Review: Breaking Bad, Season 4, Episode 1: Box Cutter

By Jordan

Pretty much since its premiere, I have generally considered Breaking Bad to be one of the best shows on television. Ever since its stunning pilot, it has shown itself to be beautifully shot, almost perfectly executed, and incredibly intelligent television. The only reason we have never previously covered the show on this site is because during seasons one and two I was always a bit behind and playing catch up, and during season three I was just too busy to add another show to my schedule, what with real life constantly getting in my way. For its first two seasons, Breaking Bad lived (in my mind at least) in the shadow of Mad Men and I generally considered it to be the second greatest drama on television. Season three changed that. Last year, Breaking Bad was the best show on television, overtaking Mad Men and turning out one of the strongest seasons of television I have ever seen. I was very upset, therefore, when AMC delayed the season four premiere from March to July; I was, of course, extremely excited for tonight's premiere. And I am happy to report that, for the most part, it didn't disappoint.

There are a few examples I want to point out before delving into the episode as a whole, that indicate to me the level that this show is operating at (and it's quite high). The first is the fact that the titular box cutter appears twice: originally as Gale uses it to open the packaging on the equipment for the shiny new meth lab, and later when that lab is sullied as Gus murders his right hand man in an effort to intimidate Walt and Jesse (and, also, because he was too obvious at the scene of Gale's death). The second is the Large sticker on Walt's new shirt toward the end of the episode: after disposing of a body, Walt is, in spite of his increasing slip into immorality, shocked enough that he forgets to remove it, in contrast to his sharp attention to detail. Skyler notices, though, and tears it off, commenting on the shirt ("Kenny Rogers, huh?") but not bothering to ask a question she doesn't want to know the answer to. She is changing, and quickly at that.

The first three seasons of Breaking Bad opened with a shocking, almost surreal opening sequences. Season one gave us two dead guys in a Winnebago and a half naked Walt preparing to commit suicide before getting caught. Season two gave us a burned, eyeless Teddy bear floating in a swimming pool. Season three gave us two unknown men joining a mass of people crawling towards a shrine to murder. This year, the show changed things up a bit, giving us a flashback to Gale as he prepares to take charge of the new lab. At this point in our journey, the show doesn't need to open a season with a bang; we know the shocks are coming, and those of us who are caught up know exactly how tragic it is to see the optimistic Gale ("I doff my proverbial cap to you sir") just months before his tragic death. And just like the opening of every other season, we are given a brief view into the consequences of Walt's actions. This may be the most subtle yet, but each opening has given us a clear view of how Walt's degradation affects those around him. In the first season, we saw murders that were directly his fault, but committed out of desperation. In season two we got a glimpse of the effects of Walt's actions, which lead to the plane crash that resulted in that bear landing in his pool. In season three, we saw that the death of Tuco would not be forgotten that easily. And this year, we see that Walt's moral degradation has cost an inherently kind and gentle man his life.

Not a lot happens in "Box Cutter," but then not a lot has to. We know the score going into this episode, and the show lays it out pretty much perfectly. Walt and Jesse are about an inch from being murdered, as Gus knows he needs them now, but clearly won't be satisfied with the current arrangement for long (and his near-wordless scene in the lab, in which he silently enters, disrobes, murders his right hand man, dresses himself again and exits with only a single line of dialogue, is phenomenal and an excellent display of the show's always superb cinematography and sense of pacing). Saul knows he can't trust Mike and fears for his own life enough to have hired a bodyguard (and when it looks like Walt's plan might have failed, Saul cynically turns to the bodyguard and asks, "You got a passport, right?") and searched his office for bugs. Skyler is knee deep in Walt's business, both because Hank's medical bills are rising and because she seems more and more invested in his livelihood. Hank is still angry and depressed, though he is able to walk at least 16 feet given twenty minutes. Marie is still optimistic and trying to pep Hank up. And Gus is still smart enough to know when he's been out played, but still prideful enough that he is not willing to easily admit defeat.

"Box Cutter" sets up a lot of the conflicts in this season and does it so fluidly, and with so much style that it is often a marvel to watch. We inherently understand that a game of cat and mouse between Gus and Walt is prepped to ensue. We see many times how characters can seal their own fates (Gale suggests the hiring of Walt, Gus' right hand man enters the apartment out of his own shock and anger, Skyler moves Walt's car indicating her own complicity in his crimes). We understand the importance of these characters actions, and how the way they act will always trump what they say (Gus' civility hides his monstrous evil, Walt's attempts, as per usual, to talk himself out of a situation are silenced by Gus' murder). We see the fear that these characters live in (Saul's paranoia, Skyler moving the car, Walt's desperation to stay alive). And, perhaps most significantly, we watch Walter White become encased in a new prison. When he "broke bad" in season one, his decision to start cooking meth was really about freedom, whether he claimed it was a necessity or not. Walt started cooking to escape his shitty job (s, if you count his evening work at the car wash), his claustrophobic family life and his generally unsatisfying existence. Yet now he finds himself imprisoned by Gus, forced to work in the lab that once was his ticket to wealth and total freedom. I imagine the bulk of this season will focus on Walt's attempts to get his freedom back, and the huge moral costs that freedom will come by. "Box Cutter" is not the best episode of Breaking Bad I've ever seen, and it's certainly a step below the show's full potential, but it does a lot of heavy lifting, both thematically and in terms of plot. It re-acclimates us to the lives of these characters and hints at the struggles that will likely form the center of this season. And that means that while it may not be an instant classic, it is a damn fine season premiere.

Grade: A-

Notes:

-"I don't consider him a professional." "If he's not, I don't know what that makes me."

-"He carpools? He carpools to work at a meth lab."

-"If you and he and everyone in America took a vote and changed the meaning of the entire English language, yeah, I guess I broke new ground."

-"You make it Gale vs. me or Gale vs. Jesse, Gale loses every time."

-"What did you expect me to do, just simply roll over and let you murder us?"

-"Well? Get back to work." Gus is such a fucking bad ass.

"We're all on the same page." "And what page is that?" "The one that says, 'If I can't kill you, you'll sure as shit wish you were dead." Sounds like a mission statement for the season, if you ask me. And if that's the case, I couldn't be more excited.

Jordan's Review: Community, Season 2, Episodes 23-24: A Fistful of Paintballs/For a Few Paintballs More

First off, apologies for missing last week. There were graduation duties to attend to and ultimately, it just couldn’t be helped. Fortunately, last week was just part one of a two parter, so let’s just pretend that I did this on purpose to write about the whole saga as one big piece, shall we? Because I’m sure many of you have digested “A Fistful of Paintballs” pretty completely by this point, I’ll spend less time on it than on “For a Few Paintballs More,” but first, let’s just talk about these episodes in general.

I’ve said before that the idea of going back to the paintball well worried me. Community is a show that often goes to very high concept places for an episode, and while I think “Modern Warfare” was one of the best episodes of the show’s first season (and one of the best episodes on television in that season), I wasn’t exactly giddy about the idea of the show repeating itself, especially after I’ve been disappointed by the back half of this season. Community is one of my favorite shows on television. Not just one of my favorite comedies, mind you, but one of my favorite shows. I hold it up to very high standards because of this, and most of the back half of this season just didn’t live up to those standards. I never flat out hated a single episode, which is two the show’s credit, but I also never loved one of these episodes as much as I loved the first half of this season. So I was worried that the show was going to go out with a glorified re-run.

Fortunately, that was not the case. “A Fistful of Paintballs” had a lot of set up to deal with, mainly in why in god’s name this was all happening AGAIN. Fortunately it has The Dean to take the fall for that in the squealy, terrified and overwhelmed way he does best. Add in an old time-y flashback to the Wild West end of the year picnic and a talking ice cream cone promising $100,000 to the winner (directly after the Dean joked the prize wouldn’t be anything insane like last year’s) and I was in on the premise.

The question of how to top “Modern Warfare” had to be crossing the minds of the writers when they decided to take on their most universally beloved episode (it isn’t my favorite, but I recognize that is the consensus). They did this largely by reminding us why the first half of season two was better than season one (though the season as a whole has been much more uneven and ultimately, I’m not sure which I like better this soon). Where “Modern Warfare” killed off the show’s “supporting cast” pretty quickly (think of how fast Troy and Annie died, a fact that would be insane to consider in an episode of this scope at this point in the series) to tell a story about the show’s ostensible main characters, Jeff and Britta, “A Fistful of Paintballs” let’s us know that this story is about everyone. Annie is at the center of part one as Jeff was in “Modern Warfare,” but really, it’s more of a Pierce story.

While the episode gave the whole cast a lot to do, it played most directly with these two, an important choice in my eyes for the fact that they have had the most problematic arcs this season. With Pierce, the problem is obvious, and addressed head on: after all the man has done to these people, all the truly awful things he’s put them through, he really shouldn’t be in the group. We learn that the group voted on whether to keep him in, and that Annie was the lone hold out that kept him from being expelled. This is an important character beat for Annie, who I think has been most underserved in season two. Most of the time this year, Annie has been brought up as part of a romantic subplot (see the second part, which I’ll get to in a minute) and used sparingly otherwise. She is the character most clearly tied to Greendale-related plotlines (as the one truly dedicated student in the group, and the one who considers leaving the school for greener pastures whenever that’s convenient), and since season two has had fewer of those, there has been less for her to do. Letting her be the lone gunman drawn into this episodes plotline was a smart choice, and seeing her bitterness at the rest of the group’s willingness to splinter makes perfect sense. Part one ending with even Annie deciding it was time for Pierce to go was a pretty dramatic endpoint for the episode, and for Pierce’s arc this season.

