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Geez, has another week gone by already? Well, let's talk about some of the awesome and not-so-awesome TV that aired during it, then!

The ABC comedy returned with a talent show full of funnies: The Shays' silly cat dance to "Stray Cat Strut" and Malik's Medium homage reminded us that this series can be totally weird when it wants to be.

Too bad the guys who made it didn't think to invite Aaron Paul to participate.

After a badass silent opening, the episode moved quickly and had tons of action, with just the right amount of personal drama. Plus it set up an interesting new home for the main characters. And ZOMG zombies in riot gear!

It's not hard to believe that transitioning from a human into a vampire has its downsides. But this week's episode of TVD (which was genuinely fantastic) made it very clear: Being a vampire can be awful sometimes!

Your mileage may vary on this one, but fans of Teen Wolf or The Secret Circle (R.I.P.) must have been straight-up elated this week when the actor behind everybody's favorite hunter of witches and werewolves showed up in the Hamptons to hassle one of TV's most annoying characters (Declan obvs.) Fingers crossed for a violent showdown!

It's almost too early to single out any one element from American Horror Story: Asylum's premiere as it felt more like an expensive appetizer plate than an actual meal, but there's one thing nobody can deny: This thing has the best cast on television. From Jessica Lange's scenery chewing to Chloe Sevigny's commitment to being committed, there are no weak links.

New category! Because even if it is too early to single stuff out from the premiere, the episode as a whole was definitely "For the what the F?"!

In a flashback, Oliver's dad washed up on shore and was being eaten by menacing seagulls! So Oliver fought them off... and then he puked.

Vulture recognized the ridiculousness of last week's Homeland and added a laugh track to Brody's bad day.

Animal Practice was starting to pick up steam, and we're sad to see it go. Because let's face it: We'd choose Justin Kirk, Tyler Labine, and Crystal the Monkey over Whitney Cummings any day.

This was an especially rough week for one celebrity couple: The same day JoAnna Garcia learned that her new show Animal Practice was canceled, her husband Nick Swisher—an outfielder for the New York Yankees—was swept out of the playoffs after his team's terrible performance against the Detroit Tigers.

What made your list of TV loves and hates this week?

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Grimm S02E08: "The Other Side"

In last night's episode of Grimm, "The Other Side," helicopter parenting ran amok as a Wesen kid took out his entire quiz team and Adalind surfaced in Europe to raise hell for Portland. However, the biggest question of the night came not from the story but from the episode's weird ending: Namely, why is Nick such a jerk?

"The Other Side" began with the ongoing saga of Juliette and Renard as she and Nick attended a ceremony honoring the captain and then Renard awkwardly drove Juliette home after Nick and Hank left for the A plot. We saw Renard's obsession had gotten worse as he stared at Juliette in the shower a la Psycho before stumbling off into the night and punching an innocent bystander in the face. Renard: 1, Grocery Man: 0!

Meanwhile, a high-school academic decathlon participant was brutally murdered and it wasn't long before another team member bit the dust, prompting Nick and Hank to believe the murderer was another teammate whose motive was to take out his competition. After they questioned team star Pierce—who was a Galapagos Tortoise Wesen—Nick and Hank found the decathlon coach murdered as well.

It turned out that Pierce's mother, a geneticist and total hard-ass—as her "do homework to take your mind off your friend's murder" approach to parenting proved—had tinkered with her son's DNA in-utero, adding genes of the Lowen (a super-aggressive Wesen) to give him an edge. The splicing created a Jekyll/Hyde personality; Pierce was now killing anyone who stood in the way of his decathlon greatness... without knowing. When he found out he'd done, he was devastated and tried to commit suicide, but ultimately Nick was able to save him. Although the poor boy ended up in prison, so maybe that wasn't such a kindness.

Everyone's favorite Hexenbiest returned as Adalind hooked up with Renard's Royal brother. From Ro-Bro we learned that Renard is half Hexenbiest, the son of their Royal father's Hexenbiest mistress. Renard and Monroe interacted at the spice shop as Renard sought a cure for his Juliette obsession, and the episode ended with Monroe delivering some bad news: Not only is there no singular cure, things are going to get worse for the captain.

