Loaded Couch Potatoes

Honk Mahfah has quick reviews of a trio of NBC Thursday comedies: Parks and Recreation, The Office, and 30 Rock.

Spoilers ahead.

Parks and Recreation 1×2, “Canvassing”:

It’s even more obvious this week than it was last week that (a) Parks and Recreation is a variation on the format of The Office and (b) that that is a good thing.  Just as The Office does with Michael Scott, this show is apparently going to specialize in putting Leslie Knope into situations where her idealism, naïeveté, and obliviousness produce cringe-inducing laughs.  This week, we get to see Leslie react poorly when neighborhood canvassing fails to produce the results she expects.  Things only get worse when she hosts her committee’s first public meeting for the park project.  Things get ugly quick, and Leslie has to resort to filibustering her own meeting so that the project won’t be voted down.  Amy Poehler is exceptional in these scenes.  “Hey, park lady!  You suck,” a disgruntled attendee tells her; she replies, grinning, to the camera, “Did you hear that?  He called me ‘park lady’.”

More good work from some of the supporting characters this week, too: Tom gets to indulge first in some crazy running, then in slimy phone calls to contractors who he invites to the meeting; Ron has a hilarious moment of getting caught mocking his boss; and April’s disinterest gets some good laughs.  Rashida Jones also has some good moments as Ann, although I worry a bit that her role (essentially, she’s straight man to Amy Poehler) is going to prove to be very limited.

A good second episode that continues to show promise for the series.

The Office 5×22, “Heavy Competition”:

I’ve heard some snarking about how this show has gone way downhill this season.  I don’t think I understand why anyone would say that.  I’ve found it to be consistently funny this year, and last night’s episode was no exception.

The Michael Scott Paper Company is proving to be a genius move on the part of the writing staff: it’s pathetic in the best Office tradition, but it’s also custom-designed to be able to show how very good a salesman Michael can be when he puts his mind to it, and that helps the realism of the entire series tremendously.  Not helping the realism: where exactly is Michael getting his paper from when he makes a sale?  Did I miss the explanation for this?

The war between Michael and Dwight provided some big laughs, and it was also amusing — and even a little touching — to see Jim pranking Andy so severely.  Pam and Ryan (who seems incresingly like he’s gone off the deep end) got in some good moments as well.  There was an extreme lack of Creed and Angela, but no episode is perfect, I guess.

I’m anxious to see where this ends up going for the remainder of the season.

30 Rock 3×18, “Jackie Jormp-Jomp”:

As it turns out, Jenna’s unauthorized Janis Joplin biopic now can’t even use the fake name Janie Jimple; turns out that didn’t clear legal, either, so now the character will have to be called Jackie Jormp-Jomp.  I laughed so hard at this that I had to pause my DVR so I wouldn’t miss the next five minutes’ worth of dialogue.

This show is great at walking right up to the line of being too silly, random, and idiotic to stay afloat.  It then shrugs and runs over the line in a serpentine pattern to avoid sniper fire, and when last viewed is diappearing over the horizon, in no apparent danger of capsizing.  (How’s them for mixed metaphors?)  Not since Seinfeld has a sitcom been able to be this consistently foolish and not only get away with it, but make it look easy.  Well, maybe Arrested Development did it; that’d be a bloody cage match, there.

Jackie Jormp-Jomp would fill the weekly quota of silly for most shows, but oh no, not this one.  Jenna is mistakenly declared dead at the Kids’ Choice Awards, and Jack decides to use the opportunity to milk the situation in order to secure distribution for the Jackie Jormp-Jomp story.  (Best dialogue of the episode: “You can’t give up now,” says Jack to a despondent Jenna.  “Did Jackie Jormp-Jomp give up when those vampires attacked Woodstocks?”)

Also great: the Liz Lemon plotline, in which she is serving out a sexual harassment suspension (?!?) and makes a new group of middle-aged lay-about female friends, only to discover that behind the spa treatments, mixed drinks, and shopping sprees lies … a fight club, of course.  Ah, Tina Fey, how I do love you.