I made a specific decision not watch too much TV this week (and next) so that I could concentrate on getting caught up on the films of 2021.  I made an exception for The Amazing Race, because I write about it for another site.  And, on Thursday, I did turn on the TV because I’ve had a long-standing argument with a friend of mine about whether or not The United States of Al is real show or just a twitter meme.  It turns out that it’s real!

Anyway, here’s a few thoughts on what little I watched.

Allo Allo (Sunday Night, PBS)

In occupied France, the search for the stolen money was replaced by the search for the stolen landmines.  Rene continued to try to run his cafe and cheat on his wife in peace while Michelle and the Resistance continued to insist that, as the bravest man in all of France, Rene had a responsibility to continually put his life in danger.  Along the way, Michelle said, “I shall say this only once,” and Herr Flick and Van Smallhousen disguised themselves as monks.  The comedy on this show is very broad but it’s also very well-acted so I can’t help but laugh.

Crabtree referred to the bombs as being “bongs.”  Again, it made me laugh.

The Amazing Race (Wednesday Night, CBS)

I wrote about the restart of the race here!  I shall miss Anthony and Spencer the most.

B Positive (Thursday Night, CBS)

This is one of Chuck Lorre’s many depressing sitcoms.  Imagine Mom but instead of being a bunch of drunks, all of the characters are terminally ill.  Anyway, I watched this week’s episode just to confirm to myself that this show actually exists.  And it does.  I didn’t pay much attention to the episode, though.  For some reason, what I did see reminded me of those annoying commercials that Kate McKinnon does for Verizon.

Who doesn’t love a comedy about people dying scared and alone?

Football Game: Cowboys vs 49 (Sunday Afternoon, CBS)

My initial reaction to Dallas’s loss went something like this: “Congrats on cheating your way to victory, San Francisco.  Must be great to have the officials on your side.  Well, you guys got the victory but at least my city is a nice place to live so we’ll call it a draw.”

Fortunately, it has since been explained to me what happened during the final minutes of the game and I now understand that the Cowboys lost because they made a lot of sloppy and stupid mistakes.  So, a sincere congrats to the 49ers and to the Cowboys: Stop screwing up!

Full House (Sunday Afternoon, MeTV)

MeTV showed four episodes of Full House as a part of their tribute to Bob Saget.  I watched all four and My God, that was a bad show.  Saget was likable, though.  And I liked both John Stamos and Lori Loughlin and even Candace Cameron did her best to bring some sort of reality to the over-the-top cutesiness of the show.  But everyone else was pretty obnoxious and the dialogue was so painfully sweet that it was impossible to listen to without cringing.  I do have to admit that the audience’s habit of responding to everything by going, “Awwwww!’ did make me smile a little.

Ghosts (Thursday Night, CBS)

Ghosts is about a couple who live in a haunted house with a bunch of quirky ghosts.  Cute concept but it gets old quickly.  Why can’t the scoutmaster ghost take that stupid arrow out of his neck?  This week, one of the ghosts discovered that she had the power to end people to Hell which … eh.  Like I said, it got old quickly.

Open All Hours (Sunday Night, PBS)

Arkwright was obsessed with Nurse Gladys Emmanuel.  Granville was depressed.  I’m pretty sure that Sunday was not the first that I had seen this episode.

The United States of Al (Thursday Night, CBS)

I watched an episode of this show just to see if it actually existed.  Apparently, it’s been on the air for a year or two but I have never met anyone who has actually watched the show.  Earlier this year, there was some twitter excitement over an extremely mawkish commercial for the show’s new season but that was pretty much it.  I always suspected that the commercial was actually some sort of viral prank but I guess I was wrong.

Anyway, this is about a veteran who lives with Al, who was his interpreter in Afghanistan.  It’s a culture clash comedy.  The main theme seems to be that Al is annoying af.  It’s also a Chuck Lorre sitcom so the show actually deals with serious issue in a cartoonish way.  This week’s episode featured Al getting addicted to online poker.  His roommate sprayed him with a garden hose until he snapped out of it.

Yep, this is a real show.

Oh!  And the episode ended with one of those stupid Chuck Lorre title cards for people who want to hit pause and discover what Chuck thinks about the world.  It was something about Liz Cheney.  It was like five or six words long but that proved to be too many for my ADD.  Oh well!