BLOGS
November 2012 Archives
The "Menzies" episode was a bit like riding an emotional rollercoaster, the problem being that the laughter peaked and waned depending on the storyline. The stuff with CeCe was great, Nick and the old man was fantastic, Schmidt's new boss has some potential that we hope to see play out over her two additional episodes and we're thrilled that Jess got a job. But there were jokes that fell flat and mostly we'd just be grateful to never hear any one of the roommates mention PMS again.
Movie over Jay, Dave and Conan -- here comes Vinny.
If you didn't see Catfish the movie, here's quick breakdown: An immediately hateable photographer "falls in love" with a person he meets over the Internet and drives across the country to see her, only to find that instead of the gorgeous young lady she claimed to be, she was an older woman with a far less perfect... well, everything. There was controversy surrounding whether or not the truly douche-y Nev Schulman and the filmmakers were falsifying parts of the story to make for a better movie -- and in my opinion, they probably were -- but honestly, none of that really mattered when it came to why Catfish was so fascinating. They never explicitly talked about it in the film, nor do they touch on it in the new MTV docuseries, but this quest to unmask people hiding behind social media -- or as the show puts it, "help couples who have never met in real life" -- reveals something about that Twitter hashtags and YouTube videos can't quite communicate: Society has seriously fucked us all up.
"And the Candy Manwich" was hands down one of the best episodes of 2 Broke Girls ever. Sure, it doesn't hurt that I love Ryan Hansen (having both Veronica Mars and Party Down on your resume basically makes you TV royalty), but the jokes about Candy Andy were actually pretty funny, Max's one-liners were more hilarious than gross (with a few exceptions below), vulnerable Caroline was totally endearing and rather than go the obvious female-competition-between-two-friends route, the show instead opted to make some pretty good masturbation jokes -- both male and female -- and was able to normalize the deed without shaming anyone... and we didn't even have to hear about Oleg touching himself at all! Amazing. I look forward to seeing more of Candy Andy, and hopefully less moments like these:
Don't worry, there's plenty of Louie to go around.
It's hard to follow Louis C.K.'s hosting debut on SNL, and while Anne Hathaway couldn't quite top him, her third time was still a success. She was a team player, and except for one particularly great sketch (we'll get to that later), she let the regular cast stand out, giving some of its newest members more screen time than usual (looking at you, Aidy). There's no better proof than her monologue, which besides showing that she really does have the voice to star in Les Miserables, was more of a fun ensemble performance -- except, doesn't The Lonely Island own Sundays? Still, after a weak cold open, Hathaway lifted our spirits and brought enough entertaining sketches to distract us from whatever was going on with Rihanna.
In today's news of things nobody asked for...
The twins on The Amazing Race were pretty terrible for taking James and Abba's money and then trying to get another team to share the wealth/guilt... but they weren't as rotten as some other people this week.
Here's a bit of TV math: If Jonathan Banks plays both Ben Wyatt's dad on Parks and Recreation and Jay Pritchett's brother on Modern Family, then surely that means Ben's cousins are Claire and Mitchell which... would actually make a lot of sense, and would so be a crossover I'd watch in a heartbeat. In this totally falsified timeline, it also evens out that both Jay and his brother got divorced from uptight blonde women and are now dating much younger -- not to mention pregnant -- ladies. Though I guess this would also mean that Breaking Bad's Walter White basically ruins everything for both family which... also makes a lot of sense. But I digress.