Can you hear it? Friends, can you? The fourth season of Friday Night Lights is coming to DirecTV at the end of the month, and I AM SO EXCITED I CAN HARDLY STAND IT. I have missed everyone so much! Coach! Mrs. Coach! Tim Riggins! Matt Saracen! Julie, now that she’s not acting like an asshole all the time! All those other people! Hell, I’ve missed Buddy Garrity.

If you’ve also missed the good people of Dillon, treat yourselves to this splendid behind-the-scenes video from the production of a promo (yeah, A PROMO, that is how hard up I am) for the fourth season.

Visually it reminds me of last year’s promos, but with, you know, more exploding. It’s just so blissful to see everyone again, especially three minutes in when Tim Riggins Taylor Kitsch (yes, I know Tim Riggins is a fictional character. I’m working on accepting that) just wanders through the frame. He’s so pretty.

If you’re watching carefully, you’ll see one of the technical fellows showing off the pre-visualization of the spot on a laptop, and I’m pretty sure the pre-viz we see is of the Tim Riggins scene. In which he looks like Prince Valiant, because that hair, it just does not translate to animation. I laughed.

Friday Night Lights returns to DirecTV Oct. 28. I will be writing about it every week here at TiFaux (and I’m saying that so you all hold me to it). Clear eyes, full hearts.

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.

It’s back! Who Would Win in a Fight is back! Except we don’t believe either of these refined gentlemen would fight. If they had a disagreement, they would dance.

So this month brings back many awesome shows, including one of my old favorites, How I Met Your Mother, and featured the regular-season debut of a sure-to-be new favorite, Glee. Both feature suave and fetching fellows, and the actors who play those suave and fetching fellows are what TNT likes to call New Classics: handsome, funny, light on their feet, multi-talented. And deadly in a dance battle. Said dance battle would be legen…

Five, six, seven, eight

NPH

Strengths:

Weaknesses:

Matthew Morrison

Strengths:

Weaknesses:

…dary!

Hello, friends. Long time, lots of bad TV. Well, with the exception of What Would Brian Boitano Make? and brand! new! shiny! Project Runway on Lifetime. But starting, erm, last week, the long summer drought has ended, and we’re getting factory-direct new episodes of scripted TV, which is awesome. Herein, a few things I am looking forward to, and a few more I am giving up on.

Because we are so very pretty. We are just too pretty for God to let us die. Huh? Look at that chiseled jaw!

As you may know, Gossip Girl returns for a third season tonight, with everyone on the show attending NYU because they are too poor/stupid/antisocial for Yale, Brown, and gen pop (Blair and Dan, Serena, and Chuck, respectively). I suppose it doesn’t even matter if I point out yet again that NYU costs more than Yale, and that CCNY would actually be more on these dimwits’ intellectual levels. I don’t think I’ll be following the Gossips too much this year, because everything became both unbelievable and unbelievably boring last year. And although I do enjoy watching boys make out almost as much as Dan (our Dan, not Lonelyboy. Well, I think Lonelyboy likes it too) does, the prospect of Chuck sucking face with this guy isn’t going to bring me back.

A show I will be following, religiously? Castle! Because Nathan Fillion is a very nice man and it’s fantastic to see him finally get a second season of something. The man works hard, selling the hell out of the show via Twitter, and also he sometimes shows up on Craig Ferguson’s show wearing a kilt. Which is the kind of commitment we like to see in our tall, dark, and handsome Canadians. Besides that, the show itself is quality. It was a midseason replacement last year and turned out to be a nice blend of procedural and romantic dramedy, with Fillion providing most of the giggles and the quite lovely Stana Katic playing the straight man. Also, his interaction with his TV daughter is wonderful. Seriously, I may be most excited about the return of Castle, and that’s saying a lot, since back in April I was inappropriately anxious to find out if Amy Brenneman would survive having her belly sliced open by that psychotic woman from Alias and Felicity.

I am also very excited about How I Met Your Mother, and not just because my crush on NPH really doesn’t care that he’s gay (remember what I said about boys making out? Yeah, I could stand to see a little PDA on the Emmy red carpet, is all). I’ve been rewatching the early seasons of HIMYM on DVD, and honestly, I just love that show. It’s so sparkling and delightful, and even SagetTed doesn’t weird me out anymore. I am really in no hurry to find Your Mother, as that might bring the show to an end, and I just love it too much. More Barney! More Marshall! More everyone!

Avec Eric is like Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations, but with less swearing, fewer snide remarks about my beloved Food Network, and far more inventive use of a toaster oven. Famous, fantastic French chef Eric Ripert travels the world for boar hunts and visits to the greatest restaurants there are, then he whips up something tasty in his palatial home kitchen. And he does it all with the most wonderful accent, a sense of humor, and a deep sense of respect for food, people who grow food, people who kill food, and people who eat food. If you only know him from Top Chef, record the show. There are no commercials! And it’s just incredibly relaxing and beautiful. If Eric Ripert’s accent doesn’t make your ears purr, I will refund your money.

