A good twist can save an episode. Such is the case in “Brave Heart.” With the Dibala drama over, Chase struggles with the fact that he, you know, killed a man, while House believes that he’s hearing things. But the best moment comes in the medical mystery (Click here to read more…)

This episode moves back towards the traditional format of focusing on the medical mystery to a degree that we haven’t seen this season. It’s a bit of an exhale for the season, as “Instant Karma” concentrates on traditional “House” issues: namely, rationality versus superstition.

Spoilers after the jump.

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Fact: The old team was better than the new team. The latest episode of “House”—possibly the strongest medically based episode of “House” since the second season—is proof of this. Part of what makes “House” unique is that even though it is a medical show, it is more about the truth. “The Tyrant” is layered in its exploration of the concept, and the manner in which each team member’s action forces another action makes the episode flow beautifully.

SPOILERS AFTER THE JUMP

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Once upon a time, there was a beautiful kingdom that’s streets were paved in gold. No–Seriously! There were billions of dollars pouring into the streets–$35 billion annually, as a matter of fact. This was the magical kingdom (empire?) of Walter Elias “Walt” Disney and the enterprise that he built, from cutesy cartoons to marvelously marketed merchandised goods, to worlds within worlds at his amusement parks.

Now, at the Walt Disney Family Museum, which just opened at San Francisco’s Presidio, you can learn about the business-whiz who got his start as an artist .

You all are quite familiar with Disney’s films. Perhaps your first exposure to death was when Bambi’s mother went to roam wilder, freer places in the afterlife. Maybe you first dreamed of space flight when Buzz Lightyear reached for the skylight. Maybe you were inspired, at the age of three, to join PETA’s army when you thought you could commune with animals after watching Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs or Cinderella. (Click here to read more…)

The first episode of season six rebuilt House as a reformed character. The second episode, “Epic Fail,” is the focused on the opposite process; instead, it destroys House’s team so that by the end of it you’re left with a situation that looks oddly familiar. Or, as House says in the episode four preview: “Oh my god, it’s three years ago … Does that mean I’m still crazy?”

SPOILERS AFTER THE JUMP
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Charlie Day as Charlie Kelly ponders his options in “The Nightman Cometh Live”.

Last Thursday night at the Nob Hill Masonic Center in San Francisco, I saw a musical that by any critical measures should be considered terrible. The actors couldn’t sing and frequently broke character on stage. The music was shoddy; the lyrics crude and illogical. The story hung like saggy, unloved skin off a nonsensical skeleton of plot. An unruly crowd shouted drunken sexual propositions at the actors on stage.

Yet this show was absolutely, wonderfully brilliant.

What was it? TV on a stage. Specifically, the gang of FX’a abrasive comedy “It’s Always Sunny in Philadephia” performing a variation of their season finale live on tour for rowdy revelers. The idiosyncratic, all-around batshit-insane Charlie (played by writer/producer/actor Charlie Day) announces he’s written a musical entitled “The Nightman Cometh”. (Click here to read more…)

“Family Guy” was just the beginning of Seth MacFarlane’s handiwork, as he is set to spin off another show based on the cartoon series.”Family Guy” protagonist Peter Griffin’s African-American friend will have an eponymous show of his own starting Sunday night (8:30 pm) on FOX. “The Cleveland Show” will be set in the American South, and it seems the comedy will lampoon race relations while maintaining the pop-culture-laden mainstay format of all of MacFarlane’s cartoon series.

But honestly, expanding one-dimensional side-characters into their own show seems a bit like shamelessly milking a cash-cow.  We’ll see tomorrow night if the show’s anything more than a substitute fix for “Family Guy” addicts who can’t get enough of the original show. And I’m gonna let this blog post finish, but Kanye’s going to make the best “Cleveland Show” episode of all time, when he guest stars on the show early next year as “Kenny West.”

Here’s a clip of the upcoming show (it breaks the fourth wall. Cool?):

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On Sunday night, HBO’s long anticipated premiere of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” currently on its seventh season, took a refreshing turn for the curiously outrageous.

Though Larry David has remained loyal to his shtick as a schmuck, the sketches in Sunday’s episode put the characters in some very out-of-character situations. (Click here to read more…)

Painkillers is a weekly feature on the television show “House” focusing on the episode’s medical mystery and the show’s character development.

One day, two and a half years ago, the producers of “House” decided to develop Hugh Laurie’s character. That turned out to be a terrible idea. Not that developing the character was a bad idea, just the way they did. For its first three seasons, “House” never dropped the ball … excepting that instance, the twelfth episode of the third season.

The episode, “One Day, One Room,” about House’s interactions with a rape victim, had no medical mystery, and its sole purpose was to develop the character of House, which it only did minimally. “Broken”—the first episode of the sixth season, which premiered Monday—does everything which that earlier episode was supposed to do, except better.

SPOILERS AFTER THE JUMP (Click here to read more…)

As always, the Penny Arcade boys have said in three frames what would otherwise have taken three pages.