I think this is why TAR wins the Emmy every year. It's not looking like a particularly great season: Last week's leg was downright awful, and the 1st two eliminated couples looked for all the world as if they didn't even want to be on the show in the first place — but then last night's leg happened. You have fun tasks ("Ride a homemade wooden bicycle through the streets of La Paz!" and "Learn a professional wrestling routine and perform it in front of a rabid crowd!"), you have "dumb blondes" Marisa & Brooke thoroughly outclassing the remarkably unlikeable Andrew & Dan, and you have the ridiculous sports-bra feud between Kelly & Christy and Nick & Starr, which seemed at first like an unwelcome (though funny) digression into LC-vs.-Heidi uselessness (not that I've ever seen The Hills), but which, by the end of the episode, turned out to be a game-changer.

Think about it. Mark & Bill reached the Pit Stop in second-to-last place and had to wait out a 30-minute penalty to see if they were still in the race or not, eventually getting eliminated when Kelly & Christy made it to the Pit Stop with minutes to spare. What if Mark & Bill had realized their error sooner, instead of getting to the U-Turn with a healthy (if misbegotten) lead and thinking they didn't need to use it (dramatic irony is the reality-TV producer's best friend!)? What if Aja & Ty had taken Nick & Starr up on their alliance offer and U-Turned Kelly & Christy? What if Nick & Starr had decided to do their own dirty work instead of chickening out? Had they been U-Turned by any of those teams, Kelly & Christy would most likely be out of the race and Mark & Bill would still be in the running. It was a fascinating chain of events.

Do you know who should definitely audition for TAR 14? Kelly & Christy's ex-husbands. Those guys will enter the show as fan favorites, and there's zero chance the producers won't cast them! It's incredible; Nick & Starr are no great shakes themselves, but the divorcées might be even less pleasant.

I'm not sure who I'm rooting for now. Marisa & Brooke are sweet and charming, but they really do seem dumb. Sarah is nearly awesome enough to overcome Terence's lameness, but she projects a certain only-child vibe that makes her hard to love no matter how much I admire her. Think: Mary-Catherine Gallagher. Aja & Ty are sweet, but too anonymous at this point in the show. Same goes for Toni & Dallas. But it looks like those are my best bets. Here's hoping their personalities start shining soon.

Yeah, I kinda love Rachel Maddow. But her appearance on last night's Tonight Show threw me off. She looked like, as I said on Twitter, a gay Buddy Holly. Very strange. The gay part isn't a big deal. I mean, like I care? She just looked . . . not the way I expected her to look. But maybe that fits her persona and says more about me than it does about her.

The big disappointment? Jay asked if her name was pronounced "Mad-oh" or "Mad-ow". She answered that her grandmother would like it if he said "Mad-oh." So then Jay asked where her grandmother lived, and she answered, "San Diego."

If she had said "San Dieg-ow", I would love her with undying devotion, no matter that she looked like she was auditioning for the lead in a remake of Just One of the Guys.

And the Hall & Oates big on SNL last night was fantastic! Will post a link to Twitter if I can find one.

Terence & Sarah are hilarious! Though not in a way they should be proud of. Look, I know how much it hurts when you slam your car's trunklid down on your own head, but still. What an effing baby!

And then that horrific Tina person at the airport! Seriously? She convinced an airline to switch a flight to a larger plane, singlehandedly, because she's just that persuasive? She believes that? And she's so proud of it, too. She actually waited around for the other teams to show up so she could tell them how great she was. As if changing "We're all on the same flight leaving at 11:30" to "We're all on the same flight leaving at 6:45" is some massive achievement. And it's fascinating to me that Ken was so convinced of Tina's right to cut to the front of the boarding line that he . . . *didn't* cut to the front of the line with her. WTF? And then to bully Terence when he dared to complain, and *then* to "apologize" for being a condescending bully by grabbing Terence's face and kissing him on the cheek? Asshole.

