Thursday, September 23, 2010
A HUGE HIT WITH BOTH ANGLOPHILES AND PEDOPHILES: Absence makes the heart grow fonder, or both 30 Rock and The Office made me forget (mostly) about their mediocre 2009-10 seasons with solid returns to form tonight. Nobody (nobody) does a pre-credits sequence like the team from Dunder-Mifflin, and I'm glad to see the joke factories back in business, even if I have no idea in which direction either show is going this year.
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And luckily there was this to get me through the lack of Parks today:
ReplyDeletehttp://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/09/becoming_ron_swanson.html
30 Rock's season premiere reiterated for me that it's the funniest show on tv, when it's firing on all cylinders. It's just that that has been too rare an occurrence lately.
ReplyDeleteSo many words have been spilled over this topic, but simply: 30 Rock had to abandon any real narrative structure it had early in its run and go for broke on the joke-per-minute ratio just to stay alive. Six years later, this leaves us a show that, when the jokes are good, is one of the funniest things on TV. When the jokes AREN'T good, however, it can't lean on the audience's involvement with the characters like The Office or HIMYM can.
ReplyDeleteWhat made the lip dub opening for The Office work is that while it was stunty, it still used the stuntiness to reflect character. With the possible exception of Dwight (and maybe Toby), the sequence reflected character rather than just being a silly opener. What did bug is that although they've redone the credits, they still only feature Carrell/Wilson/Fischer/Krasinski/Helms/Novak. What makes the show work is the large ensemble.
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