How I Met Your Mother: ‘Lobster Crawl’

“I’m getting too old for this shit.” It’s the line Barney played off of for a joke in the episode but it also rings true for the series as a whole (*). I get the impression from watching this season that just about everyone has gotten “too old” for the show and the actors and writers would really like to move on from the well that has been dried out for quite some time now.

(*) Not to mention the fact that they devoted an entire episode to this quote earlier on HIMYM’s run when Ted and Barney debated over the Murtaugh list and whether or not they were too old to be doing certain things.

The stories weren’t actually that horrible. It’s nice to watch Barney come to realizations of what he wants in life by having an actual real date with Patrice. And Lily and Marshall realizing their friend has a hole in his life now that he completed one of his major life goals. But the way that they go about setting up the climaxes to the endings of the stories has become so annoying that the payoffs fall flat time and time again. And I’m pretty sure this is at least the third time Barney has had this life changing epiphany; can it please just stick this time?

If I’m wrong about this, and people on the show do actually want to try and turn things around, then they need to stop selling out their characters and rely less on sight gags and more on wit and charm that made this show so great back in the day. The “cut to” jokes are getting way too much like Family Guy would do. Robin blowing up from her refusal to accept her allergies to lobster was just so bad. Also, they have to tone the characters down, especially Lily. Louder does not equal funnier.

Favorite moments:

• In the background of a flashback, college freshman Ted is trying to explain to Marshall that you need to smell the wine before drinking it was pretty funny.
• Barney didn’t have a dog as his wingman.

What did everyone else think? Comments are always welcome.

Parks and Recreation: ‘Pawnee Commons’

‘Pawnee Commons’ saw the welcome return of several great things of Parks past: the Pawnee/Eagleton rivalry, Wamapoke County Public Radio, Bert Macklin, and of course DJ Roomba. It’s pretty amazing that this show has established its settings and characters so well that they can have an episode where essentially not much happens and old moments are rehashed but despite that it was still another near masterpiece of joy.

Leslie will thankfully always be skeptical of the neighboring of Eagleton and because of it we got so many great moments from her and Ben’s trip across the border. I especially enjoyed the bit about how Eagleton was somehow able to miraculously have palm trees despite being in the middle of Indiana which was an excellence use of the fact that the show is filmed in California. I will say that I’ve never been a fan of the sitcom character not being to get words out of their mouths to admit they were wrong or to apologize, but I did appreciate Amy Poehler’s effort to try and make it work.

We also got the final mission for special FBI agent Bert Macklin who comes to the tough realization that after 40 years on the force, and being undercover without being able to see his family during this time either, it’s time to hang up the shades. It’s always fun to see April and Andy goofing around and getting to play the ridiculous characters they create, and it never hurts if the payoff results in one or both of get to learn a life lesson along the way.

The rest of the Parks Department was off helping Tommy Fresh spruce up the store property he just bought for his new business “Rent-a-Swag.” This was probably a bit of a sub-par plot, I think I either would have like to see less time devoted to this or much more as a couple characters, Ron and Chris in particular, didn’t get much to do here. But the store seems to be up and running and it will undoubtedly provide some interesting stories going forward.

Other favorite moments:

• ‘Jazz + Jazz = Jazz’ is pure radio gold.
• Now Entering Pawnee: Good Luck With That.
• “We asked for help and they claimed they weren’t home. An entire town claimed they weren’t home.”
• “They call their boogers Pawnee caviar.”

What did everyone else think? Comments are always welcome.

The Office: ‘The Target’

The complaint card tower story was Office at its finest. A character desperately attempting to have some fun at the dead end job he’s stuck at, some of the side characters getting involved in the action and allowing them to each have a good one-liner or two, and a little hint of romance. Erin smiling at Pete after he calms everyone down from yelling at Kevin was enough for me to immediately care more about their relationship than I have cumulatively for Erin/Andy over the four seasons they’ve been trying to develop it.

And speaking of Andy, it’s no surprise that these have been two of the best episodes of the season with the absence of Ed Helms who I presume was off filming Hangover Part 8: Drunker and Stupiderer. I still can’t explain why and how the character deteriorated so quickly but I actually think The Office would be best served if Andy’s boat sank or went missing in the Bermuda Triangle or something along those lines because the stories are simply much stronger when they don’t have to devote a main story the “star” of the show.

I certainly could have done without the Oscar/Angela/Senator love triangle storyline as always, but at least it’s finally over and for once it had a few funny bits throughout it. Also, I think that Oscar Nunez was doing some fine comedic acting during the duration of the last couple episodes; it’s just too bad that it couldn’t have been served elsewhere. Lost in the shuffle of this one was the fun little lunch Jim took Phyllis and Stanley to in order to try and sway them into covering for him while he’s off establishing his new sports marketing company. It was pretty amusing and had a sweet ending to it, can we ask for anything more at this point?

Other notable moments:

• Weird title sequence showing Jim and Pam kissing for the first time. Was that the first time this has happened or was I not paying attention before?
• Chris Gethard showing the receipts for all of his important purchases.
• Phyllis pulling off the glued down decorative bottle of wine was hilarious.
• Dwight making the first ever Office meta joke? It certainly caught me off guard when he said a documentary crew had been following him around for 9 years.
• “Ladies and gentlemen, we just lost a client! Yay!”

What did everyone else think? Comments are always welcome.

How I Met Your Mother: ‘Twelve Horny Women’

Another fairly solid effort of an episode from HIMYM and it’s nice to not have anything but complaints while reviewing one of its season 8 episodes. I didn’t have a chance to discuss last week’s episode but I will say that Brad has always been my favorite of the minor characters in the How I Met Your Mother world (sorry Ranjit) and it’s always a welcome sight to see him return, this time as the "bad guy" lawyer trying to take down Marshall and his firm over the case of chemical dumping.

For the most part this was an episode spent solely on having some fun and thankfully put the relationship stuff on the backburner. Joe Manganiello was totally game for whatever he was asked to do and he and Jason Segel carried most of the humor of the episode while the others told made up stories of their “bad ass” pasts. Far from the best half hour we’ve seen from HIMYM but I’ll certainly take it at this point.

My other favorite moments:

• “How you going to provide for the little dudes’ futch?” - Brad putting down Marshall for being an environmental lawyer.
• “Because when you do one good deed, it creates a ripple effect.” – Marshall being cheesy with future Marvin.
• “Objection your honor, no one needs this long to pick up a pen.” - Marshall.
• “Objection your honor, on account of this is ridonk!” – Brad being Brad.
• Barney didn’t have a dog as his wingman.

What did everyone else think? Comments are always welcome.

The Walking Dead: ‘When the Dead Come Knocking’

I’ve been really slacking on the blog lately and I don’t have a good reason why. So I’m going to try and rapid fire some reviews out there but I’m most likely going to keep them quick and short.

In continuing what has been a superb first half of the season, ‘When the Dead Come Knocking’ was filled with solid action and plenty of character moments that have amped up the intensity even further headed into the mid-season finale where we’ll undoubtedly get our first taste of Rick and the gang versus The Governor and Merle.

This episode had plenty of terror in it and very little came from zombies and Merle and The Governor play a game of bad cop/insanely creepy cop to the captive Glen and Maggie. I’d hate to get interrogated by normal Merle, but a Merle with a knife-hand and hit pet attack zombie? Yikes. Glen is somehow able to man-up and battle way his through it all, showing how tough he has become since the outbreak. The Governor uses different techniques on Maggie as he continues to show us that we shouldn’t assume he reached a mentally unstable, absolutely psychotic low until he actually dies.

