Friday, April 27, 2007

Scranton Area Paper Company, Dunder Mifflin Apologizes To Valued Client; Some Companies Still Know How Business Is Done

Tons of TV talk because Thursday is the greatest TV day in the world.

The Office: So much hilarity tonight. I had to watch it a second time just to catch everything (like I need a reason to rewatch the episode). The show had wonderful bookends with Jim and Dwight doing fantastic impressions of one another. Then we got into the main plot of the obscene watermark, which was even more obsence than I envisioned it being. Creed got to play a large role in everything and of course, was his usual creepy self throughout the day's events. Also great was Kelly teaching the accountants how to handle PR and their pathetic attempts. Kevin was so awesome with both his Australian accent and then his digs on Angela later on. Michael's apology video was typical Michael, which we've come to love and enjoy. About the only thing that fell flat for me was the Jim and Andy, excuse me Drew, subplot. But overall, another gem from the Dunder Mifflin crew.

My Name is Earl: Tonight's episode was a perfect example of what a great show it can be. It does the best job of blending sweet, wholesome stories with the occassion bizarre or raunchy humor. I loved seeing Earl's quest for his GED and getting a chance to be on the other side of the desk to see what he was like when he was in high school. Being a teacher, the whole storyline struck a chord with me and I can relate. The music choices for the episode were also top notch. Nice job who ever decided to include "Lean On Me" at the point when Earl was seemingly getting through to a student and "Another One Bites the Dust" during the teachers' revenge sequence. This show works perfect in the 8:00 slot because it's a good warm-up show for the rest of the night.

30 Rock: A bit of a disappointment, especially because it was the season finale. After doing such a great job the past weeks introducing all of these interesting storylines, they tried bringing closure to all of them here and didn't properly do any of them justice. I wonder if they were really worried about not getting picked up for a second season and felt they couldn't leave anything open-ended. Also, I wasn't enamored with Sean Hayes as Kenneth's cousin. I've never cared for his work and I really didn't think he added much here. I think the highlights of the night were the return of Dr. Spaceman (you gotta love Parnell) and Kenneth using Liz' "by the hammer of Thor" exclamation. Sad to see the season end on a downer, but I know they'll be back in rare form next season. That is, unless Alec Baldwin leaves. Then the show could be in trouble.

Survivor: Not as strong of an episode as last week, but still a marked improvement over the beginning of the season. Mookie and Alex looting through YauMan's bag was a pretty shady move, but I'm glad to see that they didn't benefit from it. Who knows, this reveal may play a role down the line, as Yau said, but I don't think it's going to be too consequential. I mean, it's not like it wouldn't have been too hard to figure out anyways. The reward challenge was basically a retread of previous challenges. I'm torn on the immunity challenge though. On one hand it was a glorified game of Battleship, but seeing Probst use the pryo machine was cool. There's always that "luck" immunity challenge every year and depending on who wins it, it's either viewed as great or lousy. Thankfully Stacy won it here, which allowed things to pretty much stay at the status quo. Looks like Alex will try and stir up more shit next week, but I have a feeling it won't do him any good.

CSI: What is it with shows doing non-traditional episodes this week. First, we had the overly depressing episode of House. Now we get this rather jokey episode of CSI. It wasn't a bad episode, it's just not their forte and whenever they step out of their safety zone, they run into trouble. I will say that the idea of a guy receiving several death blows of various kinds before actually dying is intriguing. Unfortunately the way they played it out, the audience got onto the joke after the first two failed confessions and then it just because a waiting game until the actual C.O.D. was revealed. As I said with House, shows like this are fine on rare occasions, they just better not make a habit of doing them.

Odds and ends: Just a couple of quick notes. What was up with a mother and daughter getting called down to contestant's row today on Price is Right. Bob finally got one of his infamous "historic moments" right. Two family members on one show doesn't seem fair. Thankfully only of of them got up on stage. Also, I finally saw the new episode of Mythbusters about ninja myths. While the show's concept is neat and I'm sure the crew had a lot of fun doing them, the episode was rather wasteful. I highly doubt that anyone believe that any of those myths were going to turn out to be true. I will admit Jamie's "water" at the end of the show was pretty sweet. I've got to make me some of that.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I haven't watched Thursday TV yet. I look forward to responding, though I've admitted to myself I'll be watching Earl and Office on DVD whenever those arrive in stores.

- Peace