Hey, it’s 2009. My last three attempts to resurrect MLTV turned out to be pretty sad, but you might say that this time I’m resolved to make this recently renewed URL viable once again. If anything, it’s just time to push that pesky photo of Lauren Conrad off the front page.

So the fall season ended up being kind of a stinker, huh? All my sophomore faves stunk it up (promptly leading to their respective cancellations), none of the new series ended up being worth the effort and the real meat and potatoes—the kind of shows that make me swoon for this medium the way I do—were all postponed until January. But now it IS January, so several things demand discussion. Friday Night Lights, Lost, Big Love and Flight of the Conchords all return this month and one show that might be as strong than any of them premieres tonight.

I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t instantly “feel” Damages. Maybe I said something about Glenn Close being distractingly masculine or I could have even compared that dude who won the Emmy to Foghorn Leghorn. Who really remembers? I quickly learned my lesson. And the fact remains that Damages is well-acted, uncomfortably suspenseful and gorgeously shot—if you cut out all the murder, it’d be one hell of a tourism ad for New York.

I haven’t seen the season premiere yet, so it’s a safe bet that I’ll be home tonight by 10. (DVR be damned!) If you find yourself in need of any convincing, simply watch the preview below…or this one… or this one.

The Bad: After the writers’ strike halted production on scripts, FX cut the episode order from 13 down to 7. Their motivations probably fell somewhere between the financial implications of restarting production and a lack of faith in The Riches’ mediocre performance in ratings. So now the show is back, but two episodes in, plot development has yet to really resume. Our characters were scattered, scrambling for an idea of what to do, and only now are they returning home to continue the farce they’ve all grown so attached to. There’s only five episodes left and it’s like the season is just now starting.

(I also still have a pretty big issue with the fact that every character in this series seems well acquainted with the idea of “travelers.” Are white trashy gypsies really that much of an issue in the American South? If so, I’ve been completely oblivious.)

The Good: There probably couldn’t be any greater improvement this season than the 86ing of those mind-boggling cheesy opening titles. (Unless the designer was under the impression that The Riches was about a family of unicorns with a habit of dropping acid, they were just unforgivable.) But that’s a little off topic.

Dahlia/Cherien, still played gloriously by Minnie Driver, is miles away from the bitter ex-con and frequently lapsing junkie we got to know in the first season. She’s taken ownership of her problems and her family. Wayne/Doug, on the other hand, is kind of falling apart. The pressures of maintaining his fake identity are mounting, he’s keeping secrets from everyone, he’s an accessory to a murder and he just buried his third body in less than a year. As for their children, they’re still charming but no more interesting than they were last season. Certainly not as exciting as their adopted grandmother or the wildly complex neighbor, Nina, who’s looks to be taking on a much bigger role this season.

All in all, I’m just happy to have The Riches back. The new season has garnered a lot of positive attention, strong ratings and even a bizarre eBay auction where people put in bids to win a lunch with Minnie Driver and… $100,000. I couldn’t dig up the winner, though I imagine they got it on a bid of less than $100,000. In any case, cheers to them. Five new episodes may not seem like hardly enough, but there will probably be plenty more sooner or later.

The first eight episodes of this past Sunny season were all doubled-up on their Thursday night timeslot. For those of you suffering from a severe math handicap, that’s four hour-long episodes in the beginning, brining the season finale (which took place last week) four weeks early. This stinks on so many levels. Sunny is one of the funniest shows on television. It’s third season was a blessing, and a long overdue one at that, but it came and went to fast it didn’t get anything close to the slow burn it deserved. Amidst new series, and the eternally frustrating first few months of new TV, it was almost completely lost in the hubbub. It’s comedy also doesn’t lend very well to the hour long format – much like The Office – so parts of the season felt a bit more like chores than the tasty TV morsels they would have been standing on their own. If FX is to kindly grant us more Sunny (which seems like an advantageous choice given this season’s ratings), I hope they’ll let us savor it a little more next time around. But I’ll take whatever I can get.

Last week’s episode, “The Gang Dances Their Asses Off,” was as dependably awesome as the rest of this season, but it hardly reached the offensive heights of past season finales (then again, there’ll never be any beating “Charlie Gets Molested”). Charlie signs the bar over to a radio station, so they can give it away to the winner of a dance marathon. The winner of the marathon turns out to be a homeless man who may or may not be returning the bar to Frank, but given Sunny’s disregard for linear storytelling, it will probably never be mentioned again. It should be noted that this, like so many things, was all a result of Charlie’s illiteracy. It also serves as a nice segue into my favorite clip of the season. From “Sweet Dee’s Dating a Retarded Person,” here is Charlie’s performance of “Night Man.” May similar laughs be on the horizon…

The fifth season finds McNamara/Troy (both the practice and the gentlemen) relocated to Los Angeles, with a super fancy office and absolutely no clients to pay for it. A great opportunity to reinvent a fairly stale formula, the new location is filled with a slew of fresh faces including Oliver Platt as a flamboyant producer, Bradley Cooper as a snotty actor, Tia Carrere as a sadistic prostitute and Lauren Hutton as a vampiric publicist. They are all a welcome relief from the folks we were used to seeing in Miami.

