Big Bang Theory: The Jiminy Conjecture

Okay, I have to say it. I don’t mean to be negative but Big Bang Theory’s new time slot is killing the show for me. Why does CBS force me to either sit through two mediocre (at best) shows or go find something else to do for an hour in order to get from How I Met Your Mother to Big Bang Theory? There, I got it off my chest.

This week was a continuation of the Leonard and Penny love story. It seems as though they might not be so compatible after all the years of longing between them. I have to say that that’s a little disappointing. But if they aren’t compatible then let the show move on to other story lines. Leonard and Penny basically spent the entire show trying to force the “relationship” to work.

As for the rest of the characters, they spent the episode debating over what kind of cricket was in the apartment. This was a much more enjoyable story. Even though it was silly, it worked. I loved the guest appearance of Lewis Black as the expert Entomologist.

I think Big Bang Theory has a lot of promise to improve as the season goes on, but they need to figure out the Leonard and Penny relationship. As for me, I’ll have to find a way to get over the new time slot because I think it’s a great show.

How I Met Your Mother: Double Date

You know how they say bands go through a sophomore slump? It’s when they sell a bazillion copies of their debut album and then only their mothers buy the follow up. I’ve been noticing that new seasons of shows tend to have a sophomore slump. I’m not talking about second seasons, because those are usually better than the first. I’m talking about second episodes. Last week’s premiere of How I Met Your Mother was actually quite good, but the follow up fell flat.

Ted spent the entire episode going on a blind date with the same girl he went on a blind date with seven years earlier. I was pretty sure throughout the whole ordeal that they wouldn’t end up together. I am very happy to be right.

The others spent their time mostly in a strip club. There were a few laughs here and there, but overall I just wanted them all to go to McLaren’s or the apartment and be normal. What do I mean by normal you ask? This season it feels like the usual spark between Lily and Marshall isn’t there. Something is just off. And although I enjoyed last week’s story with Robin and Barney, didn’t they decide to just pretend to be a couple? It’s getting a little confusing.

Marshall’s elaborate way of fantasizing over another woman was funny. The fact that he has to kill off Lily was great, especially since he does it in such a painless way as a hiccup disorder. Also, the whole doppelganger thing was hilarious. Stripper Lily was kind of gross, but I got a good laugh out of seeing Lesbian Robin.

I can’t put my finger on what exactly was wrong with this episode. Maybe it was that Ted spent it with a woman who he obviously wouldn’t end up with. Or maybe it was the strange interactions between Robin and Barney. Whatever it was I hope it gets fixed next week. I’m hoping to see Ted back in the classroom, Barney out on the prowl, and a spark between Lily and Marshall. Here’s hoping.

The Office: The Meeting

Anyone who follows my reviews of The Office knows that I wasn’t the biggest fan of the first half of last season. So I’ve been a bit nervous that it may go down the same way this year. The premiere gave me hope, but then this episode came along and took it all away from me. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t all bad.

The Meeting was about just that, a meeting between Jim and David Wallace which resulted in a meeting between Jim and Michael. Jim was proposing the idea of being promoted to Michael’s job so that Michael would be promoted to managing the entire north east region of Dunder Mifflin. The problem is we didn’t know that was what the meeting was about until about halfway through the episode. So until then all we got was Michael wandering around the office and trying to find a way to get into the meeting. It felt really disconnected and pulled back. In other words, I didn’t care what was going on. It was funny, interesting, or curious.

The side plot of Dwight and Toby teaming up to catch Darrell in what they thought was a health insurance fraud was just silly. I didn’t find it funny at all, even though Dwight and Toby are two of the funniest characters on the show.

Things started to pick up once we found out what the meeting was about. Jim is really pushing for a better job now that he has a baby on the way. I can totally see why he tried to hide his intentions from Michael, but he quickly discovered that Michael doesn’t need to know what’s going on to mess it up. I felt bad that Michael would make Jim look so bad in his meeting with Wallace. Sure, Jim hasn’t been the most productive guy over the years, but I think he has really stepped up his effort over the past season. I was disappointed, but not totally surprised, that Michael would let his insecurities get in the way of someone else’s future.

In the end things kind of worked out for the good of everyone. Michael and Jim are now co-managers. This is obviously going to be a source of conflict for the upcoming episodes. Michael and Jim will likely butt heads on more than one occasion. It should be interesting to see how that plays out. Dwight’s reaction to the news was priceless as he has basically considered himself an unofficial co-manager for years. As long as he doesn’t go into a funk like after he broke up with Angela then I think this whole situation has a lot of potential.

