Image courtesy of tvovermind.com

This episode was it, and now we have to wait another 2 months for the next one. Thankfully, the firework-display of action and drama left us breathless and momentarily sated.

Leading up from last week, Logan is harassing the townspeople in a vain attempt to sucker Damon and Stefan out of how they can walk in the sunlight. Because of Logan’s appearance as a third vampire, Stefan is of course duty-bound to protect his fellow townspeople. The mournful look of longing Elena throws him when he enters the school is palpable and one of her best, emotionally-torn moments. Stefan is more interested in discussing the mystery vampire than departing, which he says is now being prolonged. When Damon uses a compass to find Logan’s location and confront him, he’s met with plenty of wooden bullets, which, unfortunately for Logan, puts him in a vengeful mood (has a vengeful Damon ever been good?). I guess ol’ Logan loves the taste of human blood and relishes the kill, so much so that he has piled up plenty of bodies at the factory he’s hiding out in. Dur. The whole conversation is actually kind of awkward, with the two vacillating about vamp feelings (I love Jenna x100 because I’m a vampire now!) to deadly aggression, culminating with Logan running off after shooting Damon some more. Again, big mistake.

At the career fair, Logan confronts Forbes because, following the attack, buried the poor guy and sent the whole world emails about his pseudo-departure. Forbes is able to put two and two together – of course, Logan is a vampire! In another bait-and-threat move, Forbes irks Logan, who threatens her before stalking away. Again, threatening a vampire is probably not a good idea. This leads to Logan picking up Forbes’ daughter Caroline, who aspires to broadcast journalism, much to the ire of her policewoman mother. Before Caroline ven buckles her seatbelt, he knocks her unconscious. As he speeds off and calls Forbes with malicious intent in his voice (he’s gonna turn Caroline into what they hate most -a vamp!0, Stefan somehow finds Logan and throws him out of the seat, but not beore Damon riddles Logan’s body with his very own wooden bullets. Interrogating Logan, he discovers that Logan and some of the mysterious vamps who turned him know how to raise the vampires burried under Fell’s Church — oh jeez, is Katherine going to come back? Shaken by this news, he les Logan go jsut as Sherrif Forbes arrives on the scene.

Post-rescue mission, Elena has a heart-to-heart with Stefan. We then hear the most cliché line in the book: he’s leaving and doing it all for her. Wasn’t Edward enough people?! Thankfully, we don’t have to deal with an emo, manically depressed Elena who pines for him post-departure — no, no, instead, they have sweet, sweet love together. Perhaps in the most poetic moment, Elena kisses his vampiric face into human shape again. Elena, post-sex, discovers her twin staring back at her on Stefan’s desk amidst the candles and romantic hodgepodge. Oh shit. When Stefan returns, she left, vervain necklace a lasting momento of her bitter feelings. All of a sudden, driving home in tears, Elena crashes into a shadowy figure and her car flips. In a truly spectacular cinematic moment full of suspense and terror, the figure re-joints itself and stalks toward her. We can only imagine.

The episode, like I said, left us with something to savor. There are plenty of insinuations to tease out, and we can only hope with anticipation (and perhaps a little bated breath) that Katherine will resurrect, and we’ll have a bad-ass Elena look-alike on the loose. It’s gotta happen! In addition, I’m truly wondering what Alaric’s purpose is — is he a vampire? Good guy? Something in between? Time will tell…

Peter is trying to get an appeal for his charges of misusing public office, and he’s using any means to win support, including the media. He seems apologetic about using prostitutes and says he plans to move on to a better future.

Alicia’s firm is defending a scientist accused of arson, but they’re having some trouble with her – when asked questions, she stammers and apologizes, and Will is afraid to put her on the stand because she looks guilty. He and Diane agree to prep their other witnesses harshly, and decide to put Alicia and Cary on the job. But their witnesses don’t hold up under pressure, and the nervous Ellen could be facing up to 50 years in prison.

Peter happens to know the judge on his case, and his laywer requests a bail hearing – which the judge grants. Peter is excited when he tells Alicia he could be out in two days. Alicia doesn’t seem excited at all. The kids seem torn, too – Zack is glad his father might be coming home, but Grace seems as nervous as Alicia. And that’s not the only complication in Alicia’s life – Will tells her to let him know if she needs anything, and she seems to be sensing something stronger than friendship coming from him.

