Last week on Friday Night Lights, Tim became an assistant coach for the East Dillon Lions, while Coach struggled to scrape together funds for his scruffy team. Matt learned that art is about being a miserable, unbathed recluse, which understandably freaked Julie out. Buddy Garrity went off the reservation re: the Panthers under the odious thumb of Revoltin’ Joe McCoy. Vince, Landry, and Luke continued to flail about on the ragtag Lions team. And now, on to episode four, Dillon: A New Hope.

We've got spirit, yes we do! And barbecue!

Last week on Friday Night Lights: Coach is at East Dillon. So is Julie. Matt is delivering pizzas, and JD McCoy is a jackass. New people include Vince, who is very fast and quite surly, and bartender Alicia Witt and her National Anthem–singing daughter. The East Dillon football team got whipped so badly in their first game that Coach forfeited the second half. We cried. So: onward!

On Halloween we watched A Nightmare on Elm Street on TV, as one does, and thanks to HD technology and a massive TV we noticed the best thing ever in the background of a scene in the Sleep Institute.

This movie terrified me as a child, and now the poster of a giant cat riding the San Francisco trolley has officially erased any residual fear I ever felt. Thanks, set dresser!

I am now obsessed with this image, as every right-minded person in the world should be. I’ve been talking about it non-stop on twitter, but now I bring this quest to you, faithful readers. Happy late Halloween.

Whenever they add new characters to the cast of The Office — or, lets face it, to Parks and Recreation, since those characters are basically in the same tableau as The Office — I’m amazed at how they always find a new way for a person to be funny. So many sitcoms rely on basic comedy types: the Overgrown Frat Boy (see Two and a Half Men), the Maladjusted Nerd (see Big Bang Theory), the Sarcastic or Surly Teenager (see any family comedy ever), etc. These types aren’t always used in bad ways — How I Met Your Mother does a great job with Marshall’s Overgrown Frat Boy type — but they’re easy for audiences to spot, recognize, and understand quickly, so lots of comedies use them.

All of the characters on The Office and Parks and Rec are basically Office Workers — they’re all in the same type. The shows have to work harder, then, to make sure that they’re all funny in different ways. They can’t all be wacky, and they can’t all be sardonic. Right now, I’m really tickled by Erin. While she doesn’t get so many punchlines, Ellie Kemper does a great job of making her sweet and people-pleasing, and the fact that she grates on Pam (the pervious sweet, people-pleasing receptionist) really gets me. Erin asking Michael’s permission to put out Pam’s candy (and his thanking her for asking), and her calling Michael and saying “people are asking questions” after he fell into the koi pond, to me was funnier than Michael’s squirm-inducing attempt to mock himself.

This is all just a really long way of saying I’m really pleased that Ellie Kemper is featured so prominently in the video for “Male Prima Donna,” the new hit sensation by Subtle Sexuality. The video is pretty amazing.

Welcome back to Dillon, Panther fans. And Lions fans! Because we’re Lions fans now. Okay, to catch up. When last we left the good folks of Dillon, Coach Taylor had lost his job as head coach of the Panthers to his conceited QB’s private coach. He is now the coach at under-funded, athletically gerrymandered East Dillon High. Tami is still the principal at the now-renamed West Dillon High. So: conflict. Matt Saracen has been accepted to art school in Chicago. Lyla has gone to Vanderbilt and Tyra has gone to UT and we will miss their pretty, pretty hair. Tim is…going to college? Kind of? And also: Clear eyes, full hearts.

All right, all right, all right.

I don’t know if this is widely known, but George Clooney has not always been the fabulous jet-setting prankster superstar he is now. In the distant past, he was a struggling actor just like so many others, who was well-known but not totally famous and who, like his peers, would sometimes be cast in pilots that — to put it kindly — did not catch on with the general populace.

Oh my god, you guys. Sunset Beat. Sunset Beat is a show that exists. Once you read everything I have to say about it, you might not believe me, but I assure you in advance that this really happened and was not some sort of fever dream.

The pilot of Sunset Beat, George Clooney’s show that was never a show, has been airing on MGM recently as part of their First Taste of Fame series. Now, Sunset Beat is not one of those undiscovered gems, that you root for and wish there could’ve been more. No. Sunset Beat is TERRIBLE. Like, truly, horribly, mind-meltingly bad. But it’s bad in a way that makes me laugh and laugh and laugh.

SUNSET BEAT!

