There's something about the new Fox series Human Target that makes us feel like kids again. Why does this man-of-action adventure drama, starring Mark Valley as more-than-a-bodyguard Christopher Chance, suddenly take us back to the 1980s? Could it be that the show reminds us of a bunch of adventure series that were on the air back then? The first Human Target TV show failed back in 1992 because it had missed the 1980s action-adventure boat, but maybe now nostalgia-seeking TV viewers will give it a "chance" (sorry). We compared the new Human Target to some of our favorite '80s action shows and found that they had a lot in common -- although Target still has some tricks it can learn from them.

As frequent Twitterers, we're big fans of @ShitMyDadSays, where a man who lives with his parents turns all of his father's withering comments and insults into Tweets. (Example: "Son, no one gives a shit about all the things your cell phone does. You didn't invent it, you just bought it. Anybody can do that.") So when we heard that he was getting a book deal, we were happy for him. Then, when we heard it was becoming a show on CBS, we had to scratch our heads. First of all, the swear words he uses (including the one in the frickin' title) are part of what makes it so funny, and second... it's a show about a grumpy old guy who berates his live-in adult son? How is that different from half the shows on television? We looked back at some of our favorite abusive TV dads from brilliant but cancelled shows.

As announced earlier this week, the powers that be over at Fox have given the go-ahead to a sci-fi Western pilot. Seems a mite strange, given that Fox completely mishandled the last sci-fi Western they tried to air just a few years back. Not only did Fox cancel the short-lived Joss Whedon series Firefly, but they also aired episodes out of order and generally ignored the show's rabid fanbase. What's to say they won't pull the same antics with a new, similarly themed show?

When I saw that there was a G-Force movie coming out, I got all kinds of excited. After all, I grew up watching G-Force -- it was one of my favorite Japanese cartoons, along with Voltron and Macron 1. Then I saw a picture from the movie... and it was of gerbils in spy gear. This was not the G-Force of my childhood. This was something very, very different.

Here at TWoP, we bitch a lot about Smallville and Heroes, with their dull characters and their hackneyed and/or convoluted plotlines, but maybe we should stop being so surprised that they're terrible. Because while superhero comedies are usually hysterical (if short-lived -- see The Tick and The Middleman), superhero dramas are often the worst things on television. We looked back on over a decade of terrible super-powered TV, and found that most of the time, we really didn't need a hero.

Our current TV-crazed society seems to be obsessed with reality series about plus-sized families, from Jon & Kate Plus 8 to Raising Sextuplets to 18 Kids & Counting. However, shows about the complexities of coping with large families are nothing new. In fact, people have always gravitated towards these types of series... even if most of them weren't very good. But while there have been heaps of twin shows (and even identical cousins), the giant families seem to hold some especially magical allure for certain viers. And now that there are reality shows, they don't need to pay kid actors any more. They can just scar actual children for life by sticking cameras in their faces and filming their every move. Anyway, we hold these classic (and not so) scripted series responsible for this disturbing TV trend.

There have been comparisons to Liz Lemon's character and Mary Richards from The Mary Tyler Moore Show before, but last night's plot seemed to be plucked straight from the annals of MTM. Liz Lemon encounters a little person and covers for her embarrassment by trying to date the guy. It instantly reminded me of a modern twist on the "Toulousse Lautrec is One of My Favorite Artists" episode, where Mary has a nice chat with a guy, only to find out that he's a foot shorter than she is. Awkwardness ensues.