Dr. Jack's Return: What happened in 2011, what to look forward to in 2012

Well hello. Did you miss me?

That’s right, as we enter 2012 I would have felt guilty if I didn’t share my favorite TV shows/moments from Fall 2011, as well as what I’m most looking forward to in 2012.

Let’s just review the past quickly and give you some highlights from the Fall of 2011

Best New Show

“Homeland” / “New Girl” – I’m not even a big Zooey D fan, I just can’t get enough of Schmidt. And “Homeland” might be the show of the year even though I’m not crazy about where Season 2 is heading.

Biggest Drop Off

“Community” / “Boardwalk Empire” – With “Community, I just haven’t found it very funny this year and the parallel universe episode was probably the most overrated thing from TV this fall. As for “Boardwalk”, call me crazy but I’m just not that into incest. (Spoiler alert: I also felt like the “Boardwalk” writers turned Nucky into Walter White and Jimmy into Ned Stark in the finale)

Development We All Saw Coming

“The Office” struggling without Steve Carell – The show was struggling before Carell left, but aside from the Garden Party episode that CW and I loved, this season has continued the show’s downward spiral.

Good Show That’s Begun To Suck

“How I Met Your Mother” – Ted’s a douchebag who I no longer find a reason to root for and the writers are kidding themselves if they think Barney/Robin are the new Ross/Rachel, or even Jim/Pam.

CBS Show I Watched, Enjoyed, Then Just Stopped Watching For No Real Reason

“Persons of Interest” – Yep, that pretty much summed it up.

Finale That Almost Made Me Cry Tears of Sadness and Fear at the Same Time

“Walking Dead” – Bravo, I did not see that coming. I still have reservations about the show’s ability to last long term, but still, phenomenal ending.

Show I Discovered Over the Summer and am Now Obsessed With

“Happy Endings” – It’s getting a lot of buzz along these lines, so I don’t feel the need to say too much more. But I will add it’s really nice to Elisha Cuthbert having some success after “The Girl Next Door”, that movie is awesome.

Show I Pretend Not to Watch While My Wife Watches It, But Really I’m All Over It

“Revenge” – They framed her father!!!!

Show That Delivered a Comeback Season Even Though It Wasn’t In Trouble

“It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” – The episode where they were locked inside the house was one of my all-time favorites. I’d also say, while it was hysterical to see, I think the episodes would have been just as good even if Mac didn’t get fat.

Show I’m Sad To Say Goodbye To

“Chuck” – I know no one watches this show. I’ve spent countless time trying to convince my friends and family to, but no one gave in. So now the show that somehow lucked its way into five seasons is enjoying its final run. I can’t say this season’s been great, but I will still be sad to see it go.

And now on to the shows I’m most looking forward to in early 2012

“30 Rock”

Thursday, January 12^th, 8pm (NBC)

It had one hell of a comeback year last year and I didn’t realize how much I missed it until I caught a repeat on Comedy Central last month. I’m not happy “Community” is off the schedule (despite my earlier criticism), but this show taking its timeslot makes it a lot easier to handle.

“Justified”

Tuesday, January, 17^th, 10pm (FX)

Season 1 didn’t really get going until the end, but Season 2 was amazing all the way through. I’m really hoping Season 3 continues the momentum and with upcoming guest starts like Carla Gugino and Bubba from “Forrest Gump” you really can’t bet against this show.

“Archer”

Thursday, January 19^th, 10pm (FX)

For all the geek-love the Adult Swim shows get, this is my choice for the #1 non-network comedy. (#1 comedy overall would be NBC’s “Parks and Recreation”) The mini-series it had in the fall was hilarious and I really need more jokes in my life about lacrosse camps.

“Game of Thrones”

April (HBO)

I love this show almost as much as Ben Wyatt does. I want it back bad. I’m a little worried the dragon storyline might make it a little “fantastical” (is that a word?), but I’m ready and willing to be proved wrong.

