Mad Men starts its seasons with a slow, in-medias-res fade up. There’s usually no instigating incident to kick start the action nor is there some kind of introductory scene to summarize what the year will be about. Instead the first hour is about catching up on where these people have been over the last (in this case) 11 months and seeing what’s changed.

We start with someone asking “who is Don Draper” because it is Mad Men and of course that’s how the season starts. The man doing the asking is a reporter with Ad Age who can’t pry much out of the reserved Don. The idea of taking credit for the agency’s innovative Glo-Coat campaign offends Don’s humble and introverted sensibility, but being interviewed at all is dangerous for some with a secret like Don has (something further emphasized by the fact that the reporter lost his leg in Korea – the place where Dick Whitman became Don Draper).

But Don is not in the same position he used to be in. As the driving force behind Sterling Cooper Draper Price, he can no longer afford to be the genius in creative who lets everyone else worry about the business side nor can he be the mysterious cipher who is content to toil away in the background like he could at Sterling Cooper. He is not unlike the Jantzen executives who attempt to have it both ways by caving to the marketplace and selling a “two-piece bathing suit” but refuse to call it a bikini or agree to an advertising campaign that will sell it. Don wants to build a successful and innovative company but, at first, is unwilling to do what he must do in order to make that happen.

Working in closer quarters, for a more freewheeling, seat-of-your-pants kind of agency seems to generally be pretty good for everyone. Roger is back to his wise-cracking and energetic self (he also gets the line of the night, commenting that Ad Age couldn’t even afford to send a whole reporter) and Bert seems back to his old self, but what is really interesting is to see how Pete, Peggy, and Joan all appear to be thriving with their newfound responsibility. Pete brings in accounts, has no problems collaborating with Peggy and seems shockingly comfortable going to power lunches with Roger and Don. Joan finally has an office and the credit that she deserves for doing all the things she was doing at SC.

But its Peggy who seems to have changed the most over the past 11 months. She has a new haircut and good rapport with newbie Joey (incidentally the two of them are paying homage to Stan Freberg’s “John and Marsha;” Freberg himself was an innovative ad man). The close quarters of SCDP mean that there’s no time for the roundabout zigzagging that usually kept Peggy’s voice from being heard. She has the confidence to try a scheme like the ham stunt and the confidence to take Don’s inevitable abuse much better than in the past (she’s even comfortable enough to directly say to him what Roger, Bert, and Lane all tried to say and couldn’t get across).

Betty, meanwhile, provides a top-notch clip for her Bad Parent Hall of Fame highlight reel. At the Francis family dinner she childishly responds to Sally’s refusal to eat anything by stuffing a forkful of sweet potatoes in her face. It seems that the divorce and her new relationship with Henry have simply brought out Betty’s cruelty and selfishness even more. She treats Sally like more like they’re sisters than mother-daughter (and sometimes like Betty is the younger sister), basically ignores Bobby, and keeps the baby away from Don either as some kind of power trip or because it legitimately did not occur to her that Don might want to see him.

It must be hard rushing into a new relationship the way Betty and Henry have (with the added pressure of the divorce and the fact that there are already three children who need care and attention), but, even this early, it is clear the cracks are forming. Henry’s mother has no problems saying horrible thing about her new daughter-in-law and Henry seems to have started internalizing that. He spends most of the episode trying to hook up with Betty, like he’s trying to remind himself of what enchanted him about her to begin with. And whatever Betty thought would be different with Henry doesn’t seem to have quite materialized for her yet.

Don’s zinger to Henry (“believe me, everyone thinks this is temporary”) probably hit a little too close to home, but Don’s personal life isn’t in much better shape. His apartment is impersonal and a little old-fashioned, especially compared to the vibrant office he now works in. Mad Men is all about subverting expectations, but it didn’t take a great mind to predict that Don Draper: Single Man might not be the 1960s Entourage that some viewers wanted it to be. In an interview, Matt Weiner pointed out that, now that he’s once-again available, women would enter relationships with him with a different set of expectations. When he was married, there was clearly no future and therefore no need for extended courting; but now that Don is a bachelor the rules are different. In order to get what he wants – guilt-filled S&M sex without consequences – he will have to literally pay for it (getting slapped repeatedly by a hooker and then paying Peggy $300 for bail: most depressing Thanksgiving ever?).

