Since I had a few minutes before we go to dinner, though, I thought I’d try to get together a list of shows I plan on watching next week. Along, of course, with all those shows I have waiting for me from this week.

Both Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Fringe start up this week, on Monday and Tuesday, respectively. I’m not sure if I plan on watching Sarah Connor this year. I might give it another chance. I just want for it to be good and it wasn’t. I’m super excited about Fringe, and I hope that it doesn’t let me down.

Wednesday brings us the third season opener of Til Death (at 9:00 pm ET on FOX), followed by the premiere of Do Not Disturb (9:30 pm ET). Those appear to be the only two sitcoms starting this week, which is probably good, since I’ll have my hands full watching all of this weeks shows, too, and trying to blog a little about them.

I also have a couple of things I wanted to blog about from last week, like I watched through all of Arrested Development and I wanted to share, but I ran out of time before vacation.

So keep checking back here, hopefully, I’ll have a lot to share with you soon.

No we’ve really been kind of busy this year. See, my entire family - like a dozen plus of us - rents this cottage at the beach every year for a week. Mostly, we sit on the beach or play in the water, and then we eat. A lot. Its like deciding that you’re just gonna gain as much weight as possible in one week. You’d be surprised how much you can gain in that time, if you really put your mind to it.

In any case, I usually don’t have any Internet access while I’m here, and generally not any cell phone signal either. This year my cell phone sometimes has a signal, but even better, they put in wireless Internet access. I did the dance of joy when I saw it, cause I hate being so cut off from everything for a week. I mean, how can I follow up with all my obsessions if there’s no computer? I remember last year I was trying to do some work from here and I really couldn’t even check my email cause the dial up connection didn’t have the oompf.

I guess this year I have the option of doing more Internet-wise (although the connection is a little bit dicey at times), but I’ve been doing a lot more vacationy things. Mostly spending all day at the beach - you should see my tan - and also the aforementioned eating, but we went to the zoo the other day, last night we went to this little community fair and listened to a blue grass band, this morning we are going on a twin-engine plane ride up and down the coast, and there’s some talk of a boat ride later. Or possibly shopping. All good, clean fun.

So if you don’t hear from me again until next week, its not cause I don’t love you all, its cause I’m busy doing nothing, but I’ll catch up with you and all the new stuff on TV next week.

One new comedy is Gary Unmarried, which premieres on Wednesday, September 24 at 8:30 pm ET.  The show stars Jay Mohr and Paula Marshall.  Gary Barnes is a recently single painting contractor, who, after 15 years of marriage to his controlling wife, Allison, now faces post-divorce life as they each embark on new relationships and share custody of their two children, played by Laura Marano and Ryan Malgarini.

Worst Week premieres on Monday, September 22, 2008 at 9:30 pm ET.  This comedy is about Sam Briggs (played by Kyle Bornheimer), an entertainment magazine editor who constantly manages to mess up whenever he is around girlfriend, Melanie’s (Erinn Hayes) parents, the people he most wants to impress.  Now Sam and Mel have to break some news to her conservative parents, played by Kurtwood Smith and Nancy Lenehan.  They are planning their wedding and . . . they have a baby on the way.

The sitcoms that are coming back to CBS this Fall are The Big Bang Theory (returning Monday, September 22, 2008 at 8:00 pm ET, yay!), How I Met Your Mother (Monday, September 22, 2008 at 8:30 pm ET), Two and a Half Men (Monday, September 22, 2008 at 9:00 pm ET), and The New Adventures of Old Christine (Wednesday, September 24 at 8:00 pm ET).

Anyway, I did find out some stuff about new sitcoms on NBC and I can only find one. I did see references to several other new shows, however, and some new shows coming in 2009, but I’m not concerned with those right now.

