The Funny Stuff: Raising Hope(2/19)

Ahhh, this episode was great!!  Tons of laughs, and lots of puns, plus class difference between the Chances and Sabrina without feeling shoehorned.  Lets jump right in.

It’s Arbor Day, and the Chances are getting ready to celebrate it with Hope for the first time.  Sabrina is very excited to learn they celebrate Arbor Day, and Virginia delves into all the holidays they celebrate:

-Presidents Day, which included a shower of chocolate coins, special food, and their favorite show, Beverly Hills 90210

-Groundhogs Day, where they dug holes and filled them with treats, had special food, and watched their favorite show, Beverly Hills 90210

-And finally, Arbor Day, where they got baby trees and hung treats all over them, and Papa Woody came to visit, finishing with special food and Beverly Hills 90210

Sabrina is fully in for the fun tradition, until she finds out that the Chances dug up the trees from a park for the Arbor Day tradition, and then burned them on Chinese New Year, when they were good and dry.  She is NOT impressed with this, seeing as she was the one who planted those trees for Arbor Day in the first place.  Sabrina doesn’t want Hope celebrating this tradition, and forbids Jimmy from letting her.

Sabrina shows Hope her meaning of Arbor Day, including tree planting, leaf rubbing, and edutanment video watching.  That night, thought…

Sabrina was visited by the ghost of Arbor Day!  AKA Luke Perry, and it is awesome.

They visit the past, and he shows Sabrina that Virginia and Burt used the lesser holiday traditions to make up for the fact that they couldn’t give Jimmy all the awesome stuff for Christmas, but could give him the best Presidents/Arbor/Groundhog Day ever.  Sabrina is chastised, and the move on to…

The present has a bummed out Burt and Virginia, missing a kid to celebrate Arbor Day with.  Jimmy is a sad sack too, reading an Arbor Day story to Hope, but reminding her it’s only a story, and that she won’t really wake up to things growing on trees.  Sabrina is chastised again, and they move on to…

The future, where Hope is a teenager, and has all sorts of toys.  But Jimmy is bald and stressed, Sabrina is wrinkled and stressed, and Hope just wants to spend time with her overworked parents, who don’t have time to spend time with her.  *tear*  Sabrina is dually chastised, and we head out of dream land.

Sabrina doesn’t want to end up like that, so she races to the park to pull up saplings for Hope to celebrate Arbor Day, and totally gets arrested.  Whoops.  It’s okay, though, cause Jimmy got a tree for Hope, but instead of letting it dry out, they planted it like Sabrina wanted.  Aww.

This episode literally had me rolling practically the entire time.  So. Many. Puns.  I almost couldn’t handle it.  I also liked the combined traditions story, even if it is bordering on TV Trope status.  And Hope?  Is freaking adorable.  “TWEE!”

I got several funny lines for you, too:

Virginia, when Maw Maw pulled out a Votes for Women banner: “That’s for Susan Banthony’s birthday!”

Jimmy, explaining Arbor Day’s mascot: “Papa Woody—the famous spirit of the forest who pitches his tent deep in the bush!”

Virginia, naming President’s Day’s special food: “LBJ sandwiches.”

Virgina, naming Groundhog Day’s special food: “6 more weeks of wieners.”

Burt as Papa Woody, after Jimmy makes a wish: “and I’m sure he wishes you were good at throwing footballs, or chewing with your mouth closed!”

Luke Perry as Papa Woody:

The Funny Stuff: Raising Hope(1/29 &2/5)

So Ben and Kate is cancelled, so Raising Hope gets two hour episodes, yay!  Let’s start with…

Modern Wedding

Jimmy and Sabrina are finally getting married!  And since her family is psycho, Sabrina’s mother has sent the camera crew from Modern Family to tape the whole thing so she doesn’t have to attend.  Of course.  So we get documentation of the lead up to the wedding, complete with Talking Heads and everything.  The parody of Modern Family was spot on, and actually funny to boot, something MF can’t claim at all.

SO, the main plot of the episode is the wedding, of course, but it really isn’t focused on Jimmy and Sabrina at all.

Burt and Virginia are focused on getting them a great gift, but seeing as they have no money, they decide to ‘help’ instead.  They print the invitations, but put the wrong address.  They go to fix a license snafu, and find out that Lucy is still alive.  WHAT!!  Lucy’s dad has kept her squirreled away in a locked bedroom, but when she escapes to ruin the wedding, Burt and Lucy’s dad try to catch her, and are eventually successful, and completely undetected by anyone in the wedding party.  That is, until they watch the playback from the MF camera crew.  Ruh-ro.

Oh, and they have the reception before the wedding, due to Virginia having to convince the priest to officiate, since Maw Maw ruined his life 50 years prior.  And then Virginia walks Sabrina down the aisle, and the ceremony is cute, and awww.

