Ok, here’s a bunch of episodes I didn’t catch in my previous
write-ups! This is MASSIVE, since I am a
lazy slacker. Sorry about that!
Happy Endings-Sunday(1/13)
Ok, apparently, this episode was meant to play last season,
but was shelved for one reason or another.
Anyway, we open on a slo-mo kickball game, with most of our
group shown watching some sort of play in amazement…72 hours earlier, though…
Alex lets
everyone know she signed her store, and by extension, them, up for the north
side kickball tournament. Everyone is
kind of…apathetic, but with a series of bribes, she gets everyone to play
besides Jane. They get a random guy
named Scotty to play, and get pumped up to play kickball.
That is, until Penny and Alex find Jane getting her uniform
from the rival team, which brings up some harsh childhood memories for
Alex. She remembers the time Jane stole
her spotlight away at a kid’s show, when Alex was called to the stage, but Jane
pushed her away and stole it. Alex gets
even more pumped to beat Jane’s new team, as we make our way to the tournament.
Unfortunately, Team Xela(pronounced Shayla), does not get
off to a hot start. They are down 3-0
and only have 3 outs left, and Dave is set to kick. And considering he has the yips from hitting
Penny last year, things do not look good.
He heads to the plate, and misses miserably. It’s a good thing they still had two outs,
and so Alex, Max, Penny and Scotty bring it home, and they win their first
game, and the next two go pretty swimmingly as well.
Then, they face Jane’s team in the semi-finals. Jane is predictably fierce, but Alex has a
trick up her sleeve: a Chicago Bear goes to Brad’s gym, and he is taking Dave’s
spot. Dave is not nearly as angry as one
would expect, and they get right to the game.
Once they get to the last out, Alex is up, and Jane is pitching. Jane pulls a dirty trick, and has the kid’s
show shirt on under her uniform, and completely distracts Alex as Jane throws
the ball, hitting Alex in the feet, and causing an easy out. Team Xela lost, and is super sad.
It’s a good thing, then, that Jane saw her team’s cheating
ways(steel in the boots) and turned them in, getting her team
disqualified. Her friends gladly take
her back, and Team Xela makes their way to the final…where they find themselves
in the same position they were in in the first game, down by three, and one out
left.
Max accidentally takes out Scotty, and their only recourse
is the yipper Dave, who gladly takes on the challenge. He focuses, and manages to kick the
ball!...right into Penny’s face.
Again. The other team catches the
ball, and Team Xela loses. But they get
the moral victory with Dave getting over his yips, yay!
This was a fun episode, and really funny, too. You could tell it was from season two, as the
jokes were rapid fire and great, and the group didn’t split into four different
groups.
I got so many funny lines, it’s ridiculous:
Brad, on
discovering a favorite store closed: “Wait, they closed All Dogs Go To Evan’s…Bakery?”
Brad, when Dave
is extolling his eye black: “Melanin, baby.
It’s what makes me brown.”
Brad, in
reminding Dave of his yippy nature: “Remember when you forgot the words to Gangsta’s
Paradise? To this day, you can’t perform a eulogy.”
Jane, when called
on her dependability: “When I send $25, I expect a letter, Adolpho.”
Brad, observing
Jane on the other team: “I’m gonna hate her like five times tonight”
Max, giving his
team a pep talk near the end of the first game: “Well, we had a good run. Actually, we had no runs.”
Happy Endings-Tuesday(1/15)
And we’re back to season three!
Jane and Brad are
having fun with exes. They have a deal
where if an ex comes into town, they can have one dinner with that person, and
the SO can come if they want, or not.
Jane’s ex is coming to town, and Brad has opted to not go with. That is, until he finds out ‘Ryan’ is a
girl. Then he is all about being there,
if only for the threesome possibilities.
