The Funny Stuff: FOX/ABC Tuesday

Tonight, we had a couple of Halloween episodes, and a bit of plot.  Let get to it!

Raising Hope

Sabrina has a couple of gay friends, and she and Jimmy hang out with them, causing Jimmy to feel the need to understand gay culture a bit more.

He and Burt go to a gay bar, and Burt enjoys himself way more that you would expect a straight man to.  He goes back on Halloween dressed as a mailman from Village people(yes, he’s aware there is no mailman), leaving Virginia at home to pass out candy due to her Bunco club being cancelled.  She does end up at the club dressed as a guy, though, and it is super cute.

Jimmy and Sabrina, though, have a much different Halloween. 

First, Sabrina’s friends ask her to donate an egg and surrogate for them.  Jimmy doesn’t like this nearly as much as Sabrina does, but fails in verbalizing his uncomfortableness.   Sabrina decides to go through with it, while Jimmy complains to his parents.  They remind him that their family is not so good with the whole word thing, and have him use a little subterfuge to make the gay friends not want a kid.

He takes their advice, and Hope over to the friend’s house, and leaves her there after a faux emergency, all while sneakily keeping her binky on him, causing Hope to scream bloody murder as he leaves, and presumably the rest of the evening.

Unfortunately for Jimmy, Sabrina finds out what he is trying to do, and is PISSED.  They go over to the friend’s house, and are super surprised to hear no screaming Hope.  Turns out, the gay guys are way more prepared to be parents than Jimmy ever will be, and managed to wean Hope off her nook with a ring pop, and get her to sleep.  Cause Hope would definitely have fallen asleep after a big chunk of sugar like that.

Anyway, the guys decide that they want Jimmy to sperm donate, but no longer have Sabrina surrogate, to take away the weirdness.  Jimmy is totally into it, but Sabrina is having the same weird feelings Jimmy was having before.  Jimmy actually does the right thing when his fiancé said she doesn’t like something he’s doing, and calls the whole thing off.  It’s super cute, and made better with the fact that Jimmy is green…not with envy, but with Hulk makeup.

This was basically a filler episode, there was no plot mechinations at all, but it was still pretty fun.

I got some lines, too!

Burt, to Jimmy, after he tells him about Sabrina’s plan to surrogate: “So, you agreed to someone freeloading on your fiance’s uterus?”

Burt, to Virginia as he’s about to go to the gay bar: “I’d bring you with me, but all the other married guys’ wives don’t even know they’re there”

Jimmy, as he’s about to tell the guys he can’t be their sperm donor: “I can’t believe I have to deny people my sperm…there was  time I couldn’t give the stuff away.”

Reason #3614 Pixar is the best

You may have already seen this if you saw Brave this summer, but if not, enjoy!

Just in time for Halloween...

Via Pajiba by Harry Hanrahan




 (Not safe for the kiddies, though, lots of gore and language)

Super Cute Kitty of the day

Amazing Race: Chill out, freak(S21E5)

Well, we were stuck in Dhaka again this week, so there was very little movement, with the exception of one team, but in the end, it didn’t matter anyway.

Let’s jump right in!

James and Abba start the race with bad news: James’ father has stage four cancer, and it’s untreatable.  He decides to race one, in it to win it for his father.  They don’t see a single other team in the whole leg, and finish first for the second leg in a row. Prediction time! I think these two will be top 3, but won’t win

Abbie and Ryan really REALLY hate the twins.  It’s been getting grating honestly, but the twins don’t really come out much better.  Anyway, They also want to beat Dave and Rachel’s winning leg record, but in order to do that, they needed to win this leg, which obviously didn’t happen.  Prediction time! Top 3, and may win.

Natalie and Nadiya continued on their Abbie/Ryan annoyance rampage, and did so exceptionally well.  They were super cute during the scale task, with Natalie(?) getting a local boy to chant ‘Go twinnie’ with her.  They did get a good line, though it is the one that verged on almost mean as said in a talking head regarding Abbie asking if Nadiya had done this before: “yeah Abbie, I’ve made a bloody third world scale in my backyard, are you insane?” Prediciton time!  Top 3, and may win.

Josh and Brent are the team that actually moved in the ranking.  They had a hard time finding a cab, then Brent got dehydrated at the Roadblock, so not only were they the last to get there, they were the last to finish by a long shot.  They completed the rest of the leg with little to no incident, but it didn’t get them any farther forward. Prediction time! Out next.

Rob and Kelly ran a unremarkable leg, with the exception of me being impressed with Kelly.  She’s a little fire cracker, and rocked the heavy lifting of both of the tasks this week.  If only Rob wasn’t obnoxious, and no-so-rocking the neon goatee.  Prediction time!  Out in 5^th.

