"Girls" - "Boys": Giving up the gun

     Here's an image that aired for 1/24th of a second on HBO
     tonight. Ezra Koenig (Ezra Koenig) and Booth Jonathan
     (Jorma Taccone) admire great art on "Girls".
     Photo Credit: HBO

It seems I will never settle on what kind of "Girls" episode I prefer. I loved last week's "One Man's Trash" just as I loved season 1's "The Return," Hannah-only stories that forwent the other main characters for the duration of the episodes. Sunday (February 17) night's episode "Boys" featured the entire main cast, most of them (save for Jessa) with significant roles, and I loved it just as much.

Like a lot of premium cable half hours, "Girls" walks a fine line between comedy and drama, but I found tonight's episode to be the funniest of the season. Shoshanna is always funny, and I loved her great throwaway line about being the friend from "Twilight". I'm not sure how long it will take for me to not laugh at Hannah typing out the phrase, "Her name was Murjashiway," which is maybe the greatest sequence of jibberish I have ever seen in my life and perfectly encapsulates just how Hannah will fare trying to write her e-book in a month. Adam had some great lines during his even greater scenes with Ray, like his analysis of the ideal ages of women to date. Along with the full use of the ensemble (and I've never really though about the "Girls" cast as an ensemble) came interesting new pairings like Adam and Ray. I had naturally assumed from the title "Boys" that this episode would be more focused on the male characters, and Adam Driver and Alex Karpovsky really nailed the unlikely bonding thing that can so easily be a poorly executed storytelling crutch.

Booth Jonathan still being a thing caught me off guard a little bit. There was no closure to his previous horrifying encounter with Marnie, but the character feels like such an aimless drifter that I'm surprised their theoretical relationship, whatever that really entails, survived over those three or four episodes. As batshit crazy a character he is, even his opening scene where he berates his assistant for eating his ice cream (props to Jorma Taccone for having apparently just as few reservations about nudity as everyone else on this show) was enough to make me chuckle, especially the assistant's line about her boyfriend working lights for Carly Rae Jepsen - those kind of ridiculous, lack of self-awareness, Jenna Maroney-esque lines are what makes "Girls" what it is. And don't blink or you'll miss Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig tell Booth exactly how many times he's seen him cry! (Those fifteen seconds would have been enough to put this into the positive column, really).

Overall, it was not a night in which any of the characters really knew what they wanted, or felt like they should be wanting something even if it's going to make them miserable. Adam and Ray are both uncertain about their relationships - Adam goes from zero to a hundred in about two seconds when Ray criticizes Hannah, despite complaining about how bad their relationship was and how much he disliked her, and Ray isn't doing so well facing the reality that there's basically nothing to his relationship with Shoshanna. Hannah's dream is to write and publish a book, but now that it's an actual possibility, the grind of the job is proving to be overwhelming (if not funny - I mean, come on - Murjashiway - funny names are funny). And despite terrifyingly realizing how Booth views their relationship, Marnie is still tricking herself into thinking that he's brilliant and that he's some sort of opportunity of escape for her that she'll regret if she doesn't pursue.

It was a pretty spectacular episode for on screen talent. I wouldn't be surprised to see this one brought up a lot around Emmy time, even if it seems unlikely that anyone but Lena Dunham will get a nomination. While I've been enjoying the second season, there does seem to be something missing and I think the show would benefit by using more of the ensemble more of the time and in newer combinations as they did tonight. "The Hannah Show" has proven its greatness, but otherwise, I'm hoping it's go big or go home in the next four weeks.

"The Office" - "Moving On": Lord, beer me strength

     Destined to be together. Too bad they apparently stopped
     listening to each other say stuff.
     Photo Credit: NBC

14 year old me probably never thought I would say this, but tonight's episode of "The Office" was horrible. A complete and total mess on every level.

An episode of "The Office" in the 2010s was bad? Stop the presses. Yeah, this show has been a complete mess for about three years now, but never in a way that I felt, or that made me finally realize, I needed to sit down and pen an essay about why I hate so much about the things "The Office" has chosen to be.

"Girls" - "One Man's Trash": Hannah, Hannah, you're gonna die

     Hannah examines Joshua on "Girls".
     Photo Credit: HBO

Every summer for 13 weeks, FX lends out a half hour of its schedule to a stand-up comedian so he can basically televise his insanity. It's a half hour of whatever the hell Louis C.K. feels like telling a story about, and sometimes that's a homeless man being decapitated. But whatever it is, week in and week out, the subtext of "Louie" is its creator taking a sledgehammer to the current television landscape.

