BOOB TUBE: THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE UGLY

We are all Sharon Needles this week.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly dives right into the good, the bad, and the ugly parts of television each week. Still unsure what this column is about: The Good will focus on the best thing on TV this week, The Bad will explore the worst thing, and The Ugly will vary from week to week, but it’s usually serving up the hottest of hot messes allowed to hit our TV screens.

The Good.

30 Rock was back with another live episode this week an it was like a better SNL with a bunch of mini-sketches. The episode begins with Jack telling Liz that TGS will no longer be a live show and then Kenneth telling everyone in a passionate speech and flashbacks that live TV is so important. The basic premise of the episode, revealed at the end, was that a live televised telethon brought all the characters together and that’s how TGS should be. It was a classic meta 30 Rock move by talking about live television on live television.

What do we think of the Jon Hamm portion? I’m really surprised there isn’t an Internet uproar (yet).

Of course since it was live, we have two episodes (East Coast/West Coast) to watch and are able to navigate our way through all the differences between the two. Here are a few of my favorite differences.

Oh, and FINALLY an Amy Poehler guest spot.

The Bad.

I mostly love Smash and maybe that’s because I secretly wish I could star in a Broadway musical, but this week’s episode gave us exactly what we weren’t asking for: A Bollywood Number.

I think one of the best things about Smash are the Vulture recaps of Smash:

“Which means that it’s time for Karen to go into one of her periodic autistic disassociative trance states, and this time, because they are in an Indian restaurant, and Karen has the narrative imagination of well, frankly me, at this point, having been up all night trying to arrange this into something coherent, it is… a Bollywood Number.”

The Ugly.

Each week I tune into the hot mess express which is RuPaul’s Drag Race. This week was the final episode of the season and Sharon Needles was supposed to be crowned America’s Next Best Drag Superstar. Don’t get me started. Don’t even get me started if Phi Phi O’hara wins. The winner is going to be announced next week during the reunion show. I don’t like to think about a world where Sharon Needles is not America’s Next Best Drag Superstar, but just in case let’s take a brief journey in the amazingness that she brings.

Here’s a glimpse of the reunion show:

When he’s not discussing what he watched last night on television with his cats, Steven is a freelance writer and blogger from Boston. He writes about television at TV Hangover and blogs about really important stuff like pizza and feelings at his blog. He also tweets from the bathroom while his children are playing video games.