An Assortment of Things
A place where I can share my thoughts, talk about things I enjoy (or dislike) and goof off.
Review for Parks and Recreation, Season 3 Episode 13 “The Fight”
Note: this officially marks a change in my setup. No longer will I review shows in a good, bad, ugly format. As two negatives feels both arbitrary and unbalanced. In Parks case I have issues even finding a negative. So Parks episodes will be reviewed as Great and Less Great.
This week on Parks, Tom introduces his latest business venture “Snake Juice” to the world. And the entire gang pretty much gets sauced, which brings out a lot of pent up feelings.
The Great: Ann joining City Hall, the gang’s all under a single roof now. Which is a small detail, but I really appreciate the fact that I can watch Ann and Leslie’s lunch time chats without that nagging voice in my head wondering how a nurse finds such convenient times to drop in on her friend. Ann being a part of the city government hopefully also means big improvements for her character in the comedy department. She’s made big strides this season in terms of becoming more entertaining, and I think this might mark a leap forward. I hope I’m right *crosses fingers*
Everyone getting absolutely plastered on Tom’s booze, the whole Snakehole Lounge bit (which accounted for most of the episode) was genius, but it was the quick cut of most of the Parks staff (And Ann) gibbering drunkly into the camera that had me rolling. Nothing more so than Ron doing his happy dance in April’s hat.
-IGN
Andy and April’s roleplay, April in her typical “adult things suck” mentality attempts to make Tom’s Snake Juice release party more fun by adopting the role of some kind of high-class New Englander, which was golden. And Andy reprising his role as FBI special agent Burt Macklin was icing on a sweet adorable cake.
The Aftermath, everyone’s reactions and appearances the night after, hungover, hair mussed was great. Highlights include Ron’s incredibly good mood, April with two pillows taped to her head, Andy throwing up while chasing April down the hall and then there’s this:
O-M-G!
The Less Great:
Leslie and Ann’s fight, “You’re stupid, and you’re drunk and you’re stupid!” Ann and Leslie’s friendship is one of the greatest unsung elements of this show. It’s paved the way for some of the funniest moments on the show. So when things started to get ugly between them I was really looking forward to some hilarious dialog. And while there were some laughs there wasn’t anything particularly personal about the argument. Sure it touched on the issues of the episode but it didn’t really feel like an Ann and Leslie fight, it felt like two women fighting. So funny, but not as funny as I was hoping.
Donna and Chris, Chris has become a bit of a drag. His chipper personality and the way he delegated bad news to Ben was hilarious. And in his defense he tried that this episode. But for the most part he’s not as much fun as he was earlier in the season. And Donna’s cleanse wasn’t particularly interesting. It seemed more like a plot device to provide the rest of the gang with a safe ride home. I know there’s only so much you can fit into 20 minutes (in fact there’s a producer’s cut of this episode on Hulu it was so packed with awesome) but some actual story on this bit would have been nice. Especially since Donna is so underdeveloped. She’s the party girl of the group. It would have been nice to see her struggling to stay on her cleanse with all the fun everyone else was having.
There was so much hilarity packed into this episode. It was like two Parks worth of humor in one. And then it was followed up by another episode. Which I will review tomorrow. Thursday was indeed a special gift to Parks fans everywhere.
Review for Modern Family Season 2, Episode 22 “Good Cop Bad Dog”
In this week’s episode Phil and Claire switch good cop, bad cop roles for a day. Jay listens to a terrible business proposal. And Mitchell struggles with staying home with a sick Cameron or going to a concert.
-ABC
The Good: Switching roles: Phil, I really liked Phil’s bit in this episode. I liked that Phil was put in a position to actually parent. He’s the fun dad, and most of his parenting moments revolve around him being more of a buddy to his kids then an actual father. I also liked what a struggle it was for him to put that natural inclination away and make his daugther’s do their chores. And things got even better then the girl’s try to trick their father by doing a rush job and then skipping out. And when Phil finds out he goes overboard. Becoming a cruel labor-master in response. Phil is so often paired with Luke that I really enjoy it when he’s given an opportunity to interact with his girls. It brings out new sides in all three characters. And here it was no different as the girl’s freaked out over their father’s heel-face turn in the aftermath of their deceit and Phil took bad cop parenting to new, hilarious extremes.
