So MTV decided to dedicate an entire section of its website to, whoa, music videos. Though not quite the exhaustive archive I’d like, and though it lists all “the” bands under “t,” what’s truly important is that I can now embed high-quality versions of music videos like this:

You’re welcome.

YOU GUYS, THIS IS AWESOME.

Barack Obama is going to be on The Daily Show tomorrow.

And my roommate points out that tomorrow is also when Friday Night Lights airs, so within two and a half hours we get Coach, Tim Riggins, Barack Obama, and Jon Stewart.

All I’m saying is I’m going to need a cigarette.

ETA: Barack will be appearing via satellite. Which makes sense, because New York is the farthest thing from a swing state (a monkey bars state?), but I’m a little disappointed. I guess I’ll have to drown my sorrows in Matt Saracen’s sad, adorable eyes.

I’m serious. Not even one dressed as the love child of Popeye and Liberace. Especially one dressed as the love child of Popeye and Liberace. Someone needs to tell Chuck Bass that playing hard to get is Dawson’s bag and that he and Blair are BORING when they are not clawing and rasping and hurling insults and/or sucking face.

And now to the A story: For the first time in recorded history, Nate Archibald figured something out first! Well, figured it out before the only person on this show who’s a dimmer bulb than he is: petulant skeeze-magnet Jenny Humphrey. Has any person ever deserved the good things that happen to her less? I’m thinking she’s a close second to Nicole Richie. Maybe.

Buy some matches, guv’nor?

All right. Perhaps the only person on this show I still have any respect for is Eleanor Waldorf. (And that’s only because she was in Independence Day.) Dan and Serena had the same conversation for the forty-third time (”I want to be friends!” “Well, I want to judge you!” “We can do both!” “You’re a whore.” “You’re from Brooklyn.” “I hate you!” “I hate you more!”), Vanessa pouted about last week’s abortive seduce-and-destroy storyline, and that horrible girl from The O.C. showed up.

It’s like the writers reached for their American Apparel hoodies, kicked their Chuck Taylors up on the table, took a big sip of crazy juice and thought, “What could we to do make Sara’s head explode? Yes! I’ve got it! Find someone who’s a bigger asshole than Little J!” That person would be Willa Holland, who showed up in the totally unwatchable fourth season of The OCk as monotone, unmourned Marissa Cooper’s previously missing little sister, Kaitlin. (I hate that I know her stupid name without having to look it up.) Here she was playing some sort of sullen model named Agnes who attempted to lead stupid, stupid Jenny down the Dov Charney–makes–amateur–porn primrose path. Luckily, since it would have been actual child porn if Taylor Momsen took off any more clothes, Sir Nate of Manbangs showed up to protect her slack-jawed, kohl-addled virtue. And then they made out, their two collective brain cells bouncing hormonally around their pretty little heads.

Next week: Jenny wears a shmatte and does her hair like Kenley. But Lily and Rufus join forces! I hope Lincoln Hawk makes an appearance and then goes on tour with Blur.

Attention fangirls and fanfellows: Don’t forget to enter our Gossip Girl giveaway! Deadline is Friday.

House and My Name Is Earl keep piling up on my DVR, but I haven’t felt the urgent need to watch them recently. I think that’s because, for the past couple of seasons, these two series in particular were starting to veer away from their formulas and play around a little more, and now it seems as if both shows threw their hands up and said: “Too far! We might be alienating loyal fans! Retreat! Retreat!”

Well, I liked the experimenting. House was especially strange, since it somehow managed to incorporate some reality-show elements into its fictional universe. The fourth season began with House sans a diagnostic team. He rounded up 40 potentials to fill the three open spaces. That was fun and exciting. There were a lot of new characters for House to play around with. The disposable ones were good for a joke and then they were out, the favorites got to stick around a little longer and maybe get a meaty storyline thrown their way. Mostly, choosing a new team gave House something to do besides diagnose the patients, harass Wilson, and learn things about himself.

The changes to My Name is Earl started off a little bit subtler. For a while, the show had a slightly dark tint cast over it. Earl was often put in situations where doing something to cross one person off his list would wind up hurting someone else. This was my favorite era of the show. Earl had to decide how to be a better person in situations that weren’t so clear-cut. Then things got really crazy: He went to prison to save Joy from a harsh three-strikes sentence, he worked his list in prison, he broke out and decided that the nice guy doesn’t finish first, disavowed the list, got hit by a car, and spent half a season in a coma dreaming that he was in a classic TV sitcom. Yeah, crazy. But I kind of liked it because, even with the whole coma-fantasy plot, Earl was really struggling with whether or not his list project was worthwhile. It just went a little deeper.

