Every week in this space, Grantland pop culture correspondent Andy Greenwald will run down the happenings and mishappenings in NBC’s Thursday comedy night done mostly right. (Note: the order reflects newsworthiness, not quality. Although occasionally the two just might overlap.)
1. The Office
Last night, Andy Bernard debased himself to an absurd degree, begging for a temp gig unflushing the toilets, gargling with bourbon, and lapping up spilled soup from his sleeve. It was all part of an elaborate ruse, of course: Underneath the soiled sanitation onesie was a slick black suit. What Andy wanted was a dramatic moment, a big reveal that would take him from, in his words, “zero to hero” and leave everyone laughing – both at his clever trick and at themselves for ever doubting him in the first place. New York Magazine critic Matt Zoller Seitz has mused that much of this near-catastrophic eighth season of The Office has been meta-storytelling the likes of which we’ve never seen on an NBC Thursday night. (In fairness to Seitz, he wrote the piece before seeing last night’s Community, in which the study group was convinced the past three seasons had been a shared hallucination because their actual adventures were far too crazy to be real. The only thing that could top that would be if Marshall McLuhan suddenly tapped me on the shoulder and said, “You know nothing about how to joke about me in your work.” And he’s got a point: We’ve had 24 episodes about a power vacuum from a show with a serious power vacuum. Last night’s season — not series — finale took it a step further. Andy’s grubby quick-change act was a clumsy metaphor for NBC itself.
Every week in this space, Grantland pop culture correspondent Andy Greenwald will run down the happenings and mishappenings in NBC’s Thursday comedy night done mostly right. (Note: The order reflects newsworthiness, not quality. Although occasionally the two just might overlap.)
1. Community
Could there be a more perfect metaphor for Community’s relentless, occasionally foolhardy individuality than the sight of Greendale students looting and pillaging the Subway franchise that arrived to save them? The well-buffed corporate façade is an on-screen reminder that, going by the ratings, Greendale’s popularity with the greater American viewing public is on the level of olives and onions. This clearly galls creator Dan Harmon. It’s a lame and visible tax levied on him for his intransigent strangeness. And so of course the staid sandwichery would bear the brunt of three years' worth of underdog frustration, its sneeze guards shattered under scrawny undergraduate fists, its turkey sandwiches ruined by the rogue actions of a study group going H.A.M.
Every week in this space Grantland pop culture correspondent Andy Greenwald will run down the happenings and mishappenings in NBC’s Thursday comedy night done mostly right. (Note: The order reflects newsworthiness, not quality. Although occasionally the two just might overlap.)
1. Parks and Recreation
Celebrities are usually the first to know when the party’s over. Call it an eighth sense in their tiny, perfectly formed brains — located just to the left of sight and slightly below cocaine tolerance and Thetan susceptibility — but as soon as a former hotspot begins to cool, the boldface names scatter in the wind like Trick Daddy. And yet, to tune into NBC last night was to see an abundance of riches (and the downright rich — Paul McCartney alone could write off Jack Donaghy’s Kouchtown debacle as vegan grocery expenses). Despite the thousands (and thousands, and thousands) of Thetan-addled words scribbled in this column since last fall about the Peacock’s cratering fortunes, it was striking to see just how starry Thursday nights on NBC still can be. And I wasn’t just gawking at the Who’s Who of Lorne Michaels’s Rolodex that showed up for a truly breathtaking live edition of 30 Rock. Seeing the night’s Core Four sitcoms back together made me appreciate just how stacked these ensembles are, chock-full of movie stars, Oscar winners, sneaky geniuses, and legendary assholes. NBC’s must see-or-be-seen Thursday may be facing foreclosure, but the talent appears willing to rage all night long.
Every week in this space, Grantland pop culture correspondent Andy Greenwald will run down the happenings and mishappenings in NBC’s Thursday comedy night done mostly right. (Note: The order reflects newsworthiness, not quality. Although occasionally the two just might overlap.)
1.30 Rock
After an entire season of dithering and delay, NBC finally put its best lineup on the field last night. The quick Community batted leadoff with comeback player of the year 30 Rock and a fresh-off-the-DL Parks and Recreation providing protection for aging slugger The Office. It’s NBC’s very own version of the “Core Four” and, on paper, it’s a squad you can win some ballgames with, if not some key ratings demos. With only a month remaining, network manager Bob Greenblatt wisely quit overmanaging and gave up on his various experiments — shoehorning in all-offensive, no (g)love newcomers like Whitney; wasting precious playing time on overmatched rookie Up All Night — and decided to let it ride with the horses that brung him. (Brung him to last place, that is. This was the same schedule that didn’t exactly set the world on fire last spring, either.)