“Mad Men”

TBD (AMC)

This show’s been off the air so long I don’t even remember what it’s about. I just remember there’s a buxom red head and that’s something to get excited for!

Conan O'Brien: Giant Ginger Internet Bully

That's right, I said it. I'm legitimately pissed at you Conan. 

Go back and look at my "multi-denominational holiday post." Ruined. By that gigantic Ruiner, Conan O'brien, and his internet goon squad. Really guys? A holiday post, with a couple of one minute clips from your show, on a blog that the smallest fraction of the internet reads, frankly, is too much of a threat to you? Copyright infringement? Scared those two videos are going to allow me to launch a competing variety/late night talk show on TNT or something? 

Where's your holiday spirit Conan? I doubt that jolly Andy Richter character would approve of this move. I thought you were better than this...Remember when you were all depressed and you thought your life was over because NBC canned your ass (except by canned I mean paid $32.5 million to just walk away and start your own show elsewhere), and the good people of the internet, via twitter, and other various websites gave you hope and supported you, while you lived the life of luxury with no responsibilities and a boatload of cash (essentially allowing you to live my dream where you just have nothing to do and no one to answer to)? Do you remember that?

And this is how you pay the internet back? By pulling copyright infringement crap on some lowly blog (it stings to say that) who appreciated two of your recent bits so much he wanted everyone to get in on the laughs? I mean, I know I only have a small following, but from some of the news I've read, your show could use any bump in ratings you can get, is stopping the spread of your material via the web really the way to increase the visibility of your shows humor? 

Stop being a dickhead Conan. Give those videos back. Embrace the internet, embrace the few fans you have that actually watch the show on television, and then talk you up to their friends and their miniscule blog following. But mostly, just stop feeding in to the Evil Ginger stereotype.

By the way, here's the video, just to spite you.

Know What Song Gets Me Through The Really Tough Days at Work?

That's right, goddamned Toto and the blessed rains of Africa. I can't explain it, just brings me to a much more mellow  place. I'll just be sitting there doing copious amounts of busy work, singing the same few lines over and over in my head, puts me in a trance. Doesn't matter that I don't even know the actual words, I assume I've got the lines down but I've never really stopped to listen to make sure. Just sitting there, happily singing it to myself (sometimes out loud, but under my breath), maybe with the right lyrics, maybe not, but definitely a lot calmer than I would be if I weren't singing anything in my head at all.

Yikes...I honest to God just looked up the lyrics...I was WAYYYY off. Not because I can't hear or anything, now that I'm listening back I can hear, just never paid much attention I guess and inserted the words I thought fit nicely, and frankly, the real song doesn't even make sense to me...

For instance, the real lyric is: "Gonna take some time to do the things we never have." My lyric: "Gonna appreciate all the things that we had"

Like why is he blessing the rains in Africa? This whole time I thought it was about some underpriveledged kid in Africa, one of those "for the cost of a cup of coffee a day" kids, and the singer was blessing the rains to give him a better life and appreciate the things he never had...Turns out that's not the case, at all. Just something about this guys long distance girlfriend flying in and they're going to do some stuff they've never done before (anal?). 

Ruined the whole song for me. Here I am thinking its a lovely tale of caring and humanity, turns out its just some horny long distance romance couple, and a singer who just liked the sound of the phrase "bless the rains down in Africa." Now I've got to find a whole new song to soothe me.

Meanwhile in New Hampshire...

My Fox - A new year brings some interesting new proposals in the Granite State. Among them: the perfume bill, which would ban state employees who interact with the public from wearing any scents. Another state rep is pushing for a vegetarian diet for state prisoners, students to stand during the pledge of allegiance and jurors to be paid $80 a day. And another representative wants to give people with vegetable gardens a $75 property tax cut.