And man, if Sunday (February 10) night's episode of "Girls" wasn't the "Louie"-est episode the show's ever done.

The writing for "One Man's Trash" is credited solely to Lena Dunham, and I'm not surprised at all to see that. For as much as the specificity and emotion is what makes "Girls" what it is, this felt extremely personal on a level even this show hasn't fully explored yet. Its second cousin from the first season, "The Return," was also an episode that pulled Hannah out of whatever comfort zone she can claim as her own and shone a light on a really unhealthy relationship of hers. That time, it was the fact that she cheated on Adam and he didn't even care. Here, it's that she completely fabricates a relationship with Joshua basically because he has a nice house and some nice stuff, so she ignores the fact that she means basically nothing to him and views him as security she's never felt before. And yet, she's still Hannah Horvath. As much as you might think her having to return to reality would be devastating, she doesn't much show it. She's too used to it by now - it's not a match, and the board goes back.

"The Return" was my favourite episode from the first season, and though I have trouble thoroughly explaining why, this is my favourite episode of the series so far. Because "Girls" is as deeply personal as it is, the more that it's essentially the singular expression of Lena Dunham, the better it is. Which makes me conflicted, because while I like Jessa and Shoshanna and am finally warming up to Marnie, an episode like this just makes me want to watch "The Hannah Show". If we get to watch that show once a year, I'm okay with that, but only because the rest of the show around Hannah is so good as well. So now that we've spent a little time in Crazy Town, it's time to join Hannah in her walk back to reality.

"Girls" - "It's a Shame About Ray": Oasis

     Jessa (Jemima Kirke) and Thomas-John (Chris O'Dowd)
     share a (final?) meal on "Girls".
     Photo Credit: HBO

In last week's review, I commended "Girls" for telling a kind of story they don't usually tell. But I was also sure to point out that I wasn't implying that I was tired of those stories or that I thought they were doing a bad job with them. And Saturday's (February 2) episode, thanks to some non-Bears Super Bowl Shuffling, shone a pretty great spotlight on two previously unexplored (at least at this depth) couples in Shoshanna and Ray, and Marnie and Thomas-John.

For the better part of a week, I was trying to hypothesize why this episode was called "It's a Shame About Ray" (the series of tubes tells me it's also the name of a 1992 song and album by The Lemonheads) - the best I had settled on before watching the episode was that we would learn Ray would have some embarrassing accident or disease or etc. But it turns out instead that in a move both simultaneously sadder and funnier, Ray is technically homeless when he's not living with Shoshanna, with Zosia Mamet giving a great reading of the line "Are we living together?"

That probably would have been the line of the night had it not been for Jessa saying "Wish there was a lord, but I know there isn't!" at the brilliantly uncomfortable (it feels redundant to continue to refer to events on this show as "awkward" or "comfortable" - it's basically a given) dinner with Thomas-John's parents, which also included some delightful conversation about the difference between the snorting and injection of heroin, among other horrors.

It was a rough night for fancy dinners on this show, but it was a particularly rough night for the men of "Girls". Between Thomas-John's meltdown (a good, twisted performance from Chris O'Dowd), Charlie calling Marnie the dreaded C-word, and Ray's big revelation, it was a rare occasion when the pain and trainwreckery (a word I'm inventing) of the guys managed to exceed the girls. What's more, they managed to do it without one glimpse of the gentleman known as Adam Sackler. It also has me very intrigued that an upcoming episode is titled "Boys," which would seem to indicate we're going to see an episode presented from their point of view.

I thought during the episode that even though I'd been looking forward to seeing the full-fledged return of Jessa after three weeks of glimpses, I had kind of forgotten who she was as a person. I of course knew that she was the most full-of-it of the four girls, claiming a worldliness that in no way aligned with her maturity, but I kind of forgot about her fragility and that she's still a human being. So I really loved the ending scene where Jessa climbs into the bathtub with Hannah, and she just breaks down crying. No one has to say a word - Hannah just knows. Despite the fact that Jessa completely misunderstands Hannah and her life, as we saw two weeks ago in the absolutely horrible advice she gave her, there is a weird connection between those two where sometimes, their screwups can still serve as a bonding touchstone.

