Left Behind

Suburgatory, S02E15

Tessa confronted Ryan about his unexplained absence and found out that he was investigating possible colleges.  Realizing that their futures would soon go in different directions, Tessa tried to think about college herself, while Ryan tried to find a way to stay with Tessa on a long-term basis.  Marty's sudden death made George realize no one knew him in Chatswin at all.  With Noah's help, George tried to find a good place to leave Marty's ashes after he had been the only one they could find to take them.

What a relief that Ryan wasn't doing anything particularly wrong!  He was just worried that Tessa would freak at the mention of him going off for college.  It's adorable that he was so concerned she wouldn't want to be separated from him that he tried to hide it.  That idiot.  I just wish that Tessa was more worried about them parting one day rather than almost gleefully imagining her life in New York City without Ryan.  I mean, it reflected badly on her when Ryan was moping around about his blessing being a curse because it would put himself and Tessa in different places in the future, while her first thought wasn't to find a way to maintain their relationship.  He was even ready to get himself "hobbled," so that his time with Tessa wouldn't have to end.  It took Tessa while before she thought about how precious her remaining time with Ryanwas  and rushed off to see him.  Sometimes I don't like how long it takes her to realize these things.  She's human, but still.

That guy who works at the photo shop is crazy as hell.  I knew he was a troublemaker from the moment he babbled to Ryan that he wasn't a biological Shay.  Sir, mind your own business!  This time he wanted to be a "hit man," and whack Ryan with a metal pipe?  What is this grown man doing?  He should be arrested, even if Ryan asked him to do it.  Like, Tessa pointed out that he had to hear the message she was leaving for him before he ran out to attack Ryan, but Mr. Photo acted like he had no idea.  After coming back for a second attack that failed, thankfully, I was happy to see Tessa snatch the pipe from him.  What a nutcase!  I don't like the idea of Ryan hanging out with that guy.  Nothing good ever comes from it.

Besides Ryan saying that he wanted a life-size of Tessa over a pocket-size (aww!), I loved when Tessa ambushed him in the bathroom:

[Ryan] Tessa.  You're not allowed in here unless you have a penis.[Tessa] Then what's your excuse?

I liked that Tessa was not playing around when it came to lying to her like that.  I'm guessing that he was just going to keep avoiding her, so she had to resort to such methods.  Thank goodness.  I wouldn't have wanted half of the story to be about him running away from her.

In George's story, Marty's death was so predictable.  If hadn't died after talking about having his life ahead of him, it would have seemed like false advertising (or foreshadowing).  It was sad that not one damn person knew more about him beyond a few superficial things like what his driver's license might tell you or what his mailman could say.  It's ironic the second George thought to learn one thing about Marty that he kicked the bucket.  Especially because the few bits of information he gained tipped the scale enough to make him the owner of Marty's ashes.  That's a crazy responsibility for someone who barely had a conversation with the guy.  But I guess Marty was sort of lucky he ended up in George's hands.  He could have gone to Dalia who sang this horribly monotone song for his slideshow, yet easily admitted she had never even met him.  She really set the overall sentiment for those in attendance of Marty's memorial.

It was sort of cute that even though Marty's "girl" turned out to be another stranger, Fatima still was grateful enough for the gift of the tickets to give his urn a kiss.  It was a little weird, but nice that she wasn't creeped out by receiiving a gift from a dead guy.  That was closer than he was going to get with Fatima at that moment, so George sorta did Marty a favor.

I liked George's idea of spreading out Marty's ashes outside of Chatswin to let Marty travel like he always wanted to.  I guess they couldn't afford to go somewhere really far, but I think George's heart was in the right place, so it was good enough.

Noah admitted that he was in love with Carmen--duh!  Who didn't know that?  There is no way Noah's affection for her only amounted to how well she took care of Opus.  Please.  He took her to an opera and got her fancy gifts.  It explains a lot of why he couldn't let the feud with Dallas die for the longest time.  He wanted his woman back, not his nanny.  I don't know how Jill will fit into this whole thing, but I'm sure Noah's love won't come easy.  Jill and Noah don't have the most spectacular marriage, but I doubt that Jill will be able to save face if Noah divorces her for "the help."  I just hope that Carmen, who hasn't done anything wrong (so far) doesn't get caught in the crossfire of Noah's decision to pursue her.