Vegan Prisoners, Bodily Odored Politicians, and rich-ass jurors, welcome to the Granite State. Way to tackle the tough issues guys, like figuring out how to fund your public schools, or closing that budget deficit for 2012...Tossing out tax cuts for Rabbit the Carrot farmer from Winnie the Pooh should do the trick.  Or how about adding that extra lane to I-93 that you've been working on for a legitimate 10 year period at this point? It's one lane fellas, get your shit together. There's no excuse for why a major highway drops down to TWO lanes when it hits your border. None. All the pledge of allegiances and malnourished prisoners in the land aren't going to tackle that issue for you.

Forget World Hunger and the On-Going Wars of the World - These Guys Are Tackling the Real Problems

Time to Overhaul the Calendar? - Forget leap years, months with 28 days and your birthday falling on a different day of the week each year. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland say they have a better way to mark time: a new calendar in which every year is identical to the one before. Their proposed calendar overhaul — largely unprecedented in the 430 years since Pope Gregory XIII instituted the Gregorian calendar we still use today — would divvy out months and weeks so that every calendar date would always fall on the same day of the week. Christmas, for example, would forever come on a Sunday. "The calendar I'm advocating isn't nearly as accurate" as the Gregorian calendar, said Richard Henry, an astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins who has been pushing for calendar reform for years. "But it's far more convenient." "Everybody has to redo their calendars," Henry said. "For sports schedules, for schools, for every damn thing. It's completely unnecessary." "My favorite reason it shouldn't be done is, 'But my birthday will always be on a Wednesday!'" Henry said. "Of course the answer to that is you can celebrate your birthday whenever you want."

This is a real thing? Brilliant, University educated scholars, wasting their time and federally funded resources, researching ways to overhaul a perfectly good calendar, because they don't like re-printing syllabi and calendar companies can't use the same standard template every year? Are you guys freaking kidding me? Of all the things in the world, this is what you have an issue with.  You must be the laziest people on Earth. You don't have 10 minutes a year to update the dates on your course schedules? You don't think that calendar manufacturers just use a computer template to handle their printing?

And what's this shit with my Birthday falling on a Wednesday permanently? Fuck that noise. And don't give me the crap about "you can celebrate whenever you want." Sure that shit flies when you're like 8 and in the 2nd grade, mid-week birthdays were killer back then. All your classmates celebrate with a song and some cupcakes your mom sent you to school with on Tuesday (your actual birthday), then you have all the popular kids come over the following Saturday to bring you gifts and play a few rounds of tag (maybe hide n' go seek in the dark in your basement, if there's time). It's the best back then. But you can't get away with that now. Imagine me trying to tell my friends and relatives that I'd like them to provide me cake on Wednesday and then come pay homage to me on Saturday with gifts and free drinks at the bar. I'm sure that would go over like a lead balloon.

No I'd say the calendar situation is just fine the way it is...if you really need someone to take care of your syllabi for you just contact me, we'll arrange for paypal payments and I'll update your dates once a semester for something like $25...I'm completely serious.

Speaking of tackling the big issues...

Fox - The weekend came sooner than usual for the tiny South Pacific island nation of Samoa. When the clock struck midnight Thursday, the country skipped over Friday and moved 24 hours ahead -- straight into Saturday, Dec. 31. In June, the Samoan government passed a law to move Samoa west of the international date line, which separates one calendar day from the next and runs roughly north-to-south through the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Under a government decree, all those scheduled to work on the nonexistent Friday will be given full pay for the missed day of labor.

Now that's how you tackle an issue, talk about a progressive government...Just outright eliminate one workday and pay everyone for it anyway...That's my kind of country. Look out Australia, Samoa is moving up the ranks for CW's favorite country in the world, fast (anytime the USA wants to jump in and make this a competitive race, that would be great).

The NFL is Winding Down and the Holidays Are Over: Happy Season Depression Day!