So the first half of the episode was painfully bad, but it turned around enough in the end that it wasn’t a total waste. I’m hoping that this sets the stage for some good comedy over the coming weeks.

Parks and Recreation: The Stakeout

Parks and Recreations seems to really be picking up steam in it’s second season. The premiere last week was far better than anything from last season, and this week with The Stakeout things continued in a good direction.

The episode centered around Leslie and Tom finding weed in the garden they had planted in the pit. They decide to have a stakeout that night to see if they can figure out who planted the marijuana. Of course, Leslie brought all the supplies one would need on a stakeout, a camera, bags of candy (including candy necklaces) and a mix tape mostly about watching people.

The other characters were mostly kept busy as well. Ann and Mark head out on their first date after Leslie gave the okay. Back at the office Ron Swanson, who just suffered a hernia, couldn’t move his head or his torso without being in pain. After being stuck in his chair into the night, April comes in suspecting something is wrong and drives him to the hospital. I didn’t really like anything about the Ron Swanson character until this episode. I really got a laugh out of him being stuck in his office as the night cleaner went by.

The real conflict of the episode was when Ann and Mark came home from their date and saw Tom trying to get back into the stakeout van after getting himself locked out. He ends up getting arrested and thrown in jail until Leslie comes to his rescue. I thought the interaction between Leslie and Tom was really great. It made them seem like real people, but it was still hilarious. I think Tom Haverford is one of the funniest characters on TV right now.

The Stakeout was a great way to follow up from a strong premiere. I am now just as excited to watch this show on Thursday nights as I am to watch The Office. The characters are starting to seem more real, and the humor on the show is really being amped up. Hopefully things continue to get better as the season progresses.

How I Met Your Mother: Definitions

At the end of last season there were a few threads left untied on How I Met Your Mother. One was that they revealed that the mother was in the class that Ted would be teaching. The second was the undefined relationship between Robin and Barney. I had visions of the show dragging out both story lines just to keep people watching, but thankfully they were the center piece of the premiere.

Robin and Barney clearly have feelings for each other, but are so afraid of a relationship that they refuse to define it in any way. This sends Lily over the edge since she wants to be able to go on double dates with them. She even has everything all planned out (it must be a teacher thing) when she says she wants to go camping and take cooking lessons with them. So, in her usual conniving ways, she locks Robin and Barney in a room until they have “the talk” and figure out what they are.

The dance between Robin and Barney when they try to talk about how they feel is hilarious, so I was happy to see them be forced to do it. I love how Lily and Marshall were incorporated into the situation too. Marshall’s “NOT GOOD ENOUGH” with the whip cracks were great.

The other half of the premiere was about Ted having his first day as an architecture professor (or is there two f’s?). They played this out perfectly. He had the cliche nightmare the night before of showing up to teach with no pants on, but on the actual first day he had a whole different set of problems. The first was deciding what kind of professor he would be. Would he be Professor Mosby, or T-Dawg? The second problem was that he was in the wrong classroom trying to teach a bunch of economics students about architecture. So in the end the mother isn’t in Ted’s class, she’s just in the same school. I thought that was a great move. This likely won’t be the last season of the show, and we know that the mother likely won’t be revealed until the very end, so to narrow it down to Ted’s own class now seemed a bit premature. We know he’s getting closer, but it doesn’t seem so immanent.

I thought the premiere was a great episode of How I Met Your Mother. All the characters had something interesting or funny to do, and the story lines from last season were kept going. The line at the end where Ted, Marshall, and Lily admit they know Robin and Barney were lying about their relationship, only to say that Robin and Barney don’t know they were lying, summed up everything that is awesome about this show. I’m excited to see where this season leads and if we get any closer to finding out who the mother really is.

Community: Pilot (Series Premiere)

Community is the newest comedy in NBC’s Thursday night lineup. It’s about a group of people at Greendale Community College coming together for a study group but end up learning about more than just their school work.

It’s kind of an odd show that is quite difficult to describe. In the same way that The Office is about, well, people in an office, Community is about people in a community college. That’s really where any comparisons to The Office end. It is a completely different style. I would say it is more similar in style to Scrubs or Arrested Development than The Office. It is less of a funny show that has great characters, and more of a show about great characters that happens to be funny.

