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By now you know the drill, right? There's another presidential debate happening tonight—the second of three between President Barack Obama and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney taking place before next month's election—and because we basically live in the future, you can watch it live online (as well as on most of the major broadcast networks). This one's taking place at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York and will be moderated by CNN Chief Political Correspondent Candy Crowley; it'll also employ a "town hall" format that allows members of the audience pose questions for the candidates to answer (Politico's got a good explanation of how it'll work). Anyway, because we love you, we've got the live feed all queued up right here:

Whether you're planning to tune in because you want to be an informed citizen or simply because you want to understand the political jokes that will inevitably flood your Facebook news feed, the fun begins at 6pm Pacific / 7pm Mountain / 8pm Central / 9pm Eastern.

You can also watch the debate at the following online outlets:

– Hulu

– AOL

– ABC News

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Last Resort S01E03: "Eight Bells"

Note: I based this review on an advanced screener that had temporary visual effects, less-than-polished edits, and fill-in music, so the broadcast version might have been a bit smoother. I only bring this up because I was confused by a few things that may have been ironed out in the final cut.

Some time during the development of Last Resort, co-creators Shawn Ryan and Karl Gajdusek made the crew of the U.S.S. Colorado the target of a massive conspiracy, the U.S. military, and the American people and thought, "You know what? Too easy, that's not enough." In Episode 2, some badass Russians were parachuted into the island to steal the submarine, and I wouldn't be surprised if aliens and smoke monsters attack Captain Chaplin by the end of the season.

But the greatest and simplest threat comes from the island people themselves. We realized this as soon as Julian Serrat (Sahr Ngaujah, who's quickly climbing the ladder of my favorite actors), the island's self-proclaimed despot up until Chaplin pulled his steel tube into the Sainte Marina's marina, bumped chests with James King (hunky Aussie man meat Daniel Lissing) and said [paraphrasing], "Excuse me, but umm, this is my island."

And you know what? That conflict might just be more interesting than the game of nuclear lawn darts being played; at the very least it's the perfect compliment to the claustrophobic, eye-arcing, PING!-ing, silent submarine battles that are happening a few leagues under the sea. We still don't have a face to put to the threat that lies a few thousand miles of ocean away, but Julian? Now there's a man we can look dead in the eye and say, "Sir, I am scared of you."

There are a lot of characters to like on this show—probably Last Resort's biggest strength so far—and for me, Julian's at the top. He's got swagger for dayyyyyyyyys and more importantly, he has a right to be pissed off and assume the villain role. Any time a villain is mean for more than just the sake of being mean, it's a plus. Maybe he isn't involved in the most honest work, but the island was his living room, and Chaplin kicked open the door, grabbed the remote out of his hand, and changed the channel (metaphorically, in case you're reading this without watching the show, but that would make for a pretty great scene in a future episode). Chaplin ruined the ecosystem of the island when he pushed Julian off the throne with a nuke, so I'm okay with Julian pushing back.

But he didn't just push back. He KILLED a dude after Chaplin didn't fulfill his end of the agreement to get a cargo shipment in time, and like Chaplin's nuke off the coast of D.C., he had to show he meant bidness. (It should be noted that the guy who ended up dead was named Redman, as in "redshirt," the Star Trek-based term for TV bit characters who basically exist just to be killed. I see what you did there, Shawn Ryan.) Stakes raised! Julian's pestering is more than just a mosquito buzzing in Chaplin's ear, because his presence and actions (and Chaplin's non-actions in retaliation) will bubble up in the form of discontent among Chaplin's men. That's how you hit a person in power. Chain of command is going to be a recurring theme in Last Resort, and the show's challenge will be to convince us of when it's okay to break it. In this case, Chaplin expected his men to fall in line, but this is the same guy who told them it was okay to disobey orders a few nukes ago. There's already a swell of resistance against Chaplin among his men, and his decision to let Julian go without payback, while prudent, might cause problems internally. So far, I'm really digging these questions of loyalty and duty and the way sometimes conflict with morality.

"Eight Bells" continued Last Resort's so-far trademark density, packing in a lot into one hour. So much, in fact, that my tiny brain wasn't always able to stay up to speed with what was going on. This was particularly apparent in the Tani (Dichen Lachman) and James plot where they went for nighttime picnic out in the woods or something? I'm not totally sure what was going on there other than Last Resort showing off the beauty of Hawaii. In the cut I saw, Tani simply told James, "We're going to be late," without saying where or why they were going (it was a family dinner visit, so I guess they're good friends now?). I just assume it was for flirty boat rides and nose-to-nose tropical pool water-treading, and I blame neither of them for it. If these guys aren't "doing it" by the next episode then I'M gonna get blue balls. Seal the deal, James! And after Tani's emotional chat about her mother and her father and her brother, there might even be room for love to squeeze its way in.

