Spartacus Power Rankings, Vol. 5

Spartacus: War of the Damned, Episode 5 - "Blood Brothers"

TV Obituaries, Vol. 2: February 2013

Spoilers follow for Justified, Nashville, Revenge, Scandal, Spartacus, The Vampire Diaries and The Walking Dead.

Spartacus Power Rankings, Vol. 4

Spartacus: War of the Damned, Episode 4 - "Decimation"

Parks and Recreation forces sugar and Jamm down our throats, demands we like it

Season 5 Episode 14 - "Leslie and Ben"

If the show realizing it didn't need to write Leslie Knope as a female Michael Scott was the thing that salvaged Parks and Recreation in season 2 then propelled it to greatness in season 3, its writers falling completely, desperately, pathetically in love with her and making her into a flawless living saint is the thing that caused things to get a little stale in season 4 and now actively rotten throughout much of season 5. It's the difference between loving someone and building a shrine to them. One's nice. One's weird.

But it's done, and a show that was once about likable bureaucratic underdogs scraping by in life has somehow become the chronicle of Leslie Knope fighting evil and saving the goddamn world. And in that spirit, "Leslie and Ben" felt like the logical climax to a show that has completely bought into its own hype, which is no more apparent than in what this episode does with perpetually awful villain Councilman Jamm.

Now, Jamm ain't Parks' first antagonist. Leslie has tangled with the likes of Joan Callamezzo and Bobby Newport before, but the show always made it clear these people had lives and careers and goals that existed entirely separate from her and the Parks department. (In fact, with Kathryn Hahn's great season 4 antagonist Jennifer Barkley, Parks gave the impression she didn't think about Leslie much at all, which may have ultimately cost her the election.) Even perpetually nasty right-wing social advocate Marcia Langman was at least theoretically driven by her interpretation of Christian values.

But now we have Councilman Jamm, a character who exists entirely to try and thwart Leslie Knope's unfathomable, heaven-sent goodness. Trying to stop her every benevolent act and bring evil to Pawnee seems to be his only meaning, only goal, only purpose in life (and of course we know everything he supports is evil on account of it not matching the perfect Leslie's agenda). It feels like Parks and Rec has manifested a critic of itself and put him in Pawnee to be defeated every couple weeks, sorta like what M. Night Shyamalan did in Lady in the Water.

And never was this clearer than at Leslie and Ben's wedding when Jamm – who, by the way, entered the episode declaring through a megaphone that "PARKS ARE STUPID!" – ruined the wedding bellowing at Leslie that he would've gotten away with his evil plan to make lots of money if it weren't for her meddling, then literally started throwing stink bombs until Ron Swanson punched him out.

I was stunned. I couldn't believe it. Honestly, they took it this far – they really should have just taken the last couple steps and had Jamm actually shout "PARKS AND RECREATION SUCKS!", then had the wedding crowd burst into spontaneous applause upon Ron decking him. You're 90% of the way there, Parks, just take it home.

But it's fine: Evil is defeated, Leslie and Ben make it back to the Parks office and recite their very generically "TV emotional" vows to each other (set to a cheesy montage of black and white flashbacks of their relationship that had me cringing), and now they're married. I wasn't just blown away by Monica and Chandler's wedding in Friends season 7, but I definitely think it was a more accomplished episode of television than this.

What's weird is that this isn't the first surprise wedding Parks and Rec has done. In fact, the show's all-time best episode, season 3's brilliant "Andy and April's Fancy Party," was centered around more or less the same damn premise. But "Leslie and Ben" is very much the Spider-Man 3 to that episode's Spider-Man 2; not as funny, more cloying than sweet and smugly convinced of its own greatness where "Fancy Party" was warm and inviting. Mandatory and smelling of television where that episode felt surprising and vital.

It's worth capping this off by noting that the next episode, "Correspondents' Lunch," which immediately followed, got back to the business of being funny and actually did a pretty good job at it. But as NBC clearly regarded the wedding as the piece de resistance of Thursday evening, it's the one that goes under the microscope. Let's just hope Parks got the treacle out of its system and the show is more "Correspondents' Lunch" and less "Leslie and Ben" going forward.

Community settles into its new groove in a mostly enjoyable half hour

Season 4 Episode 3 - "Conventions of Space and Time"

Three episodes in and I feel I've essentially locked into nuCommunity's wavelength. And no, it's not a wavelength that grabs me nearly the same way the first three seasons did – but Dan Harmon's Community was, save Arrested Development, Friday Night Lights and the early seasons of Lost (shudder), probably the most fanatically, religiously obsessed I've ever been with a TV show, so holding it to that standard was a lost cause from the beginning.
Dan Harmon's Community thrummed with greatness and felt electric and alive and exciting like few other shows in history, expanding the canvas of TV comedy and walking a dangerous experimental tightrope with a cocky smile plastered across its face. David Guarascio and Moses Port's Community is a solid little sitcom. It's not the same. But it's not bad.
First things first, literally, with "Conventions of Space and Time": Loved the cold open. I don't have any profound investment in Troy and Britta as a couple, but everything about Britta's acrobatic escape from Troy's bedroom and looping back around to the apartment with ceiling-stashed donuts felt lively and fun in a way few sitcoms often do.
And everything after that with Abed and Troy and Britta and villain-of-the-week Toby was pretty amusing (though I understand how it could've been a nightmare for those sick of Inspector Spacetime). I especially enjoyed Abed's Winger speech impression, as Danny Pudi has always done hilarious imitations of his fellow cast members ("I like football, but also, I don't?"). And Britta's loving-yet-firm "I don't care about Inspector Spacetime" to Troy was a pretty good way for Community to wink at the show-within-the-show's obvious inanity while continuing to use it as its go-to geek franchise.
Now, as I mentioned when discussing "History 101" a couple weeks back, the replacement of Dan Harmon makes it very, very hard for me to emotionally invest in these characters the way I used to. (Which, mind you, is not the same thing as being unable to narratively or comedically invest in them.) Some might argue that's me letting behind-the-scenes drama color my perception of what's actually on the screen in front of me, and, hell, they may not be entirely wrong. But it is what it is, and what's this blog for if not being upfront about how I feel?
And this may be why Annie and Jeff's story, which seemed reverse-engineered around getting them together on the couch having a warm heart-to-heart at episode's end, was largely a miss for me, and may be the weakest non-Hunger Deans plot of the season thus far. It had a couple funny gags, but ultimately relied on touching a place in my heart that blackened and died the moment Dan Harmon was fired.

