The Office: Season 3, Episode 2 – “The Convention”

the office - the convention Last week’s opener really got my hopes up for another stellar season of The Office. I was doubly looking forward to actually watching a full season from start to finish instead of sporadically catching episodes as I have done for the last two seasons. Unfortunately this week’s episode, “The Convention” failed to live up to my expectations. Oh certainly I’ll keep watching, but my dream of a perfect season has already died.

It starts off with a whiz-bang having Michael come in talking of adopting a child after having watched Angelina Jolie on Oprah. He quickly gave up the idea after learning the application process could cost upwards of $1,000 and the waiting list is a good eight months.

“I don’t even know if I’ll want a baby in eight months.”

After a bit of bartering, Pam and Michael agree to have a child together if both remain childless in thirty years.

“If I haven’t had a baby in ten years then you and I…”
“No, Michael.”
“In twenty years?”
“No, Michael.”
“In thirty years?”
“Ok.”

The rest of the episode centers around a paper convention pitting the Scranton office against the Stamford one, at least in Michael’s eyes. He is immediately jealous of the relationship that Jim has developed with Josh, the manager of the Stamford office, or as Michael says, “the poor man’s Michael Scott as he is known around my condo.”

Josh does get off a line that he would let Michael work as a salesman if his office absorbs the Scranton one. An interesting if mostly innocuous remark that may serve as a means to get Jim back into the company with the rest of the cast.

This is also one way to solve the whole two-offices dilemma. By holding a convention they can merge the two offices, making a more cohesive storyline than trying to keep up with multiple settings. Although certainly they can’t keep holding conventions and it still created two settings having a side plot involving Jan.

Jan has her first first-date in nine years with a cartoonist friend of Kelly’s, and Angela is upset at Dwight for leaving her for Philadelphia.

“Looks like someone took the slow train to Philly,” Angela jibes, “which translates to she’s a slut!”

The blind date goes poorly, but as a possible interesting sideline, Toby seems to have taken a shine to Pam, though is too shy to approach her about it.

In Philadelphia, the rest of the office tries to drum up business, while Michael invites everyone to a party back in his room. Nobody actually seems to come to the party except Jim who suddenly stops playing the prankster and is suddenly as kind to Michael as anyone ever has been. Even going as far as to admit he left Scranton because of Pam. It is as touching as it is weird to see somebody opening up to Michael.

The episode wasn’t bad, in fact, it had some very nice moments, and the writers definitely seem to be trying to create some interesting storylines. The line about the two offices merging may prove interesting fodder for later episodes, and the Pam, Jim, Toby triangle may also open up new drama. Some interesting ideas, but they also managed to slow the episode down. In trying to lay down some strands to expand the series, they bogged this particular episode down.

The show closes with its best gag: Michael turns on a black light only to expose many large stains on the bed. Dwight surmises that it is either “blood, urine, or semen.”

“God, I hope it’s urine,” Michael concludes.

My Name is Earl: Season 2, Episode 2 – “Jump For Joy”

my name is earl jump for joy

Originally posted on September 29, 2006.

This week’s episode was different for two reasons: it didn’t involve a single item from the list, and it wasn’t particularly funny. It was also a direct continuation of last week’s episode, which may be totally different, but since I watched last season in non-sequential reruns I’m not sure about that.

Earl begins the episode by telling us that he begins most mornings thinking about the list, but on this morning he was thinking about other things, mainly going to court to help get Joy out of jail – then he recaps the events that happened in last week’s episode, landing Joy in jail in the first place.

The idea to create episodes that don’t involve the list seems like a decent one. The show is popular and it seems quite possible that the list could run dry before the show runs out of episodes, plus the concept of writing certain wrongs could become tiresome more quickly than the producers would like. But if tonight’s episode is any indication of how it will go without a list, Earl had better start thinking about his past mistakes more often.

The judge sets Joy’s bail at one million dollars due to this being her third strike. In flashback number one (or two if you count the opening recap) we see that Joy once tried to make counterfeit money by copying bills at a big copy center like Kinkos. Strike number two occurred when she was being fingerprinted for that crime and struck the officer due to him breaking her newly minted fingernails.

Randy, as usual, isn’t concerned with the events of the day, but with a walnut – he wants to see if the judge will crack it with his judge hammer. Amazingly, the judge obliges, even after tossing Joy out of court.

So, a million-dollar bail is set making it a cool $100,000s needed for a bondsman.