This was such a fun episode.  The parody was great, the comedy was continuous, and the character development was fun.

I got a few funny lines for you as well:

Middle-eastern shop owner, regarding the feds continuously opening his mail:“How many American flags must I hang for you people to leave me alone!”

Virginia and Burt, regarding Lucy dying: “Is there a word that combine tragic and happiness?”  “Schadenfreude.” “Now you’re just making words up.”

Lucy’s dad, on where he got the shock collar: “I got it from a patient of mine who’s a masochist…had to threaten to not kick his ass to get it.”

Yo Zappa Do, Parts 1&2

In this episode, Hope’s favorite show stars the creepy kid from last season that is Barney’s ex-wife’s son, and the entire family decides to head to California to see a taping, much to the chagrin of Jimmy and Sabrina.  And why, you may ask?  Cause this trip was to be their honeymoon, of course!

Before they head out, though, Ricardo, Sabrina’s mother’s ex(the baseball player) is out on the streets after completely letting himself go.  Burt and Virginia have him help them set up a scrapbooking room, and he asks to stay at their house.  Unfortunately, he stinks it up with ethnic cooking, and they take him with on the honeymoon trip, though they do manage to lose him on a street that has a name vaguely similar to a famous Hollywood street.

Anyway, they are at the taping, and it is fully meta up in here.  After the baby star of the show refuses to blow raspberries, Hope fills in for her, and they break for the two-parter before the rest of the Yo Zappa Do was finished, and Burt was very worried.  And it was fan-freaking-tastic.  The parody and self-referential humor on this show is starting to rival lesser Community episodes, and it is great.

The next episode, we’re back in the studio, and the live audience is providing a laugh track for the Chance’s dialogue and more meta-ness ensues.    Oh, and Jimmy gets the chance to be an extra on the kid’s show.   Virginia decides to whore out Hope while she has the chance(with clothes!  Get your mind out of the gutter), since child stars only shine for a short time: “They could star in a Spielberg movie and still end up the nutty mom on some sitcom!” Unfortunately for Hope, she upstages Trevor, and he was not impressed, and got them kicked off the show, sending the family back to Natesville.

But before that happens, Burt is out on the studio lot, and takes care of an unruly plant. The studio head is duly impressed, and asks for a proposal to landscape the courtyard by the parking structure.   He does a fantastic job, but when heads from the networks come by and give criticisms that are terrible, Burt flips out, and runs away, giving pretty good commentary on producer intervention in the process.

Oh, and Maw Maw wants to throw her husband’s ashes in the face of the woman he cheated on her with, but she is dead.  Whoops.  So she sleeps with her husband instead.  Odd storyline.

And then everyone heads back in Natesville, living their lives at normal.

This was such a fantastic two-parter, I was rolling the entire time.  The meta and humor were glorious, all while keeping the characters true to themselves and generally being awesome.

 

I got several funny lines for you too:

Burt, when the family walks in on Jimmy and Sabrina’s role-play: “Jimmy, my instructions were kiss, get undressed and then do it, NOT do it dressed like Kiss!”

The studio head, on something Burt said: “That’s funny!  Not strong enough to end a scene on…but funny!”

Virginia, when Sabrina tells her what she’s dressing Hope up as: “Oh, you had to play the race car!”

Burt, when he tells off the network heads:*Kick* “That’s for cancelling My Name is Earl!”

Sex, Clowns, and Videotape

After the gloriousness that was the previous half hour, this was a bit of a letdown, but still pretty good.

In the main story of this episode, Burt and Virginia are trying to locate a clown toy they used to scare Jimmy.  They need it since they hid their sex tape inside it, but Maw Maw donated it to a rummage sale.   When they go to the storage unit place, they see it in another unit that is up for auction, and so they go to bid on it.  Of course, Frank got wind of the tape, and is fighting over the unit, but they eventually get it, only to find out that the sex tape isn’t inside.  When they go to sell all the crap they got from the storage unit, they decide to give the people back their pictures, at least.  When they get to the house, turns out the people were creepers who watched their sex tape.  And apparently, it completely saved their marriage.  Creepy.   They even used it as a teaching tool for their kids, after a massive edit.  In the end, they sell it to the couple for $800 to get Virginia’s pig figurines back(don’t ask).

And in our b-plot, Jimmy sleepwalks, and Sabrina tries to snap him out of it.  First with a sleep apnea machine, and then with exercising.  When none of those work, they give up for the day, but not before collecting a bunch of stuff from his parent’s house.  That night, Jimmy sleepwalks, but he just puts a bunch of his stuff up in their house.  Turns out he was just trying to get home.  He and Sabrina decided to put some of his stuff up, and it’s super cute.

This was a fun episode, but the jokes weren’t quite as strong as in Yo Zappa Do.

