the best damn show on television

Right now, it's got to be Gilmore Girls, which just started its sixth season last night. Like any TV series, it's had its share of missteps, but I can't think of another show currently on the air that has a better overall sense of what it wants to be, and knows how to do it. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll kiss many hours good-bye (especially if you catch up with the DVD box sets).

Over on premium cable, the second and third episodes of HBO's Rome have proved to be very engrossing. The pilot was, as John Rogers said, "the draggy, pipe-y, way too much gratuitous nudity first ep", but they seem to be on track now. If you missed it altogether, the "inevitable coming three-fer night" is this Friday.

I'll write more on TV later this week, now that the fall season is incipient and some of the shows I actually care about have premiered. I used to get more excited about this time of year, but now I'm starting to agree with D: TV pilots, as a rule, suck. They're usually clunky because of all the necessary exposition, and because the writers and actors don't have a handle on the characters or conflicts yet. Start with the second or third episode, then go back and catch the first in reruns if you happen to start liking the show.

But I'm still going to watch the pilots of the new shows starring Buffy alums: Bones (David "Angel" Boreanaz), Kitchen Confidential (Nicholas "Xander" Brendon), and How I Met Your Mother (Alyson "Willow" Hannigan). Yes, I'll even watch a goddamn sitcom with a lame, gimmicky premise. Because I am a drooling fanboy. But you knew that.