Tag Archives: Episode 2

October 23, 2009 · 12:19 am

30 Rock – “Into the Crevasse”

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“Into the Crevasse”

October 22nd, 2009

When the critics’ reviews started coming out about 30 Rock’s fourth season, there were quite a few skeptical ones that seemed to indicate the show wasn’t quite up to its earlier standard, to the point where some where effectively questioning its standards. I thought “Season 4” was a bit of a weak opener, but nothing offensive, so I was a bit perplexed where people felt that the show was really off its game. And, well, then I saw “Into the Crevasse.”

It isn’t that “Into the Crevasse” is worse than “Season 4” that’s the problem: yes, this is a far less successful episode that feels more like a string of Saturday Night Live skits strung together than it does an actual hour hour of comedy, but the real problem is that it manages to achieve this while in theory sounding like something the show has always been doing. It divides evenly into “Tracy is mad at Liz,” “Jenna is rebellious towards Liz,” and “Will Arnett guest stars to terrorize Jack,” all storylines that the show has done in the past with far more success. As such, it sets off alarm bells: it’s not that the episode is without humour, but rather that it fails despite sounding like it should be right in the show’s wheelhouse.

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October 1, 2009 · 10:30 pm

FlashForward – “White to Play”

FlashForwardTitle“White to Play”

October 1st, 2009

At the opening of “White to Play,” we open on a shot of children lying on the playground out cold. We have reason to believe, of course, that this is a flashback to the blackout, until we see Charlie, Mark and Olivia’s daughter, standing. The show wants us to believe that Olivia is unique, or that perhaps she had some other sort of vision, but it turns out that it was the kids playing a game. They were playing “Blackout,” where everyone pretends they were out cold and then wakes up and tells everyone what they saw.

While the initial feeling is that this is a particularly ominous opening, there’s a problem: instead of appearing dichotomous to the show itself, it seems a fitting metaphor. In its second episode, FlashForward largely treats the viewers like children, repeating themes over and over again and actually managing to flash back to a flashback of a flashforward in the process. The investigative process feels like random happenstance, sprinkled with odd comic tangents and explosions in place of plot development, and the show struggles to recapture anything even approaching the tone that made its pilot stand out from the crowd.

There are a lot of interesting questions at play with this premise, and on occasion the show quite intriguingly interacts with some of them, but when it’s not thinking big its conversations turn into microcosms of overall themes, never allowing characters to act human in the process.

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September 30, 2009 · 11:44 pm

Modern Family – “The Bicycle Thief”

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“The Bicycle Thief”

September 30th, 2009

I, like every other TV critic on the planet, liked Modern Family. I even loved parts of it. But I was one of the few who expressed some trepidation at what the show was going to look like in the weeks ahead. So much of the episode was derived from the amazing final scene, one where everything came together in a bit of epic coming timing, and I wasn’t sure how the individual stories could live up to that moment.

For me, “The Bicycle Thief” leans heavily on two elements that made the pilot as strong as it was, focusing on Ty Burrell’s cool dad Phil and Cam’s dramatic side. I love what it does with Phil in this episode, and very much enjoy Cameron and Mitchell’s side of things, but I felt as if Jay and Gloria’s side of the equation was lacking a bit.

And it matters because here they choose to let the different families stand on their own for an episode, connecting them together with a general theme (a theme of fatherhood, in particular) as opposed to letting them mingle between one another. It makes for an episode that is somewhat less zany and surprising, but in at least 2/3 of its content it’s just as strong as it was last week.

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September 29, 2009 · 9:59 pm

Being Erica – “Battle Royale”

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“Battle Royale”

September 29th, 2009

Two episodes into its second season, you can see Being Erica retreating back to the formula that proved winning in the first season. While it wants to play around with some questions of time travel, expanding the show’s universe to include other therapists and other patients, it also wants to be the show that delights in making Erin Karpluk play a teenager and perform early 90s dance routines.

But I think it’s important to note that this is a formula that does work, and which perhaps more importantly feels as if it is capable of evolving with the character. The show leapt into the relationship between Erica and Ethan (Tyron Leitso) at a breakneck speed at the end of the season, and while the premiere normalized their relationship to handle the amount of drama elsewhere it was clear that there would be some bumpy road ahead. “Battle Royale” does what you’d expect, presenting a complication in that relationship before sending Erica back to a moment earlier in her life that lets her know what might be going wrong in the present.

