Sunday Night TV

The official "premiere week" ended yesterday with the premieres of Amazing Race on CBS, the animated shows on FOX, and ABC's Sunday lineup. I saw most of them.


Now lots of people bemoan the fact that Amazing Race has won the Emmy in its category for seven years straight. I am not one of those people. It's consistently great with entertaining contestants going through fun challenges amidst gorgeous exotic places around the world. And the season premiere had all of that in spades. In fact it was probably one of my favorite episodes of Amazing Race ever. It had everything from the first team eliminated before the starting line to a sushi/wasabi eating contest at a Japanese game show to herding 100+ ducks to getting muddy. Click here for my more detaield thoughts on the contestants themselves, but it's looking right another amazing season for this show.

Another highlight from last night was Family Guy's homage to the multiverse theory in which Brian and Stewie travel from one alternate universe to another. The best part had to be when they ended up in a Disney-drawn universe with singing and beating up the Jews. So inappropriately hilarious which is pretty much Family Guy's MO. Not so fantastic was Family Guy's spin-off The Cleveland Show which still needs time to get its groove. Brad Trechak at TV Squad said it best in his review:

Based on the pilot episode, the analogy that can be made is this: Family Guy is to All In The Family what The Cleveland Show is to The Jeffersons (with a little What's Happening and Good Times thrown in).

In Desperate Housewives and Brothers & Sisters, it was more of the same from the seasons before. In the first show, Susan is still acting like a petulant child, Lynette is one more child away from committing homicide, Bree is having troubles with her husband, and oh yeah a new family has moved in with a mysterious past. More of the same. Brother & Sisters is a bit better since I actually like the characters, but how many Walker clan flights will they be until you get really really tired of it all? The episodes I like best is when I feel all warm and fuzzy and this wasn't a warm and fizzy episode at all.