Crappy Marriage Leads To Crappy Story

The Cleveland Show, S04E09

Cleveland and Donna went to marriage counseling after Cleveland messed up his personal vows to Donna.  On top of paying the counselor extra to make it seem like Cleveland was always right, the man blackmailed Cleveland into having sex with his wife.  Rallo retrieved Junior's old fridge from its grave and filled it with snacks that Junior couldn't help but eat, and Junior ended up owing Rallo a hefty sum for it.

I didn't expect much for a story about Cleveland and Donna's marriage.  They don't have the best one, and Cleveland is chronically saying bad things about being married in the first place.  You knew he was going to say something terrible at their ceremony, and then take the whole episode to make up for being unappreciative of his wife (pretty much how all of these shows go).  Luckily, it wasn't completely boring.  There were a few things that I found relatively funny.

The first was when Cleveland was questioning paying $80 for the marriage counseling.  Thanks to Junior he was able to illustrate how many sandwiches he could get with that money, and asked Donna:

[Cleveland] What would you rather have, a happy marriage or lots of sandwich?[Junior] Lots of sandwich![Cleveland] That'll be all, buddy!

I like the idea that Cleveland would rather have more sandwiches in his life than a more successful marriage.  Can't blame him--him and Donna are a mess.  He might as well enjoy some good food than someone being paid to tell him he's doing everything wrong.

The second thing that I liked was when Cleveland was in the marriage counseling and thought for a second that the counselor was agreeing with him.  When he showed that he was just agreeing Donna for the millionth time, Cleveland had a good line:

You've got a slappable face, you know that?

Cleveland may be an ass, but no one wants to sit there and listen to someone take the side of their spouse constantly over theirs.  He'd be an idiot to refuse to pay the guy more to turn the table in his favor (or he could have just told Donna he wanted a more impartial counselor, but hey).  I liked that instead of Dona figuring out what he had done, it turned into a blackmail situation.  That was different.  However, before Cleveland even went to sleep with the woman, I suspected that it was just a ploy to get Cleveland to prove that he loved Donna.  So the ending wasn't much of surprise to me.

In the side story with Junior and Rallo, I was disappointed that it wasn't funnier.  The two of them usually are a hit for comedy, no matter what they're doing.  I don't know.  I guess Rallo extorting Junior to buy food out of convenience seemed too easy.  The only part I sorta liked was when Junior "roughed it" by walking out of the room and into the hallway, which was super windy all of a sudden.  When he was blown away, he yelled, "Cartoon!" and that made me smile.  I like when they acknowledge that in cartoons you can get away with situations that defy the laws of nature.

Didn't care for this episode, but it wasn't too bad on a scale specific for this show.  It wasn't like watching that one about different countries, so in that sense it was all right.  I can't think of one episode dealing with Donna and Cleveland's marriage that was humorously depicting the negatives of marriage (because it's not all good, of course).  Instead, these stories just leave a bad taste in my mouth.  I wouldn't mind this as much if the side story could throw in a few laughs my way to make up for the main story.  It's a shame when even Rallo and Junior can't pull that off.

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.