Hannah and Jessa are each other's wonderwalls - I don't believe that anybody feels the way they both do about the other at that very moment, where they're able to sit in the bath and splash snot back and forth at each and other. It's a nice, weird moment, even though it seems very doubtful that they will be the ones to save each other.

The five dummies you meet in heaven

     "30 Rock" cast, from left to right: Jack McBrayer, Tina Fey,
     Alec Baldwin, Jane Krakowski, and Tracy Morgan.
     Photo Credit: NBC

I am not very old at all. In my ~20 years, I have really only ever lost two people that I consider close to me: my grandfathers, one of whom died when I was 4, and the other when I was 16.

You might be surprised to learn that losing someone close to you isn't much fun. Despite being told to remember the good times, you spend a lot of time dwelling on "what ifs" - the time you wish you had spent with a person, and the conversations you never had.

Right before my paternal grandfather died in December 2009, my English class was assigned a speech. We were asked to interview a family member or close friend, preferably over the age of 50, about an event in their life that we could write out as a story and then tell to the class. My mom suggested I talk to my grandfather about how he got his driver's license back in the early 1940s (long story short: he scared the tester so much with what a bad driver he was that the guy actually passed him because he refused to ever get back in a car with him). My family and a number of our relatives had tickets to go see the Guelph Storm play their annual Teddy Bear Toss game that upcoming Saturday, and while doing some research on the time period on Monday, I thought that going to that game and going out for dinner would be a perfect opportunity to ask him questions about that story.

Well you can guess what ended up happening. There was no story or hockey game on Saturday. There was a funeral on Friday. I never got to hear that story, and I still regret that I felt like I had as little as six days to wait to hear it. That Thanksgiving, he had told my brother to come over some time so he could teach him about electrical wiring, and I know he also still feels bad about never getting around to that.

Something that draws me to television so much is that I really, really hate change. I have never liked it, and for the most part I think it's because major change in my life has never been the result of my own determination. I have never been able to experience the kind of change where I choose to move into a new house, or quit a job and move on to pursue some bigger career opportunity. My change has been new schools and living away from home because that's what you do when you reach certain ages.

Yet through any kind of change in my life, and no matter how much I might not like the show very much anymore, the paper pushers at Dunder Mifflin were still there every Thursday night. I was still able to watch Dr. House crack inappropriate jokes every week. And when my own family isn't around every day, the Simpsons can be as good a substitute.

And there is one TV show - just one, as far as I know - that has been on the air, and I have been a viewer of, while I attended each of the three schools I have ever been enrolled at. It was on during my final year of elementary school, all four years of high school, and my first two years of university. For some reason, one of the biggest constants in my life has been this ridiculous satirical TV comedy that is both really intelligent and yet probably most well known in the larger popular culture for catchphrases like "I want to go to there" and "Blergh!"

Tonight, after seven seasons and 138 episodes, "30 Rock" takes its final bow on the NBC television network. I have been a viewer of "30 Rock" since Tuesday, October 10, 2006, when I sat down to watch its very first episode premiere (a day early here in Canada). That was a little more than 329 weeks ago - more precisely, it was 2,305 days ago. I have been alive for 7,219 days. That means "30 Rock" has existed for roughly 32% of my life. And in terms of how long the show has existed in this period in which I have been the copious TV watcher who types before you, I imagine the number shoots somewhere into the 80-90% range.

"30 Rock" is not my grandfather. It's not a relative or a close friend. It's not a person whose funeral I will attend. But with the incredible sadness I feel about the show ending, tonight's one hour finale might as well feel like a funeral to me. Probably the Monty Python Graham Chapman funeral to be specific, but still.

I remember thinking a couple years back that I had never really watched a TV show from beginning to end, as it aired, at least not for a show that lasted for any substantial amount of time. I was pretty sure that "House" would be the first show I could say that about, but I bailed on the last couple seasons once the show became an unbearable chore to sit through each week.

And so for the first time, I'm confronting the conclusion of a television show whose first episode I can really vividly remember watching live so many years ago. I'm also realizing that I've been fortunate enough that it's probably also been two or three years since one of the shows I watch week to week has even been cancelled (continued RIP, "Better Off Ted"). The end of "30 Rock" doesn't bring tears to my eyes (though who knows what's in store tonight), but it also does feel like I'm losing something that's been a part of my life for so many years. It's made me look back and realize that I took the show for granted season after season, letting episodes pile up on the DVR and not understanding how lucky I was to be able to watch this show for one episode, let alone seven seasons. As ridiculous as it might sound, for someone like me who geeks over TV so much, it does feel of a piece with not picking up the phone and talking to my grandfather more often, and the failure to realize that even the things that are a part of our lives for so long don't last forever.