Peter’s friend tells him that the judge might need a little nudge – presumably in the form of a bribe. Peter declines, but he still seems excited – the friend the state attorney’s assistant. Peter thinks the winds are shifting in his favor again.

Kalenda asked for help from an FBI friend when Diane decides that they’re going to play the case as not an accident, but deliberate arson from someone else. Her friend ID’s a religious group that could be possible – a group that sent the scientist a letter warning her to stop experimenting in cloning. Ellen comes to Alicia with another letter from the same group – it had been put on her car.

But after some research, Kalenda discovers something troubling – the group is Protestant, but they use a verse from a Catholic version of the Bible. Kalenda thinks that it’s a red herring designed to cast blame elsewhere – and thinks that Ellen did it.

Meanwhile, the mystery of evidence against Peter continues. Zack and Grace come home from school to find a CD with a video on it, and they’re not sure what’s going on. Grace wants to tell Alicia, but Zack refuses; he’s still trying to protect her. Luckily, Zack knows his stuff – he sets his iPod to record and puts it in a plant outside their apartment door to try to catch whoever’s leaving Alicia the evidence about Peter. (The kid should go work for Kalenda.) Grace isn’t happy when she finds out – she thinks Zack is having fun with the investigation and challenges him to tell their father at the bail hearing.

Peter’s lawyer has picked up on Alicia’s hesitation when it comes to Peter. He tells her that she’s going to have to testify at the bail hearing, and urges her to sound like she will welcome Peter home. Alicia just tells him that she refuses to lie on the stand.

And she doesn’t, even when the prosecuting attorney pushes her about whether she plans to share a bed with Peter and whether she wants to get a divorce after he slept with prostitutes. She notices Zack in the courtroom and cuts the man off, saying that her son is in the room and to stop asking invasive questions, because Peter has someplace to go and that’s all the court is trying to determine.

Zack is impressed with his mom, but she’s furious that he came all the way down, by himself, without telling her. He didn’t accomplish his goal – Peter wasn’t in court.

Things get more suspicious on the arsonist front. Kalenda discovers that the toner used on the fake letters is a special brand, and that it’s used in Ellen’s office. Cary and Alicia are checking things out, and start picking holes in their prime witness’s story – he couldn’t have seen Ellen running on the track when he left an auditorium to call his mother because there was a dead zone, and he shouldn’t have known how much time it takes for a candle to burn down to the liquid to blow up a lab. And his printer uses the same toner.

Will urges them to take him down – it could save Ellen. Diane does so, trapping him in a lie and proving that he wasn’t at the auditorium. It turns out that he wanted to destroy her lab to end her chances of a fellowship abroad to keep her there – he cared about her.

Zack keeps his iPod camera in the plant. A janitor accidentally knocks the pot and tips the iPod, but Zack still manages to catch sight of a strange man in a suit taking photos on the entrace.

Peter is confident of getting bail, but it turns out that his old friend has a trick up his sleeve – he’s gone to the prosecutor and told him that Peter is trying to buy the judge. The judge then refuses bail. Alicia is left to go home on her own. She ends up sitting for a while outside the courthouse, and Will joins her.

It was Jules’s 41^st birthday this week on Cougar Town and as a present we got a great pair of guest stars: Rachael Harris and Alan Ruck.  (Can’t you tell from the back of his head?)

Harris and Ruck played a married couple, Shanna and Frank, that Jules and Bobby were friends with when they were married.  Jules runs into them at the beach and has an unfortunate incident with a wet, white bikini.  When she tries to apologize later, Jules finds out that Shanna has a whole litany of reasons for disliking her now and has spread it around to her whole “weird mom gang.”

Jules decides to get away from it all by going to Playa del Roca with Ellie and Laurie for her birthday.  It takes some negotiation to get them to go together because they still dislike each other.  A couple of weeks ago I talked about wanting Jules’s best friends to bond and start to like each other and Jules really wanted that this episode too.  In an effort to please her for her birthday, they try to fake a bonding moment after Jules gets fed up with all their squabbling.  In that moment, I realized that I actually didn’t want them to be friends at all.  Ellie and Laurie are way more fun when they’re at each other’s throats.

