The Good Place Review: “Most Improved Player”

In the wake of what have been a few pretty eventful episodes, “Most Improved Player” gave The Good Place a chance to take advantage of its great cast and provide a satisfying next step in Eleanor’s journey to becoming a better person. Most of the episode revolves around Michael (Ted Danson, who after being pushed to the side for the first few episodes, has become the series MVP in the show’s most recent episodes) interviewing Eleanor and her friends to figure out who knew what about Eleanor being an imposter and Janet’s death. What “Most Improved Player” highlighted about The Good Place is that with a cast as talented as the one the show has, sometimes just letting them play off of each other, can produce the best results.

Putting Michael at the center of the episode was a smart move for the show. For not being a human, he’s arguably the most human of any of the characters on the show. Here Michael was playing his greatest hits list of personality traits. His reserved sympathy for Eleanor was affecting, his misplaced reverence for Jianyu’s way of life wrung what little comedy out of that part of the show that is left, and his overall frustration with the situation as a whole provided most of the episode’s best laughs. The running gag about Janet answering every character’s request by bringing everyone a cactus instead of what they asked for, could have gotten old quick, but the the pure frustration that Ted Danson was able to convey every time made it one of the episode’s funniest aspects. Darcy Carden also deserves a lot of credit for so convincingly selling the joke every single time.

As far as addressing the events at the end of last week’s episode, “Most Improved Player” set up a lot of strong points of conflict going into the final episodes of the season. The show has shown little signs over its course that Eleanor is becoming a better person, but here the show really sold the idea that she definitely isn’t the kind of person that belongs in the Bad Place. Not only does Eleanor openly acknowledge remorse for the bad things she did during her life, she repeatedly shows that the bonds she has formed with her friends in the Good Place, mean more to her than her own comfort in remaining there. The episode smartly contrasted Eleanor’s kind of “bad” with the kind of “bad” displayed by the representatives of the Bad Place when they arrive to take her. That she is physically repulsed by how they act shows that Eleanor’s desire to stay in the Good Place is less about the physical comforts of her environment and more about the people she has been spending her time with. Overall the episode did a lot to show that Eleanor, is far from perfect, but she’s still a protagonist worth rooting for.

Other Thoughts:

• Adam Scott’s guest starring role as the representative from the Bad Place was a perfect bit of casting. Here’s hoping more Parks and Recreation alumni can find their way onto the show from time to time.
• Some of the other funny gags from the show included Michael accidentally revealing to Tahani, through the lie detector cube, that he was lying when he said her testimony was helpful, or the punishments on the train to the Bad Place, such as the temperature in the train raising one degree every time Eleanor thinks of how hot it is in the train.
• At the end of the episode it is revealed that the Eleanor who was supposed to be in the Good Place, has been in the Bad Place this whole time. It’s a great note of conflict to end the episode with, but shouldn’t Michael be questioning why the Bad Place representative only mentioned the second Eleanor after Michael pulled our Eleanor off the train?
• The show has done a nice job of building the relationships between Eleanor and both Tahani and Chidi. That Chidi was willing to put himself at risk to save Eleanor, and that Tahani’s real anger with Eleanor is because she thinks Eleanor wasn’t her true friend, were two of the more affecting aspects of the episode. 

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Review: "Where Is Josh's Friend?"

If you are unfamiliar with the show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, it is a musical-comedy about a woman who moves from New York to California to pursue a man she had a summer camp fling with as a teenager. As the season one theme song suggests, the show and its main character, Rebecca Bunch (series creator Rachel Bloom), are more nuanced than the title suggests. Along with Jane the Virgin and freshman show No Tomorrow, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend has helped The CW carve out a place in the TV landscape for smart hour-long comedies about sincere, yet flawed, women navigating surreal worlds. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend brought The CW its first Emmy award (in a technical category), its second Golden Globe award (the first win came from Jane the Virgin the year before), and a Critics Choice Award. All this to say, this is definitely a show worth catching up on if you haven't already. So unless you want spoilers for season two, go do that now.

The best compliment I can give "Where Is Josh's Friend?" is that Crazy Ex-Girlfriend no longer feels like a show in search of itself. To be fair that transition happened some time in the back half of season one, but it would have been easy for the show to second guess itself moving into season two. I'm glad it didn't, because the version of the show presented here is moving confidently in some interesting direction. Rebecca, after being let down by Greg, is as committed as ever to making her "fairytale" with Josh a reality. Josh on the other hand cares about Rebecca as a friend, but any romantic attachment he feels for her is purely sexual. Now Josh and Rebecca just need to figure that out for themselves. Rebecca chasing Josh was such a huge part of season one, that I understand why the show wants both characters to naturally come to that conclusion on their own. That's a necessary process Rebecca is going to have to go through in order to be able to move on with her life.

