The Week In TV 04/12/2011
Community, Season 3, Episode 9: Foosball and Nocturnal Vigilantism
If there’s one thing Community has taught us, it’s that it’s okay to re-visit old TV tropes if you can do them in ways that illuminate character and/or are very funny. This week, Community re-visited two such tropes, one in which two of its characters discovered that they knew each other as children (in an almost exact replica of the episode of Friends where Ross realises Phoebe mugged him as a kid), and one in which someone tries to replace a priceless item that they’ve broken. The former was the more successful, turning as it did on a pairing we don’t see often enough - Jeff and Shirley. Going up against a group of amusingly schaudenfraude-heavy German students, they reveal a mutual love for foosball, albeit one Jeff has been suppressing ever since a mean girl made him pee his pants after beating him at a game in school. This girl was, of course, Shirley, and the scene escalates in a very funny animé sequence that then fizzles down to “but you’re a perfectly fine person.” It’s the kind of big-hearted gesture the show does so well, shying just clear of sentimentality and finally giving Yvette Nicole Brown something to do, because that woman is comedy gold. Less successful, but still great fun, was Annie’s lies spiralling out of control after she accidentally steps on Abed’s limited edition DVD of The Dark Knight, as she first stages a break-in and then blames the landlord, giving Abed cause to put on his Batman costume and demand justice. It’s a little thin, yes, but all three actors were playing slightly different beats than we usually see them play, and Alison Brie was particularly funny, something the show seems to have forgotten slightly with the whole Jeff/Annie romantic subplot. All in all, another strong episode.
Glee, Season 3, Episode 7: I Kissed A Girl
I liked this episode of Glee. It had a bunch of fun moments, a few touching ones and another wonderful performance from Naya Rivera. But the more I thought about it, the more its scattershot plotting and total disregard for either its characters or the audience that have invested in them irritated me. After last week’s epic Adele mash-up, Santana finds herself Finn’s new pet project, with the latter desperate to prove to her that it’s okay to be gay, and that she’s only mean because she’s hurting so much inside. His approach to this mostly just includes the Glee club singing at her, and whilst this does include a pretty great version of “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,” it doesn’t really have much in the way of narrative drive. In a turn of events that is borderline offensive, Santana seemingly discovers her inner pride by singing “I Kissed A Girl,” a song celebrating lipstick lesbianism that’s performed in such a manner as to titillate the men in the room. That this is then proudly topped off with Santana announcing that she came out to her parents and that they were “fine” with it is particularly infuriating. This is a rare storyline that the show has seen carry out over the long haul, and one that it’s handled with sincerity and understanding, so to spunk off the story’s final moments off-stage is not only bizarre, it’s a slap across the face to the viewers that have spent so much time investing in this character. True, we get a nicely played out scene in which Santana comes out to her grandmother, who is not as accepting, but wouldn’t this have had more impact if we’d seen this character before. Instead, she exists purely to act as a counterpoint to Kurt’s more positive parental reaction in Season 1, and as much as this one scene plays with the sort of emotional honesty that Glee can pull out of the bag on occasion, it’s completely isolated from everything else we’ve seen up until this point. The rest of the episode’s problems mostly stem from the rate of knots the show is racing through its various stories. The election for class president seems to have drained Brittany’s character of everything other than her “dumb blonde” stereotype, meaning that we’re supposed to believe Kurt’s NYDA application rests entirely on his winning, and that Rachel’s actions were heroic rather than deeply misguided and out of character. And since the show has been gradually making in-roads into realising that Lea Michele isn’t the only strong singer in the group, do we really care about her absence from Sectionals considering that the show has only decided to remember the competition now? Elsewhere, there was a lovely moment where Puck recognised that Quinn is effectively a mess at this point, and that her need to be loved has spiralled into self-loathing and mistrust of everyone around her, but all too soon the show reverts to the Quinn/Puck/Shelby love triangle. For a show that’s so good at creating these small, melancholy character moments, it’s far too good at frittering away the goodwill of its audience.
Gossip Girl, Season 5, Episode 9: Rhodes to Perdition
At least they’ve given Charlie something to fight against now, with the addition of (inexplicably EVIL) Max to the supporting cast. Most of this episode was spent seeing Max try, somewhat ineffectually, to expose Charlie as Ivy, bringing her fake mother out of the woodwork along with Cici, who is being honoured by Studio 54 for some reason. It all amounted to not very much, but I’m thankful that Charlie isn’t just the passive nobody we’ve been forced to spend time with over the past weeks. Everything else was a disaster, from the re-hashed Blair/Chuck will they/won’t they story, to Nate looking into his family politics and Dan attempting to drum up publicity for his book via Twitter. Aside from an egregious look at the publishing industry, “Rhodes to Perdition” was a particularly forgettable episode.
Homeland, Season 1, Episode 9: Crossfire
After two episodes that have been somewhat overshadowed by last minute twists, it was nice to see something of a return to basics, as we learnt more about Brody’s motives. After being beat up in a parking lot, he is transferred to the home of a Saudi ambassador, where we’re treated to flashbacks to his time in captivity. After years of torture, Abu Nazir invites Brody into his home, where he is to teach English to his son Isa. Their relationship gradually becomes more paternal in nature, and the scene where Isa embraces Brody, giving him the first genuine human contact in years, was one of the series’ absolute strongest. Of course, as soon as we saw Brody happy, we knew that Isa would die horribly, so when he does it’s not a great shock, however affectingly it’s played by Damien Lewis. That it’s this that would make Brody befriend Nazir is predictable, but not unbelievable, and - again - it’s impressive how invested the show is in illustrating the complex internal lives of its characters. What felt slightly peculiar was how Brody’s flashbacks were presented to us, piecemeal between Carrie’s PR crisis concerning the Muslim civilians killed by the FBI in their manhunt for Tom Walker. Offered up in fragments, it’s not nearly as effective as it could have been. Having said that, it’s really only the structure of the episode that didn’t work here, since even Carrie’s fairly slim story where she’s trying to extract information from the mosque’s iman, who may or may not be protecting Walker.
Ringer, Season 1, Episode 10: That’s What You Get For Trying To Kill Me
Finally, the gears are turning and Ringer has become less the show I’m watching because it stars Sarah Michelle Gellar and I’ll follow her anywhere, and more like a legitimate guilty pleasure. It’s still daft as a brush, but at least something is actually happening now. This is helped enormously by Bridget’s increasingly more active role in the mystery, as she works with Malcolm and Andrew to track down Charlie and find Gemma in the process. It would appear that the only reason Gemma has been kept alive is because Siobhan doesn’t want her dead (due to some lingering sense of friendship apparently), but when Charlie realises the cops are after him, he kills Gemma and - in the most “d’uh” plot twist of the entire season - lures Siobhan back to New York, where she promptly kills Charlie and stages it as a suicide. So not only has the show managed to give Bridget a little more to do this week, it’s also given a little more screentime to Siobhan (and SMG can play bitch goddess from hell in her sleep), and found a convincing way to work Malcolm into the plot. The subplots were less successful, if only because they felt so removed from the rest of the action, although I suspect that Machado uncovering the mole in the FBI will somehow lead back to Siobhan. Juliet’s did he/didn’t he rape storyline with the teacher, though, was just flat out bad. Telegraphed from a mile off, and isolating one of the show’s more interesting characters in a narrative cul-de-sac. But these were really minor distractions, from a series that finally seems to be pulling it together.
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