The D.E.N.N.I.S. System

Thursday night's Always Sunny revisited an aspect of the shows mythology that I was worried they had abandoned. Everyone knows that the shows is about a group of horrible losers who destroy everything around them except each other. In past seasons however, despite being so awful, Dennis was a capable, if not remarkable, coxman. Unfortunately, prior to this episode, the writers had neglected this aspect of his character.

This episode, titled "The D.E.N.N.I.S. System", has a simple premise: Dennis schools the gang on his patented system for getting women to fall in love with him. (He uses an acrostic (the second acrostic featured in Thursday's T.V. line up, the first one was used in 30 Rock) on a flip-chart for effect.) The system is...well, I'm just going to come out and say it...the system is fucking genius.

D- Display Value: For Dennis this means filling a forged prescription for a fake grandmother. For Charlie it means breaking into the Waitresses house with a bag of hair and dismantling her garbage disposal. (It was nice to see the Waitress again, I hope they bring her back to the forefront a little bit. She always brings out the most pathetic (and funniest) side of Charlie.)

Engage Physically: This step involves not only Dennis and his lady friend (a.k.a victim, played by Dennis' real life wife) but also a confederate (namely Mac). Dennis takes his date to a restaurant he knows to be closed. After feigning surprise he suggests they order a pizza and eat at his apartment. Upon arriving at home with said pizza, the couple find Mac sitting on the couch (he would have been in the his room but he saw a black widow spider in there). Seeking privacy, Dennis invites the young lady into his room where he seduces her over a slice of fresh 'za.

Nurture Dependence: Dennis offers a few options to achieve this step: Slashing her tires so she can't drive and must depend on him for a ride, calling her home late at night from a payphone and threatening her in a scary voice so that she runs into his protective arms, etc.

Neglect Emotionally: Self-explanatory.

Inspire Hope: Cue Top Gun Sex Scene.

Separate Entirely: Also, pretty self-explanatory

As the episode goes on we discover that in addition to the D.E.N.N.I.S. system, members of the gang are also employing the M.A.C. system (Move In After Completion), which pretty much consists of Mac sweeping in after Dennis "Separates Entirely" and offering the ladies a shoulder to cry on. Then he bangs them. Further down the food chain is Frank. His plan involves flashing Magnum Condoms and a wad of hundreds at Dennis' and Mac's scraps in the hopes on enticing them with his massive dong.

The episode features a sub-plot involving Dee and her Army boyfriend (from the wrestling episode), who is actually wearing the pair of jorts Frank gave him. Dennis is convinced that army guy is trying to "D.E.N.N.I.S." her. To prove her independence, Dee decided to treat her new boyfriend like shit. He eventually gets fed up and leaves her, but not before calling her a "mean person" (understatement of the season). More importantly, we get more evidence that Kaitlin Olson is one of the more gifted physical comediennes on TV right now. Last season we got a scene of her careening out the door of a shoe store and directly into a parked car, this episode we got a shot of her falling head over high-heels down a steep hill.

Eventually Frank destroys the entire system by attempting to bypass the M.A.C. system and go straight to the scraps by announcing to Dennis's victim that Dennis (and by extension, possibly her) has HIV. The final scene is classic Sunny chaos in which everyone is screaming over one another, Charlie pays a carnie to stab the waitress and a poor elderly woman (Gladys, the piano player from the Nightman Cometh episode) is abandoned at the fair.

-Welcooommme tooo helllllll......

Thursday Night Spectacular

The normal Thursday night line up was enhanced a tad this week by this season's first Thursday night football game. So, not only was a I watching Community, Parks and Rec, The Office, 30 Rock, Always Sunny and The League, I was also trying to keep track of the Bears vs. the Niners.

First, the football game - The Niners got their first win in over a month against coach Mike Singletary's former team. Bears QB Jay Cutler threw his fifth and final interception of the game on the final play to seal the 10-6 loss. It is starting to look like the Bears got the short end of the stick in the trade with Denver over the off season. Cutler has thrown a league leading 17 interceptions this season and the Bears have a long road ahead of them if they plan on making the playoffs. The Niners, despite losing 4 straight prior to last night, could still have a chance at the post-season due to the terrible division they play in.

Community - I'm out on this show. Don't care about it, don't think it is particularly funny. I only half-watched but from what I could gather, this episode was about McHale's character and the chick who plays Trudy Campbell joining a debate league. I wouldn't expect to see anything more written about Community on this blog.

