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Friday, September 23, 2011

Comedy contest: Premieres of Community, Parks and Rec, and Modern Family, plus the second episode of Up All Night

Up All Night continued with an episode that wasn’t as strong as its opening, but it still had a few laughs. We loved when Will Arnett’s phone went off at the cool neighbors’ party (Hey Soul Sister, haha). Christina and Will are still working well together, and the plot/premise was solid and entertaining. This show just needs more jokes per episode.

Modern Family’s premiere was hilarious. We love talking Lily! Phil finally called Jay out for disapproving of him, even though he is a good guy. Dylan and Haley are over (just for now or forever?). Julie Bowen might have had the funniest storyline, disapproving of Dylan and trying to keep Haley from marrying him. We feel like Gloria was underused, because the premiere just had her yelling loudly and not being able to hear. We liked the names for the group. One thing we weren't digging? Alex's first kiss. In real life, that would have been creepy and harass-y, not charming and cute. Alex deserves better. And hotter.

All-in-all, this was a successful two-part first episode of season three. The change of location gave things a new feel, which is what this show needs. There was a lot of plot development too, especially for this show. It’s usually heavy on jokes and light on plot. This episode had both, especially with the revelation that Cam and Mitchell are ready to adopt a boy. This show needs new recurring characters. Haley can find another boyfriend (or Alex can?). Maybe the adults can get a few recurring friends that are weird. We think that just about everyone feels like this show needs to shake things up and make some changes. Some actual plot arcs might be nice.

Community’s premiere is not as strong as we have come to expect from this show. The musical opening was fun, but the bulk of the episode wasn’t that funny. We wish we could have had a two-parter. Pierce got back in the study group a little too quickly for our tastes, since we went through so much with him as the villain last year. That should have taken some time and significant steps.

Parks and Recreation was good, as usual. We love that Ron’s nightmare wife works for the IRS. We are so sad about Leslie’s break-up, but it was as sweet as it could possibly have been. If you liked the show before, you will like this episode, but it’s not an episode we would start a new viewer out with. New viewers of this show should read a summary of season one and then start with season two.

Up All Night episode grade: C+
Community grade: B-
Modern Family grade: B+
Parks and Recreation grade: B


Winner: Modern Family

9 comments:

  1. I loved Modern Family and I'm so glad it's back! I liked the second episode more than the first. Community was good too. I loved the line “We’re gonna have more fun and be less weird than the first two years combined!”. Yeah righttttt lol. I like Up All Night too, actually more than last week, maybe because now the characters weren't total strangers to me. And I don't watch Parks and Recreation, so Modern Family was a winner for me too :)

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  2. That makes sense.

    We've had a talk about how we want to be harder on stuff. We give out waaaaaay too many B+ grades, haha. But the thing is, we only really watch good shows/shows we like, so they are usually B+ material.

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  3. Really? I think you are pretty hard on some stuff already, because mostly my reactions to tv shows are "Yayyy!!!!!!!", "woohoo!!!!!!!" which involve too many exclamation points, lol. Especially with my favourite shows, I can't write a post about them and be that calm, haha. So don't be harder :) ;)

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  4. hahahaha, one of us always wants to be like A+++++ and one of us wants to give Ds and Fs if it isn't perfect. So we usually have to average the grades if we both watch the show. If you see an A or a D, you know only one of us watched it. TVD usually gets an A or B+ from both of us though. There are just no complaints there.

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  5. Yeah, still waiting for "The Hybrid" recap :) Why do you like to give Ds and Fs Ern? And even B+ is too less for TVD in my opinion ;)

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  6. You guys should also check out some of the cable comedies: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Louie, Archer, Blue Mountain State, and/or Awkward. They are on times that doesn't really have anything good on. :)

    Also, I don't know if you guys watched the Raising Hope premier (I know you guys did watch the show last season) but I think it had the best opening of all the comedies this season.

    ..I used to hate mockumentary style shows (that's why I never bothered watching The Office) but I tried to be open minded and gave mockumentary another try a couple of months back with Modern Family (and during summer vacation, I caught up with Parks & Recreation.) I actually like it now..(I guess I just hated the idea of making it feel like they are talking to me, etc)

    Community - right when dean came, I automatically thought Walter/Breaking Bad and around the end Starburns mentioned Breaking Bad. Wooh..I bet these guys are watching every quality TV on..

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  7. One of us watches Louie and one of us watches Awkward. This post wasn't all the comedy we watched this week, just the big ones and the ones we had time to write about.

    But, you're right, we are very ashamed that we haven't ever gotten into "it's always sunny." That's going on our list. Thanks for the reminder. At least one of us is very...irreverent...to the point where little is taboo, so that show sounds right up her alley.

    We will check out Raising Hope too. That actually might replace The Office for us as a weekly thing, rather than something we catch up on after each season on a binge.. Loved the Breaking Bad reference.

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  8. I was disappointed in the Modern Family premiere. They took every annoying character flaw to the extreme and it was just too much. Also, I was hoping that when Lilly did finally start talking she would be really lovable but nope.

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  9. HAHAHAHA. They really didn't give new Lily very much to do, did they?

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