Girl: please.

Jersey Shore. It's sort of interesting to see how the relationships and interactions in the house have evolved from typical Real World-y "who ate my pickles"/"fuck you"-type fare to, basically, office politics among co-workers at a very weird job. The arguments and bonding moments seem to happen in professional and choreographed manner. I wouldn't say it's entirely contrived at this point, but it's not very compelling anymore now that Ron and Sam have figured out how to conduct a relationship (quietly; mostly off-camera) and everyone else has figured out that the Situation is a shit-starter. I do enjoy most of them, though; I hope S5 is the last, so that I can continue to enjoy them.

L&O SVU. I like the addition of Giddish; I have liked Pino on other things, but I don't care for him here. Something is visually off, like he needs to put on 20 pounds or something — and could the ouster of Stabler have come off any more abruptly? It's almost irrelevant, because of course everyone knows the status of Chris Meloni's contract and so on, but they couldn't even arrange for one scene? Poochie returning to his home planet was less awkward than that exposition.

I still enjoy the show, though. Its quintessential over-the-topness still remains. I do have a quibble with the wavy hairstyle on Hargitay, which doesn't suit her.

Mad Fashion. I wanted to like it, because I loved Chris March on Runway, but at only half an hour, it still draaaaaags. (And not in the fun way, heh.) And it's weirdly unenlightening, too, in a way that suggests it would actually move faster with a full hour to work with. As it is, it's like, here's the brief, here's how it's totally impossible to execute, the client hates it; commercial; all fixed, client's happy, wah wahhhhh. Like, what? I don't really care about the particular guest star/client; I want to see how the sausage gets made, not drama with no backstory. Punted after two episodes.

Prime Suspect: The New Class. I gave it a chance, and I actually like it. It doesn't try to copy the original, really, and it's got some very good, under-sung actors on it (Acevedo is usually a sign of quality); Bello is in fact cast perfectly here. It can get heavy-handed at times — the sexism on the squad; the interactions with her boyfriend's ex, who is a finely-drawn cartoon but a cartoon nonetheless — but the writing has wit and it generally holds up as a procedural. If the wardrobe department can find a way to phase out the much-pilloried hat, great, but overall the show is a pleasant surprise.

Project Accessory. It's early yet, but I'll probably stick with it, although the first elimination struck me as bullshit, and obviously engineered to create more drama down the line. If you want to find the best designer, you keep Cotrice, who had way too much going on, over Nicolina, who choked and didn't do much at all. If you want to create the most drama, on the other hand…

And I hesitate to get into this, because I am as white and square as a bathroom tile, but between the response to Kimberly's styling on Project Runway and the response to Cotrice, it seems like the judges (or producers, or whoever) don't get urban style. It's one thing not to respond to a given design element, like a color or a shape or whatever, but it's like they just don't acknowledge it at all, that so many people already wear (and rock) these things, whether it's brights or big earrings or a ton of metallics piled on top of each other.

I for one would like to see that discussion: the tension between designs that reflect current urban trends, and the fact that editorial fashion is often aimed at the very rich. Do you necessarily want to try to go there in your capacity as a reality-show judge? No. But you could at least acknowledge that there's a conversation to be had.

Project Runway. …Uch. I dug Anya at first, because she's undeniably chic and pretty, and I liked her shaved-sides hairstyle and her stacks of bracelets. She's cool, definitely. It's not a reason to keep her, though, and as the season wore on and it became clear that the producers would do whatever they had to do, bend whatever rules they had to bend, and make whatever last-minute changes they had to make not only to keep her in the competition until the finals, but to engineer her victory, I started to despise Anya. It isn't her fault that this is how it went down, but I do not believe for one second that she didn't know what was going on, and the feigning of surprise every time she dodged another bullet that obviously was never going to hit her grossed me out.

Tom and Lorenzo made these points and others eloquently and repeatedly, so you can just step over there and read what they had to say about the season, but their overall assessment that the season unfolded based on personalities and backstage narratives, not on talent or achievements, is right on. As much as I loathed Wendy Pepper, I could understand how she got as far as she did. Someone else always sucked more than she did in a given week, then she had a couple of well-timed wins…it was annoying, but it read as fair. This is just disappointing, because, you know, we know the fix is in, and that in and of itself is not a big problem, but when it's this obvious and this cynical, the show becomes boring.

I'll watch the All-Star season, obvs, but Bunim-Murray needs to get their shit together with this.

In Hargitay's defense, I think the guy taking her hostage had just gotten shot by Vincent Spano; I'd make that face too. On the other hand, she could have just read yet another script in which a member of the Stabler family is kidnapped, arrested, or pinned in a wrecked car while delivering a baby. Because: seriously.

America's Next Top Model.

Do you think Mr. Jay doesn't get to come to panel because he won't play along with shit like "smize-ing," but Miss Jay and Nigel will?Do you think that, years ago, the Jays flipped a coin to see who would have to pretend that Tyra's dippy season themes and Soviet-quality costumes don't suck an egg?"Heads, I win; tails, you have to sit with the other judges and pretend that when Tyra makes the same face twice in a row, there's an instructive difference between the two"?

I miss She's Got The Look.Kim Alexis is more natural on-camera, doesn't suffer from pathological narcissism, and runs a sensible panel whose advice is logical and occasionally funny on purpose.But nobody watched that show except me and a few stoners who switched to TV Land expecting a Barney Miller rerun.Sigh.

