Tag Archives: Season 5

February 5, 2009 · 11:24 pm

The Office – “Lecture Circuit Part 1”

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“Lecture Circuit”

February 5th, 2009

Only four days after I was admittedly frustrated by an hour long episode, we have a unique test of my concerns in “Lecture Circuit,” the first of two parts of the same basic episode. What we have, essentially, is an hour long episode split into two parts: we leave most of our storylines at a cliffhanger, and it’s clear that we’re picking this up next week.

As the first half of an hour long episode, this was actually a very well containted episode that despite never really grasping at resolutions nonetheless offers a logical buildup to next week’s conclusion. The episode paces itself very logically: it’s a slow build, and one that isn’t really concerned about breaking new ground, but I enjoyed it for precisely that reason. While the hour-long Super Bowl episode was far funnier, and ultimately the better example of the show’s comic potential, it’s nice to be able to sit back and spend some time with the characters.

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February 4, 2009 · 11:43 pm

Lost – “The Little Prince”

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“The Little Prince”

February 4th, 2009

“It is the time you have spent with your rose that makes your rose so important…”

The last time we spent a great deal of time with Kate off the island, we were in the midst of her legal battles. It was quite literally a loose end: they needed to deal with her pending trial, no question, but in doing so they were forced to dredge up parts of her past back stories which felt overplayed, and to play with Jack’s lies in a way that couldn’t be investigated within that narrow time frame. The episode, “Eggtown,” was amongst the most frustrating of Season Four primarily because it never felt like there was something bigger at stake: here was Kate with this gap of time we don’t understand and with a future ahead of her, and we’re diddling around in her past and eventually, only eventually, putting together that Aaron was one of the Oceanic Six.

There was reason to be concerned that “The Little Prince” would be much the same, but it was actually quite the opposite. Working within this new broadly drawn character-focused episode structure, this is not just an episode about Kate: yes we spent a lot of time with the show’s female lead, but we spend an equal amount of time with the man who is back on the island, still in love with her to this day. The episode draws a line between Sawyer and Kate that is able to transcend time, dropping each of them into the other’s story when it feels like their connection could be severed.

This, more definitively than the other episodes of the season, is the one that shows just how beneficial this new format is. Not only do we avoid being too one-dimensional in our focus, extending it to other characters like Sawyer, but the episode delves into a substantial amount of island mythology, flashing around in time on multiple occasions and never letting those left behind to catch their breath. The urgency of the island is palpable, which keeps the momentum going from an action perspective, whereas what’s happening off the island is both emotionally resonant and questionably manipulative to the point where it maintains that momentum even without the same sense of urgency.

To draw on the above line from The Little Prince, the story on which the episode’s title is based, we can draw numerous conclusions: not only is it a key phrase for the island’s newest mystery (where time spent is an important variable), but it’s also a reminder that all the time spent building these characters has made episodes like this one operate on a shorthand that can’t be beat right now. Combine that with the episode-ending shocker of sorts, and there is no question that this episode shows the continued promise for the season ahead.

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February 2, 2009 · 1:19 am

The Office – “Stress Relief”

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“Stress Relief”

February 1st, 2009

I am not conditioned to enjoy this hour of The Office.

First off, I don’t think the show should be in this position in the first place: Chuck has a special 3D episode ready to go tomorrow night, and is much more vulnerable to audience erosion than what is quickly becoming NBC’s flagship series.

Second, I don’t like hour long episode of The Office: they are often overblown, and rarely is there enough comedy to justify the longer running time. Combine with the always frustrating reality that they will eventually be split into two parts in syndication, so they’re forced to split into two separate stories at some level, and they are rarely worthwhile (“Goodbye, Toby” and “Weight Loss” could be seen as a reversal of the trend, but the Amy Ryan variable is the more likely explanation for their quality).

And third, as if that all wasn’t enough, we have the blatant stuntcasting of Jack Black and Jessica Alba, a principle that has been a bit of an achilles heel for NBC’s other Thursday comedy, 30 Rock, all season. The Office has always been pretty immune, being as it is about the mundane life of office employees, but now even that is bleeding its way into the series.

So going into “Stress Relief,” my expectations were fairly low, and I was fully prepared to harp on all three of the above points for 1500 words.

And, well…old habits die hard, I guess – this was a mess of an episode that tried too hard to be worthy of the Super Bowl, was too scattershot to be a cohesive hour, and represented the most superfluous and tangential use of guest stars that I could possibly imagine. So in the end, my opinion remains the same: it shouldn’t have been an hour long, it shouldn’t have cast celebrities, and it shouldn’t have even been airing after the Super Bowl in the first place.

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January 28, 2009 · 11:51 pm

Lost – “Jughead”

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“Jughead”

January 28th, 2009

There are some who believe, and who boasted ahead of the episode airing, that “Jughead” is one of the strongest episodes in Lost’s five season run.