They did manage to team up in one pleasing way.  Shanna and Frank were also at the resort, in an effort on Frank’s part to soothe Shanna over the white bikini incident.  Apparently, Shanna once asked Frank which one of her friends he would get with if she died and he picked Jules.  He also sometimes sees Jules’s legs (but not her face) when he and Shanna have sex.  Which he also told Shanna.  This, complied with a topless hot tub incident, explains her new hostility toward Jules.  So, Ellie and Laurie get together to put a collaborative smackdown on “Shah-na.” As Laurie threatens: “seriously, I fight all the time. She will hold your arms and I will beat you until your Spanx are the only thing holding your torso together.”  I hope that isn’t enough to run Shanna out of town, though, because Rachael Harris would be a great addition to the cast and I can never get enough Alan Ruck.

The best subplot of the night was definitely the Grayson-Travis dynamic.  Travis loves making fun of Grayson just as much as Jules does and we get a nice mother-son dig near the beginning of the episode.  “Mommy, if that lady slept over at Mr. Ellis’s house, does that mean they’re in love?”  “Well, he loves parts of her, sweetie.” High five!

The plot thickens when Grayson promises to look in on Travis while Jules is away for the weekend.  Travis doesn’t really think he needs a babysitter – “if the house is on fire, you may knock once.  If I don’t answer, assume I set the fire, and I want to burn to death” – but Grayson ends up checking on him and kicking a girl out once Andy scares him into following Jules’s orders with a horror story about pecan-filled brownies.  (He’s allergic.)

Travis retaliates by “pretending to come out to Grayson to mess with his head,” as Andy gleefully reports to Jules.  After a long, long talk Travis gets Grayson to admit that he once practiced kissing with his cousin Ben.  Grayson even ends up paying Travis fifty bucks to keep his silence, after he’s already told Andy.  Awww, poor Grayson.

Cora is dressed to impress new principal and old friend Gordon. Sasha encourages her, and then the overprotective Mr. Brown comes in, sees Cora in a short skirt and says, “Cora. What the what? What the ham sandwich is goin’ on?” He thinks she’s become a stripper, to which Cora bops him on the head and tells him to “stop thinkin’ nas-t.”

At the hospital, Will has to treat Eddy Walker, a stabbing victim who had tried to molest Joaquin and had gone to jail. Will returns from the operating room, and Sasha asks how it went. He says he did what he had to do but did not hide the fact that for the first time in his life, he didn’t care if he lost the patient. Just after that, another doctor tells them Eddy Walker didn’t make it.

Thus begins a world of suspicion surrounding Will. Did he purposely give Eddy Walker poor treatment? Everyone knows he was the one who almost molested his son. But could Will really put his personal disdain for someone ahead of his well-being? The hospital board thinks maybe, and now Will is being investigated.

Meanwhile, the P.E. teacher at school asks Cora out right in front of Principal Gordon, and Cora says yes, even though Reggie, the teacher, is loud and obnoxious. Cora ends up having a great time with him and brings him home. But Mr. Brown doesn’t like Reggie and goes after him with his “kangaroo” kickboxing move, which is him with his arms in the air and jumping and throwing both legs forward — the most athletic move we’ll ever see Mr. Brown make.

Sasha doesn’t know what to think of Eddy Walker’s death and has doubts about if Will let him die. Cora talks to her and tells her she needs to support her husband 100 percent. The episode ends with Will telling Sasha he feels bad about what happened, but at least Eddy Walker can’t hurt any more kids.

“Meet the Saboteurs”

Cora is going out with Reggie again, but she’s not sure how to get Mr. Brown to like him. Sasha says she used to pretend her boyfriends got on her nerves, which tricked her dad into loving them. So she tells Cora to use reverse psychology.

Little do they know, but Derek the frat boy from next door advises Mr. Brown to use reverse psychology, too. He says Mr. Brown should pretend to like Reggie, which will freak Cora out and make her stop liking him.