Off the island, weapons hottie Kylie Sinclair continued to have trouble keeping a whole outfit on, showing up in a towel and just her man's shirt, and I'm okay with that. I'm liking the dynamic between Kylie and Admiral Shepard; she's concerned with keeping her company's secrets secret, and he's interested in getting his daughter back and figuring out exactly where the order to fire on Pakistan through the Antarctic channel came from. Their goals overlap in some spots, but there's enough of a rift between them that they won't run off together and become a supersleuth team solving nuclear crimes. They are going to need each other, though, and trust will become a big issue between them. Side note: It wasn't definitively laid out, but did you get the idea that Kylie's father was the one who took the harddrive with the Perseus schematics on it?

In the final scene, Chaplin was having a drink with Cortez while his grip on command slowly slipped away. He's going to get retaliation on Julian when the time is right, but he's going to pick his fights one at a time and focus on the 1,000 tons of steel 200 miles in any direction of the island. But Julian came marching down the middle of Main Street with the funeral procession of the boy who was killed in last episode's firefight, smirking toward Chaplin as he did his part carrying the box that held a lifeless body. Julian might not have temperamental Uranium encased in missiles, but he has something that might be more important: the favor of the natives. How much longer can Chaplin put off this fight when Julian keeps poking him in the forehead? Last Resort isn't perfect, but it is doing things right by making live very hard on our hero Chaplin. So far so good through three episodes.

– I said there's no real face to the conspiracy/government threat, but I kind of lied. That was Jay Karnes (The Shield's Dutch) playing Secretary of Defense Curry, the same guy who had a showdown with Chaplin on the COMM in the sub in the pilot. Also, he's looking a little grayer than before.

– Easy-money bet: That's not drugs in those boxes Julian had Chaplin fetch.

– For once in my life I want to say, "Put him in the BRIG!" to someone other than my cats before I stuff them in a cat carrier.

– Another character to like: Cortez. She's part Starbuck, part Vasquez from Aliens. AND she'll bone an island villain to save her friend's life. She's tough and she's vulnerable. I can't wait to see more things from her.

– COB Joseph Prosser is getting some good lines. "She always moans a little at 1300. That's her G-Spot." (Saucy for an 8pm show!) "Get your blouse on, partner, it's not casual Friday around here." That's rugged Navy-man talk, right there.

– Believability tester: Sophie guiding the Colorado through underwater canyons with a stopwatch and a piece of paper. Do they have a course for "Blind Submarine Guidance" in NATO school? That seemed bogus to me. But did you see the sparks between Sam and Sophie!?!?!? That's because...

– MOST IMPORTANT THING HERE: Did you know that Scott Speedman (who plays Sam) and Camille De Pazzis (who plays sexy NATO girl Sophie) are dating IRL? I can't tell you how much I fully support this. I really hope the vice presidential candidates talk about it tonight during their debate. Now I'm waiting for the People article about Dichen Lachman and Daniel Lissing caught making out at a Hawaii bar because this show is like an actor aphrodisiac.

– One last thing: I know I wrote the pilot review and Price Peterson write the Episode 2 review and now I'm writing the Episode 3 review and that can be confusing for you guys! Sorry! We're currently trying to figure out who is going to cover this show, which airs on an already busy night for both Price and me. If ABC keeps up the advanced screeners, then we should be good, but I'm guessing they'll stop soon.

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Gossip Girl S6E02: "High Infidelity"

Well, after a fairly solid season premiere, Gossip Girl settled back into its typical (read: pretty miserable) rhythms in "High Infidelity." Let's run through the big points, shall we?

Last week, I praised the premiere for pulling all the characters together in one big story. That was the primary reason why the episode worked for me. But that was a premiere, and premieres are special. So it's no surprise that in this episode, the show returned to the annoying "multiple mediocre storylines converging unrelatedly at a party or event" formula that it has beaten 100 feet into the ground.

Look, I understand that the show can't write episodes with everyone working together on some goal every week. But the way that Gossip Girl usually moves through its episodes rubs me the wrong way. Not only is it tough to care about many of the stories that happen each week, but said stories often come together in a stupid fashion. For example, Chuck being called to the event, only to realize four seconds in that he'd been tricked and didn't actually need to be there at all. It lacked all purpose and just filled time.

If it were possible for me to feel sympathy for a very attractive and likely fairly wealthy white man, there would probably be a twinge in my heart for Chace Crawford. The dude's character has, for years, had nothing to do on this show other than sleep with random female guest stars and then get duped by them somehow.

So I guess it's only fitting that Gossip Girl has kicked off its final season by trapping Nate in that exact same plot, only one that is—at least as of now—less nefarious and just simply humiliating. It turned out (of course), that Sage was not who she said she was. The episode tried to make us think that she was actually dating Barry Watson's Steven, but hopefully you knew better. Instead, it was revealed that Sage is Steven's 17-year-old daughter! Nate's getting it in with a high school lady. I guess it's only fair after last season's tryst with a much older woman.

I appreciate the show's attempts to self-referentially discuss Nate's stupidity and porous love life. Crawford is pretty good at being barely exasperated by his silly but charmed life. However, at a certain point, you can't just keep making fun of your terrible writing. You should fix it.

