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Bongo players always get the girl

Before last night’s episode I was talking with a friend about whether or not the season would end with some sort of cliffhanger. The series has never been too concerned with running plotlines (though certainly running jokes). In the end, the Conchords landed right where they had started, but their surroundings had certainly changed. So in that case I guess you could say the season did end with some uncertainty. More after the jump…

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“I don’t even like this band.”

“You could put a cigarette behind your ears… or a pencil,” says Murray to the band as he tries to explain ways they can be more “rock and roll.” Though it was his suggestion to ”put a piece of hay in your mouth,” that caused me to fall out of my chair. It didn’t hurt that 20 minutes later we return to Murray’s office seeing him with a very cool, very rock and roll-looking piece of hay between his teeth. That’s why I tune in every week. That’s what sells the show. More after the jump…

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Mermaids, Mermaids

Murray has hijacked Flight of the Conchords. What started out as show about two dawdling New Zealanders and their musical adventures around New York, has turned into a show about a worker at the New Zealand consulate who really wants to be the manager of a band. I’m OK with this. Early in the series run the big complaint was “what happens when they run out of songs?” Well, they HAVE run out of songs, and shockingly the show just keeps getting better. More on the specific hilarities after the jump…

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Picture via HBO.com

Aziz Ansari isn’t a very good actor. That being said, this episode was hilarious. I felt like the Conchords were going to right the ship a bit from last week shortly after the opening when Murray is handing out mail. Between Brett’s “favorite box” and the way-too-subtle fact that Murray’s mother appeared to have mailed him a sandwich, things were certainly looking good, and only got better. More after the break…

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Hey gang, it’s Bowie in space!

I think I might start posting about Flight of the Conchords on Tuesdays instead of Mondays. For the past few weeks I’ve noticed that I tend to find the episodes funnier a day or so after they air. This isn’t to say that Sunday’s episode was all that terrific (the songs were kind off lame, though the Bowie impressions were spot on), but I’ve definitely been laughing about it a lot more around the water cooler than I had Sunday night while actually watching on television. More after the jump…

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“Chicks dig that romantic, nautical shit.”

It’s business time! Sunday’s episode started out with a great call-back to the robot video: AFFIRMATIVE — before gettin’ busy with the song It’s Business Time, and thus reintroducing Sally to the fold. My favorite line from the song was “Two minutes in heaven is better than one minute in heaven,” because it’s as funny as it is true.

Other great moments:

• Jermaine decided to move out “because Brett is a loud eater”
• Jermaine’s new “apartment” which, perhaps ironically, isn’t all that much smaller than my current apartment.
• Murray’s investment in stellar real estate (only to have Planet Jermaine go super-nova).
• Sally’s husband being Australian, adding to the Kiwi inferiority complex
• Coco breaking up with Brett via Jermaine

Flight of the Conchords makes me so happy. It’s really going to suck when it  gets replaced in a month with the new season of Curb of Your Enthusiasm. Really, at this stage of the game, who’s clamoring for more highly orchestrated awkward social run-ins?

For those of you without the luxury of premium cable, now is your chance to check out the funniest show on television. HBO.com has posted the entire fourth episode of Flight of the Conchords for limited time… so hurry and check it out. It is currently the only thing worth regularly discussing (and by extension quoting) on the once proud cable network, and it’s worth 30 of your minutes.

Need some prodding?

Okay. Fine…

Pic via HBO.com

Even when Conchords has an off week, which I think we can all agree this was, watching it is still a breath of fresh New Zealand air. The way they approach comedy is so laid back I’m almost more impressed by the delivery of the straight lines than the actual jokes. You get the feeling they would say during production, “Laugh… or don’t… really whatever you want is fine. Should we do another take… if that’s OK?” I’ll take this approach nine times out of ten as getting beaten over the head with laugh lines (most of which aren’t particularly funny) is one of the biggest problems with television comedies of late.

The songs this week did a great job of illustrating the duo’s strengths in being able to mine comedy from genre styles more than clever lyric writing (not that I didn’t find the lyrics clever, but really anything coming the week after “Rhymenocerous and Hiphopapotomus” is going to seem bland by comparison). Still, the way — particularly Jermaine — so easily adapts to familiar cadences of a particular style is impressive to say the least.

Despite the episode’s reliance on one or two plot-points we had all ready seen from the first week, there were still some rock-solid moments with Murray (like his tour of New York bandshells) and Mel (Kristin Schaal’s intensity just kills me).

The episode was by no means Entourage-like in its awfulness, but coming on the tails of last-weeks highly quotable and brilliantly funny mugging-tale, I have to admit that I’m a tad let down.