By Doug Strassler

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but comedienne extraordinaire Roseanne has been doing a media gauntlet to promote her new reality – er, “unscripted” – show on Lifetime called “Roseanne’s Nuts,” about her life on a macadamia nut farm in Hawaii with her boyfriend, Johnny. (Get it?! The title’s a twofer!) And…all the promotion worked, because as a huge fan of her sitcom, I’ll watch her in pretty much anything.

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If the cast of That 70s Show had a high school reunion, who would have bragging rights and who would have to spend the night consoling himself at the bar?

That’s the question I’m asking in this piece over at MSNBC.com, and apparently, it’s going viral over there. (My editor says it’s the third most-viewed story of the day, and it’s closing in on J-Lo’s breakup news. You truly never know.)

Click on over to discover who wins the Good Citizenship award… and who wins the consolation gift certificate.

Welcome to Sucker Punch, the only blog post that ranks the gaudiest moments on this week’s episode of True Blood.

SPOILERS AHEAD

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Before we get started on this week’s installment, “I’m Alive and On Fire,” I have to revisit last week. In our discussion, some of you pointed out that HBO posted a featurette on the episode in which director David Petrarca and writer-series creator Alan Ball discuss the werepanthers’ plot to breed Jason against his will. “He kind of gets his comeuppance here,” says Petrarca. “The thing that he’s most been proud of becomes the thing that could most possibly endanger him.” Ball adds, “It’s kind of interesting to see the kind of guy who really gets his sense of worth from his sexual prowess to all of a sudden be kind of objectified and sort of used against his will.”

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The Emmy nominations were announced this morning, so Roommate Joe and I gallantly ignored our day-to-day responsibilities in order to discuss them.

The highlights of our conversation—which include major shout-outs to Martha Plimpton and Margo Martindale and the unearthing of some long-simmering resentments against Revolutionary Road—can be found below.

What are your thoughts on this year’s nominees?

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You guys, the YouTube-iverse has done us a major solid: It has given us Margaret Cho’s 1994 HBO standup special.

If you’re like me, then you watched this thing about a hundred times on Comedy Central. Cho’s skintight black jumpsuit is forever burned into my brain, as are the following jokes:

* “I’ll just cover it with leaves and hope somebody falls in.”

* “Stick it in!”

* “Moraaaaaan!”

* “A zaftig perhaps?” “A what?!?!” “A soft drink.”

… I could go on, but I’ll let Margaret tell us:

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Welcome to Sucker Punch, the only blog post that ranks that gaudiest moments on this week’s episode of True Blood.

SPOILERS AHEAD

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Before we dig  into the inter-species bloodfest of this week’s installment, “If You Love Me, Why Am I Dyin’?”, let me thank everyone who emailed me with their nominees for Sucker Punch of the Week. It’s great hearing from you all… because it reminds me that I’m not the only dork who sits at home on Sunday night getting really, really into this show.

Be warned, though, that I cannot be bribed into picking a Sucker Punch of the week. Cannot! Unless you can get Little Debbie to revive their long-dormant Spice Cake flavor, which was my favorite in the 80s. If you do that, then I will happily anoint any Sucker Punch you choose.

But before I write another pleading/angry letter to McKee Foods, let’s carry on… because I’m anxious to talk about Eric. His sudden “loss” at the hands of the witches—loss of memory, loss of self, loss of control—could be the greatest arc of this season.

For one thing, it’s delightful to see Alexander Skarsgaard give a brand new performance. His playfulness and innocence are such a departure from the dark and stormy Eric of previous seasons that it feels like we’re watching a new actor in a new role. It speaks to Skarsgaard’s skill that he’s able to make this Eric as instantly convincing as the other one.

The transformation also speaks to how well the writers and directors handle the soap opera conventions on this show.  A series can use the heightened, pulpy elements of soap opera storytelling—which themselves are rooted in older forms of playwriting—and still be sophisticated. It’s totally General Hospital, for instance, to have a character lose his memory, but in this episode, we see that Eric’s “great absence” is filled with deep ramifications.

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Welcome to Sucker Punch, the only blog post that ranks that gaudiest moments on this week’s episode of True Blood.

SPOILERS AHEAD

—

I’d like to begin the discussion of this week’s installment, “You Smell Like  Dinner,” with a word about nudity. And no, that word is not “delicious,” despite the physiques of the cast.

This week, I was struck that the show’s relationship to nudity is very complex. Sure, nakedness always comes with a sexual charge, but when characters are naked, they are more likely to drop the conditioning of human society and start spilling inner secrets or behaving like animals. That’s a fairly standard metaphor, I guess—frenzied liberation makes the characters in the musical Hair get naked, too—but True Blood complicates things by letting nakedness reveal different things in different folks. Not everyone is releasing the same kind of wild honesty.

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Welcome to Sucker Punch, the only blog post that ranks the gaudiest moments on this week’s episode of True Blood.

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This year, I am thrilled to announce that Sucker Punch is being hosted by NPR’s Monkey See blog. You can find the first installment right here.

Once you read, please leave a comment. Monkey See has never hosted a feature like Sucker Punch before, and it will help the series stay alive if the editors see that people are really engaging in a thoughtful discussion about True Blood.

And since thoughtful discussions are what you guys do best, I would love you forever if you started a conversation at Monkey See. You  have to register to leave a comment, but it’s totally painless. I’ve been registered for over a year, and I haven’t gotten any email from NPR or anything.

So… I’ll look forward to chatting with you over at Monkey See!

And of course, I’ll continue posting original content here on The Critical Condition.

By Doug Strassler

Believe it or not (and sometimes I still don’t), this column reaches a TON of people. And thanks to Facebook, Twitter and word of mouth, probably way more readers than I will ever realize. Certainly more readers than comment on some of the columns I write. I wanted to share some recent conversations I have had away from The Critical Condition, sprung from what readers have read right here.

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By Doug Strassler

There’s a history of great, iconic TV dads – Ward Cleaver, Andy Taylor, Cliff Huxtable, Dan Conner. But recently I’ve been watching a lot of reruns of Family Ties on The Hub, the relatively new family-oriented network co-owned by The Discovery Channel and Hasbro, and I maintain that my all-time fave television father remains that ever-quippy idealist, Steven Keaton (Michael Gross).

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