Jane immediately puts the nix on that, and all three get right into
dinner. They tell boring stories until
Ryan lets it drop that they said they love each other. Brad freaks out just a tiny bit, and makes a
huge show of how he and Jane love each other now. Jane calls him on his childishness as Ryan
leaves in a huff. They makes plans for
dinner the next night, but Brad is still being a child, and he invites one of
his exes over, under the pretense of business school reunion. It seems that this deal they have is a new
thing, because when Brad’s ex tells Jane she has nothing to worry about, her
and Brad’s relationship was purely physical, Jane silently flips out.
Jane decides she needs to make Brad jealous, and she starts
being all suggestive with Ryan, and so Brad reciprocates with his ex. The exes decide that enough is enough, and
head to the porch while Brad and Jane suss out their issues, which they do,
once they notice the exes making out on the porch, because of course.
Max, Dave, and Alex
are have roommate issues. Specifically,
Max’s new roommate, who is super cool, and super missing. And super Mark Paul Gosseler. They dig through his stuff and figure out
that his credit card was last used at a fancy restaurant downtown, and they go
to confront the person they think stole his card. Turns out, though, that the roomie is using
the apartment as a sex shack , and he was taking his WIFE out to a nice dinner,
where the threesome confront him. The
roomie’s wife was NOT aware of this newest sex shack, and is leaving him
effective yesterday. The (former) roomie
is very pissed, especially considering his job was through his wife’s dad. Whoops.
Lastly, Penny is
hanging out with Pete’s super boring friends, who have boring discussions about
the debt ceiling, and don’t lead messed up lives with crazy antics, so clearly,
Penny needs to get away from them ASAP.
She leads Pete first through Jane and Dave’s story, only to be dumped
into Alex, Max and Dave’s story. In the
end, Penny promises to hang out with Pete’s friends too(when hers are busy, of
course).
This episode was a lot meta for me. Sometimes that is funny, but this just did
not hit for me. I think the meta wasn’t
big enough, not a huge a nod to the audience as it needed to be. It was more, ‘gosh, we so cray-cray, isn’t
that funny?’ Which, not so much.
I did get one funny line for you:
Max, when Dave
keeps bringing up a past missing roomie incident: “Ok, a real gentleman saves
someone from a well and never mentions it again!”
How I Met Your Mother(1/14)
Previously on HIMYM, Barney and Robin got engaged in an hour
long slog that I didn’t recap, but the only relevant part was that Barney had a
four-episode long plot to make his proposal plan come to fruition.
So Barney and Robin
are fully engaged now, Barney’s panic attacks are getting less and less frequent! But it turns out he didn’t ask permission of
Robin’s scary scary dad, so they have lunch with him at an Italian place, since
he’s moved to New York. And then, he
comes in in a Hawaiian shirt. Barney
doesn’t make a good impression, and Robin’s dad says no.
Barney goes back the next day, intent on making a good
impression, and Robin’s dad tells the story of how he killed a bear for Robin’s
mother. “It’s called manners.” Meanwhile, Robin finally accepts her father’s
Facebook friend request, and learns some surprising news: daddy’s married! She goes to Barney’s apartment, where her
father is trying to get Barney to kill a rabbit as tribute, but Barney can’t. Robin storms in, and tells her dad that if he
can’t keep her involved in his life, then she doesn’t need to involve him in
her life decisions.
Later, they meet one more time with Robin’s dad, and he
apologizes, and agrees to the wedding, and a dance with Robin. It was cute.
Cut to four months later, and Ted is on a train talking to Rachel
Bilson, who mentions that her former roommate’s band had a gig for that
weekend, but it fell through, which was perfect, since the other wedding band
dropped out at the last minute. And that’s
how Ted met the mother! Finally!
In other news, Ted
and Lily are battling over planning Robin’s wedding. It’s kind of super lame, until they get to
the real reason they are fighting over band versus DJ: Ted doesn’t think Robin
and Barney should be together. Lily
gives him an out though, and says sometimes she just wants to run away, and
stop being a mother. They hug it out,
and Ted feels better about having those two get married. Oh, and Marvin is constipated, but he finally
lets out his stream of ‘confetti’ all over Marshal.
