Well, because…

(Oh, how can I say this?)

Because…

…because I just laughed at something Bobby Moynihan did on SNL.

There!  I said it!  Are you happy now?!?

SNL Weekend Update Thursdays 2×2

Of course, when I say I “just” laughed at something Bobby Moynihan did, what I actually mean is that over two hours ago, I laughed at something Bobby Moynihan did, but you get the idea.

Nah, like, the opening skecth on SNL was of President Obama doing interviews with various lower-tier cable networks like Bravo and the Food Network, and Moynihan showed up playing that ultra-douchey dude with the spiked blond hair from the Food Network.  He did a pretty good job of it, and I guffawed.  There, now it’s out and I don’t have to feel so awful anymore.

It was a pretty funny show, all in all.  Fred Armisen did his David Paterson schtick, which is always good for a laugh; I’m a big fan of when he gets right up in the camera, which he did while the closing credits ran.  It’s not exactly sophisticated humor, I guess, but it tickles me for reasons I cannot fully explicate.

There was also a moderately amusing Darrell Hammond/Bill Clinton bit, which was capped by a decently amusing “cameo” by Megan Fox, who hosts this Saturday on the season premiere of the regular show.

Pretty good chuckles, all in all.  I can already sense that I’m going to miss this when its time slot is taken up by Community.

Parks and Recreation 2×2, “The Stakeout”:

Heh.  When I wrote down the title of this episode on my notes, I wrote it down as “The Steakout.”  Boy, am I dumb.  Mmmm … steak.

Another strong episode from this supposedly much-improved series.  Dear America: watch, won’t you?  Thanks ever so much.

Leslie has planted a community garden at the bottom of the pit, and she and Tom discover that somebody is growing marijuana in it, so she diecides they should stake — steak? — the place out to catch the perps in action.

This just so happens to be near Ann’s house, and Leslie does the requisite amount of spying on Ann as Mark picks her up for their first date (which seems to actually go relatively well).

Best laughs probably go to Nick Offerman.  Ron has aggravated a hernia, so he’s sitting at his desk literally trying not to move either his head or his torso.  Now, that’s funny enough, but slap a mustache and a grimace on top of it, and you’ve got gold.  Throw Aubrey Plaza into the mix as an intern who — either through neglect, malice, or ignorance, and it’s hard to tell which — decides to make things even worse by “helping,” and you’ve … well, you’ve still got gold, but it’s now gold co-starring Aubrey Plaza.

Andy shows up to his new home in the pit, and Leslie and Tom invite him into their van to help with the stakeout.  He eats a candy necklace whole and goes into a weird sugar-high sort of fugue.  Big laughs again.

Coming home from their date, Ann and Mark see what appears to be a thief breaking into a van and call the cops.  It’s actually Tom, who is quite belligerent to the officer who arrives to investigate.  That officer is played by Louis C.K., who hauls Tom off to jail, and it’s up to Leslie to turn into a hardassed government official in order to get him out of dutch.  Amy Poehler gets her biggest laughs of the episode in this scene.

It’s always nice to see Louis C.K.  I still miss Lucky Louie, one of many shows HBO cut down far too early over the past few years.  Here, it looks like maybe he’s being set up as a potential love interest for Leslie; that’d be an interesting new direction.

I’m still loving this show, and if you ain’t with me, then yore agin me.

The Office 6×2, “The Meeting”:

David from corporate shows up to have a private meeting with Jim, and of course, this makes Michael go into full-on paranoia mode.  Long story short, Jim ends up getting promoted to co-manager of the Scranton branch alongside Michael.

This is a major plot development, to the extent that a show like this can have major plot developments, and I find that while I certainly enjoyed the episode, I have almost nothing to say about it.

“Almost,” I said.

Michael asking Oscar for advice on how best to about enjoying a colonoscopy; Michael enlisting Andy to help him infiltrate the secret meeting by hiding inside a makeshift cheese cart; this episode’s “that’s what she said.”  If it had nothing else going for it, this episode would be worthwhile for those moments alone.

Community 1×2, “Spanish 101″:

I said in my review of last week’s episode that I was going to give this series a minimum of four episodes, and I intend to stick by that cavalier and ill-judged comment, but I gotta level with you: I regret those words a bit, and wish I could just go ahead and pull the ripcord on this one right now.

