Top Moments: Sandra Bullock Schools Chelsea Handler and Walking Dead Breaks a Leg
Our top moments of the week:
14. Best Shout-out: The gifts just keep on coming for Castle fans. Now that Castle and Beckett are together, the writer decides that they need a couple name. "So we're Brangelina now?" Beckett asks. "No, no. We're Rickate. No, we're Katick," Castle muses. "Caskett. Ooh! That's good because of the whole murder thing." Let's face it: Castle has never met a meta reference it didn't like.
13. Worst Case of Mistaken Identity: Serena and Nate go ballistic (well, Nate just turns his head to the side like a dog) when they see their respective new significant others, Steven and Sage, dining together on Gossip Girl. Serena's boyfriend, Steven, is all too happy to clear up any confusion about their relationship when he punches Nate for kissing Sage and tells Serena that Sage is not his "slut," but his 17-year-old daughter. And we thought Dan and Serena dating while their respective parents were dating was creepy!
12. Best "Nightmare": After spending the summer reconnecting with her grandmother, Suburgatory's Tessa returns to Chatswin eager to also reconnect with her mother. However, when she tries to teach herself to play a song that her mom used to sing, she gets frustrated by some harsh words from Dahlia and throws a picture of herself as a baby with her mom in the trash. Fortunately, George changes her mind, and Tessa delivers a beautiful, heart-wrenching performance of the show's theme song, "Pleasant Nightmare," at the fall talent show.
11. The Road Not Taken Award: Phil Keoghan wasn't lying when he told us there'd be one very tight finish on The Amazing Race this season. BFFs Caitlin and Brittany finish their Detour well ahead of Gary and Will, who perform both Detours after getting U-Turned, but the girls get so hopelessly lost searching for the next clue that they end up trailing the guys en route to the Pit Stop. They pass the guys on the road, but when they hit a fork, the girls go left and Gary and Will go right. And it's the guys who choose the correct path and live to Race another day. Hey, ladies, maybe if you stopped yelling at your cabbie for a second, you'd have realized that you were right in front of the clue at one point (at 34:40).
10. Least Surprising Twist: Ever since Capt. Neville briefly mentioned his son on Revolution a few weeks ago, it's pretty clear who this mysterious progeny would be: Nate, the only other ethnically ambiguous character on the show! Now that we know his real name is Jason Neville, we're still inclined to refer to him by Miles' new nickname for the militia spy: Nipples.
9. Most Cringe-Worthy Confession: In what is called the reality TV version of Frost/Nixon (we're not making that up), late-night host and Bravo exec Andy Cohen sits down with fired Real Housewives of New York City cast member Jill Zarin for the most tense, awkward episode in the history of Watch What Happens: Live. Among Jill's many confessions on the half-hour program, the most damaging is when she admits that she played up an argument with former BFF Bethenny Frankel for the cameras — an argument that led to the real and lasting demise of their once-close friendship. Good for ratings? Sure. Good for Jill Zarin? Not so much.
8. Best Comeback: The marriage between the good wife and the "bad" husband has been hard to define since The Good Wife premiered, but things take a turn for the better in a big way when Alicia learns that the allegations that Peter slept with a young campaign worker are false. Alicia celebrates the news by surprising Peter on his campaign bus and, without a word, leaning down and planting on a kiss on her surprised husband's lips. And then kissing him again. Does this mean the two are headed for a full reconciliation? Who knows, but let's just hope there's no ice cream involved.
7. Scariest Successor: Move over, Rubber Man! There are new imagined and/or real threats in town on the new season of American Horror Story. If you thought ghosts were scary, just wait until you see what Ryan Murphy has in store for the second season of American Horror Story. Not only is the show haunted by the specter of Bloody Face, a skin-suit-wearing serial killer, we also have to deal with aliens, who, depending on your degree of skepticism, may have abducted Kit Walker and his wife, who is missing and now assumed dead. It's a nice backdrop for the real question of Season 2: Who is sane and who is insane? Are the little green men real... or a figment of Kit's imagination?
6. Best Theme Music for Revenge: What this week's episode of Sons of Anarchy lacks in transgendered hookers, it makes up for in blood. Nero's partner Carla shoots herself in the head after asking Nero (Jimmy Smits) and Gemma to have sex at gunpoint, and Jax is also able to exact revenge against the prison guard who oversaw Opie's fatal beatdown. When Jax is unable to find a metal pipe (the weapon that killed Ope), he settles for a snow globe. He twists its dial and brutally bashes the guard's head in as the sweet strains of "It's a Small World" play. We'll never think of that song the same way again.
5. Most Erotic Feast: On The Vampire Diaries, new vamp Elena's thirst for blood overtakes her hope to stick with Stefan's bunny diet, so she turns to Damon, who lets her in on an intimate exchange known as blood-sharing. As Elena drinks from Damon's wrist, Damon puts his other hand on her head and lets out of moan of ecstasy as Elena can't get enough. If blood-sharing is this sexual, we can only imagine what it'd be like if (who are we kidding? when) they have vamp sex.
4. Best Validation: After returning from Beirut, Homeland's Carrie is on top of the world. But she comes crashing down when she shows up for a debriefing at Langley only to realize that, despite the fact that her informant provided solid intel on Abu Nazir, she is not being reinstated in the CIA. Broken and distraught, Carrie swallows a fistful of pills and lays down to die. Thankfully, she reconsiders and vomits the pills out of her system. Good thing too, since moments later Saul turns up and shares Brody's suicide confession with her. After a year and a half, it feels so good to hear Carrie say, "I was right!"
3. The Naked Truth Award: Sandra Bullock gets extremely loud, incredibly close and totally naked when she confronts Chelsea Handler in the shower to warn her to start "pulling her sh-- together" with her talk show's new stage and how she has a responsibility to be a respectable host. "This comes directly from Oprah's mouth to my ear, to my mouth, out of my mouth, into your ear, down your body, out your vagina, up my vagina and out my ass," Bullock spews. "Stop sleeping with your guests. ... That is why I've not done your show — I do not want sleep with you." We'll save that segment for November sweeps.
2. Most Killer Affair: If the White-Haired Man (real name: Gordon Murphy) didn't kill Emily's mom, Kara, on Revenge, what did he do? Sleep with her, duh! Among the possessions on WHM's body (RIP!) is a pocketwatch that contains a photo of Kara and his cell phone, which reveals a voicemail from Kara. After switching the SIM cards, Emily listens to the message, in which Kara, who's hiding out at a motel, says that if she doesn't hear from WHM in a day, she'll "start shutting everything down and go dark like we promised" and that she hopes he's OK. "I love you," she says. Hmm, how's this mother-daughter reunion going to go when Kara finds out that Em got her lovah killed?
1. Most Painful Loss: After surviving months on the run, Hershel falls victim to a zombie on The Walking Dead premiere within the walls of the prison, their supposed safe haven. After the walker gets a good bite out of Hershel's leg, Rick decides to hack it off... with an ax... and no anesthesia. But knowing what we know about the virus, will it matter?
What are your top moments?
