Community is back – for real this time

Season 5 Episodes 1 & 2 – "Repilot" and "Introduction to Teaching"

Other than belonging to the same series, there's exactly one thing I see in common between Community's fourth and fifth season premieres, "History 101" and "Repilot": You can see the sweat on their brows. Some Community episodes have a relaxed, easygoing vibe to them – and plenty of entire sitcoms, including most of TV's highest-rated, are always relaxed and easygoing – but sometimes Community is working really, really hard, and both of these episodes fall in the latter category.

Difference is that in the fourth season premiere, with Dan Harmon in the wind, the new producers were working hard at proving Community was still Community by throwing as much of what they saw as "Community-type stuff" at the screen as possible: An extended Hunger Games spoof, an extended Inception spoof, an animated Muppet Babies spoof, a laugh track-scored multicamera sitcom spoof, and lots of Community recurring characters and catchphrases, all layered in on each other and crammed into 22 minutes. And whatever your stance on "History 101" – I neither hated nor loved it – no one can deny that Guarascio and Port were working incredibly hard to placate the fanbase and assure them that Community hadn't gone mainstream.

(Whether they were still working hard by the time "Advanced Introduction to Finality" rolled around is a whole different thing, and based on the evidence my theory would have to be "No.")

"Repilot" is also clearly the end result of dozens of rewrites, but otherwise exactly the opposite: A quasi-bottle episode set mostly around the study room table; one of the quietest, most down-to-earth, low-key and purely emotionally-driven of Community's 86 episodes to date. It has jokes, but they all stem from dialogue and character give or take a robot fight and table bursting aflame, and pop culture references, but no outright spoof (unless you count the perfectly-placed Zach Braff Scrubs voiceover narration at the end). Like Guarascio and Port, Dan Harmon is here to prove that Community is still Community, but rather than with wackiness, he's doing so through character and emotion – which ultimately proves superior.

Where all the effort comes in is right there in the title; in the repiloting. In introducing a whole new premise and status quo and new and surprisingly dark and despairing beginnings for these characters to relaunch from. The episode feels subdued, but under the surface there's a million engine parts cranking as the show bends over backwards to get the Greendale Seven Six home in 22 minutes without it being stupid as hell. And it would have been a real episode-killer for me and weak, uncompelling writing if the study group had returned to Greendale for no other reason than that they missed it and loved each other.

But that's why the lawsuit concept Harmon has come up with is great: Though Jeff Winger now loves these people, the lawsuit allows him to nevertheless again become the deceptive snake in the grass trying to get something from them he was way back in the show's original pilot. It tears at these people's bonds and threatens the school's very existence not with paintball war or zombies but with a piece of paper. In a word, stakes, something Harmon has always excelled at. So when the study group finally comes together and builds Table Mk II, it really means something, as Jeff, Britta, Troy, Annie, Abed and Shirley have made it through a gauntlet of real emotional darkness.

When you've accomplished that much in your plotting and character work and emotion, the fact that "Repilot" is also stuffed full of funny jokes and quotes and has a Pierce Hawthorne cameo is just kinda icing on the cake. It's not quite season 2's "Anthropology 101" (for my money, damn near the best season premiere for a live-action sitcom ever), but it's a damn good episode of Community.

Season 5's second outing, "Introduction to Teaching," also has a bit of work to do in its introduction of criminology professor Buzz Hickey, played by Breaking Bad's Jonathan Banks. And it does it well, establishing Buzz's intimidating exterior, uncertain/aspiring cartoonist interior and new place in the group quickly, efficiently and entertainingly, straight through to the simultaneously dark and goofily hilarious end tag. The fact that Banks proves an instantly great sitcom actor – something not necessarily true of every badass guest from dramatic cable TV Community has brought in – sure helps too.

But beyond that splash of laying the groundwork – certainly less intense than "Repilot" in that regard – "Introduction to Teaching" is Dan Harmon proving that he can still do a relaxed, easy-viewing half-hour about Greendale antics and classroom shenanigans and wacky teachers and pop culture discussion without any high concept or needing to spoof anything. It's totally in the spirit of season 1 episodes like "Beginner Pottery" and "Physical Education" or season 2's "Competitive Wine Tasting." And, after a near-complete lack of classroom antics in season 4 (the history class in "Alternative History of the German Invasion" and the physical education education in "Economics of Marine Biology" are all I can come up with, and neither of those stories were that great), it's a nice skin to see Community back in.

