Jeff Winger (Joel McHale) is a fast talking lawyer who has cut corners all his life and gotten by on his charm. He is being disbarred because his degree was not all he claimed it to be.

“I thought you had a degree from Columbia”.

“Yes, and now I need to get one from America”.

Winger goes back to school at a Community College and ends up meeting a collection of characters headed by actor Chevy Chase. Each has led a life somewhat less than what they expected. This oddball group forms a study group, originally just an excuse for Winger to date the pretty blonde. Somehow along the way, if he is not careful, this Peter Pan may grow up and learn something.

Community works. The Community is witty and fresh and the characters are surprisingly endearing. This show looked like it would be a one joke setup but the writers seem to be finding a way to keep the comedy fresh.

My wife and daughter were addicted to this season of ABC’s show The Bachelorette. And, since I was in the room watching last night’s 2 hour finale, I have to admit it became a guilty pleasure(?) or me as well. I admit I am a hopeless romantic but that comes in handy when you have been married for 27 years.

If you are not familiar with the Bachelorette (or its counterpart the Bachelor), the show picks one woman who is looking for love marriage and happily every after and then introduces her to 30 guys who will vie for her affection over the course of 2 months. They go on dates in small groups at first and then increasingly spend more and more alone time together as the weaker members of the herd are thinned out. At the end of each episode there is a rose ceremony where some of the guys get a rose and stay and the others are, in effect, voted off the island by the one judge who is the bachelorette.

ABC was lucky to have at least one scoundrel (and one hero) on the show this year which no doubt led to higher ratings. Wes, a country western singer, admitted on camera in scenes not seen by Jillian, this season’s center of attention, that he was on the show to sell CDs. He also apparently admitted to some of the other bachelors off camera that he had a girlfriend back home. So the big drama this season was when one of the bachelors could not sleep after being dumped until he told Jillian to watch out for that snake. So we get the tall handsome Texan hero riding in to save the damsel while the other bachelors hide behind some “man code” crap.

It made for some pretty good TV, but that was just the side story to the show’s ultimate conclusion where the bachelorette is dressed in white and waiting the last two contestants who are bringing her an engagement ring. The show is geared so the guys know that they have to put themselves out there. They have to express their love or go home. But, of course, someone is going home anyway. The show leaves a trail of broken hearts which you get to watch breaking. It is a bit like doing a reality show on skydiving but revealing to the contestants that you only brought one parachute. Good guy Kiptyn was the runner up. He finally got to the point where he could express his love but was told (with a ring still in his pocket) that she had fallen in love with Ed while waiting for him to make up his mind. “I love you”. Geronimo! Splat.

In this season there was extra drama in the last episode as one of the last men asked to leave (Reid), the 2nd runner up so to speak, comes back with his own ring and proposal. Reid had not gotten to the point where he could say that he loved her until he was sent home so he was able to talk the producers into letting him have one more try. A surprise entrance, a surprise declaration of love, a proposal, tears, rejection. Geronimo! Splat.

Terminator Salvation is the fifth installment of the Terminator series and focuses on Resistance leader John Connor (Christian Bale) and his battle for humanity against Skynet. The story however seems to focus more on the newly introduced character Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) and detracts attention from what I was more interested in seeing, which was John Connor’s rise to power and his interaction with tapes that his mother Sarah Connor leaves behind.

The entertainment value is still there and some of the action sequences were nice.  The film does manage to recreate San Francisco as Skynet and showing a very raw machine world.  I think the nostalgia that comes attached from the original 1984 and 1991 follow-up made expectations too high and I can only hope that the next installment manages to respark my interest in the battle of epic proportions which is supposed to take place between man and machine.  If you are a fan of the series you might see some flaws but the story does manage to move the story forward even if it only takes a few baby steps.

In the new movie Duplicity, when the CIA officer Claire Stenwick (Julia Roberts) and MI6 agent Ray Koval (Clive Owens) first meet they make love but then he ends up drugged and robbed of secret plans. To say that the two have trust issues after that would be an understatement. They don’t trust each other but they are drawn to each other as they transition from the complex world of espionage to the even more complex world of industrial espionage. No one trusts anyone in this movie and nothing is quite as it seems.

The background for the story is a private corporate spy war between industrialists Howard Tully (Tom Wilkinson) and Dick Garsik (Paul Giamatti). The two titans truly hate each other for reasons that are never made apparent in the movie. As they strive to gain the upper hand someone in this movie will be swindled, conned or out maneuvered, but who and by whom is not clear until the last few minutes of the movie.

There were a few plot points that I did not think tied up neatly but this was a good film and you should see it in the theatre before someone tells you the ending.

In case you missed it Hulu.com finally admitted what we always knew. There is indeed a conspiracy to use TV and hulu.com to rot people’s brains as Alex Baldwin confesses to in this video from Hollywood’s secret lair under the Hollywood sign. It is in fact an alien plot.