Here’s what you need to know about Sunset Beat. It starts with a truck crashing into a helicopter. The truck is delivering something to someone nefarious, and the driver is talking on his CB or whatever, saying “I don’t see him! Where is he?!” and other guy’s like “Um he’s like right there dummy!” and then the truck turns a corner and there’s a helicopter parked in the middle of the road. Then they crash and fall down a cliff. Classic truck-crashing-into-helicopter stuff. You know how it goes.

Then George Clooney is playing lead guitar in a band whose name is, and this is not a joke, Private Prayer. Some crazy strung out chick interrupts the performance! She used to be the lead singer! And she was married to George Clooney! And he got her hooked on the junk!

But before you go thinking George Clooney is only the lead guitarist of a medium-popular band, get ready, because George Clooney is ALSO A COP IN A BAND OF UNDERCOVER MOTORCYLCE COPS. George Clooney is driving his motorcycle down the street, thinking about how he shouldn’t have gotten his ex-wife hooked on the junk, when he sees a helicopter and a truck at the bottom of a cliff. And so he investigates and he finds a giant pile of money, because what else could a truck be delivering to a helicopter in the middle of the day on a twisty LA mountain road?

And so George Clooney calls up the other undercover motorcycle cops to alert them that something weird is going on. This scene takes FOREVER because each of the cops has to have some sort of cute introduction that tells us a little about their personality and home life. ENDLESS. Also George Clooney calls them on his 1990 cell phone, which is awesome because he’s George Clooney with chin-length curly hair on a motorcycle with a 1990 cell phone.

Some of the other undercover motorcycle cops are Doakes from Dexter and TJ from Gilmore Girls.

Then I skipped the middle because it was boring. One of the cops saved an underage prostitute? Another one told his parents he was going to med school? I don’t know. That guy from the David Mamet movies shows up in relation to the A-plot, somehow, with something tattooed on his chest, because criminals are always kidnapping innocent people and tattooing shit on their chests just to send a message.

LATER, George Clooney is performing a big outdoor Private Prayer concert (of course) and his undercover motorcycle cop mentor named JC (of course) is thrown from a helicopter onto the stage and dies. Some people in the audience threaten everyone with guns because they want their money and then they leave. And the dumb lead singer ALMOST STARTS SINGING AGAIN but then George Clooney leaves because he has to catch the bad guys and avenge JC’s thoughtless helicopter-toss-murder, and also what? Why would you think that the concert would magically keep going after a human being is tossed from the sky and lands on stage and dies, not to mention all the guns? Were there lots of terrorism-riddled outdoor concerts in 1990?

So that’s really the climax, even though there’s another climax that involves another helicopter (I think, or maybe it was a crane? Somehow George Clooney is up in the air), and George Clooney gets dumped into the ocean and saves the day (somehow) and everyone thinks he’s dead but he’s not because it’s only the pilot. George Clooney climbs out of the water onto the dock and somehow his leather jacket is still dry, and the other undercover motorcycle cops are so glad to see him because if they had lost both JC and George Clooney in freak dropping-from-helicopter accidents that would have been a really bad week.

And then, tragically, Sunset Beat got canceled.

Search your DVR for more showings! It’s very, very boring and very, very hilarious at the same time.

Guess who’s going to be on TV tonight? Yeah, John Krasinski and Joel McHale, tall, hot and funny, whatever. The really important addition to Thursday nights is my beloved John Cho, who joins Joseph Fiennes, Sonya Walger, and Dominic Monaghan in ABC’s FlashForward, which starts tonight at 8.

Bro, I'm glad we suited up.

John, whom some of you will insist on calling Harold from Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle/Escape From Guantanamo Bay (or you could call him Mr. Sulu, that would be fine), is not making his first foray into TV. He had a recurring role on the short-lived and tragically underwatched but really quite enjoyable Kitchen Confidential in 2005, and he guest-starred on How I Met Your Mother in 2007.

In fact, I have been rewatching HIMYM on DVD for the past two weeks or so, and damn, but that is just a funny show. The older stuff (can you believe this is season 5? Me neither!) really holds up, and as someone whose stomach turns a little when couples baby-talk to each other, it amazes me that I’m still cool with the whole Lily-Marshall cooing-at-each-other thing. I think my goodwill toward them dates to the pilot, when they got engaged, had sex on the kitchen floor, and then, when Lily noticed a Pop Tart under the fridge, Marshall said, “Dibs.”

Anyway, there have been two weird coincidences in my rewatching. The first is the show’s deep love of Patrick Swayze. First, there was Barney’s co-opting of the Dirty Dancing story for his losing-my-virginity tale in season 2, then, the literal (offscreen) Swayze sighting in an episode I watched last night, the one in which John Cho seduces Marshall with Kobe lobster and Swayze into becoming an evil corporate lawyer. I find it some sort of strange cosmic error that I’m watching these now, a week after Swayze died.