Every week in this space Grantland pop culture correspondent Andy Greenwald will run down the happenings and mishappenings in NBC’s Thursday comedy night done mostly right. (Note: The order reflects newsworthiness, not quality. Although occasionally the two just might overlap.)
1. The Office
How do you know when the spark is gone? For a romantic naif like Andy Bernard it’s pretty simple: You fall in love with someone else, drive to Tallahassee, share a few laughs, a couple sandwiches, and then crash a bachelorette party to tell your soon-to-be-ex the great/terrible news. But with a sitcom, it’s rarely that clear cut.
The Office has been a mess all season, but the last run of new episodes before a not-particularly-earned spring break were at least an interesting mess. The banishment of half the cast to the Florida panhandle enlivened the writers' room like nothing since the Michael Scott Paper Company, creating an arc that, while manic and bizarre, at least demonstrated the 8-year-old (that’s 150 in sitcom years) still had some fight left in it. The hot Southern sun brought out a strange sort of crazy in familiar characters — Stanley the rum head, Dwight the sympathetic psychopath — and there was a palpable charge that resulted from pushing such a well-established franchise to the bleeding edge of plausibility. It wasn’t good, necessarily. But it was something. After a stuttering, frustrating start to the season, it seemed possible that The Office had somehow survived the loss of its head.
First it was Regional Manager Steve Carell, then it was CEO James Spader — and now the real boss on The Office, showrunner Paul Lieberstein, is heading elsewhere. Lieberstein, who also turns in a bravura performance as the downtrodden Toby, isn’t going far. He'll still be around to help out whomever the ninth season’s showrunner will be, but his main focus is going to be on The Farm, the Office spinoff that will find Dwight Schrute leaving the paper business behind and focusing full-time on his family farm. (Bears, beets, Battlestar Galactica indeed.) If The Farm works out, then Lieberstein will become its showrunner. And so the search is on for his replacement.
Every week in this space, Grantland pop culture correspondent Andy Greenwald will run down the happenings and mishappenings in NBC’s Thursday comedy night done mostly right. (Note: The order reflects newsworthiness, not quality. Although occasionally the two just might overlap.)
1. Community
Despite all appearances to the contrary, the suits at NBC and the legion of hashtag-tweeting Community obsessives have something in common. Like a convention hall full of Bronies or a gathering of Ron Paul 2012 supporters, they, too, are a group of disparate individuals united by a shared belief in an outlandish fiction. In this case, it’s a bedrock faith in the existence of a creature more elusive and legendary than the Sasquatch or the Undecided Voter: the New Community Viewer.
Every week in this space, Grantland pop culture correspondent Andy Greenwald will run down the happenings and mishappenings in NBC’s Thursday comedy night done mostly right. (Note: The order reflects newsworthiness, not quality. Although occasionally the two just might overlap.)
1. Parks and Recreation
“Lucky” was everything that’s good about Parks and Recreation — warm humor, subtle character beats, sly satire — which, unfortunately, are very often the same things that keep people from realizing the show’s greatness. Sure, it’s hard to maintain a finely tuned joke machine like 30 Rock or a creaky, but still seaworthy, ocean liner like The Office. But to my mind, what Parks is doing is even more difficult: consistently making us laugh while still drawing us in. The jokes on Parks are always inclusive, the pace gentle instead of manic. It’s a show deeply informed by a love of traditional sitcoms like Cheers, where the goal was to make viewers feel welcome, not necessarily dazzled.
Every week in this space, Grantland pop culture correspondent Andy Greenwald will run down the happenings and mishappenings in NBC’s Thursday comedy night done mostly right. (Note: the order reflects newsworthiness, not quality. Although occasionally the two just might overlap.)
1. 30 Rock
The most popular misconception of this column is that it’s merely a front for a season-long campaign by my editors to break me, Marathon Man-style, thanks to a steady diet of Whitney Cummings relationship jokes and Christina Applegate baby-angst. The second most popular misconception is that the ranking corresponds to quality. Despite the presence of a disclaimer, most still think that there are weeks when I actually prefer The Office to 30 Rock — when, in reality, it’s just that the former often provides a more newsworthy or interesting hook, particularly in this, its season of slow, often agonizing decline.