Here’s the thing: this show is just not funny.  I appreciate that humor is a subjective thing, I accept that fact and live with it, like the knowledge of my own mortality and the fact that no matter what I do, people are going to continue to watch VH1 reality shows.  I’d stop all of these things if I could, but hey, it’s an imperfect world.

What Community wants to be — what it desperately wants to be — is 30 Rock.  It wants to be the kind of show where there is no real need for the plot or the setting to make any but the loosest kind of sense, thereby allowing the characters to go into hilarious flights of randomness that are designed to showcase how wacky life can be, and how wacky people’s ideas can be, and how wacky people’s ideas about humor can be.

Community, you are not 30 Rock, and odds are, you never will be.

Whay do you expect me to accept the idea that all these people like Jeff so much?  What has he done to earn even the vaguest semblance of this sort of adulation?  What, specifically?  And, see, I wouldn’t care about that if you were funny, Community; I wouldn’t care at all.

I’ll give you points for at least trying to give Checy Chase something funny to do this week; you failed, but at least you recognized the necessity.

I’ll also give you very tiny props for making me chuckle about twice during Senor Chang’s monologue.

Starburns, though?  Fairly lame.  I get that community colleges are probably full of peole who think they’r ecooler than they really are, and I’d guess that out of all of those posers, a few of them probably have an undue amount of vanity over their sideburns.  But “Starburns”?  Fairly lame.

Because I was reckless enough to commit to four weeks in a public forum, you’ve got two more chances to impress me, Community.  Don’t squander them.

SNL Weekend Update Thursdays 2×1 (?)

I’m not entirely clear whether or not this technically counts as a separate series from Saturday Night Live, so that “2×1″ designation might not actually be accurate.  However, I am entirely clear on the fact that only nerds give a shit on that subject, so, moving on…

Those election-year Thursday-night SNL specials were apparently such a big hit for NBC last season that they decided to have another go at it and see if they could make it work on a semi-regular basis.

Judging from the first episode this season, the answer is about 50% “yes” and 50% “no,” which qualifies as a win in SNL terms.  Almost always uneven even during great stretches in its history, the long-running series has been such a mixed bag in recent years that almost nobody knows whether they should actually be watching anymore.  But there were some decent laughs tonight, including a hilarious bit in which Bill Hader — almost always worth admiring — played James Carville.  Less funny…?  Kristen Wiig’s Madonna.  Blame the writers for that, though, mainly because if I catch you saying anything bad about Wiig, I will come stomp a new gap in your teeth, American History X-style.

The bit in which “Jimmy Carter” debated “Michael Steele” also fell mostly flat, but that’s counterbalanced by the fact that it’s always awesome to see Amy Poehler on Weekend Update, and there were enough good moments that I certainly feel like my time wasn’t wasted.  It’s an odd concept for a show, and the series has as awkward a title as I’ve ever seen, but still, it’s better than acid in your eye.

Parks and Recreation 2×1, “Pawnee Zoo”:

I’ve been a fan of this show since the first episode, and have occasionally found myself having to defend it to people.  Hopefully, this episode — which is pretty darn chuckleicious — will win a few more converts over to my side.

Here’s the thing: any episode that has a cold-open in which Amy Pohler does an a capella rendition of “Parents Just Don’t Understand” is an episode that I am 100% in favor of.  This is that episode.  From there, it contains other such hilarity as gay penguin marriage, a girl whose boyfriend has a boyfriend who she hates, and Aziz Ansari.  And no, I still haven’t seen his stuff on LaughYourDickOff.com; need to, haven’t, will.  Soon.  Not tonight, though, as I’ve still got an episode of Fringe to watch and review.

Poehler’s Leslie Knope finds herself in a two-pronged sticky situation, in which she is unwittingly thrust into the limelight as a gay icon when she accidentally marries two male penguins, and then takes some heat from a Family Rights protester who thinks she should resign from her job as punishment for pushing a gay agenda.  All of this leads to Leslie debating the protester on a local tv talk show, “Pawnee Today”; turns out that Tom (Ansari) is a regular guest, and the montage of him chatting up host Joan Calamezzo is by itself better than most series’ entire episodes.

But wait, that’s not all!  There’s also a gay bar named The Bulge.

And really, if that’s not enough to get you to watch this series, well, I don’t know that I can be of further use to you.