When Community draws to its end, neither "Repilot" or "Introduction to Teaching" are likely to top many people's best-of lists (though "Repilot" probably deserves to be high up on a most-important list), but I loved them all the same because the show's voice is back. The rhythms of the jokes and dialogue and editing are back. Jeff's cockiness and Abed's references feel like they used to again. Annie is once again a driven go-getter and not just Jeff's romantic interest. Without Dan Harmon, Community was an ice cream sundae minus the ice cream – the cherries and syrup and sprinkles and nuts may taste good, but they aren't why anyone ordered the damn thing. And with Community's feet back under it, I look forward to seeing what strange and compelling new ice cream flavors Harmon can show us next.

Odds and ends:

• One thing I'm not sure I liked? Shirley having lost her job, her husband, her kids and her dreams (and 166 episodes of Bones) in the space between seasons 4 and 5. I'm all for emotional stakes, but... christ. That is really, really dark. Like, that's genuinely upsetting stuff. Maybe it should just have been Shirley's Sandwiches failing?

• I'm curious to see if the story with the collapsing bridge and Marvin Humphries and the lawsuit against Greendale is over and done with or if it comes up again later this season. It does seem like kind of a big deal, and could serve as a way to tie the season together.

• I admired the cinematography here, with the moody, almost dramatic-television lighting of "Repilot" reflecting the character's emotional states and giving way to something brighter and cheerier in "Introduction to Teaching." (Also on the visual front, I liked the wide, long establishing shot of the entire campus after the credits in "Repilot." It was a breath of fresh air after the claustrophobic "Advanced Introduction to Finality.")

• For the record, Adaptation pushes me just over into the "good" column in the Nicolas Cage debate. Without that movie I'd probably be just as confused as Abed. Adaptation or no, nothing changes the fact that Knowing is one of the very worst movies I've seen in a theater in the last five years.

Favorite line: In "Repilot," Annie and Britta's exchange: "At least the drugs I sell don't get slurped out of my belly button!" "THAT'S ONLY ON TUMMY TUESDAYS!" In "Introduction to Teaching," Buzz Hickey to Leonard: "Go and get your earring, you piece of human garbage." However, my all-around favorite joke was not a line, but the visual gag of Table Mk II getting an F in birdhouse class.

Arrested Development Season 4, Episodes 13-15

(I'm going to be watching and reviewing three episodes at a time of Arrested Development. I've gone out of my way to avoid reading reviews of the new season or discussing it on blogs or forums, so these reviews are untainted by outside opinion. Also, fair warning, these aren't recaps or plot synopses. I'm assuming everyone reading has seen the episodes in question and will be launching right into analysis of each.)

Season 4, Episode 13 - "It Gets Better"

Starring Character: George Michael

For a couple of years, back when I first discovered Arrested Development in college, I'm pretty sure George Michael Bluth was my favorite television character of all time. I delighted to no end in his every awkward moment, and Michael Cera's comic delivery was phenomenally great for any actor of any age, let alone a teenage kid. (His delivery of "What, yeah, that's... fine. Ok, I guess. I don't care... stop." when Michael greets him in "S.O.B.s" remains one of the funniest lines that isn't really even a line in any sitcom ever, and that's all thanks to Cera.) So it's both meant as praise but also a little disappointing to report that George Michael's first season 4 spotlight, "It Gets Better," is... pretty good.

Like Maeby's spotlight in "Señoritis," where it was revealed that her Opie Award was just the final headshot to a dead career and that her life was a mess, the most notable narrative twist this episode pulls is the revelation that George Michael's seeming accomplishments – i.e. Fakeblock – are actually bullshit. There is no privacy software. Fakeblock is just a wood block app whose reputation spins out of control. And that was all a lot of fun (and rewarding for the longtime Arrested fan in how it plays off George Michael's woodblocking way back in the season 1 episode "Best Man for the Gob").

Where the greater story falters a bit is in George Michael's romance with Rebel, which the final third or so of the episode is dedicated to. Unlike, say, Maeby's dalliance with Perfecto, the show seems to be asking for a degree of actual emotional investment from us in this story, and I'm just not sure what's there justifies that. We already kinda did George Michael and Michael liking the same woman way back with Heather Graham in season 1, and all this just kind of seems like them trotting that story back out again, only this time spread over a whole season instead of a single episode and a lot less light on its feet.