Hilarity ensues the next time Mr. Brown walks in on Cora and Reggie. Cora pretends to be upset and send Reggie home. Then Mr. Brown insists that Reggie, who has no idea what’s going on, should stay because he already feels like family. Then both Cora and Reggie are miffed.

Now Eddy Walker’s family is suing Will because they think he intentionally gave him poor medical treatment. Coworkers put doubt into Sasha’s mind, and Will overhears her say, “I guess anything is possible,” to which he replies, “Thanks for havin’ my back.” Later, Will and Sasha talk about the situation, and Will says one of the doctors has his back and implies that Sasha should lie to the board about what he told her before finding out that Eddy Walker had died. Sasha is taken aback by Will’s lack of ethics and says they can find another way besides lying.

“I knew you wouldn’t understand,” Will says.

Sasha ends up telling the board the truth, that Will is a great doctor, that he would do his best — and that he said he was not concerned about Eddy Walker’s well-being. Sasha admits to Will she’s not too broken up about his death either.

“See, I would never tell anyone you said that,” Will replies. “But I guess that’s the different between me and you.” He walks out.

Reggie and Cora pretend to break up, and Mr. Brown realizes how much Cora likes Reggie. He goes to get Reggie back, and he’s still at the door, laughing. Still, Mr. Brown understands that Reggie makes Cora happy, and so that makes him happy.

Sasha catches Will as he is leaving the hospital and asks what happened with the board. He says he’s been suspended, coldly says “thanks” and leaves.

What’s more rural Indianan than going hunting? Apparently nothing, which led the Parks and Rec writers to center an episode on a trip to do just that. Ron, Mark, and even the uniformly unlikable Jerry take a men’s hunting trip every year under the guise of trail maintenance. When, Leslie begs that the entire department be brought along, things go sour.

The central story is of Leslie and Ron, who Leslie volunteers as hunting partners, take on a friendly competition to see who can bag more birds. Leslie hilarious misunderstanding of how men think (”Men love when you outdo them at something they love.”) leads her to challenge Ron, and the games begin. The hunt continues uneventfully enough, until someone shoots Ron Swanson in the head. Needless to say, this becomes the focal point of the episode.

Park rangers come to the lodge and when they want answers, Leslie claims to have shot Ron. We later find out that it was actually Tom who shot him, but in a kind of beautiful moment of altruism, Leslie took the fall for him because he didn’t have a hunting license. This, of course, leads Ron to want to kill Tom, so some humor does come out of it.

The B-plot involves April and Andy holding down the office while everyone else goes hunting. Their antics throughout the day aren’t as consistently funny as they are cute, but that works too. April even offers to give Andy a hickey to make Ann jealous, which he naively thinks will work out just fine. It’s pretty obvious that April has a crush on Andy, so we’ll see where that goes in the future. Hopefully her gay boyfriend won’t mind.

It should be noted that the biggest laugh-out-loud moment was a total shock value shot that totally cashed in. Before the credits, Ron comes back to work for a Thanksgiving feast with the department. He appreciates the “Welcome Back Ron” sign, and, turning around to admire it, reveals the huge bloody bald patch on the back of his head from the bullet wound. Oblivious to the fact that it totally grossed everyone out, he proclaims, “Let’s eat!” That’s good television, right there.

Photo Courtesy of mylifetime.com

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh……..the season finale……ready or not……:

The episode opens as a straight continuation from where the last one left off. Carol Hannah is sick, sick, sick as a dog…this makes me very sad….everyone gets to the workroom to keep working. Carol Hannah starts crying because she feels like shit,and everyone feels realllly bad for her (genuinely, I think). The designers head to the hair and make-up consultations for their models. Afterward, the models come in for their fittings, and Carol Hannah catches a break when she finds that all of the models she’s chosen fit really well into all of her garments.

Tim comes in for his walkaround and looks at their 13th looks. Irina and Althea find themselves on the same wavelength once again: Tim notices that their model make-up ideas are the essentially the same – big smudgy dark dusty eyes and a messy hairdo. The day ends with everyone feeling really overwhelmed

The next day, Irina is especially stressed out because she’s the one with the most work still to do. Carol Hannah feels better – yay!! Tim comes in for his last little chat – aww….then things get really crazy – everyone is running in circles around each other trying to finish. The day ends.

