So I’ve decided for the sake of my time/sanity it will be easiest for me to write weekly updates on the TV shows I’m keeping track of rather than doing reviews of every single show. I tried that, didn’t like what I wrote, and then realized there’s a reason The A.V. Club has a whole staff doing those. So, the format being established, onto the new season of television!
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Sunny was the first of my shows to premiere this Fall (for some reason the networks rolled out their shows a week later than they did last year), kicking its sixth season off with a two-parter that they did not officially categorize as a two-parter. Weird, but there it is. The plot, loose as it often is on Sunny involved the gang getting involved in some wedding shenanigans. Mac kicks it off by storming into Paddy’s with the news that the tranny he used to bang has not only had the long-promised sex change operation, but has gotten married (to the Miller High Life guys no less!). In his infinite childishness, Mac decides this is a gay marriage and an abomination before God. This outburst reminds Dennis that he always thought he would be married by this point in his life, so he contacts his high school girlfriend with a dead tooth Maureen Ponderosa, whom he marries almost instantly, because of course. Dee accompanies Dennis on his visit with Maureen in the hopes of seeing her once hot brother, who has spent the last two decades having kids and going to seed, not that that will stop her from sleeping with him after the initial repulsion wears off. Seeing all of this leads Charlie to convince Frank that their longstanding roommate relationship should become a domestic partnership.
All of this goes pretty much as we would expect over the two episodes. Mac acts like an idiot and kind of gets awakened to his latent homosexuality. Dennis immediately regrets his marriage, taking notice of Maureen’s smelly mouth, weird thing for kitten sweaters, and general neediness. Dee is repulsed by her new lover, but is willing to put up with him as long as he provides her with a new car. The storyline that I thought held the most promise: Frank and Charlie getting married just kind of meanders along, with Frank protesting because he doesn’t know who would be the woman and bellyaching after they are married because Charlie doesn’t pitch in enough money. In a lot of ways, I wish these plotlines would have been handled differently. There are a lot of funny ideas here, but stretching them to two episodes strained them a bit and often lent the scenes in the second episode a bit of listlessness. That being said, it would have been next to impossible to fit all of this into one episode, so maybe a plotline like Frank and Charlie’s marriage could have turned into a season-long arc. Anyway, grading both episodes together Sunny gets a:
B-
Boardwalk Empire
Boardwalk Empire is, at this point, the only new series that I am watching this year. I may yet tune in to something like Terriers, Lone Star, or Running Wilde, but for now this big HBO epic is it. Not that Boardwalk Empire leaves me very hungry for more television, even in its pilot this series is a feast unto itself (weird metaphor, I know, but I’m rolling with it). As you probably know from the breathless hype it has been receiving Boardwalk Empire is the creation of Terrence Winter, one of the key writers on The Sopranos, and Martin Scorsese, who needs no introduction. The series tells the story of Atlanitc City at the dawn of the Prohibition Era, when the federal prohibition of liquor spawned the creation of the Mafia as we know it.
The pilot is littered with famous names of the period from Arnold Rothstein (A Serious Man’s Michael Sthulbarg) to Lucky Luciano (Vincent Piazza), but the series is centered around Enoch ‘Nucky’ Thompson (Steve Buscemi), the County Treasurer that runs the political machine in Atlantic City and is trying to establish himself at the top of the quickly emerging liquor racket. I will refrain from diving too far into the plot machinations, partly because it would take a lot ot unwind all the various plot strands, and partly because I get the feeling that Boardwalk Empire is still in the process of setting itself up, using the pilot and the first few episodes to establish its characters and their respective archetypes before beginning the long process of exploring and undoing those archetypes ala Deadwood. Suffice to say, if you are interested in TV as an artistic medium you owe it to yourself to be watching Boardwalk Empire.
A
How I Met Your Mother
After an up and down fifth season I was really nervous/excited about where HIMYM was going to head this year. Last year had its wonderful moments (especially the 100th episode spectacular), but after the excellent premiere it was hard to figure out what the unifying thread is. The creators seemed to have let old Ted wander off into a season-long digression in his master romantic narrative, and the show suffered for it. So I’m happy to report that HIMYM is, at the very least, back to its gratifyingly teasing ways. Last Monday’s premiere begins with Ted sitting outside a church in a tuxedo, swilling a beer that Marshall offers him in order to calm his nerves. After all the hints and glimpses of the Mother, were we suddenly jumping right to the climax of the series? And if so, after all this time, who is the bleeping mother?