Bethany seemed to really enjoy their date and sees Don as someone she could potentially keep seeing, but Don is not interested in all of that. Why doesn’t Don hook up with her? It seems like Don’s old tricks may not work on the slightly more liberated women of 1964, or at least in a context where he needs to make a real connection with another human. It is not unlike the newspaper situation (or the bikini situation): Don wants sex but he is unwilling to surrender his mysterious distance and actually open himself up to other people. Conditions have changed and Don is going to have to reconfigure his values if he wants to thrive.

So, in the end, he puts on a big public show of throwing out the Jantzen people after giving them a pitch that is very obviously not what they asked for. Don can’t afford to be the people making bikinis and refusing to do what it takes to sell them. So he schedules another interview and gives that reporter a carefully crafted, slightly embellished narrative: that of the creative genius who escaped his stifling Madison Avenue cage and struck out on his own. It’s a subtler version of the speech he gave to Peggy in “Shut the Door, Have a Seat” – something changed and the old ways of doing things aren’t satisfying anymore.

In many ways “Public Relations” is season three condensed down to an hour. Don realizes that he will need to be more open and different if he wants to build something. “Public Relations” ends with the hopeful promise of Don constructing a more successful and satisfying professional life – but he’s still a long ways away from restructuring the charred wreckage of his personal life. The same for Betty, whose trade of Don for Henry doesn’t seem to have made her any happier or satisfied. But pour one out for Sally Draper, not even a half-hearted present from her new grandmother can make up for a family holiday that is somehow even emptier and sadder than previous ones. Self-loathing, lying, alienation, and delusion: Mad Men’s back everyone!

Jonah’s Score: 75
TUIW Grade: B+

E and Sloan: TV's Most Compelling Couple

I used to really like Entourage. There was definitely a time when it was a really entertaining show that was genuinely pretty funny. But it gradually started going downhill after it’s fourth season, when Medellen bombed at Cannes. Here was a great opportunity for the show to knock Vince down and triumphantly build him back up. Instead, we spent a whole year of Vince wanting to be a big star again that ended with him going home to New York before getting a call from Martin Scorsese, where he calls and says, “Hey Vince, deus ex machina!” All of last season felt like a slog, and the story devolved into Drama whines, Turtle dates a hot actress, Vince smiles and has sex with every woman in LA, Ari calls Lloyd gay, and Eric inexplicably proposes to Sloan. So basically what I’m trying to say is if you’re a fan of the show, sorry if my reviews land on the sarcastic side of things.

So “Stunted” starts with Turtle, who’s running a company out of a mansion where hot women drive Mercedes or something. One of them is late and doesn’t have her shirt, so we get our first shot of a girl taking off her clothes this season (spoiler: it will happen frequently). Then there’s Vince, who’s working on some action movie where his stunt double gets set on fire, and the super tough director wants him to do his own stunt. Vince doesn’t like that idea because he’s good looking, but he says he’ll do it because he doesn’t want anyone to know he’s just good looking and can’t act/drive. Since this is Entourage though, Vince won’t deal with this dilemma on his own, passing it off to E, who passes it off to Ari, but only after they have a deep conversation about E getting married and how he isn’t nervous. E was genuinely talking about it too, and Ari was just like, “marriage sucks you short person.” Whateves, Ari is going to fix the problem because he’s the biggest agent in the world now, so naturally, he’ll personally handle everything for Vince.

Back to Turtle, who is having problems with this girl because she keeps getting lost. Fire her Turtle! Oh no, you feel guilty about, so don’t do it! Just talk about it! Oops! She lost the car! Fire her now! Ah, her parents are getting a divorce. Bummer. Now would be a good time to try to kiss her. Brilliant move Turtle. That’s so logical. Now I guess you’ll spend the whole season chasing this girl, with her perpetually frustrating you and you still wanting her. Should be a blast.

And then there’s Drama, who has a holding deal, but no one wants to make a show with him because he’s an egotistical old bad actor. Was that too harsh? Sorry Drama, I didn’t mean it bro. I actually understand your natural instinct to demand that your agent Lloyd (oh yeah, he’s an agent now) put an entire team of agents behind you to get you a job, because your superstar brother couldn’t do it for you, so a bunch of young agents that are hiding from Ari will do the trick.

