The Big One

Listening to: A River Valentine, "Next to You." I heard a snippet of this while watching My Life as Liz and just had to find it. I mean, the first few lines are: "When I wake up in the morning / And my breath just stinks so fresh / How you still think I'm beautiful / Even when my hair's a mess." Also, even though the show is sort of a fabricated sham, it's pretty great and I slalomed through all nine Liz episodes in short order.

From the network that brought you "The Secret Life of the American Teenager," it's the best new show on television, Huge! For the record, I have a friend who actually watches The Secret Life of the American Teenager, mostly when she's home sick from work as a high powered lawyer. It's her shameful little secret. I haven't seen much of Secret Life but the title alone makes it probably watch worthy.

I wonder what the new TGIF is now. You remember TGIF right? Four half hour comedies with the tentpoles being Family Matters and Step by Step? (By the way, I had no idea that TGIF was supposed to mean "Thank Goodness It's Funny.") George and I used to get so excited to start our weekend right with some light laughs, before we were forced to go to Chinese school and other lame things the next few days. Maybe TGIF was the entertainment highlight of our lives. I know, don't judge us; We weren't born in this country. Also, if you need to rewatch the Urkel Dance, it's right here.

Somehow I doubt kids nowadays sit around on Friday nights awaiting programming of any sort. I can't imagine why they would need to with everything online and cell phones and social lives already kicking in by middle school. Sometimes I forget to avoid the local strip mall on weekend evenings and end up getting slammed by 12-16 year olds just hanging out around the movie theater. There are so many of them and they all act so cool and with it, like their Friday night is going to be better than my Friday night. They're probably right actually, come to think of it.

Anyway, so I don't know who stays in to watch ABC Family but it would be a shame if you aren't slotting Huge into your DVR.

Winnie Holzman, the genius writer behind My So Called Life -- she also did the musical book version of Wicked -- is in charge of this show. She's co-producing and co-writing Huge with her daughter, Savannah Dooley. For those of you who don't know MSCL, well, we probably shouldn't be friends anyway. But if you were a fan, you'll be glad to note that Huge has the same mix of intelligent humor, wonderfully poignant moments, and overall tartness/painfulness that made MSCL work so well. While I don't see Huge becoming iconic like MSCL, it's so much better after just one episode than 90% of the stuff on TV already. Bonus move: casting the Hoff's daughter, Hayley, as one of the leads.

One of the Huge characters adds the slow "like" in-between most of his words, a very Rickey thing to do. I'm excited for more MSCL nods while watching the show. Another of those nods so far is Paul Dooley, who played Patty's overbearing and judgemental father, and has nearly the exact same role this time around. Sidenote: I saw Tom Irwin, who played Angela's dad on MSCL, in a bit part in the recent Grey's Anatomy finale. I wanted to cry for him that his career had devolved to playing a cop on the worst overly dramatic show on television. Then again, it's not like MSCL ran long enough to give any of the participants financial success or much of a follow up career. I mean, where's Rayanne been? Sigh. AJ Langer I miss you.

Anyway, get ready to kick back Mondays at nine to watch Huge with me. Or we'll just watch it separately online whenever we have time or whatever. Appointment television is so two decades ago.