Highlight: Phil doing his best to hold onto his taskmaster role while trying not to throw up when Hayley yanks a tangle of hair from the bathtub drain.
Jay and Gloria standing together, Jay and Gloria are so often portrayed as playfully in competition with each other. Gloria is loud and exuberant about life and invites all kinds of situations into their life that Jay, who enjoys keeping to himself, would rather not deal with. It’s normally a tug-of-war between them to see who gets their way this week. This week started out that way, as Gloria brought a random man into their home (A common enough occurrence apparently that Jay is pleasantly dismissive of the random strangers sitting around in his house). But Gloria wants Jay to listen to the man’s business proposal and offer him some advice. Which Jay unhappily agrees too. The actual proposal is a rather terrible (and humorous) new dog training technique. When Jay initially tells the man his honest opinion (that is sucks) it leads to Gloria chastising him for his lack tact and compassion (usual stuff) only to realize later that he was right (also usual stuff), but it was the man deciding to turn his life around, and giving up his dog that led to some unexpected places this week. Gloria in all her generosity adopts the dog without consulting Jay. And before Jay can do something else with the dog, Manny comes home and believes that the dog is for him. And I was surprised and very pleased when Gloria backed up her husband when he explained that the dog wasn’t staying. Even though in the end Jay couldn’t go through with it.
Highlight: Jay arguing with the man over whether or not there were billions of dollars in dog training.
The Bad: Mitchell and Cameron’s story this week wasn’t as good I’d have liked. Don’t get me wrong, the story was interesting and a classic sit-com story. But it’s also in continuance with a trend I’ve noticed with these two lately. Cameron, who was this hilarious Jack of All Trades character in the first season. Seems to have devolved into a whining drama-queen. It’s not exactly that the characterization is wrong, Cameron has been the more dramatic of the two men since the pilot when he reenacted the opening of the Lion King with his newly adopted daughter. He’s always been prone to overreaction. But lately it has seemed like every week the story focuses on how Mitchell does something that Cameron chooses to take the wrong way and Mitchell comes off as a standoffish ass a lot in order to make Cameron’s tantrums seem a little more justified. Going forward I’d like to see some episodes with these two getting into situations where the opposing force isn’t each other. What can I say, I like it when my TV couples work together as a couple.
Highlight: The flashback to Cameron carrying Mitchell when he was sick.
The Ugly: Switching roles: Claire, another character who is becoming too one note for me. She’s always been the stickler of the Dunphy clan. But in the past it’s been attributed to her perfectionist nature and tendency to worry over small details. That’s why she and Phil are so great together. He never sweats the small stuff, and is concerned with making sure everyone is happy, whereas Claire makes sure things get done. But the last several episodes she’s been a little bit too much of a hard-ass. So the premise of the episode really had me excited to see her break out of that and have some fun with Luke and Manny. But instead of being cool fun mom, Claire gets so over concerned with making sure they have fun that she sucks all the fun out of it. This would have been a fine development if there had have been a point where she realized that she needed to relax in-order for the kids to enjoy themselves, similar to the situation in the Halloween episode earlier in the season. Instead at the end we have both Phil and Claire agreeing to stick to what they’re good at. Which I fear means even less of the fun character Claire can be when she loosens up.
Highlight: None, sorry Claire, I love you, but this wasn’t your episode.
Overall a solid episode. Lots of great bits in two and half of the the show’s plots. Only dragged down a bit by some rather two-dimensional characterization for Claire and Cameron.
Review of Glee Season 2 Episode 20 “Prom Queen”
-courtesy of Fox
The Good: Artie Apologizing to Brittney after his jerkass moment from last week. Also Brittney not forgiving him just because he sang a nice song (you go girl).