Back at the prison, Michonne meets our survivors for the first time while bearing the gift of baby food. After Rick decides to help her and lets her in to recover from her injuries, Michonne informs them that Glen and Maggie have been taken hostage in the town of Woodbury. After receiving some apparent miracle potion, Michonne is ready to go and she, Rick, Darryl, and Oscar embark on a rescue mission to get their group back. After getting swarmed by a hundred zombies in the woods surrounding Woodbury, they make their way into the cabin of some guy who had been apparently sleeping for the past 408 days as he was unaware of what zombies are. Michonne shuts him up quickly and, in true The Walking Dead fashion, he gets to become a nice meal for us all to watch.

Also, Andrea and Milton get to watch an old man die and become a zombie.

What did everyone else think? Are you excited for the mid-season finale? Comments are always welcome.

New Girl: ‘Menzies’

There was so much going on in this episode that I’m not exactly sure where to start. While I thought this episode was good, it was far from the best work we’ve seen from New Girl and I think that’s because they tried to cram 8 stories into an episode that called for 3 or 4 at the most. Again, I didn’t think any of them were bad but there was no room for any of them to breathe.

Our starting point stems from Jess’ inability to pay the gas bill and triggers Schmidt to turn it off until Jess finds a job and is able to pay for it. So despite having her monthly visitor Jess sets out to interview for being a night school teacher but loses complete control of her emotions the first time around and fails miserably. Later on she gets a pep talk from Nick and goes back in, nails it, and sets up lots of funny potential story lines going forward. However, Jess isn’t the only one who gets a visit as Winston has come down with “male sympathy PMS” and plenty of jokes pop-up because of it. It turned out to be Winston’s way of dealing with his recent breakup but I thought that deserved more than the 4 minutes of screen time it got. Oh well.

Schmidt has his own thing going on at work as his new boss is sex-crazy and definitely feeling the vibe that Schmidt is emitting. He’s forced to sign a contract with her in order to pursue their relationship further and it’s full of insane clauses like “guaranteed mercury poisoning” that Schmidt can expect. Schmidt also gets intertwined into Cece’s fear that Robbie thinks she’s a nice girl, pushing her into the two of them almost hooking up. And thank God Cece didn’t actually cheat on Robbie because I would have felt awful about both hers and Schmidt’s characters going forward for a long time.

Nick’s little adventure with his elderly Asian friend Tram was absolutely amazing though. Tram basically sits there as a sounding board for Nick to come to his own realizations about why he has anger problems and it quickly becomes hilarious to watch Jake Johnson struggle to accept how Tram is so knowledgeable and Zen-like. I really liked this story and I think they had the right amount of it, but overall there was little too much going on everywhere else. But I suppose you’d rather have too many good things than too few so I’m guessing this is just a minor blip in season two for New Girl.

Some of my other favorite moments:

• “I will push if I want to push! I hate doors!” – Nick
• “There’s something real creepy about you pal. You want to get weird, let’s get weird.” – Nick when he is first approached by Tram.
• “I feel like I want to murder someone and also I want soft pretzels.” 

How I Met Your Mother: ‘Splitsville’

Remember when we would have considered this to be the worst episode of How I Met Your Mother ever made as opposed to saying "well at least Barney didn't have a dog for wing-man?" Those were the days. What ticked me off the most about this episode is that not only was it lacking humor, but I was just plain out annoyed by the resolutions we got here as the set ups to them basically either made me dislike the characters or cringe at their wants and desires.

Obviously the biggest problem was the main story where we come to find out that Robin is in a purely sexual relationship with Nick who also is apparently one of the dumbest people on Earth (*). And Robin developing conflicting opinions on whether or not to dump him leads to Barney being required to step in and do the deed by finally declaring to Robin the love he really feels for her. Well, sort of. This has gotten to the point where it’s just down right insulting to the fans of the show. Even if we didn’t know, which by the way they have made it very clear to us that WE KNOW, Robin and Barney are going to end up together, I would still absolutely hate this on again off again story between the two of them. Get it over with, get them together, and let us and them get on with our lives.

(*) Now, if I’m not mistaken, nothing in previews episodes hinted at Nick being unintelligent so this was kind of out blue. I actually thought there was some humor in it, but I wish we had gotten before his final episode.

Oh and over on the Ted, Marshall, and Lily side of things? Well I could see this being a pretty decent side story of an iCarly episode. I mean come on. Radnor, Segel, and Hannigan are all good actors and once upon a time they were casted perfectly for their roles in HIMYM. But they don’t do what some of these recent storylines call for, basically turning them into cartoon characters.

Other favorite moments:

• One. There was only one thing that qualified for my “favorite moments” section and it had nothing to do with a part of the story or a joke. But watching Neil Patrick Harris pretend to eat his Chinese food at the beginning was amazing. And one point he accidentally dropped some chicken from his chopsticks and stared at them like they were defective.

What did everyone else think? Comments are always welcome.

The Walking Dead: ‘Say the Word’

The question coming into ‘Say the Word’ was how would The Walking Dead respond to the crazy, unexpected, triumphant episode we saw last week? And the answer was with an episode that was just kind of there. It wasn’t a bad episode by any means, heck in the context of season two this would have been great, but here we got an episode that was just what it was: an hour of zombie entertainment. The Walking Dead has officially figured out what to do with the show. Obviously after the events of last week if was a necessity to take a breather; so instead of having all the characters stand around and talk about their feelings, we got a zombie slaughter fest and a few good teasers to set up future events.

This episode had a lot of similarities to Lost. Not only in the overall structure of building a low-key episode right after a fast paced one, but there were a couple details that reminded me of that other group of survivors. The first was the weirdness of seeing “normal” life in this show were we’ve become accustomed to seeing brutal incivility. Andrea and Michonne mingling around the quaint town of Woodbury was just like when we first saw “the others” houses for the first time and how incomprehensible it was for us to grasp that this structure was possible in these surroundings. The second was how the episode ended. Lost was the king of doing this: filling an episode with plot devices and just when fans would start to mumble about how “slow” this episode was they would drop a bomb like having a phone mysteriously ring and leave that nugget as a cliffhanger.

I actually really liked the pairing of Darryl and Maggie as they went in search of baby formula for little “Asskicker” as Darryl so fondly named Lori and Rick’s baby. Let’s give some major credit to Darryl too for being the first one to figure out immediately that the newborn will actually need to eat in the near future and taking the initiative to go see if he can find anything. The convenience of finding it was a little ridiculous but I’d rather they get the formula easily than just ignore the issue all together.

Over in Woodbury we got some more weirdness. First the Governor is collecting zombie heads for his own personal aquarium, then we find out he has his very own Life Size Zombie Barbie (from Mattel).  I know that Michonne probably has the right intentions to leave this messed up town, but from the perspective of her and Andrea I just don’t see how you can down running water, electricity, and protection provided when you know the rest of the world is as far away from providing these things as you can be. Overall, I don’t think I quite care enough about the Andrea/Michonne relationship to justify the amount of screen time that was devoted to their debate. I know this tension should be there but considering we just skipped over the first seven or so months of their adventures I can’t bring myself to invest in it.