The glory in the new season is how fully they’re embracing the change in tone. In the first episode, we see Sean and Christian watching an episode of Hearts N’ Scalpels, a primetime soap as bad as Grey’s Anatomy but with the cringeworthy sex scenes of Nip/Tuck. They mock it mercilessly but end up writing, producing and acting for the show in less than 24-hours. The cast, crew and audience all click with Sean, and Christian finds himself in his partner’s shadow for the first time. He does not handle it well.  Nip/Tuck’s self-deprecation and pitch perfect lampooning of Grey’s is enough to make this necessary viewing. Fresh on the heels of Sunday’s untimely discussion on the integration of “vajayjay” in our TV lexicon, Nip/Tuck has its own spin on the annoying term with Jennifer Coolidge (in a scene from Hearts N’ Scalpels) begging her doctors not to reconstruct her burnt lips with grafts from her “lady cha cha.” If that doesn’t sound funny enough, imagine watching Bradley Cooper, putting on his best McDreamy face, repeat the term over and over. The rest of the season promises more feuding between the surgeons, their own reality show and an appearance by Tiffany Pollard (yes, that Tiffany Pollard). Nip/Tuck is TV’s newest critic and most unlikely asset.

So now that I’m sold on a show that’s five seasons deep, with no desire to watch the old episodes, I’m completely clueless on backstory. I have no idea why Joely Richardson is M.I.A., that kid who looks like Michael Jackson is married and to the sex-doll woman and they have a child. There’s also the small mystery of that little black boy sitting on Christian’s lap. Are single, narcissistic sociopaths really allowed to adopt babies? Hopefully the blanks will fill themselves in.

What we do know (spoiler alert!) is that if they come back, it will be an entirely different program. The Frobisher case is settled, and most of its key players didn’t even live to see last night’s credits. Whether we wanted to believe it or not, James Brown helped confirm that bipolar Patty Hewes was apparently behind it all from the beginning (we should have known when she killed that puppy in the pilot). So what’s on newly free Ellen Parson’s mind is revenge. And the best way to get that revenge? Heading back into the belly of the beast as a government spy to bring Patty down. Damages will be almost completely void of the elements that didn’t float with me now that there’s no room for romantic storylines or disturbing appearances by Ted Danson. After all of that tension, the first season of Damages really just serves as a prologue for an even more complex and satisfying story.

We’re now left with an entirely different kind of gut-twisting anticipation. Michael Ausiello claimed that Damages has been guaranteed an additional 13 episodes, but FX hasn’t let out so much as a peep regarding the fate of the show. If it really is coming back for a second run, it’s probably because the cable net is keen to keep an actress of Glenn Close’s caliber in their pocket. The ratings are abysmal but, then again, so were Dirt‘s, and we haven’t heard the last of that stinker. Fingers crossed that they make the right decision. Patty Hewes is too deliciously evil and confusing of a character to throw away so casually.

Side note: Little poll I’m taking… did any of you actually watch this show?

The second episode marks the first of three odd directorial cameos by former child star Fred Savage. You may have caught him in one of Sunny‘s recent, more obscene, viral promos. Fortunately, the Savage doesn’t make an actual appearance on camera tonight; that honor is left to The Cosby Show’s Elvin (Geoffrey Owens), who, in the greatest role of his illustrious career, plays himself playing a Donovan McNabb impersonator. You can’t make this shit up, but apparently the Sunny writing staff can.

Though not as good as Dumpster Baby, it’s a pretty stand-up episode – as are the first few of the third season. Sunny really shows no sign of slowing or ever failing to make me feel accepted for my inappropriate sense of humor. Check out my full review of the new season over at Metromix.

Season Three of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia premieres Tonight at 10pm on FX

I’d like to take a moment to get personal. Since its launch at the beginning of the year, comedic coverage here at Mikey Likes TV has been limited almost exclusively to How I Met Your Mother and a handful of exceptional premium cable series. And while I do adore Neil Patrick Harris’ implementation of the word “bro” and Bret and Jemaine singing about the similiarites between people and paper dolls (they’re a similar shape), my heart belongs to another.