Moving into the actual finale, I was pretty happy, if a little disappointed. Look, the show was going to do a Star Wars episode at some point, and as things go, it went off pretty well. There were plenty of well crafted in-jokes, and it was damn exciting, which always impresses me (when the show manages to invest me in the story its telling beyond just the parody elements, I give it extra credit points, just how I like Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz more because they are both parodies and work as members of the zombie and buddy cop genres, respectively). But I can’t help feeling like this was a little bit of a letdown, hurting the progress made with Annie’s character last week and playing similar (Though maybe different enough) beats in the Pierce storyline.

I know a lot of you will be upset that the show didn’t do all of that much with Star Wars outside of making Greendale into an Alliance of Rebels and having Abed beat Jeff to being Han Solo (both of which were nice), but personally I don’t mind. Star Wars parodies have been done to death, and I would have been very disappointed if the finale was more interested in being a parody than an investigation of the characters and their dynamics.

Again, I was upset that Annie was reduced here to “romantic interest” for Abed’s Han Solo. I think that just confuses things, especially when she remains interested after he drops the act, and I think it delegitimizes her supposedly real feelings for Jeff. If Annie kisses people whenever there’s a moment of drama and remains interested in them afterward, the thing between her and Jeff feels more like a reaction than an honest development. Plus, at this point she has been interested in every male cast member who isn’t Pierce, and that’s just a bit too sitcom-y for me, especially since we’re only at the end of season two. As for Pierce, this episode ended on the exact same cliffhanger as last week’s, which is kind of cheap, honestly. But I forgive it for the kind-of-obvious-but-still-pretty-affecting reveal that Pierce has been going to Greendale for 12 years, and never hung out with anyone for more than a semester until them. At the end of the episode, Pierce leaves the group of his own accord, and while we all know he’ll be back next season, I hope the show takes its time getting us there and doesn’t rush things in the finale. This is a storyline that needs to play out a bit.

While I did have minor complaints here and there, what I really loved about this episode was its focus not on our core cast members but on Greendale in general as a place for people in need of a second chance to gather. Greendale is a terrible college run by an incompetent Dean and filled with teachers completely unqualified to be teaching their subjects, but that has actually made it into a very special place. Greendale will take anyone, and that means that it accepts everyone for their flaws. The show has very slowly and naturally expanded its supporting cast into a huge band of misfits and miscreants, and many (though not all) of them get an appearance here. We get to see Leonard (who has been in two real wars but thinks this is the scariest thing he’s ever seen), Magnitude (who dies, hilariously, jumping on a paintball grenade, giving Troy maybe my favorite single line of the night), Quendra, Fat Neil, the return of Anthony Michael Hall’s ineffective bully, and several other recurring characters who may or may not actually have names, but who its nice to see rise up to defend their school.

And after two seasons and 49 episodes, that may be my favorite thing about Community. It really cares about all of these characters, and about giving them their second chances to be better people. It wants them to get better, to ultimately succeed over their own weaknesses, but when they fail, it supports them and encourages them to try again. Greendale is a completely insane place to be, but its perfectly understandable why everyone there begrudgingly loves the place and why Pierce gives the money to Greendale when he wins, even though he wasn’t there for the rousing speech that told everyone else to do so. For Pierce, it’s Greendale that will never abandon him, not any particular person at the school, and this strong sense of place gives me hope again that the show can return and deliver a third season that will dwarf the first two.

Grade: A-

Notes:

-These come only from this week’s episode, “For a Few Paintballs More.”

-“Why would someone who gets paid to do things be at Greendale?”

-I loved the City College reveal. It was obvious, yes, but I think City College as the fairly shapeless but obviously superior rival to Greendale is a great recurring gag, sort of on par with Eagleton over in Parks and Rec (though to this point, Eagleton has been handled better).

-“You’re the worst!” “Ok, she’s just saying that to fit in!” Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE kind of hate Britta. Except Troy.

-“Easy, Paradox. We’re all on one side.”

-“I think it’s called a taint.”

-“I’m calling dibs on the Han Solo role before Jeff slouches into it by default.” Which is exactly what would’ve happened.

-“Pop What? Pop what?!?!? What is he trying to say? POP WHAT MAGNITUDE?!?!?” I laughed so hard at this, I hurt. GREAT delivery by Donald Glover, as always.

-Nice callback to Troy’s incredible, Good Will Hunting parodying plumbing skills.

-“CHAAAAR…Well, I’m out.”

-“I had a dream it would end this way…”

-See you guys in season three!

Jordan's Review: 30 Rock, Season 5, Episode 21: Everything Sunny All The Time Always

30 Rock has always been a weird show, often bordering on becoming a live action cartoon (honestly, its pretty much always been a live action cartoon). Of late, though, the show has been getting weirder. Last week we had a gas leak that gave us four Jack Donaghy's and a Liz-Dennis reunion. This week, the show was probably just about as weird (maybe slightly less so), but to much greater effect. As a rule, the weirder this show gets, the more I seem to enjoy it. And while I thought last week went a little too far, or at least didn't do absurd in the best way, this week handled the weird just perfectly.

In the A-plot, Avery is kidnapped by Kim Jong Il and forced to become part of the North Korean propaganda machine, and eventually to marry his son. Weird enough on its own, this plotline also involved Elizabeth Banks in a Reagan mask, tracy co-starring in a propaganda film with Kim Jong Il, Jack playing flute in a duel against his ex Condoleeza Rice on the piano, and an Ipad ap that allows for the shaving of legs. Madness, sure, but damn funny all the same.

Even funnier was the constant equating of Avery's kidnapping and marriage to a dictator's son to a bag being caught in a tree outside of Liz' apartment. That was a silly gag that just kept on giving, and allowed for some lunacy all its own, from Liz' trip to city hall, to the bag's message about human mortality to our Lemon's increasingly violent threats, this was just another string of weirdness, and I loved it a lot.

Finally, Tracy is upset about being left out of an inside joke while he was away and Dot Com, Grizz, and Kenneth tried to recreate it to catch Tracy up. This plotline wasn't that funny, honestly, and that might stem from the lack of absurdity. Tracy is often the show's most absurd character by a mile, but tonight he was pretty normal, upset at being left out and just a little too obsessed with getting in on the joke. Yet when two out of three plotlines in a 30 Rock episode are cooking, that's a good episode in my book.

The last two weeks the show has been going to the weird well a whole lot. Sometimes it has worked, and sometimes it hasn't, but in general I don't think flat-out absurdity is a bad direction for the show to go in. If it manages to keep the quality up at this level, I'll be a happy camper.

Grade: B+

Notes:

-"When she's ready, Dr. Kevorkian says we have to put her down. He's a very good pediatrician, but that is an unfortunate name."

-"Lizbianism means I am a dyke...against the waters of hopelessness."

-"That's from Invictus. Wait, who's the white guy in that?" I like that Matt Damon can't exist in the 30 Rock universe, since he is just Carol.

-"I don't know why our daughter would be afraid of Reagan." "Are yo uaccusing me of not doing enough reagan time?"

-"Me plus you equals frowny face."

-"I am going to solve this. Just like you are going to solve your equally important bag in a tree problem."

-"Did I give up when tht squirrel I trained to retreive you ran away?"

-"We do a lot of plywood themed sexual play. I am a parrot."

-"I'm going to hang you in my kitchen and fill you with other bags. You will eat your family!"

Jordan's Review: Community, Season 2, Episode 22: Applied Anthropology and Culinary Arts

I have been somewhat disappointed with the back half of Community's second season. By television standards, it hasn't been bad. Yet in its first season, and in the first half of this season, I often called Community the best comedy on television, and with the weak back half of this season as well as the flat out phenomenal run that both Parks and Rec and Archer have been having over the same period, that just hasn't been true of late. I have a theory about why this is true. When season two started, the show had terrible ratings. In fact, it was sort of surprising that it got a full season two pick up right off (if it wasn't on bottom-of-the-barrel NBC, it probably wouldn't still be on the air right now), and the writers probably lacked confidence that they could pull it off again and come back for a third season.

I posit the first half of this season was the show going for broke, afraid it was nearing the end of its run. But as the season wore on and NBC continued to suck, and shows like Perfect Couples and The Paul Reiser Show (both of which had been produced as fall premiere shows and held back because they were terrible), the liklihood that Community would get to come back for a third season increased exponentially. As the show's writers became more confident that they would get another season, things sort of stalled for the characters, and we have spent most of the back half of this season stuck exactly where we were at the end of "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas." Just look at the run the show was on before that episode: it was preceded by (in reverse order) "Mixology Certification," "Conspiracy Theories and Soft Defenses," and "Cooperative Calligraphy," very likely the greatest run of four episodes in the show's history (and, if we skip over the mediocre "Aerodynamics of Gender," that quartet was preceded by Epidemiology 206." Damn this show was hot at the beginning of season two). Afterwards, we had duds like "Asian Population Studies" and "Celebrity Pharmacology 212." Has the show lost something? I certainly hope not. My hope is that they've just been cooling their heels on the realization that they'll probably be around for a while.

All of this leads us to "Applied Anthropology and Culinary Arts," the third bottle episode of this season (after the "this is a bottle episode" episode "Cooperative Calligraphy" and "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons," unless I'm missing something), likely a money saver before the two part paintball finale (thoughts on that down in the "Notes" section). The gang is in their "final" for Anthropology which involves drinking with Duncan and celebrating the blow off class, when the Dean and a reporter from Dean Magazine show up to observe the final in progress. There's nothing to see of course, and when Duncan fleed I feared this was about to be a big "fool the Dean" episode. Instead, it was the inevitable "Shirley gives birth" episode. I'm not a big fan of these episodes, as it's pretty impossible to do anything original, since this has been a stalwart of television as far back as I Love Lucy (which did a great job, by the way).

