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Ranking the Shows I Watch – 6: Childrens Hospital

10 Nov

I was about to write that at it’s heart Childrens Hospital is a stupid show, but that’s not really true.  Not that I don’t occasionally enjoy stupid humor, everyone does, even if it’s not my favorite variety.   That said, that’s not really what Childrens Hospital is, even if there are some parts that are pretty stupid.  What Childrens Hospital is based upon is rather silly humor (I actually hate the word silly which should let you know how much I like this show if I’m using it as priase here).  It’s not smart or witty or urbane or crackling with banter like other favorite shows of mine (Party Down, for example).  It’s ridiculous, it’s absurd, and it’s downright hilarious.

Childrens Hospital is an 11-minute long show which takes place in a fictional Children’s Hospital somewhere in Brazil and centers on a group of doctors who must deal with a different set of ridiculous circumstances each week.  Rob Corddry, the creator, plays a clown doctor who dispenses the healing power of laughter, a ploy, which every once in a while seems like it might be overused, but just before you get tired of it, they reel it back for a couple of episodes.  Other doctors are played by Ken Marino, Rob Huebel,Lake Bell, Erin Hayes and Malin Akerman. Megan Mullaly plays the handicapped head of doctors who for some reason everyone is sexually attracted to, and Henry Winkler plays the hospital administrator who everyone hates on.

One of my favorite sequences in Children’s Hospital occurs at the end of an episode themed as a documentary of what is supposed to be the show’s last episode.  Let’s step back a minute actually.  This is one of my favorite episodes of the show, and it’s a show that makes you actually laugh out loud.  The cast all have ridiculous fake names as they’re introducing themselves as the actors who play their character in this faux documentary, and Megan Mullaly comes out with an absolutely absurd british accent while Malin Akerman only speaks Swedish and has to read transliterations of English for the show which she doesn’t actually understand the meaning of.

Rob Corddry’s character – no, not his actual character, him playing the fake actor that plays his character, is the only one of the cast who wants the show to continue and he convinces a woman to create a campaign to save Childrens Hospital by convincing the woman that the show is an actual Children’s Hospital.

Okay, so the part I actually wanted to mention was just at the end of the episode when we see fake outtakes of the filming of Childrens Hospital.  The actors in turn pronounce a couple of words wrong over and over again.  Elbow and as rhyming with “Wow”, operation as if it were operacion and  Penicillin as “Penis” illin.  Writing it down doesn’t do it justice.  It’s a bit that really needs to be heard (as can be in the video below – the whole episode is great but skip to 9:58 for this part).  It’s silly.  There’s no great subtlety to it, there aren’t many levels to the joke.  But it’s utterly hilarious.  And that’s really hard to do, and yet it’s something Childrens Hospital has managed to do especially well.

It’s not mean comedy, like South Park.  It’s not awkward comedy like The Office.  It’s not even the newfound “comedy of nice” that Parks and Recreation is being proclaimed as.  It shares with Community the spirit of making style homages, but it does it in a very different way.  Community’s homages are far more sophisticated and layered, and that’s great. Childrens Hospital’s though are far more utterly ridiculous and over the top, and that’s great too.

Guest stars are aplenty as well.  Kurtwood Smith has a particularly hilarious turn as a representative of cancer – Ken Marino’s character cures cancer, and Smith tries to menace him into holding back the cure.

Why It’s This High:  It’s silly in a good way, and constantly zanily hilarious – a New York Magazine article compared it to Leslie Nielson’s old short-lived Police Files, and it’s an apt comparison

Why It’s not higher:  There’s not enough of it, it’s probably best in the Adult Swim 11 minute format, though that’s not really a knock against it.

Best Episode of the Most Recent Season:  (Note:  I made this choice before the third season aired – for the now most recent season, we’ll say “The Chet Episode” but there’s five or six in contention) It’s a tough call – “Hot Enough For You?” – the semi-Do the Right Thing parody episode is wonderful, and contains the Kurtwood Smith bit I referred to earlier, but considering I spent even more time talking about the faux documentary episode “End of the Middle” it will have to be that one.

