No new shows this week,

Dexter:
Review is located here. Solid episode with some great moments that was spoiled by tv.com's unwise release of news from future episodes without a spoiler warning.

Family Guy:
Eh, some weeks Family Guy is great, some weeks it's not. This was a not week for me. I was amused by the continuous repetition of The Trashmen's "Surfin' Bird" but that's about it. No doubt the various videos of it on YouTube will double in hits from people with it stuck in their head. Don't you know, about the bird?

American Dad:
American Dad on the other hand was rather amusing with a tale of not very mystery and obvious suspense. But then again you don't expect depth and unexpected twists in a cartoon like that, so the obvious nature of the plot was fine. The King Klaus joke was very good.

Life:
Episodes 2 and 3 are reviewed here. Short version is the second episode is bad, third episode great.

How I Met Your Mother:
A reasonable episode with some good moments, but nothing majorly special. I've never understood the New Jersey hating from Manhattan so it was hard to click with this one. The Barney moments were still great and Robin had a couple of zingers also.

Boston Legal:
There are two cases this week that focus on some of the core traits of Denny and Alan, guns and sexism. True these are pretty old topics for the show, but it's delivered in a fantastic way, the "Boom" interplay between John and Bill in the courtroom is nothing short of hilarious but it's capped by Henry Gibson (who's always fun as Judge Brown) yelling at them. Nice touches in this episode with Alan being cut off while ranting and Denny failing to fail, thus failing to get what he wanted. It's good to occasionally have things switched up, even a little.

The Shield:
That's over here. Short version, un-freaking-believable. But could you really expect anything less?

The Office:
Office (USA) how I love you oh-so much with your tackling Michael Scott and the doubling up of Holly and Michael's terrible matched sense of humour. Michael is just incapable of giving up anything when it comes to heading up a discussion, even when he's desperate to forge a connection with Holly he still can't help spoiling her presentation . Jim's back to antagonising Dwight, this time about his time wasting - I really can't get enough of those two going at each other and this weeks was gold. Battlestar Galactica will now forever be, the story of Dumbledore Calrissian and his journey returning the ring back to Mordor. But Jim's monitoring of Dwight's activities has put him closer to spotting that Dwight is carrying on an affair with Angela.

The scene where Holly gets a dressing down from HR is a great little callback/parallel to all the ones Michael used to get from Jan.

Supernatural:
"What can change the nature of a man?"
Dean confronts Sam about his abilities and his intimate relationship with Ruby. The episode has the lads dealing with a man who's suffering from a parallel condition to Sam's own one - eventually the man will turn into a flesh craving cannibal. Dean wants to end him while Sam wishes to give the man a chance to redeem himself. By the end of the episode he's driven to become the monster, unable to resist when another hunter threatens his pregnant wife and Sam is forced to destroy him. As a result of this Sam agrees to stop using his demonic abilities. For now at least.

My Name is Earl:
This week we learn that the first amendment is about the freedom to talk with firearms, memento makes for mildly amusing comedy and giant prosthetic asses stop being funny when you get older. Pretty standard fair for the show, nothing spectacular - just fun.

In the land of DVDs I finished watching season five of That 70s Show and I picked up the complete West Wing for an absolute steal so I've just started watching it. I missed it when it was first out but I really enjoyed watching Studio 60 so I decided to take the plunge. I'm rather glad I did, the stirring music during speeches irritates me somewhat as I hate it when shows try to manipulate your feelings with their musical score, but that's a minor gripe at best and the rest of the show is superb. Seriously, if you have a spare £50 and half an interest in it there's 114hours of programming (plus extras) there and it's been great so far.

I also forgot to watch Heroes this week, but I heard/read it was a fun episode.

I'm thinking about picking up 'Sons of Anarchy' to watch as well because it sounds like it's getting good. Anyone had any experience watching it?

Come back tomorrow for the first of the Watching the Wire series, you might want to watch/rewatch the first episode in preparation. You'll be able to correct me if I got anything wrong and earn some Wire geekery points in the process, or something.