Earl no longer has that kind of money, but Randy makes a helpful list of folks they can borrow it from – Richie Rich, the Beverly Hillbillies, and the like – but the list of fictional characters is written on a Chubby’s Pork bag, and Earl thinks he might be able to borrow the cash from Chubby himself.

Chubby, played in full-on sleaze mode circa Striptease by Burt Reynolds, relents to the money request, but only if Earl can bring back his favorite dancer, who happens to be Catalina.

Turns out Catalina loved being a dancer, but her unusual method of jumping up and down was hazardous to local citizens – an old man died of a heart attack from watching her “assets” go boingy-boing. Thus she reserved herself to a life of cleaning motel rooms.

Ever the helpful lot, Earl and Randy (who can’t seem to think straight after Earl mentions Catalina being half-naked) track down the dead guy’s family and it turns out the old man was a slave driver in a sweatshop. His death has brought happiness to the sweat shop workers (for the son brought in a fan) and everything is better.

Catalina agrees to dance prompting Randy to ponder “which half’s going to be naked – I hope it is the front half.” But all doesn’t go well when Catalina finds out her dancing will get Joy out of jail. Catalina refuses to, as she puts it “jump for Joy” in what has to be the cheesiest clever pun in the history of television.

Joy agrees to apologize for all the wrongs she has committed against Catalina in hopes that she will agree to the dance. But as usual, Joy can’t play nice and the apology turns into a catfight over which of the two is hotter.

Somehow Joy convinces the judge to release her for a one-night Chubby dance in order to raise bail money. Joy gets drunk to calm her nerves and instead of dancing, she pukes all over the front row.

In the end, Catalina saves the day and agrees to dance – not for Joy, whom she still loathes, but for Earl and his quest to make people’s lives better.

Though in the episode, Earl was unable to scratch something off his list, the episode still revolved around him trying to help people out (in this case getting Joy out of jail, and Catalina back to dancing.) This causes me to ask what’s the point of moving away from the list if all you’re going to do is set up the same type of situation. Without the list, Earl seems a little unfocused. The show focused even more on juvenile gags (witness Randy’s long gag with Catalina’s half-nakedness) and less on any moral center involving karma.

House, MD: Season 3, Episode 4 – “Lines in the Sand”

house lines in the sand

Originally posted on September 27, 2006.

I keep adding shows to my list of reviews to write which, at some point is going to bite me on the buttocks. And that right hard. But for now, I don’t mind doing little reviews of the shows I watch, when I watch them.

House is a show I started watching late last season. And for most of that, it was more filler than anything I was particularly interested in. If it was on and I was bored I watched it with detached interest, but if I missed it, I didn’t really miss it. As per usual with my writings on television these days, it was the summer that made me a fan.

I was anxious for this season to start and then I became nervous after the preview for last week’s episode thinking House had already jumped the shark and landed in X-files territory. It didn’t and we all were relieved.

What I like about House is that it is a mystery that pretends to be a medical drama (or is that a medical drama pretending to be a mystery?) Each episode brings us a patient with unexplained symptoms. House and his team spend the episode trying every test imaginable to figure out the problem. Hugh Laurie, as House does a magnificent job playing the cantankerous doctor who just happens to be brilliant. Truly he is the reason to watch.

Tonight’s mysterious illness lies in a young autistic boy who suddenly begins screaming and is seemingly in pain.

The pain isn’t related to the autism, but the team run a series of tests anyway. The tests come back negative, but the kid coughs up fluid.

In a very enjoyable sub-plot, Cuddy replaces House’s blood-stained carpet to which House complains and promises to never enter his office again until the blood carpet is returned. It is a great showdown between the two and one that seems so silly and petty in its foolishness it would be hilarious were they both not so serious about it all.

Also, the young jail-bait hottie from last week is back. She pretended to have the same chest symptoms as her father so that House would examine her (naked) chest. House plays along in his own little way and the girl continues to come to the hospital and call him repeatedly until Cuddy is forced to issue a restraining order.

In a nice, intimate, and helpful moment, House, to get the autistic lad to breathe in a sleeping agent, begins sucking on the tube himself and then putting it to the boy’s face. By doing this, the boy learns to trust House, and House gets high. But in his usual manner, House destroys the moment by telling the boy’s parents that it is a case of monkey see/monkey do, relating their son to nothing more than a primate.