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Ranking the Shows That I Watch – 7: Archer

8 Nov

Archer is an FX cartoon by the creator of Adult Swim fixture Sealab 2021 about a super spy named Sterling Archer, voiced by H. Jon Benjamin, who works for a private intelligence company called ISIS, run by his mother, Malory Archer.  The other main super secret agent is his ex, Lana, and they work with accountant Cyril, HR director Pam, secretary Cheryl and mad scientist Doctor Krieger.  Archer is a giant unabashed self-centered asshole who everybody mostly can’t stand but who is constantly making hilarious sarcastic comments at the office and throughout his super agent missions.  Much of the humor comes from Archer’s dickishness, and it’s unquestioned that he’s the primary reason that the show is so high but the supporting cast is consistently entertaining as well.

I liked the first season or Archer – I watched it all in one day, but, with all due respect to Archer, it was more because I had absolutely nothing to do that day than because I was absolutely and wholly consumed by Archer.  That said, I enjoyed it.  It was funny, pleasant, fun, and starred the never overrated vocal talents of one H. Jon Benjamin.  I watched it, remembered a few jokes here and there, and put it away in my brain, figuring I wouldn’t think much about it until the next season started.

Some number of months later the second season started, and I started watching weekly, and at the beginning I felt more or less the same way.  But as the season got maybe a third of the way through, almost at once, I realized that the show had made a bit leap that some shows make around this point in time  (Parks and Recreation, yet to come on this list, might be the best other recent example of this).  It’s certainly not as if old Archer was bad, and I’m also curious if going back and watching the old episodes, they’ll seem better than I remember them being.  That said, this Archer has just reached another level.

My friend invented the phrase “hit the jukebox” to be an opposite of the internet adage “jump the shark.”  When “jumping the shark” refers to a TV going over the hill, like Happy Days did after Fonzie jumped said shark, “hitting the jukebox” in when a TV show (or anything else really) goes into overdrive and really hits its stride.  Archer hit the jukebox and has not looked back.

Why It’s This High:  It’s funny, and it’s quotable is which one of the best compliments you can give to a comedy of this ilk

Why It’s Not Higher:  We’re at the rank where there aren’t too many ways to bash these shows.  It’s pretty much a crapshoot, and I could change my mind any time,  It’s more because I had more reasons for the shows above it at the time.  I suppose if I have to say anything, it’s just because it didn’t quite hit its absolutely top form until a dozen episodes ago or so.

Best episode of the most recent season:  Looking over the list of episodes, I’m reminded of just how excellent the last season was.  Realizing I don’t remember more about each episode makes me want to rewatch the entire season, but just reading each of the descriptions make me laugh.  I wish I could take the three episode arc aired this fall about Archer’s capture by pirates as one episode, but that would clearly be cheating so I’ll go with “Placebo Effect,” about Archer’s dealing with his diagnosis of breast cancer.  After he finds out that the drugs he’s been on are fake, he goes on a rampage, dragging around his IV, to figure out who was responsible for the fake drugs.  He turns his rampage into a film with the working title “Terms of En-Rampagement.”

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Ranking the Shows That I Watch – 8: The Venture Bros.

3 Nov

Venture Bros is a comedy and has a humorous tone at all times but takes its complicated web of continuity as seriously as any show I can ever remember on televison.  This ridiculously confusing continuity is one of the strongest aspects of the show.  What’s interesting about it is that it’s not as if all of it was planned out back when the show began; the writers seem to make something up, and then they keep that in mind when they work on later episodes and work around the changes they made.  It seems like this make-it-up-as-you-go philosophy would never work, and feel slapdash (and ill-prepared – Lost, Heroes, anyway) but it just about never does feel forced.   It feels very natural and thorough in a way that might be difficult to plot out from the beginning.

Venture Bros. is the story of an egotistical scientist (Venture and the next show on this list and their arrogant main characters have a fair amount in common) Dr. Rusty Venture who was the son of an uber-popular super scientist and struggles with not living up to that legacy.  He has two sons, Hank and Dean, the titular Venture Bros., and a bodyguard Brock Sampson.  They have to contend with Rusty’s arch-villain The Monarch, bent on Venture’s destruction along with other villains like Baron Underbite and Phantom Limb.  The show as a whole is a humorous take on programs like Johnny Quest and it’s silly and ridiculous, but it is so much more than simply a parody.  The Venture Bros. lives in a world where villains are governed by an organization known as the Guild of Calamitous Intent which has rules, such as forcing villains to temporary release their captives for certain medical emergencies.

