Best Episodes of the 2013-2014 Season | Jmunney's Blog

Best Episode of the Season: Comedy Bang! Bang! Season 2

June 11, 2014

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Season Analysis: Season 2 of Comedy Bang! Bang! reached the heights of 2013 television as its absurd brand of deconstruction made it one of the best shows about putting on a show of all time.

“Gillian Jacobs Wears a Red Dress with Sail Boats”
In playing around with the conventions of talk-based television, Comedy Bang! Bang! understands that effectiveness is achieved by specificity. The ubiquity of Chris Hardwick hosting live recap shows is ridiculous, and it would be even more ridiculous if one of those recap shows were recapping a talk show (parody or regular). Thus, the Comedy Talk! Talk! segment is spot-on and filled with crazy details (one of Hardwick’s guests will be Jacoby from the band Papa Roach, the winner of a Twitter-based contest will receive a “bucket of backyard bourbon burgers”). It is not too of-the-moment, because it must be of-the-moment to effectively skewer the state of television. “GJWaRDwSB” also gets a lot of mileage out of its parody flashback/flash-forward structure, going so far as stretching the gag out to a future beyond episode’s end, as “It Was Onions” (the in-universe name of the episode) completes the EGOT, with Adam Scott himself presenting the Tony, and then taking the flash-forward to the past, as time travelers head to the prehistoric era to present this episode for caveman Reggie Watts’ viewing pleasure. There really is no opportunity to catch your breath with all the structure-breaking of this episode, as also exemplified by the “clip” from Gillian Jacobs’ “new movie,” which seems to be taking place backstage during this episode. Finally, “GJWaRDwSB” is chock full of great performances, particularly from Jason Mantzoukas as vampire chef Emeril Luigi (actually Lugosi), who isn’t particularly monstrous or even a jerk. He’s just professional and annoyed that Scott isn’t; you may think that, as a vampire, he would want your meats to be bloody, but he’s more concerned about cooking food properly, so as to avoid watery shits.

Best Episode of the Season: Futurama Season 7-B

June 11, 2014

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Season Analysis: Futurama was energized in its final batch of new episodes, adding a few new entries to its pantheon of all-time classics.

TIE: “Murder on the Planet Express” and “Meanwhile”
Throughout its run, Futurama established a reputation for engaging both the head and the heart. It explored legitimately engaging science fiction concepts and managed to be one of the most poignant animated series in television history. I had to pick two episodes as the best of Futurama’s 2013 output, as they respectively exemplified these two major aspects. “Murder on the Planet Express” mish-mashed the trickery and paranoia of The Thing, The Game, and Alien in a nifty tale in which a trust-building exercise for the Planet Express crew quickly turns into a fight for survival as a hitchhiker turns out to be a murderous shape-shifting alien that mimics and eats the members of the crew one by one, and then it turns out this shape shifter was part of the trust exercise all along.
The series finale, “Meanwhile,” used a much simpler concept to achieve a much deeper emotional effect. The Professor has invented a device that can send the user 10 seconds back in time. Fry plans on using it to watch the sunset over and over as he proposes to Leela, but all the time-jumping goes awry and the device gets broken, thereby freezing time. Fry and Leela are the only ones who remain unfrozen, and they live out an entire married life together, against the backdrop of the universe at the moment their marriage began. Eventually, the Professor breaks through via some dimension-hopping and everything is reverted back to pre-10-second-time-travel shenanigans. Fry and Leela will not remember this time together, but it surely remains in existence in some realm, just as Futurama itself bids us farewell but surely lives on in some way.

Best Episode of the Season: American Dad! Season 10

June 6, 2014

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Season Analysis: American Dad! is getting to the point in its run when it is starting to repeat itself a little too often, but it still has enough awesome episodes every year to make you realize there is nothing else quite like it on television.

“Familyland”
Nearly 50 years after his death, Walt Disney continues to be a fruitful source of satire, as demonstrated by American Dad! with Roy Family, the founder of the theme park Familyland, who had been frozen upon his death so that he could one day return to life should the denizens of his park no longer deserve to enjoy his creation. But this episode wasn’t really about exposing the prejudices of one of America’s most beloved figures, at least not entirely. “Familyland” was mostly an excuse for American Dad! to indulge its apocalyptic side, which is its best side. A week after Mr. Family has sealed off all the exits, each section of the park has become a kingdom ruled by one of the Smiths. The details of Cartoon City (ruled by Steve), Wild Wild Wild West World (ruled by Stan), Fairy Tale Land (ruled by Haley railing against the princess role model), and Outer Space Land (ruled by Roger, who inexplicably notes that this cheesy attraction got everything right) are thoroughly impressive. American Dad! is one of the best animated shows ever in terms of understanding that it is a cartoon, and knowing that that means it can destroy its status quo whenever it feels like it and pretend like nothing happened the very next episode, and “Familyland” was the best example of that in Season 10.

Best Episode of the Season: Childrens Hospital Season 5

June 5, 2014

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Season Analysis: Going in the direction of M*A*S*H by transplanting the staff of Childrens to Japan for the season proved there was still plenty of material left to be mined in the medical procedural parody genre.