A few other thoughts:

• We got ourselves a crazy Rick Grimes here. Last season I though Andrew Lincoln was one of the worst actors to be the lead of an ensemble cast on television. So far this season I’m finding myself rooting for him to get so Emmy recognition. Really enjoying play all these different emotions over a short period of time.
• The Governor’s notebook was pretty detailed and included lots of markings, page after page. I have a feeling we’re going to find out more about how to deal with the zombie epidemic in the near future based on his findings.
• For the second straight episode we learn more about T-Dog in one sentence than we did throughout the entire series beforehand when Glen tells Rick about how he had driven busses full of the elderly when the outbreak first started.
• I have a strong feeling that Merle’s dream was to be some sort of WWE wrestler with people cheering him on, which is why I found Zombie fight club to be a great achievement for the character.
• “Hello dinner.”

What did everyone else think? Comments are always welcome.

The Walking Dead: ‘Killer Within’

“It’s so easy to do the wrong thing in this world.”

Lori Grimes was far from perfect. And by far from perfect I mean if she was standing on the top of Mount Everest, then perfect would be in an underground bunker in the heart of Louisiana. But she was also smart enough to accept that she had made too many mistakes, that she was so imperfect that at this point there was no way to reconcile herself. So she sized up her remaining options and did the only positive thing left that she could do. Let go.

As much I hated the character because her constant inconsistencies, poor judgment on just about everything, and being a detriment to the rest of the group’s success; that was a highly emotional and well executed death scene to say the least. Lori takes her last moments on this now apocalyptic Earth to confess to young Carl how easily the world can change you, and that change will probably be for the worst if you allow it. Then after Carl has heard enough of her blubbering after Lori delivers the baby and dies from blood loss, Carl is forced to put her down with his trusty sidearm. So in a span of about 5 minutes he is forced to watch his mother in labor, get gutted, and has to finish her off himself. Hopefully Herschel has some psychiatric experience from his past.

So as we lose someone who whines a lot and is much more a hindrance than they are useful in terms of helping in a zombie apocalypse, we gain another. The birth of the newborn will certainly bring about a whole host of problems for our survivors going forward, but that wasn’t even remotely what was going through Rick’s mind when he first saw it. And give credit to Andrew Lincoln for this one because that was some amazing acting, especially at the moment when he knelt down and screamed “Oh Nooo” when he saw Carl and was able to put all the pieces together about what his son just had to endure. I would not want to be a zombie in the path of Rick anytime soon.

What made this episode really special though is that Lori’s death came as an even bigger surprise seeing as it was the second death of a “main” character in the episode. The great Theodore “T-dog” Douglass also bit the dust in this one. What made the character so special to me was that the name “T-dog” was somehow less absurd than the actor’s actual name “Iron E.” Unfortunately it was clear early on in the episode that he wasn’t long for this world, what with him speaking up for the first time ever and the emergence of another black actor. For whatever reason there’s an unwritten rule in shows like this that you can’t have two actors of color sharing the screen.  But considering how little the show made us want to care about him at least he got a cool death out of it and was able to sacrifice himself for the team.

In other news, we got some more insight at what’s going on in Woodbury. Merle has his little heart set on finding his baby brother, but the Governor doesn’t seem very interested in allowing him to try and accomplish this task. Andrea and Michonne continue their disagreement as to whether or not they should stay or go. Personally, considering they  haven’t actually seen any shenanigans going on from those in charge in here, I don’t see how you can justify leaving the only town left in the world that has electricity and protection available to them based solely on a “gut feeling.”

This episode was able to keep the season three hot streak going for the show and actually has a strong argument for best episode the series has ever made. Things are going to change drastically for a main group in the immediate future as I’m sure Rick will go off the deep end, especially since this whole mess started from him chasing that prisoner Andrew out into the yard without actually finishing him off. I made the mistake of forgetting that in any kind of action or sci-fi show you have to assume that unless you actually see a person die on screen, there’s a good chance they’re still alive.

A few other thoughts:

• Setting up a trap?
• Glen had a super underrated episode considering all the other messes that happened. Not only was he able to score some guard tower sex, but also had one of the better zombie kills to date by straight up slicing off one their heads with his machete. Plus he foreshadows all the craziness by asking: “Oh man. Can’t we just have one good day?” at the beginning of the episode.
• I hope this isn’t the last time we see Herschel take out a zombie with his crutches.
• “How come we never hooked up?” –Merle is really one with words.
• The Governor tells Andrea his name is really Phillip. Yeah I’d go by “The Governor” too.

What did everyone else think? Comments are always welcome.

Saturday Night Live: ‘Louis C.K. with Musical Guest Fun.’

I’m not going to try and pretend I understand what the people in New York and its surround areas are going through right now in the wake of Hurricane Sandy and the destruction it left it behind. But I will say that you’d be hard pressed to find a better host for a live, New York based show that exists mainly to provide laughter for those who need it. Louis C.K. has always been the perfect blend of grace and slop which allows him to be really smart, really real, and really funny. A lot of people will argue that Louis is the best stand-up working right now, of which I agree, but hosting a live variety show is something we haven’t seen from him. I’m certainly excited and rooting as hard as I have ever have for a host to absolutely nail their performance. Go get em’ Louis.

Hurricane Sandy Press Conference

There was certainly no way to avoid doing a hurricane Sandy sketch considering the national attention it’s gotten over the past week. The tough part is trying to make a natural disaster funny. Mayor Bloomberg’s sign language interpreter was a good target considering her ability to sign so enthusiastically earned her plenty of recent internet fame including her very own Tumblr page. Following that up we got Chris Christie expressing his thoughts on the hurricane along with his New Jersey-style interpreter who added the Jersey stereotype gestures to her signing. Also, I thoroughly enjoyed Fred Armisen’s delivery of the line “Los blancos amore Homeland.” Pretty solid cold open, glad they didn’t take up too much time with it knowing they had Louis C.K. in waiting and didn’t have to use the open to kill some time like they’ve had to do with weaker hosts earlier in the season. Grade: B

Monologue

Louis C.K. comes out in his classic black pants and black golf shirt. Wouldn’t want Louis any other way. This was clearly a case of the SNL writers telling Louis to just do your thing man as the entirety of his monologue is him doing stand-up about a recent event that happened in his life.

Louis tells the comedic story about how he was forced to be the one who helped up an old lady who had fallen down at the airport and how difficult it was for her to stand back up: “What are you a baby deer? Just stand.” Then, to his dismay, she then requires further help from him to find her gate. His response is: “I have to help her. I’ve already been kind. I can’t switch now.” Ah, I think I could listen to him describing foreign old ladies for the rest of my life. Really fun start and apart from the way he says the word “ell-ectricity” I totally approve of the monologue. Grade: A

Fox and Friends

This has been one of the best recurring skits of late, thanks in large part to Bobby Moynihan being so funny playing Brian Kilmeade. Him playing the innocent moron is definitely tapping into Brick Tamblyn territory and it’s fantastic. Donald Trump is the show’s special guest this week played by Jason Sudeikis and he comes bearing some pivotal election information: “I have it on good authority that President Obama has been texting Abu Nizar, Jafaar, and the Riddler.” Louis shows up with some real warnings related to the hurricane and to throw away food perishables, but as Taran Killan explains: “It’s better to drink spoiled milk then no milk at all.” They also ran their show’s fact checker corrections and the only one I initially caught was “trees do not have bones.” Grade: A-

Lincoln

The bar that was already set high with “Sad Mouse” for the new SNL digital shorts that will not actually be called “digital shorts.” But damnit if Lincoln didn’t just blow it out of the water. In one spectacular meta joke we get to see Louis C.K. playing Abraham Lincoln, playing Louis. They were able to recreate the “Louis” opening credits to a tee, this time with C.K. dressed as Lincoln as he goes about climbing up the subway steps and eating ¾ of his pizza before running to do his stand-up set. And Only Abraham Louicoln would have the depressing self-awareness to feel bad for the detective who will have to solve his inevitable murder. You’ve got competition Daniel Day-Lewis. Grade: A+

Australian Screen Legend

The most honest and passionate love scene in Australian cinema.