Speaking of Ari, he wants to negotiate the NFL TV contracts (oooh, topical!) and yell at people because that’s what Ari does. He’s also in trouble with his wife because he can’t make a parent-teacher conference, something I’m relatively certain happens on Entourage every fifth episode. He goes out to the set to tell Vince’s director he can’t do the stunt, because Vinny is really freaking out about. Poor Vinny. Anyway, Ari is all, “Vince can’t do the stunt,” and the director is all, “Oh he’ll do it or I’ll kill you.” Wait, what?

In the end, Vince decides to do the stunt just to prove he’s a tough guy, and the director is such a daredevil, he decides he’s going to ride with Vince. Now, if I remember my Entourage well enough, didn’t Vince have to pass a driving test last season and he kind of sucked at driving? Didn’t someone just say “Oh, you’re Vinny Chase! Here’s your drivers license because you’re a star!” Yet, we’re going to let Vince jump an SUV with the director in it? That makes more than perfect sense. So Vinny makes the jump, but oh no! He can’t stop that crazy thing and he crashes into a barn or something. But he’s fine. He wants to do it again! Vinny Chase is a man!

Oh, and E had lunch with Sloan, just to remind us we need to care about that.  I assure you I otherwise wouldn’t.

So there you have it. Not really that much happened, but there were plenty of opportunities for rap music to play over shots of people getting into nice cars, so it was quality, right? No? Am I being too harsh on Entourage? It’s just that it was good show once that got really boring, and I’m done being nice about it.

Telling comment from my dad, who had never seen the show before: “So did it use to be better than that?”

What do you all think? Angry retorts/jokes welcomed in the comments!

Well Party Downers, this is it, the end of Season 2, and possibly the show. This season, Party Down established itself as one of the finest comedies on television. It’s grand finale was funny and bittersweet, a culmination of what the show was all season. While I don’t think the episode was the best of a stellar 10 episodes, it was pretty high up there on the list. With the triumphant return of Jane Lynch/Constance, Party Down set the table for its possible future, one in which Ron gets his dream girl, Roman writes a masterpiece, and Henry (might) go on to bigger and better things.

It was great to see Lynch back on the show, where she was a natural fit. Lynch is the bright spot of Glee, but as the undying optimist Constance, she was at the top of her game. Now engaged to Howard Greengold, an elderly Jewish movie producer that is making Constance 10th wife, a fact that makes Casey and Henry very nervous. Their wedding is a cross between traditional Jewish and Buddhist hippie, with yarmulkes and pot cookies, several of which are mistakenly eaten by Roman. Kyle’s band is set to play a song for the soon to be happy couple, and Ron must confront the fact that Danielle, her fiance, and her Party Down-owning father are there. And then there’s poor Lydia, Constance’s replacement, who can’t figure out “which part is flanks.”

For a while, the party seemed to be going in just a completely disastrous direction. The pot cookies sent Roman into a hazed out world, where he calls paramedics, fearing that he’s dying. Constance threatens a still confused Lydia. Danielle breaks off her relationship with Ron, tearing him apart. Casey becomes increasingly more concerned that Constance is going to have to sign away everything in a pre-nup forced upon her and Howard by the latter’s daughter. And then there’s Kyle’s song, perhaps my favorite part of the episode. Singing about the trials of a young, wannabe actor, Kyle sings to a group of elderly Jews that, “they brand you with a star,” and “give you a number.” His complete ignorance combined with his sincerity in singing the song made the moment less cringe inducing and more hysterically funny.

Perhaps the most poignant scene the show has ever done happens in a study, where Henry finds Casey in tears over the news that her big scene in the Apatow movie was cut. He tries his hardest to encourage her not to give up, and seemed sincere in doing so, but Casey justifiably doesn’t want to hear it from a guy who, for the whole show, has reveled in the fact that he’s given up. Party Down had relatively few somewhat serious scenes, and this one stood out thanks to the chemistry between Adam Scott and Lizzie Caplan.