DAY OF RUNWAY SHOW: The designers get up at 3:14a.m. to go to Bryant Park. Each designer shares what she’s feeling when she comes in to the the runway room. They immediatly start working, and Tim freaks out – he’s rediculous wigging out sljdflskdjflakhf;akdgKSJDHFKDSBLHAOSIPEO,VNslkdfjldhjf, and tells them that they should be lining up right now, but only 10% of the models are dressed…ah!

After the commercial break,Heidi comes on stage to kick off the show…AND SHE LOOKS LIKE MICHAEL JACKSON! i think it’s her make-up….or something…redic.

Judges: Michael Kors, Nina Garcia and Suzie Menkes (Fashion Editor of

Each designer comes onstage before her show to explain the inspiration behind her collection: Althea: sci-fi movies from the 50s and 60s, interpreting that from a futuristic point of view. Carol Hannah: Gothic architecture and fairy tales. Irina: New York, and what it takes to survive in the city as a woman.

I won’t even try to describe each individual look, but I think all of the designers incorporated their inspirations very well into their collections. One thing to note: All of Irina’s looks were black except for 3……

Spectators, celebrities and past project runway designers comment on the collections after the shows. After the commercial break, the designers come out before the judges.

Irina: The judges said it was coherent, finished, expensive, personal, but the warrior woman look that she did has been done before. The judges (especially Nina) didn’t like that she didn’t have color. They recognized and applauded that she knew how to accent the collection with every last detail like the hats and purses. They also loved the T-shirts that balanced the hard, protective, warrior feel.

Carol Hannah: They loved all of the drapings and tailoring of every dress, but the collection might be missing the cohesive element within the collection as a whole. She played with color the most out of all 3 designers, and she does what she does really well – everything is impeccable.

Althea: The judges loved that she did a lot of sportswear, separates. Nina loved the green dress she did for it’s color, and all of them loved several little details/accents. They thought that the last three pieces were off and that she may have had too many focus points to keep track of. Nina loves her…the judges think she connects to the street well, and a lot of women would love to wear all of her clothes.

…………………………….I’ll just say it…….

Carol Hannah is out.

Irina wins.

..Althea is out.

and THAT’S THE WAY IT WAS.

Photo courtesy of abc.com

If you’ve listened to our newest podcast, you’ve already heard what I have to say about this week’s episode of “V.” Therefore, this review’s going to be a pretty quick read.

On Tuesday, the show definitely picked up in speed from episode two’s hellishly slow going. And while last week’s episode was perhaps a little heavy on the Chad/Anna storyline (which is by far the show’s best) the rest of the characters were well taken care of this time around.

Through some relentless investigation and risky behavior on the part of Father Jack, he and Erica finally get to meet Georgie and Ryan and start seriously planning the resistance. We learn a lot about the Fifth Column movement in this episode through Ryan’s attempt to contact former resistance fighters, but also through Dale’s visit to the New York mothership’s sick bay, where we learn they are still alive and well even in the innermost parts of the V society.

I definitely had to roll my eyes at the strange “Matrix”-esque dialogue that went down when Ryan went to visit former Fifth Column member Cyrus, who has gone back over the V side because he wishes to be “reconnected” to Anna’s mind-numbing “bliss.” Maybe I’m not remembering correctly, but I don’t think the show so far has set up the fact that Anna can practice mind control like Diana could in the original miniseries. She’s been shown as a skilled negotiator, especially in scenes with Chad and  the protest leader Mary Faulkner, but her skills of persuasion have never  obviously crossed over into the “she’s making them do it with her mind” realm. This scene was a really cheesy, heavy-handed way to confirm what we all might have suspected.

Logan Huffman has turned out to be pretty good for someone so new to acting, but Tyler’s storyline isn’t giving him much to work with. I guess I should just take it as a given now that in TV land, all male teenagers are incoherent bags of hormones and will choose the chance to get laid over common sense, but I cheered for him a little when he told Brandon he “didn’t want to get in anymore trouble” and drove away on his motorcycle.

