Did you watch "The Simpsons" last night? I did, and about halfway through I had a weird and difficult-to-categorize feeling that I was only later able to identify as shock that the episode did not entirely suck. I'm not making any claims for its greatness, mind you, but it was one of the few times in the last, say, ten years where I saw a new "Simpsons" episode and thought, Well, wow, that wasn't terrible. READ MORE

This preview for the seventh season of HBO's "Curb Your Enthusiasm" is only about thirty seconds, but it is the most succinct explanation for why the show works that I've seen thus far: Larry David takes an obvious and hackneyed premise-in this case, the difficulty of opening those damned plastic theft-guards-and still manages to extract humor from it. I laughed, at least. Thank God there's something to look forward to this fall for those of us who aren't counting down the seconds to the new "Melrose Place." [Via]