The First Black Man To Make It To The End - Community "Epidemiology" Review

I have had a varied history with Community.  I was initially turned to it after the "Modern Warfare" episode last year, which I found to be a blast, but after a few more episodes, I still wasn't sold.  I started watching this second season, and while there was plenty to laugh at, I wasn't quite blown away like with "Modern Warfare."  Then "Epidemiology" blew everything out of the water.

With "Modern Warfare," playing name-the-movie-reference was fun and all, but I'm not the biggest action movie buff.  I knew some of the more iconic references (like the Chow Yun Fat scene), but so many more slipped past me.  With "Epidemiology," I can safely say I know plenty of horror movies, so I kept seeing zombie tropes left and right, with other movie bonuses to boot!

The costumes in this episode were pretty fun, and well put together.  I enjoyed Shirley as Miss Piggy/Glinda the Good Witch and Chang as Peggy Fleming/Racist Prover, but the best goes to Troy, not for the 13-year-old's Comic-Con Alien Robot outfit, but for toilet-seat-cover sexy Dracula. Not a vampire. His sexy Dracula doesn't need to be a certain type of Dracula. Nerd.  Kudos to everyone else, but it usually works out funniest the less time is spent on it. For the record, the Dean made a disturbingly passable Lady Gaga drag queen.

Okay, obviously, since this is a half hour sitcom, the zombies are unlike any other zombies that came before (they're curable, after all), but I liked that they had not only an origin, but we also got a breakdown of their symptoms in the study room.  Best symptom? The slurred speech. And of course Pierce, the group's somewhat skeezy old man, is the first zombie.

Since this episode is a one-off parody, like "Modern Warfare," I will forgo the more in-depth analysis to try to pinpoint as many references as possible. I don't know the names of the movies were a lot of these cliches originated, so if you know the names of the particular movies, feel free to comment and correct me. I'll try to name as many of them as I can...

In no particular order:
-Zombie Trope - Chiquita M.D.'s misdiagnosis of rabies (they don't always say rabies, but you know what I mean. Only the nerds see them for what they are, Troy: "Zombies!!!")
-Zombie Trope (the new Dawn of the Dead? possibly the original one, too?) - Chang and Shirley banging. Someone always squeezes in a quickie! I'm sure this has happened before the Dawn remake, but that's the best I can think of.
-Shaun of the Dead - Annie and the broken window! I vividly remember the zombies bursting through the shades at the Winchester! At least Annie kept her innards intact.
-Any Horror Movie Ever Made - The damn cat! It's never the monster that jumps out! Never!
-Resident Evil - Maybe it's because I've watched that movie a million times, since I'm a Resident Evil game nerd, but Troy and Abed climbing the shelves in the supply closet is a lot like the survivors climbing the pipes in the sewers of the Hive. Pushing it? Maybe, but I'll take that first Resident Evil movie any day!
-Zombie Trope (this one is pretty much all zombie movies) - The turned friend/loved one. Troy, you know better than to try to talk to Abed! He's a zombie!
-Zombie Trope (again, any movie with a group of survivors) - the squabble in the study room over the best course of action. They always fight! And then the zombies always get their little punk asses!
-Zombie Trope (happened in Resident Evil, but it happens in all of them) - Jeff opens the door to the Zombies!!!!
-Zombie Trope (all of them, pretty much) - The army almost killed the only witness! They surpressed the incident with the "mass rufie" though, so it kind of counts.
-Zombie Trope (all of them) - The Dean and Chang, the two biggest pansies, lock out the other survivors. Like all other pansies in zombie movies.
-Zombie Trope Fail!!! - Troy, the black man, makes it to the end....
-Zombie Trope Win!!! -...but not really. He got bit before he ended it. There are never survivors. The Dean doesn't count, he was never in danger.
-The Simpsons, "Treehouse of Horror III: Dial Z for Zombie" - Troy calling out the costumes as he beats them down is  like Homer making one-liners as he offs the famous people zombies. "Shows over, Shakespeare!"
-Dawn of the Dead remake (this could also appear in the original, I'm not sure) - It may be pushing it, but Troy thinking the cyborg costume would protect him reminds me of the bus they modify to save the guy across the street at the end of this movie.
-Zombie Trope - "I have to save them!" "You can't!" Happens between Troy and the Dean, and I think they have the same discussion in the study room too.
-Day of the Dead/Land of the Dead - Annie trying to read reminded me of Romero's zombies "learning".
-Finally, The Empire Strikes Back (not a zombie movie, I know, but the best moment of the episode) - "I love you." "I know." Troy and Abed should just sleep together already. They're the best gay couple on TV! For this exchange alone!

