Ron Loves Diane

Parks and Recreation, S05E11

Leslie wanted to initiate more goverment jobs for females, so she started by tackling the sanitation department.  She and April tried to prove that female garbage collectors could do the job just as well as males.  Chris was confused about where he stood with Shauna.  Tom asked Andy and Ben to teach him about basketball, so he could relate to his costumers.  Ron had Ann look over Diane's girls when he had exhausted himself watching them.

Besides the fridge business, I think Leslie and April had no problems really picking up trash.  It was cute to see something that Leslie had dragged April into that she actually enjoyed.  Even if it was to invade people's privacy.  I also liked that April was the one who convinced Leslie to think of another way to handle the fridge, so they wouldn't lose to the jerks setting them up to fail.  However, my favorite part of this story was when Leslie and Chris were having the meeting with the gender equality commission.  April pointed out there were only men present and Leslie spoke out:

[Leslie] Excuse me, everyone, did anyone notice that there are no women on the gender equality commission?

[Milton] There's a lady right next to you.  Oh, wait, no--it's just a very beautiful man.

I loved Chris looking offended for a second before he smiled at the compliment at the end.  Man, even guys like Milton can admit to Chris' good looks.

I could understand why Chris is a little confused about his standing with Shauna, but I was glad that Leslie gave him some advice about it:

[Leslie] I know you're not used to this, but maybe you should just try to keep it chill and see what happens.

[Chris] Great advice.  Impossible to follow, but great advice.

It's great that Chris can make his negativy sound positive.  It's not just his words, but his peppy, fast-paced voice.

I was surpsied in Tom's story that he doesn't know more about basketball than what he knows from the Kardashians' show.  Wow.  I knew he was sort of a non-traditional kind of guy, but I didn't know he was this bad.  After watching him play basketball like he had never heard of the sport in his life, he summed up his ignorance in one line:

Did I do basketball?

It was just a sad sight to watch him try to dribble and throw worse than what a preschooler would, and it got worse when the very type of customers he was trying to impress joined him on the court and schooled Tom and his friends in a game.  Tom's got some good friends who would put up with that and not call off the game before it even started.  But it was funny to see kids dominate them so hard.

Ron's story was just adorable.  To see someone like him just sitting like a statue while two little girls played with him as they pretty much wished was hilarious.  I admire that he loves Dianne so much that he would put up with that torture for as long as he did before he tried to pawn them off to Ann.  It's weird, though, that Ron still doesn't know her name (actually, no it isn't because Ron is like that):

[Ron] I thought your last name was Hanson for some reason.
[Ann] Nope, it's Perkins.  Always has been.
[Ron] You seem more like a Hanson.

The funniest thing about Ron asking Ann to watch over the kids was how bad and uneasy she was with the girls.  When she told them the scary story and the girls screamed, I loved how Ron forced a laugh and asked Ann:

What is wrong with you, woman?

It doesn't really surprise me, though.  Ann is sort of a hit or miss type of person with people.  She doesn't universally click with everyone and sort of easily gets on the bad foot with people.  It makes sense that with people out of her generation (not unlike April), she stumbles to connect and speak to them naturally.

The best thing about this story and possibly the whole episode was when Ron admitted to Ann that he loved Diane.  Aww!  Then to make it even better, Diane told him that she loved him and Ron said the same in the tiniest voice possible.  Yay!  Ron and Diane forever!

This was a pretty good episode, but I can't say that any of the stories were really that stronger than the other.  After that phenomenal last episode, I feel like I'm still expecting every story to be of the same caliber.  There were a few funny lines, and Tom's first try at basketball was one of the best jokes in there, but Ron's declaration of love for his girlfriend was the most awesome event of the episode.  Best of all, it wasn't anything I was expecting at all, making it a wonderful surprise.

BBall Battle

Big Bang Theory, S05E17

Wow, I have to admit that Big Bang has been pretty good lately.  This week's episode was probably one of my favorites.  The two stories were about Sheldon and Kripke fighting over an office and Penny being unable to tell Amy that she didn't like her gift.  Usually I would hate stories that focused too much on Sheldon and Penny, but these were too funny to let their usual character annoyances bother me.

