Broad City - "Destination Wedding"
Due to its beginnings as a web series, Broad City came out more fully formed than most shows do. Right from the first episode, it had an incredibly clear sense of what it wanted to be, and its characters were fully realized people pretty much from the first time they appeared on screen. And yet, Broad City continues to impress me more and more each week. The past few episodes, in particular, have seen the show starting to make a lot of interesting experiments with its direction and editing. Add that to the experimentally hilarious humor that solidified the shows' status in the first place, and you have one of the freshest and most unique shows on television. All of that coalesced incredibly well in "Destination Wedding" - the shows' strongest episode yet, and one of my favorite episodes of television so far this year.
"Destination Wedding" was great for many reasons, but what made it such a stand-out was that it hit so well on all of the aspects that Broad City is best at. The show works so well as a twisted love letter to New York City, lovingly exploiting everything that makes the city such a unique place to live - both the good and the bad. "Destination Wedding" got much of its best material from doing just that, whether it be the dignified rush of Grand Central Station, or the deeply unpleasant establishment that is Penn Station, or the unique traveling method that is Citibiking, or the horror of a Chinatown bus...whatever it is, Broad City knows exactly how to take it and turn it into something unique to its own comic voice, whether it be by having Abbi's boyfriend break up with her when she tries to take him to Penn Station, or having Abbi get drenched in a bunch of rancid fish on the Chinatown bus, or whatever twisted and beautiful comic scenario Broad City comes up with that manages to sum up city life in the most weirdly perfect way possible. But the best part of the show - and what elevates the show to "truly great" status, I think - is the bond it forms between Ilana and Abbi. Broad City is full of so much purely comic material that the show could work just fine without it, but the genuine friendship that its leads share adds a layer of vulnerability to the shows' zany humor, and those two aspects conjoining makes for some really compelling television. I don't know if any moment highlights this better than when Ilana finds out about Abbi and Darcy made out. It's funny, sure, but the sound dropping out managed to add to the humor and make us feel Ilana's hurt in the situation. That the show then led that into a scene that made the dumping of rancid fish both funny and emotionally upsetting is a testament to the unique, hilarious and weird that makes watching Broad City such a special experience.
* * * * * (5 stars out of 5)
Community - "VCR Maintenance and Educational Publishing"
The scene pictured here is one of the funniest scenes Community has ever done, and one of the hardest I've laughed all year. Seriously. Any doubts that Community is still funny should be eliminated by that scene. I could not stop laughing. If you haven't seen it, do it. You owe it to yourself. YouTube "Dean rap" or something. It was so funny that the rest of the episode could've been...I don't know, the puppet episode, and I could've still liked it a little bit.
Luckily, the rest of the episode was pretty good, too! I especially liked the Abed/Rachel material - Rachel is such a perfect match for Abed and Brie Larson is such a great match for Community that it bums me out that she has to go film movies and can't just be a permanent member of the study group (or you know, Save Greendale committee, or whatever). Ever since "Herstory of Dance" (pretty much the only S4 episode I can integrate with the rest of the show), I've been impressed with how the show uses Rachel to challenge Abed and force him to more carefully consider the feelings of others. That worked incredibly well here and also tied into how Abed is being forced to confront himself now that Troy is gone. Troy connected with him despite his difficulties connecting back, but he can't get as lucky with Rachel, and the results are proving to be interesting. I'm hoping we can get Rachel back for at least a few more episodes next season (assuming/hoping there is one), because it's a really fascinating dynamic.
I was slightly less sure of the rest of the episode. I liked Annie attempting to reconcile with her brother, but I wanted more of it. That's a plot that deserves its own episode - Annie being separated from her family is quite a sad story, and I've always wanted to hear more about it. I wasn't really a huge fan of the textbook plot, although it had plenty of funny moments and lots of great Shirley lines. It just never quite made an impact the way I like my Community plots to. It didn't have enough time to get to the bottom of the character work it was trying to, and the result was a fitfully funny plot that seemingly existed just to full some time and so we didn't spend the entire thing in Annie and Abed's apartment. Still, the Annie/Abed material - and the Dean in the cold open! - were more than enough to make this another solid addition to a very enjoyable season.
* * * * (4 stars out of 5)
Parks and Recreation - "New Slogan"
"New Slogan" had a lot of little moments that I really enjoyed - from the pictured cold open where the Parks department discovered the joys of Ben's new site for the city, to Andy's discovery of Duke Silver, to some sweet material with April, Donna, and Tom, but it felt like yet another episode of Parks that was just biding time. It regretfully followed the "Leslie faces a silly problem that she has to try to make right" formula that has been repeated ad nauseam on this show lately, and this time it seemed to realize that it was treading no new ground here, treating the entire "oh no, the slogan everyone's voting for is a joke written in by a radio show!" crisis as more of a ridiculous joke than a serious plot (and not a particularly funny ridiculous joke). The show tried to tie it into the overarching plot of Leslie considering leaving Pawnee for the National Parks Department, but it didn't really feel natural, and the episode itself didn't do much to advance that plot forward at all.
I still get some joy from watching these characters, and I'm genuinely interested to see where Leslie goes next, so I'm not going to stop watching this show or anything. But the more time goes on, the more it becomes obvious that Parks is just waiting around until it can start setting up its endgame here. Honestly, I wish the show would just start it already. I would love to have Leslie decide to take the job and have the next (and likely last) season follow her to Chicago (perhaps taking the Parks department with her). It would give the show a much needed refreshment.
Still, an episode like this does prove that there's fun left to be had with these characters. The cold open and Andy's rant were the hardest I've laughed at this show in quite a long time, and a visit from Duke Silver is never a bad thing. I wish there was a little more to Parks than light fun right now, but light fun isn't always the worst thing in the world.
* * * 1/2 (3 1/2 stars out of 5)
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