Plot is central in the Venture Bros, but not in a true serial way – many episodes have plots which mostly are only relevant in their episode, even though anything mentioned is always fair grounds for a reference or to come back unexpectedly in later episodes.  Some forces like Brisby and the Orange County Liberation Front pretty much never show up again, but sometimes characters that initially seem like one-offs like Sergeant Hatred go out and become semi-major characters.  Because of the way episodes are often very non-serial even throughout a complicated continuing storyline, Venture Bros. has some episodes that are all-time classic and warrant frequent re-watches.

Why It’s This High:  There’s really no other show like it on TV – it’s fantastically irreverent, makes you smile without always being laugh out loud funny and a joy to watch

Why it’s not higher:  Really, the only common bane of any of the shows this high on the list – episode to episode consistency – the top episodes are better – that, and some overuse of gay characters Shore Leave and Sky Pilot, but that’s a small complaint

Best episode of the most recent season:  A few stand out, but it comes down to two.  First, the first episode of the season, which skips around in time, and does it as brilliantly as any show or movie told with this device, with the ordering of the scenes is denoted by the value of an expensive comic book Dean has.  Second, which is my official choice, is “Everybody Comes to Hank’s,” a film noir homage.  While often the best episodes of the show involve utilizing many of the wide universe of characters Venture Bros. has to choose from, this episode focuses on very few characters, primarily Hank who acts as a gumshoe solving the case of why his friend Dermott didn’t get picked up by his mother, and in the process, figuring out whether Dermott is Brock’s son.  He does this along with his sidekick, the Alchemist, a member of The Order of the Triad who gets some good screen time here.  Anyway, the noir is spot on and some big time plot details come out of the episode in the process.

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Rankings the Shows That I Watch – 9: Justified

1 Nov

Justified is part of a two-some of shows, along with Terriers, which proceeded Justified on this list, that are examples of what USA shows could be without their inherent USA limitations.  They’re shows that very much feel like the “characters welcome” brand of USA show except unleashed to be a little darker, a little bit more serial and generally just feel like the creators have a little bit more control over them.

Justified is a show that grew on me over the course of the last season, which was significantly better than an already solid first season.  Part of what makes the show so enjoyable is the wonderful Timothy Olyphant, who yes, maybe always plays a type, as the tough, speak-softly-but-carry-a-gun honest guy with attitude, but plays it as well as anyone.

The show tries to posit as the second most interesting character Boyd Crowder, played by Walter Goggins, who was apparently in the Shield, a massively long show that I have not dared attempt yet.  Fowler was the primarily antagonist for most of the first season going from a work-a-day Dixie mafia leader to a crazy quasi-religious drug runner.  I knew the creators of Justified wanted to keep Fowler as a character long after the season, but I thought it would either seem forced or repetitive as shows often do when they keep around an interesting character past his or her expiration date (is Sylar still alive?), and to the show’s credit it hasn’t felt that way as Fowler has transitioned from someone seeking honest work to a gangster again, but one who ends up on the same side as Olyphant’s Raylon Givens at the end of the season.

The second season was greatly enhanced by the increased emphasis on a serial plot which was spread out over the course of the season.  The key antagonists in the second season were the Bennett clan, a Dixie mafia family who control their local county (fittingly named Bennett county).  Ma Bennett was the matriarch, and she had three sons, one of whom was the local police chief.  (By the way, I credit Justified along with Winter’s Bone for learning what the fuck the Dixie mafia is and being scared that these people could command police forces.)  The other two are mostly kind of moronic henchmen, one of whom is played by the always enjoyable Jeremy Davies, who is hilarious to hear in a southern redneck accent.  Ma Bennett is portrayed by Margo Martindale, who won an Emmy for her role (for whatever that’s worth) and actually deserved it.