I’ve seen the pilot of Community. It is quite funny, and of course, Joel McHale can do no wrong. I hope it prospers magnificently. I’ve also seen the pilot of Trauma, which is quite unintentionally funny in places, but you know I will watch whatever Peter Berg throws at me. You know who’s interesting on that? Cliff Curtis, who plays a crazy adrenaline junkie helicopter paramedic. He kind of wins the TV Diversity Sweepstakes (at first I thought he was Indian, but he’s actually from New Zealand. And once played Pablo Escobar! Far better than Adrian Grenier did). Speaking of Peter Berg, I have no idea what’s going to happen on Friday Night Lights when it returns to DirecTV, but I will be there. Er, here. In my office, where we have DirecTV. I understand that Riggins will be back (RIGGINS!!) but not Tyra. And Matt Saracen is sticking around Dillon to break our hearts like five thousand more times. Plus, Coach and Mrs. Coach! I almost forgot how deeply I love Friday Night Lights, you all.

And that is kind of it. Yeah, there are other returning shows I’m looking forward to, and I will give a looksee to Flash Forward, The Good Wife, and Modern Family, but with Jay Leno effectively blacking out five hours of primetime a week to me, this appears to be what my DVR will be filled with this fall. And! The Daily Show returns tonight! That is making me very happy. What are y’all looking forward to?

For Christ's sake, Animal Planet. Hot men holding baby kangaroos? Are you trying to kill me?

While it seems like a perfectly charming channel, I don’t normally make a habit of watching Animal Planet.  It does have the must-see annual Puppy Bowl and it does feature those heart-breaking Pet 911 shows with the one-eyed kitty who has a kidney infection. I don’t even like cats, but those emergency vet shows have me curled in a ball on the couch, negotiating with God for the life of the animal.

But I’m not here to talk about cats.  Or even animals at all.

It’s come to my attention that Animal Planet has enlisted the help of a few preposterously hot hosts, namely Night’s Brandon McMillan and Into the Pride’s Dave Salmoni. It’s enough for me to immediately flip to Animal Planet while I’m on the treadmill at the gym, just so I can ogle them while feeling shitty about my own physique (all the while learning facts about animals!).

Dave at home.

First, let’s address the issue of Brandon McMillan (right), who I only ever heard of yesterday. What you need to know about Brandon is the following: he’s an animal trainer from a family of animal entertainers and he hosts a night safari show. You can tell he’s hot even when he’s shot through the grainy, green night vision goggles. Of course, he’s a little douchey (think Jeff Corwin) when it comes to amping up the drama and being a ham. Such sins are easily forgiven.

Check him out in action here, encountering a baby hippo and her protective mother.

Now there’s the issue of Dave Salmoni, who hosts the show Into the Pride (and, much to my chagrin, the usage of the word ‘pride’ has nothing to do with floats, beads and drag queens). Dave embedded himself into a pride of lions for six month during the production of his show Into the Pride. While I’m a fan of the beard in general, he grew himself a monster of a one during the production — which sort of diminishes his Canadian hotness.

Here’s an interview with Dave done by the wonderful Michelle from Best Week Ever. She fully admits that it’s hard to pay attention to the adorable lion cub when you’ve got Scruffy McForearms charming his way into your heart.

After the jump, enjoy a gratuitous/unnecessary clip of a beardy Salmoni taking an open air shower with the pride.

Er, the Tuesdays after a long weekend. Yeah, I bet you’re hating being at work as much as I am right now. To make up for it, I have a special treat for you.

So I started watching Torchwood a while back. And while I enjoyed it, a lot, I didn’t think it lived up to the creators’ insistence that the show would be dark and adult. Um, that changed. Shit got REAL. Like existential dilemma real. And then it got awesome. I present to you a bit of the first episode of series two. If you enjoy boys kissing, and/or you liked Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and/or you have a pulse, I think you will enjoy this. Ignore the French. Fun part starts about a minute and a half in.

Don’t say I never did anything for you.

So I have started watching Torchwood lately. (Yeah, Rescue Me has been postponed slightly.) If you haven’t spent much time watching BBC America lately, Torchwood is a spinoff of Doctor Who that began in 2006. It is about a team of sexy people:

We really enjoy black leather and snogging each other.

who are kind of like Mulder and Scully, in that they investigate aliens and shit like that (also they have a pterodactyl in their office—damn, pterodactyl is a hard word to spell) but unlike Mulder and Scully, they like to make out with each other. And strangers. And aliens. People talking about the show in the extra features on the DVDs often refer to the show as “dark,” which only proves they’ve never seen anything on HBO, because it’s frankly a little cartoonish at times. The drama seems a little lightweight; when people are killed, it has about as much impact as the opening murder on an episode of Law & Order. Maybe I’m jaded, but I’ve seen a hell of a lot darker stuff on CSI.

