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.