Summer TV with The AV Club

What’s worth watching on TV this summer? Our TV critics Erik Adams and Claire Zulkey of the AV Club have a few suggestions (yes, other than Breaking Bad). Adams suggests Disney Channel’s Gravity Falls, which airs on Fridays. Zulkey recommends The Franchise, which airs on Showtime on Wednesdays at 10pm.

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Actress Lisa Kudrow on Web Therapy

Lisa Kudrow broke out to TV stardom on the hugely popular sitcom Friends, portraying the clueless but street-wise Phoebe Buffay. The cast members of Friends were practically America's Sweethearts, but Kudrow has pursued roles as less easily lovable characters in movies like Easy A and the short-lived but critically acclaimed cable series The Comeback.

Most recently, Kudrow has co-created and stars in the improv-comedy series Web Therapy, about a self-centered therapist who has an unusual "modality" approach -- she insists on cutting the usual 50-minute dreams and feelings session to a three-minute web chat. Web Therapy was adapted for TV by Showtime last year, and just began its second season on the network.

Kudrow talks to us about her early career in science research, how the fickleness of middle-schoolers set her on the path to acting, and being mentored by none other than Jon Lovitz.

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Photo by Casey Rodgers/Invision for History/AP Images
American Picking with Danielle Colby

Maximum Fun Headquarters recently relocated to a beautiful, but barren, new office -- and it needed a touch of character. There's probably no better place to find it than at the huge Rose Bowl flea market in Los Angeles, but we needed a seasoned antiquer to help us out. Enter Danielle Colby, star of the History Channel's series American Pickers, who helped us pick a doozy.

Check out our AMAZING flea market bounty for yourself.

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Comedian Eric Andre

Eric Andre isn't a comedian with a household name, but that didn't stop him from getting his own talk show. And it didn't stop him from breaking every rule in the book when it comes to doing monologues or interviewing guests, either. The Eric Andre Show is hard to describe, but if you know that Andre isn't averse to pouring ketchup down his own pants or borderline abusing his guests, you might start to get the idea. His extremely low-key straight man Hannibal Burress provides a counterpoint to the madness.

Andre talks to us about literally deconstructing the talk show, setting up unexpected situations for guests, and more.

The Eric Andre Show airs Sundays at 12:30am on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim.

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The Outshot: The Fania All-Stars

This week, Jesse recommends that we all overcome any reluctance to let salsa music into our lives, and to begin with the Fania All-Stars.

Do you have a new music love? Tell us about it in your own outshot.

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Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is co-sponsoring this weekend's SF Sketchfest show, An Afternoon With Eagleheart!

The panel features Chris Elliot, who plays the titular character, alongside Maria Thayer (Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Strangers with Candy), Brett Gelman (Bored to Death, Funny or Die), Andy Blitz (Late Night with Conan O'Brien) and co-creators of the show Michael Koman and Andrew Weinberg.

Did I mention - they're in conversation with Eugene Mirman?

You can buy your tickets here, but we're also giving away three pairs of tickets to the show if you can switch on your trivia brain for a moment.

QUESTION: What are the character names of Eagleheart's two deputies on the show? (Just first names is OK!)

Tweet us @Bullseye, reply on our Facebook page with the answer and we'll pick three random entries with the correct answers. Deadline extended! Enter by midnight PT on Wednesday, January 18th!

June Diane Raphael from NTSF:SD:SUV:: and How Did This Get Made joins Jesse and Jordan to discuss childbirth, medical marijuana, and other important stuff.

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This Sunday at midnight, Adult Swim will air a 15-minute Venture Bros. musical mockumentary called From the Ladle to the Grave: The Story of Shallow Gravy. Hardcore fans who need an immediate fix can download the Shallow Gravy EP Jacket now.

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"Move This to the Top of Your Queue" is our new feature that tells you about wonderful shows or movies that have just appeared on (or will soon disappear from) your favorite online streaming services.

What to watch: Home Movies

Where to find it: Netflix streaming added all 52 episodes last month; there are five episodes from Season 3 on Hulu; and a set of 15 episodes are available for free at Adult Swim.

Ah, summer. When kids are free. Released from the constraints of school, they finally have the time to be ignored by their parents and abused by their soccer coach all day long. If they get lucky, however, there are also days when they can hang with their friends, let loose their imaginations, and, perhaps, create a series of short but alarmingly sophisticated cinematic dramas that comment (albeit somewhat obliquely) on their most challenging life experiences.

The 1999-2004 classic Home Movies follows eight-year-old aspiring filmmaker Brendan Small (voiced by . . . Brendan Small) and his friends Melissa (Melissa Bardin Galsky) and Jason (H. Jon Benjamin) as they take the challenges of being a kid and channel them into short but ambitious films. Typical episodes revolve around whatever movie idea Brendan has cooked up that week. And we’re not talking about the type simple movies you'd expect from children this age. Plots range from a rock opera about Franz Kafka to sci-fi epics about spacemen fighting the super villain team of evil George Washington, Picasso and Annie Oakley. Frequently, these films mirror the children's more stressful "real life" experiences - and these kids are going through quite a bit; but one of the show's greatest comedic pleasures is watching how the children face those challenges with a level of maturity that far exceeds that of the adults who purportedly care for them.

Brendan lives with his recently divorced mom, Paula (initially Paula Poundstone, then Janine Ditullo), with whom he has a relationship that skews closer to friends than mother and son. And then there’s Coach McGuirk (H. Jon Benjamin again): an overweight, often drunk, galoot of a man who attempts to coach Brendan and Melissa’s soccer team while giving them outrageously terrible advice.

I love the show, but haven't seen enough of it to consider myself a connoisseur. So I've brought in our resident Home Movies expert, Dan Sai, to help show us around the series.

After the jump, you can find his top five reasons why you should set aside part of your sunny summer for Home Movies. (And yes, it includes loads of delicious clips!)

Television legend Henry Winkler is best known for his role as Arthur "The Fonz" Fonzarelli on Happy Days, but he's continued to add acting, producing, and directing credits to his name over the past thirty years. He's also co-written a series of children's books about a boy with learning disabilities, inspired by his own challenges with dyslexia.

You can see him currently as Dr. Sy Mittleman on the new season of the [adult swim] show Childrens' Hospital, airing Sundays at midnight, and on USA's Royal Pains.

Jon Glaser is a comedy writer and performer. After beginning his comedy career on the mainstage at Second City, he wrote for and gave life to various characters on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. Glaser has also written for The Jenny McCarthy Show, The Dana Carvey Show and Human Giant. His newest project is a show on Cartoon Networks' [adult swim], Delocated, about a reality show centered on a man in the witness protection program.
The show is entering its second season.

Dave Willis and Dana Snyder of Aqua Teen Hunger Force join Jesse and Jordan for a discussion of Girl Scout cookies, cement dinosaurs and tour buses, among other things. The two are in the midst of a national tour.