Star Wars???

Star Wars.

The Funny Stuff: Parks and Rec(2/7)

And we had another really funny episode on NBC’s Thursday night lineup!  This was a great episode with tons for funny lines and situations to go around.

Lets start with…

April and Andy, who were tasked with getting signatures for the new park at a public forum.  April first decided that since she hates talking to people, she’s going to pretend to be Leslie, complete with one of her old suits.  The forum is a complete disaster, since April isn’t actually Leslie, and she only manages to get four signatures, two of which are her and Andy, and one of which is Farts McCool.  Andy is super supportive the whole time, and even has a revelation:  April should do the meeting as herself.  And so, he grabs the wrong bag on ‘accident,’ and forces the issue.  April runs the meeting as her sarcastic, rude self, and it is a huge hit.  They get lots of signatures, and April is awesome.  And Andy has fruit rollups on his thumbs, obviously.

Ben, Ron, Chris, and Tom are looking for a caterer for Ben and Leslie’s wedding, and they go on a taste test, where Chris is enamored with the vegan place, Ron likes the meat, and Tom is a foodie.  And by foodie, I mean he takes pictures of all the food without actually eating any of it.  This ends up being good for him, as the mini calzones were bad, and gave the other three a terrible case of food poisoning.  In the end, Ben realizes that JJ’s diner would be the perfect place to have cater the wedding, and chooses them.

And in our main story, Ann is still dating herself, and has done tons of fun stuff like skydiving and ordering two meals at restaurants.  But the conflict comes when she decides she wants a baby, and enlists Leslie to help her find a sperm donor.  Leslie doesn’t want her to do it, and seeing as Ann didn’t even ‘do’ children until last week when she played with Diane’s girls, that’s probably a smart thought.  But Leslie goes along with it, in hopes of diverting the trainwreck in more subtle ways.  They first head to Pawnee’s sperm bank, where there are no good sperm, due to the donors all being sexual predators and whatnot.  Ann then decides she’s going to find someone in her life that would make a good baby daddy, and narrows it down to a jerk doctor, a terribly astute Pete, and the Douche.  Oddly enough, the Douche ends up being the best choice, and Ann is going to move forward with her plan.  Leslie, then, needs to drop the subtle, and tells the Douche straight up what Ann’s plans are.  Of course, he brings it straight to his radio show, and Ann is PISSED. 

Leslie goes on the radio show to try to get him to stop talking about it, but that only ends in her falling into a Jello pool.  But it did help Ann realize what a huge decision this is, and that she should make a more methodical approach.  With cartoon uteri drawn by Leslie, of course.

Like I said above, this was a fun episode, and not only were there tons of funny lines, the physical comedy, especially in the food poisoning scene, were fantabulous.  The tag, where Andy and April were burning Leslie’s terrible pantsuit, was amusing if only for the fact that the fire was clearly CGI.

Oh, and speaking of funny, here are some lines for you!

Ann, regarding her skydiving experience: “I’m not sure, cause I instantly blacked out from extreme terror.”

Ron, on Ben’s description of a pouch of dough with sauce and meat: “It was literally just a small calzone.”

April, when she is wearing one of Leslie’s suits: “This suit makes me want to scold a Catholic child.”

April’s nickname for one of Leslie’s suits: “Fleetwood Mac sex pants!”

Ann and Leslie, after a disastrous visit to Pawnee’s sperm bank: “ Is there a better sperm bank in Eagleton?”  “Mmm, you don’t want a demon baby.”

Ron, regarding his food poisoning: “I did not sleep for one second last night…and I cracked the bottom of the toilet bowl.”

Random resident on why he’s scared of parks:” …and they’re dark at nighttime.”

Leslie, while planning Ann’s baby: “Besides, what is more cuterus than your uterus?”

The Funny Stuff: Parks and Rec(1/24)

This was pretty great.  Not a lot of character development, but tons of funny to go around.