This was such a filler episode. They keep on teasing the mother, but I doubt
we’ll ever actually meet her this point, it’s pretty much ridiculous.
There was one funny line, though:
Ted, regarding
Robin’s dad: “A little? Dude’s a stone
cold Slytherin.”
How I Met Your
Mother(1/21)
OMG, this was such a creepy episode, appended with a
recycled plot from Scrubs.
So Ted has a new girlfriend,
and she is much younger. As in, can’t go
into the bar younger. Ted does all the
hipster stuff she wants to do, like rollerskate around, and eat weird combo
foods, but he realizes that a)she’s only into him because he’s old, and b)they
have nothing in common. Then comes
Barney to the rescue, telling Ted he needs to stay with this girl, and ‘proxy
bang’ her for him, and EWWW. And this
doesn’t even take into account the third act reveal. Ted and this girl have nothing in common, but
Ted gets with her for Barney. Ted
finally gets a picture of her and dun dun DUN!
It’s Barney’s half sister, and now Barney is skeeved out, and insists
Ted marries her. But on the bright side,
Barney’s over his need for one-night stands, so his wedding can go on! Woo-hoo?
In other news, Robin is
invisible cause she has a engagement ring, a plot that was done much better on
Scrubs. Robin realizes that the ring symbolizes
how Barney and her only have eyes for one another. Like I said, kinda lame and stolen from
Scrubs.
Lastly, Marshal got
a leather cuff, which hardcore turns Lily on, but he’s allergic to it. He’s willing, though, to suffer the pain if
he gets some. The end.
Such a skeevy episode.
They really need to not so much talk about ‘banging’ all the time, especially
in the context it was given. I did get
one funny line, though:
Barney and a random
barfly, after Ted talks about how he changed to get a younger woman: “Yeah,
pretending to be someone else to get laid is embarrassing!” *bow* “Your highness!”
Raising Hope(1/15)
So, Jimmy, Sabrina,
Burt and Mawmaw are watching a ring commercial, and Sabrina comments how
she thinks the diamond industry is a bunch of hooey, that they cause a Pavlovian
response in women to need a ring, but she’s above that. When she leaves the room, Burt tells Jimmy
she’s not being truthfull, and he should get Sabrina a ring ASAP.
Jimmy tries to come up with a plan, most of with involve
medical testing, and he get right on that, first getting electroshock, then
taking anti-seizure meds for the seizures he’s getting due to another set of
pills. He finally has enough money to get a ring, so he goes to the pawn shop
where…
Virginia had been
pawning her ring to have a bit of extra cash until payday. There is a whole lot of back and forth with
the ring, and Jimmy trying to buy it, and Virginia trying to get it back, but
it is super convoluted, and hard to explain, but it ends with Virginia telling
Sabrina the importance of her ring, and causing Sabrina to want one. After all the back and forth, Virginia gives
her ring to Jimmy to have as a family ring, so he uses that for the engagement
ring, and it’s super cute.
This was a nice episode, with lots of laughs and a
ridiculously convoluted plot that was fun to track.
I did get a few funny lines:
Maw Maw, on the
virtues of a ring: “Of course [Burt’s] right…a nice diamond ring gives you
something pretty to focus on when your fat sweaty husband’s is wheezing on top
of you like a dying walrus!
Maw Maw, on Jimmy’s
plan to get money: “Nothing says romance like buying your fiancé a ring with
money you earned by knocking up dozens of lesbians.”
The pawn shop owner, in
trying to get Jimmy to understand who pawned the ring: “You couldn’t get it out
of me if you dragged me all the way to VIRGINIA! Not a CHANCE!”
Raising Hope(1/22)
Hee, this was a huge shoutout to the Hangover, and it was
pretty fantastic.
