Chuck: "Chuck vs the A-Team"- There are many things Chuck can accomplish in its first thirteen episodes (before NBC gave it the pickup for more) and many things it cannot. Fortunately, with the extra eleven episodes NBC gave the show this season, it has the time to go back address many of the things the show seemed to forget about in Season 4.0. This episode saw us addressing two of the biggest plots devices that went nowhere: the Gretas and Papa B's magical intersect labtop. I found this to be on of the best episodes of the season. It baalnced humor and overall arcs fairly well and managed to tie up loose ends in satisfying ways. It does feel weird to interrupt the momentum the show was building on the Vivian arc the past two episodes, but I guess Chuck has always been one to punctuate their main arcs with episodes addressing smaller things, like this.
Raising Hope: "Mongoose"- It's interesting how you can feel this show expanding and discovering just how much it can do in 22 minutes. After an episode that ended with Burt going to jail for a month, we get this episode, which at first seemed like a pretty standard sitcom plot with the family writing their wills and trying to decide who gets control of Hope in certain situations. But then, the third act starts with a quick flashforward, showing the cast cowering from a threat in their attic. This was an interesting turn of events, but I found it just gave them even less reason to have someone like Maw-Maw around if the danger of her deciding to shoot them with a shotgun exists.
Community: "Custody Law and Eastern European Diplomacy"- Chang is not the strongest character on the show. Usually, like the Dean, he only fits with the cast in small doses. While the rest of the show can go into a 'Modern Warfare" realm of being unrealistic, Chang is the odd one out almost every single time. So it feels weird for him to be a main point on a plot as standard as Shirley's pregnancy (well...standard besides the fact that the conception may have taken place during a zombie apocalypse). I feel like the character is right for the plotline, but not how it was written in this episode, where it was crazy Chang running around and yelling the entire time. Elsewhere, the subplot with Britta and Troy and Abed's new friend was very well done. Not only did it showcase Britta's effect on the parts of the group ("No, that's why we still hang out with him. Hey Jeff!") but it also got in a considerable number of callbacks and meta-jokes (my favorite being Abed's "It's all downhill from here" sweatshirt for everybody who was involved in the paintball adventure).
Parks and Recreation: "Harvest Festival"- I thought this would be the focus of the season finale, but apparently this episode brought an end to the harvest festival arc, bringing it out on a high note. The Lil' Sebeastian storyline had a great number of highlights: Ben's lack of understanding, everybody else's over-enthusiasm, and a nice little play on the typical Jerry storyline. Elsewhere, the curse storyline, despite feeling wrapped up fairly easily, was a nice conflict for the festival. And the"Curse Watch" re-enactment was ferry funny, as was "The atrocities are in blue."
30 Rock: "Queen of Jordan"- Next to do an episode in the Mocumentary format (following Community's "Advanced Documentary Filmmaking" was 30 Rock. This was a parody of the typical Bravo reality show and since I've never seen one in my life, I don't know how accurate it was, but I'd say it was pretty funny. The visuals seemed fully comitted to the gimmick, while the script and plot seemed to change back and forth constantly. This seems to be setting up the arc on which the season will close, which the possibility of TGS being canceled thanks to Tracy's absence.
Fringe: "Os"- The thing that gets brought up all the time about Fringe is that it's much stronger with its overall mythology than it is standalone episodes and I think, up until this season, that has been true. Maybe it's because there's more mythology mixed in with the standalone episodes, but I really think they're just doing a better job writing compelling stories. There's still been episodes like "Concentrate and Ask Again", where the case of the week is pretty bland and uninteresting, but there's also episodes like "Os", which was really very intriguing, moreso than the continuation of the 'Soul Magnets' stuff and quite possibly the most bizarre cliffhanger I've ever seen. But the case of the floating people was very interesting, and I can't believe I didn't see the wheelchair thing coming. Also, props for the random Jorge Garcia cameo at the beginning.
Fringe: "Stowaway"- So, right off the bat, it's pretty necessary to talk about my interpretation and reception of the continuation of last week's bizarre turn of events. This show has always walked a line between silly (case in point, the cow in the lab) and heavy (case in point...this week's entire case) and, while I feel that they are still walking that line with this storyline, I think they are getting dangerously close to just silly. Anna Torv does an admittedly good Leonard Nemoy impersonation, but it all is just kind of odd. Elsewhere, I was once again a big fan of this week's standalone case, especially how it seemed like it was a parallel to the William Bell storyline, but it actually ended up being a parallel to Peter's storyline.
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