Throughout the episode, House and his team set up shop in a variety of places including the main ward of the hospital, Dr. Wilson’s office, a conference room reserved by Cuddy, and eventually Cuddy’s office. All of this is part of House’s plot to make Cuddy give in and give him his carpet back.

We discover that House has an affinity for the child for he never has to deal with all of the social niceties that House deplores so much.

During a basic biopsy of the autistic child’s underarm, they discover that the cells located there are in fact liver cells. This brings up many other issues such as the possibility of cancer and more tests being run.

The tests lead the team to believe the kid may have ingested something harmful. House immediately suspects the parents of poisoning, but this is ruled out through some tests. This leads to accidental ingestion and the team scours the house to see what may be a threat without anyone knowing it.

Sure enough, there is jimson weed on location and House takes pictures of it and various other items in the yard to the boy. Without treating him like a sick kid, House demands the boy show him what he has been eating, but the boy only points at the sandbox.

Finally having enough of the Lolita, House breaks up with her using lines from Casablanca. Looking into her eyes while doing his best Bogart impression, House notices her milky tears – a symptom of some type of simple disease – to which he subscribes to a drug and leaves her alone. As often happens this small symptom leads to House discovering the large problem in the main patient. After looking into the autistic boy’s eyes, House discovers small worms. Worms that would be received through eating sand could have caused all of his other symptoms.

The worms are removed and the boy is well again.

The bloody carpet is returned.

Man, House is a difficult show to cover. It has so many complexities that a plot analysis gets tedious, and I’m still unsure how to cover it critically. We’ll see if I can keep it up.

The Simpsons: Season 18, Episode 3 – “Please Homer, Don’t Hammer ‘Em”

please homer dont ahammer em

LOL total: 6 (but three of them were butt jokes)

Episode three of season 18 continues the latter-day saints period of The Simpsons. It is still not up to classic ranking, but it is definitely funny, and definitely not a disappointment to watch.

Tonight’s episode centered around two stories: Marge finds out she is quite the handyman, but apparently the entire town of Springfield is so sexist no one will allow her to work. Also, Bart finds out that Principal Skinner is deathly allergic to peanuts and in Bart-like fashion begins tormenting Skinner with a peanut-on-a-stick.

The episode starts with the Simpson clan shopping in a ramshackle mall that no one goes to anymore (since somebody shot the Mayor’s dad). This allows for some nice bits with Bart inside a terribly outdated arcade (with an Asteroids clone, and a Remington Steele game, all of which look suspiciously like the games Bart used to play in the early episodes of the show) and Homer eating decades-old gummy bears, which have all congealed together.

Homer buys a Time-Life set of carpentry books which he promptly forgets and never uses. Marge picks them up after a piece of floorboard comes up and breaks the bedroom nightstand. Turns out she is quite skilled with a hammer and nail and quickly begins building all sorts of stuff.

Unfortunately, everyone who answers her ad for a carpenter quickly laughs at her for being female. Now maybe this was typical Simpson satire knocking society for screwed-up gender roles, but it felt like plain old sexism to me.

Marge gets the idea to put Homer’s name on the company and when he lands jobs she’ll secretly do the work. The funniest bits of the show come from Marge brainstorming how she could put the typical construction worker in the ad (lazy, fat, and showing plenty of butt-crack) and realizes Homer is the perfect model from seeing his fat crack in bed.

Yeah, butt jokes are what got me through tonight.

I’m not offended by much. The Simpsons have certainly skewered plenty of sacred cows, and I’ve laughed through most of them. They’ve jabbed most major religions, politicians, celebrities, and all sorts of social norms and I’ve seen the humor behind the satire. But here it just seemed overdone, or maybe that’s because it was un-funny. Had the jokes been right on, then this paragraph wouldn’t have been written.

Both stories, now that you mention it were rather weak. Bart learns of Skinner’s peanut weakness after the students are ordered to leave all nut-related items at home. A wee chat with Groundskeeper Willie turns up the offended allergic is Skinner. Bart applies peanut to stick and begins making Skinner do everything he says (eating garbage, stuffing firecrackers down his pants, etc).

Funny, Homer’s butt makes me laugh, but Bart’s juvenile jokes left me flat.

Marge eventually gets miffed at Homer taking all the glory that she makes him redo an old roller coaster by himself. Of course, he screws up and when his ego takes him on a ride over his death-trap of a roller coaster, he finally admits it is Marge who is the construction genius.