On the other hand, Pierce and Shirley's story, which I initially felt uncertain of, ended up proving worthwhile setup for the tag punchline with Abed's reaction to the American Inspector and his blonde, racket-wielding Constable. (And by the way, Community, if you ever do a "Save Our Bluths"-type episode satirizing the show's sagging ratings and don't have Quendra appear carrying a tennis racket, you done fucked up.)

So what we're left with is a sitcom that is no longer my favorite on television – that would now be Bob's Burgers – but still makes the top two or three and I wouldn't call any worse than, say, new Futurama, or Parks and Rec season 4, or some of the middle seasons of 30 Rock. It's no longer a work of auteur-driven brilliance. But it's got a great cast and a fun tone and a lot of color and still maybe my favorite sitcom musical score of all time from Ludwig Goransson. And that's that, so, barring anything else I just have to talk about right then, this will probably be the last time I check in on Community for a couple months. E Pluribus Anus.

The Walking Dead Indulges Its Worst (And a Few of Its Best) Instincts

Season 3 Episode 10 - "Home"


The Walking Dead might be the most maddeningly inconsistent show in television history.

I've gone over the bizarre up-and-down relationship I've had with this show in the past, but just to recap: The pilot was really quite excellent, arguably the best TV pilot of 2010 (give or take a Boardwalk Empire). The rest of the first season ranged from ok to good until an unimpressive and anticlimactic season finale. The second season was, outside of its premiere and final two episodes, largely a dreadful bore that made me feel like a sucker for having ever said or thought anything good about the show. The episode where they pull the fat zombie from the well is a very real contender for a list of the worst hours of television I sat through in 2011. Like, after it was over, I was holding my head, going "This is flat-out fucking terrible. How could I have ever deemed this show good?"

Then season three somewhat shockingly reclaimed a level of no-qualifications-needed watchability, most notably in its exciting premiere and especially its blood-pumping, blood-gushing, tragic and awesome fourth hour, "Killer Within," an episode I went so far as designating one of my favorite of 2012.

And now, just six episodes later, I'm once again finding the bulk of the hour occupied by rolling my eyes, sighing, and checking my phone... until those final ten minutes, that is.

Spartacus Power Rankings, Vol. 3

Spartacus: War of the Damned, Episode 3 - "Men of Honor"

Community Is Community, But Also, It's Not?

Season 4 Episode 1 - "History 101"

I need help reacting to something.

I find myself dizzyingly mixed on Community's fourth season premiere, "History 101." It's not that I didn't laugh a number of times. It's not that I didn't find the episode's final act clever, especially the "Aha!" moment where it becomes clear that we're watching an Inception parody. It's not that I didn't find it far more memorable than the blandly pleasant oatmeal Parks and Recreation has decomposed into. Hell, if any other live-action sitcom mixed styles and mediums and genres like "History 101" in a single episode, I'd be damn impressed.

But without Dan Harmon, I'm still not sure it's Community.

Let me back up: Community was the best sitcom and one of the overall best shows of the last half-decade for two key reasons. The first, sexiest, most discussed reason was Harmon's willingness to experiment, commit to weirdness for whole episodes at a time, play with presentation and format and dive head-first into full-bore parodies of genres or of specific films or TV shows. And this yielded brilliance. If you know Community, you know the episodes. Action movies, Westerns, claymation, Glee, Goodfellas, Law & Order, My Dinner With Andre, classic video games, documentaries, Ken Burns, heists, zombies, multiple timelines, and bottle episodes were all subject to the Greendale treatment. Community had big brass balls and never played it safe.

But the second, less sexy, less discussed but equally important reason was its heart. I don't mean that in any cheesy, manufactured way – no one ever sang "Seasons of Love" in a nauseating attempt to make the audience cry (hear that, The Office?) – but it had rock-solid fundamentals in terms of characterization, relationships amidst the cast, and character development. Jeff, Britta, Troy, Abed, Annie, Shirley and Pierce were all funny, but they were never reduced to joke machines. (Chang sometimes was, admittedly.) Dan Harmon really, truly cared about the study group, and thus so did I. Jeff, Britta, and Abed in particular were largely sliced from his own personality.

(And the third reason, or what I'll call the second-and-a-half reason, is that oftentimes these two elements were mixed, with many of the biggest character developments occurring in the flashiest, most parodic episodes – Jeff and Britta consummating their relationship in "Modern Warfare," Troy becoming a man in "Epidemiology," Pierce's reckoning in "A Fistful of Paintballs," etc, though that's not immediately relevant to the rest of my point here.)

Community, at its best, managed to combine the ambition of Arrested Development and the committed weirdness of 30 Rock with the character development of The Office's prime years and the bighearted warmth of Parks and Recreation, all drenched in an extra coating of pop culture and seen through the eyes of a cocky prick protagonist with a heart of gold. Put simply, Community had great jokes, but it wasn't a show about jokes, or about references. It was about people.

And I'm not quite sure that's the case in "History 101."

Now, don't get me wrong, it's not like the episode just launches into Family Guy-style "Hey, you know this pop culture thing?" Its parodies of multi-camera sitcoms, Muppet Babies, and Inception are all rooted in Abed's fear of graduation and capped off with a Winger speech. But something does feel undeniably off without Dan Harmon's voice guiding it. The character Danny Pudi is playing looks like Abed, sounds like Abed, and walks and talks roughly like Abed, but I'm not quite sure it's Abed, just as I wasn't sure Lorelai was still Lorelai after Amy Sherman-Palladino left Gilmore Girls. Abed was so singularly driven by Harmon's own quirks and weirdnesses and obsessions that what's left is inevitably mimicry; cover artists doing their best to imitate the original.

