This Week in Television - Dec. 4-9, 2011

Once Upon a Time
I really liked this episode, although I have trouble not rolling my eyes when someone pulls out the "secret twin sibling" twist. But I think it may have been the absence of Henry that made this one more enjoyable. Not that I dislike him, but it gets a little tiring to have him keep speaking in fairy tale terms every week while Emma and everyone else continue to be concerned for his sanity. And I do root for real world Charming and Snow White, not because they really have much of an emotional connection, but because it pisses off the mayor/queen. Bonus points for having both Mr. Widmore and a bottle of McCutcheon's Whiskey in this episode. I will never not love Lost references.

Glee
Not only has Sam never previously been described as having "star power", but after going to the trouble of recruiting him, they didn't even give him any solos at Sectionals, making his return totally unnecessary (though the one thing in this episode I liked was Santana's list of trouty mouth insults). Mr. Schue should've been arrested and fired for giving champagne to underage students on school grounds. Unless I missed somebody clarifying that it was non-alcoholic or something, which is possible because I was busy laughing at the illegality of it, but I doubt it. And, really, another song about a cup? Why didn't they just sing Brittany's version? I'm not even going to get into how annoyingly one-dimensional Quinn has been about her baby. About 98% of this episode sucked.

New Girl
I was surprised to see Schmidt get his own story where we see him at work, because we haven't really gone away from the apartment to isolate a character yet, and for some reason I wasn't expecting it to happen. But I don't like Schmidt enough to want to watch him independently of our regular cast. But Jess and Paul awkwardly trying to have sex was funny, because Jess being weird is always funny, and Zooey Deschanel in her underwear is always awesome.

Survivor: South Pacific
Not much happened this week. Just Brandon's dad showing up to boss everyone around and Edna complaining about being on the bottom. I'm not a fan of either Brandon or Edna, so I would've been fine whichever way the vote went.

Up All Night
I liked Ava's pronunciation of "diamonds" and Reagan's reaction to the bracelet. The Christmas decorations stuff and Chris' adventures at the mall have been done before, but I guess there are only so many Christmas stories you can do.

Suburgatory
Sorry, but this episode was lame. The gay principal's little arc at the party didn't seem to go anywhere or serve much of a purpose, Zoe's exaggerated reaction at finding out Noah was married seemed like something out of a bad children's movie, and Tessa realizing she'd made a mistake in inviting Zoe seemed like something out of a bad laughtrack sitcom - at that point I actually imagined a studio audience going "ooohhh", and even in my imagination I still hate studio audiences.

Community
The music didn't really wow me (though Alison Brie's Bettie Boop impression was accurate), but I'm always down for Community making fun of Glee, like the bearded piano player who randomly shows up in the music room and the overly wholesome sweater vest-wearing teacher. And Britta's song and dance at the end, terrible in true Britta fashion, was hilarious. Sadly, this was the last episode before Community's hiatus, which may last until Spring but hopefully it will be shorter than that - ideally in the opening of a timeslot after Whitney is canceled. Please cancel Whitney, NBC.

Parks and Recreation
For me, this was the best episode of any show all week, and a very strong contender for best Parks and Recreation episode of the season. Leslie's Christmas gifts to her friends and co-workers managed to be both funny and perfect, and it was an interesting flipside look at Leslie doing pretty much her usual job, but on the other side as a regular citizen. Plus it was bursting with loads of hilarious moments, like Marshmallow Ron Swanson (including both April's explanation of it and Ron trying not to show how incredibly pleased with it he was); the guy at the PCP meeting who tried unsuccessfully to start up a "her daughter is an idiot!" chant; Leslie warning Ann not to touch her pickles at the restaurant; Dennis Feinstein's scapegoating of Eddie the accountant at Ben's interview; and to top it all off, an appearance by one of my favourite guest characters, Jean-Ralphio, whose hair seems to get bigger every time he shows up. I found myself getting a little teary-eyed by the ending, too. I'm starting to love these characters almost as much as the cast of Community.

The Office
The show has been using the Jim/Dwight pranks a little less often than they used to, but I like that they found something new to do with it by having Andy place a "no pranking" rule on them, leading to the two of them trying to frame each other. Andy is still coming off too much like Michael - "my ex is meeting my sex", for example, is totally a Michael line. It's like the writers are just continuing to use stories and/or jokes they had planned for Michael rather than write new stuff that is more suited to Andy. But I did enjoy this episode. The gift-opening montage was fun, though not as awesome as Parks and Recreation's gift-opening montage.

Hero of the Week: Leslie Knope from Parks and Recreation, for her truly uncanny gift-giving ability. It's not easy to make Ron Swanson emotional!

Douchebag of the Week: The evil queen/mayor from Once Upon a Time. Since when is the mayor of a town allowed to tell someone who they can't fall in love with?