Horrible tasks this week, too. The more-popular Detour option, chosen by practically all the teams because they felt it was safer to go with the straightforward physical task than the needle-in-a-haystack task, was dumbed-down by the inclusion of two locals to help each team. What a crock! And then the Roadblock, which was pretty much the worst task ever on the show. WTF? The more I think about it, the more it seems like the task worked exactly as designed. It was meant to be a simple brute-force bit of codebreaking. Embarrassingly lame for such a great show. At the very least, the racers should have had to return to the wall between guesses. At the very least.

But I *loved* the race to the finish, with Ken & Tina talking about how they're racing to save their marriage (ugh), and second-place-finishing Mark & Bill accepting defeat graciously: "If it means helping save your marriage to any degree, screw those [first-place prize] ATVs." Genius! The insane don't get it, but the sane understand: Mark & Bill were saying, "If you're so petty and superficial that the difference between rebuilding your marriage and going your separate ways is your performance on a game show, whatever."

Bottom line: Awful leg, good episode, still a great show.

OMG! Stephanie Lum working out with KABA Modern on the news just now! *Ridiculously* cute! The perfect capper for the day I had.

I was watching the news while getting ready for work this morning, and I heard a police spokesman talking about last night's hit-and-run near A`ala Park. Evidently they're looking for "an oriental male in a light-colored SUV." So be on the lookout! If you see a silver Pathfinder being driven by a colorful rug with a penis, call 911.

Idiots.

Speaking of which... eff these guys.

I get it, you know? This is Indy in the '50s, not the '30s. The Nazis are toast and the Commies are the new Big Bad. It's the Cold War. It's the Atomic Age. It's the Space Age. So instead of religious artifacts we have alien ones. Fine. I don't like it much, I think it crosses a line that I don't want the series to cross, but I get it.

Here's what I would change anyway.

If you're going to make the crystal skull super-magnetic, shouldn't it always be super-magnetic? It seemed like metallic objects (even non-magnetic ones, like gold coins) were only attracted to it when it fit the purposes of the story. I can live with that. What I can't live with is the question of why. Why make the skull so powerfully magnetic in the first place? There were cool scenes with Indy using gunpowder and buckshot to locate the alien corpse in the giant warehouse, but after that? Nothing, right? In fact, we have Mutt and Spalko using their swords to steal the skull from one another, and each time they do it they do it by hooking the bag the skull is being carried in. You'd think that the super-magnetic skull might attach itself to the steel blade of a sword, but it never does. How hard would it have been to make the skull attach itself to Mutt's sword, handicapping him in the fight and putting his life in peril, forcing him to improvise in order to save the day?

That's just one instance. In the warehouse standoff, have Indy heroically refuse to help the Russians, who then decide to kill him for his impertinence — only the skull's magnetic field pulls the bullets back so that the Russians end up shooting themselves. In the big chase scene, how about having the truck hit a bump that tosses Ox (or whoever) out, but just when it seems all is lost, we realize that the skull in the bag he's clutching has magnetized itself to the back bumper and he's "water skiing" along with everyone else? I can live without the skull being a super magnet 100% of the time; it's just too much of a headache to keep up that illusion over a two-hour movie. But they completely let it drop when there were obvious (and fun!) places where it could have been used. I just don't get it.

The other big thing I would rewrite is Mutt getting hit in the crotch by bushes as he straddles the two trucks during his duel with Spalko. That's settling for cheap 6-year-old humor when the situation is ripe for something much more effective. Why not show Mutt's virtuosity with the blade by having him fight Spalko while simultaneously chopping down the bushes as they approach? Again, it's a simple fix that would have been more fun than what they actually gave us.

Lunch break's over. I'll tackle the aliens-but-not-really issue when I have more time.

I . . . don't know what to say. This episode was a huge disappointment to me. And I'm not the only one; TWoP's grades for the show's previous 16 episodes were 13 A+'s and 3 A's. They gave this episode a B-. Ouch.

Serena's big revelation was lame, its resolution was even lamer (when did Lily figure out what was really on the "sex tape"?) and the whole thing felt like a teen-drama cliché, complete with "Special Musical Guest Lisa Loeb" (and I *love* Lisa Loeb, obviously, but she was totally unnecessary here). Heavy-handed, predictable, lazy, contrived. This is not the show I fell in love with.

