Community and Parks and Recreation

Community "Physical Education"

After the Olympics I was craving for NBC Thursday and Physical Education gave me what I was missing for two weeks. Physical Education could be my favorite episode of the series thus far, two really strong plots, tons of funny one liners and some good character work. Earlier I blogged about how I liked Community's subtle twists on formulaic sitcom plots so long as they aren't winking too much at the camera. Physical Education successfully achieved that in both of their stories. The Abed plot sets itself for the cliche, "just be yourself" plot and veers towards the obvious cynical twist. You can be yourself in the world of family sitcoms where mean things happens solely so everyone can learn a lesson, but in the real world conformity is necessary. As I watched this unfold I felt the plot uninspired, but succeeded because of all the jokes along the way, however I didn't anticipate the final wrinkle. Abed was never acting like himself and he was doing it to appease his friends who are so sure there is something wrong with him. It's easy to view Abed as pop culture references machine, but episodes like this show that he has some elements of a real person and isn't just a quirky funny sitcom character.

The other plot was an outrageous, but hilarious parody on cliche sports movies. Though Community has shown it has a heart, it is at its funniest when it is as its most absurd. Dan Harmon has created such a crazy environment at Greendale that it seems like any character can reasonably inhabit it; even a senior citizen pool teacher who insists all of his class wears tight gym shorts for increased mobility. However in spite of it's insanity Greendale is still endearing. It makes sense that Jeff would start embracing this Community instead of just making cynical comments at everyone's expense. While I wouldn't want to be there forever Greendale does look like it would be a lot of fun and we can see that Jeff really enjoys the spectacle of the pool game. Similar to the debate episode, I thought it was a really strong choice to attach the ludicrous views of the coach to the game of pool. Pool is always portrayed as a tense, cerebral game and it was delightful to see Community's manic version of strip pool, that led to several hilarious sight gags and crowd reaction shots.

Stray Thoughts

-The original joke and all the callback from Shirley wondering if white people got offended that they remade black movies specifically for white audiences was executed perfectly. Starting with Jeff calling Fat Albert the black after school special and continuing with Brown Joey and White Abed.

- Abed as Don Draper hitting on Annie/Trudy Campbell was fantastic.

Parks and Recreation "Lady of the Year"

Despite The Office having an hour long baby episode tonight, I wasn't that enthused to watch it and after Lady of the Year I have a hypothesis for why that might be the case. The Office has frequently used outsiders as an audience surrogate, they are the minority who realizes how wacky and zany all these characters are so hilarity ensues. The peripheral characters on Parks and Rec are often equally if not more insane than the cast members allowing us to empathize with Leslie Knope for having to deal with militant soccer coaches or feminists who sell out for transient publicity. In bad episodes of The Office I find myself pitying the cast members and empathize with the periphery, over time this has caused me to become resentful of a lot of the characters.

Ron Swanson has a strong sense of humanity and decency that allows us to like him and not just laugh at him. He showed this compassion in the pre-olympic Valentines Day episode and continued to show it in this episode. He has a lot of fun playing with Leslie, but never does anything especially mean spirited just a bunch of harmless pranks that rile Leslie up. While elaborate pranks are often funny, sometimes simple ones are much more effective and I enjoyed watching Ron getting under Leslie's skin so much when the most elaborate thing he did was hiring a photo crew.

Stray Thoughts

- I would go to a club called clubadubdub

-"Andy why are you digging that hole in the backyard?"

Skins Season 4

About a year ago a friend of mine recommended the British high school drama Skins to me. He told me it got rid of all the typical high school cliches in film and television and was a compelling groundbreaking show. He mentioned that they didn't present drug use and sex as taboo, but as facts of life without moralizing; I was intrigued. I pictured a version of Freaks and Geeks where they focused on the cool kids with a little less humour and a little more drama. That is not what I got. I got The OC with british actors who actually looked 17-18 instead of being 25 year olds playing high schoolers.

The above description isn't all that bad it wasn't the magnum opus I was expecting, but it could be a fun compelling diversion and considering I have watched 7 seasons of 24 and am still watching new episodes of Entourage Skins was at times a pleasant addition to my TV cycle. Skins is a mercurial show that managed to occasionally create nice moments between characters that captured high school in a real way only to ruin them with soap opera cliches. Characters sleeping with teachers, 14 year olds performing sexual espionage, characters dying or getting terminally every month. In the second season one of the characters father a archetypal middle-aged blue collar man who wishes his life worked out differently, finally confronts his more successful family members and gets the redemption he wanted his whole life. It is a nice real albeit slightly melodramatic character driven moment that lets the audience empathize with the characters. However Skins the writers aren't content with just slight melodrama so either due to sadism or an addiction to melodrama the newly redeemed father dies from a severe case of Deus Ex Machinas. I was literally angry when watching this, because they just ruined a nice relatively grounded moment so they could create a cliffhanger that didn't really lead anywhere.