Look, I know the show had to do this (though I would have been so much happier if it had been one of the flashbacks to adventures we missed in last week's episode), but it didn't really do too much with it beyond the standards, which isn't much of a criticism considering anything they did would have been cliched. Shirley was forced to give birth outside the hospital, but would it have been less cliche if the whole gang gathered in the waiting room wanting to get in to see her give birth? No, not really. There are some character moments that land here, like Britta self righteously suggesting natural birth before being horrified by it, Troy mourning the death of his secret handshake, and especially Shirley finally bonding with Chang even though the baby is apparently not his (Changs are born with tails).

I didn't love anything in "Applied Anthropology," but I also didn't hate any of it. I enjoy Community, even when it isn't at its best. But I can't help but be disappointed when it fails to live up to my (admittedly very high) expectations for the show. When Community is at its best, I really do think it is the best comedy on television. Sadly, this show hasn't been at its best in a while. I miss the show I love. Hopefully it comes back soon.

Grade: B-

Notes:

-Ok, here are my thoughts on the two part paintball finale, apparently entitled "A Fistful of Paintballs" and "For A Few paintballs More" (cute): I am worried about it. I loved "Modern Warfare," but that doesn't mean I am begging for a sequel. I think the show already covered this ground, and after a downturn over the last several weeks (months), I was really hoping the show would blow me away in the finale. On the other hand, I don't think the writers would return to this well unless they had some good ideas about how to do it (and from the preview shown tonight and the titles, it looks to be a spaghetti western episode, which could be fun). So, in conclusion, I am worried but choosing to remain optimistic for now.

-I have been watching a lot of Community over the last few days, seeing most of the first season again. That may have slightly colored my views on tonight's episode, and if so, I apologize. But this just didn't stack up to, say, "Contemporary American Poultry" or even "Beginner Pottery."

-"Wowee. This IS a real college."

-"Could someone please get every mop on campus?"

-"You ever try googling me? Can't be done!"

-"Hey, give me some respect. I may be that child's estranged father!"

-"$500." "That's like a million bucks in dog dollars."

-"I don't want to alarm anyone, but the World Food Festival has taken a dark turn!" Another great instance of Community mocking the awesome (or in this case, terrible) things characters are so often missing during bottle episodes. But in this case, I kin of wished we were at the World Food Festival instead.

-"Don't tell any doctors I said this, but at this point the bus pretty much drives itself."

-"Dean Magazine Shuts Down After Two Issues."

Jordan's Review: 30 Rock, Season 5, Episode 20: 100

Tonight 30 Rock made it to 100 episodes, a pretty big milestone in any sitcom's life. 100 episodes is a long time to spend with characters, especially on a show as strange, fast-paced, and all around wacky as this one. When the episode opened, it seemed like it was going to be a giant clip show, and for a few minutes there, it was. But "100" actually used the clip show to say something about it's characters. I'm not generally a fan of 30 Rock trying to be meaningful, as its characters are purposefully drawn like cartoon characters and it often fumbles when it tries to get real, but the realness of tonight's message was undercut by the simple fact that this was also probably the weirdest episode the show has ever done.

The central thesis of the episode (I've decided it had a thesis, so bear with me) is that Liz, Jack, Tracy, and Jenna are all realizing that they have spent five years on this show, and that the general chaos that they live in jsut getting by week to week has kept them from realizing that half a decade of their lives has slipped away from them in the process. That's a fine, even interesting concept to hang an episode on, especially the 100th, but it also has some problems. For one thing, Tracy and Jenna aren't really characters so much as insane joke machines. This isn't a slam against the show; I've said many times before that this show manages to be one of the best comedies on tv mostly by avoiding making its characters at all realistic, but that also means that trying to do big moments with them is bound to fail.

Tracy's plotline is approaching almost a season long arc at this point, and his efforts to lose the credibility he gained after winning an Oscar came off as a whole lot less funny than one would expect. I enjoyed the callback to his "I am a Jedi!" breakdown in the pilot, but the pilot wasn't really very good, and most of Tracy's craziness was just lacking the absurdity that I usually love about it. Jenna's deciding she wanted to be a mother even though no one but Kenneth thought she should was a fine plot, ostly because it was basically a string of gags and never had to go anywhere.

Meanwhile, the Jack and Liz crisis, as usual, felt more rooted in actual feeling, and both made some good points. Jack was an up and comer at GE five years ago, climbing the corporate ladder and only making a stop in the microwave and television division. Liz had a new show, a boyfriend, and a life that seemed pretty much together. Now Jack is stuck in the husk that is Kabletown and Liz is harried to the point of insanity with no romantic prospects and no back up plan. There is an argument to be made that they have actually made each other's lives worse. But they haven't, not really, and we all know that. They both need each other to distract themselves from their obsessive focus on their work. Without Liz, Jack wouldn't have Avery and his daughter. Without Jack, Liz might have gone completely insane at this point. It's nice to see the characters recognize this, and their plotlines provided enough laughter to allow for a little learning along the way.

At the end of the day, I think the "gas leak" was a mistake. I enjoyed the multiple Jack Donaghys gag more than I probably should have, but otherwise the leak added very little and probably took the show a bit too far. Danny channeling Josh Girard was worth a chuckle, but it wasn;t funny enough to be worth how little sense it made. Jenna's hysterical pregnancy was a ncie nod to Jane Krakowski's actual pregnancy, but also wasn't a good enough joke for me to suspend my disbelief (which is honestly very suspended on this show). And beyond that, since when do the characters on this show need to be high on gasoline to be completely insane? It seemed like an unneeded coneit that only added the worst elements of the episode. Except those multiple Jacks. For some reason that stupid joke really worked for me.

This was the weirdest episode of 30 Rock ever produced. I am generally a fan of the absurd, especially on this show, but I think it occasionally pushed things a bit far. Jack's storyline worked because his hallucinations were built around his character's insecurities. The return of Dennis in Liz's plot didn't really work, because the Dennis storyline is exactly the same every time the character comes back. Funny, sure, but we've been there before. And most of the rest of the hallucinations seemed weird for weirdness' sake, not built around the characters so much as around the idea that this is a crazy show so anything can happen. This was certainly a weird episode of the show, and it was often a very funny episode, but I don't think I'll ever count "100" as among my favorites. However, there was enough solid material here, and just the right mix of nostalgia, that I can't really fault the show for what it was doing here. Unlike the characters, I don't hope 30 Rock lasts for 100 more episodes. But for now, I like it just fine.

Grade: B+

Notes:

-That + was added mostly to give the show kudos for making it this far, and out of a misplaced sense of nostalgia. Be angry at it if you will.

-Am I the only one bothered by the constant references to TGS having run for the same length of time as 30 Rock. The show had already been running for a while when 3o Rock started, and bringing Tracy Jordan in was a retooling for the program to bump up its stagnant ratings. Maybe this was the 100th episode of TGS with Tracy Jordan but the show itself has been on longer, and Liz and Jenna have been there longer than five years.

-"Jesus was black!"

-"Albinos get to be watchers in the mating shed."

-"Who wants to kiss? "Let's get some fresh air." Michael Keaton was fun as the maintenance guy going through the cliche "last day on the job" crisis.

-"Wow, over the last five years we've had a lot of crazy characters and guest stars on this show..." "That's enough, Pete."

-"The gas is not effecting me yet, so I can lead you all to safety. Just follow these...TROLL PENISES!"

-"Stick around. We've got our no cook cooking hair make unders."

-"I'm getting too old for this shhhh sound that comes from this gas pipe."

-"You used to be a shark." "I still am! Look at my claws!" "Sharks don't have claws. You don't even know what a shark is anymore!"

-"What if we had a child that was prettier than us? We'd have to leave it in a desert..."

-"It's not rape if neither party really wants it!"

-"That's crazy! A man named Elia. That's a giraffe's name!"

-"You're a cook in the bedroom and a whore in the kitchen."

-"It's after six. What are we, farmers?" A great callback to one of my favorite Jack Donaghy lines of all time.

-"You're 87 years old? My God I'm outstanding!"

-"Ok, we're obviously all thinking it, so I'm just going to say it: we're all going to have sex with each other, right?"

-"Do TV. No one will ever take you seriously again." Oh Alec Baldwin. If only you weren't so bitter about leaving behind your mostly mediocre film career for a fantastic role on television...

-"Screw Williams!" I cannot beleive how consistently awesome Brian Williams is on this show.

-"Sorry recurring hobos!"

-"Dr. Stephen Poop is a homemaker and a centaur..."

"Clooney? Hanks. Actor Emergency."

Jordan's Review: Community, Season 2, Episode 21: Paradigms of Human Memory

The clip show is a pretty terrible TV tradition, stemming from all of the things I hate about the way television used to be before it started getting better. The basic premise of a clip show is that people are ok with reruns and willing to laugh at the same joke a bunch of times (both of these things are also true of me. I have watched Arrested Development through at least three times now), so why not just write a few minutes of new content, string a bunch of montages of old jokes together and call it a new episode? There is no way around it: clip shows are lazy. They're an indication that the writers have an episode order to fill but are completely out of ideas, so here are some of our old good ideas slightly repackaged for your viewing enjoyment. Clip shows are generally done because they save a lot of money and time (being that there are few new scenes in them to shoot), and I can't say I've ever seen a clip show that really worked (at least not outside of The Simpsons which is always willing to admit the reasons it's doing a clip show, and has also been running for so insanely long that I excuse its occasional reliance on clip shows to fill out another season).

