My Name is Earl, "Earl and Joy's Anniversary":
"Of all your wives, I think Joy was my favorite"-Randy
Watched it on the internet and found out it has a theme song. The first time I tried to watch it, I got halfway through and my internet crashed. The second time I tried to watch it, my internet crashed again. The third time was on a different computer three days later. It was maybe worth the effort, but only if you're as obsessive/bored as me.
"Earl and Joy's Anniversary" has really only one notable characteristic: its ending, in which Earl realizes he really did care for Joy, something which nobody was really wondering. I kind of just assumed he did. If he had realized he didn't*, or maybe if there had been some raging debate about it, than yeah, I can see why they did this one. As it stands, meh. Just OK.
*Which would be kind of ballsy, you have to admit.
Robot Chicken, "Star Wars Episode II":
"I can't hold your hand anymore, Vader. A hand I gave you, by the way"-Emperor Palpatine
I have to confess something: I haven't seen the Star Wars movies in a long time. Like over ten years. And I wasn't very old then. So most of my memory of them is kind of fuzzy, and a lot of it's based on secondary sources (though I imagine a lot of people who've never seen the movies at least know the gist).
Now that that's out of the way, the TV show. You should probably know, it's not all that much like the first one. That one was your standard collection of Robot Chicken sketches, just with Star Wars-y themes and some bigger name guest stars. This one tries something different: an actual story. There are still the occasional breaks for Jar-Jar Binks Geico commercials (sadly, I was old enough to remember that cat turd, though not old enough to have realized how bad it was), but the majority of the halfhour (we need a shorter word for that) is taken up by a straight-up retelling of Empire Strikes Back (with some Return of the Jedi thrown in at the end). Overall it works, and does its thing better than when Family Guy tried it. Probably helps that it's not an hour long, and didn't feel the need to shoehorn in the entire movie.
The real reason to watch this, besides Seth McFarlane as Emperor Crazyface (his family changed it at Ellis Island), is the animation. I guess I shouldn't be that impressed-- after all, quite a bit of the original films was made using stop motion-- but they really pulled out all the stops here. (Full disclosure: I'm kind of animation geek in general; the kind of person who noticed they kept switching between widescreen and fullscreen depending on if the sketch was part of the main story or not).
Chuck, "Chuck Versus the Fat Lady":
[sings high pitched note]-John Casey
Wow! I just found out what Chekhov's Gun means, and then Chuck gives us a perfect example with the video game doodad. OK, maybe "Wow!" is a little strong. At least it's not "Woo!" (that'd be "foreshadowing"— or is it? (and that'd be "misdirection")). I'm tempted to hold off on this three-parter-doodad until next week (as I've done before). And you know what they say about temptations: give in to all of them as soon and as often as possible.
Heroes, "It's Coming":
"Please...kill me."-Multiple characters
We did it! Heroes, as I predicted, finally crossed the watchability threshold. Maybe "good" is too strong a word, but this one was definitely worth sitting through. Characters do smart things! There are actual good guys and bad guys! Why wasn't this episode two or three?
How I Met Your Mother, "Woooo":
"All you would hear would be silence. And 'Brown-Eyed Girl.'"-Barney
Lots of "the Gang being the Gang" stuff, though that was kind of the point. There was the Dr. Suess business, and the Conference Call... actually, that was pretty much it. Still one of my favoriter ones from this year, from the Godzilla Building to Barney ear condition keeping him from riding the tricycle. Absolutely zero forward motion, and that's not a bad thing.
PS: W...wait for it...
Friday Night Lights,"Keeping Up Appearances":
"I know a girl who...thinks of ghosts"-The Flaming Lips
I forgot what this one was about. It's been a long week. I need to not wait so long to post.
I remember liking it, a lot. Maybe I'll re-review it on the reair.
The Big Bang Theory, "The Lizard-Spock Expansion":
"Paper disproves Spock"- The Tall Nerd
"I'm a physicist, so you know, I though about stuff...I wrote some of it down."-The Nerd with Glasses
OK, so I finally tried this show. And you know what? It was OK. Not a must-see by any means, but I might catch it again. I like the idea of a show about scientists, but I was worried about the execution, and to some degree, I'm not sure they can pull it off every time as well as they did here. Still, this was good enough that I can't believe it's from the creator of the Worst Show on Television.
House, "Emancipation":
"I have Huntington's"-Taub
That's how I figured they would do it: she just tosses her name off at random, doesn't make a big deal out of it (either that, or we'd never learn it). Oh, and there was other stuff, too, but most of it was just standard PoWness to lull us into false sense of complacency, until they (literally) drew their big guns the next week.
