What was on TV? Tues, Feb 22, 2005

20 years ago, the iPod shuffle was fresh on the market. Let's see what was on TV!

8:00 American Idol on Fox

4x12 "Top 12 Women Perform"

Jesus. The girls were A LOT better than the boys. Even the worst performance was better than most of the boys. And the girls make have better and more interesting fashion, which makes the whole affair more watchable.

And this episode has one truly great moment. Some girl comes out and gives a decent performance of Celine's "The Power of Love." When you imagine an average Idol performance, this is what you imagine. She is followed by Nadia Turner, who comes out in jeans, boots, lots of bling, and with a full afro and covers an obsucre Christian rock song also called "The Power of Love." It's a bold choice, one that presents a dramatic contrast. And she pulls it off! Her vocals are good, I think that her cover improves on the original, and she is full of charisma and attitude. The judges talk a lot about how she's a "risk taker" and how she's "different." You know what that means: if this girl with the giant afro went her own way and it didn't work, she'd have been ripped apart. Fortunately, she killed it.

9:00 Veronica Mars on UPN

1x15 "Ruskie Business" (record Frontline on PBS)

Last week, Veronica Mars (both the character and the show), spun a few too many plates. The strings showed, and each story suffered. Veronica is also very busy this week: she's tracking down a mail-order bride's would-be husband, she's trying to find Logan's mom, and she's searching for Meg Manning's secret admirer. But this episode does a better job showing us the chaos of Veronica's life. And the cases are tied together nicely: she visits the police station with Meg to follow up on a lead about the mail-order bride with deputy Leo. She sketches a cheeky drawing of herself with devil horns by the resident sketch artist, and she later retains the sketch artist's services to find Meg's secret admirer.

And of course, the cases are all tied by a central theme: love! It's the spring dance, and Veronica wants to believe in love: for Meg, for the mail-order bride, and maybe even for herself. This episode presents her with three suitors: she flirts with deputy Leo, she guides Logan through his mama trauma (she's been there, after all), and she even confronts her residual feelings for Duncan. It's classic "case of the week ties into your personal life" stuff, and it works (though her dating an adult cop is still icky, to say the least. And Max Greenfield is so charming you almost forget how icky it is! Thank goodness nothing much happened).

10:00 Monk (recorded)

3x14 "Mr. Monk Goes to Vegas"

I was really into scarves as a kid and my grandpa thought it would be fun to tell me how Isadora Duncan died: strangled by her own scarf when it got caught in the gears of a convertible. So this episode grabbed by attention right away when James Brolin referenced how his wife's scarf was always getting caught in things.

The episode is pretty fun too. Ted Levine solves this scarf-centric murder while in Vegas for a bachelor party and drunk dials Monk about it. But when Monk arrives, Ted Levine has forgotten all about his epiphany so they must solve the case again. It's Monk's take on The Hangover, 4 years before The Hangover came out.

Late Night

Writing this blog has made me super obsessed with sweeps. All the weird tv movies, special events, dramatic storylines, shameless scheduling gambits, I live for it. So I was thrilled to see the Conan segment "Sweeps Ahoy!" return. the jokes are silly even by Conan standards, and there's a gag involving intersex shrimp that I'm astonished made it past the censors.

What Else Was On

• CBS aired a One Day at a Time reunion special.
• Tonight's Special Sweeps Guest Stars: Scott Foley on House, William Hung on George Lopez, and Ed McMahon on Scrubs.

TiVo Status

The Masterpiece Theater miniseries The Lost Prince, two Frontline documentaries, House of Saud, the TV movies Sucker Free City, Lackawanna Blues, School of Life, and Ladies Night, three episodes of Miracle's Boys, and one episode each of King of the Hill and Without a Trace. 19 hours total.

Literature, 20 years ago

This week, the English translation of pioneering French-Algerian cartoonist David B.'s magnum opus Epileptic was published. It is dark as hell and the art is dense and weird. I read it when I was 15 and it blew my little mind.