Tonight, both shows I review did some variation on the clip show format, and both of them were very successful. But this is my Community review, so those of you looking for my thoughts on 30 Rock should probably just scroll up. Community gets a lot of mileage (some would say too much) out of mocking and subverting various genres and tropes, and so it is kind of perfect that their "clip show" probably took them a long time and a lot of money to shoot. The gimmick of the episode is exceedingly simple without ceding a single iota of the show's trademark cleverness: this is a clip show full of all of the wacky adventures the gang has gone on that we've never seen. Most television shows exist on the idea that we miss all of the boring stuff, only coming around every time something worth watching is happening. Apparently on Community the characters are always having crazy adventures, fights, and bonding sessions and we just get to see the ones they have time to fit into a season.

The premise of the episode is simple: Troy sees Annie's Boobs (the monkey, sadly for all of you Allison Brie lovers) stealing a paintbrush the group is using to finish their 20th diorama. Chang goes into the vents after the monkey and comes out with the pile of stuff we saw it collecting back in "Cooperative Calligraphy" (which, for added cleverness points, was mocking another television trope that saves time and money: the bottle episode). The stuff forces the group to reminisce about their year, which leads to them fighting about how often they do terrible things to each other, and leads to us seeing a lot of flashbacks, most of which are frankly pretty amazing.

The thing I love most about Community when it is at its best is the realistic way it handles the character interactions and slowly complicating relationships among its principle cast. This show has a memory, even when you think it doesn't, and the things that these people do to each other are often pretty terrible. That has been a major arc this season, especially in Pierce's story, and that is the center of the episode tonight. Jeff doesn't quite nail it in his ending speech like I hoped he would, but the reason this group sticks together is because on some level every character knows they are terrible and do terrible things to their friends, but each of them is trying (and fitfully succeeding) to become a better person. Yes Pierce forced everyone to confront their greatest fears while in the throws of his pill addiction. Sure, Jeff and Britta are completely self-centered and narcissistic. Shirley has a tendency to judge, Annie is a passive aggressive perfectionist, Abed lacks tact and social grace and Troy is having trouble understanding what growing up means. All of this means that these characters will sometimes do really terrible things, but what redeems them all, in my eyes, as in their own, is that they have come together to try and take advantage of a second chance to be better people.

I have talked a lot about how much I enjoy what the show has done with Britta's character, even though I often kind of hate that character. When the show began, they used her as the perfect woman Jeff would have to improve to attain, yet when that wasn't working they slowly revealed that Britta is self-righteous, hypocritical, self-centered and attracted to flawed men like Jeff, which means of course she'd come off as perfect at first. And while I am not pulling for Jeff and Britta to end up together (I'm a Jeff-Annie man, but we'll get there), I do think it makes perfect sense that these two have been hooking up all season. They both hate themselves and they have a wonderful love-hate understanding with one another. They get each other and they see what they hate in themselves mirrored in the other, yet they are both so narcissistic that this attracts the mto one another. The show has gone from presenting them as the ideal couple to being kind of repulsed at the idea of them together. But while their pairing is a bit repulsive and unhealthy, it also makes perfect sense for where they are as characters.

Jeff and Annie are more complicated of course, and the show doesn't have the time, energy, or inclination to try to sort all of that out here, instead serving us a montage of longing looks between the two of them, which Jeff immediately dismisses as easy to do with anyone (leading to a repeat montage between Pierce and Abed, and an ending montage between Chang and Annie's Boobs, all of which are hilarious).

Community can be a blazingly, thrillingly original half hour of television on any given week, which is why it remains one of my favorite comedies on television. It is such a smart show that tonight it spends much of the runtime taking digs at itself. We get jokes about all the genre episodes the show does (including a Western themed episode, and episode set in a haunted house, a robot attack episode, and an episode where the gang is institutionalized), jokes about Jeff's episode ending speeches, jokes about how often the group threatens to break up to insert forced tension into an episode, and even jokes about how much the show has forgotten to do class related storylines this season (the only thing the group has ever done for Anthropology is make dioramas, which is why their 20th diorama is a diorama of them doing their 19th diorama). We get some nice character moments here that remind us where everyone stands at the moment. If I have a flaw with Community's second season as we hit this final stretch, it's that we've been stuck in neutral for a lot of the back half of this season. The early part of season two did the heavy lifting on some of the less used characters from the first season, especially Troy and Shirley. But now that we understand where everyone is at the moment, I feel like the show has been giving us a lot of "this is where everyone stands at the moment" episodes in the back half of this season. Usually the gimmick-heavy episodes like this one are surrounded on all sides by strong character episodes that move things forward and cement relationships for these gimmicks. The last several weeks it has seemed like the character episodes have suffered for lack of a gimmick, which is slightly disconcerting. I have faith that the show will pull it together for the end of the second season, but when episodes are as funny as this one, it's hard to complain, even at some of the flaws.

Grade: A-

Notes:

-Sorry for missing last week. I was travelling and couldn't see the shows as they aired. My quick thoughts on last week's episode: it was ok, which means it was slightly disappointing. I always love Steven Tobolowsky, so his Who's the Boss? plot with Abed was cute, but it felt rushed. The Troy and Britta thing was nice, if also a bit rushed, and I have to again give kudos to my friend who called them as a potential pairing early in this season. The Pierce-Jeff plotline seemed like a lot of filler, and it was the ostensible A-plot. I didn't review the episode, so I can't really grade it accurately, but I probably would have given it something in the B- area.

-"That guy was hardcore racist, like 1800's Disney style."

-"We are friends with a grown man that clearly still believes in leprechauns."

-"The reason we had to fill in for the Glee club is because they...died..."

-"Troy, drop a beat." "Just give them some examples."

-"This habitat was for humanity!"

-"Jeff and Britta, you are free to go because you didn't step forward and are therefore clearly innocent."

-"Feast your ear tongues on these memory pops."

-"You can yell at me all you want! I've seen enough movies to know that popping the back of a raft makes it go faster!"

-"Dean-eow! It's Feline AIDS awareness day!"

-"It's a locomotive that runs on us!"

-"The heart of the water is the truth."

-"Sometimes, I felt jealous of his interesting outfits..."

Jordan's Review: How I Met Your Mother, Season 6, Episode 21: Hopeless

Barney has always represented a bit of a challenge for How I Met Your Mother. He is clearly the show's breakout character (the Kramer or the Urkel, if you will) and that puts the show in a dangerous position in regards to his development. If Barney actually matures, he by his own definition will cease to be awesome in the way the show has portrayed him and milked him for laughs over the course of six seasons now. Yet if he remains in permanent stasis, like most breakout characters, it becomes sort of difficult for the show to treat him as a living breathing human being, which it likes to do at least a few times a season. If Barney is a realistic character (and that is a big if at times) he has to develop, yet in developing him in an actual way may make him less funny to watch. A Barney without crazy hook up plots, drunken madness, and a drive to get everyone else on the show to try something crazy may be a less hilarious character. But he will almost certainly ring truer for the progress he makes.

This is why I am always in favor of Barney's development. I am even a fan of how fitfully it arrives. Sure, it means we get more time with the classic Barney we have all come to adore (and therefore serves the show's interests in keeping him the same), but it also lends realism to his arc. No one changes overnight, and no one is able to alter the course of their entire life just by realizing that they should. Tonight saw the return of John Lithgow (who is stellar as always, and may get a chance to match his Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series Emmy with its Comedy equivalent this fall) as Barney's father Jerry, and found Barney trying to force his father to regress and become "Crazy Jerry" for just one night. In typical Barney fashion, this means clubbing (which leads to a nice "Who's on Third?" bit with club names), hitting on women, drinking, and forcing his friends to adopt false identities because none of them know George Clooney.

So Marshall becomes a playwright in an open marriage to fashion mogul Lily, and Robin is a professional scotch taster (no one watches the news except for car chases and nip slips) dating Ted, who is not allowed to quote Oscar Wilde. Which brings us to the very small subplots that fill out the episode: Robin sees a "secret crush" from when she and Ted were dating (some great callbacks in this plotline) and Marshall and Lily compete to see who would fare better in an open marriage. Neither of these goes anywhere tonight (though we are told Robin and her secret crush will be going somewhere soon), but they are both fun, if a little rushed. I enjoyed the idea of Ted and Robin pretending to get engaged and I think there could have been great fun in letting Marshall awkwardly hit on women again like he was back in season two, but neither was given the room to breathe, so instead both were more good ideas for plots than actually successful in and of themselves.

While all of this is going on, Barney is having real revelations about his life. He doesn't know the hot clubs anymore, he finds strip clubs fun but doesn't really want to, and he might maybe be getting too old for the life he's leading. And, most promisingly for those of us who still manage to hope for Barney and Robin even after that TERRIBLE run they had last season, there was hope in this episode, both when Barney predicts his Dad will see Robin and say, "Deep down you know you were never happier than you were with her" and when his Dad actually suggests he just has to meet the right girl and he says, "Maybe I already have." What with Robin's secret crush, I see this all headed toward Barney about to confess his feelings before finding out Robin has a new boyfriend, but I would kind of be ok with that. The show was pretty great at the will-they-won't-they of Barney and Robin, and a return to that, if done correctly, could be pretty awesome.

Last season of How I Met Your Mother was flat out bad. This season has just been wildly inconsistent, which I guess is an improvement, even if it is a tenuous one. The show is always at its best, though, when it has a real arc it's following and strong emotions to tie the comedy to. If that can't be Ted's arc (apparently he doesn't have one again this week. He's still with Zoey, right? Why wouldn't she be there, even if he does want to break up with her now?), then at least we've had some solid Marshall and Barney storytelling this season. If Marshall's issues losing his father can transition realistically into his fears about becoming a father and Barney's disappointment in regaining his father can become an impetus for actual change in his life, season six of the show can prove itself to be a vital part of How I Met Your Mother's ongoing story, even if it has heretofore done very little to address the masterplot. I still hold out hope, however, that we will get some major progress on that front before the season is out.

Grade: A-

Notes:

-The group singing the theme song was a fun touch, especially as I recall a great outtake on one of the dvds in which they could not remember what the theme song sounded like.