The first episode was really just setting the stage for what is to come. The main character, Jeff, accidently forms a study group in order to get closer to a woman he is interested in. On the side, he is trying to procure the answers to all the tests that he will be taking through the year.

Again, it doesn’t necessarily sound like much, but I think it has a lot of promise. I’m glad it has a different feel than The Office and Parks and Recreation, but it also compliments them really well. I’m really looking forward to seeing how this show progresses.

Parks and Recreation: Pawnee Zoo

Parks and Recreation got off to a bit of a slow start with the handful of episodes in last year’s season. There were some funny moments but no real opportunities to connect with the characters. It was marketed as being very similar to The Office, which should have been a good thing, but it needed to find it’s own voice.

I knew right from the beginning of the season premiere that it was going to be good. It started with the main character, Leslie Knope, spontaneously breaking into rapping “Parents Just Don’t Understand”. So awesome.

The episode centered around Leslie accidentally “marrying” two male penguins at the zoo and the fallout that ensued. After she inadvertently becomes a hero for the local gay community she is asked to resign from her job by an anti gay marriage organization.

There were plenty of good laughs in the premiere, but more importantly I felt like I was finally getting to know the characters. Last season it felt like the show was trying really hard to be a funny show. It came across as being forced and simply not funny. Finally it seems like I’m watching the stories unfold rather than actors trying to be funny in a show. Hopefully that makes sense.

I’m really looking forward to watching Parks and Recreation as the season goes on. It looks like NBC is really building a nice block of comedy on Thursday nights this season.

The Office: Gossip

The wait is finally over and the sixth season of NBC’s hit comedy The Office is under way. Last season ended with the revelation that Pam and Jim were headed to parentville, as well as a reminder that the Michael and Holly story might not be over just yet.

I went into this season premiere with low expectations. I love The Office, but last season’s premiere fell short for me so I didn’t want to be let down again. I’m so glad that it turned out to be a great premiere.

The cold open will go down as one of the best of The Office. Michael, Dwight, and Andy have decided they are now into parkour. Sure, it was funny to see them throwing themselves around the the office and the parking lot, but what made it especially great was knowing that these three guys thought that they were soaring between obstacles with the grace and agility of a real pro.

The meat and potatoes of the episode centered around office gossip. After feeling left out of the “around the water cooler” talk, Michael decides to start spreading a rumor that Stanley is having an affair in order to feel important. After Stanley confirms the rumor, Michael decides to spread random rumors around the office about every other employee to try to mask the one that is actually true.

This is where the show took an unusually heavy turn, especially for a premiere. I was really surprised, and disappointed to find out that Stanley was cheating on his wife. Then we find out that the rumor of Andy being gay might be true. The problem is that he isn’t quite sure himself. I was quite shocked by this one. I honestly didn’t think they ever portrayed Andy as a potentially gay character up until this point. It was kind of hard to watch him struggling with the idea throughout the episode.

My favorite episodes are the ones where a large portion of the characters get a moment to shine. This was one of them. Creed’s SCUBA comment was hilarious, Kevin’s reaction to the rumor of him having another person inside of him was classic. Jim and Pam really took a back seat in this one, but I think that’s a good thing.

Overall I think this was a great premiere. Hopefully the rest of the season turns out just as good.

Changes

As you may know, a new season of TV shows is upon us. With it I decided to make some pretty big changes to Real Life Sitcom. I wanted to make things a lot simpler, both for you to read, and for me to write. The original idea was to write reviews on everything from TV, to books, to video games. I decided to narrow the focus of the site quite a bit. So as of today Real Life Sitcom will focus on TV shows. It will not be a huge site about all the popular TV shows. I’m going to pick a few of my favorites, as well as a few new shows starting up this season, and write reviews as well as post any interesting news I come across about them. Here’s the list so far

• 24 – This one doesn’t start again until January so until then I might only write about news on the upcoming season
• The Office – One of my absolute favorite shows which premieres tonight. I’ll be writing reviews along with any other fun information I can find.
• How I Met Your Mother – I didn’t write about this one last season, but I’ve really grown to love it after watching it on DVD over the summer.
• Community – This is a new comedy on NBC starting tonight. If it turns out to be a good show, I’ll be writing about it.

So that’s the list for now. I’m sure it will change over the course of the season, but for now hopefully you see at least one show on the list that you are interested in. Thanks for coming back to Real Life Sitcom and I hope you enjoy the new format!