My Four Favorite Words: Worst Super Heroes Ever? or Let The Aliens Takeover?

Chuck - Chuck Versus the Sizzling Shrimp Ep 105 - Super
Hereos - Fight or Flight Ep 205 - Worst
How I Met Your Mother - How I Met Everyone Else Ep 305 - Super (finally again)
Aliens in America - The Metamorphosis Ep 104 - Super Duper!
Samantha Who? - The Job Ep 102 - Super

What did we learn this week?

- When in trouble/amongst geeks, USE THE "SAFE" WORD... shhh... (Aliens in America)
- too-much-tongue-guy and incredibly-small-mouth-girl are, uh, the "Worst Super Heroes Ever". (How I Met Your Mother)
- Kristen Bell makes the best detective ever and always looks good in a car on a cell phone on the lookout... but even she can do so much with lame lines and a boring plot. Where is Rob Thomas when you need him? (Heroes)
- Alums from good shoes (Veronica Mars alums Kristen Bell on Heroes and Adam Rose (Max) on Aliens in America ) and bad shows (What About Brian alums Sarah Lancaster on Chuck and Barry Watson on Samantha Who?) can still be awesome.
- Apparently there are only 4 Asian actors in Hollywood because it's the same 4 people that keep getting the guest spots (Joy Osmanski (so brilliant in The Loop) as Sam's poor secretary on Samantha Who?, that old chinese guy James Hong that always plays the old chinese guy in EVERYTHING on Chuck, Gwendolyn Yeo (Desperate Housewives) as the chinese spy on her personal mission to save her brother on Chuck, Julia Ling (Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip) as the Nerd Herd's female component on Chuck). Apparently Chuck is the only show to do well in Asian representation. You would think it should be ER or something.
- "My four favorite words": Chuck Is Super Awesome (though not as awesome as Captain Awesome but can anybody be?)

So Kristen Bell joins the cast of Heroes! Finally! She has powers! She has electricity running through her! Kristen Bell is AWESOME!

Kristen Bell isn't enough to save the suckage that has become of Heroes. She's awesome, but everything around her was still very hokey. She deserves better.

Wow. Is it bad when the only points of interest was seeing Kristen Bell and pretending it was just Veronica Mars the sequel (especially when she was in the car on the cell phone) and when Monica Dawson (Dana Davis) discovers her powers, and adds a bright spot missing while Claire is off the screen. Even the sight of Masi Oka wasn't enough to save this episode as he sent messages from the past to Ando.

There was some whole ridiculous fight with clean shaven Nathan Petrelli and ugly scared Petrelli, and Matt Parkman against the Haitian until they wind-up fighting each other somehow. Oh and Peter rolls back his eyes like Isaac used to and freaks his new girlfriend out. More people get the sign to be killed... yada yada... why wasn't Kristen Bell in the show longer?

I will also admit that the spy plot in Chuck wasn't the greatest either, and it's not always a great sign when the B-plot involves more of annoying Morgan but as Chuck finds himself lying to his sister and friend as he's taken away by Sarah and Casey on a stakeout, he gets the case of bad time management. Chuck and Sarah are supposed to celebrate "Mothers Day" (in the fall) and while it seems odd that Ellie would be so persistent that Chuck show up, it's all nicely explained at the end by one quick explanation that "Mothers Day" was the day when their mother left leaving them with a useless father and that was the day when the brother and sister learned to rely on themselves. It was such an awww moment that it forgave the slightly weaker stakeout plot and somehow even redeemed Morgan (though his nicety to the customer during the sales competition moved Morgan up a notch as well).

How I Met Your Mother finally redeems itself with this seasons so-so year when the gang is alltogether at the bar and meets Ted's date BlahBlah (future Ted can't remember her name) who he met on the internet (which they show at the end!!!). Except she had some story to cover that up, but in doing so, points out to Barney that she's crazier than hot on the Crazy/Hot scale. Lily and Marshall re-tell their first meeting, now perfected to a performance, Ted reveals how HE first met Lily, Barney retells how he first met Ted and Marshall, and we remember why we loved this show so much in the first place. Plus the Crazy/Hot chart was very educational in its demonstration. The "sandwiches" were a nice touch.

Samantha Who? finds Sam going back to work, trying to figure out what she does, realises she was a crazy ass mean boss (who makes her secretary start her apple off with a bite), was deathly afraid of elevators, worked for an unethical developer (aren't they all?), and was planning on getting a boob job. It's strange that this show is paired up with Dancing with the Stars and while I'm sure the lead in helps it with the ratings, it seems like it would have been more suited with Denis Leary's defunct The Job or Arrested Development or even Notes from the Underbelly (which was so tragically underrated). Jean Smart is wicked funny as Sam's mom, who tries to make the connection with Sam despite being the typical nagging annoying mom (which is their jobs though, but someone like old-Sam would have had none of it).

Another wicked-funny mom was Amy Pietz in last nights funniest show, Aliens in America. Since last week when it really hit its stride, it's becoming more and more a favorite and while I'll hold off one more week to see if this trend can continue, this show will probably move to my 4 or 5 star category (and thus highlighted in red on my sidebar. Yes it's a big deal because I'm lazy at changing the codes so you KNOW it must mean something. Meanwhile, Heroes may just get downgraded finally (I was holding off until Kristen Bell showed up but her 3 scenes only convinced me that Dawn Ostroff is a complete moron for cancelling Veronica Mars). Alas, I must give Ostroff a few points though for Aliens in America, where last night, Justin's old girlfriend from kindergarden, now the popular girl, somehow gets convinced by Raja to become the smart girl and they all start hanging out. Claire joins the cool group, replacing Justin's new friend position in the hierarchy of school, and finds out that those cool parties she's been missing, were kinda gay (the guys wrestling shirtless was a riot and Claire's reaction was priceless).

Gary gets dolled up (and oranged up) for work to impress the boss, as Fran shifts her energies when Justin rejects her wardrobe choices. Justin, now convinced his new girl friend loves him back, and Raja is just so honest and simple and into his education (computers really DO rock!) that you just want to squeeze Adhir Kalyan who plays him so lovingly.