Fall TV review: Ringer

Well if the most recent installment tells us anything, it's that Buffy sorry, Sarah Michelle Gellar's new show Ringer is about whores.

Or at least the show's characters are throwing around the word a lot. The truth is it's about liars. Not a single person on this show is telling the truth about anything. The men are lying about sex, love and money; the women are lying about all that too and their hair colors (I'm looking at you, Gemma).

In case you haven't been watching: SMG plays the part of twin sisters Bridget and Siobhan. Bridget used to heart drugs and strip but then she stopped but it was totally too late because naturally she had already seen some mobster kill someone the one time she wasn't too high to remember it since Sunnydale collapsed. Siobhan is a cold, calculating bitch. She's married to Andrew and living in the lap of luxury thanks to her him but cheating on him with Henry. Henry is married to her best friend Gemma. Oh and she's knocked up with the boyfriend's baby. Her friends and family call her Shiv and I'm fairly certain it's because she's killed a few people with her ice queen stare.

Supposedly Gemma and Henry have a set of twins running around themselves but they've never been seen on the show so it's possible Siobhan shivved them with a stiletto when they spilled juice in her car or something.

The series begins with Bridget testifying as a witness against the mobster but then she gets scared that the murderer is going to murder her and takes off to find her sister. The twins spend some time bonding on Shiv's boat in the worst green screen scene ever made and Bridget falls asleep. When she wakes up, Siobhan is gone except for her wedding rings which Bridget promptly takes along with her sister's entire existence.

But - surprise! Siobhan's still alive and in Paris. Not only that, but someone wants her dead too.

Sound ridiculous? It is. It really truly is. This show is never going to win an Emmy, but it's fun, the drama is delicious and the twists and turns are abundant.

This is a show to just enjoy, not one to think about or critique or expect too much from. It's fun, the mystery is intriguing and the show is fast-paced with answers and developments every episode but two more questions for every reveal.

And the best part? Ringer's already picked up for a full season so no worries about early cancellation!

Fall TV review: Gossip Girl

Promise not to call children's services and/or my mother, okay?

I am, as I type, watching last night's Gossip Girl. My impressionable young daughter is in the room and currently staring in awe at Blair Waldorf.

Not that I can blame her, Blair is fabulous. I'm just hoping she is taking in the fabulous fashion of this show and not the general trampiness (or trampy-ness - does anyone know how to spell that?).

Speaking of trampiness, the father of Blair's baby was revealed last night and in the worst news ever to be voiced-over by Kristen Bell, it's Prince Louis. And she was Veronica Mars, y'all, she's delivered some bad news, including the Season 2, Episode 1 break-up of Logan and Veronica.

But luckily, the episode left Chuck-Blair fans with a little bit of hope that maybe the kid is a BASS-tard after all when Blair furtively slipped the baby-daddy-news into a drawer in her vanity. Of course that could be misdirection - if Louis were the father, it's not like she'd want to leave the paternity tests results out in the open for him to find. That's gotta raise some questions, although silver-tongued Blair could probably talk her way out of it.

Still, coupled with the fact that Blair seemed to have an epiphany after seeing GG's blast about Chuck and his dog, I'd say Mr. Bass isn't out in the "Who's the Daddy?" race quite yet.

Dan has been playing the role of Blair's own personal Maury Povich this season and for the first time in years, I'm actually finding Lonely Boy interesting. I know there are many fans out there who think Dan and Blair have significant romantic chemistry - I don't see it but I fully admit to being a Chuck-Blair fan (I know, I know, Chuck's an ass but despite the fact that I am happily married to a Good Guy, I always root for the Bad Boy - it's fiction, I'm allowed my guilty pleasures).

Even more surprisingly, I'm interested to see how Dan's book plays out. As a writer, I've always wondered how people would react if I wrote a book - would they look for themselves in my characters? Be mad about how I portrayed someone who fills their role in my life?

Chuck's storyline the first couple episodes bored me to pieces but with his reaction to Blair's pregnancy, I'm finally intrigued to see what happens to him again. He's been on the road to redemption so many time - I'd like to see him get somewhere with it this time.

