemistry tonight. They were kind of boring together. Too bad poor Casey didn't pick up on that and drank too much and slept with the 16-year-old animal shelter volunteer! I can't believe she did that! And I can't believe she seemed to get over it so quickly. That seems like the kind of mistake that would haunt you for awhile, but maybe that's just me. Let's hope she does figure out a better way to cope with the Rebecca/Cappie relationship than bedding random high school sophomores.
Quotes and highlights:

• Ashleigh (thinking her new top led to free drinks): "Well, thank you very much, Forever 21!"
• So this is the "big brother" who begets a Cappie. Not surprising.
• Dale knits!
• Dale: "Sin can be seductive. Trust me, I know. It's why I have three pop-up blockers."
• Pledge 1: "How about we put cameras in the tri-Pi's shower?"
  Pledge 2: "And have to defend ourselves to Nancy Grace? No."
• I'm glad someone's finally carding in this town when the underage kids are trying to order beer. I still find it odd that the bar doesn't seem care.
• Dale's alarm clock ring of church choir music reminds me of one of the ring tones on my freshman year roommate's alarm clock. Her clock also had a ringtone of barnyard noises too.
• Why were Cappie and Beaver having a conversation to the effect of "there are lots of really hot senators' daughters out there"? It sounded like Cappie was dumping Rebecca. Or maybe that Beaver likes her? I should have been paying more attention. I'd be willing to allow Rebecca to have Beaver if Casey gets Cappie.
• Cappie: "I have not been this impressed since Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls."
• Calvin: "And next time, we're going to talk about that flag."
• Has the "bing" mystery turned into a season-long arc a la Veronica Mars and "who killed Lilly Kane?"

(photo from: abc family)

Evan = bing?

***Update: Hi, everybody. This is an old blog post (check the date at the top of the post). I wrote it soon after the first time Cappie called Evan "Bing" in episode of Greek. I don't delete my old posts after new information arises. Like everyone else who watches Greek every week, I now know what "Bing" means. So you don't need to tell me (but thanks). If you don't know what "Bing" means and want to, check out my post for "Freshman Daze." ***

Ha ha. Well, I've gotten a ton of hits to the blog today and the vast majority of them were the result of people trying to figure out why Cappie called Evan "bing" on Greek last night. I'm glad it wasn't just me who totally missed the boat on that one.

I wonder if anyone has figured it out. I'll try to investigate further and see if I come up with anything.

The only thing I can think of now is that we're not supposed to understand what he meant because the term "bing" relates to some past shared experience between Cappie and Evan that we don't know about yet. That seems kind of complex though for Greek. I mean, it isn't Lost--it shouldn't be this hard ;-)

ETA: The good people over at Television Without Pity do not seem to know what "bing" means either. Someone there remembered that Cappie and Evan were roommates in their freshman year of college, so the theory is that "bing" must have originated back then. Some people though were trying to guess what he was referring to and came up with: cherries, Bing Crosby, and Chandler Bing ;-)