Jimmy and Sabrina
are discussing their bachelor and bachelorette parties, and Sabrina tries to
get him to have a crazy night too, but he doesn’t want to, since every time he
gets wild, something bad happens, like having sex with a serial killer.
Burt and Virginia
are also discussing the parties, and Burt is very sad that Jimmy doesn’t want
anything fun.
Cut to the parties, and Sabrina’s is fun, with bananas and
fake stripper, but Jimmy’s is as boring as expected, though Frank decided to
get a videographer(Darnell!!!) for unexplained reasons. Jimmy puts his hand in front of the camera,
calling them off since nothing was happening anyway, and we cut to…
16 hours later, and everyone wakes up in disoriented in
Howdy’s in a wedding dress. The TV says
press play, and Frank shows up on the screen with Darnell editing what happened
for them to watch, and it started with…
Frat guys storming the Chance house! They have a kegger, and Frank has a video of
his own for Jimmy: Sabrina at her grossest.
Jimmy is not deterred, and Frank moves on to part 2,Sabrina’s party,
where Frank hoped to find Sabrina cheating or something? Weird.
Anyway, that was not so much the case, so they just partied in the
bigger house until the keg ran out.
Luckily, Barney had a thought! He has the keys to the grocery store,
where there was lots of alcohol! The
whole group went there and partied their hearts out, and Frank somehow tricked
Jimmy into marrying him? It was weird,
and Frank is dumb, since Jimmy has video evidence of being tricked into signing
the certificate, so this would never hold up in court, but…
Jimmy and Sabrina head to Frank’s house and try to get him
to ‘fix this,’ but Frank has future plans for he and Jimmy, complete with a
photoshopped montage. Sabrina tells him
that they can still do all those cool things, even though Jimmy doesn’t want
to.
We cut to a chat in the living room with the Chances and
their lawyer, who is also Frank’s lawyer, and Frank has an absurd list of
demands to get the divorce done, which Jimmy refuses to sign. They decide the only course of action is to
make Frank realize he don’t want to be married to Jimmy, so Jimmy should move
in with him, which Jimmy promptly does.
Both guys actually find it completely agreeable, with weird
habits complementing each other. But
eventually Frank decides he wants to do this with a girl, so he’ll sign the
divorce papers.
This was an good episode, but it was paced really
weird. There were several funny moments,
like when they were discussing Jimmy’s weird habits, but Frank really shouldn’t
get more than a couple of minutes of screen time an episode.
I did get a couple of funny lines:
Sabrina, to Jimmy
regarding their parties: “When we compare notes, we should both feel shameful!”
Burt, regarding
Jimmy’s party: “I’m not sure exactly what’s going to happen, but I heard
‘mocktails’ and ‘jigsaw puzzles,’ so I’m not hopeful”
Jimmy and
Frank, regarding Jimmy’s party: “this doesn’t need
to be recorded.” “You could say that about every Matthew McConaughey film ever
made.”
Frank, to Jimmy: “But
as your bff-Best Friend Frank-I not only hear your words, I know your thoughts.”
The Middle(1/16)
This was a fun episode.
Lots of family moments that were fun, and a tiny bit of character
development too.
Frankie and Mike
are having issues with the kids: everyone is squabbling over dinner choices,
and they are getting fed up. After a
dinner of cereal(a terrible compromise), Frankie realized that one kid would
have been sooo much easier, but Mike reminds her what’s done is done, so
Frankie comes up with a different idea: with the three day weekend coming up,
each kid gets a day to hang out with them alone.
We start with Axl’s
day, and he is not enthused. What
self-respecting senior wants to hang out with his parents, amirite? He tries to sleep the day away, but his
parents are having none of it. Axl is
fairly certain his parents won’t want to do what he wants to do, which is
paintball. They have a great time, until
Axl disappears. Turns out he’s making
out with his girlfriend, and Mike finds him, and is super pissed he was ‘making
out with some random girl.’ Axl sets him
straight, that she is his girlfriend, and Mike is supportive, even so much as
to give Axl a head start when Frankie arrives, so that Axl won’t have to deal
with her million and one questions. “There’s one kid, done and done.”
