Fresh from his front-page profile in The New York Times, Fox News Channel wonder-boy Glenn Beck really revved it up on his late-afternoon live show today. He spent his first segment unfurling a bloody metaphor for President Obama’s economic policy. Asking his audience if it had seen the movie Twilight, he said it was about vampires, and “once they get their fangs in the neck, they can’t stop sucking.” He then showed a Twilight movie poster… but altered, with Obama’s face pasted over that of star Robert Pattinson as the vamp Edward Cullen.

“The government is full of vampires suck[ing] the life-blood out of the American economy!” said the excitable Beck. (I’ve seen him tear up on camera, as the Times piece mentions he does on occasion, but today he held back the flow. Maybe because he also said this afternoon he was going to tell us of further outrages that would cause “blood [to] shoot directly out of your eyes!” Perhaps he thought his own peepers would start brimming with crimson if he cried today.)

Beck is certainly a hoot. He’s really good at making you feel he’s speaking directly to you, the hallmark of an effective communicator.

But Obama as a brooding vampire? Well, Beck does subtitle his show, “The Fusion of Entertainment and Enlightenment,” so it must be true, right?

Do you watch Glenn Beck? Have any opinions about him?

Last night on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, the always-bowling-for-a-strike host tried a new stunt: an online petition for a Saved By The Bell 20-year cast reunion on his show. He brought out a clammily enthusiastic Mr. Belding (Dennis Haskins), and together they implored Tifanni Thiesson, Dustin Diamond, and the rest of the cast of that lousy but nostalgia-beloved sitcom to get back together.

Me, I thought this was Fallon at his lamest. He was trying to do something new, but it felt like a bit Conan O’Brien would have done ten years ago, only funnier. On the other hand, I wouldn’t be surprised if the reunion comes off; if he gets Elizabeth Berkley to agree, the rest will probably fall into line.

What do you think? Will you sign the petition? Or just switch over to Craig Ferguson?

It was a great week for mixing humor and fantasy on both Dollhouse and Supernatural. Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse continued its now-rapidly-accelerating revealing of the origins of Eliza Dushku’s Echo/Caroline, while Eric Kripke’s Supernatural offered a sort of alternate-universe tale of Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles) as office workers fated to meet.

Dollhouse is leading up to next week’s do-not-miss episode which Fox is promoting as an “event”: “Dollhouse: The Awakening.” In the meantime, we got glimpses of doll Echo’s real identity, Caroline, with flashbacks to the deal she struck with Dollhouse dominatrix (as I like to think of her) Adelle DeWitt. But the main plot was a corker about a drug that infected all the major players, turning them into, in DeWitt’s phrase, “idiot children.” It gave this diverse cast a chance to show new sides of themselves. The result was both funny (Topher: “You haven’t seen my drawer of inappropriate starches?”) and revealing. Like I said, don’t miss next week.

Meanwhile, on Thursday’s Supernatural, in an episode called “It’s a Terrible Life,” the Winchester brothers weren’t… brothers. Dean was a prim businessman and Sam was a dorky IT drone laboring in the same office building, which of course just happened to be haunted. The episode was a beautifully sustained fantasy in which the two are strangers to each other, brought together by a series of bizarre deaths occurring in the office. (I keep trying to forget that image of the guy microwaving his head.)

There was a very amusing show-within-the-show, Ghostfacers, which instructed the duo in how to kill ghosts. Once the prim-Dean and dork-Sam got into it, it was, as Sam said, “like we’ve done this before.”

Both Dollhouse and Supernatural used our knowledge of what’s come before to enrich our knowledge of their heroes, and deepen our understanding of their basic natures. With some solid laughs. Like I said, a great week for the mingling of humor and fantasy.

Did you watch Dollhouse? Supernatural? Both? Did you like these unusual episodes?

So did you check out the first episode of In The Motherhood? Flat and obvious, it featured a trio of funny women — Will & Grace’s Megan Mullally, Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Cheryl Hines, and Jessica St. Clair of Best Week Ever and Worst Week — as moms who pal around and joke about the stresses in their lives. When, early on, Hines’ character made a circular motion around her, ah, pelvic area and said, “No one has seen this in a very long time,” you (a) immediately understood the level of the entire show and (b) knew it was time to change the channel.

Motherhood, as you may know, is based on a series of webisodes with a different cast, including Chelsea Handler and Leah Remini, which was more coarse and funnier. So why would Mullally and Hines, who know how to make coarse-and-funny work for them, agree to this watered-down half-hour of sniping and wine-drinking? The lure of prime-time network-TV exposure? Who needs that? Handler’s become a TV and book-author star just by making lush-jokes on E!

The TV world has changed, but ABC continues to make sitcoms the old-fashioned way: the According To Jim way. Which is to say, the groaningly obvious way.
Grade: C-

More on In The Motherhood:
In the Motherhood: Show won’t use submissions from real parents

The recession came to South Park this week. The show’s metaphor for our real-world mortgage crisis was a “Margaritaville” machine, an over-priced, pointless gadget that makes the green-colored alcoholic beverages. Stan’s dad Randy owned one, Stan tried to sell it so the newly-poor family would have more to eat than “sliced hot dogs and tomato slices,” but no store or bank would take the gizmo in exchange for actual money. “Defaulting on your Margaritaville,” was one weasel-businessman’s phrase. (Warning: naughty language in clip below.)

