The Weak Ender

Thank you to Martina Hingis and the photog who snapped crotch shots of Maria Sharipova for providing those of us sick of Patriots/Colts coverage, and oppotunity to focus on something else. Until Bill Belichick defended the photographer, reasoning that everybody is trying to take snatc... err ..., snap hots of Sharipova.

Hoodie has a point there.

It was tempting to try to be the only NFL site to not devote much of its space to the Patriots vs. Colts game, but then, did you see the rest of the schedule? Would you like to see an 800 word essay on Panthers starting quarterback David Carr? No, as much as this game has been over-hyped, you can't ignore it.

Even the Bay Area is going to watch this game because the Raiders did not sell out their home game against the Houston Texans. (Hahaha Houston, you will be stuck with watching that game.) But that's telling when Pharaoraider, Gladiraider, and the rest of Hell's Satans would rather watch a regular season game instead of watching the Raiders lose again.

So indulge us one thought on the Patriots and Colts, and that is this; You really want to pull for the Colts in this game. Even so much than looking past Gomer's numerous commercials. But then there's Tony Dungy. Who had to compare the Patriots to Barry Bonds.

"You kind of feel like there is a code of honor, a code of ethics in the league," he said at the time. "You want to win and you want to do things the right way."

Dungy also compared the Pats to Barry Bonds, where he said the slugger's accomplishments were tainted and implied that perhaps the Pats' were as well.
Yesterday, as his team prepared to host the Patriots in Sunday's battle of the NFL's unbeatens, Dungy stood by those remarks.

"To me, that's what it is," he said. "That was my opinion at the time and that's what I believe. I don't think it takes away from anything they've done. It's just disappointing that it wasn't a good situation for the league or any of the players in the NFL."

Ethics. That's a good one, Tony. Or maybe this was just another opportunity for you to jump on your soapbox and look down his nose on the rest of the league with his moral indignation.

So if you are looking for an angle this week, look at it this way. If the Patriots win, then Gomer Manning and Dungy go back to holding that loser label that strangled them for years. If the Colts win, then Belichick will have to know that God really hates him and his running up the score.

And if you want to read a great interview with Tony Dungy, part one and part two.

• Chiefs defensive end Jared Allen is having a great season, going so far as to say that the mullet has turned his season around. Allen is the kind of guy that you really want to pull for. Until you hear that the only reason he really believes he is playing better is because he quit drinking. Talk about your bad role models. Now where are coach�s sons supposed to get their inspiration from? This is especially in bad taste coming so soon after the passing of Max McGee. Way to soon to start being sober. What a slap in the face.
  

• Eagles coach Andy Reid is rumored to be mulling his resignation from the Eagles, to join his son's drug-dealing ring. Do you think Hingis is one of their customers?

• The judge in the Garrett Reid case said that the coaches house was a drug emporium. So you mean that Andy Reid lives in a Walgreens?

• Is it time to revisit the Eagles Super Bowl Buzz Kill?

• How do the Jaguars keep finding 6-foot-5 black quarterbacks, well over their listed weight of 250 who can�t run a lick? You can have your prototypical quarterback, but this is just pushing it. Kind of like how the Cowboys scout quarterbacks based on who can bend the needle on the gaydar.

SATURDAY NIGHT�S ALL RIGHT
College football has it�s own game of the century this week � Arizona State vs. Oregon. The Ducks are in the final game of their gauntlet (unless you want to count UCLA, but we don�t) and they are going to be in a position of win and wait. If they win, that is. Dennis Dixon has played great this season. And like Brett Favre in Green Bay, his magic kind of overshadows what the rest of the team is doing. But don�t be fooled, Oregon has some of the best talent in the country.

ASU quarterback Rudy Carpenter is going to need to play nearly flawless to win this game. If forced to pick a winner in this game, it has to be the Ducks. They just can�t lose two games at home this season with this team. And if they do, hopefully the run the table.

• The key for Arizona State: Don�t fall behind.

• USC is going to drift through the rest of the season, maybe losing one more game (ASU). But this is still a very talented team. The Trojans are going to end up going to the Las Vegas Bowl or something, play an overmatched foe � like New Mexico � and win by 70. Not quite what they expected when they started the season, but something for the gamblers to look forward to.

• How is everybody enjoying the Chuck Long era at San Diego State? Why is it hard to recruit kids to San Diego?

• Why does everybody hate Nick Saban so much? He left Michigan State to go to LSU, won a BCS game, and then he cashed in and went to the NFL once he realized what a (expletive) hole Baton Rouge can be. So what does it matter that he came back to the college game to coach Alabama? And the next person who complains that he lied about taking the Alabama job needs to get hit in the temple with a tack hammer. Of course, Saban lied, he was negotiating in order to get more money. That�s not lying, that�s being smart.

AND FINALLY
Joe Torre to the Dodgers. Good luck with all of that.

The Office: But the Finer Things Club? Well, I like the Finer Things Club.

Now that's what I'm talking about. Spoilers for the best "The Office" of the season coming up just as soon as I get my fake mustache waxed...

A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer in your pants. "Branch Wars" had a little bit of everything that makes "The Office" great, from the broad but in-character antics of Michael and Dwight ("The eyes are the groin of the head!"), to the pathos of Karen realizing that Jim's presence in Utica has nothing to do with her, to the wistful, dryly funny Finer Things Club subplot.

