The Strange World of Thomas P. Coombe

What I Haven't Been Watching, and Why

I have no idea what's going on at Dunder-Mifflin these days. Same thing goes for Sterling-Cooper-Draper-Price. 

I have no clue what the boys of SAMCRO have been up to the last two weeks, or what godawful stuff Kenny Powers has gotten into south of the border, or how Hank Dolworth's fledgling detective agency is doing.

 In short, all my plans for writing about TV shows this fall -- not to mention actual viewing -- have fallen apart these past few weeks.

 But I have my reasons. First, as I've said before, my job eats up a lot of my time. Secondly, my friends and I have started the "Dracula 2012" project, which you can follow on Facebook and Twitter. So far, it's been a lot of fun.

 Also, I've been preoccupied, because I'm about to start a new job. Starting October 25, I'll be in the employ of Patch.com, AOL's local news service, covering Easton, the city I've called home for the last decade. I doubt I'll be working shorter hours, but at least I won't be commuting to New Jersey anymore. Hopefully, I'll be running at full steam here by year's end.

The Emmys: Filled With Glee. (Tom: Somewhat Pleased)

  Some quick thoughts on the Emmy nominations:

•  I'm not at all surprised at Glee's 19 nominations. It's fairly well-liked by critics, brought something unique to TV, and is hugely popular. But one of the best comedies of the year? Actually, I'd put Glee on the list before The Office and 30 Rock, which had really, really weak years. A better list would've left them off and replaced them with Parks & Recreation and Community, so that the Best Comedy nominees would, you know, actually include the best comedies. (Incidentally, Modern Family is a close third to these shows, and I was happy to see so much of its ensemble nominated.)
•  I'll confess: I'm wayyyy behind on my Friday Night Lights viewing (read: I've seen one and a half seasons). But by all accounts, the show has only gotten better over time, and it would've been clear to anyone who saw only the first few handful of episodes how good Connie Britton and Kyle Chandler were in the lead roles. So it's nice to see them finally being honored for their work. 
• Nominations that made me happy: Aaron Paul for Breaking Bad, Terry O'Quinn, Michael Emerson and Matthew Fox for Lost; Amy Poehler for Parks & Recreation.
• Nomination that surprised me, and made me happy: Martin Short for Damages, a great performance in a little-seen show.
• Omissions which really bugged me: John Noble for Fringe, the fact that  no one Sons of Anarchy or Justified made the cut (thinking specifically of Katy Segal from the former and Walton Goggins from the latter.)
• Who I'm pulling for in the main categories: Breaking Bad, Modern Family, Matthew Fox (for making us like Jack again), Connie Britton, Aaron Paul, Christina Hendricks, Larry David, Amy Poehler, Ty Burrell and Sofia Vergara.

 Tom Coombe

Season Finale Wrap-Up: Community, Parks & Recreation, The Office, 30 Rock and Chuck

 There was too much going with in the non-TV blogging part of my life last week to find the time to write about the season finales of NBC's Thursday night sitcoms after they had aired.

 Let's take a look at how they all ended their seasons, plus I'll talk a bit about the action-comedy Chuck, which had a really super finale earlier this week.

 Community

 "I give this year a D...for delightful."

 So says Troy, speaking on Abed's video yearbook. I concur with his grade, and only wish Community's actual finale had been the episode that aired the week before. That one actually felt like a finale, with the study group dealing with a -- by their standards -- crisis that threatened their existence. 

The Office: The Last Temptation of Scott

 Last week's Office ended with Michael discovering that his new girlfriend was actually married. (Making him, in his mind, "the mistress.")

 There might have been a good episode in the fall-out from this revelation. In fact, I really liked the idea of Pam turning the office into a little comfort nest for Michael, instructing everyone on how to deal with him.

 But what we got was weird and awkward. I was with this story for maybe the first half of the episode. Then we got Andy's bizarre conversation with Donna's husband, and Michael's descent into utter, non-deluded shamelessness, and things fell apart.

 We need to root for Michael, and in the past, when he's done shady things, he usually finds a way to redeem himself. This time, even when he did the right thing -- breaking up with Donna -- he did it the wrong way (a text message).

 There were things I liked this week -- Michael thinking the radon detector was one of those little toys that makes animal sounds when you turn it over, Dwight's baby contract having Benjamin Button/Matrix clauses, Darryl's sleep oasis -- but this one really didn't work for me. In fact, if next year's TV schedule remains the same -- with Fringe and The Office sharing a time slot -- it's very likely I'll retire The Office from the blog, until things turn around, and give a bit more ink to the much stronger comedies NBC is airing from the 8-9 block.  

