"Girls" - "On All Fours": Can't get much wronger

     Marnie (Allison Williams) in the midst of the worst
     decision she's ever made.
     Photo Credit: HBO

Something happened on "Girls" this past Sunday (March 10) that I don't think has ever happened before: part way through the title card, the logo changed colour. When it first appeared, it was pink on a purple background, then transitioned to green on a yellow background. According to colour theory, pink evokes feelings of immaturity and silliness, but also of nurturing and unconditional love. Green suggests self-reliance, but also an unhealthy possessiveness.

I didn't look into previous title card colours as they aired, and I don't have the time to do it now. Who knows whether Dunham and co. ever take the logo colour into consideration. But the actual changing of those specific colours in this episode doesn't seem accidental. "On All Fours" was a fairly natural extension from last week, where we revisited Hannah's onset OCD in a much more horrifying form (personally, I'm pretty squeamish about things being done to my ears so that whole story was hard to watch). We knew from last week that Adam having a girlfriend would make its way back to Hannah at some point, and she took it about as embarrassingly as she could have, trying to think up reasons to like her only knowing her first name and nearly crying when Adam calls her "kid". Shoshanna continued to have no clue what she wanted out of her relationship with Ray other than knowing that she wanted it, which made it all the more disheartening for her to hear Ray described as an asshole by nature. I know the whole point of that relationship is that nothing about it makes sense and there's really nothing to it, but I'm starting to find it uninteresting and I hope there's some more serious development on that front in next week's finale.

I recently mainlined all 18 episodes of "Enlightened," which has its own cringeworthy moments. But show me the most hard-to-watch moment of "Enlightened" and I will show you Marnie singing "Stronger" at Charlie's party, which is maybe the most excruciating but simultaneously hilarious sequence ever televised. In fact, this was a really funny episode despite how dark things got at times. Hannah telling her parents about the 12-15 very close friends she had was a classic Lena Dunham delivery, and pretty much everything happening at Charlie's party (especially the douchebag talking about how restaurants are just a part of him and Shoshanna's reaction) was hysterical. Even as bad as things got between Adam and Natalia, Adam Driver got to work in some good physical comedy in their dance scenes.

So let's talk about Adam and Natalia and the thing she really didn't like, possibly the most excruciating and not at all hilarious sequence ever televised. Credit where credit is due, the show went for it. Nothing about this show is whitewashed, so why start with rape? The "too far" moment for me was the actual shot of Adam's semen. When you're paying a monthly fee to subscribe to HBO, you expect sex, nudity, and violence as a compensation. But I think I still would have understood just how horrifying that was without the borderline pornographic "evidence". If we're choosing to read into the logo colour, it seems like any break Natalia will be making from Adam will be as clean as the one Hannah made from him. I might have a better idea of where this would be headed in a 12 episode season, but with only 30 more minutes to go, my guess is as good as yours.

Season two of "Girls" ends this coming Sunday. Here's hoping I handle the breakup better than Marnie.

Review: HBO's "Enlightened" is the best show you've never heard of

     Laura Dern as Amy Jellicoe in "Enlightened"
     Photo Credit: HBO

Since around its eighth season, Comedy Central's "South Park" has been known particularly for its sharp cultural satire. That isn't to say the show never did satirical episodes before that, mocking suburban life and celebrity culture - many consider the Ben Affleck/Jennifer Lopez skewering "Fat Butt and Pancake Head" from the seventh season to be the show's best episode. But Trey Parker and Matt Stone see season eight as the point where the show stopped being just an aimlessly wandering cartoon devoid of any law or precedent and started being the show whose six-day turnaround gave them television's first crack at a takedown of current events.

One of the seemingly less beloved episodes of "South Park," season 12's "Britney's New Look," was a dark examination of celebrity and tabloid culture through a story in which the boys, trying to sell a picture of Britney Spears to the paparazzi, push her to the breaking point as she puts a gun in her mouth and pulls the trigger. Spears survives the attempted suicide, despite the fact that she is now missing most of her head. And through the remainder of the episode, the boys attempt to help revitalize her career to no avail as Spears' critics continue to nitpick flaws in her appearance and vocals, barely registering that there's nothing above the flapping mouth that she can no longer speak out of. The episode's plot and themes pay homage to Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," a good reminder that "South Park" apparently didn't learn to distance itself from esoteric parodies following their disastrous "Great Expectations" takeoff "Pip".