The Office 6×1, “Gossip”:

I’m gonna rip off the Band-Aid and just come right out and say it: this series has probably seen its best days come and go.  This is probably the weakest season premiere the series has had since the pilot episode, but hey, let’s all look on the bright side: that don’t make it bad.  Not by a long shot.

Truth is, this show could be about half as good as it currently seems to be and still be well worth my time, so the mere (unsubstantiated) fact that the show might have seen its glory days pass it by is not necessarily a cause for concern on my part.

The setup for the season premiere is that Michael hears a rumor about Stanley, tells it to the entire office, finds out that the rumor is true, and then proceeds to make up false rumors about everyone else in the office so that nobody will actually believe the rumor about Stanley.  It’s an idea that is a bit better on paper than it proves to be in the execution, but at least one series of great moments comes out of it: when Andy hears the rumor that he himself is gay, he immediately starts to more or less believe it, and seeks advice from Oscar and Jim; later, he pleads with Michael to tell him whether or not he is gay.  Will this plotline continue?  One can only hope; there’s probably more gold nuggets to be mined from that particular vein.

The episode is sort of framed by Jim and Pam having not yet announced to their co-workers that she is pregnant; that plotline comes to a conclusion that is typically sweet, and continues to prove that the Jim/Pam dynamic is one of the show’s best accomplishments.

Not a great beginning to the season overall, but these actors are all so good in their roles that at this point, even an uninspired episode is kinda wonderful.

Can I also mention that I’m happy to see Ellie Kemper still hanging around as Pam’s replacement?  She purty.

Community 1×1, “Pilot”:

“Not impressed” is my initial reaction to this series.

The writing — it’s from Dan Harmon, who also wrote the not-liked-by-Honk Monster House as well as numerous episodes of the not-as-funny-as-it-thinks-it-is The Sarah Silverman Program – is the problem: it’s mostly weak, forced, not-as-funny-as-it-thinks-it-is, and trite.  Breakfast Club jokes?  Really?

However, the cast is pretty good, and while I won’t keep watching if the scripts don’t improve, the players are strong enough that this show earns a provisional four-week commitment from me.  Joel McHale plays the lead, and he’s smarmily convincing as a lawyer whose degree doesn’t actually count for anything.  Hence, he’s in community college.  (It’s as flimsy as concepts get, but that’s okay by me as long as they bring the funny; here, they really don’t.) 

Chevy Chase — who you’d expect to have some funnier lines — is also on hand, obviously hoping like hell for the show to be a hit, and while you might not know some of the other folks by name, you might have seen some of them before.  Yvette Nicole Brown, for instance, has been in everything from House to The Office to Tropic Thunder. 

And when I saw Alison Brie — she plays Trudy Campbell on Mad Men – I actually caught myself shouting out loud something along the lines of “Hey, who’s that?  I know her!  OOOH!  Is that Trudy from Mad Men?”  It was.  She’s awesome on that show, and might have some potential on this one, too.

But the truth is, I chuckled only a couple of times, and those were just chuckles; I expect at least one guffaw.  IMDB tells me that future episodes will feature Ken Jeong playing a character named “Senor Chang,” and if that’s the limit of this show’s wit — see, it’s funny ’cause he’s Asian but people call him “Senor” — then odds are good that my Alison Brie fix will be restricted to AMC before much longer.

Parks and Recreation 1×4, “Boys’ Club”:

I’m tellin’ ya, this show is a winner.  It just hasn’t quite hit its stride yet with its main character, Amy Poehler’s Leslie Knope.  Poehler is very funny in the role, but the writers have not yet figured out how to keep Knope from tipping over into silliness.  Honestly, can anyone be as naively officious as Knope and actually function in society?  This is very similar to the problems some of the same producers had with Steve Carell’s Michael Scott during the first season of The Office, so I don’t see it as a cause for concern.

It seems especially okay since the cast of supporting characters is already really clicking with me.  Aziz Ansari gets big laughs this week in an awesome scene in which Tom runs Leslie through a fake deposition.  Tom grills her on her sex life, asking if she’s ever thought about Ron sexually: “Have you ever had a sexual dream about our boss, Ron Swanson?”  Leslie answers no, Tom marks it as a yes.  “Now, in this recurring dream that you have about Ron, is he like a regular Ron, or is he half-Ron/half-animal, like a centaur?  Is he wearing a football uniform?  Are you making love to him on a couch shaped like his mustache?  Is he covered in Powerade?”