 Tom Coombe

The Office: Dwight Schrute, P.I.

The Office has gone up and down in terms of quality this season, but "The Cover-Up" caught the show in   a peak instead of a valley.

 It wasn't a classic, but it at least let Michael -- and Dwight for that matter -- behave like the characters we know from the show's better days. And I liked the way it progressed: everyone assuming Donna was cheating, Pam stepping in as the voice of reason, Dwight's weird -- and ultimately ineffective -- private detective work; Pam forming her own suspicions and investigating, and the revelation that Michael is "the other guy" in the married Donna's life. (Or as he puts it: "I'm the mistress?")

From reading the brief synopses of the final two episodes, it seems like the Andy subplot will take center stage in the season finale. I'm not sure it really worked that well tonight. It's always great to see Daryl get screen time, but thing is, Gabe did seem like he was lying, which meant it seemed kind of obvious that Daryl's prank would end with Andy being vindicated. Although no one could've predicted Andy's super high pitched narration, which was pretty funny.

 Other thoughts:

•  Michael proudly proclaims that he "lives in a fantasy world." One in which the Spice Girls opening for Weird Al is a plausible concert line-up, apparently.
• TV critic Alan Sepinwall, quoting one of his commenters, raises a good point: Given Donna's circumstances, would she allow herself to be filmed? 
• A lot of good Dwight stuff this week, including Jim and Pam actually learning Morse code to talk about him (and so that he would know they were talking about him), and his taking over the spinning class at the end.
• Stanley: "My doctor told me to cut out hot dogs. We've all got problems."
• A bowl of mayo and black olives. Ughhh.

 Tom 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

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

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

The Thursday Night Comedies: Buddy Cops, Old Men, Date Nights

This is the last time -- at least this year -- that I'll lump all the NBC Thursday comedies into one post. Fringe returns next week, and I'll go back to watching that at 9 PM and writing about it soon after.   

  Once again, we'll go in order.

 COMMUNITY

 What I liked best about this April Fool's themed episode was the way it tied pretty much all the characters together: Britta wants to prove she's not the group's buzz-kill, and her lame, harmless prank ends up causing a major act of campus vandalism...which is the investigated by Annie and Shirley, neither of whom can agree on who plays what role in the buy-the-book/loose cannon police equation. Abed watches it all unfold, directing his own personal buddy cop movie. And Jeff and Troy convince Pierce to wear an outfit that makes him look like "the Cookie Crisp wizard."

  Of course, it all goes horribly, bizarrely wrong, and that's one of the reasons this show has grown on me so much recently: it can take an April Fools episode and have it end in tears. Hilarious tears.

 PARKS AND RECREATION

 Does it surprise anyone that Leslie Knope sees lunch with all the former park directors as a gathering on the same level as a summit of the ex-presidents?

 Or that the ex-park directors would instead offer up not wisdom, but ignorance, cynicism and their own petty agendas? 

 It didn't surprise me, but that didn't keep me from enjoying the episode, even though it wasn't on the same level as some of the season's earlier hours. I like anything that allows Leslie and Ron to be friends -- as in their breakfast for dinner scene, or them playing darts with a picture of the former parks directors as their target.

 And the episode contained at least one laugh out loud moment for me: Leslie saying "We really made love to the pooch" after the disastrous meeting, then -- after Ron pointing out that the expression is "screwed the pooch" -- arguing that the regular version is "too vulgar."

 THE OFFICE

 At first, this felt like The Office I know and love, from the silly opening scene to the way Dwight seemed less like a cartoon. Nice move, giving him a love interest who's as odd as he is. Bad move, giving Michael a (potential) love interest without ever explaining why she'd be interested in him when she -- and we -- were seeing him at his most obnoxious. 

 For him to overcompensate after thinking he was on a date* would've been fine; that's what we expect from the character, just as we almost expect him to have his own separate character for this sort of situation. (Dating Mike, a transformation symbolized by him donning one of those hats Samuel L. Jackson always wears.) For him to abandon his "date" after embarrassing her -- and himself -- was unforgivable.

 (*Strange how both this and 30 Rock had Steve Carrell and Tina Fey out on "dates" on a night when ads were promoing their Date Night movie, which looks pretty unfunny.)

 It's too bad, really, because everything else in that episode was pretty charming, or at least amusing: Daryl telling Oscar "You can be gay for Mack, just be straight with me"; Phyllis and Bob Vance's (Vance Refrigeration) weird bar game; Andy and Erin; Creed being a master of Dance Dance Revolution.