Brothers & Sisters. I said at some point that I would give it two or three episodes to win me back over this season; then I heard that they'd cast Amy "Toni Pavone" Aquino, which annoyed me, because I love her and I'd have to stick with it.

But why did they have to stash her in a plotline I can already tell I will despise?Kitty is still treating Robert like he left a skidmark on their sheets, which I think the audience is supposed to support her in, and in theory, that's fine, but in practice, she's not sympathetic — the writing and the acting choices both make me want to slap her.Now we have to "worry" that she has cancer?The character has become utterly unlikeable in the last year, and we've seen this done much better — via Patricia Wettig's Nancy on thirtysomething, among others.

And then in the first episode we have a "wacky" showdown between Holly and Nora; we have yet another makeup/breakup/"I love you but the world thinks I'm stupid" "crisis" in Rebecca and Justin's relationship; we have a dated montage about Sarah's internet-dating exploits; we have almost enough of Holly's boobs to qualify the show for premium cable; and Kevin's hair is simply unacceptable.

Doesn't look good for this one, folks.

the forgotten. Or this one, a good idea on paper that's drowning on camera in clichés and "Why are CSIs interrogating a suspect?" implausibilities.The victim voice-over adds nothing but unwarranted self-seriousness; Christian Slater is the only actor with enough charisma to carry the material (Anthony Carrigan, playing Tyler, is actually okay, if he can get out from under the exposition-device load he had to carry in the pilot); Slater's character is an ex-cop, and I understand why that cheat was included initially, but it causes more problems than it solves and should have gotten the heave-ho after the show got picked up.

A few tweaks, and it's a decent show, but it's functionally a procedural, and it's focusing on the parts of procedurals we've seen a thousand times before, which it doesn't do well, instead of on the parts that set it apart from the others, which it could do well if it got some momentum going.And it's not impossible; it does happen sometimes that a show snaps to, figures out what it wants to do, and learns how to do it while elegantly covering its flaws.Journeyman is one example.

But the writers' room seems more interested in repurposing the soppier parts of Cold Case than in examining how a group of civilians would solve a case of this type — or in making said group of civilians less annoying.Don't just barge up to these people and tell them their child is dead, dipshit.Pairing it with meaningful squinting doesn't make it any more your beeswax.

The Good Wife. What's with the sexism?It's one thing when the show depicts the sexism and reductive attitudes of the world at large towards a woman in Alicia's position — not that the show is doing the most elegant job with that, either, so far, but I can forgive it in a pilot.

But when the show's female protagonist is dated in her gender attitudes toward herself?Alicia's so-called gotcha line about "obviously you've never made a woman mad before" botched an excellent opportunity to make a few points about pre-judging the woman behind the famous/powerful man; instead, it went for a tired "hell hath no fury" tone.It's antiquated, and worse, it's uninteresting. Alicia correctly marking the office assistant as fed up with the parking-lot attendant, and exploiting that with some "oh, men" bonding?Interesting.Sharp.Alicia taking the same martyr angle with the state's attorney, except for real?Bah.It felt like pandering to a certain segment of the demographic, and the segment is smarter than that Erma Bombeck, Attorney At Law nonsense.

Law & Order: SVU. Why does Mariska Hargitay lift her leg up like she's in a cartoon every time she has to chase a perp?You know, how Wile E. Coyote will wind himself up with his leading leg before taking off after the Roadrunner?I keep expecting a puff of smoke to replace her onscreen every time she does that.

I shouldn't harp on the Hargs, because she's a palette of beige nuance compared with Christopher "Silent Movie" Meloni — and I can't really harp on him, either.What is it, the tenth season?I don't know what acting choices he's got left at this point; at least he's giving it 110 percent every week, and I feel like he has to know that he's the subject of a Taking! It! Personally! drinking game and he's having a little fun with it.

Not so Wentworth Miller.Either Wentworth Miller is actually really good at acting and just happens to have a kidney stone the size and shape of a throwing star every time the camera is pointed in his direction…or Wentworth Miller is not good at acting, and doesn't really like doing it, either.I think he tries very hard and thinks about his lines a lot; he's not half-assing it.But I spent his entire first scene waiting to find out that he was playing an actor in a movie within the show, because his Blue-Steeling had gotten even worse since Prison Break.I was kind of psyched about it, too, like, that's awesome that he can have a little fun with himself.…Ohhhh, that's…literally the character.Wow.

What to do with the guy?He's got a lot of fans, he's a hard worker…there has to be some kind of Keanu/action niche for him, right?

The Mentalist. I won't even bother asking who else watches the show, because…no one else watches the show.Well, maybe that's not true.I really only watch because Simon Baker is cute, so maybe it's not just me who does that, and I didn't know anyone watched NCIS, either — I thought it just kept JAG-ing along because even the net execs forgot it existed, but it's practically the most popular show on CBS and it even got a spin-off.(Which looks really dumb.Is anyone watching that?I like LL Cool J a lot, but: no.)

In any case, what the hell is going on with Owain Yeoman?This isn't a complaint, mind you — but during the season premiere, he's standing off to the side of a group shot, and I thought, "Cute new agent, but why'd they get rid of Rigsby?Not that I particularly enjoyed the 'sexual' 'tension' between him and Van Pelt last season, but I figured the writers would follow it up with WAIT WAIT WAIT THAT FOX IS RIGSBY!"Lost a ton of weight, got a hipper haircut (…I guess; it's trying too hard, but it's cute), looks tohhhhh-tally different.

…I know, no one cares. As you were.