TV

Technically, what I was watching Sunday night was the Oscars, but early Monday morning I was watching the finale of what's been the best season of Big Love and, therefore, week in week out the best show on television.

This has been a crazy season and fulfilling that craziness, the penultimate episode left so many ball up in the air, there seemed no way that the finale, in the span of 50-something minutes, could wrap everything up. The short answer is: it doesn't. But the slightly longer answer is: it deals with everything it needed to in really smart, surprising and provocative ways. Read on only if you're spoiler-safe.

Unless you made it through the entire Oscars telecast, then the local news and then the annual post-Oscars Jimmy Kimmel Live, you missed quite a funny sketch.

Kimmel, in a riff on deciding who's hot and who's not, claimed to belong to a Handsome Men's Club. The members included Patrick Dempsey, Matthew McConaughey, Ben Affleck, John Krasinski and others. But the local laughs came when Tony Romo was revealed to be a member, despite Jimmy's disapproval of his ears. (Romo appears at the 4:50 mark.)

"He can't even get his hat on frontways ever... 'cause his ears are so big."

This week's Talking TV has a theme! (Gasp!)

In "Ends and Beginnings," Tom and I discuss various ends (the Nip/Tuck finale, the Burn Notice finale, etc.) and beginnings (the Parenthood premiere, Monday's Gossip Girl premiere).

Join us on moviesblog.dallasnews.com on Sunday night for our live commentary during the Oscars telecast.

Listen to this week's Talking TV here or download it on iTunes.

Oh baby. I'm a die-hard "Office" fan, but I didn't really care for the much-hyped "baby" episode, "The Delivery."

The first half focused on Pam being in labor, but not wanting to go to the hospital yet because the HMO only covers so much time in the hospital. Jim was practically doubled over with worry, but Michael decided to band the office together in an effort to distract Pam from her labor pains.

Once the baby, a girl names Cecilia Marie Halpert, arrives, the episode divded itself between the Halperts getting to know their daughter and the action back at Dunder Mifflin, where a proud Michael tries to start new families within the office by playing matchmaker.

Texas' Colby Donaldson survives to play another week on Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains, but it was a very close scrape Thursday night for one of the "good guys" of the Heroes team.'

Read on for who was evicted:

The guest judges this week are Isabel Toledo, designer to the First Lady, and Stephen Webster, jewelry designer.

On the runway, Mila's black and white plastic dress is pretty cool, but Jesse's metal puff ball is crazy. Jonathan's copper number is forgettable. Anthony actually made a feminine, lavender cocktail dress. Ben's copper outfit is overshadowed by the appearance of Emilio's "garment." Maya's dress looks like it belongs to Lady Gaga.

During judging, Ben, Jonathan, Amy and Seth Aaron move on to the next round. Mila's paint tray dress gets rave reviews, but Emilio is taken down a peg for not having any discernible pattern. (They actually give him more credit than he deserves and think he was trying to be creative and not make a dress, when really, he just ran out of material.)

Anthony (unjustly) gets insulted because he made something pretty and soft when he should have embraced the "hardness" of the hardware. Maya's dress recieves compliments, but Jesse's is compared to a dirty vacuum bag, a Hershey's kiss, a ballerina and the Tin Man. (Called it!) But Jay outshines everyone with his "luxury" trash bag outfit - he scores unanimous praise.

Maya is in and Jay is the winner of the challenge. Mila and Anthony are in, too. It comes down to Jesse and Emilio... predictably, Jesse is out. Emilio committed a grave error, but at least it was a statement. Jesse's never been a shining star and so he didn't have anything to rest on. Oh well... Auf wiedersehen, Jesse!

Next time: "Anyone could go at any time." "Is anyone else as worried as I am?" "It looks like a cat in a baby sling." All this and more on the next Project Runway!

Mila gets a good critique from Tim, but Jesse's is more mixed. (The words "elementary school" and "project" are thrown around.) Tim's perturbed by the guys' overuse of copper.

Emilio's "intergalactic macrame flapper" gives Tim some concern, as does Anthony's warped skirt. But on the other end of the spectrum, Tim says Jay's garbage bag pants are "spectacular" and Maya's keys necklace is "stunning."

Emilio is still in crisis - his garment looks atrocious. It is literally a bikini made of washers and hot pink string. Elsewhere, Jesse stops sewing and starts using electrical tape on his Tin Man-ballerina-looking dress. Amy's sandpaper outfit looks awesome, though.

