Danny Pudi, Donald Glover
Welcome to May sweeps (albeit still in April) and, more important, the countdown to the end of the official broadcast season on May 23. Meaning an end, for now, to those pesky repeats and the start-and-stop scheduling of favorite shows. Reason enough to celebrate? Wait until you see what NBC has in store for you tonight (or at least for those choosy few who gravitate toward the network's better Thursday night comedies).
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Amy Poehler
As Super Tuesday drew to a close, the candidate on everyone's mind at Parks and Recreation's PaleyFest event was Pawnee City Council hopeful Leslie Knope.
There are only a few weeks left in the NBC comedy's fictional campaign, but the race could go either way. Two endings were shot for the season finale — one in which Mouse Rat performs "Catch Your Dream" and the other in which they sing "Screw Your Dream" (you get the idea). "For a long time, we didn't know what it was going to be," star and producer Amy Poehler told TVGuide.com at Tuesday's event, which featured a panel moderated by TV Guide Magazine's Michael Schneider.
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Hello FNL fans, Leah is on vacation, so I’m filling in. If you don’t know me yet, I’m Casey. So much happened tonight! This episode felt like a stepping stone to greater, not always better, things to come.I’ve been sick all week, so please bear with me. Some people may think this episode was dated, but in the real and present world, race and gender still matter to many. I liked how this episode touched on those issues. I’ll start with the Taylor’s. I hated seeing Shelley go last week, but it gave FNL another opportunity to tackle family values and issues. Some people, like Mac McGill, believe a woman’s place is at home. But as Coach Taylor pointed out, “That just sounds stupid and ignorant when you say it aloud.” Thank you Coach! I am one of four children and both of my parents have worked full-time jobs for their entire 28 years of marriage. My mother’s a flight attendant. I’m still dumbfounded by people‘s rea...
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You mean Landry? Jesse Plemons, Kyle Chandler by Bill Records/NBC
Guest blogger Casey Marsella (Heroes) here! Leah couldn't make it tonight, but I'll do my best to recap this amazing show!Landry! Landry! Landry!Jesse Plemons made Dillon (and FNL fans) stand up and cheer tonight. His performance is what I love about this show. I’ve always noticed that the people who seem "out of place" are usually the ones most comfortable in their own skin. Landry used to be the goofy, one-liner sidekick, but he was always sure of himself. Tonight he proved that. His halftime speech was the highlight of the episode: "We can win together or lose alone." It was the perfect lead-in to: Clear eyes. Full hearts. Can’t lose!So, who’s together and who’s alone?Let’s start with the Taylors. Tami is thrilled to have her husband back, but not enough to give him the "green light." Coach was gently shot down and forced to sleep on the couch so Tami could finally get a good night’s sleep. The next day, the bags under his eyes initiated an unwanted ...
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MacGregor is out and Taylor is in. Chris Mulkey by Bill Records/NBC
Episode Recap: "Backfire"Who didn't have a little flutter in his (or her) heart when Coach Taylor, back in his Dillon Panther blues, stood up in front of that room like nothing had changed and said, "Let's go. Let's have some fun today"? What a way to end an episode that already just seemed to fly by.Aside from that weird, Mafia-like threat from Coach MacGregor ("I have a family, too, and you just remember that. I'll be seeing you again"), Eric's homecoming was nothing less than joyous. Julie and Tami are well on their way to patching things up, especially now that it looks like the grungy Swede might be out of the picture. Matt Saracen has someone back on his side again, and Buddy should probably be considered the town hero.Ah, Buddy. We may have just been witness to the only game in Panther history that Buddy honestly wanted his beloved team to lose. It was quite a sight to watch him hold back a grin as Smash got blocked again and again, leaving Dillon with a humiliating loss on t...
