All right, maybe not years. But it’s been a while.

I write now as the TV season winds to its conclusion, with one purpose only: to praise Greek. I know I’ve done it before, but this time I mean it. In these tumultuous times, there’s so little to count on, and Greek has become a beacon of dependability in a sea of disappointment.

(I may have become embittered in my absence from this space.)

So, why watch Greek, besides the fact that nothing else is on? I’ve prepared a few talking points for judgmental roommates and your own doubting consciences.

• Cappie. An episode cannot pass without Scott M. Foster, who plays the president of the Kappa Taus, completely nailing the timing on a surprisingly witty joke. His charm alone is worth an hour of your time.
• Other cast members. Spencer “daughter of Kelsey” Grammer’s line readings are not always completely confident, but she’s likable in a key role. Clark Duke has serious comedy cred because he’s friends with Michael Cera. Ashleigh’s bubbly, Calvin’s not a stereotype as the gay frat boy, Rebecca shifts from insane megabitch to vulnerable freshman in seconds, and Evan even gives the rich preppy boy some layers.
• You can reminisce about college — but there’s enough shitty/awkward stuff to make you glad you’ve gotten out of that place, too.
• Have I mentioned that Cappie is funny? The whole show doesn’t take itself too seriously, like Gossip Girl or the O.C. This is not larger-than-life absurd melodrama — it’s regular-sized people drama, with a healthy sense of humor.
• Aha! Remember when I thought I saw Dave Franco? IMDB confirms: I totally did.
• There’s nothing else on. Seriously. This is a legitimate excuse. What, you’d rather watch Living Lohan or a repeat of CSI? That’s on your head, then.

The season finale is tonight, and I’m hoping for a resolution of my most burning question: What is up with the “reformed” Frannie? Is she still evil, or is she genuinely in to Evan and apologetic to Casey? Also, will Cappie break Rebecca’s steel heart? Excitement!

After this, I will retreat to my cave to wallow in my bitterness, so this is the last thing I’ll ask of you for a long time — watch it, please!

Hello world! Dan’s post about accents has inspired me to get back on these interwebs and talk about New Amsterdam. Specifically, why I am not going to watch New Amsterdam any more.

On the plus side, he wears awesome three-piece suits.

If you’ve been following the show, you already know it’s about a dude (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) who’s immortal and who currently works as a homicide detective. He has a sassy lady cop sidekick, a sassy ancient bartender/son, and a cute doggy who I believe he just calls “36,” presumably in reference to however many dogs he’s had in his long, long life. He won’t be free of immortality until he finds true love, or something. (I don’t know. That part’s still being hashed out. He seems to have found the girl and she’s into him. Do they need to have sex? Get married? Does she actually have to pull the trigger?) In the meantime he solves crimes and forces us through ridiculous flashbacks that usually involve some sort of antiquated facial hair.

The best thing about the show, that kept me interested for three whole episodes (I missed the one they unexpectedly ran on a Thursday), is that he tells the truth. When asked if he’s ever been married, he says 7 or 8 times. When asked if he thinks about changing careers, he says about every 10 years. When asked why he knows so much arcane crap about New York, he says it’s because he was there. This is kind of fun.

However, I’m giving it up. I don’t normally get offended at my TV (except at bad writing), but last night’s “honor killing” episode was so patently absurd and insulting to an entire culture that I could barely believe it was happening. In the episode, an Indian woman gets raped, and then her father kills her for sullying the family name. This is ridiculous and contrived, and just not right.

Also, and I can’t stress this enough, I can’t understand half of what Amsterdam says. This accent is… inexplicable. The best I can describe is that it’s early Marlon Brando/Eastern European/Southern gentleman/Brooklyn old-timer. I just can’t understand him. I can only imagine how tough he is to comprehend without our marvelous 5.1 surround sound.

IMDB tells me the actor is Danish. That explains it a little bit. But it still does not explain why Amsterdam, the character, has such a bizarre accent. He is adorable, don’t get me wrong. But I am not a crotchety old lady (usually), and this show is turning me into one.

Basically, I’m over all this new stuff. I just want the old shows back again.

I’ve been really good about keeping away from Grey’s Anatomy recently, but I have to admit that I’m curious what’s going on. I even miss it a little. Not enough to go through quitting all over again, though.

Luckily I have Ugly Betty (with Posh Spice), 30 Rock (with Al Gore), and The Office (with the usual humor) to keep my mind off the cravings.

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming: If you missed last night’s awesome new Mythbusters, it’s replaying tonight at 10. I probably don’t have to tell you this, but there’s a very satisfying explosion.

We give people who watch certain shows a lot of shit.

And I’d say rightfully so, for the most part. If you really guffaw at Two and a Half Men (or the generic Everybody Loves Raymond-y standard sitcom), you probably just don’t know any better. But then I go ahead and confess that I fucking love The Biggest Loser and then you wonder why you read this blog and lend me any credibility at all.