While enjoyable, the episode's hard sci-fi twist of gene-tampering was not only difficult to swallow, it also brought up all sorts of new questions about the Wesen—questions the episode never answered—and served to point out how little we actually know about the Wesen world. For instance, if you can isolate and transplant the genes that make up individual Wesen species, can you get rid of them? Is being a Wesen something you can "cure?" Fundamentally, what is a Wesen and where did they come from?

Also, how is a prize-winning geneticist unable to afford a better lawyer for her son? I mean there were multiple witnesses to his split-personality insanity! He was obviously mentally unbalanced, so how's come Nick and Hank were fine with callously spitting platitudes about the deck being stacked against him as he was marched off to prison (and not juvie!)?

Up until the ending, "The Other Side" was a great Wesen-of-the-week episode that did a nice job of balancing Adalind's plotting and mythology with cop-procedural action. It was fun to see Monroe geek out about the spice shop and Hank get upset about the Grimms' bloody past. Plus Renard is such a strong character that I even liked the Juliette storyline. But Nick and Hank's cynical shrugging-off of a mentally unbalanced kid who desperately needed help not only felt out of character for both of them, it also destroyed the whole premise of Grimm—that Nick, despite being a Grimm, is still a good guy.

A good guy doesn't say, "Oh, well!" when a kid is thrown into jail instead of getting the psychiatric help he needs. A good guy doesn't learn that the kid's mother is the true culprit, in messing with her son mentally and genetically, and then casually watch as the kid gets thrown under the bus. A good guy would at least testify or something, right? After watching Nick cover up his own murders and bend the rules for his friends, seeing him not do anything for a Wesen who truly needs him is more than upsetting—it runs contrary to Nick's fundamental role on the show.

Last night Nick was the real bad guy, and this is a twist I neither like nor am confident that the writers of Grimm will explore past this episode.

QUESTIONS:

– Is that police station intern going to be a new main character? He's obviously going to be important, otherwise Grimm wouldn't have wasted a scene on him, right?

– Why are the Royals prejudiced against the Hexenbiests?

– As they are clearly not Hexenbiest, what type of Wesen are the Royals?

– If Pierce's Wesen species is from the Galapagos, why is he white?

– Does Rosalee just have a list of weird things Monroe needs to ask people walking into the shop, and if so, can I get a copy?

– What do you think will happen to Renard?

Grimm "The Other Side" Photos

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Elementary S01E03: "Child Predator"

I find child murder inappropriate for television. I hate to sound like an old killjoy yelling at everybody to get out of her yard, but while I can/have/love to watch murder mystery after horror movie after action film where over-18-year-olds get taken out like mice under a lawn mower, just the sight of a gloved hand gesturing for a child to get in a car is a little too much for me. Elementary tried to find a loophole in the old "Don't use the most heartbreaking crime on earth for entertainment value" rule last night with a twist: The child we saw kidnapped in the opening was actually the mastermind behind all the subsequent child captures and murders. Still, this is just NOT how I like to relax, folks. Aren't there enough compelling ways to kill grown-ups without ratcheting up the stakes to, "Someone has your little girl!"?

To be fair, its not like Elementary was intent on rendering the loss of a child with gritty realism a la The Killing. The parents of the kidnapped little girl were introduced to the audience a few seconds before their televised interview and then got really mad when Sherlock came in and brought the media junket to a screeching halt. Grieving parents need their screentime, okay?! As much as we all loved Sherlock for stopping the interview in the most aggressive way possible (spray paint on the camera lens! Someone tell Lindsay Lohan to carry spray paint in her car and tag paparazzi!):

...but like, why was the family giving interviews so soon? Redonk. And then later they told the police chief he would be the FIRST ONE they'd go after talking to "the press." We got the impression that the second call they made after calling the police was to a PR agency for representation. Simmer, grieving TV parents! Simmer.

