The Strange World of Thomas P. Coombe

The Office: Slap Me In the Face With a Rainbow

Community and Parks & Recreation have been so good, well, all year that writing about The Office and not them seems kind of silly. 

 So starting next week, I'll go back to lumping the four shows into one post. For now, I don't really have a lot to say about The Office this week. 

 Michael's stalkerish flirtation with Donna was kind of painful, although it provoked a lot of funny reactions from the rest of the cast: Jim's exasperation with Pam, Kevin's confession about the M&Ms, and Creed's horrifying observation. "You ever notice you can only ooze two things? Sexuality and pus."

 Dwight's ploy to get Kelly to join the minority executive training program was a lot funnier, first because Kelly is so clearly unsuited for executive work, then because of the way she embraced her heritage to a ridiculous, stereotypical extreme (her hobbies included yoga, snake charming, and laying on beds of nails.)

 Funny stuff, but these days, this show is being overshadowed by the two younger sitcoms that air an hour earlier, and they deserve some credit here too.

Tom Coombe

Fringe: If He Only Had His Heart

 There's few things more painful to watch on TV than a network-mandated crossover event. 

 A few years ago, NBC celebrated "green week," in which all of its programming at some sort environmentally-conscious bent to it. Basically, that meant shoe-horning lines about hybrid cars and recycling into shows like Heroes and Friday Night Lights.

 Now comes FOX's "FOX Rocks" week, in which all of the network's programming -- whether it's Glee or House -- will have a musical theme.

 Not even Fringe was immune to this, which brings us to "Brown Betty."

 On one level, it was a brilliant idea: Walter makes a full confession of all his past sins, disguising it as a film noir/sci-fi musical fairy-tale for Olivia's niece Ella.

 The music element was the episode's only weak point, because it seemed as if the show wasn't fully committed to, well, actually doing a musical. 

The Beginning of a New Doctor Who, the End of The Office

 I'd be a pretty crappy Green Lantern. 

 The idea behind the venerable DC Comics hero is that he has a ring that can basically do anything, provided the person wearing it has enough imagination and will-power. 

 The imagination's no problem. I've got that to spare.

 As for the will power...

 Um...eh...meh...*sighs*

That's more of a struggle. My latest challenge: not watching the new season of Doctor Who.

And I really want to watch. There's a new doctor (Matt Smith), with a new companion (Amy Pond, played by Karen Gillian, pictured with Smith), in episodes overseen by a new show-runner (Steven Moffat, who wrote the best episodes of the previous seasons, along with the brilliant BBC sci-fi drama Jekyll and the equally brilliant sitcom Coupling.)

 I've already seen the first episode two weeks ago, and loved it. Smith, despite being the youngest actor to play the part, already seems like he's been the Doctor forever. And I liked the way the show found a way to give Amy and the doctor years of history -- he showed up one night when she was a child and promised to take her with him, then vanished for 10 years -- in a short amount of time. The only downside was the episode's villain -- not all that memorable -- but then again, it didn't need to be. The focus was on Amy and the Doctor, and us getting to know them.

 But a few days after we watched the episode, my girlfriend and I were talking about how weird it was to be seeing Doctor Who more or less as it was airing, from week to week. With the past few seasons, we'd been watching the episodes on DVD in one big chunk.

 "Would you want to wait," I asked, "and do it again that way?"

 She did, and I agreed. So that's our plan now: when the season is over -- which should happen sometime in June -- we'll download all the episodes from iTunes and watch it that way. 

 (Oddly, we watched another show, Supernatural, the same way, in big marathons. But when we got to the end of season four back in September, we decided we'd spend the money every week to watch it on iTunes. When you end your season with the devil escaping from hell, it's hard for viewers to say "Let's wait until next year to see how this turns out.")

 If it was any other show, I might break down and start watching on my own. But Doctor Who has been a shared experience for me and Megan, so it would feel wrong to watch it by myself.

 And this leads me to two questions for you, readers: 

 Are there shows you only watch with friends, family or significant others?

 Are there shows you only watch in big chunks?

                                                                                ***

 The Doctor is a relatively ageless character, but his show has also had the kind of lifespan few programs get to experience. (It premiered in England the day after the JFK assassination, and ran for 26 years, before being resurrected in its current form in 2005). 