In my review of the pilot, I compared Tom to a cross between The Office‘s Jim and Dwight, and while that might have been true in terms of that episode, it has ceased to be the case.  Tom is now unique to Parks and Recreation, a sharp-witted, devilish, disinterested character who appears to belong to Ansari completely.  That dude is like brown gold; I can easily see him being the cause for this show ultimately breaking out.

I’m also warming to Chris Pratt’s Andy.  Pratt is listed a guest star, but he’s in all six first-season episodes; he’d damn well better come back for season two.  (There’d damn well better be a season two.  Ratings have been decent; not great, but very stable since the debut.  I’d guess a second season is a shoo-in.)  In this episode, Andy surprises Ann by cleaning their house while she’s working a long shift.  A particularly funny scene involves Andy bathing himself in a kiddie pool and then chasing — on crutches, while naked — a guy who steals his boombox.

And there’s also Nick Offerman’s Ron.  Ron comes to Leslie’s defense this week after she breaks some rules and gets in hot water, but his motivations aren’t pro-Leslie, they’re anti-bureacracy: “My idea of a perfect government,” he says in a camera confessional, “is one guy who sits in a small room at a desk, and the only thing he’s allowed to decide is who to nuke.  The man is chosen based on some kind of IQ test, and maybe also some kind of physical tournament, like a decathlon.  And women are brought to him, maybe … when he desires them.”

The Office 5×24, “Casual Friday”:

Michael’s return to Dunber Mifflin brings chaos on casual Friday when the sales staff threatens a mutiny over Pam and Ryan getting to retain the clients they stole while at the Michael Scott Paper Company.  Meanwhile, Angela prompts Toby into making changes to the casual Friday dress code.

Good episode.  There are good moments for each member of the cast, even including the new secretary.  The best scene may be the one in which we see just how short a dress Meredith is wearing for casual Friday.  I kinda feel bad for Kate Flannery; it can’t feel great for your character to get laughs based on people very much wanting to not see her naked.

This is the first episode in a while that has really put the entire ensemble to use, which is always welcome.  I continue to very much enjoy season five, and I’m curious to see if the characters begin to revert to their old comfortable roles, or if they’ll start moving into slightly different directions.

The episode’s best dialogue belongs to Toby: “Well, I was in the seminary for a year,” he says in a camera confessional, “and dropped out ’cause I wanted to have sex with this girl Kathy, followed her back to Scranton, took the first job I could find in HR … later she divorced me … so no, I wouldn’t say I have a passion for HR.”

30 Rock 3×20, “The Natural Order”:

Yet another winner for 30 Rock, this one finds Tracy becoming upset by the crew treating him like a child.  He literally plays the race card, and then insists that everyone in the cast and crew be treated totally equally.  He points out that America has a black president now; Liz points out that he voted for Nader.  This leads to Liz having to do things like change out the water tank and attend Lutz’s fake bachelor party.

In other developments, Jenna adopts a gibbon as her child, and Jack wrestles with feelings about his father’s abandonment of him.

Dialogue of the night courtesy of Jenna and Kenneth, who is trying to talk her out of keeping the gibbon:

“Ma’am, this is a wild animal, you can’t treat it like a person!”

“No, he’s happy!  His costume is hiding his erection!”

“Well…  As a child, I had a prize pig that I thought was my best friend.  But then one day I picked up one of her piglets … she went crazy.  She bit off my nut sack” [brief pause] “that I kept tied around my belt to feed squirrels.”

Now, that’s my kind of funny.

Heavy is the head that doesn’t heed the spoiler warning.

Parks and Recreation 1×3, “The Reporter”:

Another funny episode from the freshman series.  I actually found this one to be better than both The Office and 30 Rock this week, which is a good omen for the show’s viability past these first few episodes.  Ratings have been decent, so hopefully NBC will give it a renewal and allow it to grow the way most of these types of comedies do.

This week finds Leslie having to give an interview about the Pit Project, and completely choking under the pressure.  Leslie becomes staggeringly inept when the reporter — hilariously named Shauna Malwae-Tweep (and played by the smoking hot Alison Becker) — tries to tape record the interview.  This spirals out of control, and ends with Mark sleeping with the reporter, much to Leslie’s dismay.  Amy Poehler is good in these scenes; she’s a good enough actress that she can throw in hints of genuine anguish, and a sly enough comedian that she can keep it from tipping over into the maudlin.