A common theme in a lot of high school shows is that adults are not infallible, they are real flawed people, which makes solving the existential crisis that is high school even harder for our protagonists. Skins does this, but it takes out it to such an extreme that we the only people that can sympathize with the characters are popular teenage girls. I doubt any audience member thinks boy it must suck to be a precocious teenager in a world full of adults who you are much more talented then. You aren't supposed to sympathize with the characters, you are supposed to envy them, which really enforces the oldest high school stereotype ever, you want to be one of the cool kids. Frankly I think the creators of the show, wish they were the cool kids in high school and are now trying live vicariously through these characters and become cool dads. In reality they are helping create a generation of people who are envy self-absorbed egotists.

Despite all of this I still watched the first three seasons of the show. Some of this was because I had a couple of long train rides and both seasons on my computers and because I like finishing everything I start. However on some level I did like the show, it was good enough to make me want to watch the next episodes out of general curiosity while my critical rage merely simmered and it has enough attractive high school girls that I didn't feel like it was a complete waste of time (though it did make me feel a little creepy), until I started season 4.

Skins has a young writing staff, an average age of 21, which explains a lot of the awful plotting and the reductive attitudes toward all adults. However they also have different directors for a lot of episodes and it seems as if each director is trying to show off as many tricks as possible. Season 4 opens with a longshot of an unknown girl walking through a club before she kills herself by jumping off the balcony into the middle of a dance floor, which seemed like an idea some director had so he could show off his limited technical process. After this tragedy the characters finally come to the conclusion that there maybe consequences to using drugs, but of course the characters aren't responsible for their actions (with one possible exception), it's all the fault of the sketchy clubowner for letting 15 year olds into his clubs. One of the show's strength has been it's lack of moralism, however when you decide to do it you need to implicate the characters, when you have validated their actions throughout the series. It is at this point in the episode there is a sex scene with a baptist choir chanting "I believe in your lord" ad nauseam, because there is no better way to juxtapose characters actions with religion then having ironic song lyrics literally screaming at the viewer so they have to understand this trite message. It is at this point of the episode I turned it off and stopped watching the show, likely forever. I just wrote 1000 words about a show I dislike and I don't feel like letting it waste any more of my life, so I am going to end this post as abruptly as I quit the show.

Friday Night Lights "Thanksgiving"

If Vegas allowed you to bet on what would happen in this season of Friday Night Lights "East Dillon beats the Panthers to knock them out of the playoffs" would have opened at 10:1. The challenge for Jason Katims et. al. Was to make that compelling and believable for the audience, while they sort of accomplished the latter they definitely accomplished the former. I literally stood up and fist pumped when Landry's FG went through, eventhough my brain knew it was going in. There has been a lot of misery and despair in East Dillon, but the writers are not sadists. Landry losing his girlfriend, best friend* and the big game in such a short span would be too cruel for the audience and the characters. So as soon as the score was 22-24 I knew Landry would be the hero, but I still cared about the characters and East Dillon so it didn't matter that I knew it was coming.

* Yes him and Saracen patched things up, but as lots of friends do I expect them to lose touch as life gets in the way.

As usual Coach and Mrs. Coach are the backbone of the show and while it wasn't necessarily the pragmatic thing to do it was nice to see Mrs. Coach go off book, because she knows she's right. Kyle Chandlers look of pride and worry at her press conference perfectly showed how I believe most of the audience reacted to her stand. I thought it was a little contrived for Tami to get the guidance counselor job at East Dillon so easily, but it will make next season less chaotic allowing them to fully develop all the arcs, so I don't mind it.

The finale also gave a happy and tragic ending to two of the shows staple characters Matt Saracen and Tim Riggins. Saracen finally gets the finale he deserved after seeing him sparingly since he left for Chicago. In possibly his last episode* Zach Gilford gives another wonderful performance; his banter with Julie really brings out the best in Aimee Teegarden, who has been hit or miss throughout the series. Little things like Saracen talking about Greektown or joking about Matt "deflowering" Julie created a bunch of little real moments that makes this show so good.

*He won't be a regular but it wouldn't surprise me if the last season ended in a big West Dillon vs. East Dillon game where everyone came back to watch the game.