Let’s start with…

Leslie and April are on a crusade to get more women in government jobs.  Actually, Leslie is on the crusade, and April is there to mock the process.  Leslie and Chris get a meeting with a couple of people from each department to discuss the issue, and Shauna Malwae-Tweep can write a story about it.   When Leslie and April get to the meeting, they are the only two women there.  Whoops.  One of the councilmen tries to get Leslie to leave to get more snacks, but Leslie refuses, calling the meeting to order.  Leslie brings her research to the table, saying that sanitation is the worst offender for gender equality.  The guys are excited for themselves, but Leslie stomps on that pretty quickly, even though they actually have some good points, like women aren’t applying for the job.

Anyway, Leslie decides to show them, and goes on a trash run the next day, with Chris and Shauna trailing.  Leslie and April are rocking the route, and the normal garbage men are not happy.  The guys hear about a unexpected pick up, and take Leslie and April to go get it.  Turns out it is a huge freezer with no wheels.  Leslie and April can’t move it, and Leslie starts freaking out about feminism.  They are still sitting there after dark, until the owner comes out and tells them the actual garbage men couldn’t lift it either, reigniting April’s fire.  They come up with a plan: they are going to donate it to a food shelf, who have much more determination then the garbage men, apparently, cause they get it on a truck no problem.  Leslie is super stoked she got women hired at the sanitation department, and April got her a gift: trash.  Literally.

Ron and Ann are babysitting Diane’s kids since she had an emergency come up, and it was awesome.  Apparently, even though Ann is a nurse, she has no ability to communicate with children, and fails miserably on her first go round.  Ron is watching the girls paint his shoes red when Diane comes back, asking Ron to watch the girls for another day.  Ron accepts, and after they leave heads straight to the liquor cabinet.  As you do. 

The next day, Ron is exhausted, and asks Ann to help him again.  She tells them scary stories, but freaks them out pretty hardcore, and so she goes for her nurse’s bag, and pulls out the gauze and reflex hammer.  The girls are entranced, and Ron is out of there.  Ann talking heads about how awesome it is to give kids medical tools, but Ron pulls her out with an emergency:  the girls have locked themselves in a room with Ann’s bag of tools.  Jerry has a huge ring of keys, one of which will open the door, but he is too slow.  The girls have cut their own hair.  When they finally get in the room, Ron is freaking out, and spills that he loves Diane, and it is super cute.  When Diane comes, Ron tries to steel her for the crazy haircuts, but she is totally cool with it.  They are kids after all.  And then Diane tells Ron she loves him, and Ron reciprocates.  Aww.

Tom, Andy, and Ben have a guys meeting, since Tom’s business is doing gangbusters, but all the kids are super into basketball, and Tom is the opposite of a baller.  Tom gets the other two to his office with white lies involving Skittle and Michael Stipe, respectively, and they get right on to teaching Tom about basketball.  They go to a court, and Tom is seriously the worst basketball player ever.  He can’t even get the ball in the hoop when he is sitting on Andy’s shoulders.  It’s kind of pathetic, actually, but still funny, cause it’s Tom.

Tom finally makes a basket, and gets way over cocky, challenging some boys to a pickup game.  Turns out the boys are pretty good at basketball, and wipe the floor with our guys.  Tom is not impressed again.  Ben and Andy try to cheer Tom up, and they give him another idea: press conference swag!  Tom creates a really fun commercial for his business, and it is basically genius.

This was a fun episode.  From Leslie posing on the garbage truck to Tom failing at basketball, there were great visual gags all around.

I did get a couple of funny lines for you:

A former councilwoman,  about her time of the month, and the other men’s predictive prowess: “Admittedly, they were right, because of the calendar!”

Andy, when Tom asks if he can help with the basketball tutoring: “No need, my only plan was to buy skittles!”

Councilman Milton, after Leslie refuses to get more snacks: “Ouch, why so ornery?  It’s not the seventh yet!”

The Funny Stuff:NBC Thursdays(1/10&1/17) part 2

So here goes The Office and Parks and Rec, for all you lovelies who actually read my blog.

The Office

So, in our first episode, Jim is in Philadelphia for several days, wooing a very special client, some sort of basketball guy.  The end.