But that isn't to say the journey through Abed's mind wasn't fairly clever and admirably weird. If anything I think that I would have liked to see this overstuffed episode – which in addition to Jeff and Abed's main stories also contained Troy and Britta's fountain date and Annie and Shirley's pranks, plus final scenes of the Dean moving next door to Jeff, a Chang cliffhanger and a tag – shed a couple minutes from its subplots and maybe insert another layer in between Abed's Happy Community College Show and Greendale Babies, to further reflect the many layers of Inception.

But on Jeff's side of things, there's no getting around the fact that every single Hunger Games reference made me cringe. Unlike Abed's stuff, those really were just references for the sake of references, the show gesticulating in the direction of the hot new thing going "This is what the kids like, right?!"

Now, if you ignore all that, Jeff's quest for seven red balls was mostly enjoyable, even if Jeff had the same disquieting not-quite-Jeffness about him as Abed's not-quite-Abedness. We got most of the show's recurring players in that half of the story, including some great Leonard gags and the welcome return of Annie Kim, who wants ice cream. But I would've vastly, vastly preferred the athletic competition sans Hunger Games references. (Granted, that's at least partially because I thought The Hunger Games was a pretty shitty movie and I'd rather not think about it when I don't have to, but still, I think less pop culture on Jeff's side of the narrative would have caused the pop culture-drenched Abed plot to pop more colorfully.)

I'm relieved that Community is still willing to be weird and do things that no other sitcom would even consider. Dan Harmon expanded the canvass, and the new showrunners have no plans to shrink it back down. "History 101" announced that assertively, and, as someone who likes my comedy clever and risky and doesn't watch most sitcoms because I find them bland as white rice, this pleases me.

But in the end, I really fucking wanted to see Harmon's vision for how these people's journeys turn out, and to hear them (especially Jeff and Abed, coincidentally this episode's two focal characters) speak Harmon's words. I suspect I'll still enjoy Community a lot on an episode-by-episode basis, but there's no getting around the fact that my ability to emotionally invest has been irreparably damaged by Harmon's dismissal, and even if Community runs six seasons and a movie, I don't think I'll ever get it back.

And so what we're left with is perhaps half the delicious vanilla-fudge swirl that was Community's mix of formal ambition and Dan Harmon's character work. And I am of course more than happy to eat that vanilla ice cream left behind (especially when 90-95% of other sitcoms on the air don't even reach the level of vanilla, most tasting a bit more of refuse and sewage), but after three seasons and 71 episodes of eating that vanilla-fudge, I do find something inescapably lacking.

I'm still looking forward to watching the study group's senior year. With 30 Rock ended, Louie off the air for 2013 and Parks and Rec not as good as it used to be, Community is still alpha dog of the sitcom pack, give or take a Bob's Burgers (and New Girl's last few episodes have been awfully good, though I'm still not sure I'd call them Community good.) But Community was my absolute #1 favorite show of 2012, and, were it not for Friday Night Lights, probably would've earned that distinction in 2011 and 2010 as well. And I don't think it can rise up to those heights again sans Harmon. That makes me quite sad.

Or, as Troy put it: "MY EMOTIONS! MY EMOTIONS!"

Spartacus Power Rankings, Vol. 2

Spartacus: War of the Damned, Episode 2 - "Wolves at the Gate"

Best TV Episodes, January 2013

10. Banshee, Season 1 Episode 3 – "Meet the New Boss"

Here's the first of three early 2013 TV surprises: Cinemax's new show, Banshee, a small-town sheriff drama with a little extra-violent zest, is pretty good! I call this surprising because Cinemax's first two attempts at real, non-porn series, Strike Back and Hunted, sucked (I know some TV critics are bafflingly trying to pretend Strike Back is some kind of awesome guilty pleasure, but no, it's just a crappy action procedural with boobs), but Banshee is both smarter and way more fun than either. I could have picked any of its three January episodes for this slot, but ultimately went with "Meet the New Boss" on account of one of the most kick-ass onscreen fights I've seen in some time.

9. Supernatural, Season 8 Episode 11 – "LARP and the Real Girl"

2013 TV surprise #2: While I've previously found Supernatural's cases of the week to be mere appetizers to the main course of its arc episodes, in season 8, that's been soundly reversed, with my favorite hours of the season so far – "Bitten," "Hunteri Heroici," and now "LARP and the Real Girl" – all being standalones. (Filler, even.) This episode brought back Felicia Day's Charlie Bradbury, maybe Supernatural's best still-living recurring character save Castiel, and found a spin on live-action fantasy roleplaying that was funny and silly without ever being mean or hurtful about it. Just a damn entertaining episode. Forty-two minutes of top-to-bottom enjoyment.

8. Switched at Birth, Season 2 Episode 4 – "Dressing for the Charade"

And finally, 2013 TV surprise #3: I'm pretty sure Switched at Birth has supplanted Bunheads as my favorite ABC Family show. I put Bunheads way higher on my best of 2012 list, and Switched at Birth's fall arc kind of sucked, so I didn't think that would ever happen. But here we are: Bunheads has settled into a fun but disposable groove, while Switched is continually bettering itself and deepening its exploration of clashing cultures and the odd, compelling family at its center. But don't let me make it sound too serious – this episode, involving a series of escalating farcical mishaps at an ill-advised dinner party, is some of the most purely fun TV of the year so far.

7. Bob's Burgers, Season 3 Episode 11 – "Nude Beach"

One of the million things that makes Bob's Burgers the best animated sitcom on TV right now (and, at least for my money, in years) is its unusually long memory for that genre. It isn't "serialized," per se, but a number seemingly one-off characters have popped up again, weeks or even months later, picking up their stories where they left off. And in that spirit, "Nude Beach" acted as a de facto part two to the very first episode of the entire series, "Human Flesh," with health inspector Hugo Habercore coming into conflict with Bob once again, only this time in the nude. It was both a hysterically funny half-hour and also surprisingly made Hugo, previously a fairly one-dimensional villain, into a rounded, sympathetic character. When it comes to having heart without ever getting treacly or misplacing the funny, Bob's Burgers reigns supreme.