But on the other hand I did really enjoy the alternate angles this episode gave us to Michael's story in "Flight of the Phoenix" and even Maeby's one episode ago. The way snatches of seemingly privacy-software-related conversation between George Michael and P-Hound back in the season premiere were revealed to have whole new woodblock-related meanings was wonderfully clever (and, speaking of P-Hound, I loved the Eduardo Saverin spoof with him at the end). I like everything that's here... I'm just not sure I like everything about where it's headed. But we'll get back to that when I discuss the season finale in just a minute.

Lastly, I have to give Netflix or Mitch Hurwitz or whoever wrote it credit for their technically-honest-but-wildly-dishonest episode synopsis: "At UC Irvine things get steamy when George Michael finds himself in a love triangle with his best friend Ray and his girlfriend Becky." That's such a bold, cheeky misrepresentation of "It Gets Better" that I have to wonder if it's a last-minute joke added to poke fun at HBO for their "Sam and Gilly meet an older gentleman" description for the Game of Thrones episode "Second Sons."

Arrested Development Season 4, Episodes 10-12

(I'm going to be watching and reviewing three episodes at a time of Arrested Development. I've gone out of my way to avoid reading reviews of the new season or discussing it on blogs or forums, so these reviews are untainted by outside opinion. Also, fair warning, these aren't recaps or plot synopses. I'm assuming everyone reading has seen the episodes in question and will be launching right into analysis of each.)

Season 4, Episode 10 - "Queen B."

Starring Character: Lucille

I'll say off the bat that Jessica Walter's performance as Lucille Bluth has been phenomenal from the moment she uttered "I don't care for Gob." in the pilot of Arrested Development and continues to be phenomenal straight through to season 4. All you have to do is look at her staring contest with Tobias in his theralist's office in this episode, where, without moving a muscle or seemingly doing much of anything, she's somehow being hysterically funny. It's a brilliant character and a brilliant performance.

But, all that said, I didn't like "Queen B." as much as I liked the last three episodes, and I have to wonder if part of that is because Lucille just isn't a character designed to be the protagonist. Her supreme vainness and heartlessness and awful mothering makes for an always-awesome supporting character in a sitcom, but as the lead for even one episode it feels a little like eating a handful of spices – or, keeping things on-theme here, of mustard and parmesan cheese. It'd be like if Olenna Tyrell was the main character for a full hour of Game of Thrones. I mean, fantastic character and all, but this is not where the action is, you know?

I did enjoy the first act of the episode a lot, and the intro to the episode as the intro to an episode of Real Asian Prison Housewives of the Orange County White Collar Prison System was a hilarious and clever way to mix up the show's rhythms (the sudden and committed stylistic change felt almost Community-esque, and given Dan Harmon's cameo in "Borderline Personalities" I suppose that may not be entirely coincidental). All of the first fifteen minutes or so with Lucille at the prison was a lot of fun, especially the sequence's climax as the Jade Dragon Triad tries to shank Lucille with a sharpened noodle, which she neutralizes by throwing water on it.

Everything after that, while amusing here and there (I already mentioned the great Lucille/Tobias interaction), didn't feel as fun or high-energy or surprising as recent episodes. Unlike the way other episodes have shone new light onto scenes and stories by showing them from different points of view, Lucille joining Tobias' Fantastic Four musical largely just felt like seeing the same stuff over again, nor did her dynamics with George or Oscar feel super-fresh (though I did enjoy the coining of the term "treason-adjacent"). I'm not sure I liked the return of Gene Parmesan much either, as it demolished Gene's status as the greatest single-episode sitcom character of all time.

The Lucille 2 cliffhanger perked me up, though. One of the bigger plot-related surprises about this season as a whole – other than the broke and destitute Michael Bluth we come back in on, anyway – might be what a giant role Lucille 2 has played throughout the whole thing. I mean, she's been in almost every single episode from "Flight of the Phoenix" through "Queen B."! (Though given the last moment of "Queen B.", who knows if we'll see her in the last three?) Given that she was only in ten episodes of the first three seasons put together, with her last appearance being halfway through season 2, this is a pretty major turnaround. Not bad, just kinda unexpected.

(I'm not sure how to work this into my main review, but speaking of Lucille 2, one thing that was pretty awful about the episode was the way she was greenscreened into the crab shack trial scene. That was uncomfortable and not good, and does Liza Minnelli in 20-fucking-13 really have such a busy schedule that they couldn't truck her up to set for a day? Weird.)

Arrested Development Season 4, Episodes 7-9

(I'm going to be watching and reviewing three episodes at a time of Arrested Development. I've gone out of my way to avoid reading reviews of the new season or discussing it on blogs or forums, so these reviews are untainted by outside opinion. Also, fair warning, these aren't recaps or plot synopses. I'm assuming everyone reading has seen the episodes in question and will be launching right into analysis of each.)