“My Friend Falcon”
One of my long-gestating ideas for a movie is one in which the protagonist(s) suddenly switch in the middle. Like, initially, it’s the story of Bob and Alice, who meet Carol and Charlie about 45 minutes into it, and then about 10 minutes later Bob and Alice disappear for good, and now we focus on Carol and Charlie. So I was naturally inclined to love Childrens Hospital’s homage to the Werner Herzog documentary My Best Fiend, as it switched midway from being David Wain’s documentary about his working relationship with Ken Marino’s Just Falcon to Falcon’s documentary about his relationship with Wain. This show has consistently been interested in breaking apart form, as Childrens Hospital is actually a show within a show. This documentary and its making are presented outside the show within the show, but within the (Adult Swim) show. This documentary within a show in turn is broken apart and examined, as its existence seems to be beyond the control of any one person. It is a force all its own. Bonus points for this episode’s remediating nature are also due for its repurposing of a video from Ken Marino and guest star Kerri Kenney’s time at NYU, presented as a pre-Childrens Hospital moment from Falcon’s career. “My Friend Falcon” is a fascinating examination of the nature of filmed reality and quite a heady experience for a 12-minute piece of television.

Best Episode of the Season: RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 6

June 5, 2014

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Season Analysis: My first foray into the world of drag queen reality television was as breezy as I was hoping for, but it was also poignant, with these ladies finding their way into my heart much more than I was expecting.

“Snatch Game”
As a novice Drag Race viewer, I was promised that the Snatch Game episode is the most reliably entertaining of any season, and this year’s edition did not disappoint. It helped that I was already predisposed to love several elements, as I used to watch Match Game reruns on Game Show Network, and one of the guest judges was Drag Race superfan Gillian Jacobs, one of the stars of my favorite show, Community.
Joslyn Fox may have been too spacy to be the next drag superstar, but that persona allowed her to perfectly capture the spirit of Real Jersey Housewife Teresa Giudice (“prostitution whoreses,” “cumin”). BenDeLaCreme didn’t play Maggie Smith so much as the Dowager Countess, but that was the right move, as it allowed her to kill with bemusement about modern culture, asking us if we could imagine something like a citrus-flavored drink! Not every impression worked, but luckily there was Bianca Del Rio’s Judge Judy (a bold, but ultimately successful take on one of Ru’s idols) to keep everyone in check. (“Beauty fades, dumb is forever,” she snapped at Gia Gunn’s Kim Kardashian.) I haven’t seen any others, but I’ll take Ru’s word that it was the tightest snatch … game in history.

Runner-up: “Drag Queens of Comedy”
Bianca del Rio dominated far and away this year’s race for America’s Next Drag Superstar, and never more so than with her killer stand-up set. Guest judge Jaime Pressly was upset that she wasn’t the target of any of the material, to which Bruce Vilanch noted that it is the mark of a truly great insult comic when the audience is begging to be insulted.

Best Episode of the Season: How I Met Your Mother Season 9

June 5, 2014

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Season Analysis: Stretching out one weekend over an entire season of 24 episodes was a more satisfying experience than expected … but then the series finale rushed to fit decades’ worth of story into less than an hour, and we were all very confused.

“Sunrise”
Some of the best love stories of all time are the ones in which the lovers let go of each other: Rick insists that Ilsa get on that plane, Kevin Arnold and Winnie Cooper are not meant to be, Jack and Ennis cannot be together. So to have Ted Mosby pining after Robin Scherbatsky season after season, when the audience knew from the very first episode that she was not destined to be the mother of his children, was not wholly unprecedented, even though it was always going to be tricky. Ted had tried to let go of Robin on many occasions before their walk on the beach in “Sunrise,” but he had never truly been able to. On the cusp of Robin’s wedding to Barney, he still was not really ready to, but he knew he had to. Ted ranked his top 5 ex-girlfriends, and, no surprise, number one was fan favorite Victoria. His subsequent revelations – he broke things off with Victoria because he did not want to end his friendship with Robin, and he actually does not have a top 5, because Robin has always been number one – are heartbreaking. He is still not ready to let her go, but this time he knows he has to, and the shot of Robin floating away into the sky is beautiful. (This perfect moment is one of many reasons why the route that the finale took is utterly incomprehensible.)

Best Episode of the Season: Review Season 1

June 2, 2014

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Season Analysis: A critical analysis of “life itself” may sound like the most simplistic and gimmicky concept ever, but the first season of Review examined this idea to its furthest absurd and logical conclusions, making it a genuine examination of what it means to live. The unbridled curiosity of Andy Daly’s performance made for a star-making turn.

“Pancakes; Divorce; Pancakes”
Is it the mark of a truly classic episode of television that it is an incredible viewing experience no matter how you watch it? I initially missed about the first 10 minutes of “Pancakes; Divorce; Pancakes.” My first taste of it was Forrest telling his wife Suzanne that he wanted a divorce. After two episodes had made me think Review would be a mildly diverting (but totally worthwhile) pleasure, this moment suddenly had me thinking, “What is this show?” This was the point at which it became 100 percent clear that the experiences Forrest reviewed would have legitimate real-life ramifications. Actually committing to the experience of divorce just for the sake of the experience, and thus having to separate from a woman he loved deeply and had no desire to leave, made Forrest MacNeil a sort of mythic hero – the personification of commitment. What made this experience all the more poignant was bookending it with the seeming banality of overindulging in breakfast food. It was an ingenious move to have Forrest’s producer Grant (a perfectly cast James Urbaniak) remind him, for both the 15 Pancakes and Divorce segments, that he never wanted to be allowed to back out of any segment no matter how much he begged. The twin crises of those first two segments would have been enough to drive any normal human being to abandon the whole endeavor of Review. Moreover, the absurdity of a completely separate person requesting that Forrest eat 30 pancakes should have been pointless enough to drive him over the edge. Forrest did succumb to nihilism, but somehow that became the motivation that allowed him to continue this masterpiece, as he remarked, “These pancakes couldn’t kill me, because I was already dead.” Ultimately, this was an all-time classic half hour of television, a singular mix of insanity and inspiration.

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