But Party Down surprisingly enough, wasn’t ready to leave our characters at the lowest depths. Ron stands up during the wedding when the call for objections is made (as did Patrick Duffy!), and professed his love for Danielle, a move that got him punched in the face, but also won over Danielle. Constance’s friend that baked the pot cookies talks Roman through it all, and helps him wright his “masterpiece” on a roll of toilet paper. And though Howard dies in the car as it’s leaving the wedding, Constance is grateful for their time together, and its discovered Howard had signed the pre-nup as “Jack Shit,” which Henry knows from an earlier conversation that he genuinely loved her. Unlike it’s first season, Party Down ends on a happy note for Henry, as he fails to show up to an event as he goes in for an audition on an indie film that Kyle was reading. It leaves a smile on Casey’s face, and it shows Henry, our character stuck in a rut since Episode 1, finally making a go of the career that he should have had.

And thus ended a stellar season of Party Down, one I really think rivals the other top notch comedies on TV right now. Season One was good, and it had some great moments, but for the most part, it was about establishing the characters and the atmosphere of the show. With the establishment out of way, Season Two allowed for more tinkering with these characters. We learned that Roman wasn’t an undiscovered writer, but one that focused more on his own genius. We learned Henry was actually a good actor, not just one that had his moment. And we learned that poor Ron will have everything bad happen to him, but in the end, he’s got someone in the world just like him.

I was pretty frustrated after reading Troy Patterson’s article on the show for Slate, who said the show, “would seem even funnier if it were not so heavily indebted to the funniest TV shows of recent years.” Aren’t all shows heavily indebted to something else? Wasn’t Arrested Development indebted to The Simpsons or The Office to Curb Your Enthusiasm? What Patterson seems to ignore is that television is a constantly building medium. Every great show begets another great show. I guarantee soon enough you’ll read a review of a new comedy that is viewed as indebted to Party Down.

A possible third season (the show hasn’t been picked up by Starz yet) would more than likely see big changes with Adam Scott only being able to appear in 3 episodes after moving to Parks and Rec, and Ryan Hansen getting a gig with a new show. But while I’m hesitant about this great show losing it’s more or less principle character, this season showed me just how good Party Down‘s writers are and how well this show is at adapting to a revolving cast of characters. But if this is it for Party Down, then man did it go out on one hell of a high note.

Other Notes:

- Two other great moments: Danielle using the excuse that her dress was on backwards, when it actually was on backwards, and Ron’s elated news to Danielle that her parents were getting divorced.

- Though this was the fifth episode to feature a character on a lot of drugs (Season 1 had Casey on Ecstasy and Bobbi on mushrooms, this season had Ron high in a coffin and Lydia “powdering her nose”), I thought the Roman bits were pretty funny, mostly due to Martin Starr’s hilarious facial expressions.

- Be sure to check out Alan Sepinwall’s great interview with PD co-creator John Enbom, in which he talks actor changes and what might happen in a hypothetical season 3.

- What did anyone else think? Should Party Down be used in the same sentence as shows like Parks and Rec and Modern Family?

Michael’s Score: 84
TUiW Grade: A-

Party Down Season 2 Grade: A

With that out of the way, we can tackle “Night of the Living Dead,” perhaps the most unique and interesting hour a cop drama has ever produced. In just a few short episodes, Homicide has impressed me for being so different from every other show in its genre, and “Night of the Living Dead” reinforced that further, making for a fascinating character study with minimal action and a heavy dose of humor and painfully blunt realism. In a lot of ways, it’s an anomaly of its time. As current cable show like Mad MenH could pull of the same thing now, but as a network show in the 90′s, it seems like Homicide was setting itself apart from the beginning, and I don’t think its impact can be understated.

“Night of the Living Dead” takes place during a miserably hot summer night when the air conditioning is out and the detectives of Baltimore don’t have any calls to look into, save for a man dressed as Santa threatening to shoot people from the roof of a building. The mysteries are either small or stagnant; Felton and Lewis seek to figure out who keeps lighting a candle every night, while Bayliss and Pembleton bicker over the Adena Watson murder, which still has no new leads. Bayliss is embarrased when he insists they bring in a suspect that turns out to be a kid in middle school.

The heat and lack of cases leads to bickering and frustration too. Gee is furious not only that no one will come fix the air conditioning, but that Pembleton refuses to disregard his orders to remove his tie. Munch, furious over getting dumped, yells and screams about how he’s so unlucky in love, while Bolander refuses to call him his partner and frets over asking out Blythe. Crosetti is flummoxed by his daughter’s request to have her boyfriend spend the night with her at his ex-wife’s house. Felton is exhausted after his wife keeps him up night after night trying tips to save their marriage. Howard is distracted by the fact that her sister’s cancer diagnosis came the same day her husband admitted an affair. On a night when there are no murders to go out and solve and no cool air, the detectives are left to their own devices, their problems simmering in the Baltimore heat.

