12 best episodes of 2017

"Juan Likes Rice and Chicken" Documentary Now-An absurdist take down of high-end dining involving a Colombian restaurant in the middle of nowhere and the half banana, rice, and chicken dish that drives people wild

"Chadwick’s Angels" Making History-"Time travel with idiots" was the basic gist of this under-rewarded series and few plots were as superfluous as a guy traveling back to the 1980's just to complete an ice cream challenge he failed as a middle schooler. The episode ends with some impressively heavy time travel conundrums.

"Kimmy Goes to College" Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt-The episode features Kimmy Schmidt reuniting with her one true frenemy Xan and surreptitiously finding herself in college while Titus and Mikey end their relationship on the sweetest of terms. 

"Real Secrets" Real O’Neals-The season finale is a high stakes episode with a possible marraige proposal and pregnancy scare. More importantly it ends with Eileen using all her collected wisdom as a recovering homophobe to win over Allison's disapproving parents. Like many of the show's episodes, it ends with the appropriate "aw" moment

"Always an Oscar Bridesmaid" Documentary Now-Fred Armisen's love of quirk combined with the show's love of milking out little details of derivation from the original story result in a a great season finale about a man who Forrest Gumps his way through the last 50 years of Hollywood Awards history.

"The Gang Tends Bar" It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia-Of all the adventures the gang has tried, they've never done one where the gang simply does their jobs.

"Jason Mendoza" Good Place-The cliffhanger for the last episode is that the buddhist monk is, in fact, Jason Mendoza but we had no idea he was this stupid and fun. One of the season's big shockers.

"Eight Mile High"Those Who Can’t-Abby joins a gang and Loren enters the world of freestyle rapping. It's about as hard-core (and oblivious) as these characters. Also earns points for being so politically incorrect it comes back to satire (either that or dumb fun)

"Prince and the Pauper" Another Period-A prince comes to Bellacourt manner seeking a bride. The episode's an excuse for Lillian and Beartice to unleash their most awful traits and for Peepers to get schooled in the art of butlership. And poor, poor Blanche.

"Michael’s Gambit" The Good Place-AKA The episode with the big twist

"That’s Too Much Man" BoJack Horseman-BoJack's demons become completely unhinged in this time-skipping episode that pairs BoJack with old costar (and on-again off-again) friend Sarah Lynn. It's an episode where BoJack reaches some odd level of self-discovery with a person who has always been important to his life in an odd way that appropriately ends tragically. Happiness is fleeting indeed.

"Fish Out of Water" BoJack Horseman-The visually splended underwater episode that was talked about everywhere on the blogosphere.

My Week in TV Part V: Those Who Can't: "Escape Room"

Welcome back to my Week in TV series, where I take a single week of TV and review everything I watch. Thishas taken an extremely long time and this episode aired about six weeks ago but I'm thrilled to get this in in time for the season finale. Let's hope "Those Who Can't" gets renewed for a fourth season. It's a great match for TruTV. With three TV shows left to write, I'm slowly but surely making my way through the series. Stay tuned!

Those Who Can’t (TruTV)-“Escape Room”-Far more than in the first season, this show has become about terrible people (a la “Seinfeld” or “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”) who are not just oblivious but downright destructive to their environment. At the same time, the episode points out the flaws of such a categorization: If Sweens (Jerry Minor, one of SNL’s better one-season wonders) thinks that “the quartet” is the scourge of the school’s well-being, he needs to cast a wider net.  Lesley is running high-end rackets; Rod (despite one episode where he went clean) was fired for defiling the school shed and showing up drunk, the doctor twins are a pharmacy for illegal drugs, and there’s the creepy guy with the cats. There’s also the problem that Fairbell is too mentally deficient to truly be categorized as a trouble maker. This seems to be a common trope in TV such as Jason Mendoza (“The Good Place”), Amir (“Jake and Amir”), or Matt (“NewsRadio”) and none of those shows really deal with the characters as if they need to be treated for mental illness.

Moving on, Sweeney makes a power play to get “the quartet” fired through isolating them through an imaginary escape room team-building exercise and then mobilizing the staff to air out their grievances to Quinn. As can be expected, Quinn’s man crush on Loren and company hinders his objectivity. On top of that, he really wants to do an escape room exercise of his own which is a comic riff that last throughout the entire episode and gets funnier as it goes along.

Once in the escape room, the gang pretty immediately resort to cheating and immediate destruction: A pretty literal manifestation of how bad these characters have become. Here’s where I’m starting to think having the gang at least try to solve the puzzle might have been a better use of a plot about an escape room. Use what you got, people! Then again, there’s a certain shock value that it took the group precisely zero seconds to resort to cheating. Comedy is funny sometimes in that there aren’t necessarily wrong answers (which makes me kind of superfluous, huh?).

What’s more important here is the dynamics between the group as the hierarchy of the characters (Loren/Shoemaker > Abby > Fairbell) carries through their interactions as well as the topic of who was and wasn’t invited to the party.

Meanwhile, Leslie steps it up (always a good thing) in a rare act of selflessness and advocates for the quartet as the union rep in some of the episode’s best dialogue. The day of course is saved by none other than Rod who’s discovered in a backroom under the impression that he’s in a consensual relationship with the school mascot costume.

Aside from an uneventful second act (basically the gang breaking things), this episode represents Sweeney as a worthy foil. Better luck next week, Sweens.