 The British version of The Office, for example, ran for 14 episodes. Its American counterpart will have aired more than 10 times that many episodes by the time its seventh season ends next year. 

 It's seventh...and possibly final season, I should add. In a recent interview with BBC Radio, series star Steve Carrell says that next year "will probably" be his last. And with the star of the show gone, it sort of stands to reason that the show will go with him. (Assuming of course that NBC doesn't drive a truck of money to his house to get him to stay.)

 Part of me thinks it's a good thing. The Office has had a painfully uneven season this year, continually overshadowed by the two sitcoms that air before it, Community and Parks & Recreation. It's either too cartoonish or too dark. 
 

 At the same time, the issues I have with the show's tone apply mainly to Michael Scott, Carrell's character. Maybe the show could live on without him; it's cultivated an amazing supporting cast, populated with people just as bizarre and clueless as Michael. Why not have a version of the show about a level-headed manager slowly being driven crazy by his workforce? Good, hell, great comedy can come from a situation where the straight-man is in the lead. Look at Arrested Development, or Party Down. 

 What do you say, Officer writers? Make Jim the boss again and actually do something with that storyline, rather than dropping it the way the show did earlier this season. 

 And a question for Office fans? Should the show bow out next year? Can it continue on without its most famous actor?

 Tom Coombe

What I've Been Watching, Part VII: Justified and Treme

  Before it premiered last month, it was sort understood that Justified would be a serialized show. 

 After all, every other drama on FX has been a serial, and the ads for the show certainly gave that impression of an on-going conflict: an anachronistic lawman going up against a childhood friend-turned-criminal. 

 (It didn't help that these two characters were both played by actors who have appeared on earlier FX serials: Walton Goggins, who starred on seven seasons of The Shield, and Timothy Olyphant, a regular on Damages in its second season, and a veteran of a serialized drama on a different network, HBO's Deadwood.)

 Five weeks in, Justified has proven itself to be more procedural than serial, and I've been seeing some disappointment online among viewers who were hoping for more of an on-going story.

 But it feels a bit wrong, complaining about Justified, easily the best new show I've seen in a long time. (If it didn't come right after Lost, I'd be writing about it here. As it is, I don't have the time to digest/write about Lost and watch Justified the same night, so I usually end up catching Raylan Givens' exploits the following night.)

 Sure, it's a procedural, but one unlike any other procedural on TV right now.

Breaking Bad: It's Magic

  Walt begins "Sunset" living out some sort of meth production fantasy. All the sordid, pathetic aspects of his old cooking career -- stripping to his underwear, the RV in the middle of nowhere, a dimwitted assistant -- have vanished.

 Now it's like a 9 to 5 job, one where Walt can put on a dress shirt, pack himself a lunch, and head to Gus' shiny new lab. Instead of Jesse, he's working with an assistant with actual background in chemistry, one who shares his love of science and hatred of academic politics.

 So there they are, Walt and Gale, two modern Merlins doing their magic, drinking coffee so good Walt jokingly wonders "why the hell are we making meth?"

 The way real life intrudes into this bubble is what makes "Sunset" the best episode Breaking Bad has had this season. Walt learns that his RV days aren't that easy to escape, and we see -- again -- two things that Walt and Jesse need to pick up on soon. First: they still, as Saul put it, "suck at peddling meth." Secondly: they're dealing with people far more dangerous than they realize. The domestic drama that dominated the first half of the season gets pushed aside this week, and instead we focus on the basic thrill of watching two inept criminals try not to get caught.

The Office: That's Good Enough For Me

Ellie Kemper has been such a great addition to The Office as Erin -- Dunder Mifflin's sweet, adorable, and completely bizarre receptionist -- that an episode that's pretty much all about her seems like a no-brainer. 

 And "Secretary's Day" was a mostly likable episode, although the first 10 minutes or so left me with a question: 

 When did Michael start treating Erin like poison?

 We've seen them getting along in the past, and Erin's weird mental flights of fancy ("Which decade would you want to be a teenager in?") seem like the type of thing Michael would actually sit and think about.

 So it seemed out of character for him to call her a rube and not want to be seen with her.

 Other than that, this was the episode that proved Kemper's apparent fear of being fired by the show is unfounded, as she got to be weird and goofy ("In the foster home, my hair was my room"), but also show actual emotion. (I really liked the scene between her and Pam at the end, and liked even better that she didn't immediately forgive Andy.)

