No Drill Can't Stop The Gala

Parks and Recreation, S05E13

Leslie and Ben came up with an idea to throw a fundraising gala to fund the Pawnee Commons, but things looked bad when Leslie had to spend her last hours to finish up what was needed for the event in an emergency preparedness drill instead.  Andy also took the test to be a police officer.

I can't wait until the Pawnee Commons gets made.  I am so over Jamm putting a monkey wrench into Leslie's plans at every chance he gets.  He latest dick move to make the emergency drill extra long so that she couldn't manage the gala before it started was such a spit in her eye.  However, even though Leslie was deperate to get out of there, it had its moments of being funny.

My favorite part of her being trapped in the drill was when she had to talk to animal control.  Brett had me cracking up with the way he didn't understand whether he was to kill the birds for real or not.  Leslie finally just gave up on him and asked him to pretend like they never talked.  It got better when Leslie was angry that Jamm hadn't done his part in the drill to ask the buses to be shut down.  I loved when she muttered that she should have had animal control kill him:

[Brett] Oh, who you want me to kill?

[Leslie] No one.

[Brett] I'll kill 'em.  Soon as I'm done with these birds.

I like how ready Brett is to kill anything, man or beast.  If I was her, I would have let Brett do away with Jamm.  He was being such a jerk.

I also liked that Chris got infected in the drill, thanks to Jamm, and when he got killed, he was so damn positive about it.  He proudly said he was dead with a big grin and a thumbs up.  Freaking loveable Chris, with his crazy ass.

Another great thing about Leslie being occupied with the drill was that she wasn't able to do her interview.  Instead, Ron went on the show and with an unconscious Joan at his side, he took calls for people about all sorts of things, while promoting the gala.  My favorite piece of advice he gave was for some woman who had a terrier.  After giving her a tip on the scratches the dog made to the legs of the table, he added his two cents about small dogs:

Next thing you want to do is ditch the terrier and get yourself a proper dog. Any dog under fifty pounds is a cat, and cats are pointless.

I'm not much of a cat person, so to hear Ron say so matter-of-factly that cats are useless really made me laugh.  He should get his own talk show.  He was brilliant.

The last great thing about that story was after Leslie had gotten free and the gala was going great.  Leslie expressed how she couldn't wait to marry Ben, and Ben told her they should indeed get married right then and there.  That was a nice surprise!  I thought we would have to wait until the season finale or so to see them seal the deal.  I hope that nothing goes wrong with their impromptu wedding, though.

Andy's story went pretty much as I expected.  I felt like he was going to do awesome on his test because he seemed pretty damn prepared.  It was disturbingly cute when April gave him a dead rabbit with its legs removed as a good luck charm.  However, I liked Andy's response to it:

Baby, you are so creepy.  I love it.

Match made in heaven, those two.

It was also expected that Andy didn't do well on his personality part of the test.  He was answering the questions all kinds of wrong ways.  He was being really honest with his answers, the kind of honest that's dangerous.  However, that one officer remarked that Andy's perfect score on the exam and his miserable score on the personality test was a shame.  I think so too.  I thought maybe Andy would be able to slip by.  I'm curious to know what Andy will do next.

I really liked this episode.  Leslie didn't get trapped by Jamm as long as he wanted, and all of her friends came through for her and made the gala a success.  Next week, we are going to finally see Ben and Leslie get married, if they play their cards right.  I'd hate to see someone or something get in the way of that.  It's a shame that Andy didn't pass the qualifications to be a police officer, but I feel like there's hope for him yet.  He has a set of special skills that I think should be useful for some occupation, police force or not, and I really want to see him find his way to something that is perfect for him.

What If Bart Had Failed?

The Simpsons, S24E10

To cut costs, the school with the lowest standardized test scores would be shut down, and Springfield Elementary's only hope of staying open was determinate upon Bart's score on the test.  Homer also found a parking meter at the dump and was tricking people into paying it at various locations around town.

I actually would have liked to see what became of the kids if they were sent to different, horrible schools.  Although, since Springfield is the worst school in the state, it couldn't have been worse (at least academically).  I was sort of rooting for Bart to fail, which it looked like he was going to do because he didn't put an ounce of effort into studying.  It reminded me of that very earlier episode where Bart had to study really hard to stop himself from being held back.  He studied really hard and failed, but proved that he had learned something and got a little extra credit.  In this episode, he just had pure luck, and a bug happened to fill in the last question correctly for him.  I guess that's more likely than Bart doing well on a test through his own merits.  That, short of someone dressing up like Bart and taking the test for him, was one of the few ways it was going to work to keep the school open (status quo).  Again, though, I would have liked to see the kids at a different school for a brief moment.

This story wasn't really funny, but I did find myself laughing when Bart imagined that Groundskeeper Willie was lowering a dead Skinner from a flagpole and folding him into a triangle.  That was a little twisted, but for some reason I had to laugh.  I guess it was because it was such a serious moment for Bart and he was still thinking about screwing Skinner over.  No wonder they were ready to knock down the school as soon as the test was over--Bart was so freaking unreliable.

I also liked one line from the proctor concerning the kids' test results:

This place is worse than the elementary school in prison.  This student filled in everything but the ovals.

This story really reminded me of how dumb the kids are at that school.  With kids doing the direct opposite of what they're supposed to do in a test, I'm not entirely sure it's because of the lackluster staff that teach them that they can't even fill in circles.

Homer's story was sort of cute.  I mean, there's nothing like watching Homer going around trying to scam people for a quick buck, especially if it's in a way that seems more trouble than it's worth.  It reminds me of the time he had the telemarketing scam going on--he was right that this fake parking meter was his most successful business.  The thing that was dumb was that he went to spend the money at a bus station pay-TV.  He might as well have been tossing all the money he "worked" for down a well (which he did, in a disappointing conclusion).  Then again, I guess Homer couldn't very well go around town spending quarters like that when there was a news report about his illegal activities.  Still, it would have been nice to see him do something fun with that money before Marge found out and made him do the "right" thing.

Oh, I also thought the couch gag was nice.  Usually, I just ignore it and just wish the episode would start, but I liked seeing them make them sitting on the couch see like a dramatic, action-packed movie trailer.  The tagline "Don't get too comfortable" made me laugh.

This episode was a little better than some of the others just because it wasn't very annoying in any way really.  I tend to like the stories that revolve around the school, especially when the main character is going to be Bart.  He's shown that when push comes to shove, some kind of unbelievable luck will pull him through and never any kind of effort upon his part (at least where learning is concerned) will.  Homer and his parking meter were a great pair in business, but he barely even got to enjoy the fruits from his misdeeds.  I miss Homer trying all these bad ideas to get money outside of doing his own job properly--it feels like we don't get to see him doing nearly enough of that nowadays.