Season 4, Episode 7 - "Colony Collapse"

Starring Character: Gob

This is the first night of my three-at-a-time Arrested Development season 4 marathon that has satisfied both comedically and narratively top-to-bottom, and that was kicked off in strong fashion by "Colony Collapse," the best episode of the fourth season so far and the first to really start firing on every comedic cylinder from the word go. Everything that Will Arnett has done since Arrested Development – namely Running Wilde and especially Up All Night – has just cemented the fact that Gob Bluth was the character he was put on this earth to play, and in this episode he picks right up where he left off with Gob's cockiness and swagger and obliviousness and sudden swings of wild, extreme emotion like there was never seven years away.

Like the first George Sr. and Lindsay and Tobias episodes, "Colony Collapse" is pretty all over the place as it rushes and perhaps even stumbles forward in its hurry to tell Gob's story. But unlike those episodes I don't think it ever trips over its own feet, and maintains if not a narrative clarity at the very least a kind of emotional and character clarity.

A lot of that probably has to do with the grounding presence Ann Veal has on the episode's first twenty or so minutes ("Way to plant, Ann!"). I've become a pretty hardcore fan of Ann's actress Mae Whitman in recent years thanks to Parenthood (though Scott Pilgrim didn't hurt either), and it's awesome after how dynamic she is on Parenthood to see her slip effortlessly back into Ann's "plain" emotion set. Her nearly-a-minute-long "Ann" facial expression (I really can't think of how else to describe it) when Gob does his "Should-he-should-should-should-should, should-the-guy, should-the-guy, should-he-should-he-should-he, in the $32..." is easily one of Ann's best moments of the entire series, and kudos to Whitman for not breaking, because that couldn't have been easy.

Then we're off to the wedding trick illusion, which, like many a great Gob magic act, is ludicrously outsized and larger-than-life and a phenomenally crappy magic act (awards to Alan Tudyk for his delivery of "Well, I guess... we'll wait two weeks... and see if he's in there?"). And, maybe because it's transitioned into through a Steve Holt bit, I ended up not minding the episodes Lindsay-and-Marky Bark/Tobias-and-DeBrie-esque transition into a final act with Gob interacting largely with new characters. The roofie circle and whole limo-full-of-bees thing probably helped a lot too.

In terms of running jokes, the episode gave us a lot of what any Arrested fan could ask for: Michael not noticing Ann, Ann being given sudden, random nicknames ("Egg" and "Plant" return, and "Blank" is added to the mix), "STEVE HOLT!", "The Final Countdown," Gob boasting about the price of his clothes and even a little Tony Wonder cameo (where it's revealed what his headline on the cover of British gay magazine Attitude in "Flight of the Phoenix" was about, as he's since come out of the closet). It also puts in some work at building new running jokes, most notably in Gob's continued staring into the distance as the lyric "Hello darkness my old friend..."" from "The Sound of Silence" plays, which is immediately hilarious the very first time they do it and stays hilarious the entire episode.

Also, for reasons that I'm likely too dumb to articulate, the Gob/Michael model home scene in this episode felt less like a special crossover event than other multi-Bluth scenes this season and recaptured some of the looser and more playful vibe of what I hope for from family interactions in this series. Jason Bateman and Will Arnett always had some of the best comedic chemistry of anyone in this cast, and their interplay and wordplay is sharp and fun and witty ("My bees are dropping like flies and I need them to fly like bees."). The quick Gob/George Michael scene at the beginning of the episode was a lot of fun too, especially Michael Cera's first delivery of "...No." when Gob asks if they're good.

Really, except for the continued presence of the "SHOWSTEALER PRO TRIAL VERSION" joke, which I continue to find super-annoying, this episode really delivered. Turns out Gob makes a great leading man, which is a touch ironic because when I discussed Running Wilde (where Will Arnett basically played a poor man's Gob Bluth) a couple years ago, I said that it turns out Gob alone doesn't make for much of a series. Well, maybe not much of a series, but in this case definitely a hell of an episode.

Arrested Development Season 4, Episodes 4-6

(I'm going to be watching and reviewing three episodes at a time of Arrested Development. I've gone out of my way to avoid reading reviews of the new season or discussing it on blogs or forums, so these reviews are untainted by outside opinion. Also, fair warning, these aren't recaps or plot synopses. I'm assuming everyone reading has seen the episodes in question and will be launching right into analysis of each.)

