This Week in Television - Nov. 13-18, 2011

Once Upon a Time
I like that this show takes old fairy tales in a new direction. Pregnant Cinderella (or any other fairy tale character) is something you'd never see, probably because then parents would have to explain to their kids how pregnancy happens. And while I like the continuing battle between Emma and the evil queen, it was a nice change to have the latter downplayed this week so that Rumpelstiltskin could be the main villain, as he has lurked in the last couple of episodes but hasn't really been in the spotlight.

Glee
In real life, Brittany would win the school election by a landslide since high school is first and foremost a popularity contest, but since the writers of Glee don't care about real life and know nothing about high school, I'm betting it will probably end up being Kurt. As for the other elections, Sue's smear campaigns against Burt were fun, but I'm not sure which part of the resulting ad outing Santana was more offensive: the idea of embarrassing someone by outing them before they're ready, or the even more conservative idea that you shouldn't vote for a high school coach who has a lesbian on their squad.

New Girl
Glad to see the douchebag jar get a mention, although an episode too late, as Schmidt's little joke was way less douchey than his behaviour last week. I found the scenes with Schmidt and Cece to be funny, or at least Schmidt's reactions to getting potatoes on his nose and Cece's hand in the pudding. The holiday turkey being ruined is kind of another cliche, but there were enough other things going on in the episode that I didn't mind, plus putting it in a clothes dryer might be a new one. I think Winston is becoming my favourite of Jess' roommates. I just enjoyed the manner in which he grew to like Paul, and his crack about referring to Black Friday as just Friday. I really liked this episode - in fact it might be my favourite so far - but the one downside is that I think Jess was, for once, the most underused character in the episode. But I suppose that's a plus for everyone who complains that she is annoying.

Survivor: South Pacific
Coach clearly is leading if he scared Cochran and Albert into voting straight. That rice bowl challenge looked like a tricky one. I imagine it probably took much longer than the editing made it seem. Ozzy is getting arrogant, but Dawn may have a shot at beating him at Redemption.

Up All Night
Except for the ending tag, it felt unnecessary to actually show Chris playing hockey, as there was no joke in it, and what little character development it provided could just have easily been established by him coming home and saying "I had a great time playing hockey," which he did do afterwards. I didn't feel that anything used in this episode made for funny stories, in fact, and Molly Shannon was another wasted guest star - she played the part well, it just wasn't a funny part.

Suburgatory
I haven't been finding Suburgatory very funny - maybe some light chuckles, but it seems it's generally not my humour - but I keep watching because I like George and Tessa, and sometimes Noah, because he's Alan Tudyk. But the other characters tend to be annoying (I know I've said that before), especially Dallas and Dalia, who have been getting more screen time. Or it feels like it, anyway. Dalia is particularly a one joke character, so it's not really a good idea to have a storyline rely so heavily on her and that one joke. That half of the episode was a bust, but I liked George's brief Misery-inspired parody.

Community
For me, the highlight of the episode was Jeff's hilarious Dean Pelton impression (and later, when the real Dean was in a tank top and ordering him to remove the bald cap, it seemed Pelton was doing a Jeff impression). As soon as I saw that the Dean wasn't even going to play himself in the school commercial, I knew it wasn't going to end well. Looks like the Troy/Britta chemistry is continuing, but this time Abed has become the first character outside of them to notice it, giving our camera the appropriate look of confusion (or was it concern?). Also props to Luis Guzman for doing the episode. I mean he kind of had to after they erected a statue of him in season one.

Parks and Recreation
Putting Andy in a school setting is a comedy goldmine, and I hope we get more of it. Well, Andy doing anything is usually a comedy goldmine, but yes. Ron telling the professor that she "would make an excellent brunette" was also hilarious because it was so completely unexpected, and such a forward thing to say to a stranger. Amy Poehler KILLED it in the final scene. You could really see the nervousness and excitement in her performance as she laid out her feelings for Ben, and the scene was all the more effective for it. Although I realized after the fact that Ben had already told Chris he wanted to be reassigned. Hopefully that will be easy to undo. Since the parks department logo was the same as the Parks and Recreation logo, I wonder if we're going to get Tom's new retro logo on the cover of the season four DVD now. For the sake of packaging continuity I wouldn't want that, but for the sake of the show referencing itself and keeping with its own continuity, I would.

The Office
Hey, one of the few times they actually made use of Gabe. It was mildly amusing when he was mistaken for an Abraham Lincoln impersonator and then just rolled with it, but then it got funny in a creepy way when he seemed to be accessing his own interior demons as a sad, lonely man. The "Battle of Schrute Farms" argument was funny when Erin was in the middle flip-flopping between believing Dwight and Oscar, and then even funnier when they discovered the truth and Oscar ended up enjoying it as a piece of gay history. Robert spending a day with the "losers" of the office was an excellent idea, though Ryan is still too annoyingly arrogant to think he belongs in that group. I think this was one of the better post-Carell episodes, except for Andy's Gettysburg tour, because pretty much every episode this season has been about him trying too hard, and it's getting old.

Fringe
I'm not sure if Peter building a new machine is a good idea, but I suppose there aren't a lot of options, and at least it will produce some kind of result. It totally kills any dramatic potential when Peter tells Lincoln "she's not my Olivia", essentially giving him permission to date her. I mean it's true, but now we won't get an angry jealousy subplot, which would've invested some emotion into this alt world where most of the characters seem kind of indifferent to each other. The invisible albino thing was interesting. One of the few "weekly case" characters who actually got a happy ending (he did die, but happily). And it was a nice touch that, after he died, the elevator was at floor 14 right before cutting to commercial, when the 14th floor seemed to have some sort of significance earlier in the episode. No idea what Nina is doing to Olivia, but since her first appearance on the show I've had difficulty trusting her, even if this one is a different iteration and is supposed to have emotional ties to Olivia. But we'll have to wait a while to find out, as this is the last Fringe episode until 2012.

Hero of the Week: Leslie from Parks and Recreation, for taking a big risk and saying "screw it."

Douchebag of the Week: Ryan from The Office, because his tiresome elitism lacks foundation.