Apparently, this season-ender was shown as part of a two hour double-bill in the US, right after last week’s episode.  I’m glad they didn’t do that here – I have a feeling this one would have seemed pretty tiresome at the beginning if I’d already sat through another (admittedly very good) one before it. 

It wasn’t that this was bad at all, just that I found the first half of it – Willi-vs-Claire, Woman-vs-Pigeons – a bit annoying, despite some magnificent work by Judith Light as Claire, and I never believed in Matt and Betty’s relationship in the first place, so their storyline just bored me.  (It may be too late for Matt to join Papi and Hilda in our end-of-year poll for 2009, but he’s by no means out of the running for 2010.)

But having said that, the latter part of the episode made up for all that.  The scene where Justin opened up to Marc about his worries about high school was impeccable.  Moving and utterly convincing; on the strength of this, Mark Indelicato and Michael Urie don’t get to do anywhere near as many scenes together as they should. 

But they weren’t the only ones worth watching.  Daniel’s speech scene at the awards ceremony was beautifully played by Eric Mabius, bringing me to tears for the first time in the episode.  And then he joined forces with Cyndi Lauper to do it again in the final scenes outside his townhouse.  Daniel holding onto Betty for dear life, Claire and Marc’s hearts breaking elsewhere, and this playing us out.  With me crying my eyes out, of course.  That’s how you end an episode, and that’s how you end a season.  For now, let’s just forget the beginning of both.

Predictable, perhaps; I’m hardly flying in the face of critical opinion.  In fairness, though, I said when reviewing it in February that it had set the bar pretty high for everyone else in 2009, and despite a late run by Yeah Yeah Yeahs it’s remained out in front all year.  Not only that, it gets better with prolonged exposure: ‘My Girls’ and ‘Bluish’ are still standouts, but the subtle charm of tracks such as ‘Lion In A Coma’ and ‘No More Runnin’ might be just as enduring over the longer term.  There’s an underlying maturity about the lyrical themes as well which takes a while to make itself known: songs about wanting to provide for your family, about supporting your brother when your father dies, about taking your kid out for a walk.  And the love songs sound as if they might have been written by adults.  (Nor was it a complete stranger to commercial success – number 11 on the Billboard 200 isn’t too shabby.)  It might be as close as Animal Collective ever get to mainstream success, and they’ve earned it with this album.

Sometimes good reviews can lead you up the garden path.  On the basis of reviews I bought Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ last album, ‘Show Your Bones’, and it was rubbish.  (I listened to it again the other day; it’s still rubbish.)  It confirmed my belief that the band was a bunch of New York scenesters who were not only too cool for school, but too cool to bother with writing decent melodies (the sublime ‘Maps’ apart, of course, which is on a previous album anyway).

So when ‘It’s Blitz!’ came out earlier this year I ignored the avalanche of critical praise, safe in the knowledge that it would be the usual hipster drivel.  Wrong, wrong, wrongity-wrong.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.  ‘It’s Blitz!’ is fantastic, and very nearly my album of the year. 

It’s fun, for one thing: openers ‘Zero‘ and ‘Heads Will Roll’ both sound like instant dancefloor classics.  It’s emotional: ‘Soft Shock’ and Skeletons’ are next up, both showing a flawless grasp of melody and feeling.  And if the standard isn’t quite maintained after that (‘Hysteric’ being the stand-out of the rest of the album) there’s no shame in it, and anyway there isn’t a bad track on the whole thing.  I love it.

Looks like Jed was right - on the strength of this fast-moving, thrilling episode, continuing where last week’s left off, Burn Notice ain’t no comedy. 

The strain finally gets to Michael as, fresh from being blown up, he tries to juggle dealing with Carla, helping a client with a sick kid, and Fiona continually waving her new boyfriend in his face to try and provoke a reaction.  Fi, he’s breaking his heart over you.  What do you want – blood?  Oh no, honey, Sam gets that instead.

Jeffrey Donovan, Gabrielle Anwar and Bruce Campbell have perfected these characters and their relationships now, and their scenes were particularly good this week, with the bulk of the jokes being replaced by some serious emotional heft.  Added to the sharp script and exciting story, that meant the episode was utterly gripping, but one thing jarred with me. The client, Kenny.  He was just a little too pathetic.  A little too keen.  I found it so distracting that I began to wonder if he was scamming our heroes rather than just being a bit OTT.   A rare mis-step in what was a brilliant episode – shame.

