SkimIt
Spend all week trying to force the last of the Thanksgiving leftovers onto the kids? Here's what you missed on TV.
Linds and Blech
Early Sunday evening, both my Facebook and Twitter feeds started blowing up with people cackling in ironic anticipation for Lindsay Lohan's comeback vehicle, the Lifetime movie Liz and Dick. Then the TV movie actually started. I'm not sure any of my friends made it even halfway through it: even the drunken fight scenes weren't enough to detract from the problem that the whole thing was just horrifically dull. You can't be camp and boring at the same time.
Like Mother, Like Daughter
Speaking of camp, the Thanksgiving episode of Revenge (season 2, episode 8) featured 1970s trash-TV and horror-flick icon Adrienne Barbeau -- still looking amazing, by the way -- in a flashback as Victoria's (Madeleine Stowe) mother Marion, showing up at Thanksgiving dinner 2006 with her brand new, and extremely rich, boyfriend. At the dinner table, Victoria calmly tells the new beau first that Marion shot her ex-husband and framed a teenage Victoria for the crime, and then married another suitor whom she knew was molesting her daughter. So, how was your Thanksgiving dinner?
Cee-Lo and The Muppets
Cee-Lo Green, who's always seemed about one-third Muppet to me anyway, reunited with his furry brethren on The Voice, performing a soulful version of "It's Not Easy Bein' Green" alongside Kermit the Frog. It's also not easy being Christina Aguilera: on Tuesday night's show, her protege Dez Duron was eliminated, meaning that two weeks out from the finale, she has no singers left in the competition.
She Cannot Be Stopped
Sulky Abi gave up her hidden immunity idol on last week's Survivor, so it seemed certain that she was going to be going home this week. But in the annual food auction, Abi passed on the usual high-ticket gustatory delights in favor of an advantage in the next immunity challenge: she was automatically in the Top 3 during the challenge. Which, improbably, she won, gaining immunity. She's still a dead woman walking, having alienated every single other person still in the game, most more than once. I mostly feel sorry for the people who have to deal with her weird mood swings and general truculence on the island.
Another Top-Shelf Visual Gag
Once again, Modern Family spent an entire episode setting up a visual gag that was more than worth the wait. When Cam (Eric Stonestreet) hears that Lily's (Aubrey Anderson-Emmons) favorite tree is about to get cut down at a local park, he stages a one-man sit-in protest, then makes Mitchell (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) take over when he gets a call to go on as an understudy in his community theater group. Then Cam comes back, in full costume, to finish the sit-in, but gets caught in the tree and has to be rescued by firemen. While dressed as one of the stars of the Broadway musical, Cats. Yes, he's a cat being rescued by firemen from a tree.