The second coincidence is the Cho episode showing up the night before the FlashForward premiere. I will be honest, as much as I deeply loved Joseph Fiennes back in 1998, I have not given him much thought lately. And I have such lingering resentment against Lost for the two season I wasted on that show that I definitely wouldn’t give it a watch for Walger or Monaghan. But Cho? I love Cho. He makes everything better.

And this one time, he called me! That was great. His kid picked up the phone during the interview and started mashing buttons, which was adorable. So, FlashForward! Might be great, might not. I will give it a try.

I don’t want to throw all of my support behind Modern Family — ABC’s new single-camera mockumentary-style comedy.  But I can safely say that I’d love to see it succeed.

The show features three families with various quirks — gay adoptive dads, a May-December couple and a family whose father is experiencing a mid-life crisis. The writing seems to have promise and the cast seems likable, so I’ll actually give it a shot — which is something I don’t say for a lot of comedies these days.

And while “likable” doesn’t tend to make for great comedies, at least it’s better than “formulaic” or “shrill” or “Jay Leno’s new talk show.”

Here’s a clip featuring the gay dads. Here’s hoping it lasts longer than the ill-fated gay dad sitcom It’s All Relative back in the early aughts.

The show airs on ABC at 9 tonight.

On a side note, it’s nice to see overweight gay men on television. Body dysmorphia, ho!!!

Obviously the most important thing about this year’s Emmys, airing this Sunday, is that Neil Patrick Harris is hosting. We’ll all be watching (except for Kyle, who is officially against award shows) to see him gently lampoon our heroes in song. But they’re also going to give out some awards! I know, I didn’t believe it at first either. I firmly believe that any time a deserving show gets an award it’s a fluke, so I have no hope that these selections will win — but here’s why they should.

Best Series, Drama

Big Love

Breaking Bad

Damages

Dexter

House

Lost

Mad Men

My Pick: Lost. If you stuck with Lost, you were rewarded with one of the tightest, most engrossing seasons yet. Also we should honor them before it ends and we all feel like we’ve been duped. As far as the competition goes, Damages was uneven this season, House is delightful but no one’s idea of a Best Series, and I don’t watch Mad Men. That being said, it’ll probably be Mad Men. Chance My Pick Will Win: 8%

Best Series, Comedy

30 Rock

Entourage

Family Guy

Flight Of The Conchords

How I Met Your Mother

The Office

Weeds

My Pick: How I Met Your Mother. I couldn’t decide between The Office and 30 Rock, so why not spread the love around to an underdog? This was a tough category, because 57% of these shows are absolutely amazing, 14% (Weeds) I don’t watch, and 29% are the worst shows on TV. Chance My Pick Will Win: 3%

I’m too disheartened to look this up, but it’s probably been at least a year (perhaps two?) since I wrote a proper “Tonight on the Tifaux.” Now is not the time to get into a whole thing, but it’s clear from the underwhelming season coming up that the TV industry is taking its time recovering from the strike, and perhaps a full recovery will not be possible. We’ll have to scramble for good shows where we can and enjoy them for the fleeting moment that they survive (yes, I am still bitter that no one watched Kings).

But tonight is different! Tonight marks the premiere of Joel McHale’s new NBC sitcom, Community. It was available on Facebook a few weeks ago and I watched it, and it is delightful. The cast is great — Joel, obviously, plus John Oliver as a teacher-buddy, Chevy Chase in a role that actually suits his self-importance, and a bunch of other comedy ringers — and the premise is a nice combination of cynical and real. Without the real, the cynical becomes too empty to take.

Joel is everywhere promoting this thing (and the opening of the great-looking Informant!, which he’s also in). But here’s a good interview with Joel, where he drops the nugget that the show’s creator also wrote the legendary Heat Vision and Jack pilot. Good to know, right? And here’s the NYT review, in which Alessandra Stanley gets it right but also ruins a bunch of funny jokes.

Also on tonight is the return of The Office (pregnant Pam) and Parks & Recreation (still giving it a chance), and the first of a handful of SNL Weekend Update Thursdays.

And if that weren’t enough (stop being so greedy!), there’s Project Runway. The saddest of many sad things about this latest boring season of Project Runway is that we don’t get Lifetime in HD, and while it bores us it looks hideous.

Enjoy these riches while you can! There’s nothing else to look forward to. And goodnight.