Cyrus

Impressions before seeing it
Another indie comedy that went very quietly under the radar, but aside from the cast the reason I wanted to see it was because it made Quentin Tarantino's list of his favourite movies of 2010, intriguing because it was the only "best of 2010" list I saw it on.

How was it?
I've watched a few indie comedies in the last several weeks (there's at least one more coming), so I don't want to go into the whole "it was more dramatic than I was expecting" thing again, but there is that, and it's not a complaint.

The most notable thing, first of all, is how different a role this is for Jonah Hill. He's already almost been typecast as the loudmouthed wise-ass, but as the title character here, he is like a brooding, passive-aggressive supervillain. It's actually a layered and seamless dramatic turn. Cyrus and his mother (Tomei) have a relationship that is creepily close and makes one almost suspicious of incest, but it became apparent to me that this was necessary for the entire premise of the film and Cyrus' character to work. Cyrus is a lonely and pathetic kid. His mom is literally his only friend, so any and all love that he has to give as a human being can pretty much only go towards her (and from what I gathered, the same is just about true for her). Enter John (Reilly) to threaten all of this by dating his mom. If Cyrus were a normal guy, he might be a little peeved but anything more would feel excessive. Seeing as he is not, I can buy that he would become so antagonistic and aggressive in clinging to his only source of love in the world.

The fun of this movie is in the war between Cyrus and John. A lot of it is done in subtext, because neither one wants to alert the mother to his darker side by letting her see that they're fighting, so there are things like passive-aggressive pleasantries, backhanded comments, and hidden agendas in her presence. It reminded me of the kind of interactions you might see on Dexter towards the end of a season when his major target is on to him and they're both trying to get each other. John C. Reilly is one of my favourite actors, so throwing him up against a surprisingly good Jonah Hill in a battle of wits equals a good time for me, though I do have to say that it was kind of predictable. According to the blu-ray extras, they shot this movie in order so that the actors could improvise and change the plot if necessary, and that places a lot more value on the performances, which are what make Cyrus worth watching anyway.

Recommendation
I can't recommend it as a comedy, but as a drama the characters make it interesting. While the concept is simple, I can't really think of too many movies that use it, or at least not in the same way, so I suppose it can be called original as well.

30 Minutes or Less

Impressions before seeing it
The trailers looked like fun and I liked the people involved.

How was it?
It's a shame that this movie seemed to bomb at the box office and then sneak under the radar, because I thought it was really funny. Supposedly there were a lot of improvised jokes from the cast (the four guys in the poster plus Michael Peña), so most of the laughs just come out of the dialogue, and the action part of the movie is mostly allowed to be action rather than slapstick. I think 30 Minutes or Less gets a lot of mileage out of splitting the main four characters into two duos who play well off each other: Eisenberg with Ansari and McBride with Swardson. I already enjoy him on Parks and Recreation, but Ansari has a certain energy about him that always gives him a fun screen presence, and Eisenberg has bothered me in the past due to a history of playing characters with an air of pretense to them, but as an average pizza delivery guy he was toned down here to someone much more bearable for me. As for McBride and Swardson, they were basically just playing Kenny and Stevie from Eastbound and Down, something fans of that show shouldn't have a problem with.

I know in my last few posts I've been mentioning some things I like seeing, and another one for the list is that I enjoy characters trying to deal with a really, really big problem, and watching them trying to process what's happening and come up with a plan. So I loved the scenes with Ansari and Eisenberg freaking out over the bomb strapped to the latter's chest. McBride and Swardson's scenes were enjoyable simply because their characters are idiots and conversations between them were always funny. One complaint I have is that this movie tries to shoehorn in a small romantic subplot, but it's not fleshed out enough to genuinely raise the stakes in the climax as it was intended to do. I don't think there was actually any point where I worried for a character's life, and that's a problem. I mean I liked the characters, but mostly just because they were funny; they didn't give me enough of a reason to seriously care about them.

Recommendation
If you're sick of comedies with heart or a message then this might be one for you, because 30 Minutes or Less is just funny, entertaining fluff and nothing else. It does rely on the comedic senses of its actors though, so if you don't find any of those guys funny then there's probably nothing for you here.

Our Idiot Brother

Impressions before seeing it
The trailer was mildly amusing, but mostly I liked its cast of really cool comedic actors.

How was it?
The title of this movie (and to a certain extent, the trailer) is misleading, as it connotes a zany comedy about a bumbling fool ruining his sisters' lives when it would be more accurate to call it a dramedy about the most naive person on the planet. He does ruin his sisters' lives, but everything he does is done with such good intentions that we can't help but like him even as he strolls through the movie spilling everyone's biggest secrets. He is an idiot, but he really doesn't know any better. Besides, Our Naive Brother doesn't have the same ring to it.