In doing so, it certainly ends up feeling like a step down from last week’s highly emotional premiere, but it proves that “complicating” the story hasn’t particularly changed the show’s DNA.

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September 29, 2009 · 9:40 pm

The Good Wife – “Stripped”

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“Stripped”

September 29th, 2009

I’m on the record as suggesting that The Good Wife’s pilot was one of the most accomplished of the fall season, delivering a clever take on the legal procedural that emphasized but didn’t contrive a personal story for Alicia Florrick, part rusty trial attorney and part struggling wife of a shamed politician serving behind bars. The pilot was sharp in how it weaved the two worlds together, both her new job and her life balancing shame and anger, and the show has a pretty bangup cast.

As always, it’s interesting to see how a second episode reacts to the pilot, especially with a procedural where the “hook” of the show seems like something that might only exist in the first episode before being slowly phased out with time. However, with “Stripped,” it becomes clear that The Good Wife is not going to be a show that sees Alicia’s husband or his infidelity fade into the background, which is both good in the long term and perhaps somewhat awkward in the short term.

The core of the series, the integration between her personal life and her job, remains an interesting combination of workplace drama and Alicia’s personal struggle. However, the way that the episode brought her husband’s stripper past into the story was less graceful than it was in the pilot, forcing things into the open by conveniently introducing a stripped-based rape case into the proceedings. It’s not ineffective, per se, but it feels somewhat more forced than it was before, and feels almost like a second pilot as opposed to an example of what the show will do in the future…but a second good pilot.

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September 28, 2009 · 11:35 pm

The Big Bang Theory – “The Jiminy Conjecture”

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“The Jiminy Conjecture”

September 28th, 2009

I know it’s unrealistic, but part of me wanted this episode to start with a moment of recognition from Leonard as to how he treated Sheldon last week, and for that matter a moment for Sheldon to reflect on his own behaviour. I know that this is a traditional sitcom, one where the storyline from the week before could well have never happened (to some degree) before this one, which meant that the show will pick up the next day in some ways but not in others, but part of me wanted them to admit that what happened in the season premiere was not just another incident, and that Sheldon quitting his job was not something that can just be rewritten and forgotten.

However, that didn’t happen: there are no apologies, Sheldon magically has his job back, and the only thing that continues on is Penny and Leonard’s relationship. As such, this is my final complaint: I think it was a mistake, and that it tainted what could have been a strong premiere.

Now, moving onto “The Jiminy Conjecture,” this was an example of the show going back to basics by dividing off their characters and letting the Sheldon, Raj and Howard have some fun while Leonard and Penny attempt to figure out their relationship. While my past views on the show can tell you which side of the episode I preferred, it was a fun half hour of comedy at the end of the day, which is more than I can say for the convoluted premiere.

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September 28, 2009 · 10:14 pm

How I Met Your Mother – “Double Date”

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“Double Date”

September 28th, 2009

I love when episode titles aren’t what you’d expect. As a television critic, it means that I’m taking notes after I’ve looked to see what the title of the episode is (so you can more easily find this post), so I went into this one expecting the show to take advantage of their newfound pairing in order to provide some sitcom-style double date antics.

I should have known, of course, that How I Met Your Mother isn’t that kind of show. The “Double Date” at the center of the episode was a clever sort of “instant mythology,” where Ted relives a previous blind date all over again seven years later, which allows the show to do what it does best. We get healthy doses of both the show’s time-twisty structure as well as its heart within the storyline, while the other (also double-themed) story with Marshall and Barney helps to provide some levity while both work in tandem to create a whole new element of the HIMYM Lexicon.

On the whole, it’s a clever and well-executed episode that further cements the show’s strong sense of narrative, and one which provides a pretty darn good showcase for a somewhat maligned character.