Pam, while in Scranton being single mom to two kids, is completely and utterly frazzled.  Not only is she taking care of the kids by herself, CeCe got lice.  Of course, it got spread over the whole office, but luckily, Erin has extensive lice experience, and immediately goes to checking everyone out.  Four don’t have lice, but the rest have to partner up to administer treatment.  Pam decides to use the obvious scapegoat of Meredith, and no one doubts it for a second.

Meredith ends up shaving her head, while Erin partners with Pete, Pam and Creed, Angela with Oscar, and Meredith helps Stanley.  Erin and Pete are super cute, playing around, and things, Angela is terribly passive aggressive to Oscar, who is less than appreciative, and Creed thinks Pam is strange.  Things are going swimmingly until Pam’s mother calls, and spills the beans over speaker phone that Pam brought them in.  Everyone is super pissed, but Meredith gets over it pretty quickly, and she and Pam have a nice girls night out, with Meredith commiserating about single motherhood, and it’s really nice.

On the other side of the office, Daryl, Phylis, Kevin and Nelly are chilling in the warehouse with their non-infected heads, and Daryl reveals he broke up with Val since he didn’t see their relationship going anywhere, but lied about it to his coworkers, who immediately try to get them back together.  Successfully, to Daryl’s chagrin.

This was a decent episode, and I really enjoyed Pam and Meredith’s interactions at the bar, with their karaoke and mutual respect and whatnot.

I did get a funny line:

Erin, as Stanley tries to leave without the mayonnaise treatment, and she jumps on his back: “I’m trying to save you from yourself!”

The Office, part deux

Part of this episode had me rolling, and other parts, not so much.  Let’s jump right in.

So Clark is back from a vacation with Jan(!?!), and he brought an espresso maker for everyone, with a bunch of different flavors.  Dwight and Clark leave on a sales call, and Pam and Daryl head to Philadelphia for his interview, leaving the rest of the bullpen to try the new espresso.  No one is sure which flavor they like the most, so everyone makes shots of each kind for everyone.  The results are…as to be expected, but it was pretty freaking funny.  Oscar decided he needed to move the copier to the annex, and managed to rip up a big chunk of carpet, revealing hardwood, which Oscar immediately gets a gigantic boner for.  So what do they do, but decide to rip up all the carpet, of course!  It’s just too bad that they all crash when only about twenty percent of the floor is ripped up, and everyone gives up and goes home…at the same time…with massive swatches of floor partially torn up.

While this is going on, Dwight and Clark are on that sales call, at a family owned business.  They try to tailor the sales pitch to the owner, first showing a great relationship, then, when the owner reveals the relationship with his son is terrible, leads to Dwight bashing Clark in very odd, but very specific ways.  That is, until the son comes in, and it turns out he owns the business, and his dad can’t make any decisions regarding the business.  Things turn on a dime, and Clark takes the lead on the sales call, and the whole thing was so long and drawn out, I got really bored.

Oh, and Daryl and Pam, while in Philly, see Jim, and then Daryl had his interview.  He’s terribly nervous, since he sucks at interviews(see: Andy’s job, which he had in the bag until the interview).  Daryl is a screwball during the whole interview, awkwarding all over the whole thing, AND killing their fish with an ill-timed basketball shot.  Even with the terrible interview, though, he gets hired, and is super excited.  Less excited is Pam, who is coming to grips with the fact that Jim is eventually going to want to move to Philly. *Sad face*

So, the espresso thing was freaking hilarious, but the rest of the episode was rather meh.  It was like a freight train barreling toward it’s destination, and the destination here is the series finale.

No funny lines, mostly because the comedy was physical rather than one liners.

Parks and Rec

This was a great episode.  Two parallel plots, with two very different resolutions.

It’s bachelor(ette) party time!

Ben’s party was super lame awesome.  The writers tried to make it seem like it would be the worst, but seriously?  Board games and alcohol with good friends followed by some great shows, what could be better?  The guys are not incredibly impressed, and after a round of Settlers of Catan, Tom insists on going to a bar for some drinks, and it is the craziest bar in the history of bars.  They have whiskey-infused lotion posing as a drink, for God’s sake!  But while they are there, they realize that no one got a bachelor party, and so, Chris plans something for everyone.  Andy gets to play on the Colts field, Jerry gets ice cream at his favorite joint, and Ron gets a great steak dinner, and all are toasted perfectly by Chris.  The whole thing is extra adorable, and everything was lovely.  And there were shirts!