Sue is next, and
she is the exact opposite, waking her parents up to watch the sunrise. They then head to the shelter to pet puppies,
they go to the donut place, the looked for shapes in the crowd, they painted
mugs, and then they head to an arcade, where Mike is worn out. On the drive home from dinner, Sue reminds
them that she wanted to see her mom’s old prom dresses, so they head to Aunt
Edie’s. Sue is so excited to see all of
the prom dresses, she asks to try one on.
Frankie finds a box of mementos as Sue comes out looking very pretty,
and then Sue finds Frankies old yearbook: turns out Frankie was a cheerleader,
and Sue is upset Frankie never told her.
She sulks in the corner for a bit, but realizes that she has cheerleader
DNA, so now she has something to work toward, woohoo! “Kid two, done and done”
Brick is next,
and he has a different method as well.
He is up and ready to go, but he lets his parents sleep for a
while. When they finally do get up, they
Brick wants to go to Indianapolis for a convention, but his parents complain until
about halfway there, when a snowstorm starts, so they go to the shoestore instead. Brick is not impressed: “This isn’t my day, we’re
just running errands!” He notes how he
never gets yelled at, even as he is making a scene in the store, and that his
parents are too tired from the other two to even care what he does. Brick insists on going home, where he dumps
his bag on the floor and begins to walk away.
Frankie and Mike take this opportunity to yell at him, and Brick is
happy.
This was a such a fun episode. I really liked the contrasting approaches to
the different kids, and I enjoyed learning a bit more about Frankie in high
school.
I didn’t get any funny lines, but that’s not to say this
wasn’t a good episode!
The Middle(1/23)
So the Hecks have new neighbors, and Frankie is bringing over chips as a welcome to the neighborhood
gift. When she gets there, it turns out
the husband is has a great personality, and Frankie thinks that he would make a
great friend for Mike. Mike is ambivalent,
but Frankie butts in, and asks Jeff to ask Mike to hang out. They do, and Mike has a great time, but Jeff
lets it slip that Frankie asked him to do this, and Mike is pissed. He tells Frankie not to interfere, so of
course, she interferes some more, by leaving approximately 50 messages for Jeff’s
wife. They are suitably weirded out, and
avoid the Hecks for the rest of the episode, as you do.
In other news, Sue
is excited for Wrestlerettes, but the real cheerleaders have decided that the
wrestling team deserves their notice, and will be taking over cheerleading
duties. Sue tells the cheerleaders that their
services are not needed at the wrestling meets, but thye are too stupid to
figure it out. Sue then resorts to desperate
measures: a cheer-off at the next pep rally.
The cheerleaders have a great routine, and everyone is enthusiastic, as
Sue’s face falls lower and lower. That is,
until her team gets on the floor, and they do their cracked out routine. Think Romy and Michelle times three, plus a
gay teenager. At first, the audience is
confused, but then they really get into it, and the cheering is much more than
for the real cheerleaders, and Sue is super happy.
Lastly, Axl has
been making out with his girlfriend all over the place, but Brick get in his head, wondering if she’s
not going to want more intellectually stimulating conversation. Axl takes this to heart, and has Brick tutor
him on a couple of things, including Van Gogh and To Kill a Mockingbird, so he
can talk to Cassidy about things. Axl
goes to her with his new knowledge, but she’s not as impressed with that as she
is with his desire to do things for her to improve himself, and they start
making out. Again.
This was a decent enough episode. The Frankie/Mike stuff kind of dragged, but
Sue’s wrestlerette drama was really fun, especially with her misfit group of
friends.
I did get a funny line, too:
Sue’s friend, when
she explains she wants to challenge the cheerleaders: “Wait, we’re gonna
fight? Cause I got a sock full of
batteries in my locker…I call the blonde one!”