For a while I didn’t quite know how I felt about Rage Against The Machine vs Joe McElderry.  I hate ‘The X Factor’, and all it stands for, but at the same time there was a whiff of snobbery about the campaign: the belief that good music can only be made by men with guitars who, perhaps, SHOUT A BIT as well to establish their commitment.  (I do quite like RATM, but I don’t see why that should be incompatible with liking, say, Lady Gaga.)  So I was going to stay out of it.  But then, as Team Joe started to thrust their unpleasant heads above the parapet, I became so incoherently angry that I decided not to write about it because my article would inevitably descend into obscenity.  I mean, furious.  Nation-grinding-to-a-halt-as-a-result-of-Diana’s-death furious.  So what I’m going to do is use anodyne words instead of profanity.  I hope it will make sense.

Example – Joe McElderry: “I will be really disappointed if it doesn’t go to No1 after all the effort I’ve put in to this and winning the show”.  Really DISAPPOINTED?  You flipping piece of talentless sugar.  Listen, fliptard: getting to number 1 isn’t an entitlement for the winners of TV talent shows.  It’s a privilege.  For whoever sells the most copies of their song.  Flip off.

Example – Simon Cowell: “I think it’s quite a cynical campaign geared at me that is actually going to spoil the party for these three.”  CYNICAL?  Flipping curd.  The man who uses prime time ITV for half the year to foist power-ballad singing mediocrity on the rest of the flipping nation has the flipping NERVE to accuse other people of cynicism?  Curding idiot.  Flip.  Pink off. 

Example – Cheryl Cole: “I would be devastated to see Joe lose out to possibly the best thing that could happen to him in his life. Every aspiring popstar dreams of a number one record”.  Ah.  Why didn’t someone say so?  He really wants to be number 1.  Why bother with a flipping chart at all, then?  Why bother counting sales?  Let’s just flipping give it to Joe.

Team Rage.

Another good, solid episode this week with a missing mother-and-baby (and therefore double emotional whammy) story infused with the obligatory “your past always comes back to haunt you and the people you love” lesson to learn. 

I wasn’t entirely convinced by the basic premise, and I did wonder why this week the team was suddenly insistent on applying the rule of law, when several times this series they’ve decided “ah never mind, dude’s had a tough break, let him go” but it was still decent viewing, and there was no soapy personal stuff about the agents themselves, so I’m not complaining.

We got fed up complaining about those idiots who dish out the Grammys and the Globes (except when we agree with them, obv) so last year we decided to have our own awards, with winners voted for by the Unpopcult massive.   And now the second annual Unpopcult Awards are upon us – categories and nominees below.  In case you’re wondering, votes are anonymous – all’s we get to see are the total numbers.  So we hope that as many of you as possible will take the opportunity to cast your votes.  All nominations are based on what we’ve seen in the UK in 2009, and there are six in each category – except for the Most Annoying Character, where we just couldn’t help ourselves.  We’ll leave this up for about a fortnight, and do results early in 2010.

Reviewed here in May, and it sounds even better now: a terrific album, a creative rebirth, and a moving and dignified tribute to an absent friend.

Greek!  Greek’s back!

After nearly a year and a half since the mid-season finale, I idly checked the tv listings at lunchtime on Saturday and noticed Greek was on in 5 minutes.  GREEK!

I’d almost entirely given up on ever seeing the rest of the first season, but there it was, about to start and I was about to go out.  Sky+ to the rescue, and here we are.

As are the students at Cyprus-Rhodes.  Casey and Rusty are back, hearts broken by Evan (Really, Casey?  He is so not worth it.) and Jen K (She might be, Rus, sorry.) respectively; Cappie’s still adorable despite being inexplicably keen on the hateful Rebecca, and Evan’s still lurching wildly from not-as-bad-as-all-that to complete jerk.

Some things have changed though, what with the fall-out from Jen K’s expose of the Greek system.  I’m never 100% keen on the sorority politics plotlines but with former sorority president and irritant Frankie gone, things look a bit more promising on that front.  Poor Casey and the ZBZ’s trying to work their way back up the social scale after their fall from grace could be interesting if a little sad (although new enforcer-type girl Lizzie could get very annoying) and it gives Casey scope to continue to develop as a character and prove her mettle.  With a little help from Cappie and the Kappa Taus if this week is anything to go by.  (Did I mention that Cappie’s still adorable?) 

Thankfully, it’s not all angst though – plenty of great lines from Dale and a smattering of the usual good-natured comedy meant that despite a relatively understated first half, this episode was still kinda charming and funny. I love Greek all over again.

Back to the albums in a day or so.  Meantime, here’s 20-11 on the Tracks of the Year list.

20  ‘The Fear’, Lily Allen

19  ‘Lisztomania’, Phoenix

18  ‘Crystallised’, The xx

17  ‘Actor Out Of Work’, St. Vincent

16  ‘Jackie Collins Existential Question Time’, Manic Street Preachers

15  ‘When I Grow Up’, Fever Ray

14  ‘In For The Kill’, La Roux

13  ‘Two’, The Antlers

12 ‘Cornerstone’, Arctic Monkeys

11  ‘11th Dimension’, Julian Casablancas