Oh yeah, Serena and Nate were in the episodes too. I apparently didn't care enough to remember what they were doing but my notes say "Liz Hurley always looks like she's smelling something foul." You'd think she'd be a little happier to have someone as pretty, charming and let's face it, kinda dumb, as her newest boy toy. But I hate the way they are portraying her character: TV shows seem to always be making journalists out to be unethical, devious creatures. The truth is most of us are too busy to try to figure out ways to hack into phones and when we're not too busy we're usually either too tired or too drunk. Sometimes both.

While in L.A., Serena ran into Ivy-Charlie and brought Ivy-Charlie back home with her. Ivy-Charlie promptly decided to blackmail her employer/fake mother who, frankly, had it coming. But I still didn't care enough about the plot line to write down fake mom's name.

All in all though, I'm interested in Gossip Girl again after mostly checking out for season four. I'll admit, Blair's baby drama and the fact that she's got the biggest storyline is a big part of it but I care about 3 out of the 5 main characters so I'd say we're doing pretty well so far.

What do you think of Gossip Girl so far this year? Do you think Louis is the father or is it a fake-out? Do you care?

UPDATE: Luckily, Lea stopped caring about Gossip Girl about 20 seconds later and promptly began trying to climb every single piece of furniture in our house. Congratulations, Blair Waldorf, this is your future!

Fall TV review: How I Met Your Mother

Note: Because I started the blog just after fall previews, I'm going to be doing a "review so far..." type of things for my favorite shows over the next couple weeks and then start reviewing and recapping regularly.

How I Met Your Mother is one of the husband and I's favorite shows to watch together. We both enjoy it and find it funny so it's not like, say, Pretty Little Liars where I'm enthralled and he just makes fun of it the entire time (leading to the great "Just go in another room dammit" summit of May 2011 and the subsequent "If I choose to watch your stupid, ridiculous show with you, I will keep my snarky comments to a minimum or leave the room" treaty of July 2011).

Seven years in and we still really enjoy the show for the most part. But I have to ask: Does anyone actually care anymore who the mother is?

For me, Ted is by far the most boring part of the show. I couldn't care less at this point about his journey to find love. I'm dying to know who Barney marries and I really, really hopes it is Robin and I think I'll be seriously disappointed if it isn't. Marshall and Lily are probably my favorite married couple on television and as a mom myself I'm interested to see how they handle parenthood.

But Ted? I am not even the slightest bit curious after seven freaking years of waiting who his wife will be. And I have no clue who she is! I can only imagine how his poor children, who already know who their mother is, must feel. I bet all they think when he's rambling on is "God, I will never ask my father another question, ever."

And as we all know now the actual answer to the question of "How did you meet our mother, Dad?" is "I met her at a wedding." That's it. That's the answer.

But I love the show so I'm grateful for Ted's long-windiness even if it means I have to put up with boring Ted in the midst of all the awesome.

But I would like to assure you: When my daughter one day asks me how I met her father, the story will go "We met in college then started dating a few years later." It will not include every single man I dated in the meantime and ever last drunken and/or sexual exploit of my 20s. I'd like to keep her therapy bills to a minimum,thank you very much.

So far this season, I'm really liking where the story is going. I like the growth of Barney's character and seeing him figure out what he really wants out of his life. I'm enjoying Robin's journey of realizing that she's in love with Barney but trying to figure out how to respect his decisions. I even like seeing Lily and Marshall navigate the early stages of their first pregnancy, despite my long-standing belief that in TV shows and The Sims, babies ruin everything.

How are you liking the season so far? Want to share your theories about who the mother is? My current favorite is that she's Barney's half-sister - which explains why she would be at the wedding.

A rose by any other name

The husband and I had a hell of a time choosing a name for daughter.

We already had a name picked out for our first boy but when we found out we were having a girl, we just looked at each other and said "Well, now what?"

I liked Molly; he liked McKenzie. Finally we settled on Lea, a name that was actually H's suggestion and I agreed only if her middle name could be Nicole (after my sister) and we spelled it L-E-A instead of L-E-A-H.

But the majority of our discussions of girl's names were filled with justifications of why the other's choice just wasn't acceptable.