Suburgatory(1/16)
This was kind of a lame episode.
Tessa needed to
get her wisdom teeth out, and she is laid up for most of the episode, but she
does get to make a total disaster of George’s
relationship for a while. But first,
Dallas give George a glass engraving of them on a couch.
In other news, Fred
Shay won salesman of the year, and is headed out for a few days. The next day, Tessa has her surgery, and has
a bad reaction to the anesthesia. When
they get home, George hears weird noises from the basement, and discovers Fred
Shay in the basement. Turns out that
Fred did not win salesman of the year, and so is hiding out in a tin foil
suit(since Sheila can read his mind, natch.)
After George goes to the store, Fred goes up to the kitchen,
and manages to freak Tessa right out, and in her drug-induced haze, she thinks
he is an alien that captured her dad and Dallas in the glass engraving.
Dallas comes over, and finds the glass engraving in the
garbage where Tessa put it, and is all sad.
Also, it turns out that Fred Shay was demoted to junior secretary, which
netted him flowers, since it’s junior secretary’s day. This freaks him right out, since Shelia doesn’t
know he was demoted, and so Fred sends George to his house to snag the flowers.
Oh, and Ryan is very sweet to Tessa, and they start dating
again. Aww.
The appropriate amount of time passed for Fred, and he goes
home to a doting wife, and when they lie in bed, she wishes him a happy junior
secretary’s day. Dun dun DUUN.
And finally, Tessa and Dallas talk about relationship stuff,
and Tessa lets Dallas know that SHE was the one who threw out the glass
engraving, and Dallas is very relieved, and so gives Tessa advice on her new
relationship with Ryan. Aww again.
Like I said before, this was not a very strong episode. It felt very filler-y, and the conflicts were
forced at best. No funny lines today
either.
Suburgatory(1/23)
Sometimes this show teeters on the line of kind-heartedly
making fun of suburban living and mean-spiritedly doing so. This one felt like the latter, which is a bit
unfortunate.
Tessa and Ryan
are now officially dating, and she is totally cool with the school
knowing. What Tessa didn’t know was that
being an out couple means she is now part of the football girls club. All the girls are stereotypically
over-supportive, and of course, it is up to Tessa to save them from themselves,
by getting on her feminist soapbox. She
manages to get most of the girls over to her side, and the pep rally is not so
peppy. Ryan is not impressed, but he and
Tessa have a discussion, and she lets him know that she likes to be thought of
too. Ryan actually takes the hint, and
decides to make a paper banner for Tessa to run through so she knows how it
feels. Tessa realizes she really likes
it, and so she decides to help out some with the pep stuff. Aww.
George and Dallas,
on the other hand, are having cheerleading issues too, in that George is
feeling too smothered by all of Dallas’, when she makes him flyers on her brand
new expensive printer. George decided
that he needed to do something for him, so he, Noah, and Fred Shay decide to
start a dad band. It’s really too bad
they kind of suck, and Sheila calls them out, and then proceeds to rock out on Barracuda. George wants to invite her into the band, but
the other guys are not enthused, and quit.
George hires some session musicians, and he and Sheila rock out some
more. Dallas walked in on them, and is a
bit perturbed that the dad band now is mostly he and Sheila hanging out. This leads to them sussing out the flyer thing,
and it turns out Dallas doesn’t want to change him, she just wants to justify
her $7000 purchase!
So, some of the band stuff was fun, but Tessa is always so
unwilling to even see another person’s perspective until she’s already made of
huge mess of everything that it’s really offputting.
I did get a couple of lines, though:
Fred and George, on
naming the dad band: “Shall we call our band…Sheila’s Pets!?” “No! That’s a terrible name.”
Noah, on other possibilities:
“I was also thinking: Mein Fatherband”
And thus ends my MASSIVE post. Thanks to those that made it all the way
through, I hope you enjoyed the many reviews I missed in the last few weeks!
No comments:
Post a Comment