This episode did a great job of starting to establish new stories for the supporting cast as well. Paula, after spending most of season one obsessing over Rebecca's love life, has decided to channel that energy into going to law school. Paula has demonstrated on multiple occasions that she is excellent at her job, and she's excellent at arguing even the craziest points. It's a strong new direction for her character. Greg also gets a meaningful storyline to pursue this season. The fact that Greg is an alcoholic makes sense after the show presented the evidence from season one (in the form of a flashback montage), but I have to say, it's not something I particularly noticed. Greg spends a lot of the show defeating himself so that he can never be disappointed by life, and the idea that a lot of that might stem from his alcoholism, gives his character a meaningful path forward on the show.

Other Thoughts:

• "Love Kernels" was an excellent first song (music video? that's essentially what they are) for the season. It was self-satirizing, catchy, and hilariously broke the 4th wall a few times. 
• "We Should Definitely Not Have Sex Right Now" was much less effective. The show generally includes at least two musical performances an episode, and sometimes that means if forces one in like this, that feels unnecessary.
• The new theme song isn't nearly as catchy as the theme song for season one, but I understand why the show wanted to change the song as the story progresses.

The Good Place Review: "The Eternal Shriek"

This week's episode of The Good Place, took a very progressive step forward, by finally having Eleanor reveal to Michael that she was put in The Good Place, by mistake. How that will affect the show moving forward, remains to be seen, but last week's episode proved that it was time for the show to move in a new direction, so this was a smart move on the show's part.

"The Eternal Shriek" starts where last week's episode left off, with Michael announcing that he is leaving The Good Place forever and going into retirement. Believing this to be a win-win situation (her secret stays safe, while Michael gets to relax for eternity), Eleanor is content to let Michael retire, until she learns (from a hilarious monologue by Ted Danson) that retirement for Michael will essentially be his version of going to The Bad Place. Feeling guilty, Eleanor decides to "murder" Janet since only "she" can operate the train that takes Michael from The Good Place to retirement. Chidi, who does not approve of the plan, accidentally hits the button that terminates Janet while trying to keep Jason from pushing the button (because apparently stupid people love touching buttons?). After a huge screen appears in the sky playing a video of Janet saying she has been murdered on repeat, Michael learns that he at least is not the only thing wrong in the community and postpones his retirement. Eleanor seeing how much Chidi's guilt over "murdering" Janet is affecting him decides to spare him the eternal agony and admit to Michael in from of the whole community that she is the reason everything has gone wrong in the community.

There are two very important sides of Eleanor we see in this episode. Whenever she encounters a problem, her go to move is to lie until the problem goes away or someone else fixes it. She always comes up with justifications for her lies, but the reality is that this is the biggest roadblock preventing her from earning her spot in The Good Place. As long as Eleanor lies about deserving to be there, she could never actually deserve to be there (per the rules of the show). There's also the side of Eleanor that has genuinely started to become a better person who cares about those around her. She doesn't want Michael to experience the torture of retirement, or Chidi to have to suffer through the guilt of keeping a secret for the rest of eternity. Her choice to reveal herself, is the most selfless action she has ever taken. It's a necessary step forward for Eleanor as our protagonist, and a smart change of direction for the narrative of the show. Obviously the show can't get rid of Eleanor as the main character, so seeing how Michael and all of the other residents of the community react to this news will be an interesting way to spend the back half of the season.

Other Thoughts:

• The show pairs Tahani and Michael together a lot when it doesn't know what else to do with those characters. It's a pairing that has been pretty fruitless so far, but last night Tahani's increasingly misguided attempts at cheering Michael up made for one of the episode's best running gags.
• Janet rarely gets more than a few good lines in an episode, but this episode gave her a lot of great jokes. From her best approximation of human crying at the news of Michael leaving, to her default programming to realistically plead for her life when someone comes near the button that destroys her, Janet rivaled Michael as the comedy MVP of the episode.
• I'm glad Janet's "murder" was really just a hard reset. She's not the most vital character to the show, but she is often a great source of humor for a show that frequently relies more on "smart" comedy than laugh out loud jokes.
• Jason still isn't working for me. I understand the role he is supposed to play on the show, but the show would have to put in a lot of work to transition him from just a plain old idiot to a lovable idiot. At this point, the show hasn't done anything to prove that the character is worth all of that time and effort (especially given that the show is already halfway through its 13 episode season).  