Why it’s this high:  Olyphant is fantastic, the show sets a nice western tone, and Ma Bennett was a great villain

Why it’s not higher:  I greatly enjoy this show, but it lacks the scope and maybe a little bit of the depth behind Breaking Bad, Mad Men or Game of Thrones (not to give away shows coming up on the list)

Best episode of the most recent season:  “Bloody Harlan” – the season long plot more or less ends in the final episode of the second season and shit goes down.  I won’t reveal exactly what happens, but the ending is fairly final and satisfying without feeling cheap or implausible in context.

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Ranking the Shows I Watch – 10: Terriers

27 Oct

I several times almost forgot about the existence of Terriers when working on this list as it was crushingly cancelled after its 13 episode first season  on FX in December, 2010.  The best new show of last fall’s TV season by a long shot, it gained traction with critics, but never with audiences and fans like myself were left wondering whether the terribly non-descriptive name played a significant role in preventing people from tuning in.

Earlier in this list, there were a number of USA shows. USA shows, as previously mentioned, are good, but due to the strictures of the network, they genrally have a ceiling.  Terriers is at its heart, a USA show, with the strictures removed.   Donal Logue plays an ex-cop who is a recovering alcoholic and is partners with Michael Raymond-James (Renee from True Blood), an ex-con, in a private detective business in San Diego, California.  The two solve week-to-week cases while working on occasional long-term projects and deal with each other’s personal life – Logue’s troubled sister and the marriage of his ex-wife and Raymond-James’s possible engagement to his long-term girlfriend.

The primary two actors are where the core of the show lies and their chemistry is the engine that keeps Terriers moving.  The show maintained a relatively sunny disposition, giving it that great USA easy-watch feeling without the sometimes forced famed USA Blue Skies mentality. Things don’t always exactly work out.  Logue and Raymond-James were the underdogs you loved to root for (maybe that’s where the Terriers name comes from?).  With such a promising first season, it’s depressing to think where the show could have gone if it just had more time.  The concept sounds incredibly generic but the execution is pitch perfect.  When I read about it at first, it didn’t sound all that great, until I actually watched it and I was hooked.

Why it’s this high:  The actors are great by themselves, and the relationship between Logue and Raymond-James at the heart of the show is strong – about as good as a largely procedural show can be

Why it’s not higher:  This is pretty fucking high for a show with one season which is cancelled already

Best episode of the most recent season:  It’s hard to remember exactly, having watched the show almost a year ago but I’ll choose “Fustercluck” partly because I just remember it better; I don’t think there were any one standout that was so much better than the pack.  In this episode, a character they helped put in jail asks Logue and Raymond-James to steal back $250 thousand of his own money in exchange for allowing them to keep $100 thousand of it.  They take the case, but follow him after he’s bailed about because they’re suspicious of his motives.  They then learn a little bit more about the season’s long local conspiracy plot.

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Ranking the Shows I Watch – 11: Bored to Death

25 Oct

Bored to Death really isn’t like any other show on television, and I like that about it.  I struggled through the whole first season on how to place the show – where to group it, trying to figure out in what genre it fit.  During the second season, I just pretty much said to hell with that and just enjoyed it for what it was, and it was easier because the second season was significantly stronger than the first.

What is it?  Well… It’s a very dry comedy, as befits the Jason Schwartzman personality, and the Wes Anderson movies with which Schwartzman is often connected (or for that matter I Heart Huckabees to some degree in which he stars).  It’s incredibly New York and Brooklyn in particular, and the setting is very prominent (though certainly not a character – settings can never be characters, as I’ve argued with certain friends).  It’s absolutely a bit precious, and a bit madcap.  There’s a lot of drinking and a lot of smoking, but in a very different way than on, say, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.  Where It’s Always Sunny has a super low-brow feel, Bored to Death is very high-brow.  It’s Always Sunny cast members own an Irish pub and drink beer all day.  Bored to Death features members of the literary world who drink white wine.  If noir comedy was a genre, this would certainly fit in.

Ted Danson is wonderful as Jason Schwartzman’s editor and mentor, as part of the great Ted Danson revival of the ‘00s (featuring Bored to Death, Damages, and Curb Your Enthusiasm and now most bizarrely CSI).  John Hodgman is also wonderful as a recurring character literary critic who bashed Jason Schwartzman’s first novel, and is his rival.