Our problems were compounded by the fact that the husband is a teacher and I am a journalist who covers education. In the five years we've been out of school and working in our fields, we've stumbled across some of the most ridiculous names ever to exist. And let me tell you - it's astounding what passes for a name these days.

My personal favorite terrible names stories actually stems back to high school. A year below, there was a set of male twins. Their names were Rocky and Stoney. Rumor had it they had a younger sister named Pebbles.

In the city where I work, there's an infamously-named woman named Le-a. At first glance, I swore she had the same name as our daughter but with stupid punctuation. But as it turns out, that "-"? It's actually a dash. As in La-dash-a.

I think the worst name I've ever seen though was a little girl in a kindergarten class at a school I covered in my first job as a journalist. She was a doll. Petite with curly brown hair and big brown eyes and a sweet smile.

And her mother named her Stormie. STORMIE. Not even spelled correctly.

I always wonder to myself: What do these parents have in mind for their kids when they grow up? Do you think a man named Stoney has any chance of being elected mayor? Have you ever met a doctor named Stormie, M.D.?

What's the worst name you've come across?

Oh, boy

Yesterday, a pregnant friend of mine found out that she is having a daughter. We were discussing it and both saying that while we would have been happy to have a boy too, we were really glad for some reason to be having a little girl.

I spent the first few months of my pregnancy convinced that we were having a boy. Up until the moment of the ultrasound, I would have bet you a pair of Manolos that the child kicking me square in the kidney had a Y chromosome.

I was wrong. It was the first of many times in motherhood I would be.

I'm not a big crier but finding out that Lea was a girl was the first time in my life I had ever cried tears of joy.

And as I was talking to my friend yesterday, I finally figured out why: I was just so damn relieved.

Don't get me wrong: I want a son. I hope one of our kids is a boy. We even have his name picked out - Nathaniel. The husband picked that name for his older brother who died while serving in the military in the mid-90s and of course I agreed because:

a) I think it's sweet and these things are the kinds of things that made me fall in love with this man.

b) I like the name.

And last but not least,

c) How the hell do you say no to that without ending up looking like the biggest bitch ever to walk into divorce court?

I mean, I tore the divorce lawyer pages out of our phone books the day I told the husband I thought Pretty Little Liars would be a fantastic theme for our daughter's second birthday and that was a reasonably good plan because I told him at like midnight and I knew he'd be too tired to keep looking after he found out I'd already removed the pages. But if I were to refuse this particular request on say, the excuses I used for most of the names he suggested for our daughter (most commonly "Nope, a girl with that name stole my boyfriend senior year" or "Aaron, why do you want our daughter to be a stripper?"), I'm pretty sure he'd be pissed off enough to remember that divorce lawyers could be easily found on Google.

But the truth is, even though I want a son someday, and I know that I would have been happy to have a son for our first child, I was relieved. Why?

Because I know jack-shit about boys.

Becoming a parent for the first time was daunting and for me, it came with a steep learning curve. I had to look up how to play with a newborn because I was certain I was supposed to be doing something but had no clue what that something was. The day the shrubbed up little piece of grossness that was her umbilical cord fell off, it was just gone, never to be found again and likely digested by one of our dogs. In the first month of our daughter's life, I watched every single video on burping a baby on youtube (including a few misleadingly labeled videos from enterprising young men on how to learn to teach yourself to burp louder, grosser and in haiku form) and there are a lot of them.

Throw a penis in the mix and I'm hopeless.

About 88 percent of my ability to communicate with the males of our species relies heavily on flirting and all that will do is bring those busybodies from Children's Services (or maybe the worst cops in America) around. I've heard the stories from my friends about a stream of pee flying at your face when you remove a diaper. One of the very first decisions you have to make if you have a boy is what to do with a piece of skin wrapped around a body part you don't even have.

At least I'll know how to teach him to burp like a pro.

Benson and Stabler: Worst cops ever

I love Law and Order. I've seen pretty much every episode of every spin-off except that Los Angeles disaster. I once owned a cat named Briscoe, after Jerry Orbach's character, Lenny Briscoe, on the original. In college, I would watch re-runs on TNT when I studied, as I fell asleep at night and I lived for the three-day weekends when Mondays were nothing but back-to-back episodes. I once bought a wedding magazine just because Mariska Hargitay, Benson from SVU, was on the cover and I had more than a passing crush on Elliott Stabler.