Torchwood is also, kind of hilariously, set in Cardiff, the capital of Wales, which is kind of like setting The X-Files in Portland, as it’s amusingly improbable that an agency described as outside the government, more powerful than the CIA or MI5, is set in a smallish bayside town full of castles. I’m sure there’s some UK joke about it being set in Cardiff that I’m not getting. Overseas readers (both of you), feel free to educate/yell at me.

I will be honest: I started watching Torchwood because John Barrowman, who is in the middle up there, is one of the judges on Any Dream Will Do, and he looks like a hot, butch Tom Cruise and is a delightfully bitchy judge. I have kept watching it because it’s pulpy and silly and EVERYONE MAKES OUT WITH EACH OTHER. I’m not kidding. Everyone. Without regard for sexual orientation. There are boys kissing in the first episode, girls kissing in the second. Boys kiss girls too, occasionally. It’s incredibly fluid; basically, everyone is bisexual, or at least kind of unconcerned with labels. It’s interesting in both an academic and a lusty way; I have heard the word “gay” used exactly once—they don’t really discuss it. The characters just sleep with who they want to sleep with. It’s not something I expect to see on American TV any time soon, and in that it certainly has a leg up on HBO.

Ladies and gentlemen, I understand some of you may be having a difficult week (all of this waiting for Star Trek is killing me). To assuage that, I present, without comment, Nathan Fillion in a kilt.

At some point in the future I will write about Castle. For now just know that I am enjoying it.

So I’ve been thinking about starting to watch Rescue Me. I know they just started a new season, but I’m thinking about Netflixing it from the beginning. I have reasons.

1. Firemen. Firemen are excellent. I especially like when the ones at the Houston and 6th Ave. station come to the grocery store in their big ladder truck. Of course, I have enjoyed shows about people I don’t really like before, like convicts and spoiled rich children. But I much prefer shows about groups of people I like, such as hot football players and hot pediatricians.

2. I like Denis Leary a lot. He’s one of those older, kind of assholish guys who really do it for me (also: Keith Olbermann, Bill Maher). He’s also buddies with Jon Stewart from way back, which means he has to be at least moderately good people.

3. Michael J. Fox is on it this season! That would totally not apply to the previous four, but anything Michael J. Fox does is pretty awesome.

4. The ads for season 5 are awesome, with the firefighters being like 200 feet tall and marching around New York looking world-weary. I find these advertisements as appealing as they can be without making me watch the show (I have too much stuff at 10 on Tuesdays; seriously, it’s a problem).

Clearly, I don’t have enough stuff to do and have really been getting enough sleep lately, so I should pick up a new show to become obsessed with. Thoughts?

Since Gossip Girl was a repeat this week (I know! I was sad too), I thought I’d share with y’all what my roommate and I did Sunday night (aside from watching the Academy of Country Music Awards, because I know you don’t care).

We watched a zillion hours of the BBC reality competition series Any Dream Will Do and squealed like insane people at every hilariously cheesy music cue, kick-ball-change, and pinched glare from LORD ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER AND DON’T YOU FORGET THE “LORD” PART.

How can you not love this hot mess?

So Any Dream Will Do, which is about casting the lead role in a new West End production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, originally aired in the UK two years ago, and the winner has presumably been playing Joseph eight times a week ever since in the finest tradition of Donny Osmond Jason Donovan. I’m kind of trying not to find out who wins the show, because I like suspense, but if you want to know, mosey on over to Wikipedia. They’ll tell you.

But the best part isn’t who wins. It’s the SHEER TECHNICOLOR INSANITY of this show. First, the … I don’t know what to call them. The judges? But they’re also mentors. And several of them appear to want to sleep with various contestants. I shall call them the Seacrest-Gunn-Abdul team. They include host presenter Graham Norton and judges/mentors John Barrowman, LORD LLOYD WEBBER, and several other people who are not as cute as John Barrowman or as bitchy as LORD LLOYD WEBBER so I don’t care about them. There are also eleven remaining Josephs after an audition process that went a lot like American Idol (I guess): They started with like 100, invited 50 to “Joseph school,” and then cut it down to 12 for the first live show. And Joseph school, let me tell you, was fucking hysterical. The part where the producers decided to score a dance rehearsal with Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” was the first time I spilled wine all over myself because I was laughing so hard.

Ah, shit. I just found out who won. Oh well. I will enjoy anyway.

So. This show is fantastically campy, especially the SING-OFF AT THE END. The two wannabe Josephs who got the fewest phone-in votes from the discerning theatre critics of Britain had to battle each other in song. It was epic. I present to you: The Bridge Over Troubled Fashion.

And then when the fellow on the right was eliminated by LORD LLOYD WEBBER, the other Josephs took his Dreamcoat away! And they made the poor eliminated sap sing “Close Every Door To Me”! That was the fifth time I spilled my wine in a fit of giggling glee. This show is awesome and I’m going to watch every rainbow minute of it.