Rudd has already worked with Banks, Deschanel, and Rashida Jones on other projects (playing their boyfriend in all of them), and I like to think it facilitated the screen chemistry here even though he's now playing their brother, or closer to a brother in-law in Jones's case. I believed them as a family because the love/hate dynamic was well balanced. However, I felt like the characters may have been too generic or something... They weren't boring, but they didn't jump out and command my fascination, either. They lacked pizazz.

With such a great comedic cast - which also includes Adam Scott, Steve Coogan, Kathryn Hahn, and up-and-coming comedian T.J. Miller - Our Idiot Brother pulls a Funny People with an unexpectedly distorted comedy/drama ratio. Miller's was probably the next funniest character after Rudd's, and that was only because they were both playing two versions of the same character. It may be a personal thing, but if I go into a movie thinking that it's going to be a comedy, I tend to expect a fairly high number of jokes, and as a result I'm sometimes let down by dramedies. But once in a while, they shoot up to my top three, like Little Miss Sunshine. Our Idiot Brother wasn't bad, but it's no Little Miss Sunshine.

Recommendation
I love it when a bunch of cool people are all in the same movie (has anyone ever made a "top 10 ensemble casts" list? Maybe I should get on that someday), so on some level I probably would've enjoyed this movie no matter what. If it were done with unknown actors it probably would be almost completely mundane, but it has a little humour and a little heart, and that's not too shabby.

Funny People

Impressions before seeing it
I like Judd Apatow, and I heard this one was good, but more dramatic than funny.

How was it?
What I enjoyed about Knocked Up and The 40 Year-Old Virgin was the scenes involving the guys just goofing around with each other. I think this is what Funny People lacks. I mean Ira (Rogen) has his roommates that are sort of his friends, but they kind of hate each other so we don't really see them having fun. Most of the humour in this movie comes from the actual standup comedy, which may be Apatow's excuse for having the rest of the movie be almost a drama. Well, actually, the other part I found amusing was George Simmons' (Sandler) filmography, which consists of a bunch of really bad, gimmicky family comedies that would not be the least bit funny if they were real movies, but are hilarious when used in that ironic way as movies within movies parodying real movies that are actually that bad or worse. If you look it up online, you can find fake posters for every movie on George's resume that were used for viral marketing. I imagine they're on the DVD as well, but I watched Funny People on TV so I wouldn't know.

My guess is that the role of George was written specifically for Adam Sandler, not only because he is a friend of Apatow's, but because the character basically is Adam Sandler, albeit perhaps a sadder, lonelier version of him, and a version whose career is worse because where George is nothing but low-brow comedies, Sandler at least has some respectable dramatic performances like Spanglish and Punch-Drunk Love. This gives the movie an interesting meta undertone and makes me wonder whether Sandler ever feels ashamed of his career or burdened by his fame. Anyway, while it does have its funny parts, Funny People is more dramatic than it probably should be coming from Judd Apatow, and I would say longer than it should be, but I just realized that many Apatow films hover around the two hour mark so it's not unusual, though this one verges on two and a half. There was a lot of relationship drama that took a while to get wrapped up.

Recommendation
If you're going for laughs, pick another Apatow movie. Not that it's entirely unfunny, it's just so lengthy and full of drama that after it's over, your recollection of it is that it was a drama. In fact, it might be accurate to say that it is a drama about comedy. If you have any interest in a behind the scenes look at comedy-writing or fame, though, this might be worth a look for you. I did like the movie, thanks to the talented cast, but yes, it could have been shorter and funnier.

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.

Paper Man

Impressions before seeing it
I thought it was interesting when it said it was about a writer with an imaginary friend, so I grabbed it during Amazon's Black Friday sale.

How was it?
Paper Man has some weirdness to it, but not in an off-putting way. It's sort of a Lost in Translation-type story about a middle-aged man (Jeff Daniels) bonding with a young woman (Emma Stone) over their mutual outsider aimlessness. I can only name a handful of movies that are about imaginary friends, but I'm not sure if this one even qualifies for that list because I felt it was more about the budding friendship between two people with issues. Or at least that's what I cared about most while watching this. Captain Excellent (Ryan Reynolds) is there, and he occasionally helps Richard with advice and/or moral support, but I don't feel that this movie would have lost much if he had been left out.

I really like watching characters just being friends on camera - when they're likable characters, at least - and Daniels and Stone turn in strong enough performances to have the required charming chemistry, so I had a good time. However, the biggest strike against Paper Man is that I found it largely predictable. I had already figured out the film's biggest reveal fairly early (at least I assume it was supposed to be a surprise when the reveal happened), and there were other things that I expected would happen, that did. So what I will say is this: on a story level, this movie is disappointing, but on a character (and acting) level, it is satisfying, and sometimes that's good enough.

Recommendation
Worth checking out if you, too, are into friendship movies, but maybe watch Lost in Translation first, because it is a better version of this movie.