James and Jaymes were solid through most of the leg, and then they forgot three logs in the detour.  It was nice, though, in the fact that they fully put the blame where it belonged, on themselves.  They said, ‘we didn’t count, and we messed up.’  Much better than ‘it’s your fault, why didn’t you this, blah blah blah, whine whine whine.’  They took a moment to compose themselves, went back and got their logs, and finished the leg.  Prediction time! Out in 6^th.

Trey and Lexi literally got no screen time this week.  I barely even remember them checking in, which really doesn’t bode well for their finishing place. Prediction time! Out in 4^th.

This was a NEL, so even though Josh and Brent gave a terribly awful leg, they are in it for another week.   

Next week, we are finally out of Asia, kind of, as we make our way to Turkey.  Hopefully there’s a bit more team shuffling, and we’ll get some more team dynamics.

Finishing order(Average Place):

1. James and Abba(3.60)

2. Abbie and Ryan(2.00)

3. Natalie and Nadiya(3.40)

4. Rob and Kelly(5.80)

5. Trey and Lexie(5.00)

6. James and Jaymes(5.60)

7. Josh and Brent(5.60)

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!”

The Funny Stuff: ABC Wednesday(10/24)

Tonight, we had a couple of filler episodes, but one bit of plot motion in each to make things all better.

The Middle

We had a kid-centric episode tonight, with the Sue and Brick taking center stage, and Axl getting a bit of plot.

Sue is finally old enough to drive, but due to her crippling fear of driving, she is having trouble learning how.  First Mike, then Frankie attempt to help her, and get nowhere.  That whole almost stealing the neighbor’s car the year before as reeked havoc on  her confidence, and only one person can help: Axl.

After Sue unintentionally runs over Axl’s foot, she is incredibly apologetic, and was looking for a way to make it up to him.  When Axl realizes it’s election day, and has no one to drive him(and he can’t drive himself due to his bum foot), he recruits a old lady to be the adult in the car, and gets Sue to drive him to the polling place, and almost all is forgiven.  That is, until Frankie gets he news: Axl’s foot is broken, not sprained, and his chance for a scholarship have been dashed. 

Brick, on the other hand, had a good showing.  Frankie pawned him off on another parent for trick-or-treating, and when he came home, he had 20 pounds of candy.  Frankie told him to eat what he could in 24 hours, and they’d send the rest to the soliders.  Of course, Brick misunderstood, and went about eating all 20 pounds in that 24 hours, and completely succeeded. 

Frankie and Mike send him to school the next day anyway, fully expecting a call from his teacher regarding a very sick, very rambunctious child, and they are not disappointed. 

But!

When they get to the school, Brick’s teacher(TED!!), tells then he has been a model student, and to keep whatever change they did since Halloween, cause it was awesome.  Of course, they can’t keep Brick hopped up on sugar for the rest of his life, but they enjoy a non-tick-filled Brick while it lasts, which isn’t long.  He has a major crash, and is back to normal in no time.

Not only do I have funny lines, but I have a funny moment as well.

Sue, after Mike mentions her training wheels on her bike: “Oh my God! This situation is very similar to that situation!”

Sue, after she overhears players and cheerleaders saying what a horrible person she is for running over Axl’s foot: *Sue in chicken costume sadly walks down the street as ‘Everybody Hurts’ plays*

Parenthood: I’ll be right here…(S4E6)

This was not quite the cry fest that last week was, but Parenthood gave us another strong, if Adam/Kristina-centric episode.

So let’s jump right in.

Adam and Kristina are getting ready for her surgery.  Adam passes off some pre-surgery duties to Crosby, who utterly fails(but I’ll talk about that in his section).  Max decides to drop the bombshell that the election is on the same day as the surgery, and he has to give a speech for it.  Kristina asks to hear the speech, but Max has it all in his head.  Hattie is still home, and is thinking about deferring to spring semester, which both Adam and Kristina are adamantly against.

After Kristina says goodnight to the younger kids, she finds Hattie in the kitchen, talking to the Dean about deferral.  Kristina fights against it again, but Hattie wants to do all she can to help, which includes watching Max’s speech the next day.

While Kristina is in surgery, Adam is joined in the waiting room by all his siblings, all of whom offer him tea, to Adam’s increasing frustration.  Meanwhile, Max is waiting to give his speech, and Hattie is there to give her support, and also gives Max the words he needs to give a rousing, if treacly, speech fully about his Aspergers, and how it affects him.

