#EverySimpsonsEver -- Day Eleven

Really. It's almost over. One more day after this. (I repeat: stop applauding!)

MUST-SEE!

8/31 12:00 AM ET “The Greatest Story Ever D’ohed” -- The Simpsons join the Flanderseseses on a trip to Jerusalem. Guest stars Sacha Baron Cohen, but not as Borat or Bruno or Ali G.

8/31 5:00 AM ET “MoneyBART” -- Lisa becomes the coach of Bart's Little League team and, using sabermetrics, the team starts winning. Notable for a very unusual opening couch gag from the artist known as Banksy.

8/31 7:30 AM ET “The Fight Before Christmas” -- Formatted more like a Halloween special, with four different Christmas-related dreams, including one with Martha Stewart and another with Katy Perry in a live-action segment featuring the Simpsons characters as Muppet-esque puppets.

8/31 9:00 AM ET “Flaming Moe” -- Not to be confused with "Flaming Moe's," this is one more super-gay-gay-gay episode. With the help of Waylon Smithers, Moe's Tavern becomes Mo's, a trendy gay bar. If you've ever wanted to see Homer and Marge voguing, this is your episode.

8/31 8:00 PM ET “The D’oh-cial Network” -- Lisa creates SpringFace, a social networking site. Featuring a couch gag with David Letterman and a brief bit at the end with Armie Hammer as the Winklevoss twins (just like in "The Social Network"). They're competing in a rowing event at the 2012 London Olympics...against the Bouvier twins, Patty and Selma.

8/31 9:30 PM ET “At Long Last Leave” -- The 500th episode, in which the residents of Springfield vote to evict the Simpsons from the town.

MEH. M-E-H, MEH.

8/31 1:00 AM ET “Chief of Hearts”

8/31 4:00 AM ET “Elementary School Musical”

8/31 4:30 AM ET “Loan-a Lisa”

8/31 6:30 AM ET “The Fool Monty”

8/31 7:00 AM ET “How Munched Is That Birdie in the Window?”

8/31 8:00 AM ET “Donnie Fatso”

8/31 8:30 AM ET “Moms I’d Like to Forget”

8/31 9:30 AM ET “Homer the Father”

8/31 1:00 PM ET “The Real Housewives of Fat Tony” -- Fat Tony marries Selma, making her Selma Bouvier-Terwilliger-Hutz-McClure-Stu-Simpson-D'Amico.

8/31 4:30 PM ET “Replaceable You” -- I can't, for the life of me, remember anything about this episode. Even after reading the Wikipedia entry, reading that Jane Lynch appeared in it, I can't remember it at all. Hey, maybe it's a brilliant episode. But I'm gonna say...no.

8/31 7:00 PM ET “Holidays of Future Passed”

8/31 7:30 PM ET “Politically Inept, with Homer Simpson” -- With the utterly repugnant Ted Nugent.

TV Tryouts: Elementary, 666 Park Avenue

In my last post I mentioned that I planned to try these two shows, and so I have. But first, I tried "Partners" again. I couldn't DVR it because I was recording "Bones" while watching baseball, so I figured I could watch it On Demand. Except, oddly enough, it wasn't one of the shows CBS offered On Demand. So I had to watch it online. I went to CBS.com and, well, I lasted through the first scene after the first commercial break. Sorry, Michael Urie, I love you but this show sucks. (By the way, CBS.com, if you're going to show commercials and not allow us to click past them, at least show three different commercials and not the same stupid Macy's commercial showing people like Martha Stewart and Justin Bieber working in the store THREE TIMES IN A ROW.)

Now then...I might have enjoyed "Elementary" a little more if the Sherlock Holmes character wasn't named Sherlock Holmes. Unlike the BBC "Sherlock," which took great care in bringing the characters into the present day, "Elementary" just makes changes for the sake of change. Look, Holmes lives in New York now! Look, Watson is a woman now! And so on. The rest of it is just a standard crime procedural show without fancy CSI graphics. Despite the charms of Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu as Holmes and Watson, I won't be tuning in again. (By the way, are Miller's tattoos real or are they just for the show?)

As for "666 Park Avenue," I just found it boring. A show starring Vanessa Williams should never be boring. And her character is boring, at least so far.

Our lesson so far: the new shows I've sampled are all failures.

Christmas Is Coming!

Last Christmas I gave you my heart I listed the Christmas TV specials from my DVD or VHS collection that I try to watch every year. Well, this year I haven't watched a single one yet, and time is running out. (Although I have listened to every Christmas song in my iTunes. I want to try to do a holiday music-related post this week as well.) But it's not as if I haven't watched any Christmas programs. I've got both the "Glee" Christmas episode and this year's Christmas-themed "Simpsons" episode guest-starring Martha Stewart and (in live-action with Muppetized Simpsons) Katy Perry on my DVR and have watched both two or three times.

I also just recorded the TV-movie "A Diva's Christmas Carol" starring Vanessa Williams -- surely this helped lead to her becoming Wilhelmina Slater on "Ugly Betty" -- and right now I'm recording "Bad Santa" from Spike TV, although I'm sure it's a censored version that may disappoint.

Tomorrow I plan to try and add to my DVD collection, if I can find an inexpensive DVD of "Scrooged" starring Bill Murray. Like the Vanessa Williams film, it's another update of the Dickens classic, but with a more satirical streak. The soundtrack included the duet by Annie Lennox and Al Green of "Put A Little Love in Your Heart," a non-Christmas song that is now, for me, a holiday classic.



Yes, Christmas is coming...although the case can be made that it arrived early this year...