There are more, I'm sure of it.

Randomness, not necessarily Zombie references
-I was secretly hoping the Dean's personal memos would be more disturbing, but ABBA is the best zombie apocalypse soundtrack ever.
-Troy really thinking that recreating Aliens would work.
-Jeff is a cool zombie for sure.
-Britta as the turtle dragon was cute, but overshadowed by the others.
-I think Jeff put on a suit, picked up a random prop, and made a celebrity from that. I'd like to see him with an umbrella next year as Gene Kelly in Singing in the Rain.
-"You better back that pumpkin ass up or I'm gonna make a pie!!"
-Miss Piggy is not black. I would have said Mo'Nique as a fairy godmother.
-"You just punched Lady Bee!"
-Britta, you are special for lasting as long as you did with a bite! Up yours, banana!
-I don't know who's dumber: the Dean for opening a container that clearly does not have any food-related words on it and serving it, or the Army for letting bioweapons out of their sight.
-"He's acting like that impression of him we do behind his back..."
-I like Jeff forgetting their plan and chasing the cat instead, but I loved him yelling at the banana about the suit jacket!
-"Do me proud, Troy, and be the first black man to make it to the end." I think he pretty much is, isn't he? Hooray for making history!
-Damn you, George Takei! I'm not a Kevin! How could you favor them that way?!

GRADE: A+
I know it's unrealistic to expect a show to put out episodes like this all the time, but this is one of the most fun half-hours I've had with a show in a long time.  Their extended homages, like the Apollo 13 episode, are well and good, but this is a whole new level. Bravo, Community. I award you "Best Halloween Episode of 2010." Sorry, other shows...

MVP Donald Glover as Troy.  He not only was the hero in the end, but he also had some personal development with his inner conflict on cool guy Troy vs. nerd Troy.
Runner-Up Joel McHale, for pulling of cool zombie Jeff. MAH!

A Colossal Fog Cue - Modern Family "Halloween" Review

The Modern Family Christmas episode from last year was an instant Holiday classic, and their Halloween episode this year shoots for the same goal. The thing with this episode, like the Christmas one, is that while none of the plotlines are too original, the show finds a way to make them unique. Except for a few stumbles, it mostly works.

Claire is instantly believable as being obsessed with Halloween.  She is constantly doing something: cooking, cleaning, laundry, vacation reservations, jogging, anything.  So if she likes something, such as Halloween, she LOOOOVES it.  We already know she's a perfectionist, so her explosion at the end was not a surprise, though her confessions about the holidays were great character development.

Also believable is Phil's concern over the neighbors' divorce.  Even Phil knows he really lucked out by getting Claire to love a doofus like him, so like a friend's death, he wants to know where the neighbor failed so he might succeed. Phil can be stupid, childish, and irresponsible, but one thing that never comes into question about Phil is his love and devotion to Claire and the kids.  He would do anything for them, even get touchy-feely with Claire on a ladder.

I thought a lot about whether or not the divorce scare could have come up in another episode, and while I think technically, yes it could have, it would not worked as well as it did here.  Claire is in full-on Halloween-Nazi mode. Unless you're doing something that screws up her plans, she doesn't care.  And without noticing that Phil was really worried about divorce, it ate away at him and made him overly scared.

Gloria's speaking came up again in this episode, but Sofia Vergara was more than game to mock herself.  The last scene alone was powerhouse acting on her part.  I have always taken her pronunciation as just a part of her personality, and so did Jay and Manny, but I completely understand both Gloria's need to know what she's doing wrong AND her anger at being called out as different.  Her "American English" was worth anything, and I loved her half-hearted "bruja" speech.

Unfortunately, Mitch and Cam's story again left me in the cold.  I liked the fact that the only people he listened to about costumes was the tool and the douche, but his antics around the office were a bit too cheesy for my tastes, except for the phone calls to Cam.

Cam's actual childhood trauma was not that big of a deal, and it was kind of a stupid thing to carry on your mind for so long.  That said, I liked not only how dramatic Cam made it sound, I also enjoyed everyone rolling their eyes at him for the drama.  I suppose the story did serve the purpose of reaffirming that Cam is a drama queen, but still, that story...

As for the costumes, they were pretty cool, but not the best I've seen.  Jay's gargoyle was cute, and Manny and Luke were cute together too, but the winner was Hayley's Sexy Mother Theresa costume.  Everyone else was passable but not fantastic.