Season 4, Episode 4 - "The B. Team"

Starring Character: Michael

"The B. Team," the tale of Michael Bluth joining Imagine Entertainment and going full Hollywood, is easily my favorite of the six episodes I've seen, for a number of reasons ranging from structure to character work to pure comedy. So let's just tackle these one at a time.

First, structure and storytelling. Perhaps alone among the six episodes I've watched, "The B. Team," despite technically being part of the same series of extended flashbacks as most all of this season so far, feels like it's actually telling a story rather than just providing exposition. A clear and simple-to-understand story but one that's nonetheless rife with potential for inter-Bluth interaction and mishaps galore as Michael is tasked with obtaining his family's signatures so Ron Howard can make the Bluth movie. Unlike the California-Mexico border wall and other stories this season that have me saying "Well, let's see where this is going...", this story is already going, entertaining from the moment it's introduced.

Second, character work. True, the episode is lighter on Michael interacting with Bluths than "Flight of the Phoenix" – just George Sr. at any length – but to make up for it is sort of fucking stuffed with guest stars both old (Ron Howard, Barry Zuckerkorn, Bob Loblaw, Lucille Austero, Warden Gentles, Andy Richter, and most welcomely of all Kitty Sanchez and Carl Weathers) and new (Conan O'Brien and Isla Fisher as new character Rebel Alley). Bob Loblaw lobs a law bomb, Carl Weathers is still cheap and Judy Greer simply explodes back into the role of Kitty, now working for Imagine and shouting and threatening and flashing up a storm without missing a beat.

It was also a lot of fun seeing Conan provide comedic backup to Andy rather than the other way around, and the final Conan scene in the "on the next Arrested Development" may be the best thing Andy Richter has yet done on the entire series of Arrested Development (and given how I love the season 3 episode "S.O.B.s" about as much as life itself, that's saying something).

Lastly, the episode, despite its biggest laugh (for my money, Ron Howard's insistence to Michael that it would be "a lot more fun" to actually see Michael's wife die in the Bluth film adaptation) not necessarily being bigger than the biggest laughs of the first three episodes, does a much better job at actually keeping its comedic momentum up from start to finish. A lot of this has to do with the barrage of guest stars I mentioned above, of course.

The one thing that makes me potentially step back and go "hmm..." is this new romantic interest for Michael in form of Rebel Alley, Ron Howard's daughter. I liked the spoof meet cute with the two, but I'm not sure how invested I am in them just yet. Still a way better romantic interest than Jessie the publicist from season 1, though, so we've cleared that bar at least.

Arrested Development Season 4, Episodes 1-3

(I'm going to be watching and reviewing three episodes at a time of Arrested Development. I've gone out of my way to avoid reading reviews of the new season or discussing it on blogs or forums, so these reviews are untainted by outside opinion. Also, fair warning, these aren't recaps or plot synopses. I'm assuming everyone reading has seen the episodes in question and will be launching right into analysis of each.)

Season 4, Episode 1 - "Flight of the Phoenix"
Starring Character: Michael

The thing that this new season of Arrested Development kind of reminds me of based on the first fifth of it is the 2011 film The Muppets. Not in its tone or the kinds of jokes it tells, but just in the sense of us revisiting a beloved ensemble after years away and finding that in the years since they've split apart and are alienated from each other, and then telling a story of (what I assume will be, anyway) them gradually coming back together.

I'm not gonna lie – watching Michael Bluth and company do new stuff for the first time after rewatching seasons 1-3 on an endless loop for seven years was weird, weird, weird (for another, future example of this phenomenon, come talk to me in December of 2015 when I watch Luke Skywalker do new stuff for the first time since before I was born in Star Wars Episode VII). But not bad weird. Indeed, I actually really loved that we reentered the story on this destitute, indebted, rock-bottom Michael Bluth, as it immediately established something that nearly all recent sitcoms (perhaps most egregiously Parks and Recreation season 5) have lacked: Stakes. I also loved the montage of the Sudden Valley housing development filling in, finally letting us see without having to use our imaginations the town the model home was always supposed to be a part of.

There are some definite downsides to the way they've chosen to tell this story largely in flashback, though, namely the fact that pretty huge stretches play out with nothing but Ron Howard's narration and visuals. Arrested Development, for as stupefyingly amazing as it was in its first three seasons, was indeed always a sitcom, with sitcom rhythms. This feels like something else. It doesn't have that A/B/C-plot structure, and very few scenes play out at any length for character interplay and comedy purposes rather than plot purposes. (Though, curiously but comfortably nostalgically, they did choose to stick with the cut-to-white act breaks, despite the fact that no one is going to be watching this with commercials.)