I’m inclined to disagree, although not out of malice towards the episode or its intentions.

I liked “Jughead,” a lot, but it felt like a much more purposeful attempt to confuse and overwhelm the viewer than some of the show’s past mythology episodes. There is no doubt that, compared to the premiere, this episode is far more revealing: the island’s pit stop in the 1950s introduces us to some key individuals and ideas which seem to fit together numerous pieces of our puzzle, whether it be Richard Alpert’s reasoning for entering into the life of John Locke or the various details that explain the current condition of Daniel Faraday.

Abandoning the Oceanic Six entirely, the episode is all about trying to piece things together in ways that seem at first unorthodox but then, over time, become more focused if not more clear. My reservations about placing the episode into the show’s upper echelon is that it, as an entity, did not feel like a story in its own right: while we approached some major revelations for Daniel Faraday in particular, the episode never felt like it really had time to apply those to his character and demonstrate those effects.

But no one can claim that there are not now some much larger questions, and certainly the fog is beginning to clear on, at the very least, a few very important things. So that makes “Jughead” an entertaining and momentum-building episode for the show, if not the television revelation that some had sold it as.

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January 22, 2009 · 1:11 am

Season Premiere: Lost – “Because You Left / The Lie”

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“Because You Left / The Lie”

January 21st, 2009

Going into tonight’s two-hour premiere for Lost’s second season, I was unsure. Not about the show, really, so much as unsure about my own ability to get back into a Lost frame of mind. I’m only a few days out from the mindfrak that was the BSG premiere, and to enter into a similar level of complexity so soon was something that didn’t feel normal. I love this show with all my heart, through the slow periods and the various leaps through time, but there is a point where you wonder how many more twists and turns you can take.

But from the moment that Marvin Candle puts a record on and heads to the Orchid station to investigate a new discovery, it becomes very clear that there is never a time where a Lost frame of mind feels overbearing. What makes “Because You Left” and “The Lie” so effective is that they are operating are on a whole new plane: what was once a simple construct of present and past, and then present and future, has been eternally complicated by a whirlwind tour through what we’ve experienced, what we know, and what could happen in the future. Before, we were the ones who were traveling through time, but hearkening back to Season Four’s pivotal “The Constant” the show has unstuck its characters in time and we’re just along for the ride.

The result has us perhaps the most confused we’ve ever been, but it makes sense: our characters are just as confused, just as at the whim of the island and whatever crazy sense of time, space and fate this show is holding going into its fifth and penultimate season. This two-hour season premiere, more than the flashforwards or the Oceanic Six before it, has this world in a constant state of change that has fundamentally altered our sense of the show’s direction. If Season Four was drawing the line from Point A, the island, to Point B, the rescue of the Oceanic Six, then now we’re drawing a line between points constantly moving, evolving as we watch into something we haven’t come close to understanding.

We’ve gone from knowing what happens and wondering how the show will take us there to slowly discovering what needs to happen and growing increasingly doubtful that it’s an achievable goal considering the variables involved. The sheer uncertainty of this premiere is exactly what the show needed to put me into a Lost frame of mind: I don’t understand you, Lost, but at the end of the day I will always believe you.

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January 16, 2009 · 12:21 am

The Office – “Duel”

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“Duel”

January 15th, 2009

There are a lot of things to like about “Duel,” most of them related less to the episode itself (solid but unspectacular) and more to what it does to bring up some great memories from the past and to put to rest a storyline that seemed as if it was going to tear the office dynamic asunder in its resolution.

I don’t necessarily think that the episode was amazingly funny, with some sharp gags in the A-story somewhat undermined by a really quite uninteresting B-story, but what it did was establish a great deal of continuity and a deft hand for the show’s overall trajectory. Letting the love triangle between Andy, Dwight and Angela explode seemed like a really big risk to take, but with a little bit of finesse it has reached its worthwhile, if perhaps a bit overdue, conclusion.

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December 12, 2008 · 12:07 am

The Office – “Moroccan Christmas”

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“Moroccan Christmas”

December 11th, 2008

A week after getting it so very right, The Office has gotten it so very wrong.

“Moroccan Christmas” is a mess of an episode, a mostly charmless affair that offers small tidbits of potential but masks them in an unnecessary and forced intervention story that felt overdone and, like the rest of the episode, only operating on one frequency. The episode was filled with small moments that felt like they could have sustained this episode without its investigation into Meredith’s drinking: the office had more than enough drama going into this episode to let that drive the story forward, and the addition of Meredith’s hair getting caught on fire isolated Michael into an unlikable and unfortunate story.

What resulted was an episode where cleverness was not enough to overcome this issue of conception, and a Christmas episode which was both joyless and, to be honest, not even all that funny when it achieved some level of success.

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