I feel you bud, asked for a Forever Lazy and Received a Drug Rug, We've All Been There

Woke up this morning with the realization that its all down hill from here for the next couple of months, just nothing left to look forward to. My weekends are slowly going to get worse, the Holidays are crappier (nothing against the Good Doctor, MLK, or Lincoln and Washington, but you guys wouldn't even matter if it wasn't for the Pilgrims and Sweet Lil Baby Jesus), and to top it all off, no more random vacation days because you're in the middle of the "4th quarter push," where I basically didn't work a full week from mid-October on because I had days to burn.  

Nope, today is solidly January. The football field has been cut to 12 and will be halved in each sequential week, the holidays are fewer and further between with less celebrating, and I legitimately won't take a vacation day until March Madness and St. Pattys day come around, because lets face it, if you live in the Northeast and aren't a skiier (which I'm not), January and February are an absolute barren waste land. 

 That, right there people is what we're about to give up (no, not the hair, I'm sure that's male pattern baldness, I mean the sheer laziness of NFL Sundays). Ask any domesticated male and they'll tell you, there is no better built in excuse in the world for spending an entire day in a sweatpants and robe/blanket combo than NFL Sundays. They can't be beat. I have no idea why, but women don't even seem to put up a fight when it comes to this ritual. Every other day of the year they'll have no problem nagging you out of your laziness, but for some biological, survival of the species reason, when you move from the bed, plop down on the couch, and simultaneously flip on the pre-game show and crack open your laptop for fantasy monitoring, they know to just let it alone. Serve a snack or two, maybe run some errands or wash some dishes, or just join you watching the game, but really reading some celebrity gossip mag. 

It's a beautiful thing, and it exists no where else in the sports world. Think about it, can you imagine telling your wife/fiancee/live in gf, that you need to spend the next 8-10 hours watching NBA games that in no way involve the home team? Or telling her that all you really want to do is watch the TBS Baseball Triple Header while monitoring your fantasy baseball team? How quickly do you think you'd be divorced? By half time? Your shit out the door by the 7th inning stretch? Speaking of things that exist no where in the sports world....

Uhhh...whats going on here? Where are the guys in t-shirts and sweatpants, reclined back as far as they can in the couch because they're so full from beer, chips, nachos, and hoagies/wings? Granted sometimes I watch in jeans, but why are you wearing buttoned up shirts (douchey ones that highlight chest hair to boot), whats with the nerf football, the visually appealing presentation of those sliders, and the lone mug of beer with no cans or bottles strewn about? I have no idea what the hell these guys are doing, but I can tell you for damn sure they're not watching football. If I had to guess, they're watching some Tyra Banks special and discussing where they get their eyebrows waxed, because these are not real men watching football. Whoever came up with this advertisement presumably was fired.

The 2011 St. Louis Rams, Andrew Luck Consolation Prize

Your season may have been injury riddled and sucky, and your team didn't win the grand suck prize of Andrew Luck, a once in a generation talent, or so we're told. So here's this, a little consolation prize from the good people of Fox, hoping to spread some Holiday cheer, from a buxom cheerleader, ironically named Holly.

The Definitive Alt-Tab Happy New Year's Post

HAPPY NEW YEAR...From two guys who may or may not have been a couple of the Chilean Miners...Bet ya didn't think I had anymore Chilean Miner material left, did ya? It's a New Years Miracle.

In all seriousness though, Happy New Year everyone...and as always, if anyone says "See Ya Next Year" today, you have a one time amnesty pass on smacking them in the face with no repercussions.

2011's Definitive Year in Sports Video Recap

Editors Note: This one's brought to you by the AP, so it really might be "Definitive."

In summary: Rich people arguing with even richer people (NFL and NBA), Packers win, Bruins Win, and Collegiate Assistant Coaches made the Catholic Church look like a bunch of Alter Boys...(What? Bad taste in analogy?)

PS: Click the link to the AP's youtube page where this came from, the second most popular comment, "wheres the womens world cup?" That's cute ladies, thinking women's athletics would be in a "Definitive" 2011 sports recap.