Special kudos this week to Chris Pratt, who gets some big laughs as Andy.  While he and Ann are being interviewed by Shauna, the truth about his fall into the pit comes out: Andy was drunk after playing with his band Threeskin (they were known as Fourskin before a member quit), and fell into the pit while trying to pick up an old toaster.  Pratt does well with playing Andy’s obliviousness to his own uselessness in these scenes.  Later, when trying to console Leslie about Mark’s fling with the reporter, he says “He was probably thinking with the head of his weiner instead of the head of his brain.”

The episode’s b-story involves Tom letting Ron thump him at online Scrabble.  It doesn’t really go anywhere, but both Aziz Ansari and Nick Offerman have a few funny moments.

The Office 5×23, “Broke”:

This episode was fairly short on laughs, but it was still entertaining because the plot took over and resolved the storyline of the Michael Scott Paper Company.  At a couple of points, it almost felt like a drama.

I’m not sure this is a good thing.  The Michael Scott Paper Company has been providing solid laughs since its inception, and I expected it to stick around a bit longer.

I really don’t have much to say about this episode.  It was enjoyable, but I don’t think it’s going to end up on anyone’s list of favorite Office episodes.

30 Rock 3×19, “The Ones”:

Though I am a big fan of this show, I will admit that two or three episodes every season feel like they’re straining for laughs.  I thought that was true of this episode, and yet I probably laughed out loud four or five times, so the news isn’t all bad.

The plot revolves around three characters’ crises involving the supposed loves of their lives: that’s Elisa for Jack, Angie for Tracy, and a hot EMT for Jenna.

Of these, the Jack plotline is handily the most entertaining.  “Sorry,” says Elisa (who later, apropos of nothing, is wearing a “What the Frak?!” t-shirt), “I haven’t spoken English in two menses.”  Turns out she’s La Viuda Negra, a black widow who murdered her unfaithful husband.  Jack doesn’t particularly care about this, as he has no intention of cheating on her, but, as he tells Liz, “You never know, Lemon … what if I find myself stranded in a snow cave with a stern but comely geologist, both of us knowing that our only chance for survival is the heat from our naked bodies?”  Alec Baldwin, Tina Fey, and Salma Hayek each have numerous great moments; no surprise there.

Less satisfying is Tracy’s story.  And even less satisfying than that is Jenna’s story; Jenna is annoying even under the best of circusmtances, and these are not the best of circumstances.  There are a few chuckles from both of these plotlines, but there are also quite a few that don’t work and feel forced.

I don’t need every episode of this show to be a gold-medal winner, though, so it’s a no-harm, no-foul situation, and anyways, I did laugh quite a bit.

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.

Well, another week, another wretched episode of Saturday Night Live.  Talking about how bad this show has become is about as timely as taking to the streets to champion integration, but that’s not stopping me from loading up on picket signs and Joan Baez songs.

The show begins with the standard political sketch, this time one in which Jason Sudeikis’s Joe Biden gets all buddy-buddy with Fred Armisen’s Barack Obama following the Prez’s return from Europe.  I enjoy how Sudeikis plays Biden as the world’s biggest d-bag, but there was nothing else to recommend in this sketch.

Then, host Zac Efron comes out and seems to be painfully uncomfortable.  The writers do not throw him a bone.  How did these monologues get so unrelentingly awful?  Are they being written by Jar Jar Binks?

Kristen Wiig and Michaela Watkins come on and do their Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb bit.  It hasn’t been funny one single time, and this does not break that losing streak, tough Wiig gives it her all.  Efron comes out to play Cody Gifford; he’s not funny, but then again, he never had a chance.  Armisen gets a chuckle playing Penny Marshall.

We next get a science fair skit with Wiig’s Gilly character.  Now, I love Kristen Wiig as much as the next 34-year-old pervert, or a lot, whichever is more, but I can’t imagine why anyone would find Gilly to be funny.  That’s coming from the guy who lurves the Target Lady skit.  Will Forte gets a couple of chuckles, that’s about it.  The writers utterly strand Efron yet again, and even worse, they put the odious Bobby Moynihan in the skit.  That guy has yet to make me laugh.

Next, a weird faux commerical with Sudeikis playing the head of a Direct Mail Marketing firm.  It’s satirical, I guess, but it’s not funny; it’s basically just saying, hey, we’re responsible for identity theft.  Ooh, good burn, SNL!