The episode does a great job of glossing over some larger societal problems as well, keeping them significant, but not waving them in your face. First there’s the boy Bayliss mistaken calls in, who when asked what his parents do, replies, “get arrested.” The same boy falls asleep on the interrogation room table, no home to go to, but Bayliss kicks him out anyway, out into the night with no where to go. Later, as Gee attempts to find a way to fix the A/C, he finds a baby in a cage. After calling child services, they discover its the child of the cleaning woman, who can’t afford a babysitter, but didn’t want rats to go after her child, who she now fears she’ll never get back. Both are major social issues being presented, but handled with a certain amount of realistic callousness that the show quickly made its forte. They’re problems, but what can the heat rattled detectives do about it?

The episode ends full of hope, with Bayliss and Pembleton realizing something that could change their investigation into the Watson murder, and the revelation that it was Munch was lighting the candle as a memorial for all the victims, a surprising turn for the guy who was last seen yelling at his again ex-girlfriend. The parting shots of “Night of the Living Dead” are of Gee spraying the rest of the detectives with a garden hose on the roof. It’s a nice image for an episode that plays out like a session in a psychiatrists office.

I have to say, what impressed me most about “Night of the Living Dead” was that it’s the kind of hour you won’t find on network TV these days, let alone in the 90s when it aired. There’s a sense of brutal honesty and concentration on the characters that today is isolated to shows on cable. Even the best network shows these days have avoided focusing on their characters in this manner, instead concentrating on romantic entanglements and forward motion of the plot. “Night of the Living Dead” is funny and bleak, and that the show took a risk so early and tried an episode that doesn’t have their characters out in the field is really impressive. You’re not going to find an episode of CSI: Miami this good, I guarantee it.

Michael’s Score: 98
TUiW Grade: A+

One of the hardest things to do in television is make an asshole a sympathetic character. Making a villain sympathetic is one thing, but an arrogant jackass that we’re supposed to care about is a hard thing to accomplish. This season, Party Down has done a good job of making their resident arrogant jackass, Roman, a character that has always been prickly to say the least. Even last season, when he had a crush on Casey, he was more a jerky hurdle to Henry’s own efforts to patch up things with her after the Rick Fox Incident (Party Down plot or awful ska band?). But this season, we’ve seen Roman torn down frequently, and though he’s still arrogant and frequently a jerk, I genuinely felt bad for him in “Joel Munt’s Big Deal Party.”

We learned from Steve Guttenberg’s party that Roman is not a very good writer, but he sees everyone else as hacks in comparison to his perceived genius. So it makes sense that he’d fire a writing partner, the titular Joel Munt (Human Giant‘s Paul Scheer), who would make it big and subsequently hire Party Down to cater a party to humiliate his former partner. Roman is obviously distraught, not only that Joel made it big, but because he’s adapting a trilogy of books by one of his favorite authors, A.F. Gordon Theodore (Freaks and Geeks‘ Dave “Gruber” Allen). Roman wants his revenge, and through the suggestion of Kyle, plans to pee in his rival’s champagne. But it keeps ending up in the wrong hands and, and despite the invocation of “The Code” to Henry and Ron, he can’t get the job done. He finally gets the best of Joel by instilling a little doubt in A.F.’s mind about he adaptation, but he gets tricked, in an actually nice moment, into giving Joel the answer to his problems, leaving poor Roman to watch his idol and rival speed away in an SUV filled with girls.

While Kyle is mostly concerned with helping Roman get his revenge, Ron is working to re-establish himself as team leader, instituting his sets of RDDs – Ron Donald Dos and Ron Donald Don’ts. Naturally, Ron has no idea that he’s using the same acronym for both, and naturally, the rest of the crew mocks him. Henry and Casey, meanwhile, are concentrating on hooking up in the van, a task that proves difficult given that the keys are inside of the locked van. To prove himself a man to Casey, who previously called him the woman in the relationship, Henry tries in vain to get the door open. This collides with Ron’s first day back as team leader, as in a desperate attempt to get into the van, smashes the window of Joel Munt’s car. In fantastic Party Down fashion, it is just then that Henry finds the keys on the ground. Lydia wasn’t too involved with the rest of the Party Downers, mostly because thanks to a bathroom misunderstanding, she was going crazy on coke, which (as pointed out by the AV Club) was a story that was used for her character predecessors, Constance and Bobbi, but no less funny.