Leslie’s party completely fizzled practically before it started.  She’s been working on getting a Wamapoe section in her park model, only to find out that Councilman Jamm has started construction on a Paunch burger behind her back.  Leslie is fully distracted during her party, and decides it would be a good idea to bury Indian artifacts in the pit to cause construction to come to a halt.  She almost immediately has regrets, and co-opts everyone at her party(stripper included) to dig them back up again.  Everything would have been fine, but Leslie in her drunken tiredness texted a PR person, and the artifacts they didn’t find were found. 

Leslie has to apologize to her Native American friend, but he totally covers for her, and manages to get Jamm to go back to the original agreement , and Leslie has more time to devote to her park.  Yay?

So this episode was about 40/60 strong to weak.  Ben’s party stuff was really good, really sweet, and I enjoyed it immensely.  The Leslie stuff, thought?  It really dragged.  How many obstacles need to be thrown at the pit/park?  I wish we could have seen April’s dream bachelorette party, that would have been fantastic.

I did get lots of funny lines for you!

Ann, when planning Leslie’s party: “I am stress-eating gummy penises”

Ben, after describing his dream party plans: “They thought I was kidding…I was not kidding”

Ron, after Tom sort of explains the weird concept bar he wasn’t to go to: “There is no wrong way to consume alcohol…this is the wrong way to consume alcohol.”                                                                                                              

The funny stuff: NBC Thursday(12/6)

Yay, my favorite day of the week!  We start, as always, with…

30 Rock

This was kind of an odd episode.  There were so many visual jokes that really don’t translate well to the written word, but on the other hand, a bunch of them didn’t hit, either, so there was that.

Starting with Liz and Jenna, Liz is all happy because she’s married now, but Jenna is terribly put off that Liz stole her thunder, namely her secret wedding and awards, because, oh, by the way, Liz is getting an award too.  Which is being broadcast live on Lifetime. Dot com. Slash garbage file.  At the awards ceremony, Liz figures out that Jenna is trying to ruin her big day, and ruminates with Gayle, Oprah friend, about how their respective best friends continuously try to overshadow them at every turn.

Liz, though, gets the last laugh when she befriends the lighting specialist, who lit the stage in a completely unflattering light, cause Jenna to run in panic, not wanting to look like an old hag.  After some news from Jack, Liz realizes that life’s short, and she and Jenna shouldn’t be fighting, and Jenna took a pill that makes her feel feelings, and she’s happy for Liz.  Then the pill wears off, and Liz has mom arms.

Jack, on the other hand, is having mother issues.  His mother in is town for Christmas, and he isn’t going to do anything for the entire time, just so he can’t disappoint her.  Of course, she manages to die at a most inconvenient time, and with her last wish, told Jack she only wants him to be happy.  Jack takes this to mean she’s disappointed in him in some round about way, and goes off to write the eulogy.

At the funeral, Jack eulogizes that the disapproval of his mother is what made him the man he is today, and then he lists off all his accomplishments, including the greatest eulogy of all time.  Cut in between various cuts of said eulogy, we see the crowd lapping it up, and it apparently is the greatest eulogy ever.  But how could it not be, with Kermit, and Paul McCartney and Jack playing a flute piece.  And then, SURPRISE WEDDING!  Jenna and Paul get married in their strange costumes, and Paul takes her name.  It’s as weird as you might think.

Kenneth, lastly, is feeling down in the dumps because Hazel was fired, and then she broke up with him.  Tracy tries to cheer him up by making things like a TV show, since that how Kenneth wants it.  First, he invites Florence Henderson, but she turns out to be a right bitch, and then he gets them stuck in a elevator to talk and learn things(with Florence Henderson again), but all it manages to do is depress Kenneth even more due to everything not working out how he expected.