Of course, Kristina comes out of her surgery just fine, and we learn that Max won the election, completely unbelievably.  Unfortunately, at Kristina’s follow-up appointment, we learn that one of the nodes pulled for biopsy has cancer, and the type she has is more aggressive than expected. 

So what do Adam and Kristina do?  They immediately go home, and tell Hattie that Kristina is fully cured, and that Hattie should go back to school, of course!  Nothing like a gigantic lie to your grown daughter to make her trust you, guys.

Anyway.

Crosby does his best to help, and fails miserably at every turn.  In an attempt to calm down a freaking out Adam, he give Adam the most awkward shoulder rub in the history of the planet.  He then convinces Adam to let Crosby take some day before tasks, like taking the dog to the dog park, and getting Kristina’s favorite meal before she is cut off from eating before go-time.

He manages to let the dog, Otis, loose, only to get attacked by a bigger dog, requiring Otis to get two stitches, and forcing Crosby to be late with Kristina’s final pre-surgery meal. 

To end, Crosby was putting Jabbar to bed, and asked him to teach Crosby how to pray.  It was really cute, especially when Jabbar cut Crosby off in giving the backstory: “He already knows.”

Sarah had a minor plot, in the move-in with Mark day.  Drew was being a little putz, basically throwing a temper tantrum, but they get to Mark’s with little to no issue.  That is, until Mark doesn’t have cable, like some sort of dirty hippy.  This is quickly rectified, as Mark wants to be a good guy, so they get cable, and there is bonding, and only a little weirdness with Hank being all skeevy at work and whatnot.

Julia was the only one with less of a plot, which was basically her being supportive of Adam, and scheduling and stuff.

All in all, not a bad episode, though the whole ‘lying to Hattie’ thing was obnoxious.  I also wasn’t impressed with Max actually winning the election, but I think it may give him more to do this season, which may be a good thing.

The Funny Stuff: FOX/ABC Tuesday(10/23)

Tonight saw the premier of another great show to be added to the lineup, so I hope you’re ready!

Raising Hope

This was a fun episode.  Even if the A-plot was a tad bit predictable, the writers brought in different angles that made for an amusing ride.

Jimmy and Sabrina find out they get her Nana’s house, as long as they get married in the family church.  Of course, they have to go and visit said church, since the Chance’s are not particularly churchy people.

The pastor says they need to go through an engaged couples weekend for that to happen, so they set it up for the next weekend.  Sabrina’s mom and her fiancé decide they want to come too, and Virginia and Burt pretend they are only engaged, and get in on the trip as well.

The family leaves Maw Maw in the sad hands of Barney, who is convinced them asking him over to watch an eldery lady was a ruse to get him there for his surprise birthday party.  Surprise!  It wasn’t.

They go through the normal pre-wedding sitcom trope where Jimmy and Sabrina seem like they are incompatible, this time via a Newlywed Game type contest.  Jimmy and Sabrina get one right, while his parents and her mother and boyfriend get 20 and 19 respectively.

They go to bed perturbed, but wake up in the bottom of a ravine, their trailer home having been rolled down it by Virginia and Burt, after they realized that their relationship was strong due to the hardships they went through together when they were lost in Ohio.

Unfortunately for Jimmy and Sabrina, they are almost immediately chased up a tree by a bear.  Luckily for them, they realize their mutual love for bear week, and their relationship Is salvaged.  It’s too bad they have to deal with an angry, hungry bear now.

Meanwhile, when the parents realize what situation Jimmy and Sabrina are in, Sabrina’s mom has her boyfriend get a tranq gun, and they search for Jimmy and Sabrina.  They find them, just has the pair of them has decided to jump down and freak the bear out, letting them run away.

Of course, poorly aimed tranq dart shots ensue, and Jimmy and Sabrina are both hit before the bear is finally taken down.  The pastor agrees to marry them, and everyone lived happily ever after, including Barney, who got his surprise party from the gang after they got back from the retreat.

This show is so amusing.  The characters are exaggerations and caricatures for sure, but there is a  humanity and realness that shines through at every turn.  I’m kind of wondering how they are going to stop them from moving into the big house, since it seems every hurdle thrown is easily leaped over.

I got some funny lines, too!

Burt, to Sabrina’s lawyer’s 10 year old protégé, when he learn he doesn’t know the ‘birds and the bees’: “Take a seat Kevin, put your feet up, this is gonna blow your mind.”

Sabrina’s mom and boyfriend, after he proposes to her: “Could you wait 3 weeks for my divorce to be final?”  “For you, I would wait a month.”    

This was in my head all morning...

You're welcome!

Amazing Race: Funky Monkey(S21E4)

Finally, a leg that wasn’t solely determined by terrible cabbies!  This time, it was poor clue reading and execution that doomed a team that has had waaaay too many chances.