Moments of Note:
-The hand scene was funny, though I knew this show was too smart to just have Claire fail at a joke and have Luke walk away. Good one, Phil.
-The screaming coffin replaced the broken step for an episode!
-Baby Cheeses. Enough said.
-I prefer Gloria's Doggy Dog world, honestly. Poh-pies!
-"A bruja is a witch, and a gargol is a gargol!"
-It's so weird to see Andy Botwin as someone level-headed. That was a tad bit jarring to me.
-"That's hot. Who is this?"
-I am  now going to ask everyone in cat costumes how rough their tongues are.
-"Yesterday's lazy cures today's crazy!"
-"I am your mother now!"
-I like Claire, but I'm positive the gays do much better with it than her, though fireworks at Christmas is pushing it. Best moment of Claire's breakdown? Cam's "That's a lot of complaining from someone who asked for thirds on our tandoori turkey last year," followed by the best sassy head turn ever.
-"You're a girl being held in the haunted house against your will." "I know, but why the cage?"
-Phil muttering "I love you" into the monster microphone
-Who knew Mitchell was a master climber?
-Jay's speech to Gloria was the most perfect thing I've ever seen Ed O'Neill do.  Jay is not much for sap, but he knows exactly what to say to Gloria to get her back into the groove.  He told the oh-so-sweet story like a begrudging apology. Just like you would expect a grumpy old man to say to his wife. Perfect.
-Then Gloria wails on Mitchell. Ha.
-The family pulling together for Claire at the end was second for sappiest scene, but miles away from Jay.

GRADE: B+
Cam's whining and Mitchell's office were the low points, but they weren't so bad as to take away from the rest of the episode. Sexy Mother Theresa? Baby cheeses? Loving Ghoul Groom? A perfect sendoff for the dearly departed Rigg R Mortis.

MVP Ed O'Neill, for Jay's speech alone. Perfect
Runner-Up Julie Bowen. Claire's never been so perfectly crazy.

Really? Are you fixin'? - Cougar Town "You Don't Know How It Feels" Review

Why, Dr. Bob Kelso! It's great to see you again! Ken Jenkins came to Cougar Town as Jules' dad Chick, a warm old Southern gent who apparently loves to wear corsets. With him came the holiday that inspires Jules to recreate Laurie's Saturday-morning-face with pumpkins, Halloween.

The characters pulled off some of the best costumes I've seen on a TV show in a long time.  Andy's Burt Reynolds recalled an earlier episode involving mustaches. Of course Grayson meant Prince the singer, not Disney prince, c'mon Jules! Though her Cinderella-ish outfit was really well done for someone who hates Halloween, and of course the bear was her dad. Barb's haystack looked more like a backless Furbie outfit, and I'm pretty sure Bobby's costume was his unwashed laundry.

The top awards go to Ellie, Laurie, and Travis, who went as Laurie, Ellie, and Andy respectively.  They played each other perfectly, from Ellie's disconnectedness to Laurie's trampiness, and even Andy himself had to concede to Travis matching his "C'mon!!!!"  Travis did lose a few points, though, because A) bald caps are creepy, and B) he looked like he was in blackface.

Laurie did bring up a point about Travis that I sometimes feel about some of my old friends.  Being "too cool" for things like Halloween is not cool.  I did go to college, but most of my close friends didn't, and we know how to have fun a lot better than my friends who either took "more serious" majors (like Science or Business, as opposed to my English/Film/Japanese degree), and since Cougar Town is basically run by party animals, you gotta play the game, Trav.

By the way, I am not sure I'm liking the Laurie/Travis vibes. She is pretty much smack dab in between  Travis and the other when it comes to age, so seeing those two pal around together has some definite subtext of flirtation.  Unlike with Grayson, this would be the absolutely unforgivable hookup for Laurie. They have given this vibe in previous episodes too, like the season premier, but this time Laurie's single and not keeping Smith up at 3 AM before his Bar Examination.  If she had broken down this week, it would have been right into Travis's lap. Literally.

I do feel like the Bobby/Stan storyline did not need to occur this week, since it's main message (Bobby is a kind-hearted moron) was very similar to his story last week.  It was nice to see, unlike last week, Bobby successfully helping (instead of helping and failing).  And I hate both "Stan" and "Rick" but I think "Rick" is a bit better, and definitely more likely to help in a bar fight.

Jules' let Laurie be all crazy this week and took the sob story for herself.  What was amazing, though, was that most of the heartbreak was based on mostly new information we learned in this episode, yet it still bore the same weight as, say, the end of Laurie and Smith's multi-episode relationship.  Maybe it's because Ken Jenkins used the "good old guy" charm for good, unlike evil with Bob Kelso on Scrubs.  I don't recall Jules ever making a big deal about her parents before, so to see her get worked up about her dad could have failed miserably, but it was paced so perfectly that it worked.