6. Parenthood, Season 4 Episode 15 – "Because You're My Sister"

Many critics commented that Parenthood's fourth season finale almost stumbled over itself in a rush to wrap up every single loose plot thread into an excessively happy ending, just on the off chance this ends up being the series finale (though the ratings are high enough that probably won't happen, thank god). And they aren't wrong. But god damn if I didn't have the biggest, dopiest grin of pure joy on my face during the episode/season-ending montage all the same. This show. It makes me feel, man! It makes me feel!

5. 30 Rock, Season 7 Episodes 12 & 13 – "Hogcock!" & "Last Lunch"

I won't go too in-depth on 30 Rock's series finale, not because I don't have stuff to say but because approximately two million other online essays have already covered every facet imaginable. But I will say that from my live viewing of its October 11th, 2006 series premiere to Thursday's two-part series finale – which, by the way, makes this by some margin the longest-running series that I've followed in real time from its very beginning to its very end (shamefully, I think the runner-up on that account may be the four-season run of Heroes) – 30 Rock has never stopped being an immensely enjoyable sitcom, and this finale wrapped it up very nicely. But it's actually not my favorite 30 Rock episode(s) of the month!

4. Spartacus, Season 3 Episode 1 – "Enemies of Rome"

Already discussed this in sufficient depth. Spartacus is this high because it kicks unbelievable amounts of ass. End of story.

3. 30 Rock, Season 7 Episode 9 – "Game Over"

"Game Over" isn't just my favorite 30 Rock of the month, but my favorite of season 7 and a very real contender for my top ten of the series. In uniting Jack Donaghy's long-term nemeses Devon Banks and Kaylie Hooper in one final effort to have his job, this episode brought satisfying closure to stories that 30 Rock has been slow-cooking for nearly its entire run. The series of climactic reveals detailing how Jack actually played and outsmarted Devon and Kaylie all along was both hilarious and damn impressive plotting. Beyond all that, that's a series wrap on Leo Spaceman, suckers! Lenny Wosniak returns and embraces his true identity as Jan Foster! Megan Mullally cameo! An explosively great 22 minutes of comedy.

2. Parenthood, Season 4 Episode 13 – "Small Victories"

I wrote about this in some detail as well, but "Small Victories" was a fantastic, achingly emotional hour of Parenthood that took on the abortion issue by refusing to "take it on" at all, instead depicting something overly politicized as the deeply personal choice it is. And the heaviness of that story was balanced by a comedic B-plot about body odor and pubic hair that had me laughing embarrassingly loud. This show is great. Season 5, NBC? Please?

1. Fringe, Season 5 Episodes 12 & 13 – "Liberty" & "An Enemy of Fate"

The two-hour finale of one of the best sci-fi series ever, while tense, twisty and exciting, didn't miraculously leverage its modest budget into something resembling a summer blockbuster spectacular. The final, climactic action scene of the entire series ultimately boiled down to a shootout in a parking lot (with numerous sci-fi twists on its edges, of course, including but not limited to teleportation, telekinesis, and time travel).

But there are three important ways that the two-parter of "Liberty" and "An Enemy of Fate" nailed the landing. One, timing. This finale went down at exactly the right moment, after five fast-paced seasons of continually shifting status quos, character dynamics, parallel universes and alternate timelines. Fringe didn't die so fast as to be tragic ala Firefly, but it also never grew stale and didn't outstay its welcome for a second. Granted, this is more a comment on the entire series than these specific episodes, but still, it's going to be a big part of why I recommend Fringe in years to come.

Two, mythology. I don't want to go too into this right now, but needless to say Fringe is not Lost. Every plot thread was wrapped up coherently and satisfyingly, there aren't any egregious unanswered questions, and absolutely nothing was brushed aside as being magic. (I mean, obviously time travel is magic, but they explain it as science fiction with science fiction terminology. It's a subtle but really, really important distinction.)

And three and most importantly, emotion. The action in this episode may have been relatively TV modest, but on the emotional level it was an explosive, devastating, intensely moving two hours. The true climactic moment of Fringe was not an action beat but a single, four-word line of dialogue from Peter Bishop that completed a five-year character arc with stunning beauty that sent goosebumps up my arm.

And, as an added bonus, we now have a great series finale to point to when Lost fanboys still defending that show's abortion of an ending cough up the ludicrous argument that there was no satisfying way to wrap up a long-running genre serial with a complex mythology. (Angel and Avatar: The Last Airbender already soundly disproved this, but one more example is always welcome).

TV Obituaries, Vol. 1: January 2013

Pardon me if this sounds grim, but probably the best innovation of the contemporary television drama is that you're allowed to kill off major characters.

It's easy to take for granted in this post-Buffy, post-24 TV era of Game of Thrones and Boardwalk Empire and the like (hell, the new Fox show The Following was damn near marketed with the premise "Expect shocking deaths!" to victorious ratings), but this was a big, big innovation that really gave serialized drama the freedom to be bold and surprising and have real stakes in a way they just plain weren't allowed to for the first, oh, four decades of the medium's lifespan. Today a character death is simply one of the thousand tricks in the dramatic TV toolbox, not only accepted but a popular enough trope that fans can get restless and complain if a life-or-death-stakes serialized drama goes too long without one.

Thus my latest monthly feature, TV Obituaries. It's exactly what it sounds like: At the end of each month, I'll highlight prominent TV characters to kick the bucket since the last column. Obviously, even a TV nerd as pathetic as me doesn't watch everything, so I'm sure to miss major deaths here and there, but I'll aim for completion at least within the realm of shows I watch (and if people wish to let me know in comments who I've missed, I'll strongly consider adding them). Now let's get started with January 2013.

Spoilers follow for Fringe, Justified and Last Resort.