Skinner finds out Bart has an allergic reaction to shrimp and they engage in a shrimp-on-a-stick/peanut-on-a-stick battle royale ending in both being soaked in a giant tub of Chinese peanut shrimp gumbo.

The stories really were lame. The sexism failed to be the least bit funny (ok, Kent Brockman telling Homer that he would tear down the gazebo and build a coffin to his manhood if Marge actually built it and then challenging Homer to a topless wrestling was actually pretty funny, but still) and Skinner being allergic to peanuts so suddenly felt like lazy writing. However, they still nailed some good, if admittedly juvenile, jokes. It didn’t feel like penance watching the show, which is more than I can say for most of last season. And at least there were comprehendible stories to follow instead of a series of nonsequiturs.

I laughed heartily, out loud even. And that’s enough for me….anymore.

Unfortunately due to football, the next original episode won’t air until November 05. In an unfortunate, and annoying tradition, that episode will be the Halloween special, a week after the holiday.

The Office: Season 3, Episode 1 – “Gay Witch Hunt”

the office gay witch hunt

Originally written on September 22, 2006.

You’ll notice tonight that I’m covering some TV shows step by step. For a while, I’ve been thinking about doing TV coverage episode by episode. In time it could be a really cool database.

I have been watching the first season of The Sopranos and have hand-written plot lines for each of them, yet I haven’t gotten around to blogging them out. Tonight I decided to scribble notes for The Office and My Name is Earl. As you can see I have managed to get them here. It was a little difficult to determine how much I wanted to say. A simple plotline synopsis seems a little boring, but an actual review of each episode likewise seems boring and monotonous.

Fans of a show know what works. There is not a good reason to continually point out which actor does a good job, or what is annoying about a program. That leaves the plot and the best jokes. So that is what I’ll attempt to do. Give a rundown of exactly what happened adding my little thoughts here and there. We’ll see if it works, or if I manage to continue with it.

I started watching The Office last season. The trouble was I never could remember when it came on, so I only caught it sporadically. Over the summer I managed to figure out the time slot and catch most of the season’s episodes. Before the season had ended I did see the season finale ending with Jim finally telling Pam of his love and kissing her as the credits rolled. All summer I’ve waited for tonight to see exactly what Pam is going to do.

And here we are.

Jim transferred to Stamford and we got a few quick looks into how things work in another office. Jim has been promoted, but we quickly see that none of the employees like him. They certainly don’t take to his practical jokes (he puts Ed Helms’s calculator in some Jello, and Helms promptly has a total freak out), or his mugging for the cameras.

I’m not sure how Stamford is going to work out. Ed Helms is a brilliant edition and could create some wonderful comic moments, and the rest of the cast seems okay. They at least seem somewhat more normal than the Scranton bunch, and watching Jim try to find acceptance there could be very funny indeed. However, the overall cast is already almost too large, and adding an entirely new office may prove to be way too much for the series to hold. It seems highly difficult to handle plot lines for both offices which may mean Jim gets regulated to quick gags, which would ruin the show.

Who knows though, maybe he’ll work something out with Pam and move back to Scranton.

Which brings us to that relationship. Part of what made The Office work was the relationship between Pam and Jim. They have a great deal of chemistry, and the awkwardness between their obvious feelings for each other and their inability to do anything about it brought a nice bit of drama to the otherwise outrageousness.

Pam broke off the marriage and the relationship with Roy, though they had to keep all the food, now frozen. Roy doles it out at lunchtime. He seems to have had a rough go with it but promises he’ll get her back.

So now Pam and Jim could feasibly get back together. But as everybody knows, the will they, or won’t they aspect of a relationship is always the best part (in television at least). Just as Sam and Diane or David and Maddie. I hope they don’t ever get together. I hope Pam feels too hurt over the breakup and we’re treated to many seasons of not knowing if they’ll hook-up.

The bulk of the show dealt with Michael offending and then outing Oscar. Michael somehow felt that calling everyone “faggie” was appropriate. Oscar complained of this and confided in Toby that he is gay. Toby chastised Michael for being insensitive.

Michael immediately blabs to everyone in the office about Oscar’s homosexuality and gets mixed reactions.

Kevin thinks it is hilarious, Angela that it is disgusting (she says she tried to watch Will and Grace but was repulsed by it), Dwight doesn’t believe it (he’s not wearing women’s clothes) and Michael remains as obnoxious as ever.