Finally I would be remiss without touching on the tragedy of Tim Riggins, the season premiere seems so far away, but in season 4 Tim Riggins went from being a scholarship athlete to a felon. I knew they would be writing Riggins off the show as he is trying to pursue acting in films, but it still hurts to see him go. He has an incredible screen presence and charisma, in addition to being incredibly good looking. I started tearing up a bit when Tim saw Mindy and Billy playing with the baby and I knew he was going to fall on the sword. I started tearing up again as he walked into the police station alone, very few actors could elicit that emotional response from me from so little. I was expecting the Riggins brothers to turn on Mo, solving Vince and Riggins' problems, but like real life not everyone in Friday Night Lights gets a happy ending. I realize I have complimented almost everyone's acting in this blog post, but I need to mention Derek Phillips as Billy Riggins. He was always good as the goofball older brother of Tim, but he has showed off some good dramatic chops this season. His rambling apology to Tim and rambling toast at Thanksgiving dinner, were two great heartbreaking speeches that were compelling, but also difficult to watch because they were so sad.

Stray Thoughts

- Friday Night Lights does a really good job executing or putting a spin on typical sports movie cliches. The two best examples this week were Coach Taylors speech over a montage of practices at the beginning of the episode that literally gave me goosebumps and Coach Taylor''s Thanksgiving practice where the other coaches wanted to leave.

- Of course Buddy Garrity would deep fry a turkey.

- All of the new cast members have been very good this season and while the finale left a lot of open ends for Vince, Jess, Becky and Luke I expect them to all be addressed in the fifth and final season.

-I initially planned on writing this blog right after the episode, but felt so sad afterwards that I decided to do something else.

LOST "What Kate Does"

It's been awhile since I posted a blog. I don't like writing posts for TV shows a week after they aired and I have been relatively busy which isn't a great combination for whoever wants to read my thoughts on TV.

Last nights LOST was a mediocre episode, that I don't feel like commenting that much on. Evangeline Lilly is not a good actress and Kate episodes generally require a performance that Lilly isn't capable of giving. They also require the audience to empathize with Kate despite the fact that she still is a murderer* . Most of the characters in LOST have cliche redemption stories, but they are well executed and you feel happy when that character can correct their past mistakes. Despite being one of the leads the leads Kate hasn't changed at all. She is the same selfish, non-committal person and the audience is supposed to root for her. The title, "What Kate Does" acknowledges this, but I don't need a full episode to show me this is What Kate Does when I already have 5 seasons that do.

*Whose actions are less reprehensible then most murderers.

Before writing this post I read a lot of other peoples thoughts about this episode and it made me notice how many LOST fans are petulant children. There were problems with this episode, but a lack of answers wasn't one of them. It seems like people would rather have a textbook with all of the answers than a great television series and this attitude has been prevalent since season 2. Two of the consensus worst episodes of LOST are Expose and Tricia Takanawa is Dead. Both of these episodes are light on answers, but are entertaining hours of television that lets us see some nice moments between characters. They aren't my favorite episodes of the show, but they are episodes I enjoyed at the time and on the rewatch. In an era of DVRs LOST is one of the few shows that is appointment television, which has caused viewers to demand an unrealistically high standard every week. They want the answers right now so they can prove that they didn't waste 50 hours on TV's wild goose chase.

After seeing the reaction to this weeks episode one of my first thoughts was "Do these people learn?" Since the 2nd season most LOST seasons have had huge developments in the premiere followed by a letdown 2nd episode, yet everyone was completely blindsided this time. Cuse/Lindellof will wait until Episode 8 or 9 to do a Richard or Jacob or Esau flashback and everyone will instantly put that episode in the top 5 of all time. After watching this show for 5 years, waiting another week won't kill you, but treating the show like a crack addict who needs his next fix could.

NBC Thursday Thoughts

Community Interpretative Dance

Last week I complained that Community broke the fourth wall too much and after rewatching this week's episode I'd like reword that complaint to "they broke the fourth wall too overtly". When characters are literally winking at the camera I roll my eyes more than laugh. This episode had a subtler 4th wall break, which I really enjoyed. At the climax Troy decides the most masculine thing for him to do was save Brita from being embarrassed. Generally the motivation for this action is noble, preventing a friend's shaming out of pure altruism. Community flipped this on it's head my making Troy's actions selfish, since he knew the others would react as if his actions were altruistic. Another strong showing for Community, which I pleasantly discovered will add more episodes this season because of the Leno fiasco.

Stray Thoughts

- I am tired of the will they won't they stuff with Jeff and Brita, hopefully they will turn this into a Jerry/Elaine relationship and not Ross/Rachel relationship.

-Prelimiwow

- I have been spending too much money on breakaway clothing.

Parks and Recreation Leslie's House

Parks and Recreation manages it to be at it's best when it is really well grounded. I like being in a little world that thinks Indianapolis is a booming metropolis and the library is your biggest rival. This episode was less grounded than I would have preferred, but it still managed to be really funny. I thought they had a really solid tight episode before they added the belly dancer, fencing, etc. and I wish they decided to end the dinner party with good, funny human interaction instead of a couple of sight gags. I generally don't care for trials in comedy's as it is a stale contrivance that has tapped into most of it's potential humour. Specifically asking about a date in a trial is an old tired gag and something I really wish they eliminated at the time, however they did have a nice payoff with Leslie's talking head at the end. Similarily the respond to any question with a question is a gag that stopped being funny in high school, but Ron Swanson managed to make it hilarious. I think it worked so well because generally the hostile witness isn't good at asking questions, but Ron's proficiency at evading questions was really funny, ending with this little needle "Thank you Ron" "Are we done?".

Stray Thoughts

-Every episode I feel like I want to see more Tom

- "I'm going to need to refoliate"

- Ron bringing deviled eggs had me dying.

30 Rock Get Dale Snitterman

Last week I didn't blog about 30 Rock because I find it really hard to write about. Firstly I find it really hard to judge 30 Rock because I could watch 22 minutes of Tracy reading off a teleprompter, secondly because a lot of my reviews would just be listing 8-12 funny one liners. I think 30 Rock usually doesn't use their peripheral characters enough and last night gave every character a couple of solid jokes Toofer's attempt to name drop Harvard, which was later repeated by John Hancock, a couple of good Lutz moments, Grizz bashing dotcom's screenplay, etc. All of these elements led to what I felt was a pretty strong B story, some broad silliness with good writing that was very funny. My one problem with the B story is that they didn't give it a satisfactory ending, it was as if they thought the audience would forget about the B story once they went to the credits. The A story was pretty weak and I love Julianne Moore in almost anything she does, it wasn't particularly funny or engaging and I found myself waiting for those scenes to end a lot.

Stray thoughts

- As someone who hates all Boston sports teams, watching Boston jokes for 22 minutes was fantastic

- She's the female Kevin Mchale

Community and Parks and Recreation

Community Investigative Journalism

Most sitcoms take a while to find their legs, but Community has been an exception and has been the best new show this fall. Community is strongest when it is at it's most absurd with episodes like Debate 109 and Introduction to Statistics, unfortunately it's return this episode was one of their weaker efforts thus far. Like usual it has some very good throwaway gags; primarily from Pierce, but the whole episode fell a little flat. Meta-humour is very hard to execute since it takes the audience out of the reality crafted by the show, usually when people are laughing at it they are laughing because they understand the joke and not because it is funny. Community has successfully used meta-humour in its more absurd episodes, but in a fairly grounded episode like Investigate Journalism it became an annoying crutch for the writers. Investigative Journalism had overt, obnoxious meta-humour and I quickly grew tired of seeing Jack Black's character (literally his one character) continue to break the fourth wall by explaining the group dynamics or making other commentary on the absurdity of TV. This reached it's apex when he mentioned giving a winking nod to the camera, making the only meta-meta joke I have ever seen; unsurprisingly it didn't work.

Stray Thoughts

- Pierce's ironic t-shirts throughout the episode worked really well.

- "Troy's gotta point"

- I already have a huge crush on Allison Brie and than she does a "It doesn't matter"

- At some point I would like to see a final 30 seconds that isn't an extension of the Troy and Abed rap.

Parks and Recreation The Set Up

Earlier I mentioned how most sitcoms take a while to find their stride and P&R is a great example of that, after a first season that felt like a mediocre Office spinoff they started developing their own characters and it has become one of the strongest sitcoms on TV. The Set Up took a couple of cliched sitcom plots blind date gone wrong and boyfriend jealous of girlfriend's friend and managed to make them seem fresh. It is unfair that P&R will always be compared to The Office, however the one area where I feel they have already surpassed them is by turning Leslie Knope into a likeable real person a stark contrast to the man child caricature that Michael Scott has become. I like Will Arnett in almost everything he has done and I thought he had a very good guest spot with a couple fantastic lines my favorite being "I guess I am not as good a technician as I thought I should have noticed you're missing a heart". It was also nice to see Chris and Mark in a plot that doesn't pit them as rivals; they have gotten lots of mileage out of that, but I don't know how long it will last.

Stray thoughts

-I could have watched 22 minutes of Tom interviewing potential candidates for Ron's job.

Update

I haven't given up on this blog after two posts there just haven't been many new shows for me to discuss. I just watched the first third of the Monty Python documentary, which I really liked I heard that is is a little redundant if you have seen other documentaries, but I haven't and I love it.

I will be in the Bahamas all of next week, but after that I will hopefully be blogging frequently.