Fun Stuff:
-Laurie, not drinking always leads to problems.
-Chick and Travis's roommate was some awkward fun.
-"Mirror." "What up, playboy? Oh, you already know!" "Who are you talking to?!"
-"You're beautiful, and I'm only telling you this because you're the only person I'm nice to."
-"Nobody put a camera on the floor because I. Never. Wear. Underwear!"
-Dom DeLuise playing Burt Reynolds.
-"You made him sad blow away!"
-Even if Laurie's dog poop in the cobwebs doesn't come out looking like huge spiders, I would still be scared that there are giant turds in a spider web.
-"That's a cool way to say goodbye!"
-"If you ever stop liking Go-Karts, you're outta the will!"
-Why does Travis sleep on the floor of the Jam Room? Wouldn't the couch be more comfortable?
-"Why does everyone think I swing my arms?!"
-Of course the flip-flop is in the toaster!
-"Who wants a roll in the hay?!" Oh Barb.
-Where was dog/pony Travis this week?
-I was going to quote the bell-ringing beer-fetching scene, but out of context, it sounds really really bad.

GRADE: A-
I had to take a little away for the Bobby storyline, since that could have happened in pretty much any other episode, but between the Laurie and Travis scaring contest, the party at the pub, and Jules' dad, this episode hit all the right notes.

MVP Ken Jenkins, for making us all love Chick in just half an hour.
Runner-Up Josh Hopkins, bringing out the best of Grayson's worst.

Couch-Blocking and Hair Eating - Raising Hope "Say Cheese" Review

I found the first few episodes of Raising Hope to be charming and promising, but nothing that really inspired me to keep watching.  Then I watched "Say Cheese," and I have decided to keep with the freshman comedy.  The premise of a young father raising a baby with his two shotgun-married teenage parents and his senile great-grandmother actually has a lot of opportunities.  As the baby grows, so does the father, and so do the just-breaking-40 grandparents, and as long as it keeps blending the dark-bordering-on-evil family dysfunction of Married...With Children with the mostly-well-intentioned dysfunction of Malcolm in the Middle, then we've got a winner.

Jimmy's attempts at wooing the grocery store clerk are a refreshing kind of awkward: cutesy, and not so painful.  After The Office,  sometimes its nice to see awkwardness outside of a mockumentary.  It helps that Jimmy and Sabrina are doing just the right amount of flirting so we could buy them as both boyfriend/girlfriend as well as just friends.

I enjoyed the family portraits a lot.  They were horrible.  I've never experienced anything worse than a button-down shirt and a combover, never any ski-resort or French pictures.  And my mother spent more of her time yelling at my little sister to stop messing up her hair and/or dress, and I just wanted to get it in and out, so Virginia holds the world cup for Family Portrait craziness!

It would definitely make sense, though, that Virginia would put so much emphasis on the family portrait.  There's just so much about life that can't be controlled, so having one nice thing, just one, would work wonders for her.  Sabrina hit the nail on the head, though.  No family portrait is actually reflective of a family's true nature.  No matter what they say, or how you see them act, no family is so sweet and wonderful to have such contentment and happiness. It also makes sense that, since Virginia thinks that a happy portrait means a happy family, a portrait with a theme, like skiing or France or just plain nice clothing, means that the family can do fun things together, which is something the Chances cannot do, and its the closest they can get to actually going skiing or actually going to France, or actually owning nice things without worrying about finance charges.

All that said, I do believe that Virginia is the worst/best kind of crazy.  She simultaneously pushes Jimmy to kiss Sabrina, but then proceeds to block Jimmy's advances on the dip-couch, to make herself look less crazy, but does exactly the opposite.

Speaking of crazy, the writers need to figure out a better way to work Maw-Maw. In the past, she's been stumbling through various senile episodes with moments of lucidity, which is when I end up liking her the most.  I give the character a bit of a pass, though, because A) for a family to put a crazy loved one in a home, it would cost much more than the time it takes to care for her, and B) this acting is probably the best they can do to keep Cloris Leachman from eating everyone alive.




The traffic light/singing scene is just the right amount of sweet to balance a show with so much sour. I believe that however low a show will dip for the nasty, that's exactly how low it should dip for the sappy.  When Maw-Maw is giving pseudo-birth, you've gotta end on a "Whacka-Do" singalong in a pickup truck.


The whole Friends referencing moments with Jimmy/Sabrina and Ross/Rachel were great, and excellent meta-referencing.  I will say that despite Sabrina's comments at the end and Virginia's yelling, I agree with Jimmy, that things could, and hopefully will, change between him and Sabrina.