Fred Armisen hosts this Australian version of Masterpiece Theatre in which he looks at some of “best” scenes that have occurred over the great and illustrious history of Australian film. Kate McKinnon plays Tess Davies and Bill Hader plays Graham Dixon. Louis shows up later and plays John Chisholm who, after Tess’ character has been killed off, becomes intimate with Graham Dixon in “On the Bluffs,” the story of forbidden love. It’s that rare shot taken at Australia that we don’t see enough but the jokes weren’t there on this one. Grade: C-

Musical Break Number One

Fun. decided to go with “Some Nights” as their first song and it just not there. I don’t know if the sound was off or what but it didn’t sound right and was far from enjoyable. I feel like if you call your band “Fun.” it automatically set you up for the “more like anything but fun” hack joke so I won’t make it. Yet. Grade: D

Weekend Update

The biggest headline hit was in reference to Mayor Bloomberg’s remarks on the subway system being down because of Hurricane Sandy: “The subway will be up and running at full capacity. Which would be amazing considering it’s never happened before. Then they take the opportunity to pepper in some politics here before the election with Sudeikis coming in as Romney for a few fluff jokes. The next guest is Aidy Bryant as Courtney Barnes who is a social media “expert.” It’s been a long time coming for these people to be made fun of and it allowed for us to be shown this very important political tweet: “Vegetables suck and ice cream rules” sent from the account of Joe Biden. The girl you wish you hadn’t started a conversation with at a party appears as the third guest and gets played by Cecily Strong. She explains, or attempts to, her views on politics and how put off she is by, well, everything. I can definitely see this being a recurring character going forward. Fairly strong weekend update, but considering there were three guests, none of which played by Louis, I was a little disappointed. Grade: A-

Mountain Pass of Zog

Well that explains why Louis wasn’t in Weekend Update, probably took a little while to get into costume. To Louis’ amusement, they aren’t quite able to get the timing right on the act of blowing the horn and using the sound they have prerecorded for it. The whole sketch turns out to be a long joke about how Louis had been mispronouncing the name Zorn as Zog and at the end he goes on his merry way after delivering the crystal that will save his life. Certainly not the best sketch of the night. It kind of felt like they had the idea for a scene and wanted to do a farce of fantasy worlds and they came up with the premise later. Grade: D+

Hotel Check Out

“This is why it’s very important to double check the bill.” I liked this sketch enough that I’m glad they did it. This could have been a scene right out of Louis too, only he would the guy checking out, some sad and somber music would start playing as Louis’ life crumbles around him when he realizes he doesn’t have enough money to pay for all these mistaken charges but if he doesn’t leave now he’ll miss a potential career changing opportunity. This sketch, however, is much more upbeat and we get to have some laughs at the lunacy we now endure from hotels and the likes. Grade: C+

Musical Break Number Two

This time going with “Carry On.”  When will musical guests learn that slow songs usually don’t transfer well to the stage of Saturday Night Live? I thought Carry On was better than their rendition of “Some Nights,” but I just thought it felt out of place, especially after Louis came back from a commercial break clearly having joking around with the audience members. Based on the way some of them were sitting, I’m assuming he was discussing with them whether or not they should actually look backward awkwardly at the camera while he introduced Fun. again.

If it had been me making the song picks I would have gone with “Pretty Girls” for song number one, it’s actually a fun song like the band’s name suggests and the lyrics talk about being Saturday Night for petesake! And then you have to go with the song that got you here with “We are Young” and see if you  can get Janelle Monae to show up to help out. Grade: C

Last Call at Donnelly’s

It’s “you don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here time” at Donnelly’s pub in which Louis and Kate McKinnon are the final two bar patrons of the bar run by Kenan Thompson. They engage in nonsense drunk talk and are able to make connections between the two of them for every aspect of their lives including what they think are very similar meals: “What did you have for lunch today? Same time… Baby food, Candy Corn.” Kenan Thompson plays a great straight man throughout the sketch and does an excellent job of showing the disgust we were all feeling when the two engage in a kiss involving way too much tongue. Grade: B+

Final Thoughts

Overall I was satisfied with the episode and there were a few really great moments. I wish they had done a little more politically related such as Romney collecting food in Ohio and Louis plays some kind of average citizen that questions where it’s going and it’s hinted at that Mitt is keeping all of it himself… I don’t know there’s something there. Also, I think they should have done something with the new Disney/Star wars merger and the announcement of the movie which could have replaced the weak “Mountain Pass” sketch. But of course I’m nitpicking. Next week we get Anne Hathaway with musical guest Rihanna. My hopes aren't high but we’ll see.

What did everyone else think? Comments are always welcome.

Parks and Recreation: ‘Halloween Surprise’

That was really spectacular. It’s episodes like that which show why Parks and Rec is going to go down as one the best sitcoms of all time.  Personally, I’m an unabashed fan of Halloween installments of sitcoms as it is, so then I get something as sweet and unexpected as Ben proposing to Leslie on top of costumed silliness? Then sign me up.

Parks has proven time and time again that they aren’t afraid of changing the status quo in fear of losing the humor we’ve become accustomed to. For instance, we got the great spontaneity of Andy and April’s wedding in season three. Or having characters make career choices that change their environment, such as Andy leaving the shoeshine, Leslie winning for City Council, and Ben going off on location to work a campaign in DC. That type of change is rare to see in your typical workplace comedy show and that’s why when these changes occur the payoff is huge and we get emotionally invested because we start to care about these characters lives.

So Ben very romantically proposes to Leslie in their soon to be first apartment together, but then we get a couple of fun side stories thrown into this one as well. Ron and Andy team up again to take the two little girls trick or treating, and it never gets old watching Andy act as a little kid and Ron being at a completely loss words when it comes to dealing with children. It’s been nice watching Ron pursue a real romantic relationship and hopefully we’ll get a few more fun moments as we watch him try to transition into a family man.

And let us not forget our Jerry. Poor, poor Jerry. After being surprised by Ann and Leslie, Jerry starts to have a heart attack and loses complete control over his, erm, flatulence. And only Jerry would apologize while having a heart attack for making the room smell for those around him. This led to Jerry giving Leslie some sage advice in his hospital room about how important it is to surround yourself with loved ones, making the moment when Ben proposes to Leslie that much sweeter.

Really fun, emotional Halloween episode. Here a few of my other favorite moments:

• “I hope no one minds if I live-tweet this bitch.” –Donna.
• “Tree. Leaves. Night. Sky. Hand. Andy’s hand.” – Andy observing.
• “Neither of us is costume.” – Man who Andy mistakes for a costumed nerd along with his witch wife.
• In ‘Death Canoe 5’ the canoe actually becomes the hero.
• Having a wrist is a pre-existing condition Leslie.
• “If the kids were to come over to my place, I’d have to take an entire week off work just to turn off all the alarms and trip wires.” – Ron explain how kids don’t currently fit in his life.
• “Rent-a-swag.” – Tom’s first good idea? I hope Jean Ralphio isn’t far behind….

What did everyone else think? Comments are always welcome.