So, the only new sitcom I saw this Fall for NBC was Kath and Kim which premieres on Thursday, October 9, 2008, at 8:30 pm ET. This is based on an Australian comedy of the same name. In our version, Kath (played by Molly Shannon) is sexy divorced mom to Kim (Selma Blair). Kim, also recently separated from her husband, returns home hoping to go back to being the spoiled princess she was growing up. Mom has no interest in that, as she is finally finding time for herself.

Maybe this will be funny, but I’m not a big fan of Molly Shannon. I might give it a chance. We’ll see.

As for returning sitcoms, there is 30 Rock (back on Thursday 10/30 at 9:30 pm ET), The Office (Thursday 9/25 at 9:00 pm ET) and My Name is Earl (Thursday 9/25 at 8:00 pm ET).

Honestly, there was no chemistry between the leads at all, and the movie had little, if anything, that was funny about it. Catherine Zeta Jones is beautiful, but her slight accent was getting on my nerves, and she barely had any expression on her face throughout the entire movie. Abigail Breslin, as the little girl was adorable - when she cried, I cried - but I thought they might have used someone a little bit younger in the role. I’m not sure why I feel that way, it just seemed like she should have been younger somehow. Aaron Eckhart seemed like he might be good, he gave me hope that the movie might pick up, but it didn’t. The movie was filled with long, dull silences or swelling opera music. I’m not anti-opera, but I would have preferred them to spend that time letting us get to know the characters, who were all stiff and underdeveloped. In spite of a great cast, great supporting cast and a heart warming storyline, the movie didn’t work. It just plodded along and never really took off.

I was really disappointed in this movie. The whole time I watched it I kept thinking of how much better it could have been.

By the way, for other movie reviews, check out Movie Review Report.

In any case, guess how many sitcoms, new and old, ABC has on their Fall schedule. One. Yes, that’s right, only one. It’s a returning sitcom, too, Samantha Who, which airs Monday nights at 9:30 pm. Apparently, they are so afraid of what happened last year that they aren’t even going to propose anything new this year. I’m guessing they feel that they have to make up for Carpoolers and Cavemen. As they should.

In reviewing ABC’s Fall schedule, though, I noticed something weird. There are big empty gaps in the 10 pm hour on both Wednesday and Thursday. Maybe they are saving those for something good. Its doubtful they would be sitcoms, though, since sitcoms are usually considered family fare and are on earlier in the night.

The only new show I saw on their schedule, at all, was called Opportunity Knocks. It’s another Ashton Kutcher thing (I believe he plans to complete take over TV) about a game show that comes to you. Really.

Honestly, I wonder if the strike has anything to do with why ABC has no new shows this year. Or maybe they were just having a banner year and feel like they already have a pretty tight schedule. I guess it could be one of those reasons, or maybe something completely different. Maybe they plan on putting new shows into those two blank hours, but they don’t want anyone to know about them. But that’s probably not true. I can say that I hardly ever, ever watch any of the shows on ABC myself, whatever that means.

All but one of the remaining comedies on FOX are also cartoon comedies, Family Guy, King of the Hill, and The Simpsons.

The only returning sitcom is Til Death.  For some reason, I never could get into this show.  I remember watching the first ep, eagerly, expecting a lot.  We were actually on vacation at the time, and I stopped what I was doing to see it.  I was pretty disappointed and I really never went back.  Oh, I’ve caught bits of different eps, here and there, but I just don’t get it.  Maybe I expected Robert from Everybody Loves Raymond.  I don’t know.

So along with Outnumbered and Do Not Disturb, this is all FOX has to offer by way of sitcoms this year.  Apparently, FOX, a network that I’ve mentioned many times before loves to kill off shows, is now planning to kill of the sitcom.

I guess I should give in and just accept that cartoons are also sitcoms, but I just can’t.  First of all, I think cartoons are stupid.  I just do.  Years and years ago, I used to read Life in Hell by Matt Groening, and I loved it.  I never could get The Simpsons, though.  It always seemed so whiny and self-indulgent to me.  I know people are gonna attack me for that opinion, but its just what I think.