Monday, The Office confirmed that James Spader is leaving his cushy gig as Dunder Mifflin CEO Robert California (he was only booked for 15 episodes) at the end of this season. In a statement, executive producer Paul "Toby Flenderson" Lieberstein says:
"James came to The Office to play a role that was two scenes long in the season 7 finale. He instantly brought so much life and intrigue to the part that those two scenes became a season. James always wanted this to be a one year arc, and he now leaves us having created one of the most enigmatic and dynamic characters in television. He’s been a great friend to me and the show, helping us successfully transition into the post-Michael Scott years, and I’m grateful for that. I’m already looking for ways to work with him again."
Every week in this space Grantland pop culture correspondent Andy Greenwald will run down the happenings and mishappenings in NBC’s Thursday comedy night done mostly right. (Note: the order reflects newsworthiness, not quality. Although occasionally the two just might overlap.)
1. The Office
I recently read Jeffrey Eugenides’ new novel The Marriage Plot, which really has little to no bearing on a night of NBC sitcoms. Except for this: in the book, there’s a remarkably nuanced description of what it’s like to be around a biploar friend when he goes off his meds. One minute he’s the same, familiar, slightly dull dude you’ve grown comfortable with. Then there are a few flashes of excitement, wit, and surprise that you didn’t know existed. The next thing you know, you’re chasing a total stranger while he gambles away money he doesn’t have in Monte Carlo casinos. While wearing a cape.
Every week in this space, Grantland pop culture correspondent Andy Greenwald will run down the happenings and mishappenings in NBC’s Thursday comedy night done mostly right. (Note: The order reflects newsworthiness, not quality. Although occasionally the two just might overlap.)
1. 30 Rock
30 Rock has always been an immensely difficult series to cover. When the show is humming, recaps can aspire to be little more than laundry lists of jokes, dutifully scribbled by overwhelmed critics between bouts of laughter and desperate scrambles for the DVR pause button. When it’s not clicking, there’s even less to say. Unlike Parks and Rec, there are no real emotional arcs to track other than the subtly shifting sands of the Tracy Jordan/Jeremy the Iguana ‘shippers. And unlike The Office, when 30 Rock is bad it’s never really all that bad. It’s more often merely blerg, a disjointed collection of dazzles and disappointments, like Jenna’s BF Paul in a pink wig and no pants.
For the Valentine’s Day edition of the Hollywood Prospectus podcast, Chris Ryan and I decided to talk about what we love most in the world: our significant others television. Join us for a spirited — and occasionally accented — discussion of the return of The Walking Dead, the mysteries of The River, the pleasures of Sherlock, and, because we can’t help ourselves, a trip to the Peacock Hospital to check on the relative health of NBC shows like The Office and 30 Rock. Feel the love. Or at least feel the Benedict Cumberbatch.
Every week in this space, Grantland pop culture correspondent Andy Greenwald will run down the happenings and mishappenings in NBC’s Thursday comedy night done mostly right. (Note: The order reflects newsworthiness, not quality. Although occasionally the two just might overlap.)
1. The Office
One of the biggest challenges of running a television show is the constant need to make decisions both for the short and long term. Plotting out a full season's worth of episodes, replete with serialized storylines and naturally paced character development, while still in thrall to the Ritalin-requiring grind of daily production, is the sort of time-management nightmare that could turn Kang the Conqueror into Cathy. So it’s got to be galling for the smart people tasked with administering The Office to read the reactionary jeremiads written by certain critics. Especially because TV isn’t like movies, in which the final product is the final product. (Unless, of course, your name is George Lucas.) Rather, it’s constantly changing and course-correcting. So it’s very likely that the brain trust behind The Office, led by showrunner Paul Lieberstein, was keenly aware of the failings of the first half of the season. By the time desk chair commandos like yours truly were crying cancellation, he and his writers were already weeks ahead, attempting to set things straight. (It’s a risky, difficult repair job that my podcast pal Chris Ryan and I likened to a mechanic tinkering with a NASCAR engine in midlap.)
Every week in this space, Grantland pop culture correspondent Andy Greenwald will run down the happenings and mishappenings in NBC’s Thursday comedy night done mostly right. (Note: The order reflects newsworthiness, not quality. Although occasionally the two just might overlap.)
1. Parks and Recreation
To be warm, fresh yet familiar and never stale -- this is the impossible challenge of every successful sitcom. (Also of every loaf of bread, but despite recent evidence to the contrary, Grantland is not a food blog.) Last night, Parks and Recreation pulled off this tricky feat as it has for much of its campaign-centered fourth season. “Operation Ann” was as cozy as a throw pillow with Joseph Stalin’s face on it, deftly playing with the audience’s expectations and well-earned trust in ways that left me as giddy as Ron Swanson on a scavenger hunt.
