Televisionary: New Girl, Happy Endings, Up All Night & Modern Family

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Up All Night

by Lizz

This week, Chris and Reagan had to deal with trading in Reagan’s sweet BMW convertible for a family car. While I normally try my best to suspend my disbelief for sitcoms, Reagan having to “trade in her car” makes absolutely no sense. She’s supposed to be a goddamn executive producer for a major daytime TV show. Shouldn’t she have enough money to keep her car and buy a new one?

IT'S NOT EVEN THAT NEW OF A BMW

Speaking of the big deal producer job, Ava decides that her show, Ava isn’t nitty gritty intellectual enough. Anyways, she decides to have a big deal economics guy on and now she has to read A Whole Book by the end of the week. I would make fun of the writers here, except it did take me a week to get through Richard III so maybe they’re on to something.

READING IS HARD

Since getting a car and reading are so hard, everyone gets drunk and procrastinates. Probs the parents should not be getting drunk while they don’t have a babysitter present. Since, like, um, they have a baby and stuff (who’s actually barely appeared in the show thus far). The drunkenness results in Ava not reading the book and the happy couple buying an Awesome Van from a questionably offensive character.

IF THEY GET A DOG, NOW THEY CAN RIDE AROUND SOLVING MYSTERIES

Luckily everything resolves itself after Gob decorates Reagan’s new mommymobile with the trippy van-eque exterior decals. Also during her interview with the economics guy, Ava changes the subject to bullying and the guest cries. This is a good thing because obviously people who watch daytime TV only want to see emotional breakdowns about traumatic life experiences. Does Oprah have a problem with there existing a sitcom exclusively designed to make fun of her show?

As you probably gathered from my mindless chatter, I’m still a bit bored by Up All Night. This episode was better than the ones before, but I still won’t be shocked if it gets canceled. Obviously everyone in the world is protesting the end of Arrested Development by preventing Will Arnett from having another TV career. Did you know this show is based on someone’s actual life sort of?

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Happy Endings

by Brittani

Seated around that table they’re always seated around in that one restaurant they always go to, we discover Jane donated an egg freshman year of college so she could afford to go to Cabo. Now she’s wondering about her over-achieving egg baby and probably doesn’t remember most of what happened in Cabo. Such is life. She’s so worried about it, it interrupts her and Brad’s sexy times.

Jane: How did you now know that was a dress?

Brad: I had my suspicions but the price was right and daddy likes a deep tuck.

Max rented out Dave’s room to help cover his half of rent only to have Dave return home early because of a sewage mishap in Wisconsin. Speaking of Wisconsin and the Midwest in general, these people never wear coats. Later in the episode, a Bears game is mentioned. It should be a little brisk if it’s football seasons. Not even a jacket? A sweatshirt? Nothing with a lining?

Alex comes up with the idea of selling baby shirts to boost sales. Little does she know that wearing shirts 16 years too small is the new high school craze. When three high school girls are in the store looking to make a purchase, Alex attemps to tell them the shirts are for babes because she’s a pusher. She pushes people. Her attempt is thwarted by the girls who compliment her and Penny rendering them ineffective. I feel like being unpopular in high school doesn’t make as big a difference on people in real life as it does on TV. You can’t even where your varsity jacket past graduation without getting made fun of. And those coats are comfortable and expensive. It’s not fair.

Brad and Jane go searching for the egg. They find her only to discover she’s become a baby tee wearing brat. Jane wants to help so she shows up at her school in something worse than a mom van — the Free Candy van. After all the work she put in stalking it turns out the kid isn’t Jane’s egg. Apparently Jane submitted a follow-up video to the potential parents that made her seem off her rocker.

A gaggle of teenagers tap a keg in Alex’s dressing room and throw a party in the store. Penny has to choose between hanging with the popular girls/potentially seeing the guy she was in love with in high school or helping Alex clean up. She heads to the mall only to be ditched by the teens. She returns to the store with Sbarro, everyone’s favorite mall pizza chain. Does Sbarro exist outside of malls and terminals? No, right?

Max begs Dave to let him work on the truck. That’s as disastrous as one would imagine and he gets fired.

Max: Have you not heard the phrase no shirt, no shoes, no service?

Customer: Yeah. I’ve heard that phrase.

Max: Well you’re wearing flip flops, bro. Those don’t count as shoes.

Left with only one other option, getting a real job, he sells his Beanie Baby collection and buys an 80’s limo. After spending the day at O’Hare Airport, he has the money he needs thanks to a generous tipping Jewish couple.

Ratings have been up for the show. Does that mean you’re watching? What do you think?

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Brittani

Brittani Nichols is a Los Angeles based comedy person. When she's not tweeting about white people or watching television, she's probably eating pizza. Actually, she's probably doing all three of those things concurrently and when she's not doing THAT, she's sleeping. Brittani also went to Yale and feels weird about mentioning it but wants you to know.

Brittani has written 328 articles for us.

12 Comments

  1. i love lizzy caplan! but probably not enough to sit through New Girl, the tv show that is making me hate zooey deschanel. seriously, did she not read the script?

  2. People should be watching happy endings. I sort of hated Penny at first but now I think she’s “amahzing”. The episode where she realizes she can speak Italian while drunk totally sold me on her.

  3. anyone from canada watching lost girl? wonder if someone would be kind enough to upload some funny/sexy clips of the show?

    • I watch Lost Girl! But I have no clips, I am too busy simmering over Lauren and Bo not having hooked up.

  4. So many things bothered me about this episode of Modern Family. First, it just freaks me out every time Lilly talks. She should be old enough to talk in complete sentences! It’s weird.

    Also, you do not get a stop sign just because you have signatures! There’s a thing called the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices that decides if you get a stop sign or not, Claire.

  5. I love her how did you know
    The other day I watched 127 Hours because it said she was in it
    Imagine my feelings.

  6. Cardboard boxes are endless hours of entertainment. You can build a fort in them, you can cut holes in them, you can turn them into an art project, you can give them to your cat and subsequently spent six hours watching your cat have the most fun she’s ever had, or you can ship things to people you like. So, yes. Cardboard boxes.

  7. Does anyone else get really pissed off with Happy Endings? What really bothers me is that the show is try to represent the “adult millenial experience” when they completely ignore the economic hardships most millenials have experienced since leaving higher education (with tons of student loan debt). All of them are super rich, and only barely, mildly employed, except for the one who is unemployed and yet still lives in a bigger apartment than anyone I know.

  8. I really wanted to like New Girl. Instead I can’t help but hate the shit out of it. Everything about it pushes all the wrong buttons.

    Ugh.

Comments are closed.