The show is essentially just three characters – Schwartzman, Danson, and Zach Galifianakis, who plays Schwartzman’s best friend, who writes his own comic, Super Ray, who fights with his magically enlarged penis.  While normally a show with such a small cast feels limiting, I never get that sense in Bored to Death.   In addition, for a show that feels like it should be more of a smile and enjoy comedy like Entourage, I find myself laughing out loud frequently during episodes.

Addendum:  The first three episodes of the third season have been outstanding, even more consistent so far than the second so now’s the time to at least give the show a try – watching episodes out of order is not really a problem.

Why it’s this high:  It’s unlike any other show on television – and while I can see a lot of people not liking it, I’m probably somewhere around the perfect audience for it

Why it’s not higher:  Three character shows are always a little small for my liking

Best episode of the most recent season:  “I’ve Been Living Like a Demented God”  – this episode involves a wild goose chase in which Jason Schwartzman must track down a rare book which was pawned off by Professor F. Murray Abraham to his drug dealer – John Hodgman figures prominently, and he follows Schwartzman, who follows drug dealers, until they catch him, and the drug dealers follow them.  Hijinks ensue.

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Ranking the Shows I Watch – 12: The Walking Dead

20 Oct

This is the second of two shows I admit I may have overrated slightly because I wrote these entries right after seeing them.  AMC can just about do no wrong in its post-Mad Men original programming days (just about because of the “noble failure” Rubicon and the Prisoner remake miniseries which everyone seems to have tried to forget and mostly succeeded).  From Mad Men to Breaking Bad to now Walking Dead and The Killing (well the start of The Killing), AMC has hit after hit on their hands.  After the incredible success of the six episode season of the Walking Dead (six episode season, I know – what is this, the United Kingdom or something?), I read an interesting article concerned whether it was so successful that it would change AMC’s entire strategy.  The first episode of the second season has been no exception rating-wise, as the show shattered all sorts of AMC rating records, especially in terms of younger, advertiser-attractive demographics.

Based on a graphic novel, with which I was not too familiar before the series started, it comes on top of a decade long zombie fascination, second only to the more broadly popular vampire trend – made up of the resurrection of the Night of the Living Dead franchise, Zombieland, Shaun of the Dead, Planet Terror, 28 Days and Weeks Later, Zombie Survival Guide, World War Z and probably a couple of others.  Like most zombie works, even though the zombies are the enemy, they have no personalities, they’re simply unthinking, unrelenting enemies who the humans have to strive against.  The remaining humans, overtaken by the zombies have to figure out a plan to survive.  The real personal conflict is between the different factions of humans who are a bunch of unlikely folk brought together due to the strange circumstances of zombie attack and must work together in tough scenarios or face inevitable doom.

The tension is palpable, and both the action scenes and the personal drama are handled extremely well.  Finding the correct balance between out and out zombie action and relationship tension between the characters will continue to be an issue, but initial results are positive.

The season ended in a bit of a strange place, but due to the general strength of the season and the fact that the graphic novel is widely acclaimed, I’m more than willing to give the creators the benefit of the doubt.  The show faced an unusual level of behind-the-scenes drama this summer, as show runner Frank Darabont left, and going forward, the fact that I’m not sure who exactly the writers and show runners are going to be gives me a great deal of pause, but there’s a really good start here that I sincerely hope doesn’t get messed up.  They’ve started so well and have so much to work with, if they can just avoid a The Killing, it should be pretty promising.

What It’s This High:  Dark zombie drama which is constantly on the move and changing the status quo, so far anyway

Why It’s not higher:  The last episode was a little bit weak; I’m not sold on how it will continue to evolve just yet

Best episode of the most recent season: “Days Gone By” – the series remained pretty solid over the first six episodes but it was the pilot that won me over.  The episode felt cinematic and was so gripping that I was in for the whole six episodes whether or not the next five were terrible.