But I did like the episode a lot. It's my favorite of the three I've watched, and it's not hard to pinpoint why: Most of the gang is here! Michael spends most of the episode interacting with George Michael, and we also get lengthy scenes with Maeby and Gob and George Sr. and Lucille (with Buster, Lucille 2, Sally Sitwell and Barry Zuckerkorn all cameoing). Seeing the semi-flipped dynamic of Michael and George Michael is great, and there's surprising emotional stakes in the scene of Michael drawing the ballots; probably the most emotionally "real" Arrested Development has felt since the first half of season 1.

It's clear five minutes in that there's real storytelling at work here, and I respect and admire the hell out of that. It's just my hope that that can be balanced with laughs and quotable lines that measure up to even half of what the first three seasons gave us. Fingers crossed.

Least favorite gag: The "SHOWSTEALER PRO TRIAL VERSION" slashed across flashbacks to the first three seasons. I get it, they pirated their own show, haha. But in practice, this joke is 5% funny, 95% annoying after like, the second time, and we get it like a dozen times across these first three episodes. I'm reaalllly hoping this isn't something that extends straight through to episode 15.

Favorite gag: Probably Michael's "You ever even been on a plane, you piece of *bleep*?" to P-Hound. Arrested Development hasn't missed a beat with their hilarious comedic bleeping. Gob pinning down Michael and feeding him the forget-me-now also made me roar. "Stupid, forgetful Michael."

Fuck you, The Vampire Diaries

Season 4, Episode 23 - "Graduation"

Ok, so here's why I hated the fourth season finale of The Vampire Diaries, to the extent I'd almost call it a betrayal. I'll order these three reasons from least severe to the possibly unforgivable:

Tim's TV Talk Podcast, Episode 4: Hannibal Episode 6 ("Entree") Review

Here's a 13-minute podcast review of the sixth episode of Hannibal (or fifth, if you don't count episode 4, "Œuf," which was pulled in America). Hannibal spoilers up through this episode, of course. Bon appétit.

Tim's TV Talk Podcast, Episode 4: Hannibal Episode 6 ("Entree") Review

Awkward launches its third season with bizarre pro-life moralizing

Season 3 Episode 1 - "Cha-cha-cha-changes"


First off, because much of the rest of what I'm about to type might make it seem otherwise, I'll stress that I generally really enjoy MTV's high school sitcom Awkward. I'd go so far as to label it one of the ten best live-action comedies on television. It's funny and massively energetic, with stronger characterization and continuity than all but a handful of other sitcoms, and creator/showrunner Lauren Iungerich writes with TV's most charmingly and authentically youthful voice. It's a very good show.

But all that said, its (again, otherwise really funny, with an awesome guest starring turn from Anthony Michael Hall) third season premiere... got weird. You see, protagonist Jenna Hamilton has her a bit of a pregnancy scare. Which is a typical enough plot for television, that's not the weird part. But before the end of the episode when she and her mom get up the guts to look at the pregnancy test together – which is negative – the option of abortion (which is never mentioned by name, it being too ghastly to even say out loud, I guess?) is twice referred to as "choosing death," and when Jenna's mom tells Jenna that she'll support her decision, Jenna looks at her mother and says "There is no decision, mom," and that if she is pregnant she has to have the baby.

Perhaps the weirdest part is that nothing else about Awkward has ever struck me as being politically conservative in the least. It's completely sympathetic to its gay characters and totally apathetic about teen girls having and enjoying sex (hell, it may even be in favor of it), and the very next episode after this premiere had Jenna going on birth control, when all true Republicans know that birth control pills are but little pieces of Satan. But in this case, it, perhaps befitting the network of Teen Mom and 16 and Pregnant, leaned hard right.

It was jarring and pretty weird and it made me uncomfortable, and I'd be lying if I said that I don't now think about it at least for a second every time I think of the show. I still think Awkward is funny, plan to keep watching until it ends or is canceled, and I think almost every live-action sitcom could learn a thing or two from its insanely high energy and snappy pacing. But, on some small level, it may always be the show that suddenly started reciting a pro-life pamphlet at me.

Spartacus delivers one of the greatest series finales of all time

Spartacus: War of the Damned, Episode 10 - "Victory"


From day one, Spartacus defied the rules.