Now? House has a new diagnostic team. They diagnose patients. Often, those patients teach them something about themselves. Wilson was gone for a while—oh no!—but he came back.

And Earl? He’s out of prison, and out of his coma. He learned things about karma while in the coma, so he’s back on the list. Each week, he rights a previous wrong and feels better about himself.

Ho hum.

• The bad economy is helping to save low rated shows
• Bravo confirms Project Runway ripoff
• Katee Sackhoff to play a murder suspect on Law & Order
• My thoughts exactly: Best Week Ever not as funny with one host
• Random: Michael Chiklis fills in for Regis Philbin
• Here’s an interview with the creator of Mad Men
• Maureen McCormick in talks over a Marcia Brady movie
• Wesley from Buffy/Angel to guest on Private Practice
• What we aren’t watching: SNL suffers Sarah Palin fatigue
• This day in lists: The top 10 misfired sci-fi shows of the 90s
• Don Draper offers some advice on picking up women
  

So CBS has canceled The Ex List.

I watched the pilot. I never mentioned it because, well, it wasn’t worth mentioning. The characters were okay, but every time I thought the show was getting somewhere, it would do something that would totally annoy me. Like the fact that the main character was named Bella Bloom, and she owned a flower shop. We no longer live in an era where people’s surnames are derived from their occupation, otherwise we’d all be named “Blogger,” and we wouldn’t have any way of distinguishing our families, and we’d all be inbred. Also, in the pilot, Bella’s BFF totally showed Bella her pubic hair. On purpose. Do guys think that girls actually do that?

Really, though, I think the problem was the premise. A psychic tells Bella that she has to find her true love in a year otherwise she’ll never get married–and that her true love was someone she’d already dated. I know that most girls would do what Bella did–namely, start going in search of all of her exes in hopes of finding her true love BECAUSE SHE MUST GET MARRIED OR DIE LONELY AND SAD–but I personally would’ve been more impressed if she’d said, “Go back to one of those losers? I’m happier by myself, thank you very much.” And then, in my fantasy scenario, she would’ve gone on to live a happy and fulfilling life.

Also, doesn’t it seem a little cruel that this show aired on Friday nights? I’m sure it left no comfort to the dateless.

Thus marks the first and only time TiFaux will use a tag for The Ex List.

Marisa addressed the more interesting points of the new Christian Slater series My Own Worst Enemy a while ago, but after the second episode I’ve got some loose observations left to make.

On the whole though, it’s a decent thriller made ‘pretty good’ by my low expectations. Those low expectations are the result of the fact that the superhero-by-night, PTA-parent by night genre is well-trod territory.

My concerns:

• Is Alfre Woodard slumming it? She’s one of those actors who always seem to lend dignity to whatever show she’s in, thereby elevating her scenes in My Own Worst Enemy (she plays the steely intelligence officer who keeps Edward on track and Henry under control). I’m sure she could lend gravitas to anything — even pre-destined duds like Gary Unmarried. However, she did star in that one season of Desperate Housewives…
• The thing that made me happiest in the series’ pilot was the moment when Henry was walking around the building after being freed from the Russian terrorists. He was walking around amid gunfire and then someone got shot, spraying blood all over his face. In that moment, I knew that this wasn’t going to be Medium — meaning we’re not going to have to endure precocious breakfast banter with ridiculous children. We weren’t necessarily going to have to be burdened with plot lines about the kids standing up to bullies at school or being nervous about a school play. Children are what ruin shows like this.
• This show is much darker than I ever would have expected (not that it can’t get darker — a choice I wouldn’t frown upon). I’d like to see more characters, more Mission Impossible-style intrigue and, yes, more gunplay.
• Remember that song by Lit called My Own Worst Enemy that they played for an entire summer? Thank God we don’t need the radio anymore.

