SkimIt
Spend all week taking bets on whether the groundhog would see his shadow? Here's what you missed on TV.
As Good As Finales Get
The week's biggest news was the end of one of the finest sitcoms ever, 30 Rock. The funniest, smartest show about the TV industry ever ended with the episode I wasn't sure Tina Fey actually had in her: a genuinely sweet, moving farewell to the characters -- particularly Liz's twin foils Tracy (Tracy Morgan) and Jack (Alec Baldwin), who both got the emotional payoffs their equally extreme personas deserved. The American Graffiti-style epilogue showing everyone's post-TGS lives was a nice touch too.
So Near and Yet So Far
Now that Downton Abbey has moved into the post-Great War 1920s, the first truly modern decade, it's sometimes hard to remember how very different life really was back then. For example, that women of privilege would give birth at home because hospitals were considered somehow beneath them. And that sometimes, those women suffered complications in childbirth that cut short their promising young lives at only the age of 24. We'll miss you, Lady Sybil. And you too, Jessica Brown-Findlay: hope you get a new series soon.
The Rumors Seem Not To Be True
We've heard it ever since 2008: Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton don't actually like each other at all. If that were actually the case, it would mean that both are exceptionally good actors, because the President and his now-former Secretary of State's joint interview on 60 Minutes was about as loose and unscripted as I've ever seen either one be. An animated GIF of Clinton busting a gut over a shared in-joke was all over the internet seemingly within minutes as a fond farewell to one of the most unlikely political partnerships of our times.
Sibling Disharmonies
Bunheads continued its interesting new storyline directions with an episode that featured its titular foursome splitting apart at the seams. Meanwhile, Michelle (Sutton Foster) barely notices any of what's going on with her charges because she's dealing with the sudden reappearance of her dissolute older brother Scotty (Hunter Foster, Sutton's real-life sibling). After a sibling blowout brings up decades of anger on both sides, the episode ends with brother and sister sitting stiffly on the steps of Michelle's house, singing a ukulele-led duet of the old pop standard "You Belong To Me" while deliberately avoiding eye contact. It was yet another of Amy Sherman-Palladino's trademark strange but somehow perfect endings.
An Unexpected Breakthrough
On The Big Bang Theory, the slow evolution of the relationship between Sheldon (Jim Parsons) and Amy (Mayim Bialik) took an interesting turn. When his office nemesis Barry Kripke (John Ross Bowie) assumes that Sheldon's subpar recent research is due to being distracted by his amorous adventures, the contact-averse physicist not only plays along with the misapprehension, he admits to a shocked Penny (Kaley Cuoco) that he's potentially ready to actually begin a physical relationship with his longtime girlfriend. A generation of us who had teenage crushes on Blossom wonder what took him so long.