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Ranking the Shows That I Watch – 13: Eagleheart

18 Oct

Probably the most obscure show this high on the list, Eagleheart is the rare show that I had never heard of at all before I watched it for the first time.  It was on after Childrens Hopsital on Adult Swim, and my friend, who I was watching with, said he had heard of it, and that it was supposed to be decent, so we decided to give it a watch.  Expectations were relatively low, and all we could tell right away was that it was a comedy in which Chris Elliott portrayed a ridiculous supercop charged with serious missions, along with his two partners, an idiotic guy Chris uses as a battering ram, and a woman who is generally more competent but whom he ignores.  We started to watch and we slowly started laughing and looking back and forth at each other until the realization gradually set in that this was actually pretty good.  We still weren’t entirely convinced, so we watched a couple more episodes and by the time two more were finished, we were pretty sure; surprised, but pretty sure.  Soon, we finished the series (it really only takes about two hours if watched all in a row – that’s how short the episodes are, eleven minutes each) and when I told my brother to watch, he balked.  When he eventually gave in, he was just as surprised, but enjoyed the show just as much as well.

It’s an excellent companion piece for Childrens Hospital, because the shows share a very similar sensibility.  The show is loaded with terribly corny wordplay which takes a certain appreciation which I understand not everyone has.  When Chris is captured on a blimp, the evil blimp captain baron tells him there’s only one day when one can leave the blimp – splatterday.  Yeah, it sounds stupid when I write it like that I realize.  But with audio and video it’s funny, I swear.

I’ll be the first to admit that this show is possibly ranked higher than it should be because I just watched it recently and the lines and laughs are fresh in my memory.  That said, I’m also glad that I put it this high because I think it’s probably the show in this tier that people are least likely be familiar with.  The show is so unheralded that the entry “Eagleheart” in wikipedia’s search takes you to Finnish power metal band Stratovarius’s thirteenth single release Eagleheart rather than the show.  I’ve read just about no buzz about the show, and I had never heard about it, yet I’m not sure why.  A lot of people may just not be into this type of comedy, but with each episode lasting a mere 11 minutes, it’s certainly worth giving a shot.

Why it’s this high:  It’s ridiculous, absurd, and though my brother noticed after watching a few in a row, there’s a pretty similar rhythm to the episodes, just because you know what’s coming doesn’t make it any less funny

Why it’s not higher:  I suppose when you have twelve eleven minute episodes it limits your peak here – the shows are short and sweet which is normally a good thing but may have a topping out point

Best episode of the most recent season:  I thought one would jump right out, but not as much – I’ll take “Chris, Susie, Brett and Malice,” in which the cops must disguise themselves as swingers in a swinger-unfriendly town.  When they try to shop in the supermarket and pick up some aluminum foil, the employees lets them know that they only sell “family foil.”

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Ranking the Shows That I Watch – 14: The Office

13 Oct

Let’s put this right out there.  I know quite a fair number of people who were long time Office fans for the first three, four, or five seasons who just don’t watch it anymore.  It’s over the hill they say, jumped the shark, however you want to put it.  To me, that’s a lot of shit.  Has that happened in shows before?  Certainly.  I’ve complained about it myself.  And I’m making no claim that The Office as of 2011 and seventh or eighth season is as good as it’s ever been in its entire run.  But that doesn’t mean it’s not quite good and funny and enjoyable.

Admittedly this season was particularly strange, paving the way for the departure of Michael Scott, with guest star Will Ferrell as a potential replacement boss appearing in the last few episodes of the season.

Some people have said, Steve Carell is leaving, maybe that’s a sign you should just end the show, whether to put it out of its misery, or whether it’s going out on top.  Normally, I’d think they have a good point. It can look desperate to replace a major character in a comedy, and worse than appearances, there’s a huge risk of it simply not working.  The show got so far because of the chemistry and laughs generated by the core current cast.  When you risk throwing that off, you could have a show that would never make it on air as a pilot, but automatically gets a season because of the show’s pedigree.  In this instance though, I’m not particularly worried, at least about Steve Carrell leaving, although, of course, who they bring in is another matter.  I’ve been advocating Steve Carell leave the show for another boss for a couple years now.  Not at all because I think he’s done a bad job. On the contrary, I think he’s been able to make a character awkward and funny in a way I think very few actors could pull off.  Still, the character has inherent limitations and it’s a credit to him and the writers that they were able to continue to generate laughs until the end, but fresh blood can be a good thing.