But then, at the funeral, Kenneth realizes that his life is way better than TV, since he had a TV star trying to cheer him up for two straight day, and when has that ever happened on a TV show? 

I was amused by this show, but the second viewing didn’t do much for me.

I did get a funny line:

Liz and Jenna, after Liz thwarts Jenna’s plans: “You’re not the center of the universe, JENNA.”  “I am too! I’m the moon!”

The Funny Stuff: NBC Thursday(11/29)

This night of comedy started out on a high note, faltered a bit, and then finished decently.  We started with

30 Rock

Liz got married!  It was super fun, and she pulled out her infamous Leia costume, after much wailing and gnashing of teeth.  Her ex, Dennis, he of ‘dummy’ fame, adopted a kid with his wife, and Liz laments her looooong wait on the list with no kid to her name.  Dennis was apparently on the list for all of two months, with Liz finds grossly unfair, so she sarcastically suggests marrying Cris, who unsarcastically agrees.  They decide to go through with it at the justice of the peace, win sweats and whatnot, the next day.  Liz gets all emotional and whatnot, and finally decides that she DOES want to be a princess, so they get all set up thanks to Jack, who manages to get Tony Bennett to sing. 

In other news, Tracy is very upset: Dr. Spaceman has told him, due to all the parts replacement, he is in perfect health.  Tracy takes this to mean he’s not going to die any day now, and must subsequently plan for the future.  He does this by turning his chainsaw hat fund into his kid’s college fund, and reading scripts that people submit to his production company, for starters.  But then! He gets hit(lightly) by Liz’s cab, and realizes that he could still die at any time, so it’s back to immature behavior, woo!

This was a fun episode.  There really wasn’t a whole lot of action beyond the two main plots, but that was just fine by me.  Kenneth and Jenna’s plots have all be pretty crappy as of late.  I got a couple of funny lines for you:

Dennis, after Liz accuses him of being racist: “Yeah right Liz, the guy with the black kid is racist!”

Dr. Spaceman, after declaring Tracy 100% healthy: “I don’t have a pamphlet to help you get through this…but I do have one full of vaginas.”  “I’ll take it!”

The Funny Stuff: NBC Thursday(11/15)

A day late and a dollar short, but I finally have your Thursday comedy reviews, starting with:

30 Rock

This episode followed two main plots, but seemed very inconsequential.

Liz needs bunion surgery, which was turned into an metaphor for Liz’s family ambitions.  She doesn’t feel like she can take time off, since the show collapse when she’s not there.

Hazel convinces Liz that she can take time off if she only had an assistant, and Hazel is the obvious choice, of course.  And it has nothing to do with her desire to be famous by getting on to TGS at any cost, no sir.

Anyway, Liz gets the surgery, Hazel is awesome at the job for like, a day, and tricks Liz into staying off the show floor for the episode that night by showing a video that she claims is a live feed, but is really just an old behind the scenes tape.  Liz figures out this duplicitous trick when she walks into frame. 

Whoops.

She rushes to the floor on her poor disfigured feet and shitcans Hazel on the spot, the end.

Jack and Tracy have a battle of wits, and Tracy manages to come out on top, amazingly enough.  Tracy has been using Jack’s name as the villain in his urban movie series, and Jack doesn’t like it one bit.  He tries to get him to stop by claiming liable, but Tracy outwits him at every turn.  Jack did in fact shut down an urban youth program by cancelling a sexually confused kids show, and he accosted an old woman in a wheelchair when he yelled at Liz earlier(since she is off her feet from her surgery). 

However, he hasn’t caused an orphanage to close, so Tracy huffs off, clearly planning something as Jack insists the movie be shelfed.  And that something is a benefit for an orphanage based on ticket sales.  Jack is stuck, since now he can’t stop the movie, because the orphanage will close without the money, and then the liable claim will be indefensible, so the movie release on schedule.  Jack then finally watches the whole thing, and realizes he’s not the villain anyway, so it didn’t matter in the slightest.

Oh, and Jenna and Kenneth have a thing where Jenna fails at listening for about the millionth time.

This episode was amusing, which I suppose is all a comedy needs to be, but sometimes I wish the character development would be more of a focus for this show.