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September 25, 2009 · 9:52 pm

Fringe – “Night of Desirable Objects”

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“Night of Desirable Objects”

September 24th, 2009

Thursday night television is, well, a night of desirable objects. With the return of Grey’s Anatomy and CSI, along with FlashForward, FOX’s decision to move Fringe into this competitive timeslot proved temporarily terrifying for J.J. Abrams and company as the show plummeted 23% in overnight ratings. Now, Live+7 numbers will ultimately tell the story of how many people DVR’d the show in order to catch the more buzzworthy Grey’s opener, but it’s like a big old red flag that FOX knew was coming, but that it hoped could be avoided. Bones has nicely situated itself in the once Survivor-dominated 8pm timeslot, and FlashForward dominated the timeslot with its premiere and CSI debuted to its own lowest premiere numbers since likely the first or second season.

What’s unfortunate for Fringe is that “Night of Desirable Objects” isn’t particularly desirable, effectively stopping the long-term storylines dead in favour of presenting a pretty simple (and not overly complex) frightfest along with a slow burn reveal regarding Olivia Dunham. For those who want the show to be a full-fledged television serial, it’s the kind of pace changer that turns them off entirely; meanwhile, for those who are mostly tuning in to see Walter have too much fun investigating dead people and to get some cheap thrills with some characters you enjoy, it was a harmless hour of entertainment that did some good work making Olivia more interesting and perhaps provide some laughs or scares along the way.

As someone who kind of sits in between, it was a not entirely unwelcome change of pace, although one that’s likely to prove an ineffective lure for new viewers.

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September 25, 2009 · 5:22 pm

Parks and Recreation – “The Stakeout”

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“The Stakeout”

September 24th, 2009

Last night’s ratings report, in all of its complexity, has a lot of big stories. Some are positive: FlashForward won its timeslot, Bones held up well against the increased competition, Grey’s Anatomy grabbed what will be the week’s highest demo numbers, and The Vampire Diaries actually grew in a competitive timeslot on The CW. Others, however, are negative, like CSI plummeting to all-new lows while handicapping The Mentalist which struggled to match last year’s premiere numbers in a more high-profile time slot.

However, the real sadness is in the fall of two of NBC’s sitcoms, in particular Parks and Recreation. Community, with its Office lead-in, is in a somewhat safer position and put up solid but significantly lower numbers than last week’s sampling. But Parks, which struggled in the ratings in the Spring, dropped down to the same levels as The Vampire Diaries and is on a sort of ratings life support. In a month, these two shows are going to be sharing this timeslot, and if they’re already struggling that’s only going to get tougher as things move further into the season.

And this is kind of terrible for Parks and Recreation in particular, a show that not only deserves more viewers but deserves to earn back the viewership of those who bailed early in its uneven first season. “The Stakeout” is maybe not quite as laugh-out-loud funny as Community’s sophomore episode, but I’d argue that it was the best constructed of the three sitcom episodes on the evening, utilizing its characters to hilarious effect and confirming just how much better the show is this season. It may be struggling in the ratings, but it’s killing where it matters most (to us, if not to NBC).

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September 25, 2009 · 1:51 am

Community – “Spanish 101”

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“Spanish 101”

September 24th, 2009

While I love being able to follow and communicate with TV critics when it comes to the Fall TV season, sometimes they ruin some pleasant surprises. I don’t mean that they spoil episodes or anything of that nature, but rather that they ruin the pleasant feeling you get when you watch “Spanish 101,” an episode which confirms that Community’s pilot is not a one-hit wonder and that this is a very funny, very well-constructed series. By learning that the second episode lived up the expectations of the first ahead of time, I knew going in that this was going to be an entertaining half hour of television, so I don’t have some sort of catchy opening about how this broke down all of my apprehension.

What it did do, though, is make me laugh a whole lot. In many ways working like Modern Family’s pilot and many episodes of 30 Rock where the final sequence is a lavish and bombastic affair which has enough laughs packed into it to fill an episode of a lesser sitcom, in others it did still manage to surprise me by taking characters in directions I didn’t expect them to go. By only visiting the study group session once, and yet remaining central to the shared experience of these characters, it humanizes the characters who needed to be humanized while lampooning (but not insulting) those who are still rife for some simple comic pleasure.

The result is a fast-paced episode of comedy which out-paced The Office for me tonight, although the two shows are obviously peddling different styles of humour.

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