30 Rock: ‘Unwindulax’

In ‘Unwindulax’ we see 30 Rock get political all over the place as Liz Lemon fights for the representation of ideas and her support for Barack Obama, and Jack Donaghy tries to prove that money is power and that is why Mitt Romney will win. Seeing that this is a television review and not a political forum, I want to avoid pushing any of my own opinions here when it comes to how I feel about the two characters perspectives and ideals. However, viewing it as more of a satire of political stereotypes, I did enjoy this episode but I thought it was the weakest to date in this the show's final season.

There were two big points in the episode that stood out to me the most. The first was when Liz could no longer stand by and listen to the men at Jack’s Republican fundraiser mock her fellow democrats and she starts a rant that amusingly not very well thought out but it is her best attempt to express her feelings about the ignorance these people in her opinion choose to have. This apparently was Jack’s plan all along as he uses this outburst as evidence to raise more money to keep “people like that” out of the White House.

The second main point was Jack’s own speech about why Liz’s belief that people want to hear good ideas is nonsense: “ Americans don’t want that that. They want their Honey’s Boo Boo and their Sunday Night Feetball, which is the plural of football. Americans don’t want to think, they want men like me to pick their Presidents for them.” This was truly a shot at all of us and it was spot one. Say what you will about either candidate, but the biggest problem …. Sorry …. I don’t want to break my own rule that this is a review and not a political forum. So I’ll just say I thoroughly enjoyed Jack right there.

So this was also a part one of two episode where we find out at the end that one person may indeed make a difference in the election as Jenna is currently the biggest celebrity in the world of the Unwindulaxers that preside in the one truly undecided part of America, Northern Florida.

A few of my favorite moments:

• “You people in New York don’t know what’s going on in the rest of the country. Truck races, swamp parties, mall fires.” – Unwindulaxer man played by the great Gary Cole.
• “What do I do, press a button? No. It’s different from every other camera.” Pete being truly annoyed at the typical tourist.
• “It’s an original Leonard Ni’moy” – Liz’s justification of her semi-nude photograph.
• “Ed Begley Jr. wasn’t available because the sail on his car broke.”- Jack
• Only Pete could sprain his own neck by accidentally closing it in a window.
• TGS has never been the most cutting edge comedy show as proven by the characters of Baseball Mitt Romney and Barack O’llama.
• Florida. The penis of America.

What did everyone else think? Comments are always welcome.

Modern Family: ‘Open House of Horrors’

Last week I had begun to write a review for the new episode of Modern Family, but after the episode was over I realized I had almost nothing positive to say about it and instead decided to skip over the episode instead of criticizing all of its faults. But given that this is the second straight atrocity, and that ‘Open House of Horrors’ is a Halloween episode, usually one the easier and most fun episodes for a sitcom to make in a season, I have to point out the major fallacies.

Although there might have been a salvageable story here if they had gotten some of bugs out, there were three moments that were too cringe inducing for me to get on board with anything else that happened as the episode progressed.

1. The very first joke of the episode, Luke mistakes the giant Halloween decorations  in their front lawn for real lollipops and asks: “Why do they taste like cardboard?” Now I understand that this is a television show and it’s often times humorous to have a character who isn’t all-together there, but this joke crosses the line from oblivious to someone who may have a medical problem. Absolutely no one in their right mind over the age of 5 would make that mistake and it’s simply cheap and lazy writing on the part of the writers.
2. This one also happens in the very beginning of the episode as this has to be the 20^th time the cold open ends with Phil saying something slightly offensive to or about Claire and she gives her “classic” dismissive look at the camera as they roll into the credits. While Phil’s general misunderstanding of what comes out of his mouth is still funny at times, this format has become so formulaic that when it’s presented in this manner we all know that it’s coming and without the surprise it just lacks humor.
3. Speaking of things we've seen way too many times, Gloria gets to be “all Colombian” all over the place in this one. Why can’t the show just let Sofia Vergara be funny with clever jokes and scenes? Why do we have to see her time and time again mispronounce words and get mad at people for not understanding her? Why do we have to see her constantly get upset from being an immigrant and joking about her culture? The writers seem dead-set on keeping this character exactly the same from now until the end of time which is shame because I know there is more there for her.

I’d say that maybe Modern Family has just told all the stories it can tell, similar to The Office, and it’s just time to hang it up. But they haven’t told that many stories, they just keep using the same ones over and over again. On the plus side that means there’s still plenty of potential going forward for a show I once really liked, but with the constant Emmys and good ratings it’s hard to blame the writers much for not trying to fix something that is broken.

What does everyone else think? Am I just being too harsh? Comments are always welcome.

New Girl: ‘Models’

After being put on hold last week due to an MLB postseason rain delay, New Girl returned with another solid effort. While the Jess/Cece story fell flat at times, I loved everything about the story of Nick and Schmidt’s friendship and all the weird little details that circled around it.

First, on the Jess side of things, we saw her do her best to be a part of Cece’s birthday celebration by hanging out with the rest of Cece’s model friends. The best portion of this was that we got to see Cece’s crazy Russian roommate Nadia again and got to hear her plan for the birthday: “We go party tonight. Let dogs out. Catch gypsy.” Also, we got a nice call back to Nadia’s love of Wilmer Valderrama, first introduced when she listed off all the things she liked about America on her date with Schmidt last season. Besides a couple of okay gags mixed in, I could have done without so much time devoted to this plot; however, I’m glad that if the show was required to have blatant product placement for financial reasons that they didn’t try to force into a great overall episode where it didn’t belong.

But over on the guys’ side things? That was really funny and delightful. I loved that the whole questioning of Nick and Schmidt’s friendship was completely sparked by the fact that Schmidt simply brought Nick back a cookie because he was thinking of him. Pure and simple genius. Max Greenfield and Jake Johnson have become so good at expressing every emotion that their characters are going through that they don’t have to be on a big adventure or life changing dramatic moment for us to enjoy their screen time. In fact, it’s gotten to the point where the smaller the scope the better. The evolution of their friendship and the intricacies of their give-and-take relationship were fantastic to watch and moments like that make New Girl a must watch comedy.

Some of my other favorite moments:

• “Oh that’s make-up? I would take that off. You look crazy.” –Nick’s confusion on the shoe polish eye-liner she put on to go out.
• “The only time a man is allowed to think about another man is when that other man is Jay Cutler.” – Nick. Two Chicago Bears quarter back references in one night as Max tried to live out one if fantasies with Jim McMahon over on Happy Endings.
• “It’s official. We’ve got to turtle-proof this loft.” – Nick after he decided he was going after a turtle for a pet.
• “That wasn’t a cookie, damnit. That was a piece of his heart.” – Winston on what the cookie represented for Schmidt.
• “What’s going on? Did you guys watch porn together again?” – Jess on seeing the guys awkwardly sitting around together.
• “You’re the only turtle I want.” – Nick doing his best to describe his love of Schmidt.

What did everyone else think? Comments are always welcome.

Happy Endings: 'Cazsh Dummy Spillionaires'

When Happy Endings premiered back in the spring of 2011, you would have been hard pressed to find many fans of the show, let alone anyone who might predict that it would become one the most fast-paced, perfectly executed comedies on television. But somewhere along the line, that very thing happened and it’s great that it’s and back and we all get to enjoy it.

A few things have changed in the lives of our six friends since we last left them. Penny is dating her new boyfriend whom she met at their friends’ wedding in last season’s finale. Brad is blissfully kind of unemployed and is working on some fantastic ventriloquism skills with his dummy Sin-Brad. And Dave and Alex have begun to casually date, this of course being a much bigger deal in their perspective than it is to the rest of the group.

