One of my favorite things about NBC's Community is the little jokes that it puts into the background. Last night they seem to have managed to squeeze an entire second episode into the background. Ostensibly about how the death of Pierce's mother brings all of Jeff's anxieties about his own mortality to the surface with a subplot about Britta and Annie's mutual competition and jealousy (as well as Shirley feeling left out by the two younger girls), it also includes at least six little ten to thirty second vignettes about a subplot with Abed helping a pregnant girl who goes into labor and catching a lot of grief from her hotheaded boyfriend.
Abed is seen in the background talking to a very agitated pregnant girl outside the study room. He touches her belly and places his head on it to listen to the baby.
Pregnant Girl follows Abed and grabs his arm as she looks around nervously while Britta in the foreground explains that the current Gulf oil spill is worse than 15 Exxon Valdez spills. When they are joined by a redheaded dude, the pregnant girl places herself in between Abed and the dude as some students laugh at Britta when one of them points out that "Nobody is on the other side of this issue."
Redheaded Dude takes issue with something that Abed says. He shoves Pregnant Girl out of the way, knocks a Slurpee out of Abed's hands and pushes him. Pregnant Girl grabs her belly and doesn't look well. Redheaded Dude tries to start a fight but Abed runs off. Pregnant Girl throws up a hand in disgust. All of this is going on behind Annie while she's talking about Pelicans.
Abed is sitting in the cafeteria talking to Pregnant Girl and Redheaded Dude as Ian joins Jeff for lunch in for foreground. Redheaded Dude shows some pretty angry body language. He gets up and tries to storm off but Pregnant Girl begins to have contractions. Abed and Redheaded Dude (the baby's father?) both help her limp away. She's clearly in labor at this point.
Pregnant Girl is seen behind an angry Shirley giving birth in a van. Abed has his back turned but it's clearly him assisting in the birth. Redheaded Dude is holding Pregnant Girl's hand.
Girl and Redheaded Dude are seen behind Shirley holding a new-born baby as Shirley asks Abed about his day.
7. Oil Spill Fighting Technique: name given to a technique similar to the "Top Hat" employed in fighting a 1979 oil spill highlighted on Rachel Maddow segment showing that spill fighting technology has not improved much since the 1970s.
8. Sex Slang: featured on multiple comedies most notably The Daily Show.
9. Oil Spill Fighting Technique: another name for the "Dynamic Kill" method which uses relief wells to take the pressure off of the main well.
Maybe there's something to this whole Twitter thing. Twitter is where I just learned that Comedy Central has just ordered 26 new episodes of Futurama to be aired sometimes in 2010. Awesome news; Futurama was my favorite show for years and it's exciting to know that it will be back.
I'm not sure when exactly The Tick came out on DVD but I've been watching it recently. Based on a successful comic and children's cartoon, it was an ideal, if unsuccessful (it only lasted nine episodes) vehicle, for Seinfeld's Patrick Warburton whose clueless alpha male persona is perfect for the role of an indestructible but dimwitted superhero. Despite having been a relatively short-lived sitcom, The Tick in many respects fits quite neatly into the zeitgeist of it's day with a similar feel to that of more successful 90s sitcoms like Seinfeld and Friends. You rarely saw its superheros doing anything heroic, they would usually just sit around at a restaurant talking about their lives, their relationships, and their jobs. (How exactly do you fill out a report explaining that you had to stop a fifty foot cow with flaming teats by throwing a dump truck at it?)
Perhaps this is the reason why this show was so short-lived—most viewers would expect to see superheros actually performing acts of heroism. But the show also had other problems. It could be uneven at times with some episodes trying unsuccessfully to use superheroes and their sidekicks as a metaphor for something else like homosexuality or relationships. But the show ultimately worked best for me when it really explored its premise—the mundane side of being a superhero.
My favorite episode, The Tick vs Justice, did this very well. This episode follows the trial of "Destroyo," a super villain captured by The Tick and Arthur. The preternaturally dense Tick is quickly found to be in contempt by the judge and put in jail. This leaves Arthur who has no super powers beyond the ability to fly with his winged suit vulnerable to Destroyo's henchman with no one except Bat Manuel (who is really only into the superhero thing because chicks dig the suit) to protect him. Destroyo meanwhile takes advantage of attorney client privilege to brag about his crimes and tries to convince his guards to commit suicide. But Destroyo meets his match in Captain Liberty, a needy super heroine who sees his psychological manipulations as a way of scoring some free therapy for herself. But ultimately Destroyo is foiled not by the Tick's super strength or by the justice system but by Arthur who uses his past as a doughy ballet dancer to get him to confess his crimes in open court. When Destroyo is freaked out by Arthur's taunts of "dance, fat boy, dance" it makes for a hilarious climax to the episode.
Overall, The Tick is hardly a classic TV show but it was an enjoyable little comedy that was always watchable and entertaining.