Parks and Rec - Pretty hilarious episode. The Parks Department (well, mainly Leslie) is determined to create a contest winning mural that captures the spirit of Pawnee. Tom pays an art student $20 to create his mural for him. It turns out that the student is a budding abstract impressionist and the mural that he paints for Tom is just a bunch of shapes and colors. Anne draws an infantile picture of a park and glues pictures of animals cut from a magazine to it (Great zinger from Tom: "It looks like something a death row inmate would make during art therapy"). Jerry makes a beautiful photo-mosaic of a Pawnee landmark but makes the mistake of referring to it as a murinal (mural combined with urinal) and like always everyone shits on him. My favorite was Donna’s (I think that is the big black lady's name). She recreated of The Last Supper but instead of depicting Jesus and his disciples, her version featured famous Indianans (Larry Bird, Michael Jackson, Greg Kinnear (as Jesus)). The group can't agree on whose mural should represent the department in the contest, so they decide to combine the designs. The result is, predictably, a disaster, but the process brings the department closer together. There is a funny sub-plot about Andy becoming a shoeshine who becomes freaked out by an inappropriate sound Ron (fast becoming one of the funniest characters) utters during a shoe shining session.

The Office - Dunder-Mifflin might be going out of business! In order to keep his staff's minds off the impending doom, Michael orchestrates a rousing game of "Belles, Bourbon, and Bullets", a murder mystery game set in antebellum Savannah. Hilarious southern accents ensue (Andy’s displayed a knack for regional dialects).

30 Rock - I have begun to use the 30 Rock timeslot to enjoy my pre-Always Sunny jay. From what I saw, this episode was about the TGS cast welcoming a new member. I vaugely remember chuckling at a few Tracy Morgan jokes.

Always Sunny in Philadelphia - Sunny got back to its roots with this episode. It didn't waste any energy with elaborate story lines (breaking into the World Series, giving Frank an intervention, going on a road trip) and or settings (courtrooms, baseball stadium dungeons). This episode was all about the chemistry between the characters. One of the best things about the show has always been the little nuances and idiosyncrasies that the characters display from season to season. Here are some examples from this episode: Mac and Dennis pointing out Sweet D's resemblance to a bird, Mac's obsession with the male physique (I refuse to believe that a guy who is so obsessed with choreographed fight scenes and muscle bound men has never scene The Transporter), Charlie's love for felines (by the way, how funny is it that Charlie wears a McGregor sweatshirt. Is he a gym coach?), and Frank's love for trash. The plot for this episode is simple, yet effective (plus it included a sweet message about the importance of friendship (Mac/Dennis = Dynamic Duo, Frank/Charlie = Gruesome Twosome)). After D tells Dennis and Mac that they act like an old married couple they decide to take a break from each other. Mac goes to Charlie and Frank's house, Dennis goes to Sweet D's. D gets a cat stuck in her wall and enlists Charlie to assist in its extraction. Charlie puts more cats in her wall. D goes into the wall after them and gets stuck. Mac and Dennis reunite. The End.

Things I learned from the episode:

The importance of "packing on mass".

Apple skin and seeds are highly toxic.

Cigarette smoke suffocates the bacteria found in apple seeds and skins.

All calico cats are female.

The League - Thankfully, after the third episode, The League seems to be finding its voice. I think the writers may have read the posting where I complained about the wife characters; one is completely gone and the other has been pretty much relegated to the background (although Ruxton’s wife assumed a more central role in this episode). Speaking of my suggestions, the writers also clued us in to one of the teams names; Dr. Andre’s team is called Double Entendre (which absolutely sucks). This episode focused on a Sunday lunch party put on by the afore-mentioned wife of Ruxton (I have no clue what her name is. Something Spanish I think). He invites the rest of the league over because, obviously, if he can’t watch the games, no one can. We find out the Dr. Andre is member of another league ( The Fantasy Football League of Extraordinary Gentleman. Which absolutely sucks.); one in which he dominates and is revered as fantasy football guru. The episode ends with a toddler smearing dog feces (the dog’s name is Kale, which absolutely sucks) on an infant’s face.

Stay tuned for a review on the new Call of Duty game for the Xbox.

Yankees win, Aziz Ansari rocks a great T-Pain costume, Michael Scott hangs himself, 30 Rock gets more political and less funny and The League premiers

Last night was a veritable clusterfuck of television programming choices. I may have pulled a muscle in my thumb from flipping through channels. The World Series was on Fox, Carolina shocked VA Tech in Blacksburg on ESPN, NBC ran its standard Thursday night comedy line up, and FX aired Always Sunny along with the premier of its new show The League.