A mildly amusing sketch follows in which Andy Samberg and Efron play underage guys who are thrilled to get served in a bar.  Then, they notice there are ten-year-olds in the place.  A few laughs are milked from kiddies dropping shots into their beers, but the sketch goes absolutely nowhere, a frequent problem on this show.  Again, Efron is wasted!

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs come on.  They’re pretty good.  Karen O is hot, in my favorite kind of way, meaning that she’s a little bit ugly, knows it, and does not give even the tiniest shit that people might think that about her.  She’s makes me think about what it might have been like in the ’80s if Angelica Huston had been the lead singer of Siouxsie & The Banshees.  I should listen to this band more.

Weekend Update is usually good for a few laughs, and it’s true to form this week.  I still miss Amy Poehler, but whattaya gonna do?  They pull out a few good character bits, with the always-fun Hader/Armisen New Jersey Gay Couple making a long-overdue appearance.  Michaela Watkins, who is really growing on me, comes out to do her bit as Angie the movie blogger; she’s funny, especially when she freaks out over seeing Zac Efron.  Finally, we get the return of Jon Bovi, the Bon Jovi opposite band comprised of Sudeikis and Will Forte.  I’d laugh at them just for Forte’s mustache.  And really, that’s about all I laughed at this time; it’s a tired bit.

Then, there’s a High School Musical 4 skit, in which Efron returns to the school to let the next group of seniors know that people don’t sing and do choreographed dance numbers in college.  Efron looks like he’s gonna do a chowder-toss out of his throat through the entire thing, and again I have to put up with the cretinous Moynihan.

Next is a weird sketch in which Efron is going off to Germany to fight in WWII.  He’s leaving on a train, and girlfriend Casey Wilson runs alongside of him … even once the train picks up a shitload of speed.  This, predictably, goes nowhere, and only the talents of Casey Wilson save it from being downright embarrassing.  As it is, she elevates it to the level of mere suck.

Jason Sudeikis is directing a Jeno’s Pizza Rolls commerical with Samberg and Efron, with Armisen playing their mother.  “She” can’t deliver her line — “But I’m your mother!” — pleasantly, instead screaming and breaking things on every take.  Efron seriously looks as if he’s about to bolt from the set, call his agent, and fire him on the spot.

We get another Yeah Yeah Yeahs performance, of “Maps,” a song I actually knew already.  It’s pretty good, although it’s a song that essentially goes nowhere; I prefer to think they did this as a sly commentary on how most of the comedy bits have been going for the past few years.  Karen O continues to look a bit like the female lead from Prizzi’s Honor, but I kinda dig her.

Then, by God, right at the end, we finally get a decent sketch: Sudeikis playing Efron’s older brother, giving him advice for a big date.  He advises giving his girl a foot rub, and demonstrates how to do it on Efron.  This ends with Sudeikis toe-raping Efron with his mouth, and it’s actually kinda funny.  It’d seem weak on a good episode, but here, man, it’s like light shining down from heaven.

Poor Zac Efron.  He was given literally NOTHING funny to do on this show.  Worse, several of his skits involved him being humiliated in way or another, with Fred Armisen sloshing milk onto his shirt or Jason Sudeikis sucking his foot.  Not a high point for Efron’s career, and I suspect we’ll never see him on this show again.

I’m amazed by how shitty this show can be.  It isn’t always; the Alec Baldwin episode this season was good, as was Dwayne Johnson’s, not to mention the classic political stuff during the election season.  But this week’s was so bad, it makes me wonder how such awfulness can come from professional writers.

I’ll say this, the cast is great.  Except for Bobby Moynihan, whom I despise, they’re all actually quite good, and most of them are tremendous talents.  They should ALL jump ship while they still can, because this show can only drag them down unless drastic improvements are made.  I may miss Amy Pohler, but I damn sure don’t blame her.

Parks and Recreation began its life as an attempt by NBC and show creators Greg Daniels and Michael Schur to fashion a spinoff based on their successful series The Office.  At some point, those plans fell through, so they did the next best thing: they settled for fashioning a ripoff of The Office.

Make no mistakes about it: Parks and Recreation is a ripoff of The Office.

This, as it turns out, is not a bad thing.  Funnier and more confident than the pilot to The Office, if Parks and Recreation is able to stick around for a while and develop anywhere near as satisfactorily as that show did, then NBC has another winner on its hands.