Spartacus Power Rankings, Vol. 1

Spartacus: War of the Damned, Episode 1 - "Enemies of Rome"

(As a means to share my thoughts on each installment of Spartacus: War of the Damned without having to write full reviews, I've decided to do weekly Spartacus Power Rankings, wherein I outline who blew it, who kicked ass, and whose cock rages on. Spoilers abound, of course.)

Spartacus Returns Big, Bold & Bloody, With a Great New Villain

Spartacus: War of the Damned, Episode 1 - "Enemies of Rome"

If there's one thing I feel a great certainty about, it's that Spartacus – now in its final season, subtitled War of the Damned – is the most underrated show on television.

I could go on and on about how this fucking mind-blowingly kick-ass show has continually refined and bettered itself since its January 2010 debut, making the vast swaths of TV critics who wrote it off after its very first, table-setting episode look increasingly stupid. I could go on and on about its surprising thematic depth in its exploration of freedom and choice and power, or about the fascinating moral questions it raises on a regular basis, or the way it marries an epic scope to intimate concerns in a way that should make damn near all other sweeping genre sagas envious, or its rich, multi-dimensional character development, or about how it can deliver a moment to make you bolt upright and go "HOLY SHIT!" like few other films or TV shows I've damn near ever seen.

I could also appeal to TV fans' love of Joss Whedon and point out that Spartacus boss Steven S. DeKnight honed his writing, producing and directing in various combinations on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Dollhouse over nine years (including writing Buffy's "Seeing Red," by far the most controversial hour of the Buffyverse), and it shows. Spartacus is unmistakably familiar in its season-spanning story arcs, building long-term villains to eventually be satisfyingly defeated, always maintaining tension and conflict among the heroes' makeshift family and never shying away from killing off a character (at a rate that would make famously kill-happy Whedon tremble in fear, I might add).

I could even take the basest road and go on and on about the pure, unadulterated visceral pleasure of its ultraviolence and ultragore and ultranudity, though, recalling much of the criticism I've read of the comparatively gentle, PG-rated Game of Thrones, the milquetoast fucking buzzkill whining about this aspect of Spartacus would probably make me wish I could hit undo and make critics unaware of its existence again.

But for the purposes of not making this introduction to my review of Spartacus' final season premiere, "Enemies of Rome," into a 5,000-word dissertation, I'll whittle the show's greatness down to one core guiding principle: It's the pacing, stupid.

Put simply, this sucker moves. I mean, it really, really moves. It had to hone itself in the first half of its first season, but what emerged was a show as lean, fat-free, and ready for action as its well-oiled cast. There isn't a speck of filler on it. The status quo changes so quickly, storylines are squared away (generally with massive bloodshed) hours before they can even begin to grow stale, climactic arc-ending episodes that any other serialized drama would have saved for their finale are tossed casually into the middle of seasons. This is aggressive, thrilling storytelling.

Let me put it this way: If Game of Thrones was run by Steven DeKnight and his Spartacus writers, everything from the pilot to Blackwater Bay all would have gone down in one season. If The Vampire Diaries was run by DeKnight and company, Klaus would have been dead a year and a half ago. If The Walking Dead was run by DeKnight and company, the season 2 farm arc would have spanned about ten minutes.

I cannot overstate how incredible it is to me that "Enemies of Rome" is only the 30th episode of Spartacus (and, were it not for the prequel, would only be its 24th episode!). Going by the usual standards that govern TV pacing, it feels like 150-200 episodes worth of incident has gone down. This show has established new status quos, burned them to the ground while slaughtering half the cast, rebuilt with brand new settings and status quos, and it's done so again and again. It's fucking dizzying, and breaks all the rules of television in the most spectacular way.

And then, about six months ago, Steven DeKnight made the most ballsy and badass creative decision yet: That War of the Damned, the show's third main season following Blood and Sand, Vengeance, and the prequel miniseries Gods of the Arena, would wrap up the story and conclude the series. I'd be lying if I said the decision didn't upset me, but doesn't burning bright, hot, and quickly reflect the spirit of the Third Serville War itself? Spartacus is the highest-rated show on Starz by orders of magnitude, and DeKnight could have kept this cash cow going ad infinitum, but he's a man with a fucking vision, and that's so rare and so awesome on television.

And that brings us to "Enemies of Rome."

A Plea to TV & Movie Writers: Stop Having Your Heroes Successfully Guess Passwords

On last night's episode of NBC's new soap Deception, protagonist Joanna – a detective going undercover as an assistant for the wealthy Bowers family to find out if one of them is guilty of murder – had a late night conversation with family patriarch Robert Bowers, whose computer she needs to get into. In this conversation, Robert sadly mused that when his rich prick oldest son Edward was a little boy he used to call him "Eddie Spaghetti." Joanna casually asked Robert how old Edward was when he called him that and Robert told her he was four.

Then Robert left the office and Joanna hopped on his computer and got access to his incredibly important secret files and showed off how smart she is by correctly guessing on her very first try Robert's password: Spaghetti4.

Yes, she's so smart she knew it wasn't "Eddiespaghetti4" or "Eddie_spaghetti4," but just "Spaghetti4." She's so fucking smart she even knew the "S" was supposed to be capitalized, and that there weren't any underscores or punctuation. That it wasn't "SPAGhetti__four," or "spaghetti4_!", or, being a computer containing life-shattering corporate secrets worth billions of dollars and possible murder convictions, you know, like, "kKg89H1_rb8," or something like that.

THIS IS SO FUCKING STUPID, TV AND MOVIE WRITERS. STOP DOING THIS.

Up to this point in my life, I have yet to ever see a single scene in a film or TV show where a character successfully guessed another character's computer password based on shallow details of their life or, worse, stuff in the same room as the computer (see the insanely fucking stupid password-guessing scene in Sherlock season 2 episode 2, "The Hounds of Baskerville," for a truly godawful example of the latter) that wasn't suspension-of-belief-shatteringly fucking moronic. Every single scene of this type sucks, sucks, sucks, sucks, fucking sucks out fucking loud.