Supergirl Review: "The Last Children of Krypton"

Supergirl's second episode at it's new home was mostly a continuation of what occurred in the season premiere. Superman was still around for this episode, but by the time he left at the end it felt like it was time for him to go. The opening montage of Superman and Supergirl helping people around the city, was a great reminder of the great sibling chemistry these characters have, but this is Supergirl's show. These episode did a lot that helped transition the show from CBS to the CW, but it's time for Supergirl to start figuring out what show it is going to be after the dust settles.

"The Last Children of Krypton" at least started to answer that question. Cat Grant is leaving, which means that those outstanding scenes between Cat and Kara, which have been a lot of the emotional backbone of the series so far, will not be present for majority of the second season. It's a shame, and I'm not sure Kara's new boss Skipper (played by Ian Gomez in a role that is almost the polar opposite of his beloved Cougar Town goofball Andy Torres) will be able to fill that role, especially given the gender gap. I'm willing to give that relationship time to establish itself though. The show will need to establish strong connections in Kara's personal life if it has any hope of continuing the momentum that it established over these two episodes.

Otherwise, it was a pretty standard outing for the show. Metallo gave the cousins from Krypton a much more worthy opponent this week than the army of drones they fought last week. So far the show has been able to keep the special effects standards up to par with the CBS episodes, and I would argue that the many fight scenes between the Metallos and our various protagonists were more impressive than just about any of the show's previous fight scenes. Now all that remains to be seen is how the show will handle the many impending changes on the horizon. If they handle them with the same care that they have handled these first two episode with, then it looks like Supergirl will have many bright days ahead.

Other Thoughts:

* James doesn't seem like an adequate replacement for Cat, but at least his new role will give his presence a little more meaning. These first two episodes functioned almost completely without him, so the show is going to have to do a lot to justify his continued presence on the show.

* After two episodes, it is very clear that "Winn DEO Tech Nerd" is a much better fit for the show than "Winn Kind of Unnecessary Catco IT Guy.

* For as much as the show seems to be banking on audiences being intrigued by the identity of this mystery man from space (Chris Wood), the show has done a pretty bad job of actually giving the audience a reason to care about that random storyline.

* The show has necessarily ignored a lot of the backstory established in season one, to make the transition to the CW easier, but how Cadmus transitioned from a secret government facility to a rogue anti-alien terrorist group probably could have used a little more explanation.

* Alex donning the anti-kryptonian suit from the end of season one makes sense, and was a smart way to keep her in on the action in this episode.

New Girl, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and No Tomorrow Mini-Reviews

New Girl:

After what has been a pretty slow start, and a very half-hearted attempt at a cross-over with Brooklyn Nine-Nine, last night's episode of New Girl was easily the best outing the show has had this season. Jess securing votes for Nick had a lot of decent comedic material, but more importantly it allowed the show to explore both the Jess/Nick relationship and the Jess/Cece friendship in ways that were affecting without being overbearing. Schmidt and Cece's interior design disagreements gave that couple a chance to work out some of their most obvious differences. That couple has been through so much, that at this point it's nice to see them have breakthroughs, without the threat of breaking up. The idea that Schmidt and Cece's home might have been the setting of an adult film, never really paid off, but Nick and Winston's secret vault was easily the funniest thing the show has done this season. That the rituals involved with the vault became more complex over the course of the episode made it all the more fun to watch. New Girl is best when it commits to the absurd.

No Tomorrow:

The first two episodes of No Tomorrow showed how the idea behind the show had a lot of promise, but that the show wasn't quite where it needed to be yet. There is still some fleshing out to do, but "No Doubt" was the first episode that felt more like a good episode than just a good idea for an episode. Evie isn't perfect, and it was nice to see the Xavier call her out on trying to take advantage of his fun lifestyle, while trying to hide the parts of him away that she doesn't like. If Evie and Xavier's relationship is going to be compelling beyond just a few episodes, it has to eventually move beyond these two people liking each other because they have fun together. "No Doubt" was a big step in the right direction. It was also nice to see how Xavier's lifestyle started to have an effect on the people in Evie's life. Kareema in particular started to move from "sarcastic best friend" status to being her own individual in this episode, which was nice to see for a character with really strong comedic potential.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine:

