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HAHAHAHAhahahaha!!! Oh man, I take it all back. This show is hysterical! I'm gonna be repeating that one all week. "STANDING IN THE MIDDLE OF AFGHANISTAN!" Heeee hee. You tell him, Ohio Dad! I just...how does any show hand the TV-watching public that line and these characters and not hang their heads in shame, not to mention a show that purports to be smarter than the average TV crap? Are there Midwesterners who look down upon those in Hollywood as "less than" because they're not fighting in a war? Sure. Are there Ohioans who could give a crap about the history of comedy, even if it's their son's chosen profession? I bet you could find some. Hell, I'm sure if you looked hard enough you could find a husband and wife in Columbus who don't watch TV, don't care about Hollywood, vote Republican, and are pretty culturally illiterate. It's not that people who think this way don't exist. It's that these characters, Tom's parents, aren't people. They're cardboard cut-outs of whatever stands in opposition to the point this show wants to make this week. They are ciphers. They are, to employ an overused term, straw men. And the idea that the best this show can do in terms of nuanced characters voicing an opposing viewpoint is "your little brother is STANDING IN THE MIDDLE OF AFGHANISTAN!" is more than a little insulting. But mostly, it's just very, very funny, so I guess I should be grateful. Anyway, everyone looks like they're going to cry before we head to commercial.

And now it's time for Matt and Simon's evening at the Improv. They're ushered through a crowd of rabid sitcom-pitchers and enter the main room to the dulcet tones of a Jack Nicholson impersonation. Man, that worked quickly this time. Usually when Matt enters a room, it takes maybe five or ten seconds for everyone else to get 70% dumber to compensate. Hacky Jack introduces our man Willy Willz, who steps up to the mic and goes after the white people like a fat man at the buffet line. Hey, I'm just trying to fit in. Willy starts this really interesting set of jokes about how, in the same or similar contexts, black people -- with mannerisms and language uniquely their own -- will react a certain way, while white people -- their own culture having provided them with distinctly separate affectations -- will act in a comically opposite fashion. Example: "Black people be all 'I'll take yo' ass out, BITCH!' while white people are like 'All righty then, sir!'" Hilarious. Simon's pretty disgusted, probably because he realizes that no respected comedian's hauled this material out of the mothballs in years. Then Willy moves on to the "white people pay their bills, while black people go to prison and have lots of baby mamas" material. Goody. Simon's outraged at this broadstrokes portrayal of black comedy and huffs out. Matt doesn't even stick around for his Courvoisier and Diet Coke before following.