Even if you ignored stuff like numbers and underscores and punctuation and alternating capitalization, these scenes would still be fucking stupid. How many people's passwords are really just the names of the most obvious things in their lives? I know mine aren't! Based on TV and movies, the passwords I use for like, posting on internet forums about TV shows – much less my bank account – are a million times more secure than the passwords guarding massive conspiracies, life-or-death stuff, even nuclear secrets.

So, here's my plea to all screenwriters: If you're writing a scene involving your heroes trying to get into someone's computer and not knowing the password, try having them find it written down somewhere, or bribe/coax/torture the information out of someone, or give the damn thing to a hacker, or see the computer's owner type it in, or dust for fucking fingerprints or just not be able to get into the computer at all or anything else other than guessing the password, and if you can't, then please delete your shitty screenplay and burn the manuscript.

(Note: The one exception to everything I've written above is in comedies when people get into their coworker's computer by correctly guessing that the password is "password," which is admittedly pretty funny. But it's been done in multiple shows, so don't do that either.)

The Big Bang Theory Spews Mean-Spirited Bile, Calls It Comedy

Season 6 Episode 13 - "The Bakersfield Expedition"

I don't want to spend too much time on this, because every second spent even thinking, much less writing about The Big Bang Theory is toxic to my soul, but its latest episode, "The Bakersfield Expedition," actually does merit a little discussion. Not over its comedic value – this is The Big Bang Theory, so it is of course 22 minutes of hacky generic lame-brained sitcom idiocy that shouldn't be funny to anyone with a drool-free chin – but over a question regarding the show's very soul:

Does The Big Bang Theory hate Leonard, Sheldon, Raj, Howard and their lifestyle?

It's an honest inquiry. While the show and the roaring studio audience were obviously mocking them for it, the characters did actually have a couple minutes of fun at the start of their journey making Star Trek poses on the side of the road, but that led to Leonard's car being stolen and after that the episode was an incredibly grim slog of the guys being insulted, dismissed, and humiliated for being nerds. There wasn't anything that even suggested warmth or compassion towards these people. It was just a grotesque spectacle of mockery scored to a cacophony of hateful laughter.

I think the iconic moment of this episode – in a way, a moment that sums of the spirit of the entire series – is when the guys, already beaten down, exhausted and depressed from their march down the highway, have their misery compounded by a jock motorist hurling a slushie onto Sheldon with a bullying cry of "NERDS!" It read to me as a very depressing moment of salt being rubbed into fresh wounds, but the studio audience disagreed, instead exploding with joyous laughter. The message is, "This is what you deserve, nerds."

Of course The Big Bang Theory isn't the only sitcom out there to lampoon nerds – Ben Wyatt's Game of Thrones and Star Trek fandom has been a subject of humor over on Parks and Recreation, ditto for Liz Lemon and Star Wars on 30 Rock, and like half of Community is sendups of geek culture via Abed Nadir. But the difference is really one of tone and presentation. Those shows make fun, sure, but there has never, to my knowledge, been an underlying implication that these people would be more complete, happy, self-actualized individuals if they abandoned their passions and conformed. The Big Bang Theory on the other hand absolutely seems to imply that we're looking at stunted, loathsome creatures worthy of scorn.

Now, you might point to the not-inaccurate fact that the episode seemed to end with a moment of impending victory for the guys as they were about to walk in on Penny and the girls (who spent the episode exploring the world of comic books, getting gawked at by the poorly-groomed comic store patrons who had of course never seen women before) discussing Thor and finally getting to enjoy their nerdery.

But if that deserves to be pointed out it also deserves to be pointed out that the episode cut off before we actually saw the guys inside their apartment enjoying even a moment of onscreen triumph or happiness. It's almost like Chuck Lorre and the Big Bang Theory team perceive the show's audience as being repulsed by the idea of seeing anything simultaneously nerdy and joyful. The show is exclusively interested in nerd misery.

In the end, I guess it doesn't matter, because The Big Bang Theory sucks and isn't funny one way or another. But "The Bakersfield Expedition" definitely suggested a hateful show with a fundamentally pessimistic worldview, which in a way makes it the perfect successor to the previous highest-rated sitcom on television, the equally mean-spirited Two and a Half Men.

Parenthood Sets the Bar Early for Great TV in 2013

Season 4 Episode 13 - "Small Victories"


Now that's what I'm talking about. This is the Parenthood I put at #4 on my top shows of 2012, the Parenthood that making-you-cry-with-television warlock Jason Katims has somehow stuffed full of pure Friday Night Lights-era magic, the Parenthood that leaves all other pure human dramas on TV (and yes, that includes your precious Mad Men, internet) bowing at the feet of its effortless superiority.

Yeah, I thought "Small Victories" was a damn good episode.

Bunheads Returns Still Light, Frothy and Enjoyable

Season 1 Episode 11 - "You Wanna See Something?"

Funny thing about this TV game is that someone creating one show you love often has little bearing on how you feel about their next show(s). The iconic example at the moment would probably be Aaron Sorkin's twin marks of shame, Studio 60 and The Newsroom (and now there are even some weak-kneed types retroactively pretending The West Wing and Sports Night weren't great, which is obviously dumb and wrong), but the list goes on and on. I don't like Armando Iannucci's Veep nearly as much as The Thick of It; Shawn Ryan's Last Resort is but a shadow of The Chicago Code, much less Terriers; plenty of Wire fanatics couldn't care less about Treme; and Mitch Hurwitz's quasi-remake of Arrested Development, my favorite work of fiction ever crafted by the hands of man, was the instantly forgettable Running Wilde.

So it's nice to know in these uncertain times that there are TV writers you can count on: Your Joss Whedons for genre serials, your Jason Katims for warmhearted family dramas, and your Amy Sherman-Palladinos for light dramedies about motormouthed, pop culture-referencing young women in charming small town settings. In its first three seasons Gilmore Girls was one of the most special shows on television, and Sherman-Palladino's new show Bunheads has picked up that baton admirably, merely swapping out inns and academia for ballet and more ballet. It could never be as good as Gilmore Girls without Lauren Graham or Stars Hollow, but it's a damn fine little program. After The Legend of Korra, it's my second-favorite show to both start in and make it alive out of 2012.