I was disappointed to see that Tyler’s love interest Lisa is simply manipulating him at the behest of her mother, but the doubting look she gives as Anna walks away tells me her character is a little more complicated than the usual sycophants that inhabit the New York mothership. Things could get a lot more complicated if Anna’s mind control doesn’t work so well on her kid.

Now Showing at the IMU / Photo Courtesy of Universal Pictures

Unlike “Pulp Fiction,” Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” pushes no new boundaries in terms of cinema; so it may just fall in at number two on Tarantino’s best list. But this film is a testament to his lifelong passion with movies.
“Inglourious Basterds” displays directing, acting, writing, cinematography and art direction at its finest, and it is the best movie of the year thus far.

Tarantino’s episodic tale is not a World War II epic but a story set in 1940’s occupied France. His acute obsession with the intricacies and depth of his characters drives the action, and the result is a verbose yet invigorating endeavor. The film clocks in at two and a half hours, but these dialogue riddled scenes each more intense than the last make the time fly by. And yet, the film only has anywhere between 10 and 15 scenes. Tarantino moves the action along through his conversations, and if violence is a consequence or resolution to the scene, it is because his characters have led it to that point.

So any fanboy attending “Inglourious Basterds” may have to wait for the blood to hit the fan, and they will no doubt be praising the beautifully orchestrated violence Tarantino can conjure, but in their patience they will not be disappointed. Tarantino’s screenplay is the crowning achievement of the film, and it’s likely he’ll earn another Oscar-nod for his work.

The film begins in 1941 France at a farmer’s home. Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) is interrogating the farmer on suspicion of harboring a Jewish family. Landa knows the family is hiding under the man’s floorboards and makes quick work of them but has one 18-year-old girl, Shoshana (Mélanie Laurent), escape.

I’ve done a poor justice to this delicately laid out scene that offers so much in terms of suspense and character development. Christoph Waltz’s Landa is brilliant, demonstrating such range and terror in his character’s personality. To describe him anyway would be to lead to a cliché, as he is tough and determined but not brutal. He is toying and wise but not deceptive. Landa’s wisdom, ability and principles outweigh any boundaries of a character sketch, and Waltz’s talent to illicit such range, acting fluent, proficient and fearsome in German, French, English and in one hilarious scene Italian, is unprecedented. Waltz has already won the acting award at Cannes, and if he does not do the same at this year’s Oscars, something will have gone terribly wrong.

Anyway, back to the story. Cue in the Basterds, a mercenary group of American Jewish soldiers disguised as French civilians. Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) leads them in a mission to claim 100 Nazi scalps apiece. And he wants his scalps! Everything that needs to be known about the Aldo Raine character is told in his opening monologue to the Basterds, and conveniently enough, this scene has also served as the trailer. Pitt’s character may be the single one-dimensional character in the film, but Pitt plays him so openly, he leaves nothing to suspicion.

The Basterds are simply a killing force and are actually very inconsequential to the overall plot to blow up a cinema showing a German film premiere in attendance by the four chief Nazi officers, including Hitler himself. Fitting that in a way, the Basterds plan is a failure and surrender followed by a betrayal. But their characters are necessary to add to the concept of principles hanging over the film.

It’s also possible that the inclusion of the Basterd characters at all is to serve as a form of parody to the heroic Americans portrayed in virtually every World War II film to date. In addition to a parody and somewhat of a comedy, “Inglourious Basterds” is an homage to all genres of film Tarantino has admired over the years.

So many of his shots and details are reminiscent of old classics. Notice the aerial view of a character leaving a room, the fishnet mask of a woman in a red dress, the 70’s style subtitle of a man’s name before his origin story is told, and the spaghetti-Western style music as “The Bear Jew” makes his entrance. All of this and more are the lacing between his film. They are the extra tidbits that give “Inglourious Basterds” not just flair, but style.

I was even wrong to say that “Inglourious Basterds” pushes no boundaries. Firstly, his film’s ending, without giving anything away, changes history. The story is fiction and so are his characters, so to make them bow to an arbitrary concept of historical accuracy would be unnatural, uninspired and unintuitive.

Tarantino’s work is also influential in challenging the mood set for this year that all films possessing violence need contain mindless, if occasionally stylistic, action. Many of his scenes are not driven by action or even story but instead by character motivation and development. No film this year has been able to match the consequence generated by two people simply having a conversation.