I can’t remember the last time I watched an episode of SNL hosted by someone who I had more or less never seen before (discounting his roles as the cable guy on an episode of The Sarah Silverman Program and as a skydiver in David Wain’s The Ten, which I never, ever would’ve remembered despite my general “that guy” identification skills). Checking the invaluable SNL Transcripts site, I can safely say that yes, Jon Hamm is the least recognizable-to-me host since Andy Roddick turned up in 2003 (other sports stars nose ahead because they usually do commercials at some point). Based on the show, though, this Hamm kid, he seems like a good egg. I mean, I’m not going to start watching Mad Men or anything, but Hamm definitely makes it look more appealing than The Shield. Incidentally, does it seem kinda like everything on FX is pitched as “TV — TO THE EXTREME!”?

Anyway, maybe it was my imagination, but I thought I felt a palpable sense of relief this week over no longer having to deal with an obligatory quick-turnaround debate sketch for political content; the writers seemed to be looking for more inventive ways into ribbing the candidates in these waning days of the race. Facing the limited availability of Tina Fey and lacking a single killer political impersonation performed by anyone in the regular cast, the strategy this season seems to be to spread the material around and not give anyone a chance to tire of Fred Armisen’s technically OK but entirely uninspired take on Obama, Darrell Hammond’s close but centerless McCain, or the physically vague Jason Sudeikis version of Joe Biden.

The latter got more screentime in the opening sketch, and though Sudeikis isn’t much of an impressionist — he’s too much of a deadpan everyman to disappear the way Hammond or Bill Hader can — his style is perfectly suited to the writers’ take on Biden as a dude who can’t help but take his honestly into nutbar territory. The writers also got around a middling Obama impression with an inspired musical-variety format; Lorne Michaels may have long insisted that Maya Rudolph would have to come back to play Michelle Obama, but I think we can all see that she really came back to sing. Incidentally, I would consider buying a Maya Rudolph album.

Neither of these sketches hit the spot like that Ferrell/Fey bit on the final fun-sized Thursday edition of the show — but then again, Ferrell and Fey don’t actually work for SNL anymore. The actual cast members worked well within their grooves this week: Will Forte’s sketch about a trick-or-treating sex offender (funny, but could’ve gone further); Bill Hader’s welcome return as an eternally put-upon Vincent Price (funny, but not the best Price sketch he’s done); and Andy Samberg’s Digital Short about a faux-rasta college student (funny, but kinda hard to parse on a basic level). It was all pretty good: rarely better and rarely worse, until around 12:45.

The final sketch, a trio of campaign ads with Hamm as the unfortunately named Pat Finger, candidate for office in the town of Butt, NY, was a wash-out; instead of building, the joke got lamer and more predictable as the ads progressed. It mainly served as a reminder of a far better version of the successive-campaign-ad gag which, upon further research, aired ten years ago this weekend: When Ben Stiller hosted, he and Tim Meadows played rival mayoral candidates airing ads about who is best-qualified to wipe out the town’s “bat problem.” It’s a brilliant sketch, and the kind neither favored for best-of collections, nor even archived on NBC’s website, nor, I’m guessing, even kept in the one-hour rerun versions (I may be wrong about this, but generally if there’s an amazing stand-alone SNL sketch from the late nineties, it gets cut out of the reruns).

Anyway, it was almost at that exact moment that the episode seemed to sort of fall apart: the lame Pat Finger sketch was followed immediately by a third Coldplay performance, as if to say: we give up, let’s run out of the clock. Maybe there were some killer Poehler-starring sketches that had to be canned when she went into labor on Saturday, or maybe Coldplay is, you know, one of the biggest rock bands in the world (I’m still coming to terms with that one and I couldn’t work up the interest to even try to check out any of their three songs). But it left the episode feeling perfunctory and thin. This feeling may stick around when the election dust clears, with Amy off raising her kid and doing her sitcom and, I assume, the guest spots from the likes of Fey, Ferrell, Parnell, and Rudolph becoming less frequent (though hopefully there will be reason for Rudolph to keep popping up). The current cast is a talented one, and soon enough they’ll be on their own again.

Episode Grade: B-

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• NY Mag renounces Entourage (five seasons late in my opinion)
• Damages lawyer Zeiko Ivanek heads to Big Love
• Producers reportedly “concerned” Cloris Leachman has made Dancing “a big joke”
• Entertainment Weekly offers up five ways to fix Heroes
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• This day in lists: Tina Fey’s greatest SNL moments
• It’s Project Runway season 5 in 60 seconds!