So let’s break it down.

We’ve established that I love the competitive reality genre — Project Runway, Top Chef, the whole Bravo oeuvre. But, unfortunately, this love stretches to the competitive weight loss subgenre.

The Biggest Loser (and Celebrity Fit Club, that’s a whole other embarassment) is something I’m ashamed of loving. Actively ashamed. It’s not like sneaking a few minutes of E! News Daily with Ryan Seacrest and Giuliana Rancic. I mean, you’re not human if you don’t recharge every once in a while by catching a few minutes of Lohan rehab update. But The Biggest Loser has become a show I make a concerted effort to TiFaux.

In fact, my DVR inexplicably cut off during last week’s episode, causing me no end of distress (later, I found out that Patty got cut — serves her right for that team-sabotaging eating binge she went on the week before).

What do I love about The Biggest Loser? Let me explain it in a numbered list:

1. The closing shots when we find out how much weight the eliminated contestant has lost to this day.
2. Hot, hot tattooed trainer Bob.
3. The ridiculously long weigh-ins.
4. The ethically questionably temptation challenges.
5. Shots of people screaming on the elliptical.
6. The shameless product placement (the show has previously given away the “Jello Grand Prize,” making me think that every reality show should call their prize money the “Jello Grand Prize”).
7. The fact that they gave longtime host Caroline Rhea the boot in order to give the gig to a soap star Alison Sweeney, who looks exactly like her.
8. The huge gimmicks they use every season (last season had the 50 states challenge, this season there’s the renegade black team — I’d explain, but it’s totally not worth it).

There’s a lot to not like about the show, though. Like the weepy “what this experience means to me” segments and the fact that it’s totally fast-forwardable after the weigh-in.

This is really not a show I’m going to try to defend, but I’m definitely going to continue to watch.

I don’t know about you guys, but the whole Britney-Spears-sucks-at-the-VMAs thing has really made me appreciate Britney Spears. She is doing exactly what she wants to do. I think it’s the story of how she showed up late, drink in hand, and immediately fired her hairstylist that made me turn a corner in my Britney-watching. That and the weirdness and badness of what she wants to do makes me feel a sort of, you know, affection for her. Can’t explain why.

Everyone’s talking about it. So how about you?

Even I’m getting a little sick of me taking High School Musical too seriously. I promise after this I’ll direct my brain-beams at something a little more worthy. For example, The Pick-Up Artist is now officially my second-favorite reality show after Project Runway. What? Not brainy enough? [Side note: Four years ago, I never would've thought I could utter the phrase "second-favorite reality show." The thought of even watching one would make me break out in hives. Ah, how times change.]

So. Ryan Evans. Ryan, as I assume you know if you’ve made it this far in the post, is Sharpay’s super-sparkly, super-awesome, super-gay (coded) brother. This is the Disney Channel, after all, so none of the characters could actually be gay, but of all the likely candidates (cough-CRÈME BRÛLÉE-cough [another side note: Where's Crème Brûlée in movie #2? Is he at culinary school? What, is the actor too good for the Disney channel now? And jeebus, crème brûlée has a lot of accent marks]), Ryan is the most likeliest. And I think Disney is kind of okay with that.

So how does Disney tell us they’re okay with it, in their subtle way? It’s not the fact that he performs in the musical; Troy performs in the musical, and he is the epitome of Disney’s manly men. I mean, Troy totally wants to kiss Gabriella. Like, seriously. The fact that he keeps letting circumstances come between himself and the kiss doesn’t mean he’s not way into it.

It’s not the fact that Ryan loves jazz squares, either. That’s just his way of annoying his sister. And besides, jazz squares are awesome. As he so aptly put it, “Everyone loves a jazz square.” You can’t argue with that.

No, it’s not the musical or the jazz squares. It is, simply, and quite literally, that he wears a lot of hats.

I caught about the last half hour or so of High School Musical Two on Friday. This was entirely by accident.

However, I did watch it in a semi-darkened room with four other gay men (just as God intended) and we enjoyed it approximately 85% ironically.

Eventually, the entertainment turned to other (decidedly less wholesome) entertainment.

Anyway, throughout the ordeal, I was distracted by Zac Efron’s ever-changing skin tone. In the indoor scenes, he was a normal-ish shade of porcelain, but during the outdoor scenes he tended to glow orange. Therefore, a quick poll:

Get ready for another post in my continuing quest to make this blog all about High School Musical (part 2 of, potentially, hundreds). This is more of a scholarly look, because honestly, I’m seeing a huge gap in the academic community when it comes to made-for-TV Disney movies, and I’m just here to fill the need.

Sharpay Evans (blue dress) is the “villain” of the High School Musical series (technically, though, the villains really keeping our heroes down are better described as “the status quo” and “classicism”). In the first movie, Sharpay tries to keep Troy and Gabriella from auditioning for her precious musical. It was vaguely suggested, as so much was in movie #1, that she also had designs on Troy romantically, but that angle was not nearly as important as the audition plot. In the stage version (which, yes, I have seen, thank you for asking), which features an expanded book, her motivations are much more obviously confused — she spends a lot more time trying to make them into the perfect couple.