I think what separates Happy Endings to put it in the current elite crop of sitcoms is how it has effectively taken the best parts from a multitude of shows and is able to balance them. The connection that everyone immediately makes is with Friends (*) because it is a show about six twenty-somethings making their way in the big city while going on goofy adventures. But that’s where the similarities stop. Because this group has much more of a maniacal undertone in their attitudes and sometimes blatant indifference towards the world which is much closer in line to the It’s Always Sunny gang. But they still have enough heart and morals for us to care about them and when you mix in a non-stop barrage of jokes, puns and pop culture references in the vein of what 30 Rock  does, well then you have what Happy Endings has become.

(*) Even Brad high on laughing gas made this connection in an episode last season by referring to Brad as Ross, Alex as Rachel, Penny as Phoebe, Jane as Monica, and Max as fat Joey.

So many great quotes from the premiere, I’ll try my best to limit it:

• “Your Momma’s so fat, she died.”
• “You look like the Olsen twins’ burnt out brother, Larry-Kate Olsen.”
• “Dave is currently getting his goatee highlighted.”
• “Mmmm. That girl’s so whack, her first name should be Nick-Nack Patty.”
• “You sleepy-tea’d me.”
• “The doctor requested you wear bike shorts and a Jim McMahon jersey.”
• “It’s my one-man experimental band ‘Yoko Uno.’”

Also, I can’t get Brad's rendition of ‘Ebony and Ebony’ out of my head. What did everyone think? Comments are always welcome.

The Walking Dead: “Sick”

As of twenty four hours ago I was all but sure that I wouldn’t be able to watch The Walking Dead until Monday when it became available on other platforms because, as a Dish customer, AMC has been blocked out since before Breaking Bad started airing its’ fifth season. But then when all hope appeared to be lost, it turned back on like Hershel getting revived after he had been all but left for dead.

Speaking of which; by my count Lori has now made out with 34 different men since the zombie apocalypse has hit. After getting upset at Carl for being the first Grimes family member besides Rick to something useful when he retrieved medical supplies from the infirmary, Lori was able to channel her jealous rage and concentrate it at saving our now beloved old man Hershel. I’m really glad that they were able to save Hershel in this way because that was a thing about zombie movies that had always bugged me in the past when one of the characters would get bit on the ends of one of their limbs. I’m glad Rick had the common sense to chop off the diseased leg before it had a chance to spread to the rest of his body.

Sorry, I got a little ahead of myself there. Let’s get back to the point of when that leg got the ax. After Rick performs surgery our gang is greeted by five inmates that had been trapped in the prison’s cafeteria for ten months, completely cut off from the outside world. The newcomers are curious to say the least. First about who are these nut jobs that came bursting through their door and cut off this old dude’s leg? Secondly, they have been completely out of touch to what has been going on in the world since the outbreak. Clearly Rick and the gang can’t begin to express in words what the world has become. How civility and understanding no longer exist as they once knew it. So it shouldn’t come as any surprise that Rick doesn’t have the patience or time to deal with attitudes that aren’t along his lines.

And that is why I’m so very proud of the show for the scene where Rick faces off with “new Shane.” In my head I’m already thinking “oh great, Tomas is another bull-headed foe that Rick is going to have to keep at bay for the whole season.” But then they did something so great, something this show has been so hesitant to do in the past. They realized they had a problem and they took care of it. The show runners realized that this kind of character arc didn’t work in the past when we were forced to watch Shane and Rick for an hour 12 times last season. And just like the show runners, Rick too realized this is nonsense so he stared him down, and then he put him down. The zombies are what drew everyone into this show, but scenes like a pissed-off, machete wielding Rick Grimes taking out trouble makers is why we want stick around and watch this story out. Well done The Walking Dead. Well done.

In continuing the new theme of the show having all of its characters do useful things, we see Carol go hunting for some human cadavers to experiment on for when the time comes that Lori needs her C-sections to deliver baby Shane Rick. And when she starts to cut open one her many potential test subjects, we get the view of a something or someone watching her from behind some trees. I won’t speculate too much on this, but based on what I’ve heard from casting news I have strong hunch of what that may be.

What did everyone else think? Comments are always welcome.

Saturday Night Live: “Bruno Mars”

I’m making an attempt to review a Saturday Night Episode so I’m going to preface this, similar to how Bruno Mars did in his monologue, by stating that I’m a little out of my element here. Although SNL is considered a TV show, it’s a whole different ballgame critiquing a structured, scripted show than it is to critique a collaboration of funny sketches and musical performances. So we’ll see how this goes and decide later if this should be a recurring segment.

Tonight we get double duty from Bruno Mars as he is both the host and musical guest. I don’t know a ton about Bruno going into this episode other than I've heard 6 or 7 of his songs and seen a couple of his music videos. Personally I’m not a fan of his but not so much in a way that I oppose everything he does. I’m just hoping SNL has enough wherewithal though to not put someone out there that can’t do anything comically.

Sketch One: Town Hall

We’re leading off, of course, with the town hall debate that took place on Tuesday. And also as predicted the undecided voters of New York are going to be the driving force of most of the jokes. This poor Jeremy kid gets poked at one more time, this time by Fred Armisen playing a 38 year old version of him. We get a great moment when Jay Pharoah’s Barack Obama asks: “Candy is he bothering you?” as Jason Sudekis’ Mitt Romney insists on talking about four more things. This is followed up by Taran Killam standing up and shouting: “Let me at him Dad.” And Mitt responding: “Sit down Tagg. Not now.” Then we get a superb surprise guest appearance from the great Tom Hanks and he asks his deeply profound and well thought out question: “Libya?” The debate escalates as Governor Romney hilariously begins pushing President Obama as he’s trying to speak. All in all I’d say they did a pretty good job with it, but I think there was some more untapped potential they didn't quite hit.
Grade: B

Monologue

Bruno at least makes it clear he doesn't deserve to be the host based on his lack of doing anything comedy or acting related. Make that blatantly clear. He breaks into song and dance about how unsure he is about performing on Saturday Night Live as host and at this point all this opening song is doing for me is reassuring my huge doubts that Bruno Mars should be doing just that. One lyric of the song actually relates this outing to that of Justin Timberlake who has also pulled double duty recently. You’re not even close to that status yet Bruno so stop putting the cart before the horse. Rough start here.
Grade: D-

Brad Pitt Commercials

There ended up being four Brad Pitt commercials for various products but I’m going to sum them all up here. I really love Taran Killam’s Brad Pitt so much and this was a fantastic way to incorporate that character. His first commercial is for Chanel Cologne where he describes it as “Pitt-ilicious.” Next up is the story of how Brad Pitt travelled across a seemingly endless desert to arrive at Taco Bell, home of the eloquent Dorito’s Loco Taco. Thirdly, Pitt is selling us “Dog Condoms” because our pets have every right to be freaky if they want to be. And finally, we see that Brad must be really hard up for some cash because he is now endorsing local tattoo remover: Doctor Zizmor.
Grade: B+

Sketch Two: Haters with Sunny Taylor Tompkins

“Don’t you boo me.” Bobby Moyhinan legitimately gets better every episode he’s on. “They are haters and they don’t know how to process all of this.” Says Moynihan as he’s points to his rump while dressed in drag. From this point on the sketch takes a big nose drive as the spoof of your typical trashy talk show doesn't have enough meat at its core to carry the side jokes. Also lets face it, it’s not much of a stretch having Bruno pull off looking like a woman…

Yikes

Grade: D+

Sketch Three: Pandora Radio

I really like the premise of this sketch. The power has gone down at the Pandora headquarters and some of the specific channels are going out one by one. The only person that can save the day is the intern Devin (Bruno Mars). Sudekis looks square in the eye and states: “Pandora is counting on you right now.” After that though it gets pretty light on humor and relies on Bruno having fun singing the songs for a wide array of different artists. Not the greatest sketch ever but at least they had a lot of fun with it.