Panic set in, with some citizens blaming the banks, some blaming “materialistic hedonists,” and some — well, the always reliably-appalling Cartman cranked up his anti-Semitism and started blaming Jewish people for hiding all our money in a “secret Jew cave.” (Among its many achievements, South Park has exposed anti-Semitism to such relentless ridicule over the years, it deserves some sort of humanitarian award.)

Pretty soon, South Park residents turned, inevitably, to religion to help them understand — or in South Park terms, further confuse — matters. Kyle becomes a savior-like figure who tells people they should spend more, and in a tableau designed to resemble “The Last Supper,” Cartman was positioned as Judas, ready to betray and kill his friend. In the end, it was Kyle’s use of an AmEx card with no spending limit (“Faith is what makes an economy exist”) to forgive everyone’s debt that saved the day.

The episode was the most back-handed endorsement imaginable of President Obama’s economic bailout plan. Or the most withering dismantling of it. As usual, South Park had it both ways. As Randy said to the assembled multitudes (i.e., us): “Instead of paying for cable, let us watch clouds!”

Did you watch? What was your interpretation of South Park’s view of the economy? Did it make more or less sense than anything you’ve seen on any of the network or cable news shows?

The ratings are in for the season-enders of the HBO Sunday-night comedies Flight of the Conchords and Eastbound & Down, and I’m a little surprised and mighty pleased to see that underdog Eastbound scored the higher ratings (904,000 vs. 678,000). Don’t get me wrong: I admire the droll musical-comics Bret and Jemaine, but I did think this season of Conchords was a bit off. The songs weren’t quite up to last season’s quality, and the plotlines were a tad more predictable.

On the other hand, Eastbound & Down finished with a strong surge of quality. Danny McBride’s down-and-out baseball pitcher Kenny Powers was (ugh, do I really have to write this?: SPOILER ALERT!) called up by the majors again… or so he thought. For a comedy as assiduously profane as Eastbound is, it’s also got a lotta heart. I was genuinely moved when Kenny found out his regained dream was smashed once again, and yet he had to go through the Kenny Powers-patented motions of leaving town in a roar of bravado. I was even more moved by the sad face of April (the wondrous Katy Mixon) when Kenny left her and her suitcase in the dust as he fled from a convenience store in his car.

Last season, Conchords still seemed like a breath of fresh air with its low-key, very welcome gentle humor, and it gained a lot of hip pop-culture cachet. But Eastbound & Down, conceived as nobody’s idea of “cool,” ended up showing us that vulgar comedy can still do lots of sutble things, and few things on TV so far this year have matched McBride’s portrait of a working-class guy trying to make it after imploding.

How about you? Did you watch either of these shows? Do you like the contrasting comedy styles of Conchords and Eastbound, or do you have a clear favorite?

The fourth-season finale of Jon & Kate Plus 8 was promoted as though there would be husband-and-wife fireworks (“It’s all been building to this!”) but, really, all that consisted of were a few moments of Jon saying, “I can’t just be Jon [in public] — I have to be ‘Jon and Kate Plus 8.’” And while Kate said he was “struggling” with this identity crisis, Jon Gosselin, to his credit, seemed a tad embarrassed to even be admitting on camera that “we don’t have privacy at all… it’s tough.” He’s smart enough to know that that’s the sort of sound-bite that can bite back: It doesn’t do for a family-man to whine as though he’s Spencer Pratt dodging the paparazzi. I’d cut the guy some slack, for sure. If there’s one thing Jon rarely is, it’s a complainer. “We’re ready for season five, we think,” said Kate more cheerfully. Jon remained deadpan. But then, Jon’s always deadpan.

For regular viewers, the choicest tidbit occurred in the new episode that aired before the season finale, during which Kate said that the family has a new “helper” since they moved to their bigger house, and that “we will keep her identity a secret for privacy reasons.” That’s understandable, I guess, but may prove awkward next season — how, other than through deft editing, are you going to prevent the four-turning-five year-olds from referring on-camera to their “helper”? (And she’s not a nanny, Kate insisted.) Given the fact that Gosselin family and friends have all but disappeared as the series has proceeded, and given rise to lots of internet chatter and rumor about the reasons why, this morsel of news was intriguing. More to come next season, I’m sure.

Meanwhile, we have Table for 12, TLC’s new contribution to the kid explosion, about a New Jersey police officer, his wife, two sets of twins and sextuplets. The two back-to-back premiere episodes made a strategic mistake, I think, by focussing on activities (Mom’s birthday party and a trip to a restaurant) rather than introducing us to the family’s ordinary-day routines. What made Jon & Kate so fascinating in its first season was simply the stuff of organization — the how-they-feed/clothe/organize-the-kids stuff. Table for 12 did little to establish the children’s personalities last night. But parents Eric and Betty Hayes seem like very nice people, and the show handled the presentation of four-year-old Rebecca, who has cerebral palsy, with restraint, not exploitive sentiment. The episodes were, overall, edited in a rather dull way, but I’ll keep watching a few more times.

How about you? Did you watch Table for 12? And what did you think of Jon & Kate’s finale, and Jon’s struggle with fame?