It's pretty common for people to say that Saturday Night Live is no longer funny. The truth is that SNL has always been wildly uneven in quality and today's SNL is about as funny and unfunny as it has ever been. But I did notice in an interesting thing in Allen Sepinwall's review of last night's show. He mentions a skit done by a guy I've never heard of which he enjoyed much more than a similar skit done by Ben Affleck last night. Both skits make fun of Keith Olbermann, MSNBC's sportcaster turned pundit turned professional Bill O'Reilly puncher. Affleck's skit builds slowly from a dull start to a funny over-the-top finish. The unknown guy's skit is much shorter but I think that it is much funnier overall. That is SNL's biggest problem in my opinion, in order to fill the show's ninety minute running time, they tend to pad out their skits causing them to run way too long.
Boing-Boing links to a new web series called Web Therapy starring former friends star Lisa Kudrow as an online therapist who finds herself treating an old boyfriend. The first episode feels a little long as it sets up the show's premise but overal it's a very amusing show.
Probably my favorite sitcom right now is 30 Rock and one of the reasons is that it is so keyed into what is going on right now. Almost everything that is amusing, strange, or downright stupid about our society, government, and pop culture is certain to get satirized on 30 Rock. A few months ago, a hilarious story started making its way through the news cycle particularly on the blogs. Apparently, the US military at one point tried to create a non-lethal weapon which would make enemy combatants want to have gay sex with each other. It was the funniest story I'd ever heard and couldn't stop laughing when I read about it.
Just think about it—you're an evil enemy soldier brainwashed to hate America and suddenly a weapon strikes and suddenly you feel an irresistible urge to go shopping, listen to Elton John, and have gay sex with your fellow soldiers. It's hard not to laugh when you think that it. And the military seriously considered turning that into a weapon.
Sure enough a few months later, you have 30 Rock satirizing the idea. In the episode, when Jack Donaghy leaves GE for a job in the Bush administration, he is so shocked at the general incompetence at the White House, that he immediately decides to get himself fired at the first sign that he might get the head job at GE after all. And how does he propose to accomplish this? By trying to revive the "Gay Bomb."
A recent Usenet thread led to this Daily Show segment. It does a good job of poking fun at racism and political correctness. It's the essence of what makes The Daily Show good in my opinion.
So I was reading about astronomy on The Daily Galaxy when I saw that they linked to this video. It's an amusing take on the Democratic presidential primary done in Star Wars terms.
I watch too much television and one of my favorite shows is The Office. One of the things I like about this show is that I can watch it again and again and find new things that make me laugh. One example of why came when I noticed something interesting about a recent episode.
In one scene, they show the office's organizational chart. I had to pause the action to catch all of the jokes. The women of the office for example, all have little icons to denote their gender and whether or not they have reached menopause, and are connected by pink dotted lines which supposedly denote their menstrual cycles. That last part was explained by Dwight who drew up the org-chart but the rest has to be seen to be believed. More little jokes abound in the chart. Oscar, who is gay has two little interconnected male symbols by his name. Creed Bratton, who has a reputation for being sleazy, has his name in quotes—implying that this is not his real name. Toby, the HR rep, has a Star of David by his name which implies he's Jewish. The two black men in the office, Stanley and Darryl have black power fists by their names. And Kevin has what appears to be a four leaf clover by his name.
This is hardly a new thing, cartoons like The Simpsons and Futurama have always had visual jokes that only appear on the screen for a fraction of a second. But these little things help keep me entertained and I suspect that I'm not alone in this regard.
The controversy over the movie Expelled has made me think about a lot about how people debate the topic of evolution. It also reminded me that a few years ago The Daily Show took a brilliant and hilarious look at the subject with a series of reports called "Evolution Schmevolution." Poking fun at both sides of the issue and giving the intelligent design crowd a chance to argue their side, Jon Stewart showed how fake news can be much better and smarter than "real" news. While Nova did a brilliant job of covering the recent intelligent design trial in Dover, Pennsylvania, sometimes it's nice to step back and relax and not take the subject you're debating too seriously.
Star Wars: Galactic Racer has a release date
-
[image: credit: hafizi / Shutterstock.com]
On October 6th, you can be pod racing! A racing game that relies on as much
aggression and underhandedness as it...
Link Latte 285
-
*#285*
To Scale! The Solar System - [one of the best videos]
The Hardest Gear In The World That Will Take Forever to Spin - [wow video]
Welcome to Scuba K...
Palm PVG100 aka Pepito Spotted in Leaked Pics
-
[image: palm pepito pvg100]Android Police once again has additional details
on the latest Palm rebrand leaks. This time around the site has published a
new...
Mom Has Stacked Dinner Party Roster
-
GOLDEN, CO—Their eyes widening in amazement as the 43-year-old rattled off
the names of heavy hitter after heavy hitter, impressed members of the
Dreesh...
I watch too much television and one of my favorite shows is The Office. One of the things I like about this show is that I can watch it again and again and find new things that make me laugh. One example of why came when I noticed something interesting about a recent episode.