For the past two years, the brief, sporadic seasons of FX’s It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia have provided me with more pee-your-pants and milk-through-your-nose amusement than anything I’ve ever seen on television. So you can imagine my excitement at this morning’s news that MySpace is hosting a web-exclusive episode to promote Sunny‘s September 13th return to prime time. The episode itself isn’t exceptional, but it does whet the appetite for the 10 glorious half-hours of unabashed obscenity that will soon follow.

Sunny‘s reliance on offensive subject matters is so near and dear to my heart, it’s as if they snuck into my mind and catered each episode to my sick sense of humor. This season’s storylines include babies in dumpsters, sweatshops and promises of love in exchange for drugs – not to mention old standbys like racism and homosexual incest. To make the wait more tolerable, watch the MySpace episode that dissects the anatomy of a serial killer and even boasts a scene of pimp-speak. If that’s still not enough for you, Ducky Does TV has been kind enough to collect all of Sunny’s Apple-inspired advertisements that have been running on FX. September 13th cannot possibly come soon enough.

Something happened in Glenn Close’s life – something frustrating or tragic that pushed her to carve out a career by playing bunny-boilers, puppy-skinners and ball-busters. Of course there have been some light-hearted roles along the way, but she has always been most memorable when her lips are curled and she’s unsuccessfully trying to restrain herself from screaming like a harpie. It was only a matter of time before someone cast her as a lawyer.

Damages premiered on FX last night, and, as promised, Close brought her special brand of gender-defying bastardom to the law drama. The show follows Patty Hewes (Close) and her new protégé Ellen (Rose Byrne) as they navigate the choppy waters of a high-profile, deeply shady trial in New York. From the start, it seems clear that poor Ellen has sold her soul to the devil – not unlike a far less literal version of The Devil’s Advocate. The case itself, a class action suit against one of America’s richest CEOs, is thus far too ambiguous to be compelling. There is a unique suspense though, most of which can be credited to following the silent, discreet rage in Glenn Close’s eyes.

FX chose to saturate almost every scene of the pilot with Close, so most of the supporting cast (and her co-star, Byrne) are still pretty vague. Even so, with the potential for tantrums and her generally menacing air, she is hardly the biggest creep on Damages. There’s a small, sinister Southern man (Zeljko Ivanek), who’d be downright terrifying if his accent was a little more Hannibal Lector and a lot less Foghorn Leghorn. Playing a more unlikely villain is Ted Danson. He wouldn’t be my first choice for, well, pretty much anything, but he’s much better suited to playing an ATV-racing white collar criminal than his standard “whimsical codger.” It’s also nice that we’ve been spared his wife piggybacking on another one of his contracts.

At the end of the day, there are those of us with attentions spans for shows about the law, and there are those of us who lack them. I may be a part of the equally cursed and blessed latter, but Damages is clearly strong enough to soldier on without me. What isn’t clear is how the limited scope of the show could possibly carry it very far. Similar questions have risen with all programs in the recent wave of super-serial drama, but Damages seems particularly vulnerable to cannibalizing itself before running its course. For the sake of whoever at FX is in charge of informing casts when a show gets the axe, I sincerely hope Damages makes a go of it. I would not want to piss off Glenn Close.

The Riches is an interesting case. The premise is smart, but the development is kind of plodding and ludicrous. The acting is amazing, but the writers seem content with giving them just enough good dialogue to get by. And after a really awesome pilot, every episode seemed to fall into the clumsy routine of the Malloys/Riches getting frustrated with their charade and almost almost hitting the road. Things took a darker turn a couple weeks ago, and the storyline gathered a lot of momentum, but at the expense of a lot of whimsy. Dahlia speaking to her children like a schizophrenic would to her cats has been sorely missed since her sobriety.

This seems to be a recurring theme in The Riches. All the elements are there, but never at the same time. A fusion of all of the good stuff is what I want to see in the next season, because by the end of last night’s finale, it seemed like they had kind of run themselves into the ground. Taking the fish out of water is not a television first. But taking the fish out of water, dressing it up like a cat and having two different dogs from the vastly different socioeconomic worlds try tirelessly to out the cat for the opportunistic fish it really is… while innovative, is also very confusing. Conflict seems to come from too many directions on The Riches, and that’s why nothing seems to blend.

That is not say that they’re renewal is anything but deserved. All faults aside, The Riches is the best new show of 2007. It explores class in America from a perspective most people don’t even realize exists, and their subtle introduction of a transgender middleschooler, while confusing, is something you won’t see anywhere else. And even if The Riches were completely horrible, it would still be worth watching just to see Eddie Izzard every week. With the passing of Veronica Mars, he easily takes Enrico Colantoni’s crown as the greatest TV dad.

FX’s scheduling is a mystery wrapped in an enigma, so look for the second season of The Riches sometime in the next decade.

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