Abbie and Ryan got the pole position, and made the most of it, despite not taking the fast forward.  They were competent, did their tasks with ease, and pulled in second.  They are getting annoyed with the twins, which is totally understandable, but videobombing seems beneath you, Abbie.

Trey and Lexi had a much harder go at this leg, and it started with cabbies again.  They got a cab that was having mechanical issues, and instead of finding a new cab, they whine and blather around, and generally waste time until they get a push start on their dead cab, which amazingly enough, works.  Then they do poorly on all the tasks, and completely miss a step of the route, but are only saved do to my most loathed team failing even harder.

SNL: Bruno Mars(10/20/12)

Well, that was an episode.  Tom Hanks showed up, for some reason, and Bruno Mars sang a lot.

Let’s look at the sketches from Saturday in…

The Good

Pandora break down(7)-The concept was good, if not terribly funny until the end, but it went on for a song or two too long.  We had Bruno doing covers of Green Day, Aerosmith, Katy Perry, Bieber, Louie Armstrong, and Michael Jackson, so the sketch was super long.  I don’t think it is on the NBC site, but you can probably find it on YouTube if you are so inclined.

Weekend Update: Headlines(8)-There were a ton of funny jokes tonight, and even the political ones were funny, for the most part, which is highly unusual for a SNL sketch.  I don’t actually remember any of them off the top of my head, but they were good for a quick laugh, at least.

The Funny Stuff: NBC Thursday(10/18)

All the good stuff was on, so lets get right into it.

30 Rock

This episode kind of lacked a bit in plot, but the lines, they were great.

Jenna had a photo spread that said she was 56, and Liz and crew go to great lengths to keep it from her.    However, it turns out she wanted to be thought of as old, so as to take advantage of the Helen Mirren effect. 

In an effort to prove to Tracy that women are funny, Liz and Jenna put on a scene from their two-woman show, where Liz plays a doctor, and Jenna plays a child.  In doing this, they proved Tracy wrong, and got Jenna her coveted Geezerchair endorsement, so it was win win for everyone!

In other news, Jack is dating several different women at the same time, because he gets different things from each one.  He’s pissed when he finds one of his girls dating someone else as well, until he realizes she will feed him soup and laugh at his vaguely racist comments because he’s her father figure boyfriend.  Oh, and Ryan Lochte’s a sex idiot, for some reason.

Anyway, the funny lines!

Liz, when Tracy tells her women aren’t funny: “NERDRAGE!”

Sarina to Jack, when they run into each other, in reference to her *other* boy toy: “Ryan is my sex idiot”

Sarina, after Jack tells her about his ‘Great Escape’ dating philosophy: “My generation calls it ‘Pokemoning’…gotta catch em all!”

Tracy, when acknowledging Liz: “Elizabeth Q Lemonade!”

The Funny Stuff: ABC Wednesday Night(10/17)

The Middle

Frankie, fresh off of being fired, as taken to walking around the neighborhood, until she has a run-in with crazy Rita.  She thinks Frankie stole her hose, though Frankie is 100% certain she did not.  Frankie, in an attempt to appease Rita, buys a new hose to put in her yard, but Rita is not impressed, and they get in a tug-of-war over the hose, and Frankie chips a tooth.  But in a surprising twist, Brick took the hose!  He was using it to water the demonic bunny from the previous episode, so Frankie and Brick try to sneakily get rid of the stolen hose.

But!

Rita stops them before they drive away: her hose was left on the front yard the night before, so the Hecks are coming to a pool party, since Rita hates owing anyone.  Frankie and Brick get rid of the hose anyway, just in case.

In other news, Sue was invited on a band trip as the mascot.  She is super excited and even wants to show off her new routine sans costume, with unfortunate results.  Apparently, Sue is only a good performer inside the costume.

When Sue is at Mike’s work, hawking her meaty wears(and no, that’s not dirty, get your mind out of the gutter), she gets a peek at Mike’s paycheck, and comes to the not-so-surprising conclusion that the Heck’s are poor.  Sue, being the worry-wart she is, decides she needs to single-handedly save her family, and cancels her trip to Cincinnati to save money.  Of course, she doesn’t actually tell them why, but makes up (several) excuses as why she’s not going, mostly involving the school putting the kibosh on the whole thing.

When Sue’s friends come over, and make it painfully obvious she told them about her family’s poor-ness, Mike goes and talks to Sue.  He has a very nice conversation with her, reassuring her, and reminding Sue that she’s the kid, and doesn’t need to worry about the grown-up problems. 

