A Disjointed Tuesday

TigerBlog decided to watch the first episode of the new season of "Modern Family" last week.

He lasted somewhere around two minutes before he couldn't take it anymore. That show used to be really funny. Now? It isn't.

It's not easy to constantly churn out something creative year after year. In the sitcom world, what makes the characters funny in the first place gets stale after awhile, but it's really hard to figure out how to have sitcom characters evolve.

The normal tact is usually to make it more about the storyline then, rather than the characters themselves. As a result, sitcoms turn into soap operas that are minimally funny. Or the main character is turned into a caricature of what made it funny in the first place and the show suffers as a result. TigerBlog offers Sheldon from "The Big Bang Theory" as proof.

In the case of "Modern Family," there hasn't been any of that, at least from what TigerBlog has watched of the last few years. Instead, the show has just trotted out the same tired jokes time after time after time until there's nothing remotely funny about them anymore.

And that's basically what the first two minutes of this season were. So TigerBlog immediately switched off.

Then there is Season 5 of "Homeland," which debuted Sunday night.

More than any other show that TigerBlog has ever seen, "Homeland" has done a remarkable job of reinventing itself through the years. It appears this season will be no different.

Season 1 of "Homeland" is the single best season of any television show TigerBlog has ever seen. It was his first experience with binge watching, as it were, as he watched all 12 episodes of that season in about four days. Before that, he'd never even heard of the show. 

The first season was powerful, from the first scene through the last episode. It was gut-wrenching, with unreal character development across the board.

The show stuck with the Brody character a little longer than it needed to, but at least it recognized that that situation would ultimately drown the entire series. So instead it made a radical change in characters, location, plot, everything - and came back with a really, really strong Season 4 (other than a disappointing last episode).

The first show of Season 5 takes "Homeland" down what appears to be a radically new path. It has he main characters - Carrie, Saul and Quinn - but they're in a different setting, with a different relationship dynamic. The first episode was merely setting up the rest of the season, but it was still very strong.

TigerBlog didn't watch much football this weekend on TV.

He didn't, for example, see Caraun Reid's touchdown in the Lions' rather controversial loss to the Seahawks. TB's colleague Craig Sachson did, though. He had THIS STORY up on goprincetontigers.com less than a half hour after the TD.

TigerBlog did see the end of the Cowboys-Saints game, and as he's said before, when you pull within one on a touchdown late in a game, why not go for two? Win it or lose it there.

In this case, it was Jason Garrett, the Princeton alum and Cowboys' coach. Go for it. His team kicked the extra point and then ran only one snap after that, a kneel-down after New Orleans missed a field goal in the final seconds.

Had Dallas gone for two and not made it, Jason would have been ripped everywhere. Now? Nobody is blaming the coach, but his team lost the game nonetheless.

TigerBlog said two weeks ago, when the Giants were 0-2, that he wouldn't be shocked to see the team go 9-7, squeak into the playoffs and go on another postseason run. Now they're 2-2.

Because Princeton played on Friday night, TB was able to watch as much football as he might have wanted Saturday. Though he chose not to, it's not because there was a shortage of games on. He lost track, but it was well over 20.

At least in college football, the regular season games means something. In college basketball, they don't mean much, since it's all about March - first the conference tournaments and then the NCAA tournament.

In the world of Ivy League football, there are 10 games in 10 weeks. It's not quite binge watching, but it's pretty fast for a football season.

There are currently nine undefeated teams in the Football Championship Subdivision, which used to be much easier when it was just Division I-AA.

Of those nine unbeaten teams, four are in the Ivy League, where Princeton, Yale, Dartmouth and Harvard are all 3-0. That number has to shrink by at least one this weekend, when Yale is at Dartmouth.

Princeton is home against Colgate Saturday at 1.

Before then, Princeton has two home non-league soccer games, tonight when the men host Seton Hall and tomorrow when the women host Army West Point. That's how Army wants to be known these days, by the way. Army West Point. Navy is just Navy. And the Army-Navy game is still the Army-Navy game, not the Army West Point-Navy game.

The men's soccer team lost its Ivy opener at Dartmouth Saturday 1-0. The Tigers are now 3-3-1, and if they can manage to tie Seton Hall, then they'll be 3-3-2, just like they were after eight games in 2014.

Then they went 8-0-1 the rest of the way. So, yeah, losing to Dartmouth wasn't a great start, but there's a lot of season to go.

As for the women, they're 2-0-0 in the Ivy League, as is Harvard. The Tigers have league games against Brown this weekend (away) and Columbia next weekend (home) before traveling to take on the Crimson. There's also a non-league home game against Lehigh next Wednesday as well.

In the meantime, Mimi Asom was the Ivy Rookie of the Week for the third straight time after scoring twice in Princeton's 3-2 OT win over Dartmouth.

Check out the highlights HERE.

Asom's goals? Pretty sweet.

Summing up: "Modern Family?" Bleh. "Homeland?" Lots of intrigue. Great to see Caraun Reid score, even if only on the highlights. Jason should have gone for two. The Giants are looking good. There's a lot of college football on TV. Princeton has two good home soccer games the next two nights.

And that's it for today. A little more disjointed than usual, no?