BrainDead is a show on CBS made by Robert and Michelle King — who originally produced The Good Wife — staring Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Tony Shalhoub, and Aaron Tveit. It's about government gridlock and also an invasion of space bugs that are controlling people’s brains. The space bugs are supposed to be a metaphor about the state of our government, I think.

I don’t actually watch 'BrainDead'

You see, I don’t actually watch BrainDead. But it’s still my favorite new show of the summer. That’s because I do watch the weekly musical recaps the show publishes on CBS's website before each new episode. They’re written and sung by geek folk singer Jonathan Coulton, who you probably know from Portal’s Still Alive credit music.

(Oh, and spoilers for BrainDead below, I guess.)

I can’t imagine that actually watching the show would be a better form of entertainment

The songs are catchy, fun, and concisely synopsize what happened previously on BrainDead. In fact, they do the job so well I haven't actually taken the time to, you know, watch the show. Each song recaps the most recent episode, usually with some minor twist on the format to shake things up — for example, this week’s recap involved taking a break from the complicated plot to review an episode of long running classic TV series Gunsmoke. But each recap goes into enough detail on the previous episode, and is just so delightful that I can’t imagine that actually watching the show would be a better form of entertainment.

So take a few minutes out of your day, enjoy a few fun folk songs, and maybe actually watch BrainDead? If you do, please let me know if it’s actually any good. Okay, I know, I know, I need to give it a chance. And I will just as soon as I recap these recaps.