Conner and Mason, the main characters of TNT’s new comedy “Trust Me“, have been partners for years in a Chicago ad agency. The whole office dynamic of the agency and their own partnership is thrown into turmoil with the unexpected and dramatic exit of their temperamental boss in the pilot episode. The series is witty and quick in the first few episodes (although Tom Cavanagh either needs to slow down a bit or work on his diction at times). I do wonder why TNT advertises a funny series like this with their tag line “we know drama”. Oh? Do we?

Eric McCormack ( Will & Grace ) and Tom Cavanagh ( Ed ) return to series television in TNT’s TRUST ME , a sharp, witty drama series that centers on two best friends working as creative partners at a top-ranked Chicago ad agency.

Joining McCormack and Cavanagh in TRUST ME are Monica Potter ( Boston Legal ), Griffin Dunne ( Law & Order: Criminal Intent ), Sarah Clarke ( 24 ), Mike Damus ( Lost in Yonkers ) and Geoffrey Arend ( Garden State ). The show from Warner Horizon Television is executive-produced by THE CLOSER’s Greer Shephard, Michael M. Robin, Hunt Baldwin and John Coveny . Baldwin and Coveny are also writers on the show. TRUST ME premieres Monday, Jan. 26, 2009, at 10 p.m. (ET/PT) , following an all-new episode of THE CLOSER.

Fox has a new crime drama with an interesting twist called “Lie to Me“. The main characters are not cops and not forensic experts but psychologists. Think of this as a psychological CSI. The show stars Tim Roth as Dr. Cal Leightman and Kelli Williams as Dr. Gillian Foster.

When you itch your chin, wring your hands, scratch your nose or increase your swallowing, DR. CAL LEIGHTMAN knows you’re lying. And he doesn’t just think so – he knows so. Whether it be family, friends or complete strangers – he knows when they’re holding something back. More accurate than any polygraph test, he is a human lie detector.

Dr. Cal Leightman heads up a private agency contracted by the FBI, local police, law firms, corporations and private individuals when they’ve hit a roadblock on their searches for the truth. Joining him are the foremost experts in the field of behavioral psychology: DR. GILLIAN FOSTER is the doctor’s professional partner and intellectual counterpart, a master of deception equally comfortable with lying and concealing her emotions; the other is Dr. Leightman’s lead researcher WILL LOKER who says everything on his mind and seemingly lacks the ability to lie. RIA TORRES (Monica Raymund), the newest member of the team, uses her natural and uncanny ability to read body language to catch the clues that her professional partners miss.

After the first two episodes I am liking this show and have added a season pass to my Tivo. It seems like if you can figure out who is lying then the crime is solved but the show, not unlike real life, is more complicated than that. Some times the guilty people are telling the truth and the innocent people are lying. But just why and what they are lying about is the puzzle. This is a smart show.

With network TV showing more and more inexpensive reality TV shows, some of the most innovative work is happening on the web. Felicia Day’s The Guild is one example. I have high hopes for a new web series from some talent friends of mine called “Exit Stage Left” which is based around the production of a stage play.

EXIT Stage Left is the story of The Lowry Theater Company and their attempt to stage a new play from novelist turned first-time playwright and the seasoned director who returns to NYC to keep the production on track. A show within a show, a play told within the confines of a web series, and a chance to see what happens before the curtain goes up.

In the premiere episode, Pam William (the Tisch University film student) starts what will be a series of interviews with the cast and crew of The Lowry Theater Company. First up, Ronny Simons the director of the new play A Wonderful World, by the accomplished novelist Tim Haggard. Can Ronny make this show a success, will Pam get the interview of a lifetime and what do you do when the last act has yet to be written, find out on this episode of EXIT Stage Left.

With the cancellation of the shows Eli Stone and Pushing Daisies I think ABC has pretty much severed links with my TV set. Unless I am very much mistaken, those are the only shows that ABC has that I have watched so far this season. I am not sure what direction AB is taking their network… but I know I no longer care.

If you like these shows sign the petition to save Eli Stone and Pushing Daisies

What do you get when creative people like TV writers go on strike for months… besides bad TV? You also get original content at Strike.TV.

Striking writer Peter Hyoguchi was walking the picket line outside Disney’s ABC Studios in Burbank in January when he had an epiphany. What if scriptwriters launched a website featuring their work, which they would own and control free of studio interference? That hunch is about to be tested. After months of planning and delay, Hyoguchi and his colleagues have turned their seemingly quixotic idea into a reality. Two weeks ago they launched an online “network” for original programming named Strike.TV. It marks an ambitious effort to connect film and TV writers to the fledgling world of online video. The portal will run 45 original Web series with more than 200 episodes from such veteran writers as Lester Lewis, a producer on “The Office,” and “Star Trek: Enterprise” scribe Ken LaZebnik. Shows include actors Timothy Dalton and JoBeth Williams. Episodes are mostly three to five minutes in length and roll out daily on Strike.TV, and also are available on video websites YouTube and Joost. The Los Angeles company just signed an agreement with Hulu, an online video service, to become its largest supplier of Web-original entertainment.