As for spotting tiny details and weaving them into a damning narrative, last night's episode was one of the more successful ones we've seen so far. Sherlock's glance at the kitchen led to the discovery of an Anna Nicole-lookalike mistress.

A paint scratch on a parked car told a tale of the kidnapper's van (shudder shudder shudder) and the banter between Sherlock and Watson was simply adorable. "I thought I was just a cavernous expanse between two ears," Watson coyly whispered at one point. After last week effectively drove a wedge between the pair, this week was about Sherlock vocalizing what he likes about Watson and validating her role beyond all the "sobriety twaddle"—she provides a sounding board, she actively assists in supporting him rather than interfering with his process. (Also she's provided several integral clues in the last couple weeks, but that was glossed over.) And how adorable was it when they fell in step doing squats? Lucy Liu gets extra points for doing squats in high heels.

The person in this episode who got a million points was Johnny Simmons, who took a break from the big screen to step into this juicy/thankless role as a child child-murderer, a 19-year-old who was first kidnapped and then used his superior intellect to direct his abductor and commit more and more murders (shudder). He seriously knocked my socks off both as a vulnerable brainwashed abductee whispering sweet nothings across the table from Sherlock and also as a "lettin' the freak flag fly" psychopath with an immunity deal taunting Sherlock in the park. Not to mention that gracefully handled some rather clumsy exposition speeches. I almost felt sad when cops picked him up because having him around a couple more episodes as a small-arc nemesis could have been cool, but hopefully his schedule was too full. Hire him, Hollywood, is what I'm saying! He great!

About the sweet nothings... there was a lot of whispering in this episode. There was a point where they were all watching Adam from behind two-way glass, Aidan Quinn, Watson, and Sherlock, and just whispering up a storm. Two-way glass is soundproof, right? Or was the perp on the other side sitting there thinking, "Is someone swishing around a rain stick on the other side of that mirror? What is going on?"

There was also a full spectrum of topless men last night, the hugely built and fantastically furry JLM bien sûr but also the serial killer appeared topless at a kitchen table in a back brace and it was pretty upsetting. Although, note to casting director/hair person: You did not pick enough of a weirdo for this serial killer. No offense to the actor (in fact, take it as a compliment!) but this is just not the face of a weirdo serial killler:

But you know who WAS weirding it up? Sherlock, who must have been given the direction, "You're not just a tweaker this episode, you're a tweaker on no sleep. Play it BIG!" If you've ever been around someone so exquisitely manic that they haven't slept for four days, you know that the body pulls on weird reserves of energy, making them increasingly jumpy and skittish until it's exhausting to be around them (I know from personal experience, long story, don't ask). In an attempt to capture both this energy and the Sherlock Holmes exactness and precise-itude, JLM was whipping around people and spinning on his heel like a nervous high school kid giving a cheeky presentation he'd worked on for way too long in front of a class. Just pure nerve. Well done, JLM, and also knock it off JLM! You're making me skittish.

Also, as much as I'm warming up to JLM's Sherlock, I fantasize from time to time about the roles of Sherlock and Watson being reversed and Liu playing a cold, icy, Sherlock to JLM's hunky Watson. Sigh! #fantasyseriesreset

So to sum: Aside from the regrettable content of the mystery, the way it was handled and the dynamic between Watson and Sherlock showed real growth and promise. As usual I had almost no patience with the actual B-story mystery going on, but the increasing detail involved in the mysteries and the actors, the characters, and their very cozy flophouse keep me coming back. Also are you THIRSTY GUYS?! Because there were no bees in this episode and don't even tell me tea = honey. Need to see wings and hear buzzing, people. Bet a coke would taste PRETTY GOOD RIGHT NOW but alas, no bees.

QUESTIONS:

1. Child murder: should procedurals steer clear?

2. Johnny Simmons: a young, male Meryl Streep?

3. How tall is JLM ?

4. Would you feel invigorated or collapse with exhaustion if you did 100 squats in a row?

5. Should stars being stalked by paparazzi fight back by spraying paint on the paparazzi's cameras?

Elementary "Child Predator" Photos

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