Tonight on the Tifaux: Give your 2nd tier cable channels a chance

Posted by Cristin July 30th, 2007 at 11:30am In Guilty Pleasures

As I type this, Tifauxers Maggie and Kyle are on a tropical cruise, most likely rocking out in the karaoke lounge to the theme song from The Nanny, and Freebird (both of which I’ve seen Maggie and Kyle, respectively, do live, without any need for the scrolling lyrics in front of them. Also, is Freebird one word? I’m not googling it. Don’t post angry comments about my lack of knowledge). That means it’s up to me and Tifaux Dan to hold down the fort for a week. If it were after August 13 I would be in no way nervous about that (HELLO, SEASON PREMIERE OF THE HILLS! I’m not as entranced by the current trailers as I was by last season’s pregnancy test stunner, but I do get goosebumps every time Intern Whitney remarks that Lauren might be better off without Heidi and Lauren calmly responds “I am so far” in a quiet, soulful voice) but, it isn’t, so it’s time to get creative.

LUCKILY, today I get to say the words I’ve wanted to say for months. MY BOYS IS BACK ON! Wooot! Holla at ya, TBS!

I used to think that loving My Boys was more shameful than, say, not realizing after 4 years as an english major and 4 years as a “publishing professional” that the title of the book was not, in fact, The Unbearable Likeness of Being (that was a rough conference call, let me tell you). I was wrong. You really do have something for everyone here– ambiguous mixed-gender relationships, jokes about beer, comedian Jim Gaffigan (whom The Boyfriend tells me fantabulous at stand-up, except that The Boyfriend would never say the word fantabulous), and a hot chick who knows a lot about baseball. When we closed on the first season, lead character P.J. had just made out with her best friend Brandon, much to my dismay as I chalked up another loss for team “Really, I have a platonic male best friend and I’ve never seen his underwear.” New episodes start tonight at 10 on TBS.

And, on the off chance that you have nothing to do for the hour before that, you should devote some time to figuring out which of your local stations is ABC Family just so you can watch Greek.

A frighteningly precise interpretation of my college days.

Maggie already previewed Greek, which I first heard of via their slightly odd social networking site where you can go through “virtual rush” and cruise through all of the Greek houses as well as the engineering club and athletic club (this kind of reminds me of the board game Barbie: Queen of the Prom where you have to become a club president, get an afterschool job and save money, buy a dress, and find a boyfriend and get him to go steady with you before you can become Queen Of The Prom. It’s that easy).

The quick catch up: Casey is rush chair of her sorority. Her boyfriend cheated on her with one of her pledges. Her younger brother has a Jesus-loving roommate in the engineering honors dorm, and decideds to pledge the fraternity of Casey’s fun-loving slacker ex-boyfriend. The younger brother also has a friend who’s a member of the cheating boyfriend’s fraternity and has yet to admit to anyone (including… himself) that he’s gay. None of this actually matters. What matters is, outside a few cringe-inducing moments of over-acting (most of which come to us at the hands of Younger Brother Rusty), the writing is hilarious and fast paced and contemporary and more CW than ABC Family. If you paid for your friends in college (as I did, no shame), you’ll recognize the girl who plans 8 mixers in a row with a “pimps and hos” theme, and if you didn’t, you can congratulate yourself on having morals while you wished the girls living next door to you in college demonstrated a similar propensity for running around their lawn in their panties. Monday, 9 pm, ABC Family.