Speaking of love, Dalia is so aggressive when it comes to Evan.  I don't think that he'll be able to push her away after that intense kiss she gave him.  That was insane.  I admire her for going after the one she wants, even if he's so outside of my imagination of her preference.  I wonder if Dalia and Evan will make as a wonderfully mismatched couple as Tessa and Ryan do.

This was a good episode.  I couldn't hate it for any reason as long as Ryan wasn't trying to go after another girl behind Tessa's back.  I should have had more faith in him--he wouldn't be that much of a scumbag.  I don't know if they'll be able to survive Ryan going off to college, but at least they've agreed to enjoy their time while they have it.  And it's great that Ryan didn't throw away his future by letting a crazy photographer destroy his leg.   George was burdened by giving Marty his final resting place, but he eventually figured out the best thing to do.  The lesson he and Noah learned through their journey of Marty's unknown life made Noah confess his love for Carmen, which seems equivalent to lighting a stick of dynamite to me.  There might be another explosion of love soon between Evan and Dalia.  I doubt that little dork will be able to keep Dalia off his mind after the passionate kiss she gave him this week.

Reezy Peezy

The Mindy Project, S01E10

Mindy's little brother Rishi came to stay with her and tell her that he was dropping out of school to become a rapper.  Mindy tried to kick him out and teach him tough love in hopes that he would return to school.  Jeremy and Danny also spent time at a nursing home to get their landlord to lower their rent again after the landlord's son had raised it too high.

It was nice to see someone from Mindy's family.  He was pretty cute and I liked seeing Mindy sort of mother him in a way.  It was just a bonus that he ended up wanting to be a rapper and was pretty good at it, even if Mindy didn't want to see that at the beginning.  My favorite part of the whole story was definitely the end where Mindy went to support him and ended up being his backup singer.  She was sort of ruining his performance with her unnecessary comments about the lyrics mid-singing, but it was still funny.  Best of all, Mindy seemed a little more relaxed and hopefully this will be the end of her stress barfing.  I also liked at the very end that she suggested that Rishi should change him name to "Nice Cube."  That's hilariously bad.

In the Danny and Jeremy story, there wasn't much I thought about it.  I did like seeing Jeremy getting pissed at the landlord's son.  He was a jerk, for sure.  I would have liked to see Jeremy deal with that little idiot some more.  The time the two spent at the nursing home wasn't interesting enough to really say much.  It just seemed like a waste of time, despite that they got their rent lowered again.

I liked this episode, but I'm sort of disappointed that there weren't many jokes that I could enjoy.  I wonder if Rishi will be in any more stories.  I doubt that he's going back to school, but it's not really clear if he's a one-shot character or not.  I'm not sure if adding Mindy's family to the mix will make for better stories in the future, but I wouldn't rule out the possibility yet.  This show is still young, after all.

Grandpa's Other Wife

The Simpsons, S24E04

After receiving money from a fast food injury, Homer put the money in a college fund for Lisa via an online poker site.  Lisa soon became hooked on playing and increasing her money for her higher education.  Marge and Homer discovered that Grandpa had gone missing after they neglected to show up for a visit.  They spent their time looking for him, while learning about his past as a songwriter and his short-lived marriage.

This wasn't the funniest story, but it was a little interesting to learn about Abe's past.  I would think that we've explored the skeletons in his closet enough, though, but they did an okay job of still making this worth watching.  Two things that were almost funny to me were when two chained dogs at Spiro's wussed out on a fight after getting free and the poker game telling Lisa to log off because they could all hear her crying.  None of the jokes worked extremely well for me, but I sensed an effort.

The most interesting thing in this episode was that Abe was married briefly after he had split up with Mona.  It was conveniently over pretty much as soon as they were married.   The brief nature of their relationship distracted you from imagining this new timeline working into what we already know about Abe.  I suppose I could overlook that Homer didn't remember that at all because Abe took him to an airport bar to drink away their memories after Rita left for Europe without them.  I don't know if Abe actually forgot about her all those years (since is prone to forget most things), but it's a little weird that he had a black wife when he refused to tell the truth about the Simpson family tree including a slave named Virgil.  He seemed ashamed to admit that, but had few problems wedding a black woman.  But it wasn't as if he ever told Homer about it, so perhaps he had intended to keep it a secret like Virgil.