Like many season premieres (ok, this is technically season 1 episode 11, though with five months since the last episode and a substantial time jump in-Buniverse, it's a de facto season premiere), "You Wanna See Something?" is largely dedicated to undoing the seemingly show-shattering events of last season's finale. In this case that involved getting Las Vegas-showgirl-turned-small town-youth-dancing-instructor Michelle Simms back to said small town of Paradise after she was exiled for accidentally macing her students, and yes, like many season premiere retcon jobs, it played out with a slight sense of stale inevitability.

But I thought it was fitting and in-character that Michelle wasn't returned to Paradise through any realization of her own but by another character, in this case Fanny, reaching out to her. Really, after macing a dozen children, that's the only way it could be, and it felt at least 80% earned. Michelle's final moment with Sasha was also quite nice, and I enjoyed the way it sliced through the bullshity scene with Sasha's generic bad boy romantic interest. (Sorry, generic bad boy: I watched Jess Mariano, I knew Jess Mariano, Jess Mariano was a fictitious friend of mine. Generic bad boy, you're no Jess Mariano.)

The real magic in this episode lay not with Michelle but with the titular bunheads, something it shares with the show's second-best episode so far, "Movie Truck" (an episode which, I might add, was one of the very last cut from the rough draft of my best episodes of 2012, though I think that's made up for by the pilot almost cracking the top ten). Ginny and Melanie already feel like much more integrated parts of the ensemble than they ever did last year, and Boo's unwitting starring turn as the "it's time to dance!" girl was one of the infinitesimally few fictitious viral videos I've seen that had even a passing resemblance to a video that might actually go viral.

I also rather enjoyed the way "You Wanna See Something?" functioned as the mirror image of the series' pilot, which was all about Michelle in its first act and didn't bring in the rest of the main cast until deep into the episode, by featuring everyone except Michelle until thirteen minutes in. It was a clever way to subtly but strongly announce that the show, which began as the story of a single person, is now about Paradise itself, a town which now feels empty absent Michelle. It widened the show's thematic scope through just a slight change of narrative emphasis.

The ratings aren't especially great on Bunheads, making it a very real chopping block risk on not-shy-to-axe-underperformers ABC Family. But I know I for one enjoy the adventures of these teenage ballerinas more than a grown man who doesn't give a shit about ballet probably should, and I'll be bummed if the next seven episodes wind up the show's swan song. Bunheads is "chill the fuck out" TV done right.

A Brief Tribute to Megan Ganz

On Wednesday night, news hit that my favorite currently employed TV comedy writer, Megan Ganz, is departing Community for the infinitely greener ratings pastures of Modern Family.
Now, following the losses of Dan Harmon, Chris McKenna, Joe Russo, Anthony Russo, Neil Goldman, Garrett Donovan, and most recently Chevy Chase, this definitely feels like yet another death knell for the already-bleeding series. And yes, like many Communists, my initial reaction was one of "NOOO!!" But honestly, there's no lack of doom and gloom out there, so I'd rather take the opposite approach and whip up a quick tribute to Megan's work on four of the finest sitcom episodes of the last decade.
Her first script, season 2 episode 8, "Cooperative Calligraphy," is a concept episode of both the simplest and arguably most horrifying kind for a TV writer (much less a brand new one): The bottle episode. The group is stuck in the study room looking for Annie's pen, and from that point forward the episode is driven by twenty minutes of nonstop dialogue, maybe the series' purest writer's showcase to date (save Harmon's script for the pilot having to set up all the characters).
And it's a masterpiece. For real. There's so much energy and emotion to it, it's so thunderously paced and exciting with so little outward action, it's so funny, and it does such an amazingly good job of balancing big jokes and moments and reveals for every one of the Greendale Seven. The reveal and explanation of Abed's menstrual calendar is as good of an uproarious "Oh shit!" moment as I've seen a sitcom pull off in years. Everything about the episode is fantastic, and it's all there on the page.
Abed: "Ok, if I could just take this time to share a few words of sarcasm with whoever it is that took this pen. I want to say thank you for doing this to me. For a while I thought I'd have to suffer through a puppy parade, but I much prefer being entombed alive in a mausoleum of feelings I can neither understand nor reciprocate. So whoever you are, can I get you anything? Ice cream? Best friend medal? Anything? Mm-mm? Ok, sarcasm over. You're last up, Shirley. Dump your comedically huge bag and end this."
Megan's next two episodes, season 2 episode 16, "Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking," and season 3 episode 8, "Documentary Filmmaking: Redux," are notable not only for being among the best TV episodes of 2011 but also because they're two episodes that aired only seven months apart with what outwardly seems like the same gimmick, yet they feel so different.
The former, via Abed's painfully sharp skewering of the "explaining things to the camera" crutch, is mostly a sendup of The Office and Parks and Rec and, ironically, Modern Family (and is also, between Firefly and Reading Rainbow, an incredible episode for Troy, and Britta and Jeff's "dumb gay dad" exchange is an all-timer). Meanwhile, the escalating derangement of the Dean's film project in the latter makes it a clear Hearts of Darkness parody, with The Office barely coming to mind at all. This is smart, controlled, hyper-specific pop culture riffing of a caliber other series with their throwaway references just can't even dream of.
Both episodes are also alike in the way that they root all their goofiness and pop culture in meatier character deconstruction than any non-Community sitcom out there has any real interest in. "Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking" is the best episode of the "Evil Pierce" saga after "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons," and actually surpasses that episode in the way it examines the why of Pierce's newfound evilness via his increasing isolation from the study group. And "Redux" is just a delicious examination of Dean Pelton's ambitions.
And finally, Megan's fourth and most recent episode, the Law & Order parody "Basic Lupine Urology" (which I recently put at #17 on my best TV episodes of 2012 list), is, along with the Glee parody "Regional Holiday Music," one of Community's two episodes that are just start-to-finish full-bore parodies of other TV shows, and it's terrific fun. In fact, I think it probably qualifies as my favorite Law & Order episode of all time.
Every second is flawless spoofing, from the initial discovery of the "crime" scene to the early onscreen planting of the real culprit to the good cop/bad cop routine to Leslie Hendrix as the medical examiner to a gratuitous chase scene to the lawyer's closing arguments to the final surprising "tragic" note the episode ends on. It's the shallowest of Megan's four episodes, but it's 22 minutes packed to the brim with pop culture perfection.
And in a way those four episodes show an arc of mastery of every facet of what Community is: Ganz started with a totally character and dialogue-centric episode that's as light on pop culture as post-season 1 Community gets. Then she moved on to two episodes that balance a roughly even mix of pop culture riffing and character analysis of Pierce and the Dean. Then finally she capped off her initial run with a colorful, straight-up, just-for-fun TV parody. And all four are perfect 'A' episodes. It's one of the highest quality averages for any TV writer I can think of in any genre, drama, sitcom, cartoon, whatever.
Now, I'm gonna level here: I have no intention of watching Modern Family, Ganz or no. It's awesome that she got a job on the second highest-rated comedy on television, but it's just not my thing. But thankfully, all of Community season 4 is already in the can and Megan worked on it start to finish (she wrote the season finale, in fact). I may be in a state of perpetual dread about what the show's post-Harmon year(s?) will look like, but I'm also really excited to see the final act of Ganz's Greendale career. Bring on October 19th February 7th!