 (The only character who bothered me was Kevin, who I really go back and forth on. Sometimes he's funny, other times, wayyy to juvenile. Tonight was the latter.)

 Watching all these different couples have their night out was kind of enjoyable, and in the end, I found myself wishing, like Jim and Pam probably did, that Michael had just stayed home.

 30 ROCK

This was probably my favorite 30 Rock in some time. No high profile guest stars, nothing too over-the-top. For once, Liz Lemon had a romantic problem we could actually relate to (as opposed to say, meeting someone when whacked out on anesthesia, or dating a sex offender.) 

 It hurts to learn an ex-girlfriend/boyfriend in a happy new relationship, and hurts even more to have reminders of that relationship thrown in your face, or in Liz's case, happening outside your window.

 Floyd (Jason Sudekis) had always been Liz's most likable romantic partner -- even Jon Hamm revealed a cruel side when Liz burst his handsomeness "bubble" -- but here, he got to play sort of mean as well, accidentally getting drunk on alcohol-based sauce and comparing his new girlfriend (a deer) to Liz (a badger): "Why are you still single? There's plenty of guys out there for you to poison and yell at."

 Even if Liz did make things right, it was kind of heavy...at least by 30 Rock standards. Fortunately, you had Frank, Twofer and Lutz around to keep things light, getting into a prank war with Jack and Danny. (Jack clearly had the edge here, convincing the three "Pranksmen" that a "Cloverfield" type monster had attacked New York, then sending Frank a video from his mother's bedroom).

 The Tracy/Jenna plotline didn't work for me other than seeing their reactions (from under the plaster) to Kenneth's endless stories, but I welcome anything that gives Pete screentime.

 Other thoughts/questions/lines I liked:

•  Shirley: "Tell that to whatever our equivalent of a judge is."
• Loved the coonskin cap gag that opened Parks & Rec, as well as Tom's lame pick up lines while wearing it: "Animal on the head...manimal in the bed."
• Another good Tom moment: trying to act Mad Mennish while showing off his photos for the catalogue.
• Was that Michael Gross as the pro-pot parks director?
• Oscar, talking about Stanley doing 26 push-ups so he could go home early: "Essentially what we have here is the story where the mother lifts her car to save her baby."
• Pam's friend, amazed at how laid back Michael is: "He doesn't act like a boss. If I had a boss like that we'd never get anything done."
• Dwight got good at "Whack-a-Mole"...by actually whacking moles. Notice that the "Scranton Strangler" -- referenced on the unfortunate "Day You Were Born" newspaper Andy gave to Jim and Pam -- makes another appearance.
• As much as I didn't like Tracy and Jenna's Elm Street story, I like how Tracy started calling his dreams "Kenmares."
• Where's Dot-Com been? I know Grizz has health issues, but does the show want them to appear together? And for that matter, where's Cerie been?

 Tom Coombe

The Thursday Night Comedies: Sailing, Mugging, Searching, Settling

 Wow, much better. Last week, only some of the four NBC sitcoms really hit the mark. This week...well, they weren't perfect, but they got a lot of things right. Let's take them in order.

 Community

 In college, my roommate and I needed a physical education course in order to graduate, so we took badminton. "How hard could it be?" we argued. "It's badminton! People play it in their backyards at family reunions."

 Plenty hard, as it turned out. And I sucked at badminton, the way I suck at all sports that aren't bowling or miniature golf.

 I'm telling this story because I sort of identified with Jeff's plight tonight on Community, a show that's growing on me every week.  

 Maybe the badminton class didn't have a cool lady-killer guy, but I know what it's like to take a class that seems like it'll be easy, only to find out how bad you are at it. (And we weren't graded on participation. We actually had to write a paper. A paper on badminton.)

 We also didn't have Tony Hale as our teacher. He shows up tonight as the latest addition to Greendale's menagerie of bizarre instructors, with his quirk being that no one in the pottery class can reenact the famous scene from Ghost.

 But as weird as that was, it didn't compare to the rest of the crew turning into, well, an actual crew, taking a sailing course on a ship that never left the school parking lot. Chevy Chase had a lot of good moments with this stuff, including his attempts to "christen" the ship, and his assertion that he once captained "a jet ski through an electrical storm, and only lost one person." (The joke would've worked better without Troy pointing out the obvious flaw in Pierce's argument.)

 Really weird, really funny stuff, and as shows like The Office and 30 Rock show their age, it's nice to have it around.

 For more on those shows, and Parks and Recreation, read on.