I did catch a funny line for you:

Liz, as she’s dragging herself to the show floor to expose Hazel: “Why are my arms so weak?  It’s like I did that pushup last year for nothing!”

The Funny Stuff:NBC Thursday(11/8)

Apparently, NBC thought that The Voice was more important than the normal seven o’clock shows, so we only get two tonight, starting with…

The Office

This was a worthless episode.  All it did was get Andy out of the office for a few episodes due to Ed Helms’s movie commitments, and make a douche out of just about everyone.

Starting with…

Jim, who was a complete and utter ass for no reason.  A radio program wanted to interview a local business, and for some reason, decided Dunder Mifflin would be the best one to go to.  Dwight declared he was going to be the on-air talent, but then the radio station called back, and cancelled for reasons.  Unfortunately for Dwight, Nelly was the one that was told, and she and Jim conspired to make Dwight humiliate himself.  First they had him take off all his clothes do to ‘feedback,’ then they made him think he destroyed the company by saying the paper is toxic.  He eventually called a supposedly despondent David Wallace, who had no idea, and then the interview ended, and Dwight was none the wiser at any point.  It was so mean-spirited, it was beyond ridiculous.

Oscar is still insisting on this stupid affair plot, and Kevin knows now, and he’s a moron, so it’s not going to end well.  I really don’t understand the character assassination that is going on this season, it’s like the writers want us to hate everyone on the show.

Including Andy, who is still in the midst of sorting out his family business after his dad stole all the money and fled to some foreign country.  He decided to sell the yacht, and he and Erin went out to it for one last day of memories.  So of course, after they got there, Andy’s brother was there, and Andy decided to sail the thing to the buyer in the Bahamas by himself, leaving Erin on the dock all emo, since she would have loved to take the three week vacation too, but Andy didn’t even think of it.  Dumb.

There were a couple of funny lines:

Andy, talking about his exceptional handling of his family emergency: “I wish my dad could see me now…of course, he caused this whole mess, so eff him.”

Andy, reminiscing about his family boat: “Got the memories, don’t need the boat, what are you gonna do, cry about it? Gruunngh” *runs off camera*

The Funny Stuff:NBC Thursday(10/25)

Stupid stupid football game forced me to watch these on Friday night, but the OMG in one of the shows more than made up for it.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, there will be massive spoilers following, especially for Parks and Rec, which I urge you to watch before reading this!

30 Rock

This was kind of a meh episode.  There weren’t a whole lot of laughs, and the plot was really just filler, but the end cap was pretty great.

Jack invites Liz to his Republican luncheon as long as she promises not to be obnoxious with her liberalism.  She fails after the shrimp does, and busts out with this huge long spiel that only gets the Republicans there to donate more money to Jack’s super PAC.

Jack uses the money raised to buy ad time for a terrible commercial, and is angry when it doesn’t work.  He goes to his super Pac committee, and they look through the electoral map to try to figure out who they need to pitch to, which ends up being the stoners in Florida’s pan handle…

Which is precisely the group Tracy has just described to Liz, after she vented her frustration to him.  He, though, explained how he knew people’s voting patterns based on stand up gigs throughout the country.   Luckily for all involved, this leads right to Jenna’s subplot…

She had another hit song, “Catching Crabs,” and has amassed a massive following who call themselves the Crab Catchers.   Of course, as a twist in the end, these are the same group of people that will swing the election either way, so we end on Jack and Liz both racing to Jenna to try and get her to pimp one candidate over the other.  “To be continued…” says Kenneth to a spider as the very end, so we’ll find out next week who Jenna will go for, unless they are just doing some sort of meta commentary, and do something completely different.  I guess we’ll see.

Anyway, the very best part of the episode was the explaining how the country will go, and explaining Florida hilariously.  There were other funny things, though!

Jenna, singing her newest hit: “I caught crabs in paradise, and yes, I mean both kinds of crabs.”

Jack and Liz, after Liz’s outburst at the luncheon: “You are my chum...the bait I throw in the water to attract the big fish.”  “Dammit, second meaning!”