Bones While this show was on hiatus,...

Bones
While this show was on hiatus, I completely forgot about the gross-out factor and that I can't eat while watching this. But noshing on some ice cream while they discuss partially digested human remains and bear excrement was a quick reminder. I sure am glad that this show is back  I missed the odd subject matter and the witty dialogue and sexual tension. I thought it was great that Temperance's boss thinks she should loosen up a little bit. But the good Dr. Bones questioned his motives for shipping her off to WashingtonState. "Are you suggesting that I take this opportunity to have sex with Booth on a field trip?" Well, she doesn't hook up with Booth, but there is a bit of a lingering question about whether she hooked up with that shipping Charlie  how else did she know so much about his thigh muscles? Or was she just checking them out for future reference? Plus, this show is educational. I never knew that an animal autopsy was called a necropsy. Cool. I've also missed Temp's complete ignorance of pop-culture references like Hannibal Lecter or The Blair Witch Project comments that come up while she and Booth are investigating a cannibalism case. Oh, and the look on the two lab techs' faces when they discovered the sexy new courier they were both "zooming" was more interested in Angela than either of them? Priceless.   Angel Cohn

House
TB or not TB? That truly is the question for Dr. House and his team when brilliant Dr. Sebastian Charles, known for treating tuberculosis in the less fortunate in Africa, lands in their care. Played by Ron Livingston, Dr. Charles challenges House by self-diagnosing, but as is usually the case, there is more to his ailment than meets the eye, and Dr. House, of course, figures it out this time via televised press conference. He's so clever. Before we get to the weekly tumor as the source of all that plagues House's patients, what was that contraption that House used to check Livingston's heart? It took me back to the Pit of Despair in The Princess Bride. All we needed was an albino assistant. This week it was Cameron's turn to get hit on by a patient, and like Chase with the young cancer patient, she responded. Okay, Chase wasn't really into his child patient, but he did kiss her. Anyway, is it suddenly alright for doctors to get romantically involved with their patients? Either way the romance with Dr. Charles was doomed from the moment he threw up and collapsed on her. They hadn't even kissed yet. The B-story line was DOA. Foreman, while wearing House's lab coat, upsets a woman who believes she has breast cancer. She complains and Cuddy orders House to apologize. Too bad he wasn't the culprit. Poor House, he's so misunderstood, but in the end he dupes Cuddy and satisfies Foreman's patient. All is well in the world again, until next week.  RC

My Name Is Earl
Let any other sitcom on or off the air feature beauty pageants, particularly of the mother-daughter variety, and you'd get some of the same clichés we've seen a hundred times. Only Earl could manage to give us a pageant with a name like "Prettiest Pretty Princess," have the contestants model lawn mowers and add in some freaky reigning champions who win with their knife-throwing skills. And I'm so grateful they passed up the blatant opportunity to make Joy suddenly a sympathetic character. Her inner child is just a smaller version of the grown-up who would bring an urn full of cigarette ashes to enter the contest as "Joy and Cremated Mother Darville," and then do a soft-shoe dance on a sprinkling of "Mom" for the talent portion.

But let's not get distracted from my biggest source of joy in this show, the glimpses of their totally un-PC, trailer-trash lives. There are those many variations on that old "How poor were you?" joke: getting excited about brand-name cereal, squeezing ketchup packets into an empty bottle, using ketchup as spaghetti sauce, envisioning a hot tub as the be-all, end-all of luxuries. Not to mention the fact that a porcelain princess on a lawn mower counts as a "fancy figurine." And, in case you were wondering, yankees, Shelly Stoker's reprimand to her daughter "If you don't put down that book, I don't know what!" was a spot-on mimicry of an impatient Southern mother. Meanwhile, Randy's growing crush on Catalina is making me kind of sad. Don't hurt him, Cat: The kid still recites A-Team members to lull himself to sleep!  Sabrina Rojas Weiss

Commander in Chief
You might think it's a little too soon for a hurricane aftermath episode, but apparently you'd be wrong. Mac and Templeton bury the hatchet for a full 30 seconds as they head to Florida on a post-natural-disaster moral-support and photo-op expedition. And since one environmental crisis is never enough, this one's compounded by the threat of a catastrophic oil spill off the Atlantic coast. Let the party politics begin! The formula's becoming crystal clear: Mac makes a presidential decision; Templeton sabotages her before a captive world audience; Mac comes out ahead in the end because, by golly, she's got principles. So, uh, when does Mark-Paul Gosselaar show up? I think I'm in desperate need of a Zack Attack.

As if she hasn't got enough worries, like ruling the free world and stuff, Mac's picture-perfect family life begins to crack a bit at the edges, too. It looks like First Hubby's gonna take the baseball commissioner gig he didn't so much as tell her about although he did find time to mention it to the nubile and oh-so-understanding press secretary. Meanwhile, the First Daughter manages to make out with a boy behind the local burger joint, fend off a mob of teenage autograph hounds and get her loyal Secret Service agent pink-slipped. Imagine how much she could accomplish with a tutor.

Best moment of the hour: one of the environmentalists in Templeton's pocket demonstrates the dangers of Mac's proposed oil-spill prevention plan by pouring what appears to be maple syrup all over a big map of Florida. Mmm, Everglade-cakes. CS

Got questions about Commander in Chief? Send them in here.