This Week in Television - Nov. 27-Dec. 2, 2011

Once Upon a Time
Loved the Lost shout-out with Henry breaking out the Apollo bars. This episode felt a little too "Hallmark", though. Actually many of them do, now that I think about it, but this one especially.

Glee
Well, they actually did have Brittany win the school election, but I'm afraid I still can't give Glee the proper credit for accuracy, because due to Kurt's silly ballot-stuffing scandal and subsequent disqualification, they made it seem like Brittany won on a technicality. And it's funny that they used "I Kissed a Girl" (and named the episode after it) in an episode about Santana's sexuality, because that song is about fake lesbianism; it's not actually a song about loving women, so it's not entirely relevant to Santana. Sue Sylvester writing in her journal always makes for a good scene, though.

New Girl
The bell stuff wasn't the greatest source of comedy, but it gets a pass because, again, I like Winston, and because of Jess doing the robot while playing the bells, which was the real highlight of those segments (actually, probably the highlight of the whole episode). I think Nick and Schmidt play well off each other, perhaps because Nick has always been the one most vocal about Schmidt's douchiness. It was interesting to take it that much further in this episode and have them outright fighting.

Survivor: South Pacific
Funny how Coach told Cochran that one of them would win the challenge because they were doing Tai Chi (which was crazy Coach talk to begin with), and neither of them won but they both got the reward anyway. Cochran is weaselly, though. Apparently, according to an interview with Jim and Keith, Cochran was never bullied by his tribe at all and only flipped for selfish reasons. Not the first time Survivor has distorted the truth.

Community
I'm not really a fan of shows giving us flashback reveals to characters meeting as children when we've already seen their "first" meeting earlier in the series, because to me it feels like a cheap undercut; nor am I big on Shirley-heavy episodes, because she is the least funniest character on the show. But on the other hand, Shirley is also the most underused, and for equality's sake a part of me was glad to see her have something to do this week, and we did get that awesome and completely-out-of-nowhere anime sequence from the foosball story, complete with an even more random anthropomorphic cat. As Troy pointed out, the replacing a broken item story is a sitcom cliche (funnily enough, I saw a rerun of Married With Children earlier that same day where they used it), but pointing it out and then going in another direction is how you get away with it, even if building a web of ridiculous lies is probably even more common. It worked largely thanks to Annie's Christian Bale impression and nervously lengthy squeaking noise, the callback to the conspiracy episode, Troy being touched that Abed was using the grappling hook he gave him for Christmas, and of course, Abed as Batman, which I guess is official if Christian Bale's DVD message said "Abed is Batman now."

Parks and Recreation
Whereas last episode, Poehler and Scott nailed their big romantic moment, this time they only had to react to it while the courtroom stenographer objectively read all the romantic stuff aloud for them. What an ingenious way to not repeat the previous episode's scene, which was so good it needed no repeating. And some good jokes too, as always: Chris' excessive methods for keeping negativity out of his body, Ron throwing out his computer (city property) after discovering internet privacy invasion, Jerry's real name blowing his chance on the witness stand, and the stories of both the frozen "whore" who exposed her elbow and the man who blew his face up. Pawnee's violent and unjust history is always funny.

The Office
Another strong episode, I thought - in terms of humour, anyway. It seems far-fetched that Andy would be unable to pick up that Robert was going to act contrary to his own instructions while his wife was in the room. At times Robert can be hard to read, yes, but this was not one of those times. His one frantic line at the beginning of the episode was enough to explain the entirety of the subtext between he and his wife. But Dwight and Darryl at the makeshift gym was funny (those two are not a common pairing as of yet), as well as Creed inexplicably flying a remote control helicopter on the roof during work hours.

Hero of the Week: Jess from New Girl, for doing the robot...WITH BELLS!

Douchebag of the Week: The European foosball guys from Community, because they were loud and obnoxious.