There was a reason only Parks and Recreation had a Valentines Day episode last week. It's because it was a whole week and a half before the holiday and Parks and Rec is not on this week. Instead, 30 Rock has an hour-long Valentine's episode. Goes to show how aware I am of this particular day.
30 Rock - "Hey Baby, What's Wrong?"
Comedies can suffer when extended to an hour, but 30 Rock pulls it off admirably here. Not as good as the hour-long 100th episode, but a solid outing. I say this every week, but the Liz and Jack stuff was the best part of the episode. However, this week, Liz and Jack had mostly separate stories. The Jack story had a great guest star in Mary Steenburgen as Avery's mother. They're mutual attraction was understandable, but creepy, which made it more funny. I was really relieved in the end that they did not act on it, I was afraid that this show, being absurd as it is, wouldn't care. Thankfully, they were able to blow off steam with golf. Jack shaking down the Transylvania delegate (who is definitely not a vampire) with Friends spoilers was hilarious. The Liz story has the return of silly-named Criss Chros as her boyfriend, and their soul crushing trip to Ikea. I love that everyone knows that going to Ikea will end in a fight, but they go anyway because of the good prices. The creepy employee that kept popping up to take pleasure in their pain was weird and funny. I especially liked the resolution that Criss doesn't care, they'll fight about stupid things and make up, that's what people do.
The other plots were not as strong, but had good moments. The Jenna and Pete story had Dr. Spaceman, whom I love, and a call back to Pete's days of archery glory. The Lutz, Tracey, and Frank story had really funny ways to skeeze on women. I like the added time they're giving to Lutz this season, he's so pathetically funny. The Kenneth story is moving forward in the not working at TGS anymore and training Hazel to be his replacement. I love Kristen Schaal from Flight of the Conchords, so I hope she's around for a while.
The Office - "Special Project"
First of all, I have to talk about the tag. This Karen chick, who I didn't even remember her name and should actually be gone now that Pam is back, is going to seduce Jim while they're in Florida. What the hell? Was there any indication of this that I was missing? This just seems to come way out of left field, I'm baffled. The rest of the episode, not that bad. I liked the shuffling of characters as to who was going and who wasn't, especially Dwight's reactions when Andy was announcing the people. The whole text message thing with Jim and Pam was a little off. I understand what they were going for there, but I just don't think it was played well. I am enjoying the Darryl and Val romance, and Nate's love of Darryl's Valentine's gift. The way they are handling this is so much better then anything they are doing with Andy and Erin these days. I imagine the next few weeks are going to be in Florida, I just hope this whole Karen thing isn't as bad as it sounds.
No comments:
Post a Comment