Moral Orel, "Nesting":
"You're the mayor"-Orel
Oh, only one more. What will we do? I was kind of surprised by this one, because it shows that some of the characters actually might have a happy ending. We'll see tonight, when I watch the finale, and then write a real post about it.
OK, I wrote that last Friday. It's Monday now, over a week later, and I just yesterday figured out that the finale isn't airing until the 18th. Until then, then.
Pushing Daisies, "Oh Oh Oh... It's Magic":
"The killer knows how to make a sandwich!"-Olive
"Now where'd I put that rat's ass I could give?"-Emerson
So it goes. In case you didn't hear, this show that you weren't watching just got de facto cancellated. And of course, it happens after the show did one of its best episodes, of course. "Magic" did some high-level metaphoring, mysterying, and characterering, and I, for one, loved it. If the show did all episodes like this, instead of last week's just-okay effort, it...probably still would have been canceled. Still, excellent TV, effectively utilizating the various elements that make the show work.
South Park, "The Ungroundable":
"You got pwned, Bebe, you Jap bitch"-Cartman
"Oh my Gosh, are we in trouble?"-Head Vampire kid, per se
Two weeks in a row, we get South Park satirizing a sanitized, lame, ridiculous trend that affects the stupidest of our children. This one works mainly because it was Butters-- at this point, Stan and Kyle are too smart to fall for this crap.
It was clear that for all they mocked the Goth Kids in their first appearance, the SPGs (my coined-too-late abbreviation of "South Park Guys") were on their side. Let that sink in. Apparently this tomato-sparkle-vampire crap* is even worse than a bunch of "faggy goth kids".
Other things I liked: "Burn Down Hot Topic" and the other faux-Goth (Fauxth?) songs; Vamp-Butters looking like a circa-2001 pop-punker (another lame co-option of something originally scary and dangerous); everything with Butters' parents; the tall Goth kid (do they have names?) flipping everyone off at the end; all the vampire hair (at least they're colorful)
*PS: if it doesn't drink blood, it's not a vampire. If we could call whatever we want whatever we want, than bats would be birds, stars would be planets, and blogs would be worth reading.
Life, "Badge Bunnies":
"No, this is a kidnapping"-The Bad Guy
How 'bout that ending, huh? Things aren't looking so good for ol' Charlie, are they?
This was probably the best since the prison experiment one, because the case tied really well into the characters, without feeling forced (as is often the case on these kinds of shows). As is my usual policy on two-parters, I'll say more later.
My Name is Earl, "Nature's Game Show":
"People often ascribe heightened meaning to random acts of physics" [or something like that]-Multiple Characters
I get that there's a difference between clever writing and good writing, but damn, this one was clever. How each piece of the puzzle meant something different to everyone, how it all fit together at the end without fitting too neatly. But what struck me from my Buffy rewind (the one-episode one, not the whole season), is that on that show, this would have been the first episode (or the second), and set up where everyone would be going for the rest of the year. This episode will probably be forgotten by the next one.
The Office, "Frame Toby":
"Let's pretend we're talking while the cops are here."-Creed
If you go on the internet, you can (legally and for free) find the "Producer's Cut" version of this episode. And by that, I mean just click on this. It's a big improvement to an already-good episode that fills in a few plot holes as well as just being funnier (the Pam story has a resolution, for instance).
This one wasn't great great--nothing really happened-- but I suppose we needed to take a breather at some point, so I forgive it.
30 Rock, "Gavin Volure":
"Toronto's just like New York, but without all the stuff."-Gavin Volure
"Stop patriciding me!"-Tracy
Oh Steve Martin, you so crazy. You guest star on 30 Rock, and you is bring the funny. Who would have think your storylines would have intersect with Japanese sex doll.? Who would have think.?
Fringe, "The Equation":
"Not now! I'm sciencing!"-Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
OMG they killed Guest Star! With the blinky dinky and the hypnotyzing and the glaven! I'm not even sure I actually watched this episode, but it was better than most of them have been.
"A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All":
"I'm so high, you're hallucinating"-Wizzle Nizzle
...oooooooooooooooo! (Aren't you glad you waited?) Finally, a semi-ironic variety show/ musical extravaganza. As I predicted, a shark ate the Jonas Brothers (they will not be missed), Steven made out with a bear, and John Legend couldn't act.
Most of the songs were actually better than your standard X-mas fair (fare?), maybe because they were co-written by this guy (not Drew Carey, they guy who wrote the song). And as I somewhat suspected, they ended with something almost-serious:
OK, that's a good place to split this in half. Hang on...
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