I did get a couple of lines, though:

Virginia, regarding Burt’s inability to kill a fly: “Flies carry deadly diseases, why do you think there’s a no-fly zone at the white house?”

Sabrina, as she and Jimmy walk by his parent’s house: “Either your parents are having a yard sale, or your house finally threw up.”

The Funny Stuff: All the rest(1/13-1/23)

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.”

The Funny Stuff: A week in review

So some of you may have noticed I’ve been slacking pretty hard core.  I apologize, and in penance, have reviewed every episode of comedy shows I watched in the last week, which started on Sunday, with…

Happy Endings

So, this was a thing.

Jane and Dave tried to find guys for Max to date.  Jane had the perfect guy, and so did Dave, and they set Max up right away.  Max was not terribly impressed with either guy, mainly due to the fact that Jane’s guy was guy-Jane, and Dave’s guy was gay-Dave.  Max didn’t like either guy, but he did find another guy he liked, Marcus.

When they are on a date, Dave and Jane crash with their gay dopplegangers, and completely scare off Marcus.  Max calls them out on their BS, and storms out of the bar.  Dave and Jane try to get Marcus to talk to Max again, but are harshly rebuffed.  When they see Max again, they apologize, and Max accepts, letting them know that he already has an awesome Jane and kick ass Jane in his life, and so doesn’t need another. Aww.

In other news, Alex is going to Rom-Com Con, and Brad and Penny manage to break a keepsake plate as she is leaving, and then Alex’s racist parrot Tyler kicks the bucket while they are gluing it back together.  Brad and Penny stage a ‘plausable’ death scene, and Alex totally buys it, or she will, once the parrot autopsy comes back.

At Tyler’s funeral, Alex talks about the human hand that caused his death, and Penny and Brad can’t handle the pressure, and spill the beans.  Alex is obviously pissed, after her confusion fades(she thought Tyler committed suicide due to the argument they had), and goes to verify with the autopsy, revealing Tyler died of alcohol poisoning…as a picture of Alex and Tyler scrolls across the screen, them drinking a martini together.  Alex resigns herself to knowing she killed Tyler, and the gang reminisces about the horribly racist bird.

So this episode felt like it was hitting beats, and occasionally finding punchlines, but the character pairing didn’t really ring true for me.  There were definite funny moments, but the whole thing didn’t gel for me as Happy Endings normally does.

I did find a couple of funny lines for you, though:

Jane, to Alex, wondering why she brought her parrot out to a restaurant: “Wait, I’m not surprised, I once saw you put sunscreen on a grape so it wouldn’t become a raisin.”

Jane and Max, as Jane and Dave snuck into Max’s apartment: “How did you know we were here?”  “I smelled testosterone—and Dave, you smell like peppers, bud!”

The funny stuff: FOX/ABC Tuesday(12/11)

Tonight we had a couple of shows, starting with…

Raising Hope

Apparently, Virginia thinks that the world is going to end on the 21^st (the Mayans and all that), and, when she heard about it more than two years ago, she convinced the fam as well.  That is, until the day Jimmy talked to Sabrina, who informed him it’s a fallacy.  Burt, though, decided to humor Virginia for the two plus years instead of causing a fight, so Virginia started planning for the apocalypse, mainly by buying tons of crap with extreme couponing.

Now that it’s almost go-time, Jimmy is getting more and more testy, especially since it’s Hope’s first Christmas she’ll remember, and he wants it to be perfect.  Virginia, on the other hand, insists Christmas be celebrated early due to the impending apocalypse, up to and including eating all the chocolate out of the Advent calendar.

Jimmy freaks out at this, and finally spills to Virginia that the world is in fact not going to end, much to the chagrin of Burt.  Virginia freaks out in turn, of course, but insists she still has the day to prove Jimmy and everyone wrong.  Well, the day ticks slowly by, and there are no signs of the apocalypse, and Virginia is super sad.  That is, until…

Her friend from work comes in completely grimy and destitute.  Apparently, her whole family bought into the end of the world craziness, and decided the only prudent thing to do would be to sell everything they own and watch the theatrics from Disney World.  As one is wont to do.

However!  With all the crap the Chances have stored up in the bunker, along with all their disaster preparedness, they knew exactly what to do to help Virginia’s friends.  They patched up the blistered feet, got them hydrated and fed, and gave them a place to stay until they got back on their feet.

And Jimmy realized that even with his mother’s craziness in the lead up to the non-end of the world, he was glad she did it (relatively) sanely, and is happy to have her as a mom.  Aww.

This was a fun little episode, showing who the family has grown and changed in the past few years, and it was really cute, especially showing how Sabrina and Jimmy first spoke.

I got a couple of funny lines, too!

Jimmy, when Maw Maw wants to fight him: “Maw Maw, I’m not going to fight you, you’re a million years old, and you broke your pelvis falling off the back of that car carsurfing.”