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Eric hopes he can get his old job back. Kyle Chandler by Mitchell Haaseth/NBC
Episode Recap: "Are You Ready for Friday Night?"Is this show about football or hockey? There was so many smackdowns (verbal and physical) tonight, that I think I'm forming bruises in sympathy. What does it say about a show when the characters who are doing the best at the moment are the ones who recently committed murder?That's right, you Tyra and Landry fans — the deed has been done, is probably going to be done again. And it seems like they're genuinely in love. Dillon's former bad girl — who seems to have passed on her particular brand of anger to Julie, but more on which later — is in a relationship with a guy that respects her and won't take advantage, so it's just too bad that the entire foundation of their love is that they killed someone. Their watch-shopping scene was the sweetest and lightest of the night ("it really doesn't look anything like [the old watch] except that they are both watches and have hands and tell time"). Definitely a welcome respite fro...
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Matt tries to figure out how to deal with the women in his life. Zach Gilford by Bill Records/NBC
Episode Recap: "Bad Things"Regular readers of this blog know that this show make me cry on a pretty regular basis. Tonight's episode was no exception, though I'm not sure what part was most affecting. You'd think it would be Jason still coming to terms with his paralysis after recovering some muscle function, but that's really just par for the course on this show. As usual, Connie Britton's flawless portrayal of a new mother with a crumbling psyche was wrenching to watch. Was there any scene in which she wasn't desperately trying to swallow her sobs? And the thing is, it all seemed so completely organic — there was no screaming or a melodramatic "Why me?" moment. It's hard not to love a show that allows its characters to fully comprehend the ridiculousness of their choices, and when Glenn (the guidance counselor in need of guidance) asked Tami why exactly she and Eric were living apart, her acknowledgement of, "I don't know, that was just my idea, it was just a stupid idea," wa...
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The Taylors adjust to their new situation. Connie Britton, Aimee Teegarden, Kyle Chandler by Bill Records/NBC
Episode Recap: "Last Days of Summer""Welcome back to another glorious year of Panther football." I'm not ready to classify the football as glorious just yet, what with this new Coach McGregor (the anti-Eric Taylor) and all, but the show itself is certainly back and in sublime form.Let us first welcome into the world Miss Grace Taylor, second daughter of Eric and Tami, sister to suddenly moody teen, Julie. Now Eric has another daughter to defend against football players and Swedes; too bad he's a plane ride away in Austin. His new coaching job at TMU is having a deleterious effect on his family and (I'm not even being dramatic when I say this) the entire football-loving community in Dillon, but more about that in a bit. Julie won't talk to him because she considers him to have been an absentee father for the last 8 months, and Tami — Connie Britton, proving yet again how wrong the Emmy voters got it with her incredible performance tonight — is absolutely destroyed that he c...
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“You feel different?” “I do. I do.” I do, too. Has there been a more sheerly exuberant episode of television this season than this? In a way, it was the perfect capsule of this show: Even if someone had never watched this show before, they could fall instantly into its rhythms and story lines just in this one hour. In fact, in looking at the whole season, both the pilot and the finale could be viewed as perfect one-offs. When I said last week that I thought the writers would be bringing their best game, I wasn't expecting for it to be the blow out that it was.Is it possible for a show to be both more than the sum of its parts and have those parts be almost more important at the same time? As wonderful as the episode was as a whole, the individual scenes themselves were so fully developed, they could have counted as one-acts. The pre-game dinner, for instance, with Buddy’s “Eric, I just came by to tell you that I’m gonna miss you, and that you’...
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Can I take a moment here to reiterate that I hate promos for shows I care about? Promos are supposed to give you a teaser to keep you coming back; they are not supposed to give away key plot points. In any case, next week’s episode looks fantastic, and that’s as far as I’ll go.The more I thought about it, the more I considered last week’s episode to be a high point in an exceptionally strong freshman season. Compared to that, of course, this week was going to be a bit of a come down. Part of it has to do with the fact that we’re being set up for the final episode, so while we got many great little moments, something tells me they’re saving the bonafide A-material for next week.So let’s talk about those little moments. The meeting that Coach and Jason had with Saracen was hilarious. Jason had the best line in the scene when he explained, “I’ll take care of Julie. I’ll give her a nice call and tell her there’s a new girl in town a...
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