NBC's Thursday lineup is back to full strength, for one week at least. I guess they didn't want to keep all their comedies in repeats for a whole month, so they sprinkled in one new one in March.
Community - "Advanced Documentary Filmmaking"
Community dips into the documentary style episode a third time, and there's a reason they avoided going there for three seasons of paintball episodes. I went back to look at the last two documentary episodes and both were written by Megan Ganz and directed by Joe Russo. Not so here, and it shows. I'm glad they are exploring Chang's changnesia, but what was the reason to make it a documentary. The Dean wants Abed to film something to show to the MacGuffin Institute (great name), but the plot needs Abed to do more so that they can keep the format up when the MacGuffin Institute arrives. Or at least I thought, because then they leave the format for the last couple of scenes. It's an episode that is all over the place. The format is used well here and there, especially Britta messing up her interview with Shirley. Ultimately, it just doesn't seem necessary. And then the tag, I'm not surprised Chang is faking, not in the least, but we could have had a few episodes of us believing it was because he realized how horrible he was and wanted to change before showing us he really is evil and working against them.
Parks and Recreation - "Bailout"
I could watch a loop of Ron laughing about how the video store is now a xxx video store for the full 22 minutes and be satisfied, but this episode had so much more going for it. At it's forefront it had a disagreement between Leslie and Ron. Those two have been presented has having the strongest non-romantic bond, and it's good for the story to shake that up some. We get to see that Tom's business is thriving, which leads us into the introduction of Jean-Ralphio's sister Mona-Lisa. This also gives us Jean-Ralphio singing about how horrible she is, which is hilarious. Jason Schwartzman was criminally underused in this episode. I hope we get to see the video store some more, because he fits in well with the town, from what little time we got to see him. I really enjoyed the guy who kept popping up to say you can get everything for free on the internet (of course, only illegally). Chris gets to struggle with whether or not to donate his sperm. We all knew he was going to say yes, but pretending to be a father to Tom was a fun subplot.
The Office - "The Farm"
The failed Dwight-centric spin-off pilot, reconfigured as an Office episode, and it shows. Comedies don't have to been funny all the time, but the trade off is a compelling story. This episode had neither, not one laugh or a even mildly interesting story. Packer's an asshole. Dwight wants to run his deceased aunt's farm. That's the episode in two lines. There was some good character work from Dwight, especially his interactions with his nephew. The only problem is that all these characters are most likely going to disappear because the pilot wasn't picked up. Dwight will be right back at the office next episode, and even though we may see his siblings again, they will not be running a farm together. The more I think of it, I wish they had held this until right near the end. It's a good send off for Dwight, and he could still be in the office for the finale finishing up his last minute things, maybe selling the building to someone new. At least I can't gripe about Andy this time, he was barely in it.
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