Pretty much every moment with Kurt. I think he’s an overexposed character (Which has stunted the other character’s growth) but he’s also a great character who is both comically and dramatically well written. On the drama side his reconciliation with Karofsky almost brought me to tears. It was emotionally satisfying and felt like a proper payoff after a season where this storyline has hogged the spotlight.
The cover of Friday, it’s a terrible song and I despise it, but even I enjoyed Puck, Sam and Artie’s both ironic and wholeheartedly embraced take on the Youtube sensation. It was hilarious and a massive improvement (not saying much) on the original.
The School voting Kurt prom queen as a joke. This is GOOD drama, it came out of nowhere, I didn’t know how to react to it at first. It just came out of nowhere, but made perfect sense in the context of the rest of the episode. I also enjoyed Santana, Kurt’s and yes even Quinn’s reactions to the news. Smart writing, more of this please! But I did not like how they wrapped this up. (See The Ugly)
The Bad: Finn’s and Rachel’s less than subtle glances at each other, Jesus these kids! Finn, pick a fucking girl! Rachel stop pining! I can’t take this nonsense anymore!
Blaine! I’m so glad that Kurt has a boyfriend that makes him happy, a happy Kurt is a Kurt I want to spend more time with (unlike early on this season when it was sour-puss Kurt and I was becoming sick of him), but Darren Criss is not a good enough actor to make Blaine a character I care enough about to listen to the sad sap story about how he doesn’t like school dances because he was beat up once. From a more likable and better acted character this would have worked, but here it didn’t, especially when it didn’t add much to the show’s story.
Sue’s Torture Scene with Artie. I know it was supposed to be funny, but it was mostly just boring. Sue was much better utilized earlier in the episode when she was poking fun at the Glee Club’s less than stellar musical offerings (and in a meta-way also making fun of the show’s least successful and most derided numbers). That’s when Sue is best, that’s when this show is its best, when it finds ways to laugh at itself. The torture scene was just silly.
Ugly: The return of Jessie St. James/Finn’s jealousy, Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! You can’t have your cake and eat it too Finn. You’re with one girl or the other. And you can’t just lose your shit on some guy because you don’t like how he’s necking your Ex. But why was Jessie even back on the show? I hate the character, he never brought much to the show, he should go away and stay away… FOREVER. But back to their fight, again, Finn ruined his and Quinn’s evening with his jealously over Rachel and as a result got thrown out of the dance, and then nothing! No more Finn for the rest of the episode. Way to follow up writers.
Really guys? You give us the Prom Queen twist and than completely fail to deliver with a satisfying end? Kurt should have ripped that school a new one when he went up on that stage to be coronated. Or if that wouldn’t have been high road enough, he could have said something uplifting and meaningful. A quip on the Royal Wedding does not count, and it certainly doesn’t win a crowd of detractors over. This was a big fumble and completely skewered the otherwise well written twist for me.
Overall a big improvement over last week’s underwhelming showcase. But I really wish this show would stop rotating out romantic pairings to generate artificial and meaningless drama. If you want me to care about a couple breaking up, give me a reason to love the couple guys. And follow-through on your better story elements. This is basic stuff guys!
10. Anne Hathaway
9. Isla Fisher
8. Felica Day
7. Carey Mulligan
6. Aubrey Plaza
5. Heather Morris
4. Amy Poehler
3. Karen Gillan
2. Christina Ricci
1. Alyson Hannigan
Jack Johnson (Not that Jack Johnson) is my new hero.
If there is a god. Then he is a geek.
Funny and Hot? Regular girls don’t stand a chance.
Ron: “I’m Hungry”
Leslie: “Okay, well don’t be such a baby. I cooked you some bacon for a Trail snack.”
Ron: “I ate it already.”
Leslie: “What?”
Ron: “I could smell it in your purse before I even parked my car. And now it’s gone and I hate everything.”
Tom: “What is he thinking?”
April: “Why is my cup so tiny?”