Like New Girl, Brooklyn Nine-Nine has had a pretty slow early run of episodes this season. Elements of the Florida based episodes worked, but as a whole the show felt disjointed without having the entire cast together. Leave it to the annual Halloween heist episode to get the show back on track. There's an argument to be made that the show should probably retire this tradition, but if the show can keep making episodes as strong as "Halloween IV," then more power to them. The "surprise" of Gina winning the bet wasn't all that effective because the show did something similar last season with Amy's out of nowhere win. It's something that the show will need to do differently if it does future installments. All of that being said, this episode was a lot of fun. Jake's original plan to steal the plaque by locking everyone out of the lobby and making them watch, was surprisingly ingenious for him. It also led to Holt hilariously smashing through his own office window, to keep Jake from winning. Realistically, Jake should have gotten to keep the plaque after all of that, but Gina still would have pulled one over on him anyway. Diaz's commitment to Amy's detailed plan (down to reading the suggested Babysitter's Club chapters) led to some of the episode's best moments, and took full advantage of a relationship that the show doesn't explore enough. Gina's win wasn't a surprise, but her at least her motivation for winning was different from past years, and her explanation (especially wearing Amy's clothes to hide in plain sight) was a lot of fun.

The Good Place Review: "What We Owe to Each Other"

"What We Owe to Each Other," is the most uneven, of what has been a very strong run of  episodes for The Good Place so far. In one respect the episode expanded the show and its characters in some much needed ways. Namely this was the first episode to spend a good chunk of it's run time exploring who Michael is, and what makes him tick. Ted Danson has been a little underutilized on the show so far, besides a few hilarious one-liners or perfectly executed bits of physical comedy. Here he gets to let his freak flag fly.

Michael is so eccentric and obsessive, that he's often one of the show's greatest comic tools. From his love of paper clips (paperclip shower anyone?), to the way he puts on a hoodie like a sullen teenager when he can't solve a problem, Michael (in large part due to Ted Danson's excellent performance) is a gold mine for jokes. His obsession with the show Friends was a recurring joke that kept producing some of the episode's funniest lines, such as "Ross and Phoebe" being the first pairing from the show that Michael could think of as an example of true friendship. Eleanor's insistence that Michael needed to learn how to have fun, turned out to be more of a good deed for the audience than for Michael. From his line about liking frozen yogurt more that ice cream because, "There's something so human about taking something great and making it a little worse so that you can have more of it," to his description of a plush Minion he won from a claw grab arcade game as an, "ugly yellow toddler," Michael finally got the showcase episode he deserved this week. I hope Michael doesn't make good on his promise to leave the Good Place, because I'll never get tired of hearing him call a pile of rocks, "devious little bastards."

Most of the other characters had much smaller stories in the episode. Chidi and Tahani discovered that they have enough in common that in another situation they possibly could have been paired together as soul-mates. Given how nice Chidi and Tahani are, and how neither had a chance to be paired with a genuine soul-mate, it's nice that they are developing a connection, even if it makes the whole situation even more complicated. Jianyu/Jason hasn't been clicking for me. I understand the element of humor he is supposed to inject into the show, but for the most part it doesn't seem to be working. The show has just traded the "Jianyu never talks" gimmick for a half-hearted "Jason isn't smart" gimmick. Janet continues to be a good source of comedy, even if the show isn't completely sure how to use her. Her "does not compute" bit was the show's funniest non-Michael moment, but overall it seems like she's best used as a "straight man" to counter Michael's often spastic personality.

Eleanor's story this week was pretty basic as well. Seeing her teach Michael how to have fun was a great use of both Kristen Bell and Ted Danson (who have fantastic chemistry together). The episode didn't go too in depth on Eleanor's moral lesson from Chidi (which essentially boiled down to "keep your promises"), but focusing on building the Michael and Eleanor dynamic was a more rewarding use of time, so I applaud the writers on that. Where the episode took a big misstep was in the flashback. Past flashbacks have provided a lot of understanding as to why these characters have the bad habits and insecurities that they do, but this week's flashback served no other purpose than to show that Eleanor was a bad person on earth. That's something we already knew about Eleanor. Had the flashback been funny or illuminating, then I could have been okay with it, but here it seems like a contrived piece of formula the show is relying on. It would be a big mistake for the show to stick to this formula of including a flashback in every episode. At most they should be an occasional device the show uses, but really we are starting to know the characters well enough that the show would be fine dropping them all together. Other than that, the episode was mostly good, even if it was lacking in content. 