Maw Maw, during her (slightly inappropriate) stand up routine: “If you ever bought or sold a person, you might be an old person”

The Funny Stuff: Fox/ABC Tuesday(12/4)

On Tuesday, we had a couple of new shows, one pretty good, and one awesome.

Raising Hope

We started here with Burt and Virginia.  Burt saw a rape on the way home from work, and Virginia was obviously concerned, until she figured out that it was a squirrel, and not a human being.  Burt does get her to worry about it, and they spend the episode capturing, then attempting to punish, the offending squirrel.  They eventually decide on castration, and bring the squirrel to the vet, who refuses, on account of that’s what animals do.  He then lets the squirrel out the window, and the squirrel gets right back to it’s business of humping anyone and anything. 

In other news, Jimmy and Sabrina have a slight conflict, in that Sabrina only takes the fun stuff with Hope, like playing in the mud or bringing her to the carnival, while Jimmy is stuck with the hard stuff like cleaning and disciplining.  They decide to let Sabrina take care of Hope for the weekend, while Jimmy hangs out with Barney, working on his masculinity on the auxiliary police force.

Of course, it turns out the auxiliary police force is less police and more Barney being tolerated because he give the dispatcher a discount at the market.  They tool around town on the recumbent bicycle built for two, sorting recycling and looking for trouble.  And they find it!  Loud yelling is coming from a house, and they run up to tend to the situation.  Which turns out to be a little girl at her uncle’s house, with a splinter.  Luckily, Jimmy is such a nurturing  guy, he knew exactly what to do, and the day was saved.

When he got back home, he found Sabrina at her wit’s end.  She apparently is just finding out that kids like to do things over and over again, like reading a book and watching a video and knocking over blocks.  But after all the stress, and the whole weekend of the hard stuff, Hope bonded, and calls her mommy.  It’s super cute. 

This was a fun little episode, and I really like how the family dynamic is growing in a natural way, with spurts and hiccoughs just like a normal family.  I got a few funny lines for you, too!

Burt, after Virginia is dismissive of his squirrel rapist: “A moth is just an ugly butterfly Virginia! Racist!”

Sabrina, babbling when Jimmy sits her down for an intervention: “Ok yeah, sometimes I eat dirt! Einstein ate dirt! Einstein!”

Virginia, when she tells Sabrina what her intervention is about, after Jimmy starts in on a terribly long soliloquy: “Sorry Jimmy, but the baby would have been a grown up by the time you finished that sentence.”

Burt at the vet’s office, regarding the squirrel: “Hide yo cats, hide yo mice, cause he’s rapin’ everyone up in here.”

The Funny Stuff: Fox Tuesday (11/27)

Tonight, DWTS overtook the 8 o’clock hour, so we only get:

Raising Hope

The plot this week was not terribly strong.

Jimmy and Sabrina run into Sabrina’s ex, Wyatt, and she and he get into a massive pissing contest which ends with Jimmy volunteered to race in a 1k charity walk to regain Sabrina’s honor, and her ice cream maker.  Sabrina is fully convinced any gift she gives while in a relationship only stays a gift as long as the relationship continues, which is her motivation for demanding the ice cream maker back from Wyatt.  Jimmy knows she’s wrong, but Burt gives him the advice to just go along with what she says.  He does, but during the race, he realizes that Wyatt probably needs the win more than Sabrina does, and so Jimmy throws the race.  But he makes up for it by getting Sabrina another ice cream maker.

Burt and Virginia are feeling old, and so try to make themselves younger by buying new clothes and saying ‘totes.’  They eventually realize it’s okay to be old because they’ll be doing it together. D’awww.

What this episode lacked in plot, it definitely made up for in funny. From drive-by shrimping to hair dye in the eye, the physical comedy was great.  The running gag through the show was A.B.S, which stands for angry bowel syndrome, which was used to great effect when Jimmy revealed he had it as a kid, and used it again when his parents were putting him in the middle of their arguments.  I really think this show would so well with another family comedy, one that doesn’t have characters that clearly hate each other(*cough*Ben and Kate*cough*). 

I got several funny lines, as well.

Barney, after spouting off several inadvertent poop jokes: “Ricardo, could you please stop pinching that loaf?”

Maw Maw, when Sabrina described her breakup with Wyatt and subsequent hookup with Jimmy: “In my day, they called women like that whores…but it never bothered me.”

Virginia, after the table chef flipped a shrimp to Sabrina instead of her: “What kind of man shrimp-teases a girl like that?”

Virginia and Burt, when both are hurting after a long day: “I’m not getting on top!”  “Well, I’m not getting on top!” “JIMMY!”

Virginia: “You’re right, if those 40 year old on Glee can act like teenagers, so can we!”