“I thought you had a degree from Columbia”.

“Yes, and now I need to get one from America”.

Winger goes back to school at a Community College and ends up meeting a collection of characters headed by actor Chevy Chase. Each has led a life somewhat less than what they expected. This oddball group forms a study group, originally just an excuse for Winger to date the pretty blonde. Somehow along the way, if he is not careful, this Peter Pan may grow up and learn something.

Community works. The Community is witty and fresh and the characters are surprisingly endearing. This show looked like it would be a one joke setup but the writers seem to be finding a way to keep the comedy fresh.

If you are not familiar with the Bachelorette (or its counterpart the Bachelor), the show picks one woman who is looking for love marriage and happily every after and then introduces her to 30 guys who will vie for her affection over the course of 2 months. They go on dates in small groups at first and then increasingly spend more and more alone time together as the weaker members of the herd are thinned out. At the end of each episode there is a rose ceremony where some of the guys get a rose and stay and the others are, in effect, voted off the island by the one judge who is the bachelorette.

ABC was lucky to have at least one scoundrel (and one hero) on the show this year which no doubt led to higher ratings. Wes, a country western singer, admitted on camera in scenes not seen by Jillian, this season’s center of attention, that he was on the show to sell CDs. He also apparently admitted to some of the other bachelors off camera that he had a girlfriend back home. So the big drama this season was when one of the bachelors could not sleep after being dumped until he told Jillian to watch out for that snake. So we get the tall handsome Texan hero riding in to save the damsel while the other bachelors hide behind some “man code” crap.

It made for some pretty good TV, but that was just the side story to the show’s ultimate conclusion where the bachelorette is dressed in white and waiting the last two contestants who are bringing her an engagement ring. The show is geared so the guys know that they have to put themselves out there. They have to express their love or go home. But, of course, someone is going home anyway. The show leaves a trail of broken hearts which you get to watch breaking. It is a bit like doing a reality show on skydiving but revealing to the contestants that you only brought one parachute. Good guy Kiptyn was the runner up. He finally got to the point where he could express his love but was told (with a ring still in his pocket) that she had fallen in love with Ed while waiting for him to make up his mind. “I love you”. Geronimo! Splat.

In this season there was extra drama in the last episode as one of the last men asked to leave (Reid), the 2nd runner up so to speak, comes back with his own ring and proposal. Reid had not gotten to the point where he could say that he loved her until he was sent home so he was able to talk the producers into letting him have one more try. A surprise entrance, a surprise declaration of love, a proposal, tears, rejection. Geronimo! Splat.

Eric McCormack ( Will & Grace ) and Tom Cavanagh ( Ed ) return to series television in TNT’s TRUST ME , a sharp, witty drama series that centers on two best friends working as creative partners at a top-ranked Chicago ad agency.

Joining McCormack and Cavanagh in TRUST ME are Monica Potter ( Boston Legal ), Griffin Dunne ( Law & Order: Criminal Intent ), Sarah Clarke ( 24 ), Mike Damus ( Lost in Yonkers ) and Geoffrey Arend ( Garden State ). The show from Warner Horizon Television is executive-produced by THE CLOSER’s Greer Shephard, Michael M. Robin, Hunt Baldwin and John Coveny . Baldwin and Coveny are also writers on the show. TRUST ME premieres Monday, Jan. 26, 2009, at 10 p.m. (ET/PT) , following an all-new episode of THE CLOSER.

When you itch your chin, wring your hands, scratch your nose or increase your swallowing, DR. CAL LEIGHTMAN knows you’re lying. And he doesn’t just think so – he knows so. Whether it be family, friends or complete strangers – he knows when they’re holding something back. More accurate than any polygraph test, he is a human lie detector.

Dr. Cal Leightman heads up a private agency contracted by the FBI, local police, law firms, corporations and private individuals when they’ve hit a roadblock on their searches for the truth. Joining him are the foremost experts in the field of behavioral psychology: DR. GILLIAN FOSTER is the doctor’s professional partner and intellectual counterpart, a master of deception equally comfortable with lying and concealing her emotions; the other is Dr. Leightman’s lead researcher WILL LOKER who says everything on his mind and seemingly lacks the ability to lie. RIA TORRES (Monica Raymund), the newest member of the team, uses her natural and uncanny ability to read body language to catch the clues that her professional partners miss.

After the first two episodes I am liking this show and have added a season pass to my Tivo. It seems like if you can figure out who is lying then the crime is solved but the show, not unlike real life, is more complicated than that. Some times the guilty people are telling the truth and the innocent people are lying. But just why and what they are lying about is the puzzle. This is a smart show.

If you like these shows sign the petition to save Eli Stone and Pushing Daisies

Striking writer Peter Hyoguchi was walking the picket line outside Disney’s ABC Studios in Burbank in January when he had an epiphany. What if scriptwriters launched a website featuring their work, which they would own and control free of studio interference? That hunch is about to be tested. After months of planning and delay, Hyoguchi and his colleagues have turned their seemingly quixotic idea into a reality. Two weeks ago they launched an online “network” for original programming named Strike.TV. It marks an ambitious effort to connect film and TV writers to the fledgling world of online video. The portal will run 45 original Web series with more than 200 episodes from such veteran writers as Lester Lewis, a producer on “The Office,” and “Star Trek: Enterprise” scribe Ken LaZebnik. Shows include actors Timothy Dalton and JoBeth Williams. Episodes are mostly three to five minutes in length and roll out daily on Strike.TV, and also are available on video websites YouTube and Joost. The Los Angeles company just signed an agreement with Hulu, an online video service, to become its largest supplier of Web-original entertainment.

This is not a show I would watch with my 80 year old parents or with children as the themes are very adult in nature, but I found this new comedy to be engaging. In the pilot Bella gets back together with a musician boyfriend who she had dumped because he was over emotional and clingy. Dumping him has been good for his music career as he has turned the experience into the lyrics of hard rock ballads. Sure it is the plot of an old Boy Meets World episode but it is still funny.

Fortunately for Bella she lives in the world of TV comedy where psychics are always right sleeping with old boyfriends every week will probably not get her an STD. Like My Name is Earl, Bella makes her list but she has been told by the psychic to follow the signs. She won’t be going out to track down old boyfriends but will be running into them every week and if the writing stays sharp I will be watching.

I was convinced that the CBI was something they had made up but it does really exists.

The California Bureau of Investigation (CBI) provides expert investigative services to assist local, state and federal agencies in major criminal investigations across the state.

The show is probably a closer match to X-Files since the main characters are FBI and other government agents dealing with strange situations related to “fringe” science. I found the characters of Special Agent Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) and Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson) to be intriguing enough to tune in again, but this show is not Lost and maybe not X-Files.

After the first minute of Lost I knew it was something different and that I was hooked. After one episode of Fringe I am not at the same place yet. It is certainly darker and more gross based on the pilot. As a fan of the arcane, so able to deal with complex plots, I find the science and plot of Fringe to be less believable. There was a virus that would either kill instantly or take a number of days depending on what would work better with the plot.

So my take so far on Fringe is that the show’s title is prophetic. I am not sure this will become a main stream hit.