In the DVD commentary track for "Britney's New Look," Parker and Stone acknowledge that the episode's bleak and unattractive shell are off-putting to the audience, making it difficult for fans to appreciate the intended message. Specifically, Parker mentions that such an episode is one in a handful of episodes through the years of "South Park" that requires the full trust and acceptance of the viewer. You're either on the train or you're not, and if you're not, it's gonna be a 22 minute bummer.

HBO's "Enlightened" asks something similar of its viewers. It's a half hour show, but like so many of those on premium cable, it isn't really a comedy outside of awards purposes (its comedic moments are really limited to Timm Sharp's Dougie). Yet it's not quite a drama, because everything happening is so wonderfully ridiculous. "Dramedy" is a word that never had any positive meaning and yet has somehow lost all meaning, especially when you see things like the "Silver Linings Playbook" ad where Bradley Cooper explains that the movie is both "a drama and a comedy, much like life". This show defies classification like no other unique show that has come before it. Co-creator Mike White extended his hand and said "Come with me and I'll show you something awesome. Just trust me." And unless you were expecting highlights of his time on "The Amazing Race," he delivered.

"Girls" - "It's Back": No one can hear you scream

     Peter Scolari, Lena Dunham, and Becky Ann Baker on "Girls".
     Photo Credit: HBO

We've all had a person in our life who is either a horrible influence or brings out the worst in us. In some cases, we don't tend to realize this about that person until they're gone from our lives. They weren't necessarily trying to push the dime bag closer to us and asking us whether or not we want to be cool, but they do behave and think in a way that is, below the surface, ultimately toxic. The behaviour seems so normal that outside perspective is the only way to finally realize what a mess that person is.

Countless TV shows have dealt with the trope of a protagonist reuniting with an old friend. "How I Met Your Mother" depicted a phenomenon known as "revertigo" in an episode where the presence of Lily's high school friend reactivates her urban slang. In fact, most shows that tackle this subject are comedies depicting a humorous personality clash in the former friends. I always enjoyed the way that "Freaks and Geeks" handled the pseudo-fallout between Lindsay and Millie because of its complexities. Lindsay knew creatively and spiritually that Millie and the geeks were not going to bring out her full potential, but she also realized academically and sensibly that Millie was a positive influence, and that made it difficult to constantly reject her. And because Millie is too nice and believes she can bring Lindsay back from the dark side, she always welcomes Lindsay back to her with open arms, trying to do whatever she can to help her. Sunday (March 3) night's "Girls" gave us the opposite, in that almost every main character is confronted with the person or people who are their biggest impediment to success. And in a way, even the title "It's Back" could suggest that these people are akin to horror movie villains, back to finish the job they don't realize they were drafted for.

Shoshanna is just beginning to find some kind of stable adult life with Ray when her old friend and party girl Radhika (like "30 Rock," "Girls" appreciates the funniness of funny names) reappears. Radhika isn't pushing that lifestyle on her, but in reflecting on her recent progress, Shoshanna realizes that regardless of whether or not this was a life she at one time wanted or wanted to feel comfortable with, it certainly isn't any longer. Yes, Shoshanna ends the night confused as ever about her feelings for Ray, but it was hard to do worse than Marnie, who once again makes a complete ass of herself in front of Charlie. Marnie knows exactly what's wrong with her. She just thinks those things are either Charlie's fault or flaws of Charlie himself. But...progress! Right? (Yeah...we'll see.)

By all means, Hannah isn't capable of taking care of herself, but her parents (the always great Becky Ann Baker and Peter Scolari) aren't doing her any favours by dragging her to a pediatrician to cure her onset obsessive compulsive disorder (which...weird right? It's never been my understanding that OCD comes and goes, but who knows). It wasn't a terribly gripping storyline, at least not with the track record "Girls" has had with the Hannah character, but it featured some good work by Lena Dunham and the previously mentioned Baker and Scolari (and hey look, HBO favourite Bob Balaban!) and was an interesting counterbalance to what seemed to be the episode's major story.

I was not impressed with the direction Adam was taken early in the season, as it seemed a lot of the work done to humanize him in the end of the first season was being undone because of the mistaken belief that a creepier Adam is a funnier Adam. I enjoyed the Adam and Ray scenes in "Boys," but Adam's dinner date with Natalia was the first time all season the character really intrigued me. Natalia's stories about working as a decoy for a private investigator made me wish that that had been the outcome of the date instead simply because it would be hilariously tragic, but I'm much more interested in seeing a happy Adam, and no one has any reason to sick a PI on him.

Not their best episode, but one that exhibits promise for the season's remaining two weeks.

Stay tuned: The past 24 years of the Super Bowl lead out show

     The 1996 "Friends" episode "The One After the Superbowl"
     is still the most watched Super Bowl lead out show ever.

