Saturday, October 20, 2012

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!”
 
Up All Night

This…was not a great episode.  Reagan and Chris decide they need to get out more, but all the good babysitters are taken.  So of course, they poach a neighbor’s sitter, and get called out, creepily, by said neighbor.

Reagan’s brother comes over and saves the day, though, watching Amy so Chris and Reagan can go to a show and act like drunken idiots, eventually getting them kicked out of the bar.  It then occurs to them that they are parents, and should probably act like it, so no growth, and pointless plot…check and check.

There were a couple of funny bits, however.

Reagan, after Chris asks what his Tupperware surprise meal is: “Cream of breast milk.”
Chris and Reagan after they come back early from a bar, drinking out of Buddha mugs: “Hey, your [drink] is really good!” “Suck it!” “I was sucking it…”

The Office
And here we had another rather pointless episode.  I don’t think we really needed an entire episode of Jim making up his stupidness to Pam, and yet, here we are.

So apparently, there is a bunch of EMF’s in the office building, and, after Jim convinces Dwight his manliness is at stake, Dwight rents a ‘work bus’ to cram everyone into while he gets the wiring fixed.

Not that that was Jim’s plan(he had hoped for a week off), but he parlayed the bus action into a road trip to get Pam’s favorite pies for Lulane’s pies and tires. 

Oh, and Nellie still wants to adopt, but Andy is a dick for no good reason, until his antics makes Erin cry, which makes him partially realizes his dickishness, and so he sign’s Nellie’s character reference.

This episode was short on laughs, but high on character interaction, so it kind of settled into a high D/low C grade for me.  Too bad there were no real quotables from it.

Parks and Recreation

It has come to Leslie’s attention that the STD rate among the senior citizen population is exploding, so she decides to have a Sex Ed for Seniors class.  It’s going along swimmingly until the morality police show up and kill the fun. 

And no, that wasn’t a sarcastic thing, I’m pretty sure that’s what the husband and wife team call themselves.  The thing I was least impressed with this plot was it’s stereotypical treatment of this couple.  They want abstinence education only, even for completely voluntary exercises.  They have pet names for everything, and use a typical lefty understanding of the religious right to explain their views, if that makes sense.  The husband is clearly gay, for God’s sake.  If they’d made the opposing view a bit less vile, and more believable, I think it would have been better, but as it stood, the over-the-top antics really drew away from the story.

ANYway, Leslie eventually says screw it, teaches the Seniors about condoms anyway, and gets a censure from the mayor, since as the abstinence bill is written, it prohibits any type of education beyond abstinence by any government official for any purpose.  Like I said, way over-the-top, and very nearly story breaking.

In other news, Tom got in an accident because he was tweeting and driving, and so got his screens taken away for a week.  As an avid internet user myself, I can vouch for how terrible that must have been.  In order to take his mind off of it, Ron offered to take him camping.  He instructed Tom to basically spill his guts, and get all the tech stuff out of his system, expecting it would take five minutes.  Ron clearly underestimated Tom’s addiction, so the spewing took the better part of the rest of the day.

To thank Ron for bringing him out, Tom offered to buy some steaks with Ron’s car as his ride.  Of course, he goes to Best Buy, gets a phone, and immediately crashes into a tree.  Ron had every right to turn him in to the judge, but decides to have Tom help him fix his car, first by reading a ‘non-electronic’ auto mechanic manual, and then probably just watch Ron work.  It did end on a nice sentiment, though, which I’ll chare below.

Finally, Ben and April finally meet the congressperson they are working for, and he is a robot.  Ok, not really.  But he sure acts like one, at least when cameras aren’t on him.  This led to the cute tag, where Ben was pretending to be a robot, as April slowly at first, but then quickly after caught on.

I liked this episode.  It showed what kind of councilwoman Leslie is going to be, and gave us the Perd-verts.  I don’t think we could ask for more.

You want lines?  I got lines!
Tom to the bailiff, as his phone was being taken away: “Press send, bailiff, press send!”
Leslie, with Andy’s reaction, about the status of old people in Pawnee: “Lots of old people have Chlamydia!” “Woo!”
Leslie to the crowd, with their answers, at the Sex Ed conference: “Does anyone know what we risk when we have unprotected sex?” “Heart attack!” “Dislocated hip!” “Partner dies on top of you!”
Ron, to Tom after they get themselves sorted out: "Tom, if you ever need to talk things out, go find Leslie, she's really into that kind of thing."

All in all, a decent night, bookended by two good episodes.  Here’s hoping for similar or better next week!

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