 Meanwhile, the Kevin subplot felt like it would be a chore at first, until his co-workers started doing their own Kevin-as-Cookie Monster impressions. (Thinking about Darryl doing the "nom-nom-nom" noise as Kevin actually eats a cookie is making me laugh as I write this.) Plus I liked the way it gave the staff something to bond over/rebel against as Sabre representative Gabe tried to assert his pathetic authority. (His phone call to corporate: "So I can reprimand them, but I can't suspend them...Oh, I can't do either...")

 Other thoughts:

•  I could've watched a whole episode that was just Erin babbling away at Michael: "I used to work at a Taco Bell express, then it got changed to a regular Taco Bell, and I couldn't keep up."
• Dwight thinks of Sesame Street as that show "where the puppets live in the barrio." He also loves it.
• Michael, on Andy: "I don't think he's the best dresser. Reminds me of Easter."
• So does Michael think the book that Precious was based on is a novelization of the movie, or did he actually manage to find a watered-down novelization? I can't decide which I find funnier.
• At the same time, it's also an example of classic Michael Scott obnoxiousness: not only is he listening to an audiobook with someone else in the car, it's one about horrifying child abuse. Bonus points for his passenger being Erin, who may not have lived through anything as bad as what's described in Precious, but certainly seems to have had an unhappy childhood.
• Andy: "If it wasn't for secretaries, I wouldn't have a step-mom."

Tom Coombe

Fringe: When Worlds Align

  The reincarnation thriller Past Life was disliked by critics and viewers alike, but say this much for it: the vacation it gave to Fringe seems to have cause that show to return better than ever.

 Yeah, yeah, I know Walter Bishop would tell me that correlation isn't the same as causation.

 Still, even the weakest of the four episodes the show has had since it came back from hiatus earlier this month -- I'm thinking here of the one two weeks back about the guy who was passing on his sickness and taking other people's health -- had its moments.

 And that episode was bookended by two of Fringe's best hours, "Peter" and last week's brilliant, beautiful "White Tulip." And like bookends, they were a matched set: both stories about men crossing scientific boundaries, endangering themselves and others, in order to rescue lost loves. 

 Tonight brought us "The Man From the Other Side," and while it couldn't compete with the two episodes I mentioned above, it had a lot going for it.

LOST: Busy, Busy Worlds

  There's only five hours left for Lost to tell the rest of it story, and one of them is apparently going to focus on Jacob and the Man in Black.

 That meant "The Last Recruit" was a busy, busy episode, with a lot going on in both the island and sideways world.

 It was the first episode this season not to have a POV character -- unless you want to count Jack -- which meant it gave pretty much everyone something to do. (Between the two worlds, everyone was present, except for Richard.)

 And, like the Monster said to the group, "It's so nice to have everybody back together again."

Damages Finale: A Man Has to Be Awful If He Wants To Be Great

 Midway through Monday night's Damages finale, there's a scene where disgraced CEO Arthur Frobisher talks with a woman producing a movie about his life. 

 There's clearly an attraction there, even more so now that she's learned some of his dark secrets.

 "A man has to be awful," she tells him, "if we wants to be great."

 That could be this show's epitaph. 

 As of this writing, Damages' future was up in the air, so this episode had to -- and did -- work as both the season or series finale.

 If it's the former, fine. A fourth season would be a gift, and it will be interesting to see where the show goes from here. And FX used the term season finale. If it had been cancelled, we'd know about it.

 If it's the latter, then Damages went out on the highest of high notes, with a gripping finale that covered many of the series' main themes and storylines as Patty's terrible war of attrition against the Tobin family came to an end. 

Breaking Bad: Now We're Cooking

  Before we get into the heart of this week's Breaking Bad, I want to take some space to talk about the show's pre-credit sequences, which are so good it seems like the Emmys should create a new category just to honor them.

 Each week, they unfold like a short film, interesting enough to watch on their own, but with some sort of payoff down the road, whether its in the long term (think the bear in Walt's swimming pool) or the short term, like last night's opening.

 Let's call it "Jesse Rips Off Walt." We start back in the first episode, where Walt gives Jesse $7,000 and tells him to go by an RV so they'll have a mobile meth lab. Originally, that's all there was to it: Walt gives him the money, Jesse shows up the next day with the camper.