I was very excited to see The League. FX had been running promos for it for months and it looked like it had potential. I mean, how could it not be awesome? FX's track record speaks for itself and the world of fantasy football seems like it should be a comedy goldmine.

The first episode of The League was good, but not great. It certainly had its share of laugh out loud moments, but it also left some laughs on the table. One of the funniest things about fantasy football leagues are the team names (The name of my girlfriend's current squad is Flacco's Crack-ho. Hillarious.). We were shown the name of the league (The Quest for Shiva), but they missed an opportunity for some good fantasy football team name shtick. Also, I wouldn't have minded a few more scenes with The Oracle doling out draft advice. ("How about Larry Johnson?". "Yeah, that is a great pick... In 2005".) I thought Taco's song was pretty funny, and the mere fact that the character's name is Taco is a nice touch. While I enjoyed watching the way the men on the show interacted, the two wives felt a bit flat. (I laughed the first time I saw the scene about the charity event for dogs with down syndrome, "Its an epidemic.", but I had seen the same commercial so many times that when the scene played out in the episode I barely cracked a smile.) I liked the pubic hair joint bit; I once saw a kid take a bong hit of pubes, plus the fact that Paul Scheer's character decided to frame a half smoked joint was great in itself. While I wasn't as impressed with The League's series premier as I was with Modern Family's, I am definitely looking forward to seeing more episodes.

Thursday Night TV Extravaganza

Wow. Thursday night was an epic night of television. Two and a half straight hours of hilarity, most of it on NBC. Here is a run down of the highlights:

8:00 PM – Community
Initially I liked this show. I was intrigued by the notion of Joel McHale starring in his own sitcom along side Chevy Chase (who, by the way seems, to be competing with Ed O’Neil for the “Damn He Got Old Award”), some blond chick named after a popular water filtering pitcher, that black guy from the “Bro-Rape” sketch, Pete Campbell’s wife, and an Indian guy with mild autism. In the first episode, Joel McHale was snappy and charismatic. Unfortunately, the show, and McHale’s character, has become much less interesting and the laughs father and farther apart since. Now the funniest and most likable character is Abed, the Indian Raymond Babbitt.


8:30 PM – Parks and Recreation
Most underrated comedy on TV right now. The cast is superb. I had given up on Amy Poehler when she joined the cast of SNL. The move from Upright Citizens Brigade to SNL was kind of like a football player from a successful small college with a great program who is drafted by the Oakland Raiders. Al Davis might overpay to get you, but you are going to be part of something supremely awful. Rashida Jones is great. (Best semi-racist quote from my girlfriend of the night, "She doesn't even look black at all") It is getting to the point where I have to stare at the floor when she is on screen so I will be allowed to sleep in my own bed that night. She is that hot. She also has a pretty kick-ass resume. Check out her IMDB sometime (Here are the highlights: Freaks and Geeks, Boston Public, Chappelle’s Show, The Office, I Love You Man). The unsung hero of the show (and pretty much everything he appears in) has to be Aziz Ansari as Tom Haverford. He absolutely fucking slays me. His 5 minutes of screen time in Funny People was exponentially funnier than any scene with Adam Sandler since The Wedding Singer.

9:00 PM – The Office (Hour-long Jim/Pam Wedding Special)
I loved the first 55 minutes of this episode. It was absolutely pitch-perfect and had more laugh-out-loud moments than I can count. For whatever reason, this episode seemed to use slapstick type humor more often than we are used to from The Office (the vomiting scene at the beginning, Andy ripping his scrotum) but it really worked well. To me, Kevin stole the show. He was hilarious as usual. I could have done without the whole dancing down the isle bit. It seemed like the writers took the easy way out with the end of the episode. It came off as gimmicky and trite. I would have been happier if they had used those 5 minutes to show a few more scenes with Jim’s brothers or Michael and Pam’s mom. This episode raises some serious questions about how the show will work in the future. A married couple in the office creates a whole new dynamic, one that at first glace does not appear particularly funny. But I trust that the people at The Office will find a way to make it work.

10:00 PM - Always Sunny In Philadelphia
I am starting to get worried. I love this show, and have since the first episode, however this season seems to have more chuckle moments than knee-slappers. As much as I like the idea and will probably try it this weekend, the wine-in-a-can bit seemed to miss. But, like always, Charlie saves the day. It is tough for me to hate on an episode that went to credits with me in hysterics.


-Salt The Snail!