Watch The Office tonight.

And read this for an insightful international take on The Office. 

In a stunning display of network programming GENIUS, America's Next Top Model and The Biggest Loser premiered last night in the same time slot, creating a major conflict for yours truly. Do I go with the genuine overweight people or the soulless underweight people? Despite tifauxing both, I was still manically flipping back and forth, trying to catch all of the magic. Oh, and I also ate an entire sleeve of oreos during the 2 hour premiere. It just seemed like the right thing to do.

The crew at ANTM went with their "most controversial photo shoot of ALL TIME" for the first episode, which turned out to be… portraying model stereotypes. Yeah, you're really going to piss off fundamentalists with that one. So while the 50 contestants on The Biggest Loser were collectively weighing in at over 14,000 pounds, one of Tyra's new circus ponies was giving us this:

Let is also be said that her identical twin/ equally unattractive sister was selected to portray the Bulemic Model stereotype. It was identically disturbing and equally unattractive.

My early favorites on this one do not, in fact, include the blonde chick who rapped in her audition ("I got a whole lot of personality you just can't bottle! Check it out, I'm on America's Next Top Model!") or either lollipop twin, but rather the self-named Melrose who collapsed to the floor after narrowly escaping elimination, and AJ who turned an endearing shade of red when questioned by the judges. Love her. Love.

As for The Biggest Loser, I feel obligated to root for the contestant from New York, but my real favorite is the perky chick trainer, Kim. Her dad was an airforce pilot! And she looks great in a sports bra! I love you, Kim!

Straight up: none of these shows were that great. There's no Lost or 24 among them, hard as they may try. There were moments of fun, and some of them have good ideas or great actors, but I'm relieved that my Wednesday nights will not be consumed like this in the future.

Jericho (CBS). The show starts with the word Jericho in a staticky font on a black background, while beeping noises play. Wait a second. Where have I seen this before?

Skeet Ulrich arrives back in town, mysteriously, after a five year mysterious absence, which he "explains" by stealing jokes from Grosse Pointe Blank. He wants his grandpa's money for mysterious reasons, but he can't have it, because his dad is a hardass and his brother is a suck-up and soon the world is ending anyway. The thing you need to know about Skeet: he's a budget Johnny Depp, and his teeth. Are. ENORMOUS.

I like the premise, but the pilot had a lot of aw-shucks, I just love this godforsaken small town so damn much. That's not really scary; just annoying and cheaply written. If you're the type of person who likes worrying about a nuclear holocaust, you're better off reading this book. If you really want to know what Skeet has been doing and you have a great deal of patience, along with a high tolerance for emergency tracheotomies done with juicebox staws, this show's for you.

Justice (Fox). Victor Garber is the House of lawyers. He's a fancy defense lawyer surrounded by other fancy defense lawyers, but he's the meanest and best of them all. At the end of the show, they reveal what actually happened. The show is shot in a very jerky hand-held style with tons of CGI effects that add absolutely nothing to the story. That's pretty much all you need to know.

The thing is, I have no problem with Victor Garber being the House of lawyers. But I didn't see all that much evidence of Victor Garber being funny or mean, at all. What I saw was a lot of running around and slamming papers down emphatically, and people being brilliant and troubled and ethically dubious blah blah blah. Also, I had to change the channel because the show's constant jiggling was giving me a headache. So my verdict: no.

Kidnapped (NBC). This one was my favorite of the night, though it had its moments of suckiness. Timothy Hutton's son has been kidnapped. Jeremy Sisto finds kidnapped kids (and, side note, what?? Can that really be a full time job? We're not in South America, here). Delroy Lindo was thisclose to retiring from the FBI, but now it's personal, or something. Lot of stuff going on. Lots of opportunities to reveal deep dark secrets. Lots of time to wonder what's wrong with the kid and why isn't he taking his medicine.

I've always liked poor, constantly miscast Timothy Hutton, ever since seeing Ordinary People. Apparently the writers of this show have a thing for Ordinary People, too, because they gave his character the same name he had in his breakout role, Conrad. He's good as the sleazy-yet-worried dad. And Jeremy Sisto can't help being charming even when he's not supposed to be a people person.

Mom: You're not good with people, are you?
Jeremy Sisto: No. I'm just good at finding them.

That line is so bad that it gets to horribleness and then comes back around to being good again. Or my other favorite, when his partner finds him looking at the son's copy of Buddhist Epistemology:

Partner: Don't tell me you've read it.
Sisto: No. Not that translation.

I'll probably watch at least a couple more episodes, and not only because I blog-stalk noted New York character actor James Urbaniak. 

