In "America's Got Talent" Season 4 Episode 3What is the name of the intro music for Judge...?

"America's Got Talent" is back with a vengeance, says our host Nick Cannon, who I am enjoying more and more as a sort of real-life entry point to the separate and very different fantasy worlds inhabited by our judges and our contestants. Of course, when your go-to guy for the man-on-the-street's perspective is actually married to Mariah Carey, we understand that everything on the entire Earth is relative, which we see from above, as we hurtle through the American sky to the "AGT" stage: splits! Nose tricks! Fire acts! Backward-feet walking dude! That guy who put the hook through his nose!

Curiously, only that last act got through to Vegas; the rest have been banished to community center stages and church basements until the end of time. There's the guy who serenaded the Hoff, and the Stepford Dance Moppets, the flying Australian dog, magician Drew Thomas, the fiddling Polish triplets, and, of course, "the pride of America" (according to English Piers, so whatever on that): brothers-and-sister trio Voices of Glory. Week 1, consider yourself recapped.

Tonight, we're taking things to a whole new level -- of nausea (Nick's), bloodiness (some dude's), and patented, leaning-over dance moves (Michael Jackson's, rather poignantly). Plus: chicken catchers. What else could this be but "America's Got Talent"? Let's do this.

New York

Back in New York again? The geography of this show continues to astound me. An extra from "The Sopranos" reminds us that New York has the greatest talent on the planet. Enter Piers (slapping hands with, from the expression on his face, the crowd's swine flu sufferers); Sharon (slapping hands enthusiastically); and the Hoff (barreling through the crowd like the bull on Prada loafers we know him to be).

First up: 62-year-old Jersey City supermarket cashier Carol Lugo, who could, by the way, totally be a Lauren Hutton-style J. Crew model, and who dances -- I truly don't know the words to describe that dance. "Bizarre but wonderfully bizarre," Sharon says. Hoff, who's on his feet and looks like he's about to break into shout-y tears, just thinks it's "awesome." Piers proposes that she might singlehandedly rescue the country from recession. Carol's through, and she moonwalks offstage.

Moving on: Sharon tells Joseph Harris ("aka Yo-Yo Joe") that "all those yo-yo fanatics in America" -- demographic of one, I would have thought -- "need to be represented by you." He's through. So are the dance troupe Diva League, which has out-drag-queened the drag queen stylings of the Pussycat Dolls, and Chris Allison ("aka Coney Island Chris"), who appears to have eaten a light bulb.

We open the next segment to the tune of the Pussycat Dolls' "When I Grow Up." Callback, there. Despite the expect-a-schlub intro music, Jay Mattioli is revealed to be a rather adorable, disappearing magician whom Piers thinks has "star quality." He's through, leaving the stage to be sucked into the vortex of his even more adorable father's bear hug.

Chicago

We're back in Chicago. In addition to talent, Chicago has pizza, burgers, Route 66, and a river. There's an awful lot of schadenfreude in the air as juvenile court judge Franklin Sane massacres "Downtown," and it's all extremely cringe-y. Soft-piano intro (SPI) guarantees success, however, for 14-year-old Thia Megia singing Jennifer Holliday's "I Am Changing" -- her huge voice is at such intense odds with her tiny little body that at first I think she's lip-syncing.

Yes, we'd sure appreciate it if you'd order the season five DVD/blu-ray set through the TWSS Amazon link to your right, but we understand if you're one of those people looking to take advantage of the exclusives and extras the various big box stores throw your way.

Case in point-- Best Buy, after offering the "fun run" pack last year, is back with more Schrute Farms crap than you can shake a beet at:

Included in the pack is the DVD set, a beet shaped stress ball, a "do not disturb" door hanger, a mousepad, magnet, and t-shirt. The set is available in limited quantities, and will be selling for $41.99 when it drops on Tuesday.

Target is offering their own exclusive, which includes Michael Scott Paper Company graphics, "a 45-minute interview with the writers, plus a script and inspirational cast magnets." Price is $39.99, and will also be dropping this Tuesday.

This also leads into a difficult decision for me-- now that I own a PS3, do I spend the extra $10 for the blu-ray versions? You don't get any of the fancy extra shirts or magnets, but you do get the wonderful HD picture for $41.99/42.99 at Best Buy/Target.

Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In is an American sketch comedy television program which ran for 140 episodes from January 22, 1968 to May 14, 1973. It was hosted by comedians Dan Rowan and Dick Martin and was broadcast over NBC. It originally aired as a one-time special on September 9, 1967 and was such a success that it was brought back as a series, replacing The Man from U.N.C.L.E. on Mondays at 8pm on NBC. The title, Laugh-In, came out of events of the 1960s hippie culture, such as "love-ins" or "be-ins." These were terms that were, in turn, derived from "sit-ins," common in protests associated with civil rights and anti-war demonstrations of the time. The show was characterized by a rapid-fire series of gags and sketches, many of which conveyed sexual innuendo or were politically charged. Rowan and Martin continued the exasperated straight man (Dan Rowan) and "dumb" guy (Dick Martin) act which they had established as nightclub comics. Laugh-In had its roots in the humor of vaudeville and burlesque, but its most direct influences were from the comedy of Olsen and Johnson (specifically, their free-form Broadway revue Hellzapoppin'), the innovative television works of Ernie Kovacs, and the topical satire of That Was The Week That Was.