Fun Things:
-It's not that I don't believe the family would compete over balloon bouncing, but where does Virginia get the time to defend her record?
-The pseudo-birth gave Maw-Maw's crazy a fluid line of thought, which made her a bit more likeable.
-Love/Hate Burt's long hair in the flashbacks.
-Hair eating is disgusting, but it gave Jimmy a nice dash of neurosis. It works.
-I don't know what I liked better: the price tags on the sweaters and the French outfits, or the lack thereof on Virginia's '50's outfit, implying that she actually owns it.
-"If I ever get that crazy, take me in the backyard and blow my head off with a shotgun."
-"I better go before this gets on Dateline."
-I never played with Shrinky-Dinks. The closest I got was that thing where you could bake rubber bugs. Does that count?
-"Ignore? How does that work on a phone? I mean, I can ignore people in real life..."
-The baby playing Xbox!
-"You know how I feel about finance charges!"
-I was half expecting Virgina to start macking on Sabrina when she sat on the dip-couch.

Grade: A-
Virginia's inability to be sane was a blast, and it was cute watching Jimmy trying so hard to flirt with Sabrina.  Even Maw-Maw's story worked for me, but I'm gonna need a little more to prove that Cloris Leachman knows what she's doing.

MVP Martha Plimpton owned Virginia's crazy. I don't think I've ever seen someone go from calm to batshit in less than a second like her
Runner-Up Lucas Neff, for making hair eating disturbingly believable.

Could you put a human on, please? - 30 Rock "Reaganing" Review

This was a strange episode of 30 Rock.  There was plenty of good, and, unfortunately, some bad, to make for a mixed bag of an episode.  I wanted to both give it an 8 in over-35 East-Coast-Excluding Miami in the right light, but I also wanted to throw tossed salad and scrambled eggs at it.

Let's start with Tracy. For me, he fluctuates the most often from good stories to bad stories, and this was typical of him, but still not a good one.  I think where they went wrong with Tracy is simply the length of each commercial take.  Sure, it made a good Boys and Girls Club commercial once it went through, but it wasn't so much fun watching Tracy botch up each long take.  He also wasn't giving us his best Tracy-isms, instead just looking like a jackass with ADD. This just wasn't Tracy's best moment.

This was a great pairing in Kenneth and Jenna, however, when we got to see them scam an ice cream shop, not to mention a great appearance by Kelsey Grammar.  Even though Kenneth is a good boy, and he does ultimately stop the con and go back to his good ways (after a Best Friends Gang beatdown, of course),  part of me does think that most of Kenneth's good nature is borne not of a wholesome mindset, but just from the fact that he has never seen any sort of positive to it.  He stole cable, with Jack's help, and loved it, and this time he robbed an ice cream shop for his pigs' medical expenses.

Jenna got to shine too, between the spoon dance and her fast-talking run down of the scam.  Throw in an overly excitable Grammar ("If anyone falls behind, we leave them behind to die. Now, who are you and what are we doing?") and you've got a solid story.

Jack and Liz's story teetered between good and bad.  The good was Jack's "Reaganing" streak ("She's into that?""No, but she appreciates it when it's done right.") and someone finally getting Liz to address her aversion to sex and love.  Not so fun? Liz's flashback.

Sure, anyone in a Pete Rose/Dorothy Hammil cut on rollerskates is funny, but it just felt...off.  I want to blame it on the fact that we have seen a young Liz Lemon not played by Tina Fey before, but we can write that off on the fact that this was a sexual-repression story.  Maybe cutting it off before we saw Liz writhing underneath Tom Jones' poster? I'm not sure, but I can just say it didn't work for me.

Another odd moment (not necessarily bad, but odd) was the flashbacks to Liz's comments on sex from previous episodes.  They were good quotes ("Then at summer camp I once kissed a girl on a dare, but then she drowned!") and it was effective to see her sexual hangups in relation to her almost cutting it off with Carol, but if they meant to do less shooting, after their live show last week, then it seemed odd that they cut only 3 minutes, tops, to clips from old episodes.

The saving grace was Jack complimenting Liz, then threatening her, and his invaluable Tracy Jordan imitation.  If Alec Baldwin could make a conversation with a peacock interesting last year, it was no wonder he saved the two odder storylines this week.

Fun Moments:
-I swear to god that the only serious hint I have ever picked up on for a Liz/Jack romantic relationship is Jonathan's irrational hatred of Liz Lemon. But hey, we learned on the Oprah episode how he got the job in the first place.
-I did like that they not only used the same director as they did for Garfield 3, but that they addressed the fact too. "I had to move back in with my parents!"
-"Liz, you are the sexual equivalent of a million Hindenburgs"
-Liz is right, Patricia Heaton and Doris Roberts are whores!
-I did like that Liz's mom was paranoid enough to take away Kermit the Frog
-Jenna and Kelsey really should open that medical supply store in Florida.
-"You're pretty uptight for hanging out under a bridge."