Yesterday, while idly commenting on my own post, I came up with a truly astounding explanation of the "mother" situation on How I Met Your Mother. The explanation has it all: the element of surprise, romance, similarity to Friends, and most importantly, it allows you to root for Robin and Ted to be together always, even though she's not technically the "mother." In fact, if this is not what happens, I will be really, really, really disappointed.

Other possible explanations for why Ted hasn't yet met their mother:

• In an unexpected twist involving a freak accident at a routine visit to an experimental drug facility, Marshall is their mother. 
• Ted never finds anyone willing to marry him, so he adopts some of Barney's many offspring. Ted has never met their mother — UNTIL NOW.
• Same situation as my idea from yesterday, except replace Robin's name with Lily's. Robin ends up with Barney. Marshall ends up with ME [just kidding, Kyle].
• On a festive 6th-season trip to Hawaii, their plane crashes over the Pacific, hundreds of miles off course. In a mysterious hatch in the middle of the jungle, Ted finds two babies, imbuing the question of How I Met Your Mother with dark and sinister signifigance.
• UPDATE: Stolen from Mamma Mia — He doesn't know who the mother is because he's sleeping with three different women. One of them just sends him the babies and doesn't leave her name. He and his kids must solve the mystery. (This works better if Ted is a woman and has been sleeping with a bunch of dudes.)

Do you have any other ideas?  

You know that feeling where you see someone and you're convinced you know them from somewhere?  You just can't put your finger on it, but maybe you went to college with them or they were a friend of a friend or maybe you've even seen them on TV?

I had no such feeling when I watched Survivor: Let's Get Racial last Thursday (more on that later).  As far as I was concerned they were completely fresh faces — all of them.

So, imagine my surprise when I find out that one of the castaways, Jonathan Penner, has been in TV shows and movies that I've seen.  According to his IMDB page, he's been on episodes of Arrested Development and Seinfeld, was a series regular on the mid-90s Tea Leoni show The Naked Truth and movies such as Snoop Dogg's Hood of Horror (and who hasn't seen that?).

Also, he starred alongside the rising star Cameron Diaz in a black comedy called The Last Supper.  I remember liking it as a 15-year-old.  It was about a bunch of liberals who invite conservatives over for dinner and then murder them.

Here's a picture of him on the video cover of The Last Supper and a picture of him now.  It's obvious that he has changed a lot due to a lot less hair and a few more pieces of birthday cake.

I wasn't really planning on watching The Class. The premise — 3rd-grade classmates become Friends — is silly, and I have no patience for traditional sitcoms with a laugh track (or at least I try to have no patience, but I keep watching goddam How I Met Your Mother anyway. Speaking of which, there was a premiere last night. So when's Lily coming back? And are they ever going to add any new characters? I'm kind of getting sick of the ones we have. Except Barney.)

Anyway, The Class is pretty bad. The woman married to the closeted gay guy is the absolute worst; she reminded me of someone doing a "Humorous Interpretation" (or HI, for those in the know — it's not acting, it's "interpretation") at a high school speech competition. She's followed closely by the guy living with his mother and the chick from Joey as my least favorite parts of a sometimes painfully bad half hour.

The best is Jesse Tyler Ferguson, seen at left in The 25th Annual Putnum County Spelling Bee.

His character's name in the Spelling Bee was Leaf Coneybear. He wore a cape. He was my favorite.

And he was my favorite on The Class, too, and one of my top three favorite famous redheaded guys*.

I also liked the girl who was the goth chick in Mean Girls. But I think that's just because she reminded me of Mean Girls.

Which is how I learned an important lesson: Just because you appreciate an actor's previous work (broadway shows, Mean Girls), and believe that they have the makings of a great performer, does not mean you have to support every little thing they do.

So, goodbye, The Class. Maybe if I'm home alone and bored and drunk sometime I'll watch you again.

*1) Eric Stoltz, 2) Paul Bettany, 3) Jesse Tyler Ferguson.

This week, MTV will introduce Virtual Laguna Beach, an online service in which fans of the program can immerse themselves — or at least can immerse digitized, three-dimensional characters, called avatars, that they control — in virtual versions of the show’s familiar seaside hangouts.

You can register here (line forms behind me).

Take note, dan: One of the next virtual destinations will be through Logo. I wonder what Jake Gyllenhall will name his avatar?

I've been trying to concoct a way to force my musical tastes on the TiFaux readership for a while now.  And I think I've found a way to justify it.

Hear me out. 

MTV hasn't been about music videos since we were 12. This isn't news.  Ever since The Real World launched the reality genre, the station has slowly evolved from true Music Television to a slutty teenage monstrosity that yields such gems as Next and Date My Mom.  Now I get as much perverse pleasure out of all that crap as the next guy, but there's still a void as far as music goes.  Maybe if you catch it first thing in the morning you can see a Nelly Furtado video or something. 