Michael and Dwight form a mission to find out who else is gay, but have no idea how to do it. Dwight searches gay porn for possible clues and calls up Jim about purchasing that gaydar he talked about previously.

As tensions rise Michael calls an office meeting where he manages to enrage Oscar even more by raising more homophobic gossip. Ever endearing Michael attempts to smooth it out by embracing Oscar and even gives him a quick kiss on the lips (ever the follower, Dwight then jumps up for a kiss on the cheek.)

Hilariously, the episode ends with Dwight receiving his very own gay-dar from Jim (it is a portable metal detector in reality.) He quickly finds Oscar and runs it over his body, pleased when it beeps at Oscar’s crotchal region (in reality the belt buckle), but shocked to discover when it beeps at his own.

The show is back and in fine form. There were many laugh-out-loud moments and a few of the awkward, I can’t believe Michael just did that moment as well. The two offices could create more moments of hilarity or could cause the plots to be diluted. The Jim/Pam relationship is in flux once again and I’m crossing my fingers it will remain as such.

My Name is Earl: Season 2, Episode 1 – “Very Bad Things”

my name is earl very bad things

Last year I only caught a couple of episodes of My Name is Earl. I enjoy Jason Lee in just about anything he does, but this show never really grabbed me. It had some funny bits, but the characters all seemed a little too dumb to be interesting and I kept myself busy with other things to watch much.

This summer, or as I like to call it, The Summer of TV Addiction, I began watching it regularly and now add it to my ever-growing selection of must-watch.

The season premiere starts with Earl deciding to scratch off Joy from his list. It seems he never agreed with her while they were married. In a series of flashbacks, we see Earl take sides with everybody but Joy including Randy (who grabs the potato chips with his toes) and a lobster (who squirted Joy while she was cutting it up.)

Earl finally takes Joy’s side by telling Darnell that he should throw Joy a surprise party even if she knows about it (thus ruining the surprise argues Darnell.)

Joy decides to buy a “disappearing” TV after watching Britney Spears and K-fed use one on their show.

Unfortunately, the TV is too big to fit inside the trailer and the store won’t take it back because there is gum inside the receipt. They attempt to watch the television outside in the yard, but the glare of the sun and motorcyclists keep them from it. After a rain the TV is completely ruined.

Joy again attempts to take the TV back. Declaring she is going to get her $3,000 back one way or another she steals a truck from the store.

Joy tries to sell the entire truck, not what’s in the truck mind you, to someone but he doesn’t buy due to the truck having the name of the store still written upon it. His friend, an Eastern European by the accent, says she’ll buy the truck, but when they arrive at Joy’s trailer, Darnell has landed the surprise birthday party a month early, scaring off the European.

Earl, still feeling generous, decides to help her unload the truck. They paint the name off the truck, then brilliantly decide to open the danged thing to see if the contents might be worth $3,000.

Oops, there is a man (a store employee) inside! After some thinking, they decide to order (in fake British accents no less) the man to blindfold himself and run out of the truck when they open the door. He obliges but crashes into a tree, knocking himself out.

Earl and Joy load him into the truck and drive off to a hospital. The truck runs out of gas along the way, and while Earl walks to get more fuel, Joy accidentally lets the man loose. She got hungry, you see, and opened the truck door looking for food. The man had taken off his clothes and stuffed them to look like he was unconscious, then whacked Joy on the head while she was looking at it.

Prompting the second-best line of the episode, “Son of a bitch he Ferris Bueller-ed me.”

Man, now in his underwear is caught by Joy and Earl and Randy, but Randy sticks the man in the front of the truck, instead of the back, prompting him to take off in the truck.

During the hot pursuit, Randy suggests they could cut out the man’s tongue so that he wouldn’t be able to tell anyone who he saw. Realizing that he could still draw them he suggests they cut off his fingers, prompting the best line of the show, “At least he’s thinking, he can’t help it if he’s not good at it.”

Earl decides he has helped Joy enough and lets the man escape. Joy is charged with stealing a truck and kidnapping and ends the episode in jail.

I read recently that the writers were going to focus more on the characters than on the list this season, and they seem to be off to a good start. Most of the episode had nothing to do with a list point, and in fact, the only item on the list “Take Joy’s Side” was done within a few minutes. Instead, the episode moved forward from the general concept of that item.

Joy got a lot of screen time and she ran with it. She’s always a funny character, but here she stole the best lines, played the best scenes and pretty much ruled the episode. It was a nice change of focus from the usual Earl/Randy relationship.