Which leads naturally to the second movie, where her motivations are more hopelessly muddled than ever. She wants Troy; she arranges the whole summer so she can spend time with him. But “getting Troy,” to her, means getting Troy to sing with her in the talent show. For Sharpay, it seems at first that romantic relationships are all about winning. She needs that trophy more than she needs Troy. Or is it all the same, really? Does she consider performing with Troy the same as being with him romantically? In a way, it doesn’t matter, because her obsession with Troy means she forces him to sing with her. Forcing him to sing with her also guarantees that she’ll win the trophy, since he won’t be upstaging her by singing with Gabriella.

So far her romantic goals and her trophy-winning goals line up fairly smoothly, if not exactly emotionally consistently. But then the rest of the staff decides to compete in the talent show together, with the help of Sharpay’s scorned brother, Ryan. A single glance at their rehearsal convinces Sharpay that they pose a legitimate threat to her trophy. This is despite the fact she OWNS THE RESORT and could just insist on winning no matter what (it’s obvious she has that power; the grumpy resort manager almost gives her the trophy, despite the fact that she didn’t end up singing in the competition at all). She can’t do it, though, because it’s actually important to her to be the best.

And that’s the key to her personality.

I can’t say anything that Maggie hasn’t already said about High School Musical 2: Havana Nights. But I can cop to the fact that I spent the first hour of my workweek scouring YouTube to get my HSM fix, and came up with the “official video” for breakout hit “I Don’t Dance,” which incorporates nearly every player I’ve ever had on any fantasy baseball team of mine. Plus Bronson Arroyo. Plenty of Jose Reyes high fives, plus David Wright exactly as I like to think of him: Sliding into home.

In case you’re not a subscriber to CosmoGirl magazine, you might not have heard that last year’s wildly popular original Disney movie High School Musical released a sequel on Friday — the sure to be even more wildly popular High School Musical 2. If you know nothing of these cultural touchstones, I can explain them using a simple analogy.

High School Musical:Grease::High School Musical 2:Dirty Dancing

Remove all the sex from the older movies, and you’ve got your fair approximations. Overall, HSM Part Deux: Electric Boogaloo was an improvement on the first. Considering they made the first one for about $5 and a sandwich, and then it went on to become the bestselling album of 2006, they had a little more to work with this time around. The songs are peppy and better produced. The choreography is fun. And Ryan is vindicated! Hooray Ryan! Our hero!

There were two numbers that our viewing party knew immediately would be the breakout hits. One was the baseball song, ironically titled “I Don’t Dance.” It’s genius in every way. The other is Troy’s big number, “Bet On It.” Troy is played by Zac Efron, and right now, he’s the hottest thing in pre-teen crushes. He’s huge. Witness, these comments. His solo number was bound to be the hit of the evening, and this one delivers.

“Bet On It” incorporates/borrows/appropriates so many cultural references, by the third time we had rewound to savor the cheesy goodness, I was taking notes. See if you can think of any I missed.

• With his all-black ensemble, shaggy hair, and blue eyes — and with the subtext of the song, which is all about whether or not Troy’s going to be a good friend or continue being a jerk (embracing the Dark Side, so to speak) — Troy resembles Luke Skywalker to a scary degree. Later in the song, stumbling upon a rocky pool, I could swear he was about to raise a X-wing out of the water with his mind.
• In that same segment of the song, Troy sings to his reflection in the pool. My immediate thought: The Lion King, Simba talking to his dead father.
• Any time anyone walks and snaps their fingers in time they automatically owe royalties to West Side Story.
• Similarly, the leaps through the air and the long shots of him dancing his merry way along the path bring to mind a former teen classic that they’re talking about remaking, Footloose.
• At one point, Troy leaps from a grassy spot of the golf course into a new shot, which features craggy rocks with weeds sprouting out of crevices. The abrupt change in locale and his dogged insistence on moving forward bring to mind our heroes in The Lord of the Rings. Almost expected him to jump into a snow-covered mountain next.
• The song itself: Justin Timberlake junior.
• The sweeping crane shots of Troy singing his blessed heart out, with mountains in the background, sadly reminded me of the absolute worst/funniest part of the movie version of Rent — Roger’s Bon Jovi video version of “What You Own.”
• When Troy picks up some sand and tosses it to the ground: a little David Copperfield, no?
• I also saw snippets of Michael Jackson, Karate Kid, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Creed’s Arms Wide Open video. And much more, I’m sure.

Disney seems to be pretty tightly monitoring the YouTube situation, so I can’t find a link to this particular number. I’ll keep my eye out, though, so I can share this special experience with you all. In the meantime, just try to mash up all those things I listed. You’ll get a pretty accurate picture.

ETA: