Good News Guys, I Spent All My Money!

I’m saying it now – if Parks and Rec doesn’t end up with the Emmy for Best Comedy Series this year then the whole awards show will have been a massive waste of time.

Spoilers:

Community – “Curriculum Unavailable” (A-)

Well I don’t know about you, but it sounds like we’re probably not going to get another paintball episode. It’s probably for the best anyway, it’s just ironic that that message came to us in the successor to another popular episode, “Paradigms of Human Memory,” though I guess the latter still had some life left in it.

“Paradigms of Human Memory” in its own way was a remarkably original idea. To put together a clip show where all of the clips are brand new material in and of itself is funny, but to do it and also construct a veiled parody of your own show at the same time is something else entirely. “Curriculum Unavailable” didn’t have the full out surprise of that episode, yet it functioned in the same joke machine sort of way, spewing out cutaways at break neck pace with the notion that whatever lands, lands. If you don’t like something just wait a second and we’ll get you some other way.

In fact, I enjoyed the episode more the second time I saw it almost solely for that reason – the jokes come at you fast and it was hard to catch some of the more subtle nuances because of that. But I think that’s the sign of a good comedy, that the more you watch the more you pick up. How many of you are still finding new things to laugh at in all those classic Simpson’s episodes?

The first joke packet (a term I just now coined) that really stood out to me was the jaunt through all of Greendale’s... well let’s call them eccentricities. To me that was probably the most consistent group of clips, giving us the Dean literally playing human chess, Shirley picking up a hollowed out library book in the shape of a gun, and a plethora of hilarious classes. They were the type of Greendale sucks jokes we get pretty much every week on the series, but I don’t think most of them would have worked outside of this particular format.

The other bit I quite liked was looking back through the history of the series under the guise that our study group was in a mental institution the whole time. The entire concept was ridiculous, but I think the writers did a good enough job of acknowledging just how stupid it was that it was still enjoyable. There were two moments that really got me, the first being the look back at “Paradigms of Human Memory” (Do you remember this? YES! Do you remember this? Yes!) which is about as meta as it gets, and the second being a super articulate Garrett wondering what would happen if they took one of their pens. That’s another level of writing onto itself.

Of course, the problem with reviewing an episode like this one is that there are just so many hilarious moments that don’t fit into any category. So here’s my list:

-          Annie doing Troy and Abed in the Morning without them.

-          Troy’s ATV (“Good news guys, I spent all my money.”)

-          The Dean chasing away a girl because she was wearing the same outfit as Annie.

-          Britta’s peyote hair.

-          Abed narrating Pierce’s life ala Stranger Than Fiction.

-          Chang using Garrett and a kiddie pool to solve future crimes Minority Report style.

To the quotes!

TROY: You have to understand about Abed he’s usually adorable weird, like Mork from Ork, but since we got expelled he’s been creepy weird, like present day Robin Williams.

TROY: Please Mr. Doctor Psychiatrist Sir, please don’t send my best friend to crazy people jail.

And my obvious choice for line of the night:

DOCTOR: Should we increase their lithium?
GARRETT: Not yet, I want to see what happens if we confiscate one of their pens.

30 Rock – “The Return of Avery Jessup” (B)

The title kind of says it all for this one, and I mean that in both a good and bad way. The good – Avery did return in this episode (it wasn’t a misprint) and that return was pretty awesome. The bad – that was pretty much all this episode had going for it, as the B stories didn’t even come close to matching the quality of her homecoming.

I’ll start with the good of course because I’m a positive person and I want to lull you into a false sense of security. I didn’t realize how much I missed Elizabeth Banks’ presence until I watched her in this episode. Avery is funny in her own right, but she also seems to bring out the best in Jack whenever she’s around, which makes her a dual threat. The competition between the two of them was an element, particularly for Jack’s character, that the show has been sorely missing lately. We only saw Jack’s perspective for most of this episode, but even the perceived rivalry in the eyes of his character was enough of a spark to jump start the storyline.

On Avery’s end though, I quite liked the cutaways to her news broadcasts while she was a prisoner. The writers on this show sure do love a good North Korea joke, and they had a year’s worth of material to work with in this episode. I just wish Michael Mosley (who played Scott Scotsman) had been given a little more to do. I’ve been a fan of his ever since he was brought in for the med school version of Scrubs and unfortunately he was relegated to the role of a decoy here.

But as I said before, the rest of this episode just couldn’t compete with Jack and Avery’s storyline. Jenna’s wedding sponsorship story felt fairly generic for her character, and outside of watching Tracey shout “AGAIN” over and over it didn’t have much to keep me interested. Liz’s thread was similarly disappointing – the writers didn’t really go anywhere past the initial premise and the whole storyline stunk a bit of filler.

To the quotes!

JACK: I didn’t wear your nightgowns. If they seem stretched out it’s because you’re remembering wrong.

JACK: Avery I should tell you something. I wasn’t completely honest when I was being completely honest earlier.

JACK: Nice to see you relaxing and enjoying yourself and totally unprepared for a forgiveness attack.

And line of the night:

JACK: Did Liddy go down?
AVERY: Eventually. Understandably she’s a little wary of me. I heard her ask her bear who the dye job is.

The Office – “Free Family Portrait Studio” (C)

This was a disaster of a season finale. I was actually excited to see Andy’s big coup, but somehow this episode managed to strip the fun out of it entirely. I wasn’t at all a fan of Andy’s pathetic janitor bit. It’s one thing to put Andy’s accomplishment in perspective by covering it with a shroud of incompetency in some other area – it’s a comedy show after all and incompetency is The Office’s bread and butter – but you’ve got to make it funny and his ridiculous plan to reveal he got his job back just felt laboured from the beginning.

I also had a hard time with the way they wrote Robert off the show. Part of that has to do with expectations – in the last episode it looked like he and Andy were headed for a showdown and I was hoping he would get some sort of comeuppance. But even without the grudge match I think the writers have exposed him over the last couple of episodes as a fraud, and I would have liked to have seen that out in the open rather than having him con his way into another cushy gig.

In fact there wasn’t much I liked about David Wallace’s final visit to the office. It was just a little too neat and tidy for my liking. Aside from the general mishandling of Robert’s exit, it wasn’t until last week that the company even looked to be having any problems at all. Now Jo’s liquidating the company? It’s a convenient way to get rid of that pesky Sabre storyline I guess, but it just felt a little too much like “okay, this is what’s happening now” and that isn’t great storytelling.

The side stories in this episode were a little better, but more from a story perspective than a comedy perspective. The episode in general was pretty devoid of laughs. Dwight and Angela’s thread looks like it could be promising, but taking into account that Dwight is set to receive his own spinoff next season I don’t know how far it can really end up going. I was happy to see Darryl finally gain the courage to tell Val how he feels though, even if the storyline was largely pushed to the background.

Line of the night:

DARRYL: What flavour’s that?
HIDE: Coconut P***s.
DARRYL: The coconut is pretty subtle...

Parks and Recreation – “Win, Lose, or Draw” (A)

I’m on such a high for this series right now. I know these types of recaps are wrought with hyperbole and sweeping generalizations, but I’m being sincere when I say that over the past two years this series has produced two of my favourite seasons of television ever. And “Win, Lose, or Draw” really cemented that for me. Not only was it an excellent conclusion to the season that was, but it showed once again that the writers of this series are not content with the status quo (well except for with Ron, who kind of likes the status quo). They’re willing to let these characters grow and expand, and because of that they’ve turned this series into one of, if not the, funniest show(s) on television.

When Amy Poehler does her Emmy submission she should put this episode and “The Debate” into the package. She was fantastic, and not just from a comedy point of view either. I could cite all kinds of examples of her brilliance in this episode – the heartbreaking scene where Leslie cast her ballot, the raw emotion on Leslie’s face (and let’s be honest, in our hearts) when she found out she’d won – but it’s much simpler to just say she was a force from the get go in this one. Frankly, I can only think of a handful of episodes where she’s been better.

Structurally “Win, Lose, or Draw” wasn’t a perfect episode. The demands on Leslie’s time periodically made things a little clunky, the best example being Ben looking for her only a scene after the two of them had been alone with each other. But overall, it didn’t detract too much from the episode. In fact, it was the cost of making sure no one was left out. Leslie got one on one time with pretty much every important person in her life – Ann, Ben, and of course Ron – and each scene was sweet and smart and touching in its own way.

It was a smart move by the writing staff to put the emphasis on the relationships that have gotten Leslie to this point rather than her own personal glory. Her final impromptu speech at the end did a phenomenal job of summing up what was essentially the thesis of this episode – that no one achieves anything alone. And for an ensemble series such as this one, that’s a powerful message. It was one of those moments where the show transcended the narrow definition of a sitcom and became more than just the sum of its parts.

And while this episode was first and foremost about Leslie, I was still quite impressed with the small B-story they gave Andy and April. For Andy, it did a nice job of subtly setting up a possible direction for his character next season. For April, it showed that she actually cares about her job, which has been part of her slow evolution over the course of this season and hopefully the next one as well. Not bad for an almost purely comedic storyline with essentially three scenes.

That sort of led into the tag of this episode, which contained the standard pitches for possible storylines next season. In truth, some of them will be around come September and some of them probably won’t, but regardless I have a ton of faith in the instincts of this writing staff. Parks and Recreation is clearly in its prime right now, and while it’s still unclear how long it can remain in that position, if it can capture anything close to the magic it’s given us over the past two or three seasons, it’ll be something worth watching.

Line of the night:

ANDY: Okay, okay, calm down. First of all you did the right thing by hiding under this table. Secondly, your man is here. I’m gonna take care of this for us. I’ve been playing Xbox for years. I’m really good at fixing it when it freezes.