*** SPOILERS INCLUDED *** This episode starts out strong with a fun exchange between Dwight and Jim regarding tardiness. Jim, as usual, one ups Dwight in the end.

The start of "The Office" day is interrupted when Phyllis arrives at work upset, having been "flashed" by someone. This becomes the center topic of the episode. And while Michael’s response is Michaelish, on this occasion his reaction seems to stretch creditability. Yes, I understand that is part of the fun, but it is always a tightrope.

I enjoy inappropriateness, but for it to work (IMO) it needs to feel authentic and not shtick. Consider "The Larry Sanders Show", "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and "The Office UK" as masters of this art. When this show feels like it is trying hard for a laugh it usually loses me. It makes me suspend my disbelief that this could be any office, which is when it is most fun.

We ARE treated to some good lines. For example, Creed wonders what all the fuss is about "hanging brain". Michael loses his faux-erection when Toby arrives to work, further demonstrating the tension that exists between them.

As the episode progresses, the Michael-Jan relationship is examined and leads to some fun bits. Jan willing to pay Michael to visit (aka: provide sex) which is funny, although it seems a stretch that she would have her male assistant on the phone when asking Michael this. Again, that seems too heavy handed. Having the assistant inadvertently on would be funnier and more convincing.

During this time, Dwight still has penis on the brain," looking for things to do to reduce these occurrences in the future: setting up an anti-flashing task force, removing bananas from the break room, requesting the women to dress more demure. And when Pam comes up with a sketch of the flasher to distribute, it is looking uncannily like Dwight (but with a mustache and sans glasses). Dwight is oblivious of this semblance and proceeds to post them with vigor (with the sly and devious help of arch-enemy Andy).

After the office women (plus Michael) have an outing to the mall (including a Kelly Kapoor rushing into Victoria’s Secret on Michael offer for free shopping), Michael realizes he need to break up with Jan. This breakup carelessly occurs both in person and over the phone. The opportunity for emotional impact and/or humor seems squandered, and the moment is ultimately unfulfilling. Hopefully this will be better explored in the remaining episodes this season.

In the end I judge a show like "The Office" it by how much I laugh out loud, how much I snicker and how engaged I am. It did a fair job, but not as much as the best it can offer. Overall there is much to enjoy, but a few drop balls keeps this from being on the "Classics" list for me.

QUALIFICATION: My scores, while general, are biased toward the TV series they are part of, i.e., it is unfair to consider a Reality Show’s "10" to be as good as the best drama [add your favorite show] "10".

In this penultimate episode of the 11th Season, the remaining teams pretty much get a pass on the tough navigation/language barrier issues that usually accompany a race leg. Instead the teams are treated to some fairly straight-forward challenges on the warm island of Guam. The good thing is that these challenges are interesting, albeit not as fun as my all-time, wish-I-got-to-do-it ARMY TANK driving in Season 10!

We were treated to some humor, courtesy of Charla and Mirna, joking around that the “blonde” beauty queens don’t know how to use the Internet. Perhaps not surprisingly the other blonde Danielle seemed to have the issues with the GPS device to locate a hidden soldier in the second challenge -- not that Charla faired much better. Overall the challenges were straight-forward and didn’t provide much opportunity for Oswald and Danny to make up time lost in the previous leg.

*** SPOILER *** In the end we lost Oswald and Danny, which is unfortunate since they were my favorite of the remaining teams. But the good news is we are at the Final Three with only the final episode to a winner! Good luck all. I don't have an immediate favorite but I'll have to come up with one before Sunday.

QUALIFICATION: My scores, while general, are biased toward the TV series they are part of, i.e., it is unfair to consider a Reality Show’s “10” to be as good as the best drama's (add your favorite show) “10”.

STORY: On “beaming down” to a planet believed to be deserted, Kirk, Spock and McCoy discover a library with a card catalog of “portals” into the planets past history. Everyone on the planet, sans the librarian Atok, have been sent into a time period in the past to save themselves from the planet’s imminent destruction due to it’s local sun’s explosion. The crew, in a hasty moment, walk into the portals to arrive at two different time periods in the planets history with limited time to return to the library (and the Enterprise) before the planet is destroyed.

ACTING: The acting is quite good all around with the standard dramatic flairs. Kirk does a little sword fighting. Spock succumbs to emotion (due to going back far enough that the period on his planet Vulcan was still barbaric) and is courted by a well played Zarabeth. Zarabeth has been banished alone to a cold tundra and spends much of the time hoping/wanting Spock to stay. It is interesting that Spock devolves to a much more savage state than McCoy but no explanation is given. The actor playing Atoz also does a fine job.

SETTING: The set design is very good for the show, in particular the cave. Interestingly the past portal “cards” in the library look a lot like thick, metal CDs of today (although they hold both data and have a viewer built in the disc).

TIDBITS: The woman Kirk saves in his medieval-ish time says “he’s a witch, they’ll burn ya”. It gave me a smile when I thought about Monty Python’s movie “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” when a similar line is uttered.

ISSUES: Some common clichés I could do without: more distracting today that originally, having the violins play every time a man saves a woman and looks are her doesn’t hold up well; and once again, the crew tries to phaser a boulder for heat (I wonder how many episodes they did that); who needs the Vulcan nerve pinch when you can karate chop a guy out – as Kirk does – with a single hit, ouch; and McCoy, who can you keep touching those extremely cold mountain boulders with your bare hands. Burrrrrr.

DISCLAIMER: My scores, while general, are biased toward the TV series they are part of, i.e., it is unfair to consider a Reality Show’s “10” to be as good as the best drama's (add your favorite show) “10”.

For this series to be entertaining and watchable today (somewhat like Star Trek TOS), episodes that don't have specifically dated/cliché items work best. So please no three-eyed dancing women at the Space Bar.

When watching this episode I was able to keep with the story, despite the early Starbuck two-women on one date item. I actually found it entertaining and like the new Battlestar series, dealt a little with the reality of a black market created by the war (i.e., there is a long waiting list to get a nice dinner and some privileges can be bought for the right price).

The focus of the episode is sending Starbuck out in a scout ship to survey the space ahead. As mentioned by tmkreutzer in his review, the fighter is lacking weapons to improve its speed.

After an event that has Starbuck losing his vehicle to another humanoid, he ends up in a prison on a planet that has been cutoff from the main colonies for generations. The prisoners are now part of a chaste system: inheriting the prison time of their parents and their parents. They actually stay behind bars that don't lock! The prisoners are kept busy by creating the alcoholic drink ambrosia which they themselves drink in prison. Ironically most of the drink they produce is unused and sitting on the docks, unbeknownst to the prisoners, since the penal planet has lost contact with the other colonies. While it is unclear how much the leaders of the planet are aware of the outside world, they clearly know there are no cargo ships coming and hide that knowledge from the prisoner-class to ensure the hierarchy.

It is only when Starbuck tell the prisoners their ambrosia is just sitting on the docks that the prisoners walk out of their unlocked prison. The chaste concept is interesting and would have made a interesting and meaningful story, but it fails to really have impact. But there is one interesting thing revealed when Starbuck is rescued by Apollo and Boomer: Starbuck sees an old picture on the wall of the prison that Adama recognizes as the solar system that contains Earth, giving them both hope and a better sense of the configuration of the system (presumably to better help them locate and identify it).