We all know the rules of television, even if we don't know we know them. For example, we know that arcs move slowly, with maybe one major change of status quo per season (having two means people will call you "fast-paced"). Spartacus said "That's okay, we'd like our show to move with ferocity and purpose and cataclysmically shatter the status quo about every two or three episodes," and did just that.

We know an "epic" battle by TV standards means about twenty guys on each side (or maybe fifty in the case of Game of Thrones' $12 million extravaganza "Blackwater"). Spartacus decided that wasn't good enough and that they'd like battles that rival those in Lord of the Rings or Braveheart and that, defying finances, logic and maybe even simple physics, they'd like to do them on a shoestring budget with more than one a season, and so it was.

We all know there's supposed to be a couple major character deaths in a TV season at most. Spartacus decided it would like to slaughter over half the cast every season, and slaughter they did.

We all know that a successful show – much less the highest-rated on an entire network, which Spartacus was – is supposed to run on and on until it's squeezed bone-dry and the fire in its belly is but embers. Spartacus decided three main seasons was just right (plus the prequel miniseries Gods of the Arena), because they'd like every season to be completely different from the others and for each to tell a whole and satisfying story with a thunderous climax that leaves you wanting more.

Spartacus excelled above where it was expected and frankly where it was allowed to from day one. Stuck on a third-tier premium cable channel, it said "Fuck it, this is an opportunity!" and became that channel's highest-rated show and flagship property. It attempted and powerfully pulled off a grand, sweeping war epic on a small budget with little star power. It never got 1% the respect it demanded, its passion and energy and sheer, intense visceral pleasure baffling TV critics used to thinking of cable dramas as being something dry and grim and antiheroic.

Where other shows added to or, in the ballsiest cases, bent the unwritten but unmistakably felt and omnipresent TV Drama Rulebook, Spartacus took that damn rulebook and fed it into a shredder.

Where other shows were content to tell stories, Spartacus seared a legend across our TV screens.

So perhaps the only course left for a show that lived to break the rules – a show that lived to shatter expectations and deliver one crazy "HOLY SHIT!" twist after another after another – to break the rules one final time was by breaking its own rules and choosing to more or less align with history in its final hour. For a show that constantly went directions I couldn't have predicted, it's interesting that Spartacus pretty much ends how I figured it would since the beginning of War of the Damned, if not since the beginning of the series.

And this predictable – even predestined – hour was one of the most stirring, marvelous, thrilling, emotional, heart-pounding and heartrending episodes of television I've ever witnessed and easily one of the two or three best series finales in television history.

In this sense it reminds me of Friday Night Lights' "Always," the best series finale ever (and perhaps the only one I've seen that trumps "Victory"), which put an abrupt halt to the plot-heavy nature of the episodes leading into it and let pure, stirring emotion carry it home. Twists are awesome, and Spartacus had dozens, but "Victory" cements the idea that a truly great series finale doesn't need a mind-bending twist and perhaps even actively shouldn't have one. When you reach the end of a terrific story, what counts isn't exploding expectations, but taking it home. And Spartacus took it home masterfully, bloodily and beautifully.

Community season 4 produces its first bona fide great episode

Season 4 Episode 8 - "Herstory of Dance"

Watching the sweet, simple and almost shockingly enjoyable eighth episode of nuCommunity – not only easily the best of Guarascio and Port's Community but one I'd rank over a solid dozen or so episodes of Dan Harmon's Community – it occurred to me that the best thing Community's new guard can do (or rather should have done, since this whole season's been in the can for months) is stick to the sitcom basics. Be funny, be nice, draw story from character. It's simple, and, as "Herstory of Dance" shows, it works.

Now, don't get me wrong – I'm in no way advocating that Community morph itself into According to Jim. Or, to be less hyperbolic, even into Scrubs or Ben and Kate. Community should absolutely and always maintain its pop culture-infused tone and vibe, something that's been with it since Abed launched into a Breakfast Club monologue fifteen minutes into the pilot, and "Herstory of Dance" absolutely does. Abed's story, where he's not aggrieved but delighted to find himself reenacting a classic trope when he finds himself on two dates at once, is pure sitcom self-commentary, and Britta's whole Sophie B. Hawkins story is basically one long music reference.

