The Week in TV

One thing we learned on TV this week: never trust a white guy. This season's Survivor, which started out divvying up tribe on the basis of race, quickly showed the gimmick to be insubstantial when the tribes mixed after two weeks and new alliances formed. One alliance in particular looked strong: two of the Asians allied with two of the Caucasians.

This week, we discovered that the two Caucasians, Jonathan and Candice, were merely biding their time until the merge, when they could ally with the other white folks again. And when they got the chance to jump ship and join the other tribe, they leaped for it. Bad move: now neither side trusts them.

Meanwhile, on Heroes, we have a noble Indian scientist searching for clues to his father's death, a Japanese man searching for the hero within himself, a black man wrongly convicted of a crime he did not commit and his genius, half-black son...

And a whole bunch of nasty white folks: a schizo woman who is a stripper on one side and a murderer and thief on the other, a corrupt politician, a heroin addict, a wife cheating on her cop husband with his partner, a suicidal cheerleader, her potential boyfriend/would-be rapist, and her upstanding dad, who is the head of a secret conspiracy. Oh yeah, and a super-powered serial killer who eats the brains of his victims. There are a couple of minor henchmen characters of other races, and a few decent white folks, but we can see which way the wind is blowing.

Studio 60 was pretty good this week. The behind-the-scenes part of the show is still funnier than any of the skits, although at least this week, they only showed the skit in rehearsal and acknowledged it wasn't that funy. One good thing: John Goodman guest-starred. One bad thing: he doesn't look healthy.

What else? Supernatural did some stunt-casting this week, with Linda Blair playing a cop investigating the Winchester boys. It was the weakest episode of the season as far as I'm concerned, which means it wasn't bad, because the show has been surprisingly good. But Blair is just not a strong actress. If it weren't for her famous face from a movie she made when she was 12 (?), she wouldn't get any work at all nowadays.

And Smallville keeps inching toward the Justice League, which is about the only reason to keep watching, because otherwise this season is pretty damn dull.