The contestants rejoice over being in the top ten. Tim Gunn and Michael Kors tell the designers that they'll be designing a garment and an accessory... out of items purchased at a hardware store. Amy's excited. Emilio's not.

Per usual, everyone kinda cheats and tries to buy things in yards - like sheet metal or screens. Emilio goes over budget and ends up with some cord and washers. Whoops.

Anthony focuses on innovation and tries to make something soft out of hardware. Seth Aaron hammers away at sheet metal. Amy and Jonathan flirt (?) and laugh as they work. Jay thinks everyone is going the "easy" route by making dresses. It seems everyone's having trouble with their materials - but no one makes it seem as charming as Anthony, who says he's being controlled by the materials.

...are Jermaine Sellers, Michelle Delamor and Haeley Vaughn. As Ryan had Haeley and Lacey Brown to walk to center stage to hear their fate, Simon was asked if one of them deserved another chance.
"Yes," he said. "But it's very obvious who's going to go home tonight. To everyone watching."
Huh? It wasn't obvious to this here person watching. I have no idea which girl he was referring to with that. Any guesses?
After a montage of happier times for each of the failed four, Haeley had to sing. It was not her finest moment. I'm not sure if she hit one correct note in that rendition of "The Climb," actually. It reminded me of watching a figure skater mess up from the first jump; oftentimes, it's all downhill from there.
That's not to say that I didn't feel for Haeley (as did all of her crying cohorts). She's definitely likable; when Ryan asked her what she was going to do when she got back to school, she paused and replied, "Um...learn?"

The first person leaving us tonight is John Park. No big surprise there, right? He hasn't made much of an impact yet, and it's probably high time to be doing so.
His ouster meant that local guys Casey James, Todrick Hall and Tim Urban will be sticking around. Cross your fingers for Alex Lambert, who will hear his fate later; if he gets through, four of the top eight guys will be from right here. That would be a first for any metropolitan area, people! Get excited!

It seems clear now that there are three standout women in this year's contest -- and they're all very quirky. Or "strange," as Simon put it about Siobhan Magnus, the glassblowing apprentice.
She closed the show with Aretha's "Think," and while it seemed wobbly at first, she made up for it all with a through-the-rafters note toward the end. Simon seems particularly amused by this girl, which is fun.
Then there's Lilly Scott, who rivals Crystal Bowersox with her folksy/granola vibe. But lucky for us, they're both incredibly talented. Lilly's version of "A Change is Gonna Come" was just flat-out entertaining -- which can't be said about more than half of the performances tonight.
So my prediction is that the top three girls will be Siobhan, Crystal and Lilly (not necessarily in that order). Sure, the big-voiced Paige Miles still has a shot, as does Katelyn Epperly. (Although Simon pretty much accused her of ripping off Natasha Bedingfield's version of that Coldplay tune tonight. That was interesting. We at home love tense moments on live television.)
But my money's on the atypical trio.

So after a super-strong start by Crystal, things have been flying downhill. I thought Amarillo's Lacey Brown did a great job with "Kiss Me" (and aren't her eyes the prettiest you've ever seen), but the judges just pooh-poohed it.
They continued riding the Disappointment Train for Katie Stevens, who went with "Put Your Records On." Simon told her that if she were coming into his record label, he'd advise her to get some experience, "and tell me what kind of artist you want to be." Which, to me, means she's not quite ready for this show. But I can be proven wrong.
Next up: Didi Benami, who sang a spirited version of "Lean On Me." I rather liked it. The judges rather hated it.
Again, this little contest is Crystal Bowersox's to lose. So far.

The perky teen went with perky teen Miley Cyrus' hit, "The Climb." It was, as Randy put it, excrutiating.
"You need about a year of really strengthening your instrument," Kara said. Seems like sound advice to a layperson such as myself.
After Simon said he didn't want to add insult to injury, he did just that. "There's a certain irony of you singing a song about climbing, when you actually fell off," he said.
Fell off what? The show? I guess that's what he was saying. But perhaps it wasn't necessary; we're all aware of how that performance sounded to our ears.

It appears that after Week One, in which the judges took turns in their speaking order, Simon is now going to be the last person to talk at all times. Good. All is right with the world, I say. (But you have to wonder if that ruffled a few other folks' feathers, because they were mixing things up for a reason, I'm assuming.)
Also: I noticed last night that when Ryan introduced Randy, Ellen smiled and clapped for the dawg. When Simon was introduced? Hands folded. Slight smile. I'm not saying this is evidence that they don't get along, but we people at home notice these things. All I'm sayin'.