In the remaining few hours before the finale, I'll be rewatching some classic episodes, as I've been doing for the past week or so, and wondering where the time has gone. And at 9pm tonight...well, I was gonna say that at 9pm tonight, I'll probably sit quietly and think about the fact that "Parks and Recreation" and "Cougar Town" and "Arrested Development" are still on the air, and that at least "30 Rock"'s 8pm timeslot will be filled by the delightful "Community" next week. But I think I'm probably gonna end up DVRing the finale and then staring at the list of recorded shows, finding five more minutes at a time to put off facing this weird end of an era for a kid who has been obsessed with TV for so long that he's been watching "Mad Men" since he was 15. *Then* I will go through my version of the five stages of TV grief outlined above.

And then...it'll be Friday, February 1. I wait for the next time I lose one of my favourite shows. Lather, rinse, repeat.

But we're talking "30 Rock". So I think the more appropriate term would be "respawn".

Global's SAG screwup reflects a network in shambles

     "Homeland" star Claire Danes reacts to winning the SAG
     Award for Female Actor in a Drama Series Sunday night.

A funny thing happened on Canadian television last night.

No, that's not right. Allow me to rephrase. A funny thing didn't happen on Canadian television last night.

Hmm, still not exactly right, since even for TBS and TNT viewers in the United States, the 19th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards probably weren't a laugh riot.

Okay, how about this: a super weird, ridiculously embarrassing thing happened on Canadian television last night. A major screwup the likes of which I can't remember ever seeing before.

"Girls" - "Bad Friend": Catch the wave

     Hannah (Lena Dunham) and Elijah (Andrew Rannells) find
     the magic on "Girls".
     Photo Credit: HBO

At the beginning of Sunday (January 27) night's "Girls," Hannah's potential employer tells her to step outside her comfort zone in terms of her writing, specifically with a diagram on the wall suggesting that the magic happens in a little circle outside said comfort zone. Like the meta criticisms from last week's big Hannah/Sandy fight, it seemed to suggest that, despite being a show that focuses on the whole lives of twentysomethings in the big city, the critics of "Girls" were looking for something more each week than mostly or solely sexual exploits. We spend a good deal of time with...(we need a good "Cul de Sac Crew"-esque name for these people; to just call them "the girls" doesn't seem right since Adam, Elijah, and Ray are significant parts of the show)...these characters in their professional lives, but I'm blanking on an episode before this one that was primarily a personal story, but wasn't about a romantic relationship.

"Girls" has proven through a dozen or so previous episodes that it's perfectly capable of telling such stories about Hannah and Adam (last week's episode in particular), or Marnie and Charlie, or even Ray and Shoshanna (whose name I think I have finally learnt how to spell correctly). This week, the show stepped outside of its comfort zone and documented a coke-fueled night in the lives of Hannah and Elijah, with sequences that were at times quite funny, very well produced, and great showcases for Lena Dunham and Andrew Rannells. Rannells isn't playing the exact same character on both "Girls" and "The New Normal" so it's probably not a totally fair statement about the performances, but Elijah and Bryan share enough DNA that it's very refreshing to see this version of Bryan who is similarly obnoxious but that "Girls" can have a lot of fun with by understanding how obnoxious he can be ("The New Normal" will never be able to do that because Bryan is Ryan Murphy, and Ryan Murphy's favourite person in the world is Ryan Murphy).

And in an episode where Hannah is not on a romantic misadventure/screwup, what better way to continue the theme of "Hannah and Marnie couldn't be in more different places in their lives right now" than through Marnie's horrifying night with Booth Jonathan, fucking great artist/runner up to Adam Sackler in the 2012 "New York's Biggest Creep" contest? I didn't dislike Marnie in the first season, but at the same time I have no specific memories of really pulling for her as a character. It's hard for me not to, though, after watching the walls literally close in on her, forcing her into the fetal position. And much like when real life does it to her, she brushes it off and tells Booth how awesome she thought it was. Poor, poor Marnie - bravo, bravo Allison Williams.

The season is young, but this was my favourite of the three so far. As with all things "Girls", I imagine the reaction to this one in particular will be quite split.