But what made it work in a way that surpassed the Doctor Who/Inspector Spacetime jokes from "Conventions of Space and Time" or the Shawshank jokes from "Cooperative Escapism in Familial Relations" or the Changnesia documentary from "Advanced Documentary Filmmaking" is just how strongly every inch of it was rooted in character. Abed's internal fight between maturing and falling back on his love of sitcom tropes really let both the character work and pop culture references roll, and Britta's stubborn refusal to acknowledge that she'd accidentally said "Sophie B. Hawkins" rather than "Susan B. Anthony" even as things began to get out of hand was such a great distillation of Britta down to her sweet, clumsy and well-meaning if overly out-to-prove-something best.

Props should also go to Brie Larson's guest spot as Abed's new love interest Rachel. She was great in Scott Pilgrim and 21 Jump Street and I've heard good things about her in the upcoming dramas The Spectacular Now and Short Term 12, and in this episode she demonstrated within seconds the immediate, can't-take-your-eyes-off-her charisma of a rapidly rising movie star. In her hands, Rachel was a real character as opposed to walking romcom trope.

Also, can I just say that this episode's deeply warm, humane ending was just a couple minutes of great, great television? Community has of course always been a show of happy endings. In sharp contrast to, say, Arrested Development or It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, one of its signature elements is that it pretty much always brings episodes to some form of sweet, victorious resolution for our heroes, and in the few cases where it doesn't ("For a Few Paintballs More," "Digital Exploration of Interior Design") it's pretty much always part of the plot and continued on into the next episode, which then resolves last's episode's downer ending sweetly.

But even in that context, the final minutes of "Herstory of Dance," where Abed reconnects with Rachel and especially where Jeff sends his text redefining what it means to "Britta" it, evoked shades of some of the show's all-time best episode endings and were up there with bits of Bunheads and Parenthood as being among the most sincere, heartfelt and genuine TV of 2013. They weren't really "funny," per se, but when TV makes you feel so unreservedly good, that's ok. Tears damn near came to my eyes.

But there were some solid laughs, too, from the Dean's black and white costume to Troy's fake mustache and longing for wacky ice to YouTube celebrity Wendy McColm as Abed's manic pixie dream girl date. Granted, it wasn't as nearly funny as Community as its Dungeons-&-Dragoning, guard-chloroforming, insane-asylum-cutawaying very best, but not many things ever committed to screen are, so that's a ludicrous standard to hold it to. It was a damn funny episode that made me laugh a lot, and, even more importantly, made me feel content and happy, and I'd say that gets the job done.

Kudos to Gillian Jacobs and Danny Pudi and Brie Larson, kudos to episode writer Jack Kukoda (a former scribe for The Onion's videos, new to Community season 4) and kudos to the new guard for producing what is, ignoring Bob's Burgers and the ending stretch of 30 Rock, 2013's best half-hour of TV comedy to date.

The Walking Dead wimps out spectacularly in its wet fart of a finale

Season 3 Episode 16 - "Welcome to the Tombs"

At one point, very early on before they got their second season's budget hiked by HBO, the producers of Game of Thrones discussed having the Battle of the Blackwater take place offscreen, seen briefly through Sansa's viewpoint out a window far away. But budget issues were sorted, money was allocated, and we got the outstanding episode "Blackwater," replete with wildfire explosion, ships on fire, clashing armies, a battering ram and fighting on the battlements. And good thing, too – can you imagine how frustrating it would be to have an epic battle foreshadowed, discussed, planned, built up to and generally hyped all season long only to see but a few seconds of actual battling?

Well imagine no more, my friend. Just watch The Walking Dead season 3.

Spartacus goes meta

Spartacus: War of the Damned, Episode 6 - "Spoils of War"

I've reached a point where I feel comfortable calling Spartacus one of my favorite series of all time. But while I've repeatedly explained the many facets of the show's greatness – its pacing, its structure, its depth, its character development, its sheer visceral awesomeness – one thing I've never really called it is clever. Smart, yes, even verging on brilliant in the way it's throwing out all the rules governing TV pacing with a devilish grin on its face. But not clever in the way of a brilliant Harmon-era Community or golden-era Simpsons episode, or some of the more ambitious hours of Buffy or Fringe. Spartacus is for the most part content to be straightforward meat-and-potatoes action-adventure TV storytelling honed to perfection.

But in "Spoils of War," the sixth episode of War of the Damned and fifth-to-last of the series, Spartacus has finally put out a fiendishly clever episode worthy of Steven DeKnight's Buffy roots. Though it never comes right out and announces its meta-ness (there's no Jeff Winger declaring "We're doing a bottle episode!"), make no mistake, this is Spartacus's meta episode, in the way it takes us on a whirlwind backwards tour through the entire series, right back to the beginning.

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.

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 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."

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.