Retro Review: Community, Season 2 Episode 12 - "Asian Population Studies"

(I'm still a little burned out from writing my top fifty list, so instead of a new TV episode review I'm gonna chill out and post a review I wrote a while back for the Community message board on The A.V. Club, where I post under the screenname Eolith. The review includes "Stray Observations" and "Commentary Commentary" categories that aren't part of my regular routine but I did to fit into the board's review style guide, so don't be alarmed. We'll return to our regularly scheduled weekly episode reviews and Wednesday essays/lists next week.)

"Asian Population Studies," the kickoff of the gang's fourth semester at Greendale, is never mentioned alongside "A Fistful of Paintballs"/"For a Few Paintballs More" or "Curriculum Unavailable" when discussing Community's spiritual sequel episodes, but maybe it should be. The episode too directly echoes the previous January midseason premiere "Investigative Journalism" to be entirely an accident, both centering around the study group debating the merits of adding an eighth soul to their merry band as they return from winter break. But rather than a celebrity guest spot, the two men applying for group membership this time around are established characters within the show's universe: Jeff's offputtingly perfect pottery rival Rich and former Spanish teacher Ben Chang.

Best TV Episodes, December 2012

(I'm still a little burned out from writing my top fifty list, so I'm gonna keep this month's best episodes feature short and sweet. Look for me to return to my usual excessive verbiage in a month's time.)

10. Fringe, Season 5 Episode 9 – "Black Blotter"

Just a few hours shy of its likely grim and apocalyptic endgame, Fringe reminded us of its sense of humor in a winking episode fueled largely by Walter Bishop tripping on acid and building to a climactic Monty Python-esque animation sequence.

9. Arrow, Season 1 Episode 9 – "Year's End"

With the introduction of what seems to be its debut season's "big bad," Arrow took shape and found narrative focus in its last installment of 2012.

8. Last Resort, Season 1 Episode 9 – "Cinderella Liberty"

After slipping a bit episode by episode following an impressive pilot, Shawn Ryan's (soon-to-be-finished) naval thriller finally got the blood pumping in this tense, climactic hour, revolving around a hostage crisis at sea.

7. Parenthood, Season 4 Episode 10 – "Trouble in Candyland"

While this episode's focus on a more straightforward "antagonist" (Pamela Adlon's Marlyse, trying to shut down the Braverman brothers' recording studio) was a slightly odd change of pace for Parenthood, it came to a heartwarming conclusion that earned a huge smile. The episode also provided another strong, angsty showcase for Matt Lauria.

6. Boardwalk Empire, Season 3 Episode 12 – "Margate Sands"

A flawed finale in certain ways, but one thing's for sure: Richard Harrow rescuing Tommy was fuckin' fantastic.

5. American Dad!, Season 8 Episode 6 – "Adventures in Hayleysitting"

The sequence of graphic ultraviolence ending this episode was one of the darkest, funniest things I saw in any sitcom – animated or no – all year long. One of the best Steve and Hayley stories of the entire series.

4. The Vampire Diaries, Season 4 Episode 9 – "O Come, All Ye Faithful"

Capping off a half-season that occasionally felt stagnant, the final ten minutes of The Vampire Diaries' midseason finale assertively, violently reminded us that Klaus is not a Spike-esque lovable antihero or a grumpy harmless cartoon villain, but a full-fledged murderous bad guy, and thank god. Outside of the third season finale it's the show's best 2012 episode.

3. Homeland, Season 2 Episode 12 – "The Choice"

Was Homeland's second season finale dumb? Yes. Was it entertaining? Hell yes.

2. Fringe, Season 5 Episode 10 – "Anomaly XB-6783746"

Fringe did an awesome job raising the stakes in its final episode of 2012 and the fourth-to-last episode of the series, moving the greater plot forward and making damn sure that we sufficiently hate ultimate villain Captain Windmark going into the final stretch.

1. Bob's Burgers, Season 3 Episode 7 – "Tina-Rannosaurus Wrecks"

Tina very slowly crashing Bob's car is one of the most staggeringly fucking funny things I've seen on television in I can't even tell you how long. The rest of the episode ruled too, but seriously, that car crash is easily one of the greatest television scenes of 2012. (Also, I assume the #1 slot on these monthly best episodes lists is going to be dominated by dramas – especially as we enter this uncertain, Dan Harmonless fourth season of Community – so I'm going to leap on every opportunity to put a sitcom in the top slot.)