American Idol is my TV guilty pleasure and I'm thrilled to have it back. After a pretty dull season last year, this episode made it easy to remember why I love this show (especially the auditions!) - bitter, entitled wannabes, sweetly sincere oblivious train wrecks, the occasional side-show act, and my favorite - no-talents who somehow think that their own judgment is far more valid than that of three seasoned industry professionals.

Some highlights:

1) An angry Pat Benatar-wannabe who, after being very gently turned down by Simon and pals went on a lengthy tirade which concluded with her deciding that she was going to show them by becoming an actress.
2) The finance manager who brought music into the workplace by kicking off meetings with his own version of an MC Hammer dance number (think the Comic Relief episode of the British version of The Office).

Many more, but I'm too tired to type out more...maybe later.

I am a fan of crime dramas, but found The Inside extremely disappointing. To be fair, I may be spoiled by Criminal Minds, but stacked up next to the latter, I found The Inside shallow and unsophisticated, with uninteresting characters and boring cases. Actual profiling is usually nonexistent and when present at all mostly meaningless nonsense. Even worse, especially for a crime drama, I found outcomes extremely predictable (maybe because of my "training" from Criminal Minds.

If you enjoyed The Inside at all, I strongly recommend you try out Criminal Minds. Even with the recent departure of Mandy Patinkin, it has far more to offer than The Inside.

American Gladiators is back! I remember watching this show when I was a kid and it's exactly the same - Lowest-common-denominator fun. There is absolutely nothing redeeming about it, but I'm going to watch it anyway.

I do have a couple of criticisms. 1) Laila Ali and Hulk Hogan are kind of boring. 2) The voice-over (I'm not sure that's the proper term) seems to be dubbed in afterwards and adds almost nothing.

In terms of the events, there's been some updating but the old favorites are still there. Assault, which was always my favorite, looks like it needs to be tweaked a bit; every contender seems to have trouble with the mechanics of the different stations and the gladiator's cannon seems to be too quick to allow the contenders to get very far. Earthquake (a new one) seems kind of pointless. The Eliminator seems difficult enough that previous events (the cumulative scores of which are used to determine a lead time for the leading scorer) are all kind of pointless (except perhaps in draining contenders' stamina). I'm also not sure why they removed the final element of chance from the Eliminator (where you had to choose two paths to break through, one of which hid a gladiator).

The show seems to mostly treat its audience as intelligent, but sometimes switches to patronizing. Some decent treatment of adolescent issues, but can't seem to find its focus.

Not much originality - shadowy cabal pulling the strings, probable double-crosses, secrets lurking around every corner, etc.

It will be interesting to see where the show goes; will Kyle and his abilities be let loose? will the cabal become a major presence or is it out of the picture? will the Tragers become less "setting" and more dynamic characters?

The truth is, Kyle XY is not really made for me; I imagine that teenagers would probably find a lot to love about it.