Brooklyn Nine-Nine and New Girl Review: Jess Meets the Nine-Nine

"It's a crossover!" ~ Jess Day

Was it a crossover though? There are few TV plot devices I dislike more than a lukewarm crossover episode. Last night we got two of them in the form of the Brooklyn Nine-Nine and New Girl crossover episodes. Crossover episodes are tricky, I understand that. It's hard to make two very different shows mesh together to create a story that satisfies both shows; especially when the two shows are as stylistically different as Brooklyn Nine-Nine and New Girl. A successful crossover episode needs to be fully committed to the idea of bringing two shows together, but here the shows only seemed interested in doing the bare minimum to qualify as a crossover. It begs the question; why do a crossover at all?

Brooklyn Nine-Nine's half of the crossover was by far the lesser of the two episodes. The officers of the Nine-Nine have been switched to the night shift and while all of them are tired of the paperwork and long hours, Jake is back and ready to work his first case in over six months. The problem is, everything takes longer on the night shift, because all of the departments have less qualified skeleton crews working. This resulted in the episode's best scenes which involved Jake and Charles trying to solve a case, only to run into a series of escalating obstacles because of it being the night shift. The rest of the episode mostly consisted of the officers complaining about working the night shift. With the exception of a few comical moments like the revelation that Terry's night time alter ego has been dubbed "Sassy Terry," or Gina becoming a social media star in Australia. The "crossover" part of the episode was a scene where Jake commandeers a car Jess Day happens to be driving and promptly crashes it. That's the extent of the two characters' interaction with one another.

The New Girl part of the crossover worked much better because it felt more like a whole episode from start to finished. Schmidt is being honored by his high school (which later turns out to not be such an honor), Cece has to fight Schmidt's mom for respect and approval, and Winston and Nick had to put on a fake subway show to earn money for subway fare after spending all of their money on an expensive lunch. The latter storyline led to the most natural part of the crossover, where Charles Boyle happens to be one of the bystanders watching Winston and Nick "perform" in the subway. It's a scene that takes advantage of how all three characters would naturally act in that setting, even if it didn't really land as a joke.

The other crossover scenes consisted of seeing how Jess wound up encountering Jake, and the aftermath, where Jess met Gina and Holt while trying to complete the paperwork for the damages done to Schmidt's mother's car by Jake. This material all felt pretty forced, and Jess's revelation about how her last trip to New York changed her life without her knowing it, felt like a pretty big stretch. The clips at the beginning of the episode of all of the bad things that happened on that trip, were pretty funny and ridiculous. The funniest scene in either episode was hands down the scene with Jess in the deli shop slowly being annoyed to the point of blowing up at all of the other customers, which almost made the trip to New York seem worth it. Otherwise these episodes were mostly a bust. They didn't function well as individual episodes or as two parts of a whole crossover. I'd love to see these shows give a crossover another try, but only if they are willing to commit to the concept.

Other Thoughts:
* The scene at the end of New Girl's episode, where Coach shows up, was nice punctuation mark on the crossover. Damon Wayans Jr. has appeared as different characters on both shows, so there wasn't a realistic way to work him into the crossover aspect of the episode. It was also kind of a nice joke about how extraneous Coach has always been as a character on New Girl.

* One of the main reasons the show had trouble actually getting the characters in the same place at one time was because of the night shift plot that consumed all of the Brooklyn Nine-Nine episode. That plot also leaves some of the events of the New Girl episode unexplained. We know why Jake ran into Jess during the day, but why were Holt and Gina still at the precinct in the middle of the day? Why did Holt not have the authority to switch his officers back to the day shift once he took up his post as Captain again?

* The most frustrating part of the crossover was that the episodes actually had a perfect way to bring both casts together, built right into the story. Jake commandeering Jess's vehicle could have led to those two being forced to team up to chase the criminal Jake was after. Jess's disappearance could have led to her friends showing up at the Nine-Nine looking for her where that have to wait and bother/bond with the officers there. Winston himself is a police officer, which could have made his presence all the more relevant. Overall it all feels like a missed opportunity to have two very diverse groups of people interacting with each other.

* Holt forcing the group to smile and laugh made for an amusing scene, but the joke about Holt misjudging what the others would thing was fun to do at a party, was a joke the show has done many times before to much better effect.