In fact, if you’re so inclined, it’s entirely possible to imagine this series to actually still be a spinoff of The Office.  The show’s conceit is that a documentary — or, maybe, a reality show — is being based around another workplace, this time the Parks and Recreation board in Pawnee, Indiana.  Who’s to say that this isn’t the same crew which is filming Dunder Mifflin in Scranton?  Maybe it’s a different crew making a show for the same channel.  Too much thought?  Yeah, that’s what I figured you’d say.

The Michael Scott role here is filled by Saturday Night Live‘s Amy Poehler, who is confident, foolhardy, awkward, persistent, and entirely sincere.  It’s a winning combination, as Steve Carell proved long ago, and Poehler was a terrific choice for the role.  Her character, Leslie Knope, does not appear to be quite as cartoonish as Michael Scott was in the early episodes of The Office, and that represents a substantial improvement.  Whether Knope is able to be used to elicit the same kind of wretched sympathy the writers can get out of Carell’s Scott (witnessed most recently in the two episodes which bookended the premiere of Parks and Recreation) remains to be seen.

It also remains to be seen whether or not the supporting cast will be as flexible and interesting as the supporting cast on The Office.  If Daniels and Schur have failed to replicate that magic again — and it’s far too early to say one way or another — then they can hardly be blamed too harshly … the odds are always against assembling that great a cast of characters.

However, I liked what I saw from the supporting players in the pilot.  Best of the bunch would probably have to be Aziz Ansari, who plays Tom, Leslie’s less-than-enthused assistant.  (Ansari is having a big week, also appearing in a funny role in the Seth Rogen film Observe and Report, in which he gets one of the movie’s best lines.)  In Parks and Recreation, he’s kind of like a swarthier combination of Jim and Dwight: he’s got the eye-rolling disdain for his boss that Jim has, and the creepy weirdo vibe that Dwight emits.

Also extremely promising is journeyman actor Nick Offerman, who plays Ron, the head of the Parks and Recreation board.  Ron is vehemently anti-government, vehemently pro-Bobby Knight, and hilariously mustachioed.  One of the series’ best dynamics is the potential for pitting the gung-ho Poehler versus the hell-no Offerman; therein could lie many a chuckle.  Therein could also lie some pointed 30 Rockesque political satire, which The Office almost entirely avoids.

Probably negating my earlier lame assertion that Parks and Recreation and The Office are taking place in the same universe, the cast also includes Rashida Jones, who, unsurprisingly, does well playing Ann, a character whose indignance at a hazardous unfinished construction site spurs Leslie into action.  Ann’s shiftless boyfriend (Chris Pratt) has fallen into a pit at the site and broken both of his legs; now, he lays around the house all day, asking Ann to cook him pancakes.  This dynamic promises to hold some humor, especially since I get the idea that her boyfriend’s broken legs aren’t exactly the reason for his laziness, but are merely a new excuse to exercise it.

Aubrey Plaza plays April, a college intern whose blatant disinterest makes her a younger, smaller, paler, less male version of Stanley from The Office.  Again, there seems to be potential here, although the pilot episode doesn’t make a whole lot of use out of it.

The cast is rounded out by Paul Schneider, who plays a colleague of Leslie’s; the two apparently slept together years ago, and while he barely even remembers it, he does Leslie a big favor during the course of the episode.  This would seem to hint at the series’ big romantic relationship, but it’s unclear whether Poehler and Schneider have enough chemistry to make it fly.  Compare that to the sparks which instantly flew between John Krasinski and Jenna Fischer on The Office and you might have found a stumbling block for Parks and Recreation.

All in all, I definitely enjoyed watching this episode.  Since NBC’s shown so much commitment to its other Thursday-night comedies, I’m going to guess that the show will get to stick around for a second season, unless the ratings absolutely tank.  Based on the potential exhibited here, the prospect of a triple feature consisting of Parks and Recreation/The Office/30 Rock is mightily appealing.

As a final thought, I’d like to pitch an idea for all the creative people behind this series, all of whom I just know are reading this site:

You need to cast Will Arnett.  You need to cast him as the mayor.  And he needs to have an inappropriate, unreciprocated sexual attraction to Leslie Knope.  You don’t need to pay me anything for this idea; let this article serve as my legal singing over of the idea to you.  Seeing that happen would be all the reward I would ever want.