Another thing that I thought was a little odd was that the lawyer Roberto Deniro (ha) had these acid markers on hand to burn Homer.  What would he be using those for??  I was also a little confused the way the beginning story didn't really tie into the main story.  I mean, thanks to Homer's onion ring incident, Lisa did get to gamble her college fund online, but Lisa's story was a side story that didn't really connect to the main story at all.  I don't know.  I just feel like Marge noticing that they forgot to visit Grandpa could have been a little more relevant to what was going on before.

Lisa's side story wasn't too memorable, and I had a feeling that Sideshow Bob was really Bart after all.  And of course, it wasn't a surprise that they had to maintain the status quo and Bart's winnings were returned to $5000 due to him not being of legal gambling age.  It would be too good of an outcome for her to have so much money to spend on college.

I probably would watch this episode again to check out some things that I didn't pay a lot of attention to, like the contents of Granpa's army locker.  I thought it was nice to hear Anika Noni Rose, but I wouldn't say that the story would have been worse if she hadn't played Rita.  I just enjoyed learning that there was more to Abe's love life in the past than we had thought.  And even though Homer and Grandpa don't get along so well, it was sweet to see that he sacrificed a lot to make sure that Homer grew up safely.  I can overlook the flimsy plot when there's sentiment to be found.  I'm a sucker for that for this show.

Rallo And Junior--You Can't Go Wrong

The Cleveland Show, S03E18

Cleveland, wanting to regain some of his youth by reliving his college days agreed to take Roberta on a college tour of his alma mater.  He screwed around with his old fraternity, thinking that they were going to honor him, but were in fact making him the joke of the night.  Roberta initially used the trip as an excuse to go to a music festival, but she eventually was convinced to attend college after all.  Junior got upset that Donna washed Larry and couldn't sleep without his old smell.  Rallo showed him that he could sleep on his own, but Junior started to use Rallo as his replacement Larry.  To fix this problem, Rallo modified Larry a bit so that Junior thought it was different doll.

Even if the frat boys hadn't told us beforehand that they were just fooling Cleveland, it was likely that he would have still ended up taped to an ass, feeling like a bigger one than the real one.  The only thing that was notable about the story with Cleveland and Roberta visiting the college was that we found out that Roberta is a good fighter (and Federline is a weak punk) and Roberta is lot smarter than she lets on.  Even though she acts like an idiot and uses Rihanna and Kim Kardashian as models for life choices, Roberta scored welled on her PSATs and has good grades.  Apparently she's just a pain in the ass and a bit of a whore.  Since Roberta is my least favorite character, I'm glad that she's not as vapid as I had thought.  I remember the episode where she pretended she was Tyra, so it's not a stretch to think that she's been hiding her genius to remain part of the crowd she's already been accustomed to.  It makes me hate her a little less and hope that she might end up displaying a little more of that intelligence in the future.  At least we know that she'll go to college.  Perhaps if this show is on long enough, we might see her character evolve once she gets away from the high school hype she apparently has to keep up just to fit in.

Well, I guess you just can't go wrong with a story about Rallo and Junior.  Saved the episode for me.  When Rallo saw that Donna had cleaned Larry after Junior stormed off, he remarked, while in nothing but dingy underwear:

On the bright side, at least you finally did some laundry.

It's funny because it really seems like Donna does the bare minimum when it comes to cooking, cleaning, and just any general house work.  It's ridiculous.  However, I can believe it.  I mean, she already had two kids of her own and then she got Cleveland and another child (granted that Junior probably cleans up a lot after himself).  Still, to have your child going around in brown undies is gross.

Another funny moment was when Junior was trying to put back all the nasty smells into Larry and complained about his new smell:

[Junior] He smells like Snuggles, the gay fabric softener bear.

[Snuggles shows up in a huff]
[Snuggles] Just ’cause I’s clean don’t mean I don’t like it dirty.

[Snuggles leaves]
[Rallo] A’ight, Snuggle.

I didn't expect that Snuggles would show up, nor have so much attitude about Junior's comment.  Loved its random appearance.