GRADE: B-
Tracy flopped and Liz lizzed, bring down the episode's vibe, but at least Jack was the level head for both of them.  They should spend more time with their cake-eating sketches.  I do like that if 30 Rock is gonna throw in celebrities, at least they do it in a good way.  Kudos, Kelsey, for brightening a pretty blah episode.

MVP Kelsey Grammar. Less than 5 minutes of screen time, and he rocks the boat.
Runner-up Kenneth, for letting his dark side through just a little bit.

Like we're Peruvians! - Modern Family "Unplugged" Review

What Modern Family does over other sitcoms is blending heart with comedy.  Sure, other shows can make you feel happy for the characters, but none so often as Modern Family, and no other show can get away with the sappy speech at the end to sum up how happy these families really are.

This episode didn't really do that. There was a hint of it at the end with Jay and Gloria, but it was squashed right away.  The lack of outright heart is what made this episode one of the better entries to season 2.  Cam and Mitchell got themselves overworked about Lilly's preschool and screwed themselves over, Phil's big mouth combined with Hailey's ingenuity ended up disappointing the poor teen driver, and Jay and Manny try to simultaneously avoid and validate Gloria's killer instincts.

In a rarity, Cam and Mitchell had the least interesting plots.  We already saw the two of them freak out about daycare last season, so we already knew Mitchell wanted Lilly to be the best damn 1-year-old possible. It also was just a tad bit predictable that they would royally mess up their chances at Billingsley, so I was ready to throw in the towel on these two for the episode.

I was right in that they crashed and burned, but I had no idea it would go so wonderfully horrible, and it made me believe in them again.  How do you compete with a black baby with interracial lesbian mothers? Why, by being Cherokee, of course.  That is, 1/16th Cherokee.  For the record, Lilly looked much cuter than the other baby, so she should have won the spot for that alone, but having Cameron keep digging them such a horrible hole was worth the loss of Billingsley.

Claire, meanwhile, missed human interaction with her family members, and made them all quit their phones, gameboys, and computers.  The second Phil mentioned "contest," it was apparent things would go badly, but things never go like you think they will in the Dunphy household.  It was no surprise that Luke and Alex would be the first ones to go, but I was shocked when Claire fell next.  I knew Phil was competitive, but I also remember him infamously getting so depressed that he didn't get an iPad last season. That plus the fact Claire was the one who initiated the contest caught me by surprise.

I knew Hailey was up to something with the marker and soap line, but I wasn't exactly sure what until she was talking loud enough for Claire and Phil to hear.  This is the girl who let loose a scorpion to scare away an animal trainer who was hitting on her boyfriend.  She's not that dumb, and being a teenage girl, she's a natural actress, and with Phil frazzled by fantasy football and Claire excited over not having to buy another car, she easily pulled one over on them.  The whole storyline was pretty giggle-worthy, but seeing Claire and Phil dumbstruck multiple times topped them all.

The best story belonged to Jay, Gloria, and Manny.  They kind of tricked us, starting the episode thinking it would end up being a contest of loudness: the dog vs. the "parrot."  Instead, we got a kidnapping, with a side of suspected murder.  Gloria rocked this episode.  Of course the smother-mother Colombian who forces her husband to kiss his son of 30-odd years would be a murderer. 

I don't know where she was better: kililng the rat in the driveway in all white, or in the garage's serial-killer lighting.  Jay and Manny were right to be scared of her: you don't question the woman with the shovel.

As I said before, the closest we got to a morals speech was Jay admitting to Gloria that he uses her roots as a source of suspicion and rude humor too often and offers to visit her home village.  But just like a rat in the driveway, she smashed and chopped the head off of that. "I got into two car accidents, both with goats! One of them was hurt pretty badly, but fortunately I had a shovel in the trunk."

I was actually very glad and impressed that they got some good development in for Gloria.  A major point for last season, at least the beginning of it, was Gloria marrying Jay.  Both Jay's ex-wife and Claire had their doubts about her, but as the season went on, and we learned bits and pieces of her history, she became more than a stereotype.

She's been doing very well this season, with chastising Jay for not getting to know his employees, and for letting her mothering instinct rear its ugly head (with a very hypnotic chocolate-milk-stirring scene, I'll have to add).  But this episode not only expanded on Gloria, it let Sofia Vergara be something other than a touchy-feely Latina bombshell.  She got to be Frida Kreuger, and she pulled it off beautifully.  She can terrify like its nobody's business.