Not everything was a disaster, though. The Lily/Rufus kiss was pretty spectacular, and I literally pumped my fist in the air at Chuck's "I'd say 'Let's get that bitch'." Nate & Vanessa have real potential (and here's hoping Jenny's next storyline has her trying to triangulate her way into that love connection), and the fallout from this week *should* make for a great finale next week. But I'm worried. It's not like Josh Schwartz did a great — or even good — job digging The O.C. out of the hole he put it in at the end of S1, so I'm not sure this misstep is something the show can recover from. I'm hoping so, but I'm not sure.

Gossip Girl. Watch it.

I feel the same way about it that I felt about Veronica Mars; I watch it and I worry that it's too ambitious for its own good, that it bites off more than it can possibly chew . . . and then it goes and tells its stories with such incredible deftness that it all seems so simple, until you look back and remember how much has happened.

It isn't perfect. Timelines don't always match up — but that's a problem with most shows, and one I don't pay much attention to. I don't watch TV for the realism and practicality of it all! And at the climax of this week's episode, my first reaction was, "Oh no! They just jumped the shark!" But then I thought about it, and that's the only possible place they could have gone. Anything less would have been a disappointment. And besides, unlike Jenny Humphrey, the show has earned the benefit of the doubt.

Issues: Where was Nate this week? After he and Vanessa hooked up in the last episode, he should have been around. His absence really bothered me. But here's what I'm thinking: He *will* be around soon, and he's going to be the one who blows Georgina's plot wide open. And I can't wait.

When did Monday become the best night on TV? The Big Bang Theory has turned out to be a seriously great sitcom (if you didn't lose your shit when the guys helped Leonard time travel last week, I don't want to know you!), How I Met Your Mother has been spectacular since the strike ended (Sarah Chalke FTW!), and Gossip Girl is honestly the best thing I watch each week. If I were into The Hills or less burned-out on Dancing With the Stars, Mondays would kill me.

I was pretty exhausted last night; took a nap as soon as I got home and couldn't even get up when the UPS guy rang the doorbell. Luckily they have my sig on file, so he left the box on the porch. Eventually I forced myself to get up, made a plate of food (feeling like I was melting into the ground with each step — I was tired!), and dragged the box to my room.

First things first, the Special Edition's safety-deposit box is awesome! I was worried it would be a cheap plastic thing, and while it's by no means a genuine bank-quality box, it's metal, it feels substantial enough, and it's got a rudimentary lock. I think I've found a new box for all my treasures!

Now, most of those treasures are letters Sara wrote to me years and years ago. Fast-forward to 2008, and Sara has me emailing her friend Michelle so I can learn how to talk to girls (don't ask!). It's been awkward and weird and it feels kind of pointless since Michelle lives in San Diego, but it's been fun enough. And in GTA IV, one of your first missions is to go on a date with a character named . . . Michelle. It's crazy, but my life just always seems to work that way. I laughed so hard!

So Virtual Michelle and Virtual Me go bowling (My real-life scores from bowling with the office fam last Friday: 126, 126, 139). She has a lot of fun, things are looking good . . . and then as I'm taking her home I find a stash of molotov cocktails. These are the first weapons I've found in the game, and since I've already gotten my ass kicked in a couple of fistfights and had to use vehicular homicide to survive encounters with fascist-pig Liberty City cops, it's safe to say that I'm excited by this new development. I jab at the buttons on the controller, trying to figure out how to switch between the cocktails and my bare fists, and suddenly I find myself throwing a cocktail at poor Michelle! She gets burned and runs, and I fail the date mission. Again, just like my real life. LOL!

Long story short, this game is awesome! Ultimately not as awesome as sleep, but pretty awesome.

Monday night, banging out a few quests in the Hinterlands, I got my third-ever purple drop: The Green Tower. I've fallen in love with dual-wielding maces on my shaman, so I have no use for it, but still. PURPLE DROP, BITCHES! Awesome.