By my unofficial count, "High Infidelity" referred to high school 490 times. My guess is that Gossip Girl's writers are using it as a way to thematically circle back to the show's origins, particularly with all the discussion of (finally) growing up. In that regard, it makes some sense with regard to why characters kept talking about how they weren't in high school anymore.

BUT, uh, college? I've been willing to accept the show's decision to stop writing stories about the characters expanding their minds in higher education. Few shows in this genre have made that work. But the combination of most of the characters becoming highly powerful titans of industry, the lack of references to college, and the returning mentions of high school pushed too far. Gossip Girl has its own warped reality, but it wouldn't kill them to mention class every once and a while, especially when beating the "time to grow up!" thematic drum. College is where you really grow up. Not post-high school scheming.

Yet again, Gossip Girl was half-assed in giving me what I want from Serena and Blair's mostly lifeless feud. As I said in my pre-season wishlist, the show always wants to pit its two leading ladies against one another but never actually wants to make their tension matter, or allow either character to be truly villainous. Blair's almost been there before, and it seemed like Serena was on a warpath at the end of last season, only for the show to hit eject.

In just two episodes this season, the show has both complicated and simplified the 98th iteration of S and B not liking one another. On one hand, the short scenes they have shared in both episodes have been pretty great. Serena's actually trying to move on with her life, which means ditching the drama and history with Blair. Last week's "break-up" was nicely followed with Blair being not being invited to tonight's event, and ultimately being tossed from it. But although those scenes were good on an individual level, the story itself lacks teeth because both ladies are trying so hard to avoid one another, a move that more or less enforces that they still like each other more than they do not. That's lame and suggests that a reconciliation is closer than a legitimate throwdown.

Dan writing the sequel to Inside (working title: Inside-er: This Time With Last Names!) feels like a dead-end story to me. The show wants us to believe that Dan is actually, finally fed up with the elitism that he thinks he's not a part of, which isn't really true, and even if it was, the publishing of his version of the truth seems like one of those larger Gossip Girl stories that results in little more than Dan being given the cold shoulder for a few episodes before everyone gets over it and the show just glibly and offhandedly refers to it at random points.

Knowing what we know about the show and how it operates, what does Dan publishing these chapters in The Spectator accomplish? This might be Gossip Girl's final season, but things so rarely really change on this show that it is tough to imagine it resulting in Dan leaving New York City for good. And even if it does, that won't be until the finale, when the impact wouldn't be substantial. I don't mind this story but I hate it when the show pretends that certain events are going to CHANGE EVERYTHING.

Gossip Girl "High Infidelity" Photos

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Call me a weirdo, but while most of America looks forward to new fall season that includes shows about the power going out and, I don't know, monkey doctors, pretty much ALL I can think about is the new season of FX's American Horror Story. When Ryan Murphy's campy horror dramedy first premiered last year it was hard to know whether it would ever evolve past the bizarre horror mixtape of the pilot, but boy did it ever! The season stayed bizarre, of course, but who could've guessed it would've been as sad and haunting (pun NOT intended) as it ended up? Great television, made even moreso by its audacious between-seasons reset. Whoops, we were tricked into watching an anthology series!

Which brings us to the upcoming Asylum chapter of AHS starting in October. We still don't even know for sure what DAY it begins, but FX has seen fit to start teasing us mercilessly with fragments of footage possibly excerpted from the new opening credits sequence. As we all know the first season's title sequence was itself a season-long teaser since its imagery continued showing up in the show itself (save for that man with the garden shears whose plotline was excised for time). So let's take a look at the teasers that have been released so far and attempt to figure out what it all means! (And more importantly HOW it all relates to Chris Zylka's character!)

Here they are, be careful:

What on earth is that litterbug nun dumping in the field? At first I assumed she was disposing of body parts, but now I think she's leaving food out for some kind of terrible hell-beast. Or possibly a friendly puma. Oh, I really hope there is a friendly puma plotline.

Well, obviously it's laundry day at the nightmare nunnery and white-mask nun was just trying to do a solid for the corner chillin' nun. But then white-mask nun goes and gives us the SIDE-EYE? Aw, hell no, girl!

So, someone filled up the bathtub with milk and then turned the whole thing sideways so it didn't look like a big version of ladyparts. Then some guy or gal was bobbing up and down and then got zipped inside! This could honestly happen to anyone.

I feel like anybody who has allergies can relate to this woman. Get outta that flower, girl!

White nun was all annoyed because clearly the asylum had a pest issue what with all the scuffling under the stairs and whatnot. But I bet when she called the pest control dude he didn't find anything and she felt super embarrassed about it. (This will be a three-episode arc.)

That ghoul is like, "What is this, Miami Vice? Glass brick is SO '80s you guys!" Just kidding, the ghoul is just growling about whatever. Relax, ghoul. You're smudging the glass and we're low on Windex.

Not gonna lie, this does NOT look like a fun rave.

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