So FOX is delivering us a slate of cartoons, which, from my point of view, clearly shows the dumbing down of America.

Sarcoidosis is an inflammatory lung disease and in the same family with connective tissue disorders. I read that his publicist said Bernie’s death was unrelated to the sarcoidosis, which had been in remission since 2006, but I’m not sure I believe that. It just seems that too big a coincidence to me that someone who has sarcoidosis, would then get pneumonia and die at 50, without the sarcoidosis being a factor. One of the reasons that it stuck out in my mind at all, is because connective tissue disorders is one of the many random not-quite-diagnoses that the many doctors I’ve been seeing has thrown out at me. Nothing is proven yet, and probably never will be, but it just made me think.

Bernie Mac, born as Bernard Jeffrey McCullough, started out as a stand up comedian, who won the Miller Lite Comedy Search when he was 32 years old. He went on from there, through the 1990’s to perform in comedy shows and movies. In 2001, he starred in The Bernie Mac Show on FOX, which was based, somewhat loosely, on his real life. It was a pretty funny show, wherein he and his wife take in his sister’s three children when she enters rehab. Along with the standard sitcom story lines, Bernie was also able to address the audience directly, breaking the “fourth wall.” The show itself won awards, which is probably why FOX failed to renew the show after the 2006 season. In case you can’t tell, that’s me being sarcastic. If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you’ve probably heard me rant about how FOX kills off shows before their time. So I won’t do that here.

I just wanted to say goodbye to Bernie Mac, a great comedian and actor, who died way too young.

So there’s and upside and a downside. The downside is that you have to go through a couple of links to get to the show and also, if you aren’t careful, you might click on something that ends up showing you something you don’t want to see, like porno. Or maybe you do want to, but that’s between you and your computer. It wasn’t actually porno, but one time I ended up at a site for local dating, with pics of scantily clad chicks. But these were just average people and it was kind of scary. Another downside, is that since the shows are linking back, they have to buffer for you to see them. A couple of the shows I watched buffered every few seconds, although a couple didn’t hardly buffer at all, so for the slow ones, I just paused them and walked away for a while until they were all loaded and then I watched them. Some of the shows also had foreign language subtitles, too; I saw both Chinese and Russian.

But now for the upside. There is a huge, huge selection of both TV shows and movies, kids shows, anime, and other stuff. I’m pretty excited, cause there were lots of shows there I’ve been wanting to see that aren’t at hulu, so that’s really cool. I even saw some movies that are still in theaters, but I’m not saying anything.

One other thing is that the site works better if you use Firefox rather than Internet Explorer. I’m not sure why that is, exactly, but if you don’t have Firefox as a browser, I’d suggest downloading it, even if you just use it to view the shows on this site.

Outnumbered is a family sitcom, which is described as a “a fresh and hilarious approach” to the sitcom. The description on the FOX site mentions both Curb Your Enthusiasm and Malcolm in the Middle, as similar shows for one reason or another. Apparently, the adult dialogue is scripted but the children’s is not. This is very confusing to me, cause it seems like scripting the children and allowing the adults to improvise makes more sense, like The Cosby Show. But whatever.

Outnumbered, based on a hit British show of the same name, stars Greg (Ken Marino) and Jenna (Brooke Bloom), who have three children, 6-year-old diva Lily (Alina Foley), 7-year-old con-artist Jack (Aidan Potter), and pre-teen Kyle (Ridge Canipe). Greg and Jenna also stars Beth Dover, as Tanya, Jenna’s new agey sister, and Bill English as Eddie, Greg’s fast-talking salesman brother.

I watched the video clip at the site and I wouldn’t call it hilarious, but it was a little amusing. I do love Ken Marino, though, so I’m definitely gonna give this one a shot. The only problem I found is that I can’t find out when the show is airing. None of the sites I checked mentioned it or showed when it aired. But I’ll keep looking and let you know when I find out.