I should not have been surprised that this set-up turns out to be yet another head fake by the series (Ted is the best man at this particular wedding, and old Ted tells us that he met the Mother at the ceremony), but it was a good one, and it reaffirms my faith that the show still knows where it’s going. The rest of the episode was a fun, if a bit familiar; Ted thinks that an ex is setting him up with the hot girl at the bar, which leads to an unexpectedly Sapphic conclusion. Robin takes a lot of heat from Barney for wallowing in misery following her breakup in last year’s finale before going upstairs to instantly transform into the gorgeous creature the gang knows she is. Marshall and Lily have a stale fight about his dad intruding too much into their lives, especially as they start trying to have a baby. It’s certainly not groundbreaking narratives, but it doesn’t really matter to me right now, I was sold on this from that tease that started the episode.
B+
Modern Family
For a while last season I thought I had missed the bus on Modern Family. Having dismissed it as amusing and promising, but not quite worth my time when it debuted last fall I was even a little irked when its acclaim and popularity rose throughout the season. So sometime around last February I decided to give it another try, see what I had been missing, and lo and behold Modern Family was fantastic. Sure, the C plot could feel undercooked sometimes, and the ending narration seemed superfluous at best, but those small shortcomings didn’t obscure the fact that this was just an expertly constructed sitcom. Indeed, despite my initial ‘meh’ it was my favorite of the nominees for Best Comedy Series at the Emmys last month, though that a lot of that had to do with the Emmys ignoring almost all of my favorite comedies from last year.
Anyway, Modern Family is back and facing the daunting task of living up to a first season that won the Emmy. Happily, based on the first episode of Season Two, the show seems to be handling that stress as well as the last two sitcoms to face that situation (Arrested Development and 30 Rock). Now, the second season of those series were phenomenal, some of the best TV comedy from the past decade, so Modern Family probably won’t reach quite that plateau, but it seems to be in fine form at this early point. I’ve probably rambled on too much to spend time hashing out the plot of last week’s episode, so I will simply say that the two main comic set-pieces of the episode (the Dunphy’s car ride and Mitchell’s construction efforts) were astoundingly funny. I wish all TV could be so successful.
A
Community
My relationship to Community last year was basically the inverse of Modern Family. Where I abandoned MF early because I misdiagnosed early growing pains that weren’t worth watching, I was hooked by Community from the pilot, despite the show’s very apparent shakiness as it founds it comic voice. The cast and crew of Community did not let me down last year, turning in what I thought was one of the three or four best shows of the year by the time the season ended last May. Indeed, the only episode that I had misgivings about after Community hit its stride around Halloween was the finale. It was certainly funny, but it also veered into some earnest soap opera-style plotting that the series had been clever enough to avoid to that point.
Last week’s premiere responded to the earnest note last season had ended on by skewering itself, creating a gem of an episode in the process. The episode opens with a wonderful Wes Anderson inspired montage, the camera tracking across each of the characters’ bedrooms as they prepare for the first day of Year Two at Greendale. It’s a nice cinematic touch, filled with jokes (Donald Glover as Spider-Man) and nice character moments (Shirley rolling around in bed with her boys), and it gets us right into the action of knowing these characters better through their comic personas. The episode’s plot revolves around Britta’s newfound fame for being so publicly spurned by Jeff in last year’s finale, ultimately winding its way towards a classic study room scene where all of the show’s sins are called out and turned into humor. Plus Betty White was on hand to shoot a blowdart into Starburns’ namesake. That’s just a recipe for an...
A.
30 Rock/The Office
I did not much get along with 30 Rock last year. It got off to a shaky start, with jokes that once might have been clever or meta falling flat because they had become too familiar or on the nose. Then that awful Stone Mountain episode happen and I wanted to beat up the few defenders the show still had on the Internet. The series hobbled along from there, amusing me occasionally, but mostly existing as a moribund reminder of how good it once was. So color me surprised when this season’s premiere, while still a little dodgy here and there, was something of a return to form. I won’t even bother to describe the plot of this, since that has always been a background to the jokes. But suffice to say the jokes were there and I was pleased. Here’s hoping it continues.
B+
I’m including The Office with 30 Rock here since I’ve been thinking of these shows as peas in a pod for a year or so now. They are former sitcoms all-stars who have gotten a little long in the tooth, but can still get by on their charms and residual goodwill. The Office has certainly been the more consistent of the two, but its shine really started to fade last year, especially in comparison to its sibling show Parks and Recreation, which was nothing short of phenomenal. The Office is also facing down some uncertainty over its future, since star Steve Carell has stated he will be leaving the show when his contract runs out at the end of this season. So do we see hints of this in the premiere? Any anxiety because of impending change or punched-up narrative and humor because friendly competition? No, not really. This was an episode of The Office that was…fine. The opening lip dub (an Internet phenom I have missed out on apparently) was very fun and a nice reminder of the series’ unique charms, but the rest of the episode was more or less rote, with few surprises or laugh out loud moments. Which, strangely, is about what I expect at this point. Oh well.
B/B-
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