And the videos they do show on TRL are, well, you know… They have their place, but not really for anyone who isn't filling out college applications.

MTV2 used to be a safe haven for music videos that were somewhere left of the mainstream.  It wasn't a hipster oasis — all Arcade Fire and whatnot — but it at least maintained a Hot Topic level of alternative.  And that was good enough for me.

Elsewhere, the country music people seem to be fairly well taken care of by CMT because there are always music videos when I flip past it. (By the way, country music people, has Carrie Underwood really become a real singer? I mean, I watched that season of American Idol [I know, I know -- shut up] and the girl seems to be sweet as pie, but just as smart.) And VH1 seems to have carved out its own niche with comedians doing list of the 101 Most Revolting Rhinoplasties and having c-list fatties doing crunches for prizes.

The point is this, there are a lot of music videos being made and I have no idea who is watching them.  Now, I know I'm not going to singlehandedly fill the void of music television, but I thought I'd share some good music videos when I see them.  Because you're sure as hell not going to see them between reruns of True Life: I Want A Famous Face.

The first one I want to point out is by a band called The Thermals.  Their new album is full of political statements through religious imagery.  And set to punk rock.  Good stuff and the video is one of those videos that makes the song more fun to listen to, what with the quick editing and bright white scenery.

I'll admit, they do a bit of the "let's film the band in an enclosed space, but in a bunch of wacky costumes" thing, but it's easy enough to forgive since the song's so good.

.. for actual, real television returning next week. Monday has How I Met Your Mother, as Cristin pointed out, along with Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, which I've seen and should be even awesomer with commercials.

Thursday brings the big hitters: OMG OMG The Office, and Teetering on the Edge of Overexposed Grey's Anatomy.

Plan your schedules (or set your tifauxs) accordingly. 

Ed Helms joins the cast. Photo borrowed from Jenna Fischer's blog.

You've got to hand it to the producers of Project Runway. Recently Heidi has been dropping hints that winning challenges would be good for more than just a chance to pin your name on a dummy. It turns out you also get a second chance after you've been eliminated. And it just happens that the only two people who were both eliminated before the final four and were also challenge winners were much-reviled contestants Vincent and Angela.

Now, I'm not one to be cynical, but I have a suspicion that this was not in the original plan. And I also suspect that there isn't any footage of Heidi dropping her hints on camera. If you were to go back through the episodes I bet you would see that they had been dubbed in later. Although I am currently between jobs (and back in the U.S.S.A!) I'm not yet bored enough to do this myself. Suffice it to say that this whole thing stinks of producer manipulation. Of course this is reality TV and I'm sure it says in real small type at the end of the show that the producers are free to change the rules around as much as they want in order to suit their many whims. Fine by me. It made for some nice drama. Could two of the least talented, most annoying contestants of the season somehow skate by into the final four thanks to an arbitrarily rigged contest? The blogsphere would be angry that day my friends.

Back in the apartment, totally missing the point of the plot wist, Laura points out that Angela won a team competition so it's not like she actually deserves to be back. And convenient flashbacks remind us that Laura and Michael won that challenge for Angela. But if Angela actually deserved a second chance, she wouldn't be back. She's only there for the drama.

With the hacks returned to their midst, the designers are given a nice challenge. A black and white cocktail party outfit. And they have to use every bit of fabric they buy. Nice and simple, and it forces everyone to plan ahead. I hope Angela sketched something.

Laura really took last week's drubbing hard. She was somehow shocked that her Cruella De Vil outfit (sorry Dan) didn't go over with the judges so she's on the verge of tears as she tries to youth it up a little this time. A video clip of her kids delivered via cell phone cheers her up, and everyone's heart is warmed along with her. I hope Laura gets a chance to win a competition…

Everyone goes for fairly predictable dresses. Jeffrey does "punk-rock cocktail party," Uli does a wild print dress, Michael does something tasteful and flattering (side note, the Hollywood Stock Exchange predictive market currently has Michael as the favorite to win. Currently trading at $14.76, you'd earn 24 cents a share if he wins.) Angela does something ridiculous, and Vincent goes for clueless and ugly. The only real surprises are Laura, who makes something new, and youthful, and Kayne who does his best to be tasteful.

Sadly, Kayne can't really do tasteful. He makes great pageant gowns. But the dress was only half nice. It really did have a good front, but the back was just weird. He should have given up on white altogether. But it probably wouldn't make a difference. It was his time to go. He was clearly the least talented designer left and the judges made a good decision. Prediction for next week: Uli is out.

And Laura wins the challenge! She's really coming around, and I'm putting her in my top 3 now. But the real winner is the American public, because Laura's win means Vincent and Angela get eliminated twice, finally giving Daniel Franco some company in that particular category.