Spoilers for last night’s Big Love coming up after the jump:

I liked the return episode of Flight of the Conchords that aired last week, but I really liked the second episode that aired last night. And while the music wasn’t the only reason—FOTC is a funny enough comedy qua comedy that the songs are gravy at this point—it did have the first season 2 song, “Sugar Lumps,” that was good …

It will probably be a while before I get to tonight’s Battlestar Galactica, so I’ll leave you the keys to commence discussion in the meantime. (There didn’t seem to be many takers to discuss last week’s Friday Night Lights, so feel free to comment on that here too; if it becomes an issue, I’ll do separate threads in future weeks. )

Next Wednesday, CBS is finally enacting that much-predicted revolution in primetime programming: a primetime newscast. But only for one night. In an effort to gain more exposure for Katie Couric—riding a modest bump in the ratings after the election and her Sarah Palin interview—CBS will pre-empt The New Adventures of Old Christine …

Big-budget, fantastical event miniseries used to be a staple at NBC not too long ago: The Odyssey, Merlin, The Tenth Kingdom. They don’t make ’em like that much anymore, and The Last Templar, a daffy holy-relic-hunt mini starting on NBC Sunday night, suggests that that may not be such a bad thing.

It kicks off as a display of …

You know that digital-TV transition scheduled for Feb. 17 that you were hearing about everywhere you turned but didn’t quite understand? Well, it looks like you’ll be getting another four months not to understand it.

The Senate is reportedly close to agreeing to push off the transition—aimed at putting broadcast TV on more efficient …

Watching and writing up last night’s 30 Rock, alas, was one of the casualties of my continuing struggle against the giant-slug-like-virus-from-Fringe that has lodged in my upper respiratory system. (I know, it’s only 22 minutes of TV. But the virus-slug is a demanding taskmaster.) So I’ll let you DIY this one. The past couple 30 Rocks …

Spoilers for last night’s Office coming up after the jump: 

In this week’s TIME, my Tuned In column takes the temperature of pop culture around the Inauguration. It’s arguable whether new Administrations affect the culture or if it’s the other way around. But either way, if the national mood is changing, TV programmers and soda salesmen want a piece of it:

How do you know when a President is a

…

A few ratings numbers from here and there:

* Last night’s Lost edged out the debut of Lie to Me (with an American Idol lead-in), but barely. Lost’s adult rating dropped 25% from last season, though, the Hollywood Reporter notes, the comparison to last year’s Thursday time slot is not entirely apples-to-apples.

* Nielsen reports that …

Am laid up with a cold virus approximately the size of the one that crawled out of those people’s mouths in this week’s Fringe, so blogging’s going to be light today. But I thought I’d point you to Mo Ryan’s postmortem interview with Damon Lindelof about last night’s season 5 Lost premiere. “If you apply common sense rules to Desmond’s …