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Alyssa Rosenberg

Alyssa Rosenberg - Alyssa Rosenberg is a correspondent for TheAtlantic.com. She is the pop culture blogger for ThinkProgress, where she writes about the intersection of politics and culture at thinkprogress.org/alyssa. More

Alyssa Rosenberg is a correspondent for TheAtlantic.com. She is the pop culture blogger for ThinkProgress, where she writes about the intersection of politics and culture at http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa.   

Alyssa is also a columnist for the Washington Monthly and The Loop 21. Her career as a critic began at 8, when she began a children's book review column for her local paper, taking payments in gift certificates to the neighborhood bookstore. Since then, her interests have expanded to include Atlanta hip-hop, procedural television shows, and action movies she watches without any sense of irony whatsoever. Her writing on culture has appearedin Esquire.com, The Daily, The Daily Beast and the American Prospect, and she has written about politics and the executive branch for Government Executive, The New Republic and National Journal.   

'Community': Katharine McPhee Must Be Stopped

By Alyssa Rosenberg
Mar 12 2010, 10:37 AM ET Comment



Please, won't someone stop Katharine McPhee? The former American Idol contestant has dyed her hair blonde and set off on a television guest-appearance reign of terror, stopping last night to weigh down Community en route to the premiere of her own comedy, The Pink House, on NBC this fall. This time, she showed up as one of Pierce's many ex-stepdaughters as the members of the study group suffered through Family Day at Greendale. Lessons about family abounded:

1. Twins are strange. Whether they're finishing each other's pie, like Troy and Abed, who are brothers of another mother, or eating each other in utero, there's something just not right there.


2. Taking care of your children matters. But blow-up bounce pits are no threat to anyone, even girls who normally wear burqas. "If a young lady wants to go in a bouncy house, she should go. You did a noble thing," Shirley told Abed after discovering that her sons were impersonating his cousin so she could go have fun for once—and learned that she was a better mother than she'd thought along the way.


3. We make our own families. After Jeff's hot professor dumped him just before Family Day, the group stepped in to take care of him, just as he'd later step in to help Pierce learn to become a father. "I'll give Jeff a shoulder to cry on, and you boys put a dead bird in that bitch's glove compartment," Shirley commands, rallying the troops.


4. That said, it's possible to take things a little too far. Britta learned that the hard way when she tried to bond with Troy's terrifying grandmother, and ended up getting a switching. Nobody can say Troy didn't try to stop her.


And Jeff got himself declared a "chip off the old block" after seducing Pierce's ex-stepdaughter and discovering that she's grifting him. But no matter how awkward things are, it's worth trying. "Have a family. Share your life," Pierce told Jeff. "That, and understanding computers are two things you just can't knock out at the end."

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