First I'll talk about Penny's problem.  Amy gets her a little something, and it's no surprise that it's more than a little something.  In fact, it's a $3000 portrait of the two of them.  And it's huge.  She has no choice but to put it up in her apartment to spare Amy's feelings, but when she talks to Bernadette, she realizes she has to come clean about it or hide the painting after Amy leaves each time.  I liked that Penny tried to use Bernadette as an excuse why she couldn't hang it up.  Her idea was that Bernadette would be jealous.  Bernadette quickly and smartly refused the idea, afraid that Amy might get her one.  Oo.  That is a serious fear.  Especially since the portrait makes Penny look like a transvestite, according to Bernadette.

I knew it wouldn't take long for Amy to discover that Penny hated it, but I was surprised how quickly she grabbed her giant portrait and ran back to her apartment.  Penny is a horrible liar.  Amy wouldn't have had to find out why she took down their portrait, if only she used a fraction of her brain.  Back at Amy's apartment, Penny fails to nicely let Amy know her true feelings and instead cops out and makes Bernadette the scapegoat anyway!  Amy falls for this lie, but thankfully since Penny is being kinda evil to throw Bernadette into the equation, Amy doesn't give a damn about Bernadette's feelings.  Wow.  She really does love Penny.  I think that Penny is lucky to have Amy, despite that she is a little over-enthusiastic.  And pretty creepy (who commissions a naked picture of yourself and your best friend!).  When push comes to shove, I'm pretty sure that Amy would rush to her side and help her out when she needed it.  When it comes to girlfriends, you have to have someone like that.

Now onto the main story about Sheldon and Kripke.  You gotta love Kripke with his Elmer Fudd-sounding self.  He's one of the few scientists at their university who doesn't seem like the biggest nerd on the planet. And he's hardly intimidated by Sheldon and refuses to let him have the Rothman office just because he claimed seniority.  They later go to the president while he was in the bathroom.  The president didn't give a damn about their squabble.  So they had no choice but to battle it out themselves.

Sheldon was being his usual insane self by proclaiming that if Kripke didn't listen to reason and let him have the office, he would poison his tea.  Good God!  Do you need to murder someone just to get an office of your own??  He really is like a step away from being mad scientist, causing havoc to all of the innocent townspeople.  They eventually settle on a contest where they are both equally disadvantaged: sports.  For some reason, I would have thought that Kripke was a little more athletic.  This episode removed any idea of that for me.

Leonard takes them to play basketball.  They are the worst players ever!  Not only do they cower away from the ball when Leonard first passes it to them, but they couldn't put the ball in the basket if the basket was on the ground and 1 foot away from them!  I was laughing pretty much the entire time, but my favorite part was when Kripke dribbles across the court and then straight into the wall:

Time.  Ran out of room.

LOL!  Thankfully, after they are all sweaty from their fumbling around, Leonard suggests that the person who bounces the ball the highest in the air will win.  Sheldon manages to win that.  As silly as the outcome of their battle is, I doubt anyone would dare try to overturn the results.  That was more than enough to declare Sheldon the winner after their horrible basketball playing.

To my delight, karma had plans for Sheldon.  His new office was, in fact, horrible.  We knew this as soon as we saw the ex-employee Rothman standing naked behind Sheldon's door when he first came in.  Of all the problems that Sheldon described from the room, including a mysterious hole, uncontrollable temperature, and vibrations from the geology lab above, my favorite complaint was the one he had with the mockingbird trying to imitate the song of a wind chime.  According to Sheldon, the bird was out of tune and was intentionally mocking him.  God, he is a nutcase!  But he is too stubborn with all of these problems to give up the office to Kripke and move back in with Raj.

Speaking of Raj, who didn't have much of a role in this episode, it was funny how he admired the naked Rothman at the beginning of the episode.  I was expecting him to say something to support the homosexuality he sometimes gives off, but he was concentrated on the hat.  Oh, Raj.  And he's such a dork to order a Harry Potter wand on Ebay!  It turned out to be just a stick, but he eventually accepted it because it had numbers inscribed on it as if it were a real product.  He's an idiot, but I love him.

Leonard, too, had a backseat role this time, but I liked that in the end of the episode he took a picture of Sheldon with his head stuck in the wall instead of going to get help for him.  He's a nice guy because I would have kicked Sheldon in his ass and pushed him further in there.  Or tossed something on him that would have made him freak out (because he's a germaphobe).  The possibilities were endless.

Great job this week, Big Bang!  For a secondary show of mine, it's nice to see an episode of caliber of one of my primary ones.