I swear, I logged in to mention Lisa Randall, and there you were.  Yeah, she's one of the physics world's top proponents of Fringey theories, so it was probably about time the show feature a brilliant (pre-Alzheimer's) female scientist.

And as it happens, "White Tulip" introduced the idea of Faraday cages as well.

I liked that Ron was trying to lure Tom back into his old job, despite the man's stated disdain for government work.  He seemed to be going about it all wrong, though, letting Tom play him instead of the other way around.  An off day, maybe.

I actually liked Pawnee Rangers.  If I'd pick out a dud, probably Meet 'n' Greet.

I liked the fact that even though it wasn't a concept episode, it had the kind of go-for-broke surrealism that they often do.  Pierce's hula girls and tuxedo being a prime example.

Yeah, I do that on some sites in regards to timeout issues.

Is Robert California a smart manager who pretends to be an entitled jerk in order to gauge his employees' reactions?  Or is he actually supposed to be an entitled jerk.  I would guess that James Spader has an answer in his mind, which is why his performance is watchable.  But the writers just seem genuinely clueless…

"Petered" out?  Oh, well played!

I'm going to assume that it was an invocation to Nyarlathotep.

Yeah, since I could never really get into Alice, I think it would have been great if she could stay on Miller.  Although not if it meant losing Steve Landesberg.

What?  Have you forgotten Jayne Cobbjehowicz?

Even better, he made it sound like he didn't know it was a punchline.

Had to log in just to voice my approval of this idea.

One thing that did tickle me about this episode was the way the opening seemed lifted from a 40s movie about small town life.  Between the gazebos, the Dixieland band, and the roly poly mayor's grand speech, I was half expecting George Bailey to come up and accept the award (instead of Lee Adama in mom jeans.)

One smart thing the producers have done this year is to just drop the new doctors into the middle of the action.  In S4 Taub, Hadley and Kutner were all chosen after House's extensive Survivor style auditions.  There was some suspense to this, but it was easy to second-guess the process because some of the rejected…

Yeah, once Danny Devito came up as a point of comparison I could see that Charlie was on the petite side.

I like her closeted news reporter, Michelle Dison.

Gettin' Freaky with Cee-Lo is pretty lame.  It gives me new appreciation for Fred's old "The Prince Show" feature, which did better at mining humor out of its subject instead of trying to shoehorn stuff in.

That's Peter Lorre for you.

Dahl also redid both of them on his British series "Tales of the Unexpected".  Well-made remakes, if unnecessary.