The nerve it takes to spit in the face of the Hollywood blockbusters by filming a “talkie” and making it the most invigorating, exciting film of the year is something remarkable and something only Quentin Tarantino could do.

Read more of Brian’s Reviews at web.me.com/bgw608

Photo Courtesy of IGN and Comedy Central

It’s a good thing last night’s episode of South Park was the season finale, because after submitting my online math homework 13 minutes late, I almost decided to never again watch the show live. It’s also a good thing that ‘Pee,’ this episode’s odd title that I will refrain from using again, was actually a step up from the last few lackluster ones. The gang is going to a water park called “Pi Pi’s Splashzone,” and everyone there is excited and having fun except for Kyle and Cartman.

Cartman has become annoyed at the excessive number of minorities hogging the wave pool, making the lines real long and wearing their T-Shirts in the water. Don’t you hate that? Cartman has an amusing song, complete with music video production values called “Too Many Minorities at my Water Park,” and then comes to the realization that the number of minorities in the park has surpassed the number of white people. “That makes you a minority, Cartman!” “Dumbass, do I look like a minority to you?”

On the other side of the coin, Kyle is grossed out by the knowledge that everyone is peeing in the pool. Stan tries to rationalize this by saying that one person doing it isn’t going to make a difference, but with everyone doing it, the water becomes entirely pee, causing a meltdown that destroys the water park and leaves the boys stranded inside, except for Kenny of course, who’s seen dead, floating face down in the river of pee.

From these two scenarios come two separate stories, one of which I wish they had developed more. Kyle’s pee phobia, although made funny with some facts that not everyone washes their hands after going to the bathroom, some people pee in the shower, and we may as well be drinking our pee with all that goes into our water, was admittedly gross, and a bit much.

The more interesting story however was the realization Cartman made of Biblical proportions. He stumbles across data that shows that the minority population in the country has exponentially doubled over the past three years. In three more years time, the minorities will surpass the white population. 3 years. 2012. The Mayans had it right.

When trapped on a raft in the destroyed park with numerous people of other races, he imagines a world run by minorities, he being unable to get a job, forced to learn differently in school and being unfairly prosecuted. (”Nooo.”)

This concept would have made for a better episode, but maybe it’s for the best that I didn’t just watch a 30 minute show propagating the master race.

Lorenzo Von Matterhorn is a fictional creation of Barney’s on the lastest episode of How I Met Your Mother – “The Playbook.” “Lorenzo,” aka Barney, said hello to a co-worker of Lily’s in MacLaren’s and introduced himself. She had no idea who he was, so she Googled him, found out he was a huge philanthropist with an equally huge penis, and by the time he came back and asked her for coffee, she was game.

But it turns out, she’s not the only one who can Google Lorenzo.

As part of the play, Barney had to create fictional sites to make the character seem famous. But the How I Met Your Mother team actually did create some, like the Balloon Explorers Club, which lists Lorenzo as a featured member. The man even got a Wikipedia page with background information. When Wikipedia found out that it was a joke from the show, they deleted the page and had it redirect to a page about the episode, but it was up for a while.

This isn’t the first time the HIMYM team has created background sites like this. The blog Barney writes on the show is featured on cbs.com and actually has quotes and photos from the show. Other sites that have been mentioned on the show are real, such as tedmosbyisajerk.com from the episode “The Bracket” (a girl is upset that Barney, posing as Ted, hooked up with her and left her a letter saying he was a ghost and couldn’t see her again – which happened in the episode “Ted Mosby, Architect”) and the now-closed lilyandmarshallselltheirstuff.com from the episode “Everything Must Go” (Lily has maxed out all her credit cards and Marshall sets up the site to sell some of her clothes and pay back their debt. At the end of the episode, actors Alyson Hannigan and Jason Segel informed viewers that it was an auctionof show props for charity).

The HIMYM staff has been really good with creating all the online material to go with the show, something it’s gotten attention for. I have to say, kudos to them – I think it’s rare that a show would go to all the extra effort to do something like this.

Plus, it’s pretty hilarious.