Catching cold and catching up

As I write this, my left temple is generating a dull throb. My sinus cavity is alternating between clogged and arid, with each state providing its own special kind of unpleasantness. The rising, spiraling sensation of a sneeze comes on, then fades away with no such relief or release -- all "ah," no "choo," if you will. Wadded facial tissues are piling up, daytime cold tablets sit in my pocket and wait to be freed from their secure plastic bubble, and a sipped-at bottle of orange juice continues to tiptoe its way to room temperature next to my keyboard.

Aren't seasonal colds a delight?

I know my winter isn't complete until I've had one. For good measure, I'll also catch one in the summer; I find that a nice case with chills and fever really helps to round out those hundred-degree July days.

A cold, however, can't stop me from watching TV. In fact, being sick sort of encourages my viewing habit -- although, admittedly, the jury's still out on whether that's a good thing or not.

While I'm ill, I tend to try to catch up on things I wanted to see and missed, or I'll re-watch an old favorite or two. In that spirit, I thought I'd go back through some television programs I've watched but haven't brought up in the column yet.

The Super Bowl: I know I wrote about this last week, but a postmortem of the broadcast seemed appropriate. The game, of course, was quite good, and NBC's coverage of it was terrific -- special credit has to go to the fine technical work by the camera crew and director Drew Esocoff; the replays of the game-winning touchdown catch by Pittsburgh Steelers' wide receiver Santonio Holmes were just as thrilling as the live moment itself.

The Super Bowl Commercials: Pretty lackluster, actually. Several traditional advertisers (General Motors and FedEx, among others) had elected to skip this year's game, and it showed. NBC's programming seemed to be featured more heavily than usual, with the bulk of the ads about the network's flagging Monday lineup. Most of the commercials were merely time-fillers, with a surprisingly small number of truly creative spikes. The spots I enjoyed the most were Coke's beautifully animated "Insects," Pepsi's "MacGruber" (which, I found out later, was originally a "Saturday Night Live" skit from the show the night before), and careerbuilder.com's elaborate construction about the reasons why job hunters should use their site.

The ads I disliked the most were the pair of cheap-looking (and empty-feeling) GoDaddy.com commercials -- the company is in the Web site domain registry business, but you'd never guess that by the leering nature of these productions.

"Scrubs" switches networks: The hospital-set comedy moved from NBC to ABC for what is likely a final season. While the show has seen its quality rise after the move -- the cast seems more into it this year, the writing is markedly improved compared to the last two or three seasons, and the wackiness has been dialed back significantly -- this eighth year needs to be the last. While I still like the show (and thought that the episode where J.D. and Turk -- played by Zach Braff and Donald Faison -- sit at a dying patient's bedside while he passes away was particularly affecting), the fact is that "Scrubs" just isn't as fresh and involving as it was in the first few seasons, a trait it shares with most series that live past five years. At least ABC will give the show the goodbye that the producers and fans were clamoring for when NBC cut the program's order short during last year's writers' strike, and a show that deserves a proper ending will actually get one. Three stars (out of four).

"Burn Notice" returns: When this action-comedy premiered two summers ago, I was instantly hooked, and I'm happy to say that my opinion hasn't changed. Jeffrey Donovan's pink-slipped super-spy is still super-cool, even while running for his life, while co-stars Gabrielle Anwar (as his gun-toting once-and-future love), Bruce Campbell (as his best friend and other partner-in-crime), and Sharon Gless (as his chain-smoking mother) have grown in their roles to form a tight ensemble. At times, "Burn Notice" feels like a throwback to action hours that filled the TV landscape back in the Seventies and Eighties with its gunplay, car chases and fisticuffs, but I don't mind that at all. "Burn Notice" might not be a deep, challenging show -- indeed, it's light and quick and fun, all in all, a terrific entertainment. Three and a half stars.