Moments of note:
-Cam and Mitchell's catalog of the other parent's physical attributes.
- "Yay! YAAAYYYYY!"
-Luke dipping his jaw in his cereal.  Then building, and destroying, Dunphy towers, cut corners and all.
-"Don't fall for it Claire, she's just making up words." To be fair, I don't remember the difference between a gamete and a zygote either (I think one of them is one cell and the other is multiple cells?)
-Of course the lesbians' black baby is named Jaffar.
-"Don't normal kids drink soda?""Who knows what they do?"
-"I've had like 5 of these today. I think I have a problem."
-"We've been Shawshanked."
-The black receptionist's reaction to Cam's ghetto talk.
-"My white man name is Tucker."
-"...which, as you recall, is corn...""What if I was a single dad?"
-"The dog is happy, Manny can sleep, and we have peekles!"
-"Such bad parenting!"

GRADE: A
While it doesn't usually phase me that an episode of Modern Family gets emotional, it's also refreshing to have everything fall apart, too.  But I guess that could be the unspoken moral of the episode? Things can also just not work out?  At any rate, seeing everyone, the characters, that is, not the actors, off their game made this a great episode.

MVP Sofia Vergara gets a chance to be more than just Latin and sexy to play for laughs.  She kills. Literally.
Runner-up would have been Ed O'Neill for Jay ("You Rat!") but Eric Stonestreet stole it out of his hands when he suddenly became a Native American.

Trading Kisses for Milk Money - Cougar Town "Keeping Me Alive" Review

One of the strangest aspects about Cougar Town is the show's ability to be incredibly silly, absurd, and downright insane, while still pulling off emotionally affecting scenes.  Granted, sometimes this switch doesn't go off without a hitch, but fortunately, whether or not you actually feel sad or warm-hearted at a more dramatic moment, the show will kick you back into comedy before long.

Take this episode, "Keeping Me Alive."  There were three particularly more dramatic moments: the "Aw Shucks" moment between Travis and Ellie conceding that they are simpletons, the moment of Jules and Bobby figuring out their post-marriage relationship, and the heartbreaking scene of Laurie's breakdown.

Watching Ellie try to assert her intellectual superiority over the episode was actually quite fun.  What the hell was the documentary about that Travis wanted to see? Locomotion and kinesis? It sounded like a physics lecture, and I'm fairly confident not too many physicists would want to go sit through a documentary about it, much less a photography nerd and a drunken, angry mother.  You also couldn't help but feel for Travis and Ellie as they tried their hardest to define the word "island."  I felt their pain.  Maybe they should vacation to the island of Mexico one of these days.

As much as I felt for Ellie, I still got a great big kick out of her being told off by Jules, Grayson, and Andy.  I'll admit it too: I don't know what bonds are, besides money but not.  I do know where Afghanistan is, though, and I (somehow) manage not to clap at dead people in documentaries.

I think that many people do subscribe to Ellie and Travis' pleasure in seeming smarter than others, even when its not necessarily the case.  There's a small boost in self-confidence to be had when you hear a group of grown adults call Mexico an island. At least aspirin-rimmed margaritas are involved to help you through the pain

Bobby Cobb is an idiot, but one of my favorite idiots, primarily because he rarely does anything, no matter how stupid, without having noble intentions.  In this episode, he looks to not only become more independent from Jules, but become someone they can rely on in the process.  Sure, he accidentally turns Jules' office into a bar, and then mistakes  a client's wife for his mother, but he only does so to try to help Jules instead of just himself.

But Jules takes some convincing.  Jules values herself on how much she's needed, and has for a long time.  That's why she had, and probably still has, trouble with Travis being a whole 20 minutes away, and it's a big part of why she doesn't want Bobby to help her out.  Jules is needed, she doesn't need.  Of course, his case could have been stronger had he never cheated on her.  This is a dynamic we haven't explored much in the show: Jules and Bobby's divorce.  We know he cheated on her, and he was still in love with her for most of last season, but we've only heard a small speech or two regarding Jules' feelings.

Last season, Jules had to drill into Bobby's head that she didn't love him anymore.  She still found herself comforting him, though, and also him comforting her.  We saw them working together, and occasionally teaching each other lessons, like letting Travis go, but we never explored the bad blood between them.  I think the show used their conversation on the beach to show us that we've actually been seeing it all along. She helps Bobby out so often because she's still a little bitter and likes to help him as a reminder that she can do things he can't.


I will criticize Jules on her client a little bit though.  She has confessed to having redneck roots, and on top of that she should have known to at least ask Bobby for advice, if not outright help, in communicating with the man, who totally should not have shamed Jules' "Woo!"  And I would also have preferred a less-Chinese bathroom.  Most other rooms, Chinese would work for, but not bathrooms. 

