Television

Community – Advanced Dungeons & Dragons

Returning from last week’s mediocre episode, Community returned to form last night.  Feeling sorry for one of their classmates and his unfortunate nickname, the study group takes Fat Neil under their wings and attempt to cheer him up. They do this by partaking in one of Fat Neil’s favorite games: The infamous Dungeons and Dragons.  Feeling left out, Pierce soon takes over the game and takes it quite a few steps too far.

Don’t be fooled, though, into thinking that the plot was only slapped together to give the writers a chance to make fun of Dungeons and Dragons. While the show does joyfully play with the notion of role-playing, the plot itself is sound and important to the overall success of the episode.  This is one of the things that is most enthralling about the NBC show. Community successfully ingrains its pop culture references into the plot in such an intrinsic way. Never do the characters simply name-drop an idea, or a reference, to get a laugh. They earn the joke, again and again, and give each situation a reason to exist. And they get these laughs, while also making us care for the characters sharing the experience.

The Cape – Goggles and Hicks

This week The Cape tries to take a day off, but his nemesis Peter Fleming has other plans!  Fleming hires a pair of assassins named Goggles and Hicks, and this marks the first time that that The Cape has fought a villain with a two-syllable codename.  Goggles!  Previously he’s battled Chess, Scales, Cain, and Dice.  I’m not saying that NBC is pandering to an audience of monosyllabic morons, but I don’t think The Cape is going to fight a villain named The Antidisestablishmentarian any time soon.

30 Rock – Que Sorpresa

The new Kabletown overlords arrive this week to take over General Electric, Sheinhardt Wigs and NBC.  The episode begins with Jack assembling the gang and demanding that everyone be on their best behavior.  Of course that just isn’t going to happen, so a crazy caper must be in the cards and this launches 30 Rock into an overt spoofing of one of the classic sitcom tropes; everyone mistakenly thinks that Liz is pregnant. 

In the main storyline where Liz and Jack need the gang to behave, this helps out because everyone has to be nice to pregnant women.  At the same time, Liz and Avery get their own subplot where Liz must convince a nosey reporter that she really is indeed truly preggers.  Again, we have the use of an unabashed TV cliché: The Nosey Reporter. In this case, it’s the ethnically ambiguous Carmen Cho who gives us the episode’s title, Spanish for “What a surprise.”  The writers put in a few self-aware nods to what they’re doing with this cliché, like “By the law of verbal traps you have to do it.”

Star Wars: The Clone Wars – Altar of Mortis

In my review for the previous episode, I neglected to delve as deeply into the concept of the “force family” that we were introduced to and instead chose to focus on the characters’ inner conflict, and for that I apologize. I regret this and will do them justice in this review. The Clone Wars continues its story arc regarding the balance of the force and the awesomeness continues.

Picking up where the last episode left off, our Jedi heroes are leaving the planet and the force family behind, but the Son has other plans for both the Jedi and his Father. Son (played by Sam Witwer A.K.A. Starkiller from The Force Unleashed video games) attempts to tempt Anakin over to the dark side (give one more movie pal), but when he refuses, he takes Ashoka hostage, turns her to the dark side temporarily by biting her, and Obi-wan must journey with Daughter to collect an ancient sword to control Son before he kills everything.

Can a Wonder Woman TV Series Work?

NBC has green lit a Wonder Woman show to air sometime in the next year, but was this the right decision? Can Wonder Woman really impact the small screen again? Let’s look at the following points and see if she can: The Original Show: Yes, there was a Wonder Woman show back in the 70’s. It was well before my time and there hasn’t been a big push for a DVD release in Australia, so I haven’t actually seen the show for myself. Going off of the minutes of research I have done as to how the show was received and executed, it would appear that while the show didn’t tie to heavily into the comic book canon, it was still able to retain an audience with well written characters and a great female lead, Lynda Carter. Now I think it’s safe to say that she won’t be reprising her role, although she could cameo as Hippolyta, so they’ll have to find a new Dianna. I won’t do a section about casting or what characters should be featured, but I’ll just say they need a strong female lead compassion and full of love, but at the same is imposing and could kick the living snot out of you then proceed to tie you up… bondage anyone?

Durarara! Episode 3 – Rampant Evil

The third episode of Durarara! begins with a bit of overlap from the second episode. We saw previously that the first day of school started and that Mikado Ryugamine and Anri Sonohara are in the same class together. On the second day the teacher asks for class representatives and Anri is quick to volunteer, but still comes off very shy. She asks if there’s a boy that will help her represent the class which is the norm (one girl, one boy). Mikado wants to join her as the class representative, but hesitates until he hears other boys talking about doing it. He stands up and volunteers while making awkward eye contact with Anri.

Durarara! Episode 2 – Highly Unpredictable

The second episode is a bit different from the first. The pacing changes as does the narrator. This time we have the voice of the Black Rider narrating as she unveils the events that we weren’t privy to in the last episode. Events like, what happened to the girl she saved once she was dropped off? The episode works to wrap up a lot of questions and scenes unanswered in the first episode and make both episodes stronger because of it.

It’s the first day of school and Mikado Ryugamine is introduced to the class as a new transfer along with the girl that was saved by the Black Rider. A third girl with glasses is introduced by the name of Anri Sonohara. It becomes very apparent that Mikado has interest in her as he can’t seem to look away. The narrator then focuses on the girl who she saved the night before.