 A little later, it was so cute when Rallo was rocking in a chair and knitting while he looked over Junior so he could sleep.   His humming was just like some little, old lady.  These kinds of things only work with him because he just acts so grown, but is the tiniest little thing.  It's also funny when he acts his age, like when he agreed that he, too, should brush his teeth, but all he did was wet his toothbrush and put it back.  That's totally something a little boy would do.

The last good bit of that story was when Rallo and Junior were arguing about him replacing Larry as his bedtime cuddle partner.  Junior said that Rallo had no power to stop him because he was about ten times his size.  When Rallo tried to counter that Donna would help him, she yelled up the stairs that she had her own problems.  Again, Donna with the bare minimum of both homemaker and mother.  However, I will give her points for not letting Rallo run off to Holiday Inn to solve his problems:

We don't run from our problems in this family.  We trick people.

That should be written on a plaque and hung on the wall in the Brown house.  Those were some of the best words that have ever come out of Donna's mouth.

Good thing that Rallo was able to trick Junior into taking Larry back.  But it was funny that he commented that whatever Junior chose to do was fine as long as it prolonged the eventual day that Junior would snap and kill them all.  He does have that vibe.  He may act like a child, but when he's passionate about something, he can get a little psycho.

Not a bad episode, but of course, that's because there was a Junior and Rallo story to pick up the slack.  I never expected gold when it was obvious that Roberta was going to be involved, but it was more decent than usual.  It's good to see that Roberta isn't an idiot and has the potential to succeed beyond getting pregnant by Federline (hope we never see that story!).  Maybe one day I can see an episode besides the Tyra one that could make me hate Roberta a little less.

Ron Swanson Gets Some...And Some Steak Too

Parks and Recreation, S04E18

Leslie had an awful interview with an obnoxious show host who trashed Pawnee, and Andy celebrated his passing grade from his first college course with steak.  Also, Donna was fascinated with Jerry's super focus with stuffing the envelopes with campaign flyers (but I won''t get into that).  I liked the Leslie story better than previous ones, but it still wasn't as good as the one that involved Andy.  You can't top a story that has Ron Swanson at the heart of it.

This week, Ron was doing one of the things he does best--eat meat.  Not only does he eat like 3 steaks, but Andy's professor is charmed by him, despite that Chris joins their little celebration and seems to be having a connection with the woman.  There were quite a few good lines at the table.  One was when April spots Chris at the restaurant by himself:

[April] Is that Chris?
[Andy] It really looks like him.  But there's no way to know for sure.  We should ask him tomorrow.

Another was when Ron probably had the conversation that made the professor fall for him:

My life has been shaped by powerful women.  My father once told my mother that woman was made from the rib of Adam, and my mom broke his jaw.

 I felt bad for Chris when the professor shot him down for a few seconds before she went after Ron.  There was no time to think about his feelings when Ron so casually and easily accepted her invitation to hookup.  However, after Ron comes in the next day so happy that he is making jokes like "Donuts.  Go nuts," and Chris says that he is going to try to win over the professor, my heart went out to Chris again.  It was cute and unexpected that Andy convinced Ron to be upfront with Chris with the same words Ron had lectured Andy with earlier.  The disappointment that Chris expressed was overshadowed by the hilarious hug Ron had to endure for being honest.

The only thing I really wanted to mention about the Leslie story was how it was nice that Ann and Tom were getting along.  Even though they seemed to be breaking up more than they were staying together, it was cute that Tom was keeping track of the time they were officially a couple.  Tom ruined it at the end with the 48-hour anniversary gift of 48 condoms.  Damnit, Tom.

It's also sweet that people of Pawnee love Leslie so much.  Or either they hate Buddy Wood enough to purposely throw his bag away.  Either way, things worked out nicely for her.  Maybe she won't win the race, but she surely can't say that her relationship with Pawnee is a one-way street.

I wonder if Professor Linda was a one-time character or if she will stay on to be Ron's girlfriend for a while.  Hopefully that won't be painfully for Chris to see, and he'll find someone else.  He's too convincing as a lonely person, so it is kind of breaking my heart to see him like that.  It's funny, for sure, but it also so sad.  I'd also like to see a good Ben and Leslie story next time like the bowling one.  As much as Ron cracks me up, I'm starting to miss my dose of Leslie-brand laughter too.