Grade: B-

Sad Mouse

This had a very similar feel to it as the Digital Shorts. We see Bruno Mars playing a guy down on his luck and takes a job as a costumed mouse who has to wave at people on the street. I kind of really liked this, a lot. It had a weird, brilliant feel to it and I hope this is the new thing SNL does by making these little indie movie-like shorts. Plus it has a beautiful ending as Sad Mouse gets to find love with Sad Frog. Amazing!

Grade: A+

Music Break Number One

Bruno Mars sings “Locked out of Paradise” from his new album.

Tough to judge because I’m not a very big fan of Bruno so I’m a little biased. I will say that I’m glad he went with a highly upbeat song to keep the audience in it. Too often of late we've seen the musical performers pay a slow or deep song that kind of drains the crowd for the rest of the night.

Grade: C+

Weekend Update

Most of the jokes hit here like they usually do on Weekend Update however I was caught a little off guard by the sketchy joke about candidate’s skin color among rural voters. Something just wasn't right there and you could tell by the audience’s reaction as well. We also got a segment of great “Debate Do’s and Don’ts” which gave way to a rare Ruben Studdard reference. My favorite headline was for a new product that relieves the pain from burning your tongue or the roof of your mouth and as Seth Myers explains it as: “Finally a scientific alternative to WAITING A MINUTE!” And then. Making his first appearance of the season. Our favorite correspondent. Stefon! The gift that keeps on giving. Bill Hader completely lost it this time making the sketch even more hysterical. I’m so very happy. That had to have been the longest Stefon sketch to date and I’m not complaining.

Grade: A

Sketch Four: Merryville Haunted Castle

As a couple gets stuck on a carnival ride they slowly begin to realize that the singing robots may be alive and seeking their lives. Good idea to use Bruno in a sketch where he doesn’t have to talk as he plays one of the Merryville Brothers. And the robotic brothers really do creep me out in these sketches. This one also get the added of bonus Tom Hanks. He’s back. Robot Tom Hanks Trying to feel-up a girl is just hilarious. I don’t care who you are.

Grade: A

Sketch Five: Yeti Point

Too much Bruno here. The dramatic stare at the camera didn’t work from the start. The ending with Hader eventually being serenaded by our Yeti friend was the only salvation in this sketch gone wrong.

Grade: D-

Musical Break Number 2

Bruno Mars sings another new song “Young Girls” (I think that’s the name of the song) as we near the end of the show.

Like I said before, I don’t think he’s an atrocity to the music industry like many of the other big Pop performers of today, but he’s just not my guy.

Grade: C+

Under-underground Records

The final segment of the night is another addition of Under-underground Records, this time the “Donkey Punch the Ballot” edition. We get tons of great references here and funny combination names for people and places associated with politics and hip-hop.

Grade: A

I’d say that ended up being a pretty excellent episode for host Bruno Mars and musical guest Bruno Mars. The addition of Tom Hanks certainly didn't hurt but I wouldn't be opposed to Bruno getting another shot in the future.

First Saturday Night Live review is over! And that took forever. If I’m going to do more of these in the future I’ll have to figure out how to shorten them. Until then, SNL returns November 3 and it could be really great. Louis C.K. is hosting with musical guest Fun.

What did you guys think? Comments are always welcome.

Blog Updates

First of all, the name and web domain of this blog has changed. They now share the same name of "Something About TV."

Secondly, I've created a new blog at http://hardlyinformed.blogspot.com/ . When I started this one out I intended it to be a collaboration of everything I wanted to write about. However, because of the expanding amount of readers (thank you all by the way), that come here to read my television reviews, I don't think it's appropriate to also discuss topics far outside of that forum.

Okay. Sorry for the minor inconvenience. Let's get back to talking television.

Parks and Recreation: “Sex Education”

I think Parks and Rec has officially beat every other show to the game of “what happens when we take the electronics away from funny characters in today’s society?” And they successfully were able to set the bar high here as Tom Haverford without technology and social media is pure gold. Whether it was his desperate attempts to keep his sanity by creating a real-life Pinterest Board and notepad iPhone, or his complete inability to find anywhere, including his home, without his trusty GPS. Plus, it allowed for the always spectacular pairing of Ron and Tom as Ron played sponsor to Tom’s difficult withdrawal. Also, I can’t imagine anything Ron would want to less than “Nacho Average Podcast.”

On the Leslie side of things we see another circumstance of her grappling with standing up for what she believes to be right and the never ending hurdles of red tape and outspoken nut-jobs standing in her way. Any excuse for the Parks gang to be involved in a town hall style forum is always welcome seeing as how clueless everyone in the town of Pawnee is about pretty much everything, so Leslie trying to teach sex education to the elderly was fantastic. The town complaints led to Marcia and Marshall Langman (*) calling out Leslie on “Ya’ Herd with Perd” and we learned that Perd Hapley devotees are affectionately referred to as “Perd-verts.” These kinds of stories seem to be what we can expect from Leslie going forward so hopefully they can keep producing at this high of level.

(*) Marshall must be Pawnee’s Tobias Funke.

The “C story” revolved around Ben and April meeting a robotic, clueless politician. I’m sorry that was redundant. The “C story” revolved around Ben and April meeting a politician. As much as I’m still enjoying the give and take with Ben and April in their little side adventures, I’ll be even more excited when we get the whole gang back together in Pawnee.

A few other quotes and thoughts:

• “I am April Blart, mall cop.” – April introducing herself.
• “God Jerry you don’t deserve the internet.” – Tom getting mad at Jerry when he goes to Alta Vista and searches for “Please go to Yahoo.com.”
• Chris would be completely oblivious to Marshall’s flirtation with him.
• “Sometimes I like to throw in LinkedIn for the professional shortiiees.” –Tom.
• “Why would a robot need to eat organic matter?” – Ben’s instinctive need to nerd-correct April.

Comments are certainly welcome.

The Office: “Work Bus”

An episode about the desire for affection and pie.

It’s the final season of The Office, that much is clear. The only questions that remain, or at least what we really care about, pertain to how we are going to leave these characters. Michael Scott got the sendoff a character of his stature deserved when Steve Carrell decided that season 7 would be his last. And while I’m not expecting that kind of resolution for every character, I’d like to see most of them go out on a high note.

“Work Bus” really had that great sense of vintage Office as we got a good amount of workplace comedy intermixed with solid emotional moments as the employees of Dunder Mifflin struggle to keep those they love happy and try to avoid a future of loneliness.

Jim is still feeling guilty about leaving Pam in the dark for so long about his potential sports marketing job in Philadelphia so in an attempt at a grand romantic gesture, Jim is able to get them out of the office for a week with pay. The only problem is that it backfires when Dwight decides to keep business going by renting a mobile office. The last couple of seasons have been really lacking when it comes to anything interesting Jim/Pam related, but I’ve slowly found myself caring for these two crazy kids again, and I was positively elated by the fact that Jim was able to get Pam that Peach Cobbler before closing time at Laverne’s pie stand.