-"Many of my plays are about the bourgeois...and ennui...and one rock opera about...a frozen yogurt shop."

-"If I can score five numbers before you, we have sex in the bathroom. BUT, if you get five numbers before me, we have sex in the bathroom." "So our usual wager then. Deal."

-"I would've stolen you a whole orchestra. There. What's the rush?" Great callback to one of my all time favorite moments. Also a nice cowboy boots callback.

-"Look what I just ripped out of the ground!" I'd like that to become a thing.

Jordan's Review: How I Met Your Mother, Season 6, Episode 20: The Exploding Meatball Sub

This week, How I Met Your Mother dealt with a little bit of every major plotline in season six. "The Exploding Meatball Sub" had plot movement, some solid laughs, and defined a new term that actually worked. In short, it was a pretty solid episode of the show. It's unfair of me to be annoyed with the episode, really. Yet I spent a lot of it annoyed nevertheless.

Let's start with the new term, something the show has done so often at this point it is definitely a trope at this point. The show has an uneven track record at this of late, but I think Graduation Goggles is an actual thing. As Robin defines it, Graduation Goggles is the feeling of nostalgia you get when you're about to leave something behind, whether or not you liked it at all. High school, a terrible job, and a relationship are all examples given of this, and I can remember feeling nostalgia at the end of all of those, even when it isn't warranted. So well played, HIMYM. Looking at the plot, each major arc of the season got some play tonight. We know Barney is upset about his father's abandonment, and that leaks over into his reaction to Marshall's departure from GNB, which he covers by planning an elaborate revenge for a very minor slight (a revenge which, we see in a terrible flash forward, he finally achieves ten years later).

Marshall has been unhappy at GNB from day one, and has finally decided to leave to work at the NRDC, a job that is unpaid. This is problematic, as Marshall is an adult and should recognize he has a huge mortgage and can't afford to work for no pay, but at least this is character movement and by the end of the episode is looking for a real job again. We also revisit the fact that Marshall and Lily are supposed to be making a baby, a plotline that keeps getting punted further and further into the season, I can only assume because the writers dread bringing a baby into this show as much as I dread that prospect.

Finally, we learn that ted and Zoey fight all the time, and that Ted needs support to be happy. This plotline is my biggest issue with the episode. I have defended the show's decision to bring Zoey into the mix before, and I still think she could have served an important purpose in the over all narrative of the show. Instead, after setting her up to be a major relationship for Ted, she has been ignored for most of their relaitonship, and now is being given the standard "suddenly developed craziness" that befalls so many sitcom significant others when the show decides to move on. Their plotline this week, that they are still fighting over Ted destroying the Arcadian to build a skyscraper in its place, feels like something they would have HAD to deal with by this point in their relationship. Zoey has hung out with Marshall and Barney, both GNB employees A LOT, and has been dating Ted for months now. And they're still fighting over the building? I just don't buy it. The show has screwed up this storyline after a promising start back in "Oh Honey" and at this point I just can't wait for them to be rid of Zoey and move on. And I hope to god they are moving on to the introduction of the mother.

In the early seasons of the show, some of my friends complained about the show stalling on the mother reveal, and I defended them taking their time. I also argued that everything the show did was in some way leading to Ted meeting the mother (I have laid out how this is true for the first four seasons before). Now, though, I am in their camp. The stalling is a distraction that gets in the way of many episodes, even ones that are pretty enjoyable like this one. At this point, the show just has nowhere left to go but into the home stretch. I know How I Met Your Mother is going to be on for at least two more years, and I've resigned myself to this fact. But I truly think the only way the show will stay remotely watchable for that long is by introducing the mother and letting her relationship with Ted dominate (or at least play a large role in) the final seasons of the show. If the show regains its sense of forward momentum on the masterplot, episodes like this one will start looking a whole lot brighter.

Grade: B-

Notes:

-Two biggest laughs tonight: Barney trashing his office when Marshall refuses to come to lunch, and Robin telling Barney the completely made up story of the time her Dad killed a man and made her help him bury the body.

-"Marshall and I have been together for 15 years, and the only debate we've had about Tommy Boy is whether it's awesome or super awesome. That's love, bitch!"

-"Want to play Who's Hot and Who's Scott?" "It's always the one in the turtle neck."

-"You wanna make God laugh, tell him your plans, right?"

Review to Be Named Podcast #6: Archer

Jordan, Sam and special guest Chris talk about season two of Archer, what to do about Wee Baby Seamus, and discuss how you get ants. DANGER ZONE!




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Random Pop Culture Top Ten List: Top 10 TV Shows to Make it Past the Season Five Mark Without an Abhorrent Drop in Quality

By Jordan and Sam

Random Pop Culture Top 10 List is a (fairly self-explanatory) weekly list in which the Review To Be Named gang take stock of the realm of pop culture, and come up with their Top Ten in a specific category.

There is an unwritten rule of television that five seasons is kind of the perfect length for a television show. Less than that may leave the show feeling incomplete, with remaining loose ends or a rushed feel to it (look, for example, at two cancelled shows, Arrested Development, which is near-perfect but feels rushed toward its end, and Dollhouse which aimed to run five but was cancelled after two and forced to shove four seasons of development into its 13 episode second season). More than five, and the show tends to run off the rails, jumping the shark or losing track of its narrative structure and eventually tarnishing its legacy (look to Scrubs, 24, How I Met Your Mother, Dexter, which will soon join this crowd with its sixth season, or any number of others for examples of this). Plenty of shows have lasted exactly five seasons, and end right when they should have (like The Wire, Six Feet Under, and Angel). Here are a list of ten shows who made it over this mystical lump and kept producing at the same quality for seasons afterwards.

10. Saturday Night Live
The longest running show on the list could have very well could have ended after its first few seasons and secured a spot amongst the most influential comedy programs ever. But Saturday Night Live was brilliant in that it's built to have a rotating cast of performers and writers which has made it a still relevant franchise over 35 years after its debut. Some may point to that original cast that had the likes of John Belushi, Chevy Chase and Gilda Radner as the best the show ever had. But you can't scoff at a show that has produced stars like Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Adam Sandler, Bill Murray and Will Ferrell. Years after its fifth season it has continued to produce some of the industry's biggest stars (for better or for worse) and while fans may always lament the quality of the show, it still remains an important part of the comedy landscape. Whether it's covering an election or lampooning a celebrity, SNL has remained an overall funny show throughout the years. Today, the show is typically hit or miss but overall it's been an up year. The cast boasts some excellent performers like Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig and it makes us glad that this show will always be live from New York.



9. The West Wing

This is a slightly controverisal pick for the list, as many fans of the show will tell you it was never as good after Aaron Sorkin left at the end of season four. And they aren't really wrong. The West Wing was at its worst during season five, when John Wells turned in a very dark season of the show, both literally and figuratively (the government shut down, Josh almost quit, Donna was hurt when a convoy was attacked, and the directors seemingly didn't know how to light the set after Tommy Schlamme left). Yet the show had a huge comeback in its last two seasons, focusing on the upcoming presidential election, a battle of wits and wills between Congressman Matt Santos (Jimmy Smits) and Senator Arnold Vinick (Alan Alda). It may have had an off-year, but any real fan of the show will recognize that sending Josh out to run a campaign, turning in a live debate episode that felt more energetic and informative than any actual presidential debate, and giving a loving goodbye to the characters we'd loved for seven years (except Toby, who got kind of screwed) kept the quality of the show plenty high as it went on in years. But seriously, CJ becoming Chief of Staff was just ridiculous.





8. South Park

When South Park debuted in 1997 it was unlike anything people had seen on television. It had the road laid down by The Simpsons and took the animated sit-com to the next logical step. Incredibly crass, foul-mouthed and often incredibly violent, South Park never pulled any punches. A tribute to the shows strength is that it continues to this day and not only did it avoid an "abhorrent drop in quality" it got better after its first five seasons. We've been introduced to more fantastic characters (and had some great development from stalwarts like Stan's Dad, who has become one of the greatest characters in the show's later seasons), have had a movie and even switched the sex of a central character--South Park still works. Because of the shows quick turnaround, masterminds Trey Parker and Matt Stone can make sharp satirical episodes about very current events, something that only Saturday Night Live was able to do before (and they didn't even have to animate anything). Talking shit and a Jesus Christ that's packing heat to save Sant-y Clause's balls is now par for the course. The only times we would say that South Park strays from hilarity is when it gets lost in it's episode's concept. But there's no reason to think that South Park can't continue in the path of The Simpsons and continue to pump out new, and high quality episodes for years to come.



7. Frasier

Spinning out of Cheers, which had just ended a pretty solid 11 year run (and would have made this list if only Shelley Long's Diane Chambers hadn't left at the end of season five, signifying the end of the show's golden years), there was nothing to imply that Frasier would be in it for the long haul. Yet a change of locale, a great premise that found neurotic psychiatrist Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer, who won four Emmys for the show) hosting a call-in radio show and trying to live with his recently retired and completely uncultured father (John Mahoney), while continuing the endless rivalry with his even more high strung brother Niles (David Hyde Pierce, who also racked up four Emmys during the show's run and was nominated for EVERY SINGLE SEASON), who was in love with their father's physical therapist Daphne (Jane Leeves). One of the smartest comedies of all time, Frasier won a record five Best Comedy series Emmys in a row for its first five seasons, but the show managed to stay just as good for six more years after that, eventually winning 37 Emmys and finishing with a last season so strong, it boggles the mind to think this was the eleventh time the show had pulled it off. Stellar from start to finish, Frasier managed to beat the "five season curse" and then some.

6. Futurama

From the mind that brought you The Simpsons and the mind that wrote many episodes for the show, Matt Groening and David X. Cohen's Futurama always had the label of being the classic show's little brother. But Futurama did something that many people forget-it was better than The Simpsons. Let me clear that up a bit. It was better than The Simpsons when both were on the air. But Futurama holds a distinct honor for this list. It was cancelled. A tribute to the quality of the show is that it had a strong (not Family Guy strong mind you) DVD following and eventually the green light had been given for three Futurama direct-to-DVD movies. This sent fans into a tizzy. A show that had been legitmately dead in the water, had been given a second chance. To make things better the show would return to surpass its five season mark on Comedy Central. The movies were later broken up and shown as "episodes" on the channel but it was the summer return of the show that was really a pleasant surprise. There were rumblings that there would be a scab voice cast brought in because of contract disputes with Comedy Central, but the right thing was done where Billy West, John DiMaggio, Katy Segal and the rest of the original cast was brought back. Thankfully, while the show had to shed some staff to save money, the quality was there. Last season brought back that mix of humor and heart the show does so well. And if you disagree with us you can bite our shiny metal asses.




5. I Love Lucy

Perhaps the first truly great television show, I Love Lucy set the standard against which every subsequent sitcom would be measured. Running nine seasons and 194episodes (if the revamped, hour long Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour which kept the same cast, characters, and setting is counted), the show never had an off season and very rarely even an off episode. Kept fresh by a changing premise that had The Ricardos and The Mertzes spending a season in Hollywood, trekking across Europe, and finally moving from New York City to rural Connecticut, the show never abandoned its ace comedic set up that had Lucille Ball scheming to get into the show, out of a jam, or into contact with her favorite celebrities, with some of the greatest physical comedy of all time. The show's sixth season, and the final in the half hour format features some of the show's best and most famous moments, including "Lucy Meets Orson Welles," "Lucy and Superman," and the all-time classic "Lucy Does the Tango" (which boasts the longest studio laugh in sitcom history) in which Ball is forced to practice the titular dance with a blouse full of eggs. Even when the show doubled its length (and did far fewer episodes a season as a result) it still managed to turn out some unforgettable comedy, including the Lucy-Ricky origin story "Lucy Takes a Cruise to Havana," the fantastic guest spot "Milton Berle Hides Out at the Ricardos," and the hilarious "The Ricardos Go To Japan" which finds Lucy and Ethel dressed as Geishas. The show is so classic and influential, it has literally never stopped airing over its 60-year history, and no matter what season an episode comes from, it is almost guaranteed to be hilarious.



4. Buffy the Vampire Slayer

For a little while there, it looked like Buffy the Vampire Slayer was only going to get five seasons, when the WB refused to renew the show's contract. In a bit of a bind as he looked to continue the show elsewhere, show creator Joss Whedon prepared for the show to end in case it was never picked up by another network. In one the the series' best episodes, the season five finale "The Gift," (SPOLIER ALERT) the show came to a tentative end with Buffy's sacrificial swan dive off of a tower to close a tear in reality. His protagonist now dead, Whedon got a two year pick up from UPN to bring the show back. Some fans will argue that Buffy was never as good again, and while season six is admittedly pitch black and nihilistic for much of its run and season seven occasionally cavalier about its plotting and mythology, the show also turned in some of its best episodes in the last two seasons, including the stellar musical "Once More With Feeling," the experimental "Normal Again," the appropriately dour "Conversations with Dead People," and the stellar examination of parental relationships and their tendency to form lasting scars, "Lies My Parents Told Me." The Buffy the Vampire Slayer that aired on UPN was different than what had come before, but rather than a marked drop in quality, the last two seasons of the show were bold enough to take some big risks, and occasionally reaped fruitful rewards for their efforts.



3. The Sopranos

As much as I Love Lucy set the standard every sitcom would measure itself against, The Sopranos has become the gold standard of what a serialized drama should try to be. Fans of the show's violent gangster drama side were often disappointed with the back half of the show's run, which was often less whacking and more quiet examination of moral ruination, yet the show's sixth (and longest, clocking in at 21 episodes in two partS) season is an essential part of its narrative, making some bold choices and ultimately ensuring that The Sopranos will forever hover near the top of "best television show of all time" lists. Whether its Tony's time in limbo, Vito Spatafore's brief moments of freedom in New England, or the all out war between the families, the show's final season had something for every type of fan: plenty of psychological symbolism, tests of moral rectitude, subtle character interactions, and bloody mob violence to keep any and every fan of the show happy with at least parts of what the last season was doing.



2. Seinfeld

Contrary to many of the shows on this list, Seinfeld was actually in the midst of its prime when it passed the season five mark. Sure, season four gave us the plot about Jerry and George pitching a show very similar to the one we were watching, and season five had "The Puffy Shirt" and "The Dinner Party," but the show was still primed to turn out excellent episodes for the remainder of its nine season run. The last four seasons of the show include such classics as "The Fusili Jerry," "The Soup Nazi," "The Bizarro Jerry," "The Yada Yada," "The Muffin Tops," "The Merv Griffin Show, "The Frogger," and "The Puerto Rican Day." Not only did Seinfeld stay as good after season five, there's a pretty great chance your favorite episode of the show came from its last four seasons.



1. The Simpsons

The Simpsons has an interesting palce on this list in that it did absolutely maintain (and depending on who you ask, even exceed) the quality from its first five seasons but at the same time, no show has been more complained about in terms of a drop in quality. When The Simpsons hit season 10 or so, fans declared worst season/episode/Homer-Marge story/continuity error EVER! But for that first decade or so it was the tighestest comedy writing in television history as far as I (Sam) am concerned. Season 6, or the season where things often go to hell for TV shows, brought fans one of the most storied pair of episodes in Simpsons history, Who Shot Mr. Burns Part I and Part II to start the seventh season. Take away seasons 6-10 and you'd make many nerds convulse in rage. Say what you will about seasons 11-48 (just wait) but those first ten rival any comedy in television history.



Read more Random Pop Culture Top Ten List here

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Review to Be Named Podcast #5: Matt Weiner vs. AMC

Sam, Jordan, and Ashley discuss the contract dispute that's keeping us from getting our Mad Men fix this summer, who's the real bad guy in this fight, whether Sally Draper will eventually trip on acid and throw herself out of a window, and manage to fit another reference to The West Wing into a completely unrelated podcast.



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Jordan's Review: Community, Season 2, Episode 19: Critical Film Studies

Community is a show about a group of people coming together, forming a family and trying to grow into better people. The show's second season has done excellent work making many of the "supporting" characters in the ensemble into more fully fledged characters and allowing everyone the space to develop. We've had Troy episodes and Pierce episodes, Annie episodes and Shirley episodes, and even a few Britta and Jeff episodes to boot. We've had some Abed heavy episodes this season (I would call "Messianic Myths and Ancient Peoples" and of course "Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas" his moments in center stage this year), but for the most part he has stuck more to the background. Tonight, Abed got the chance to shine.

Abed is probably a difficult character for the show to write. He clearly has some issues (possibly an undiagnosed case of high functioning autism, as the show has alluded to before and does again tonight) and generally connects only through pop culture references. This makes him an ideal character for any time the show wants to do an arch take on a genre or rolls out a well used trope--Abed gets to be the character in those instances who comes right out and says what the show is getting at, giving it a meta layer (and sometimes two or three of them). Yet this also makes him some steps apart from the show's general themes and arcs. Every other character in the group is on a path toward becoming a better person, but as Abed himself pointed out tonight he, by his nature, stays exactly the same.

So to do an episode about Abed making progress (or, really, feigning it because he knows he can't really change that much), the show had to take the character somewhere he'd be comfortable. They had to put him in an elaborate homage. This episode was billed as the Pulp Fiction episode of Community, and sure, we got to see the cast in silly Pulp Fiction costumes and some great jokes about wanting to see what's in the briefcase, but this wasn't really a Pulp Fiction episode. It was a My Dinner with Andre episode. The show couldn't bill itself as such because most people (myself included) haven't seen My Dinner with Andre, yet this was a great way to deal with Abed's immobility and yet give him a chance to really connect. The conversation between Jeff and Abed is really great stuff, funny and moving and with a sense of realism that also doesn't take away from the homage that let's Abed have his "first adult conversation." It may all be an elaborate charade, but I think this really was Abed's first actual conversation. To get there he had to dress it up as a movie homage, but Abed and Jeff really connected.

This isn't one of the laugh-a-minute episodes of Community. The humor here comes more from strange pay offs to really long monologues being played entirely straight. Abed's monologue about Cougar Town was both profound and really, really silly. By the time he was declaring that he had pooped himself on the set at the "death" of the character he was playing (and the way he talked about it like the show was set in a place called Cougar Town) I was laughing really hard at the sheer absurdity, regardless of the fact that he was playing it totally state. In fact, it was funnier that way. And Jeff's slow, faltering confessions about his deep insecurities and fears that he isn't pretty enough were real and touching too...But the idea that he calls phone sex operators and pretends to be 400 pounds and once went trick or treating dressed as an Indian princess and didn't corrent people about his gender because they thought he was pretty is funny, even while its really sad. This was a dark episode of Community, but one of my favorite things about the show is that it can do episodes of so many types. This was a new style for the show to tackle, and it did so with shocking verve for how different it was from the standard.

I've said before, and I'm sure I'll say again that one of the reasons this show can get away with zombie apocalypses and claymation episodes is because it does episodes like this that remind us of the real heart that lies behind the show even when it gets wacky. If every season of this show can turn out a few half hours as powerful as "Cooperative Calligraphy," "Mixology Certification," and yes, "Critical Film Studies" it can get away with whatever zaniness it wants to throw out in the interim because I believe in these characters and in their relationships with one another. This is the episode where we see how close Jeff and Abed are, where Jeff's "cool" facade comes down and he reveals the damaged man behind it, because he trusts Abed as his friend. And he accepts Abed as well. When Abed opens up about his fear that he will be left behind because he cannot change like his friends, Jeff reassures him that he loves Abed and that he considers them close friends. Abed wanted a conversation, but more than that, he wanted a night with a friend he was afraid he was growing distant from, and so he constructed that the only way he knew how: by creating an homage to a movie about a guy who fears he is growing estranged from his friend.

Community does a lot of high concept episodes, and to an extent, this is one of them. Sure, on one level this is a long My Dinner with Andre episode. But on another level, on the one I think counts, this is an episode about what it means to be a friend, and the simple, beautiful humanity that can be found in that kind of connection.

Grade: A

Notes:

-I like the touch of Britta working in the diner, but I also got the feeling this episode, as I have a lot this season, that the show doesn't really know what to do with her right now. Hopefully, they'll figure that out soon.

-"I'm hot and my balls are touching a zipper!"

-"Am I the hero or the love interest?"

-"Its a thirty minute film where the heroes like dancing, cheese burgers, and the Bible."

-"Chad had lived, Jeff. Chad had lived more than Abed."

-"He seduced me with his dark Chinese powers."

-"I doubt I'll ever forget my My Dinner with Andre dinner with Abed." Nor will I.

-"They said market price. What market are you shopping at?"

Review to Be Named Podcast #4: Mr. Sunshine

Jordan and Sam discuss Mr. Sunshine, sending characters to Mandyville, the comedy of perfection and how the best advice for a bad writer just might be "get better."



Got comments about this podcast, or questions you want Sam and Jordan to answer? Well let us know! Follow us on twitter @reviewtobenamed (follow us here), or shoot us an e-mail at reviewtobenamed@gmail.com.

Jordan's Review: How I Met Your Mother, Season 6, Episode 19: Legendaddy

If there has been a theme to this season of How I Met Your Mother, and I would argue at this point that there certainly has, its the idea of fatherhood. We began this season with Marshall struggling with the idea of becoming his father and Barney struggling with his strong desire to meet his dad. Along the way, Marshall lost his dad and Barney found his. These two characters have really formed the center of the show this year, and while from a masterplot standpoint that might bother me a bit (I doubt either of these plotlines is crucial to Ted meeting The Mother, but then, what is these days?), in terms of creating a season that hangs together as a coherent narrative I think it works. The show's creators promised us at the dawn of season six that this would be a return to form after the wayward (read: directionless and completely bungled) fifth season, and while I'm not sure I can call this season a full return to form, it has been at its strongest when dealing with continuing stories (I have even liked some of what the show has done with ted and Zoey, though I may be in the minority there).

"Legendaddy" is a big episode for this season, then, as Barney finally gets to meet his father Jerry, played by sitcom vet and all around awesome actor John Lithgow, who was last seen scaring the shit out of us as Trinity on Dexter. What Barney is looking for when he meets his dad is validation; what he gets is something different but quite possibly something much more meaningful. Barney hopes that his dad will drink his whiskey neat, high five his son, scam girls in bars and be a successful tour promoter after his stint as a roadie in Barney's youth. Instead, Barney is confronted with a quiet older man who drinks skim milk, teaches driving in White Plains, and has a family of his own (one that doesn't include Barney). The emotional subtext to the episode (until it is made text with such a forceful performance by NPH that the lack of subtlety didn't bother me for a second) is that Barney discovers his dad left him to become nothing more than a better dad to another family.

The scene in which Barney tries to tear J.J.'s basketball hoop fro mthe garage while his father tries his best to apologize for the ways he has failed him is nothing short of phenomenally executed, with brilliant performances by both Lithgow and NPH (who damn better get his Emmy this year). Jerry has regretted abandoning his first son for 30 years and wants desperately to make up for his greatest mistake. Yet allowing Jerry to do this will force Barney to come up against all of the ways he has fallen short because of his daddy issues. Sure, he has that gap in his knowledge that makes him ignorant of how to use tools (and there's a great gag when Jerry symbolically hands Barney the screwdriver he was missing earlier in the episode and Barney just bangs it against the backboard futilely), but he is also desperate for paternal attention and validation, a pathological womanizer who has serious intimacy issues stemming from his abandonment by his father (along with the disintegration of his first real relationship). Barney is the show's break out comedic character, to be sure, but the writers have always backed that up with a realistic and believable emotional core, and this episode lets us see again just how wounded our Mr. Stinson is inside.

The B-plot has the gang confronting each other on their gaps in knowledge and Marshall getting everyone around him to stop treating him with care after the death of his father. There isn't much here, but when the show is on its game like it was this week, there doesn't need to be. Many of the best plots the show has ever done come from letting the gang just rip on each other, and the comedy involved in all of their ridiculous "gaps" is a nice counterpoint to the often uncomfortably real drama going on in the A-plot. And, for symmetry points, Marshall makes a real step towards making peace with the loss of his father at the same time that Barney is making a real step towards accepting his dad back into his life. Nicely done, HIMYM.

The episode ends with Barney walking away from his father carrying his half brother's basketball hoop, which he feels entitled to since JJ gets the suburban upbringing with the perfect family. Things do not get a tidy conclusion this week, nor should they. The issues Barney has with his father cannot be cleaned up in a "very special episode" and I imagine we'll revisit them often in the years to come, especially now that How I Met Your Mother has been renewed for two more seasons (a fact that I have mixed feelings about). When Barney brings the basketball hoop to Ted's dream house to set it up in the back yard, he is acknowledging that Ted's children will have what he always wanted and truly needed to avoid becoming who he is today. "A kid needs a hoop," he says, and like all of the best ending lines, he speaks volumes about where he is currently as a character. "Legendaddy" is not a perfect episode of How I Met Your Mother, but it does come pretty close, and it gives me as much hope for Barney's character arc as "Oh Honey" gave me for Ted's romantic conclusion. Which is really saying something.

Grade: A-

Notes:

-"Here's the thing about me and tools. The only one I know how to use is attached to me. And I'm not going to stick that in the TV...again."

-A list of the character's gaps that we learn about this evening: Barney can't use tools, Ted mispronounces chameleon, Robin thinks the North Pole is fictional, Lily has terrible aim, and Marshall (once he gets the gang going) can't wink or swallow pills, adds too much milk to oatmeal and is too old to ask to see the cockpit.

-"I still think about him in the shower."

-"I've published two nonfiction books about asparagus. And one fiction."

-"I guess you could call me the LeBron James of drapes."

-Did I hear that wrong, or did they accidentally reverse the reverse punchline on the Vietnamese shame wheel? In the first scene, which takes place after Barney has met his dad, at Ted's house, barney tells the gang they aren't ready to hear about a Vietnamese Shamewheel. And unless I heard wrong, he tells them they still aren't ready to hear about it when referencing a travel sized version as he lies to them about his meeting with his dad, which occurred before they went to Ted's house...There's a chance I've put too much thought into this.

-"You've been treating me with kid's gloves since my dad died." "That's not true!" "Robin, don't disagree with Marshall!"

-"You think John and Jack Kennedy are the same person!...What?"

Jordan's Review: Community, Season 2, Episode 18: Custody Law and Eastern European Diplomacy

Community focused during its first season on Jeff and Britta, leaving enough room for Annie and the occasional Troy and Abed plotline, though most of those were B-plots. This season has for the most part done the opposite, focusing on the supporting cast of the show (especially Troy, Shirley, and Pierce) at the expense of Jeff and Britta. While Jeff has stayed a large part of any given episode, Britta has floated toward the background all season. We have been desperately in need of a Britta episode to tell us where she's at, how the other characters are relating to her, and where she may be going. The show has done an excellent job of establishing Britta as a character. We know that Britta is a self-righteous and often hypocritical "caring liberal" who focuses on the potential issues in any situation before focusing on the humanity, and that has carried her through this season with a sense of consistency. Yet while most other characters have developed in a recognizable way this season (Troy as the heart of the group, Abed realizing his outsider position, Shirley judging less, Jeff caring more, Pierce struggling with addiction and stubbornness, and Annie realizing her perfectionism), Britta appears to have remained in stasis of yet. This episode's focus on her was expected and potentially refreshing, yet for the most part this fell short of my expectations for what a Britta episode should do.

The storyline focused on her dating Luka (Dollhouse's Enver Gjokaj, who I've been hoping would get more work since that show's cancellation, and here mostly just reminds us how good his Russian accent is), a friend of Troy and Abed's, and on her tendency to ruin things with her righteousness. This is something we already know about Britta, and the only aspect of the storyline that might reflect development is her realization that her PC nature has a tendency to ruin things. At the end of the day, though, this doesn't feel like the Britta episode we've been needing, not really. She was more prominent in this episode than she's been in a while, which indicates that the show knows its been pushing her to the background, but what it did with her this week leaves me worried that Community is not yet sure where Britta is going as a character. When a show is as sure in its character development as this one has been to date, and seems to understand everyone as well as it usually does, its odd and a bit disconcerting that the show just leaves Britta there. To be fair, it discovered the current incarnation of Britta later than any other character, as she started the series as the love interest for Jeff and therefore had to seem superior until the shw discovered she was much more interesting as a flawed character who considered herself superior when in actuality she wasn't. Yet still, this season has failed to equal in Britta the progress it has made in every other character, and I find that disappointing.

The episode's other plotline also covers promising territory in a disappointing way. I think that season two of the show has made occasional (and occasionally promising) efforts to turn Chang into a real character, and this is something I fully support. I think there's real pathos and a potential for meaningful progress hidden in Chang's cartoonish exterior, but the show often seems afraid to shed his unrealisatic and over the top side to get at the honest character beneath it. Every other person on this show can become a cliche or even a cartoon figure from time to time, but this is ok because I totally believe everything behind that cartoonish exterior. If Community makes the effort to turn Chang into a realistic and believable human being, I won't mind his jaunts into the ridiculous quite so much. And at the beginning of this episode, that's exactly what I expected. I thought the idea of Chang realizing he needs to get his life together in order to be a better father might lead to a moment of true pathos by episode's end, but instead we were left with Chang holding a pipe and crawling through air ducts to escape arrest for a very real crime. I respect the show's willingness to go to dark places, and I think the "Chang kidnaps Shirley's kids and then find out they aren't hers" story might have gone somewhere. I even retained faith that Chang's having Jeff arrested might lead to a moment of real emotion. Instead, we were left tonight with Chang as a cartoon character that the rest of the gang hates if they aren't entirely ambivalent about him. This may (and should) change in weeks to come, but this episode didn't do anything to move him towards the kind of character he would need to become to have a place on this show that isn't just intermittently annoying. For Chang to become relevant to the show's ongoing narrative, he needs to become a believable person who is flawed, but on a road to redemption. So far, all I see are his flaws.

In theory, this could have been a great episode of Community. Both Britta and Chang need to be developed further, and both of their journey's toward a second chance need to be filled out more. This episode could have made progress on that front, but instead, it went for the easy jokes instead of the often difficult character development. I hope this was an off episode on the road to development for both of these characters; I fear it may have been evidence that the writers aren't truly clear where these tow are going in the episodes and seasons to come. This was a promising episode of the show that by its end became little more than a disappointment. I expect more from Community and I hope soon to get it.

Grade: B

Notes:

-Earlier today it was announced that Community (and Parks and Rec, another great and possibly even better NBC comedy) was renewed for another season, which to my mind is a huge vicotry. Celebrate accordingly.

-This episode was a B- until I wrote out all of the quotes I noted tonight. At that point I realized I laughed too much to give the episode that low a grade, though I still think it failed in some very important ways.

-Enver Gjokaj is one of the best television actors I've ever seen and needs to be given more work. This episode didn't do much for him, but it was nice to see him get some work.

-"You know baby showers can be race neutral right?" A greart early gag in which everyone seemed to think a baby sahower was all about the race of the baby.

-"We wanted to give him a sawed off shotgun, but those are really expensive..."

-"In my country we give 9mm to little girl for sweet 16. Try the grenade launcher."

-I LOVED Birtta's Britney Spears rendition: "Hit me with your genius bottle, rub it all over me..."

-"You mean Jeff 'nipple play' Winger?"

-"I'm tired of confiscating saws. Give me that." I also love the idea that Chang has a ton of saws hidden around the apartment to use for random purposes. Another great gag in this mediocre episode.

-"Parental Rights...? You're adopting me?"

-"I know you're not going to make a pregnant woman run...I know you're not going to make a pregnant woman walk this diastance between us."

-"Who am I to stand in the way of a person getting their life together? What am I, daytime television?"

-"You think that pool table put aluminum siding on itself?"

-"In what war is he a criminal? The battle for our affections?"

Review to Be Named Podcast #2: How I Met Your Mother

Jordan and Sam discuss this season of How I Met Your Mother, problems they have with the show, ways they hope it will improve, and how sitcoms occasionally kill babies. Also, they still hate Elizabeth Banks.

Rachel's Review: Chuck, Season 4 Ep. 17: Chuck vs. the First Bank of Evil

I’ve constantly given Chuck the benefit of the doubt. I considered the show clever, fun, and adorably endearing. When, a few seasons back, there were talks of cancellations, I signed petitions and got agitated. Sadly, with recent episodes, I’m starting to lose faith. But I’m clearly still watching, anyway, so here goes.

Riley, Volkoff’s lawyer, shows up with a letter for Vivienne, which he attempts to read in Alexei’s voice (a quirky and ridiculous request that totally fits the crazy man’s character). Vivienne swears she’ll be the first to say no to her father, but Riley gets all crazy and tries to force her. Apparently he forgot the whole thing about her being “groomed for evil,” which he’d said a few seconds before, because when he tries to hold her at gunpoint she goes all kung-foo on his ass and escapes.

Cut to Sarah and Ellie trying to plan the automaton's wedding. Sarah doesn’t get the whole deal with flowers, Ellie tells an adorable story about having emotions, which Sarah clearly can’t relate to. Ellie has a lovely premonition about the Ice Queen melting, making the end of the episode abundantly obvious.

To help assuage Chuck’s guilt, Morgan pretends that everything is going fine at his mom’s while he looks for a new place. But he’s actually miserable and sick of hearing Big Mike (the Buy More manager) and his mom get it on.

Vivienne, meanwhile, comes running to Castle, trying desperately to prove she isn’t evil. Chuck flashes on the gift Riley gave her earlier, and they learn where all of Volkoff’s funds are: the First Bank of Macau, which is apparently staffed by mercenaries. The plot is hatched: Vivienne will help the team get into the bank. Chuck is hesitant at first, but General Beckmann is completely clear: she is an asset who must be cultivated. We discover a delightful new gadget in Castle that sweeps a person and gives them holographic projections of some available costuming options.

Back to the B-Plot. Jeffster, a pair of whacky Buy More employees, try to get Morgan to give them time off for a Renaissance fair, but Morgan refuses, and so they come up with a zany plot to use Morgan’s online roommate ad to bring the Renaissance fair to them. And so a troupe of Renaissance freaks answers the ad, which Casey quickly shuts down to maintain Castle’s cover. Morgan tries to move in with Casey, but clearly that would be weird, seeing as Morgan is dating Casey’s daughter. Whatever.

But yay! Casey shows up, clearly occupied with his NSA mission. He isn’t even interested in taking down the First Bank of Macau, a challenge normal Casey would love. So clearly, something serious is going down in the under-construction secret lair annex.

At first, the team tries to infiltrate the bank the easy way, bringing Vivienne through the front door, but Chuck sort of blows her cover when he’s told account holders only can enter the vault. Vivienne decides to go in alone. This is clearly the perfect time for Sarah to discuss wedding details and her concerns over her lack of excitement with Chuck, which is just when Chuck flashes on a bunch of stolen military grade servers and realizes that there are some much bigger problems afoot. Vivienne, meanwhile, is subjected to a lie detector test, which she passes, and gains access to her father’s private box, which is (yawn) full of pictures and news clippings of Vivienne. Chuck gets stopped by a security guard and Vivienne acts all evil to try to misdirect the guards’ attention. The bank president makes some comment about seeing her father in her, and Vivienne (clearly not all that tied to being a good guy), is visibly moved.

Vivienne convinces Chuck that she deserves answers when it comes to her father, so Chuck pulls some strings to get her in to see Alexei. This is when I groaned at the blatant direction the show is going to take Vivienne in; she’s at least going to have a foray into the dark side. Ellie decides wedding dress shopping is the best way to get automaton Sarah excited for her pending nuptials, so Sarah uses the makeover machine to try on dresses. They’re all ugly and un-Sarah; that is, until she tries on a super simple, sexy, sleek satin number that makes her cry and giggle like a little girl.

Gen. Beckmann determines that the bank is using the stolen servers to fund terrorism. So Vivienne must be sent back into the bank to hack the system, and Sarah and Chuck will have to stage a diversion by pretending to rob the bank. They dress like they’re in the Matrix (I mean, exactly like they’re in the Matrix, complete with leather trench coats and the entrance scene where they walk through the metal detectors, guns blazing). Vivienne takes the opportunity to plant a bug in the system so the CIA can track the money movement, which is of course when Riley, hand all bandaged, comes in to stoke the flickers of her evil flame. Riley tells Vivienne that Chuck is responsible for her father’s arrest, claiming that Alexei isn’t actually evil and that the CIA is using her.

A body-suit clad Sarah and a 90s sunglasses wearing Chuck discuss her dress shopping while holding the bank’s customers hostage in the fake robbery. Vivienne leaves Riley and is “taken hostage” by Chuck and Sarah, but she clearly isn’t comforted by their praise. The shoddily constructed cover of her loyalty to the CIA is (too) obviously cracking. The situation isn’t helped by the fact that Beckmann refuses to let Vivienne see her father, and when Chuck tells her the news, Vivienne clearly loses a lot of her faith in Chuck.

Suddenly, Sarah is bride-zilla, ordering Ellie around and planning the most expensive wedding ever. Morgan’s still desperate for a place to stay, and even the spot at Jeffster’s is filled (by the Renaissance King). He settles for sleeping in the Buy More, but while he’s trying to catch some zzz’s he sees technicians enter Castle to build the new NSA secret lair. Hopefully this means the plot will be discovered for real, and soon, because all episode I just kept thinking about how much I missed Casey. The lovable meat head discovers Morgan as he’s poking around, and when Morgan confronts him about it later, he uses the information to semi-blackmail Casey into letting him crash at his place.

The episode closes with Vivienne ignoring a pleading call of apology from Chuck as she sits next to Riley and proclaims she’s “ready to know the truth about [her] father.” Cue stock ominous music.

While this week’s episode at least had some shining (albeit dimly) comic moments, the entire show is just getting too overwrought and obvious. I mean, it’s never been a particularly inventive show, outside of the original premise, but the writing and characterization in the early seasons was spot on, and the dorky witty banter kept me entertained. But now, I see everything that’s happening episodes in advance. Unless there’s a giant twist coming around the bend, I’m going to be pissed. Hopefully, I keep watching to see it.

Overall grade: C+


“It’s kind of like J. Crew for spies.”

“I’m fine. Lets hook up later, get facials, and chat.”

“It’s a little intimidating to be in the presence of a King. You’ll get used to it.”

Did I mention I miss Casey? Screw you, NSA (I’m probably going on watch lists for that…)

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