Just looking through the episodes of the most recent season I recall funny segments.  In the last episode with Will Ferrell the oddly hilarious dunk attempt that landed him in a coma –  I can’t explain exactly why, but my friend and I laughed for five minutes straight and had to pause the show.  Dwight at the garage sale, starting small and then trading up, until he is sold on Jim’s magic beans.  Dwight and Jim gags may be the most resilient part of the show.  By all rights, they should get old, but they never do.  Ryan’s grilling of Pam about her Christmas comic book gift was fantastic and emblematic of the newest and best iteration of Ryan’s character as a pretentious hipster.

A word is also worth saying about how the Office’s attempts to add new blood (new blood?  fresh blood?  same difference) with new receptionist Erin and corporate liaison/stooge Gabe have very much worked.  Gabe becoming wholly unhinged by Erin’s awkward and extremely public break up with him turned into what may have been one of the funniest running arcs of the season, highlighted in the last episode when he quizzed Andy, during his interview, about the sun, and when Andy knew the answers, ordered him to “Shut up about the sun!” Erin carefully walks the line between adorable empty-headedness and maybe-she-has-an-actually-problem with the defining moment possibly being her believing that disposable cameras were for disposing immediately after you took the pictures.

Why it’s this high:  It’s still The Office, more or less, Dwight and Jim antics are hilarious, they continue to do good work

Why it’s not higher:  Yes, you should still watch it, but no, it’s not as good as it was during maybe the third season

Best episode of the most recent season:  There’s no obvious choice but I’ll take “Andy’s Play” which had one of my favorite scenes of the season at the end – Michael’s word-for-word rendition of a Law & Order episode as an audition

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Rankings the Show I Watch – 15: It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

11 Oct

It’s frankly amazing how long this show has been on the air, and just how big it’s become.  The scientific factor I use to determine its popularity is number of green men, the green lyrca full body suit mascot that Charlie wears during a couple of episodes.  I see at Philadelphia and national sporting events, and on Halloween.  The actual suit only appeared in three episodes of the series, and yet it spawned a phenomenon as green men are everywhere.

The show has the potential to get tiresome. In each episode, the “gang” – as the characters are known find a topic, be it racism, terrorism, abortion, or sometimes less political and more random, and go off, offending tons of people in the process and coming out making fools of themselves.  Yet it stays relatively fresh, and the writers have done a pretty good job of thinking of material that is new enough to keep me laughing.  I really tried to hold off this comparison for as long as could, even though I wanted to use it all article, but Curb Your Enthusiasm really is by far the most similar show on TV to It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.  They’re both basically shows that apply a similar process to a new set of facts every episode. You can enter a situation into the It’s Always Sunny machine, and it’s pretty easy to figure out how things are going to go, but it still generally ends up being pretty funny.  Like in Curb, it’s all about the main characters, and everyone else is the world is just someone for them to play off of. While in Curb about equal times the other characters are crazy or normal, in It’s Always Sunny, they’re generally normal conservative folks who are utterly outraged by the gang’s lewd, selfish and inappropriate behavior.

Highlights of the last season include Dennis implying that Mac and he will bring some women onto a boat, and since they can’t get off, there will be an “implication,” which is disturbing even for Mac.  Another highlight is the gang’s drunken memories in flashback form of a Halloween party in which Dee may have gotten pregnant, and in which Dee is remembered as more and more birdlike, eventually ending up as an ostrich.

Looking over the episode list, there aren’t quite as many stone cold classics as there have been in previous seasons, though to be fair, my opinions could change, for good or ill, with a second viewing.

Why It’s This High:  No show generates more out loud laughs than It’s Always Sunny, even after six years; Charlie makes me laugh.

Why it’s not higher:  It’s a little bit hit and miss, a little bit repetitive, some episodes are better than others, some of the best ideas were used seasons ago

Best Episode of the Most Recent Season:  “Mac’s Big Break” – My friends and I became somewhat obsessed with this strange part of the episode in which Dennis uses a strange voice on his radio show asking about the US’s involvement in two wars – I can’t find anything on youtube, so you’ll just have to watch the full episode.

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