Dwight has a whole other host of romantic/family problems than what Jim is facing these days, mostly because in that he is lacking any tangible problems. Ultimately, this looks like the perfect set-up for the eventual Dwight spin-off that’s in the works. He’ll come to the realization that he wants to improve his actual family (the Schrute’s that will be populating Schrute Farm), and we’ll probably watch his pursuit of the future Mrs. Schrute as/if that show progresses. So as far as the final Dwight resolutions will go on The Office, is that I think we need him and Jim to have one last acceptance of each other and their realization that they’ll miss each other as they progress separately in their future careers.

There was really only one glaring problem throughout this episode and it stems from Andy Bernard. I still don’t understand why they've made Andy so unbearable and mean-spirited this season when last season was all about how he was a sweet, incompetent goofball who needed the loving support of his coworkers. His new personality, coupled with the Nellie’s story line just didn't work until the end where it allowed for Andy to get in on the sentimentality most of our characters have joined in on the episode. At this point I’m kind of hoping that Erin ends up with the new guy, like they've been hinting at, because I just don’t see how we can root for Andy at all at this point.

A few other thoughts:

• Bryan Cranston appears as part of NBC Thursday for two consecutive weeks, this time behind the camera directing the episode. Based on the rare high quality of this episode of The Office, I think it’s safe to say Cranston is a genius and we should make sure he’s involved with everything, everywhere, from now until the end of time.
• I really liked the pairing of Clark and Darryl. First, when Clark asks Darryl about Jim: “So Creed is that dude’s step-dad? “…. “Correct.” – Darryl. And secondly when they both start lamenting over the fact that the work bus is leaving without them. “Stop. Come back. Too late.”
• “Thanks. Playing a little hooky from work today.” – Creed when he accidentally gets a ride from the work bus while hitchhiking.
• For Germany’s sake, I really hope "buildingkinder" is not actually a thing.

Comments are certainly welcome, whether they are for agreement, disagreement, or indifference.

30 Rock: Stride of Pride

So I know it’s stupid to make bold, extreme judgments of anything immediately after you experience it, but I think “Stride of Pride” is going to end up being one my favorite episodes of 30 Rock. So much so that I’m going to have to retreat a little from the statement I made last week about how I was glad 30 Rock was going out on a high note, because I am so not ready for it to end.

We got a very meta story in tonight’s episode about the debate of whether or not women are funny. This stupid argument got a lot of steam over the summer when Adam Corrola declared that women just aren't as funny as men, and I have no idea why. Give it rest people. Women are just as funny, and in some cases funnier, than men. I won’t even give you the satisfaction of making a list of hilarious women or Asians that drive well.

Great story-line about how Jack was “Great Escaping” a group of women and one of those women, Zarina, was doing our generations version of it called “Pokémoning.” As much as we all rightfully hate Ryan Lochte, it was really funny having him in this episode. His delayed, idiotic fear that he was the guy Zarina was using as a replacement to her father figure was spot on.

Lots of fantastic quotes and funny moments from this episode but here are a few of my favorites:

• “Bradley was only sexually gay.” – Liz Lemon on justifying her former “boyfriend.”
• “She’s actually not that hot. She’s got a gut and British legs.” –Jenna describing Helen Mirren.
• Ryan Lochte misspelled his own name for his email address.
• One of the guys Zarina had in her group email was named Ken Tremendous, which is also the Twitter handle of Mike Schur, also known as the genius who created Parks and Recreation and plays Dwight’s crazy brother Mose on The Office. Nice little shout out to him.
• “Now this is how people danced before Chubby Checkers ruined everything.” – Jack embracing being an old man.
• “There are no bad ideas, Lemon. Only great ideas that have gone horribly wrong.” -Jack. I plan on using this quote for quite some time.

Comments are certainly welcome, whether they are for agreement, disagreement, or indifference.

How I Met Your Mother: “Who Wants to Be a Godparent?”

Hey I didn't think that was half bad. In fact I enjoyed a large amount of the episode, which is an immense improvement over the previous three installments we've gotten to start the season off. I had a few genuine laughs, two big laughs, and I appreciated a pretty darn decent story that everyone in the group got to partake in.

I always think HIMYM is at its best when all five of the characters are all together throughout an episode, having the same experience and playing off of each other’s quirks. In “Godparent” we got exactly that and I think it was clear that this episode was better because of that. I’m not saying that we can’t have any story-lines involving who the single members of the group are dating, or what goofy couple problem Lily and Marshall are having, but at this point in the shows run those story-lines have gotten so played out that they need to find a way to make them original again and at the very least develop the supporting characters better for them. It’s tough as a viewer to care about the money that Victoria’s Dad thinks Ted owes him, or the motorcycle scooter Nick rides (*), when the show has essentially ignored Veronica all season with the exception of a few scenes and has barely even given us Nick’s first name let alone shown us any reason as to why Robin should like him.

*Cobie Smulders seemed more than ready to reprise her role as Maria Hill from The Avengers with the motorcycle get-up. Not complaining.

It was also really nice to see a story that was not only new to HIMYM but one I don’t think I've really seen before on television. Most shows, including what I assume HIMYM will do in the near future, kind of ignore the fact that new parents don’t have time to hang out with the main group anymore and kind of just go on with business as usual with the occasional baby/child story thrown in. But the reality is that it becomes a real problem for people and it shouldn't be ignored so nonchalantly. Glad HIMYM tackled the issue and was able to make a funny, touching story around it.

Some other thoughts and great moments:

• “Barney Stinson. How may I direct my penis?” – Barney answering his Booty Call phone.
• Robin would listen to a police scanner during lunch.
• One of the spaces on the Godparent wheel was: Tooth Fairy, Santa, Bigfoot. I’m guessing the Bigfoot issue would be of the utmost importance to Marshall.
• “He’s no Vinnie Pestano. Am I right?” I have a feeling that I’m one of 12 How I Met Your Mother viewers that got the reference but it was so fantastic.

Comments are certainly welcome, whether they are for agreement, disagreement, or indifference.

The League: “Training Camp”

The League is back and we got to see a whole bunch of athlete cameos (*) in the first episode of season four. I love that this show has gained so much credibility that they can essentially get any NFL player they want and employ in an episode. However, I think the episodes heavy on the cameos tend to be some of the shows weaker episodes because we don’t get the weird, crude, isolated humor from our main characters.

(*) Robert Griffin III, Felix Jones, Jason Witten, Jerry Jones (not an athlete), Desean Jackson, to name a few.

With that being said I did enjoy last night’s premiere a lot and it was chalk full of the jokes and randomness we’ve grown to love from the show. The League is kind of rare in that every season so far has been better than the previous, hopefully we’ll see that trend continue here in the fourth season, and so far so good.

Much like It’s Always Sunny, it’s difficult to do much of review for this show because the characters, for the better, don’t change and have no desire to change who they are. So instead of just describing all of the scenes in the eipisode, I’ll leave you with my favorite quotes and moments from “Training Camp,” mostly Taco related:

• “The poorly named Double EntAndres.” – Rich Eisen on Andre’s new fantasy team name.
• “I don’t like the C-word but this is collusion.” Anyone who’s played fantasy sports knows that collusion is indeed the cardinal sin of the imaginary leagues we create.
• The Taco of the League. - Taco’s business card describing his job title in their league.
• “Jerry Earl Jones.” – What Taco thought Jerry Jones’ name was because he’s the Darth Vader of football. The guys couldn’t argue.
• “Eh. I’ve been rich before.” - Taco
• “It’s America. There’s always a bar.” - Taco

Comments are certainly welcome, whether they are for agreement, disagreement, or indifference.