Of those grown-up problems, having ‘the talk’ is one of them, and apparently, Frankie and Mike didn’t have it with any of the kids, so when Brick has a sex ed unit at school, he’s a bit freaked out.  They manage to convince him to attend, and the information he got from Axl manages to get the group called into the nurse’s office to discuss ‘appropriate classroom discussion.’

This was a nice episode.  There was some funny visual gags, and the Brick made me laugh throughout.  This show deserves more attention then I think it gets.

I did catch a funny line:

Brick, after his first sex ed lesson, to his parents: “I guess I’ll go look at your bras now…apparently, that normal, and you guys are always on me to be more normal”

Suburgatory

This is another great show that finally had it’s season premier.

Tessa spent the summer in Manhattan with her grandmother, learning about her mother, and generally having much more freedom than she normally does.

When she gets back, George is much less hands-on than he normally is, and Tessa is appreciative, if a little distracted by all the mom memorabilia she brought back from her vacation, including photos, a leather jacket, and a tape of her mom singing.

In other Chatswin news, Noah’s surrogate(and George’s ex), had the baby, and since his wife is on a book tour, Noah wants a nanny.  But not just any nanny, Carmen, who currently works for Dallas and Daliah.  Dallas and Noah spare no expense to bribe Carmen to work for them, to no avail, and Carmen bugs out completely at the craziness that is Chatswin, and hides at George’s house.

George finally talks some sense into the two, showing them that sometimes, they may want to actually, you know, raise their kids themselves, instead of letting a nanny do it for them, since soon enough, their kids won’t need them anymore *cough*Tessa*cough*.

In the final story of the evening, Lisa is leveraging her knowledge of Ryan being adopted to get everything she wants from her parents, from Ryan doing all the chores, to getting the solo in the family act for the fall talent show.  Of course, this totally backfires on her when Sheila figures out that if Ryan knows about being adopted, he may want to go searching for his birthmother, leaving only Lisa for Sheila and Fred to dote on, horrors.

We end on the talent show, and Tessa channels her mother, and the guitar lessons her father gave her as a child, and sings the show’s theme song, in the guise of it being a song her mother wrote, and it’s actually very good, so that was fun.

I love how real this show seems, even as the absurdity of the behavior of the Chatswin residents is ratcheted to incredible heights.  The relationship hardships are exaggerated, but the reconciliations always feel earned, and the growth natural.

All in all, a good opening for a fun show.

Will! It! Blend?!?

For your edification of the day...

The Funny Stuff: FOX Tuesday(10/16)

Raising Hope

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: this show is so cute.

So, we open with MawMaw narrating to the wall the events of the last episode, mainly how she was taken from the Chance home for elder abuse, and placed in a nursing home.

Virginia decides she needs to get MawMaw back, so they make their way to the home, but are denied entry, forcing the group to make a plan.

Burt’s plan includes tons of cupcakes, mainly so he can lick the bowl after they are made.  Everyone shoots down his plan as being ridiculous, so instead, Virginia calls on Jimmy’s box of magic tricks, and they sneak in in the rolling trunk.  Virginia and Burt, once the group is fully in, get out of the trunk, and dress up as old people, complete with creeeeeeepy masks.  They attempt to sneak MawMaw out, but are stopped in their tracks by…

A caring staff that actually knows who to care for MawMaw, what with the meds in the Pez dispenser tricks, and their sheet music to stop ‘Chopsticks.’  Virginia decides MawMaw is probably better off at the home, and the group dejectedly leave sans MawMaw.

Once they get home, though, the annoying social services lady comes back: MawMaw has gone crazy, and they can’t figure out why.  It’s soon determined that SOMEONE denied MawMaw her last piece of taffy, and so she barricaded herself in the activities room, and may have assaulted the staff.

When MawMaw threatens annoying social services lady’s cat, she allows the big guns, and the Chances get the spray bottle, saran wrap, and hot sauce, and heroically subdue MawMaw.  The home staff decide MawMaw would be better off anywhere else, so she goes back with the Chances.

Virginia VO’s that while they were glad to have her back, they did learn some tricks from the home, though the big guns were held in reserve for when someone steals the last piece of taffy.

I really liked this episode.  It showed growth of character that hopefully will stick, and there were so many laugh-out-loud moments, I wasn’t able to catch them all. 

I did get some, though!

Orderlies, as MawMaw VO’s the previouslies: “Who’s she talking to?”  “I don’t know, yesterday she said she won a Golden Globe and slept with Warren Betty”

Jimmy, after Virginia asks him where his magic trick are: “Oh no, they’re not magic, they’re illusions.”

Burt, after downing one of the seniors’ lunches: “Oh, that’s the best lasagna I ever drank”