Erik M.

5/19/14

Abe's history was already wrecked by "Gorgeous Grampa". No point pining about more Abe retcons now.

5/19/14

Tossing Jeff into space was a brilliantly clever writing move.

4/11/14

Craig is an excellent character… for 30 Rock. He's totally out of place in the laid back Pawnee Parks Department. His manic insecurity so jarringly breaks the chill groove of this show. P&R doesn't need or want a worse version of Dean Pelton.

3/31/14

I was just surprised they actually said World Cup instead of Brand-Xing it like "Ultimate Punching".

5/5/13

He missed a few, but that happens to most SNL hosts and even some cast members. Live TV just goes like that, nobody's perfect every time. Even consummate pro Tina Fey missed a line or two in the 30 Rock live episodes.

3/25/13

I too was instantly struck by the car departing from NJ. It was exceedingly strange to do such a casual offhanded reveal of the show's setting. Or maybe we're just too used to the Simpsons' decades of careful concealing.

3/11/13

I liked this episode a lot, underuse of Tina Fey aside. The Simpsons nowadays is at its best with low-key slice-of-life stories. Trying to play for high stakes leaves the show hollow and unfulfilling, when we always know we'll be back after 22 minutes to the status quo. We can't care about Grandpa wrestling when…

2/18/13

Totally agreed. Jeff's character is too limited to work long term. He was funny as Hayley's semi-regular stoner boyfriend, with his worldview naturally contrasting with and bouncing off Stan's. But marrying him to Hayley was a mistake of a ratings stunt. Now the show has written itself into a corner with Jeff,…

2/18/13

Very true. Francine subtly makes American Dad work, by lubricating the wackiness and not being the classic predictable stick-in-the-mud mother hen.

2/18/13

I was going, oh not another song. And then Bob laid down that backing "grind grind grind grind grind grind grind grind" during Linda's solo verse. Perfectly orchestrated. I was grinning until the next commercial break.

2/10/13

Kenan's spot on Weekend Update was the wrong use of the concept. I totally kept waiting for them to, you know, ACTUALLY SHOW some of the commercials (real or parody) he kept yakking about. Yeah, we know that having one cheerful black guy show up in an ad is a common conceit. But SHOW it. They violated the first…

1/28/13

Linda is the lubrication in the engine of Bob's Burgers. It's her getting in on the craziness that allows the show to work so well. You know how the number one rule of improv comedy is "Always Say Yes"? That's Linda.

1/27/13

Agreed, I found it weirdly enjoyable too. It went to meta-humor for me: forget the premise, just bask in the spectacle of Hader going completely berserk.

1/27/13

Loved it. The best part was the slow buildup and delayed reaction as the audience figured out the joke.

1/18/13

Also two great visual gags that weren't lines:

1/18/13

Also two great visual gags that weren't lines:

10/14/12

Yeah, this show was fine. The Californians was a thermonuclear dud, but everything else was A- territory. Applegate sure was channelling Kristin Wiig. The monologue musical, the jazz teacher sketch, and also the Greek Sirens totally felt right up Wiig's alley.
And High School Principal brought us our first actual…

10/14/12

4/2/12

The video game was the opposite of lazy. They really put in the effort for it, with a decent game design and giving it quite a bit of screen time. Lazy would have been taking screenshots of BurgerTime, pasting in a couple new sprites (or not bothering), and putting it on screen for like three seconds that nobody…

3/30/12

Thought it was Corporate Blimp Weekly. I chuckled about that one the whole episode. It works on so many levels. Corporations don't have blimps unless they're Goodyear. If they did, there wouldn't be a magazine about them. If there were, it wouldn't be weekly. If it were, Jack Donaghy wouldn't be spending his…