Even without Oscar hilariously declaring, "Besides having sex with men, I would say the Finer Things Club is the gayest thing about me" -- or, for that matter, Michael's reaction to seeing Toby with a bowtie holding a tea set -- I was going to love that subplot, because it felt so quintessentially "Office." It was a dead-on depiction of people trying to better their lot in this world in some small way with the resources available to them, and the world -- in this case personified by Andy, Kevin, Phyllis and even Jim -- doing their best to spoil things. I loved Andy looking at the Club like one more thing to join back at Cornell ("Kevin's band is my safety"), that Phyllis didn't want to make her popcorn in the kitchen microwave because that one smelled too much of popcorn, and that there are certain things about BMOC Jim that bother not only people like Oscar, but even Pam herself. Just a perfect small-scale B-story, and one that made the wacky hijinks of the A-story palatable. In the world of "The Office," you can have Frank McCourt jokes and Dwight peeing in a soda can, and it's all good.

It occurs to me, by the way, that the roster for the Utica road trip -- six hours round trip, by the way -- was identical to the one that drove a concussed Dwight to the hospital after Michael cooked his foot. Dwight + Jim + Michael + moving vehicle = gold, apparently. Also, I was too busy laughing during much of Michael's panicked walkie-talkie communication to Jim as Karen showed up, but I definitely caught him ordering Jim to host the Dundies without him and to "climb on top of (Karen) and think about Stanley."

I'm glad that the show isn't quite done with Karen just yet. The PB&J development necessitated her exit from Scranton, but Rashida Jones brought a lot to the table comedically, and it makes sense that she might be able to swing a branch manager job after impressing David Wallace so much in her interview in the season three finale. (If only she'd dazzled him with talk of websites and Power Point, maybe she could be the d-bag in Jan's old office.) I don't wish failure on people, but assuming her lousy Fox midseason sitcom fails (and that's assuming it even airs, strike or no strike), I hope she can come back from time to time as a thorn in both Michael and Jim's side.

If I had any real problem with the episode, it was that the payoff to the possibility of Stanley's transfer was underwhelming. I assumed he wasn't going anywhere, because Leslie David Baker has established himself as the show's go-to supporting player -- you can get a funny Stanley reaction to any situation -- but I was hoping for something more inspired than Stanley not wanting to go in the first place.

A really funny episode, and no pacing problems of any kind.

What did everybody else think?

Legless, sleepless, powerless

Kind of an odd day for me, so all of last night�s viewing gets the round-up treatment. Brief spoilers for, in order, �Pushing Daisies,� �Private Practice� and �Life� coming up just as soon as I ask my doctor whether I can get a gorilla arm transplant...

As with �Reaper,� a Halloween episode is kind of a gimme for �Pushing Daisies.� They�ve done better episodes -- usually the ones with more of Emerson snarking on everybody else -- but the show has yet to put out a bad hour. Five episodes is a small sample size, but almost every new show stumbles in some noticeable way by this point, and �Pushing Daisies� hasn�t yet.

A nice showcase for Kristen Chenoweth, whose flair for comic bitchiness wasn�t really on display in her previous TV roles, and Lee Pace got to carry more of an emotional load than usual as we dealt with the reason why Ned, like Ray Wise as the Devil, hates Halloween. (One minor complaint about that storyline: in the pilot, Chuck�s dad lived across the street from Ned, while her aunts lived elsewhere, which is why they said goodbye at their parents� funerals.) Interesting that they had The Narrator speaking in verse this week; I find in general that he works best in the flashbacks and for exposition and get annoyed when they use him to underline the emotions that are clearly on the actors� faces.

I haven�t written about �Private Practice� lately, even though I�ve seen every episode. It�s definitely improved in a number of ways, notably in how the characters are beginning to act their age instead of squeaky-voiced teens. But I still find it to be completely inconsequential viewing. When �Grey�s Anatomy� is working � as, I have to admit, it was for most of last week�s unblogged-about episode -- the hospital setting lends an urgency to all the relationship angst going on around the cases. Here, despite attempts to create crisis storylines like the abused girl here or the blue girls a few weeks ago, everything feels too laid-back. The stakes aren�t high enough for me to get invested in whether Addison and Pete are a good match or whether Cooper will ever get the stones to ask out Violet. I know Shonda wanted to differentiate the spin-off from the original by changing the workplace setting as much as possible while still staying in medicine, but it feels like a waste of everybody�s talents, both off-camera and on. (What the hell is a world-class neo-natal surgeon doing at this place?)

�Life,� meanwhile, has grown on me quite a bit. While the things that annoyed me -- the fruit obsession, the Zen koans, Charlie marveling at modern technology -- are all still in place, Damian Lewis has such strong presence that I�ve learned to tune the quirkiness out like so much background noise. The cases still need improvement � which, as I�ve written, is a genre-wide problem at the moment � but I�m enjoying it just enough that I�ll be disappointed when the low ratings or the strike brings about cancellation.

That said, this wasn�t one of their stronger episodes, because the focus was on Reese instead of Charlie. I get that the partner has to become a more well-rounded character so it�s not just the Charlie Crews Genius Hour, but I still don�t buy Sarah Shahi in this part. I think about how often the female partners on �Criminal Intent� have to stand around and goggle at their partner�s brilliance and wish that, say, Shahi and Kathryn Erbe could swap series. Erbe would�ve killed with the AA story.

What did everybody else think? And, out of curiosity, did anybody watch the debut of Joe �Joey Mants� Mantegna on �Criminal Minds�? I watched a screener but found it as stultifying as every other episode of the show I�ve seen.