Luckily, Crystal Bowersox has bounced back from her illness enough to perform tonight. What illness was that, exactly? Nobody's saying. Crystal just said she's a "tough cookie," while Ellen noted, "I was so scared for you." (Yikes! That just makes us want to be in on the secret even more, but OK, fine.)
Anyway, I guess we can just all be happy she's around, because her performance tonight was brilliant. Who else got chills? Simon may have, because he told her that "this was like the moment we realized with Kelly Clarkson that we've got a serious artist here. And I think we've got a really serious artist with you."
High praise, and well-deserved. I'd say she's officially the one to beat now.

Jarrah joins dark side.
Sideways: He still loves Nadia.
March on, Locke army.

Yay for new Southland! Well, yay for you, I should say. The episode's called "Phase Three," and it is the first completely brand spankin' new episode to air since NBC canceled the show and TNT picked it up. And I was anticipating this day, until I remembered that me and some other lucky Dallas fans already saw this episode at a January screening.

Yeah, kind of a bummer, but the thing with Southland is that it's awesome. Those of us that have been watching since the very beginning are invested. And if Jay Leno can return to The Tonight Show and beat David Letterman just like that, than doggone it, we're going to make sure everyone knows about the greatness that TNT's bringing us.

The episode starts with the cool, HBO-like intro stills, then we see Ben Sherman (Ben McKenzie) getting jumped after he and his partner, John Cooper (Michael Cudlitz), come on the scene of a small riot. We then backtrack and see an elderly man pruning rose bushes in his front yard before a shadowy figure approaches. Then, Detective Lydia Adams (Regina King) is on the phone with her partner, Russell, who we last saw shot and bloody in the season finale. He's in the hospital with a nasty scar on his stomach, but otherwise he seems good - and almost like he's flirting with Lydia?

SPOILER ALERT! Don't read any further if you don't want to know what happened on tonight's episode of Lost.

Haiku reminder: Check back here on Wednesday morning for Samantha Urban's much shorter -- and more poetic -- recap.

Finally, the Sayid episode (OK, I admit it, while everyone else was oohing and ahhing over Jack and Sawyer, Sayid was always my Lost crush).

Sayid (Naveen Andrews) spent the entire episode, both on the island and in Sideways World, wrestling with his evil past (Iraqi Republican Guard, torture, etc.) and the hope for a violence-free future. On the island, he confronts Dogen (Hiroyuki Sanada), who nearly kills Sayid until he's stopped by the sight of a ... rolling baseball. Dogen, lovingly caressing his baseball, tells Sayid to leave the temple and never return. And yes! A baseball has 108 stitches -- I learned that from Bull Durham -- and so does a Buddhist or Hindu rosary (not a Catholic rosary, as also stated in Bull Durham -- it's not the one-stop resource for info, apparently, that I'd always thought it was.) But anyway, there's that pesky 108 again. We learn later that Dogen's 12-year-old son was killed on the way home from a baseball game, when Dogen was driving drunk.

PHOTO by Mario Perez/ABC: Naveen Andrews as Sayid on Lost

Andrew Garcia, Aaron Kelly and Jermaine Sellers all sort of fell into the same trap. It's called Boring. (No offense, because I love Andrew in particular. Not tonight, though.)
Closing out the show was Lee Dewyze. During his montage, he talked about being placed in an alternative high school. But thanks to a supportive teacher and a better attitude, he pulled through.
"I'm a nice guy; I always was a nice guy," he said. "I just made bad decisions."
This week, he ditched the guitar for a half-nervous/half-believable rendition of "Lips of An Angel." I'm still on the fence with this guy (he reminds me of David Cook, only not as talented), but Simon proclaimed him to be "head and shoulders above everybody else on this side of the competition." I think that might be debated on various blogs tomorrow, but OK.

The Duncanville resident jokingly called last week's horrendous performance (and subsequent lashing by Simon) "a great confidence booster." This week, he went back to his original style with "Come On Get Higher." Was it stupendous? No. But it was 100 times better than last go-round.
While the first three judges still dissed him for various things (Ellen suggested he pursue an acting career instead), Simon had only good things to say.
"You really listened to the criticism," he said. "I'm really impressed not just with your performance tonight, but by your attitude and your work ethic. You didn't whine, you got on with it. So congratulations; you did great."
That should keep him safe for another week. Maybe.