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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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Wait… what?

It always ends with a parade, no? It doesn’t matter how aggravating the plot or the dialogue or the nonsensical (or at least moderately nonsensical) doublespeak, just so long as we’re all treated to a parade. Parades are fun for the whole family — especially if your family happens to be a group of dysfunctional surfers who may or may not have just been visited by the son of god. That’s how John From Cincinnati, perhaps the oddest series I’ve ever seen, ended its first (and likely only) season Sunday night. A full breakdown 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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Picture via HBO.com

First of all, this was a great episode. Maybe not great in the same way that His Visit: Day Five was great, what with that speech at the end and all the mind-buggery, but this episode is certainly in the top two… at least for me. If anything, this was THE quotable episode of the season, chalk full of gems from everyone from Bill to John to Freddy and Palaka. Perhaps what made this episode so much fun was that even if you find the series overly dense (and really, who doesn’t) when the characters are given some room to really express themselves there’s an undeniable pleasure in just seeing their interactions with one another. 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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“This is what I used to record Mr. Belding in the bathroom!”

C’mon, Marc-Paul, everyone knows that the first rule of recorded blackmail is to make sure the blackmailee isn’t recording the blackmailer. Man, TV characters can be so foolish (when needed).

For a show that seems so unbound by television conventions, I have to admit I was a little disappointed this is episode’s straightforwardness. It’s not that I want every week to be as mind-crushing as John’s big speech at the end of last week’s episode, but when you set up a series as expressionistic as this, it’s something of a cop-out to just tell a story straight-up — it doesn’t help things that the story itself wasn’t particularly interesting. 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?

“In His-Word-in-Cass’s-camera, the Internet is big.”

Well that was a head trip. Before we get too far along, I encourage anyone who’s interested to check out Steve Hawk’s blog over at HBO.com. He has John’s big monologue printed in its entirety (not that that will suddenly make the last ten minutes of the show any more clear, but it’s a start). Perhaps more interesting is a Milch quote he recently took note of, “The tactics of fictive persuasion have nothing to do with reasoned discourse” (classic Milchspeak!). In other words, why does storytelling have to necessarily be built on a chain of practical happenings?

As confusing as that episode was trying to be, when I turned off the television I felt like I took away the information I was suppose to have learned — even if that information was delivered in the most haphazard of ways. More specifics after the break…

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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.

Pic via HBO.com

This was probably the series weakest episode to date, scarred significantly by the absence of all of the most interesting characters. Thank god Bill had at least a few scenes, albeit with Zippy, a character not known for his range so much as his feathers (and magical healing powers, of course). More after the break…

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“Hey Now” Hank Kingsley and George Bluth Sr.

I’ve been working my way through The Larry Sanders Show. It’s relentlessly brilliant, and not just because it’s so painfully realistic. The series seems to be one of the few comedies in the history of television that really relied on the skills of its actors more than the wit of the writers (which isn’t to say the writing isn’t incredibly sharp — it is). In most television comedies, acting frequently takes a back seat to the comedy. The Larry Sanders Show had the balls to say, “no, they’re the same thing.”

When you look at the traditional model for television comedy, series have been built around performers. Whether it was I Love Lucy, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Mary Tyler Moore, Newhart or any number of the “schluby guy with a hot wife” shows from the 90s and aughts. More after the jump…

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I don’t know Butchie instead.

I’m part of a small group of people who absolutely love David Milch’s new HBO series John From Cincinnati. As a member of this group, I’m entitled to heap upon glowing praise for a series that I don’t even slightly understand. I’m also given a 10% discount at participating Sizzler locations. The problem with this group of smart, attractive and wholly likable people is their only words of recommendation when it comes to this particular series is “it’s just so odd you have to keep watching” — not exactly a ringing endorsement. After watching the third episode Monday afternoon on HBO On-Demand I tried to figure out what it is that attracts me to the show — outside of the oddities. More after the jump…

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