Finally, Laurie had her "dump 'n bump" phase with Smith.  I think that the reason Laurie and Smith didn't work out actually can be attributed to Smith's dad, a role Barry Bostwick should really get nominated for an Emmy for; who else can pull of Tarzan golf yells like him? If that final scene at the driving range is any proof, nobody can.

At any rate, Smith's dad never liked Laurie, since she is of a less refined class.  I think that this has affected Smith more than he knows.  There was an episode last season where Smith wouldn't get upset at a man Laurie fooled around with while he was away at Law School.  This theme followed them all the way into the episode right before this one, where Smith couldn't care less that Laurie and Grayson hooked up.

Obviously his reaction last week was not due to a passive personality, like they tried to pass off on him last season.  I think it is his lack of passion towards Laurie, whose history he is hung up on, more so than her personality, her heart, or even her Vajazzling.  I kind of hate Smith for this, because I think he knew she was not the one for him from the start.

On the other hand, to give Smith a little credit, Laurie didn't initially love Smith either.  In the beginning, she felt too unsophisticated for him, and later almost broke it off due to Smith's lack of ex-boyfriend-fighting.  Grayson and Jules both helped push her to give Smith a chance. Laurie was able to move beyond her history of dating shirtless men who carve "DIE BITCH" into glass tables, and found someone she could settle down with and be genuinely happy, which is not at all what she expected going into this relationship last year.

Andy may be a bromantic dork, and Grayson may hail from planet Douchelon, but they do have one over on Laurie in that they understand relationships a lot better, from their combined experiences of odd love (Andy and Ellie) and devastating heartbreak (Grayson's divorce).  They saw right away that the Smith-dump-'n-bumping Laurie was not who she really was anymore, though I'm inclined to more believe in the Smith-beer-smashing-curb-kicking Laurie is more to her nature.

Finally came the Good Will Hunting recreation scene (still topped by the Shawshank experience from last season, though).  While Andy and Grayson brought some giggles, it was Laurie's heartbreaking realization that shows the heart of this show:

"Why doesn't he love me?" "I don't know." 

Sure, a good friend could have said a number of things in this situation "He doesn't appreciate you for you." "He's a heartless jerkoff." These guys are here to support in every which way they can, especially in being truthful to each other.

Bobby calls out Jules for not actually forgiving him for messing everything up in their marriage, and gets her to admit that she gets a little pleasure in seeing Bobby struggle.  After the gang gets Ellie to realize she's as simple as them, Travis tells her that their thing isn't so much actually being intellectual, just so long as the others think they are.  And Andy and Grayson aren't going to go into a tirade against Smith because there really isn't a solid reason to despise him: Both he and Laurie thought they shared something, when, unfortunately, it was only Laurie loving Smith,  and not the other way around.

This episode may have delved into real introspections of the characters, but that didn't mean it didn't have it's funny moments:

-While I pronounce it "Rue-inned", I prefer "Roined" to "Rue-eened" any day. If you're gonna say it wrong, go way wrong
-"No more alimony and you still need me? This is the best day ever!"
-Laurie's two brothers: the one who lost an eye in backyard wrestling, and THEN "The Cyclops" I wonder if she's got a glass eye herself.
-Truth or Penny Can was fun, but it was no Movie Mash-Up game
-"Travis, you are wearing Kylie's varsity field hockey jersey!" "I'm proud of her..."
-"You're manly, but you're still slight, so I can spin you like a pizza!"
-It would only make sense that Ellie writes a blog about Project Runway that seems to have nothing to do with the contest.  I'd be surprised if she even paid attention to the fact that any of them made clothes.
-"I only have half a bottle of spray tan left. Should I go North, or South Side?" "Zebra stripes!"
-I know Bobby's heart is in it, but if my Realtor is giving away beer to get business, I'm going somewhere with fewer toothless people.
-What else is Dog Travis good for besides selling sperm? Also disturbing about that comment is that Bobby once referred to his penis as Little Travis. So wrong.
-Does anyone look good in bowties?
-Is it really just the yelling that makes golf suck? Or am I just a jaded non-sports guy?

GRADE: B
The last act of the episode kept wavering in tone, from serious to silly, keeping it from striking its themes home.  Still, Busy Phillips saves the day by giving yet another heart breaking speech that gets through loud and clear.  Add that to some real insight into Jules and Bobby, and that raises an episode that, while still pretty fun, doesn't seem to pack the hilarious punch of other entries.

MVP: Busy Phillips, for Laurie's breakdown.  Runner-up is Christa Miller for Ellie's deflated ego.