The fourth season of Friday Night Lights finally arrived on NBC last night. Man, what a dust bowl that new East Dillon High football field was. You could almost feel the
grit getting into the eyes of Kyle Chandler’s Coach Eric Taylor, and that red cap sat lumpily upon his head. Since the re-districting of Dillon and his loss of the lead-coach position at (west) Dillon, Eric has READ FULL STORY »
Well, you were right. So many of you Commenters correctly identified who “The Secretary” would prove to be: congrats to all. Waiting until the final moments of the episode to make that reveal didn’t even feel like a tease, because there was so much going on in “Northwest Passage,” a twisty, witty, multi-fake-out but not faked episode of Fringe.
Following the events of “The Man From The Other Side” two weeks ago, Fringe took us to Washington state, where Peter had gone to be moody and where shape-shifter READ FULL STORY »
When it comes to the comedy of awkwardness — the laughs wrung from miscommunication, embarrassing emotional act-outs, baffled stares — NBC’s sitcoms are better at it than any other network’s. (This figures, since its late-night programming also operates on the same principle.)
The Office, 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation: Terrific shows all, and all sitcoms that rely heavily on lead characters (Michael Scott, Liz Lemon, Leslie Knope) that are oblivious, indifferent, or sometimes-both to the crass or impolitic nature of the things they say.
Not so on Community. As the season has progressed, the series has steadily developed in a new, fresh manner, one distinct from its Thursday-night neighbors. What can make Community exhilarating is that it’s frequently all about confidence.
Think about it: Jeff (Joel McHale) is so cocky, even the rest of the study-groupers have to take him down a peg or two occasionally; Abed (Danny Pudi) is so comfortable in his savant dorkiness, the only human interaction he really needs is an audience of meatbags off which he can bounce pop-culture references; Shirley (Yvette Nicole Brown) radiates the calmness of a woman who takes no crap and is one of the most overt, least-ridiculed Christian characters on TV; Britta (Gillian Jacobs) knows the advantages and limitations of blonde allure and doesn’t hide her quirks (“BAG-el”); Pierce (Chevy Chase) has reached an age where he both enjoys the company of young people and doesn’t mind admitting he’s completely out-of-the-loop pop-culturally; Annie (Alison Brie) is both cheerful and intelligent, a rare combo in any sitcom; and Troy (Donald Glover) was, for pete’s sake, a football star and prom king, and is, if anything, even more assured of his charms than Jeff and teams with Abed for the show’s regularly superb closing-seconds parodies.
Tonight, the Community gang goes gung-ho for the school’s paintball competition, and the show delivers on its deft homages to everything from Die Hard to 28 Days Later to Scarface to John Woo films. The action sequences are extremely well-staged (by Fast & Furious director Justin Lin), which only make the loony jokes better. As usual, there are a number of other things going on as well:
• There are some very precise, stinging, hilarious slaps at Glee.
• You get to hear Jeff say, “I invented phony,” and see a lot of his pecs, if that’s something for which you’ve you’ve been tuning in.
In short, a first-rate edition of Community. Will you be watching? I’m confident you will…
It’s hard to believe that a sitcom as funny as The New Adventures of Old Christine doesn’t get more notice. Yes, Julia Louis-Dreyfus has won a 2006 Emmy for her work on the show, which last night had an episode that somehow managed to wring fresh laughs out of familiar sitcoms subjects such as READ FULL STORY »
What an oddly shaped version of The Good Wife we got last night. The cliffhanger from last week had Chris Noth’s Peter setting off his house-arrest ankle-bracelet alarm to punch the hall elevator button, hoping to catch Julianna Margulies’ Alicia before she went off to dinner (or is that “dinner”?) with Josh Charles’ Will.
But what felt last week like a pivotal point in the series was READ FULL STORY »
These next few weeks will help determine whether Chuck survives to take on a new set of missions. It’s a good thing, therefore, that the series gave us one of its trickiest, most intricately-arranged editions this week. Or not. What I mean is, this was a very good hour, but probably not a Chuck for newbies, and new viewers — or at least a lot more of the viewers that used to watch and have been sucked into that maelstrom of madness that is Dancing With the Stars — are what Chuck needs.
The hour played off the series’ current major READ FULL STORY »
Last night’s Breaking Bad was more explosive than an RV meth-lab driving into a burning building. It was also one of the most beautiful-looking hours on TV this season.
The pre-credits sequence, in which we saw a flashback to the murderous READ FULL STORY »
Family Guy‘s hour-long 150th episode began with a two-character piece that revolved around Stewie and Brian being trapped in a bank vault, then finished up with some memorable musical numbers from the show. The “regular” episode, “Brian and Stewie,” was both tedious, predictably vulgar, and, by the end, sentimental.
The big joke: Stewie had a soiled diaper, and READ FULL STORY »