All that said, Benson and Stabler may be the worst cops ever to appear on television. That includes Barney Fife and his one bullet.

The last few nights, the husband and I have been watching the most recent season of Law and Order: SVU on Netflix. And with pretty much every episode, at least once, we look at each other, laugh and roll our eyes at something.

I realize that this is a TV show and of course they make it more dramatic than it really is. But if an actual police officer fire 1/10th of the bullets any SVU cop has, they'd still be on desk duty at the pearly gates.

It's also astounding what they put their victims through. I'm going to go ahead and say this and it might be a controversial position but when you're dealing with a rape victim, I don't think questioning them until they're a sobbing puddle of Wicked Witch of the West is a terrific strategy. Putting them in an emotionally-charged confrontation with their attacker also seems a bit unnecessary.

Now I don't usually like to tell people who carry guns how to do their job. That includes not only cops but also soldiers, career criminals and people who work at laser tag facilities.

But I have a suggestion for Detectives Benson and Stabler: Please, for the love of God, use your damn radio. You do not have to be the first ones on the scene. You are not the only person who can save your victim and you could probably prevent a lot of unnecessary deaths and traumas by just alerting the bazillion other cops in the city and letting the closest officer get there first.

But no. Not Olivia and Elliott. They'd rather ride in themselves, after the ish goes down, and then stand there, dumbstruck, as if they couldn't possibly understand how they could have been too late. Never mind that if one of them had just picked up the stupid radio en route to the scene, someone could have been there long before them. Then what excuse would they have for Mariska to stare off pointedly, tears welling in her eyes? She has Emmys to win, people.

But perhaps the most disturbing part is how many of the people they are supposed to be helping end up committing murder themselves. At least a couple times a year, the episode ends with the accused struck down and a sobbing, shaking victim clutching the weapon. Most of the time, the jerk deserves it and truthfully, probably deserves a whole lot worse. But still, I think the fact that your victim turns vigilante as often as Stabler draws blood from a perp or, I don't know, knocks up his wife, has got to come up on your yearly review somewhere.

And yet, I keep on coming back for more. But as a journalist who sometimes has to cover these types of things, I'm glad the Bonnie and Clyde of law enforcement are based in New York City and not Ohio.

Oh, my daughter? The one without any clothes. Yep, that's her.

Our family has a pretty simple, if not strict, bedtime routine: snuggles, a book, quick bath, PJs and then Lea has a cup of milk and heads to bed. That's the idea, anyway.

Tonight, things took an interesting turn.

Lea and I were in her room, picking out pajamas and ended up with a fun pair of Halloween jammies: a pair of black and orange pumpkin print pants and a long-sleeved t-shirt that says "Witch way to the candy?"

Get it? Witch/which? For some reason baby clothing designers loooooovvvveeee puns. It's a natural second career for a divorced Hallmark copy writer who just can't bear to write another "Congratulations on finding your soul mate!" wedding card.

Anyway, Lea's in her cute, super-clever pajamas and I give her the milk and then let her spend a few minutes burning off some energy and drinking it while I take the dogs out, feed everything that walks on four legs and straighten up.

And by the time I walk back into the room, my child is sitting in the middle of it, with her shirt only on one arm and it pulled over her head like a hood.

I stop in my tracks and stare. Within seconds, the shirt is off and discarded to the side and Lea's gone about her business without it.

Later, while recounting the story to the husband, who was at soccer at the time, I found out she did the same thing with him this morning.

Here's the alarming part: Within the last few weeks, Lea has also been able to remove her pants. And her diaper.

At the rate she's learning new tricks, the baby Bug should be able to easily open the door and drive within a matter of weeks. Finding the car keys won't be an issue since they are one of her favorite things to steal and hide and she's usually the only one who knows where they are these days anyway.

So, please, if you see a blue-eyed child in some state of undress, parent-less and giddily telling strangers "Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi." over and over, return her, will you?

But you'll have to bring her to us - she'll probably have our cell phones too.