Here’s the thing about not being a professional: you’ve got to make sure real life is taken care of first before you commit to what you’re passionate about. And with that in mind, I present to you an examination of Super Bowl lead out shows in March.

The question that seems to constantly perplex the networks is, “What makes a successful, and hopefully good, lead out show?” Just because a network figures something out one year, doesn’t mean it can be emulated for their next Super Bowl year, or even the next calendar year.

So for no real reason other than me liking lists, I decided to take a look at the last two decades of lead out shows (1990-present), arbitrarily put them into “great,” “good,” “bad,” and “ugly” columns, and talk about where and why things went right or wrong. At the end, we’ll regroup and talk about what we’ve learned and what the postgame slot might go to next year.

"Girls" - "Video Games": Continue?

     Hannah (Lena Dunham) and Jessa (Jemima Kirke) enjoy a
     home-cooked meal on "Girls".
     Photo Credit: HBO

Okay, let's run through some of the contradictory things I've written about "Girls" over the past few weeks:

I claimed "One Man's Trash" to be my favourite episode of the series, citing a preference for "Hannah Show" episodes like "The Return" from season 1. The week after, I praised "Boys" for putting new characters together like Adam and Ray, and I finally considered the cast to be an ensemble the show would be best served to use. Not only did I write that I preferred a sort of "all or Hannah" approach to the cast, but this week's episode featured Hannah and one other main cast member, like most of the episodes this season have, and I thought it was terrific.

And a few weeks back, I wrote about the ultimately toxic relationship between Hannah and Jessa, even if they have their moments of clarity and understanding. And now after Sunday (February 24) night's episode "Video Games," I'm going to revise that statement if not rescind it completely.

Hannah and Jessa are in very few ways similar people. As Hannah points out when first arriving, Jessa and her father speaking in their heavy accents made her feel like they were speaking different languages. When Jessa offers Hannah supposed words of wisdom about how her life will never get any better than it is right now, it's clear how little Jessa understands Hannah and an episode like tonight proves how bad Jessa is at showing Hannah she cares about her. Jessa has never had a good relationship with a parental figure, as we saw in her breakdown with her dad (Jemima Kirke. Emmy nomination. Now please.), so it's not surprising that Hannah yelling "slow down!" from the backseat of their speeding car is off-putting to her. The last thing Jessa wants in a friend is another parent. But the things that bring the two of them together are not just straws they grasp at to keep their friendship alive - Jessa is not the kind of person who would pretend to be friends with anyone -  they're reminders why they are friends and why they enjoy each other's company when they can spend a lot of time not having the time of day for each other. As Aimee Mann's "How Am I Different?" plays over the end credits, I'm left wondering why I ever thought this relationship was on life support.

We had spent the early part of the season seeing only glimpses of Jessa, and I convinced myself we were ramping up to crazy Jessa/Thomas John antics late in the season. Thomas John is gone, but Jessa and Johansson family insanity were in full swing tonight. With a character like Jessa, a good origin story (not exactly the correct use of that term, but you get what I mean) is essential but almost guaranteed to be a letdown. Because Jessa leads such a ridiculously misguided life, a plot synopsis describing a visit to her parents makes me think, "Oh wow, Jessa's parents! She's so screwed up, this is gonna be good!" And surprisingly, it really, really was. Ben Mendelsohn and Rosanna Arquette (playing "Petula," which is a pretty funny name but not as good as Murjashiway) brought some hilarious quirks to their roles and I had no reservations believing those three as a family. On a side note, actor Nick Lashaway played Frank, and I spent most of my viewing being very frustrated that I couldn't place where I knew him from. (The IMDB tells me I recognize him as one of the teenage boys at the health clinic that Steve Carell takes Kat Dennings to in "The 40 Year Old Virgin" and as one of Michael's co-workers at his telemarketing job in the "Money" episode of "The Office".) Note to self: attempting to mentally cut a character's bad haircut isn't very helpful in trying to place the actor in a previous role.

Like "One Man's Trash," "Video Games" was a "Louie"-esque short story that ignores any sense of continuity from episodes that precede it. But what "Girls" does so well is it does use episodes like that to establish continuity for later episodes. I have no idea where we're headed next with Jessa, and I won't be surprised if we don't see her again this season.

I'd like to say this is my new favourite episode of the series, but I feel like I will say that three to five times a season with a show like this. So just know that I actually preferred this to "One Man's Trash," and I won't replace my favourite episode week after week. If "Louie" won't be back for another year, then I am perfectly happy to accept short film episodes of "Girls" as a worthy placeholder.

"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.