The two guests, Scheer and Allen, were both bright spots in the episode. Scheer did a great job at turning up the jackass dial to 11 as Joel Munt, but he also had a great scene with Martin Starr in the kitchen was pretty genuine and for a while, I was convinced that Joel wouldn’t do the inevitable and steal Roman’s idea. Allen too was great, hitting all the right notes as the dorky sci-fi writer that is too smart and socially inept to navigate a Hollywood party. Martin Starr gave his best performance of the show in this episode, and as he watched Munt and A.F. drive away, I genuinely felt bad for him.

But the rest of the episode was a little flat for me. I thought the Lydia bits were funny (particularly her interaction with Bubbles from The Wire, but Casey and Henry were largely absent, and Ron’s story didn’t really go that far. The main plot with Roman was great, but without a funny secondary story, the episode stalled at a couple points. Party Down has been fantastic this season, and this episode fell short of the awesomeness of the preceding episodes. But with two more episodes to go, I’m looking for PD to bounce back, and almost assuredly leave us with a depressingly comic ending to the season.

Michael’s Score: 74
TUiW Grade: B

Dead Like Me is available to watch for free on Hulu or on Netflix Instant Streaming!

Even though it was over an hour long, the pilot of Dead Like Me is pretty heavy on the establishment of the world of the show instead of the characters. Sure, we got a little aquainted with George Lass, but really, we only got a light glossing over the rest of our cast of characters. “Dead Girl Walking” took the opposite approach: a relatively small bit of exposition was used as a method of figuring out who the Reapers and the Lass family are.

And we got some good bits. We learned that Mason died in the 1960s when he tried to drill a hole in his head to expand his consciousness, and Roxy is a hard ass parking attendant, and Betty sweetly takes pictures of the people she reaps. There’s also of course Rube, who doesn’t really except any bullshit and doesn’t understand the idea of bite sized food that isn’t bite sized. The surviving Lass family also gets a little bit more added to their biographies. Reggie, who I don’t think had a line in the pilot, tells people that Joy doesn’t let her go to the bathroom and steals toilet seats, which she uses to decorate a tree near the Lass home. Joy is tough, and has little tolerance for her daughter’s antics, while Clancy is softer on her, ultimately creating a bit of a riff with his wife.

George’s story in “Dead Girl Walking” revolves around her refusal to reap a soul assigned to her. She doesn’t want to do it, and since she never agreed to anything, feels she doesn’t have to. Despite tagging along with Betty on a reaping, and assisting Rube in another at Der Waffle House, she still doesn’t feel comfortable with the whole concept, and decides she doesn’t need to show up when Post-Its are dolled out. But as George quickly learns, she can’t escape her responsibility, and the consequences are dire. You see, when a soul isn’t reaped in time, the person can still die, their soul trapped inside. In this case, it leads to the traumatizing experience of a man experiencing his own autopsy. Though still stubborn about who’s responsibility it was, George learns her lesson.

What I liked most about “Dead Girl Walking” was that it had a secondary plot for George, which surrounded her adjustment to living on her own for the first time. Sure, the biggest change for her was dying and becoming a Reaper, but she also is an 18 year old girl that is forced to live on her own for the first time and can’t stay in contact with her parents. She doesn’t get anything to eat at Der Waffle House because she can’t afford it, and the crappy apartment she’d been squatting in needs rent payed on it soon. She keeps going back to her old house, and is depressed over the world that has kept turning since she died. Big changes other than her new job have happened very quickly to George, and rather than follow Mason’s example of stealing money from parking meters, George returns to Deloris Herbig (“As in her big brown eyes”) and the Happy Time Temp Agency, and starts anew as her alter ego, Millie Hagen.

“Dead Girl Walking” is the quintessential “second episode.” Even the best shows often need to have a second episode that is designed to help the viewer find their bearings within the show (examples: Lost, How I Met Your Mother). “Dead Girl Walking” slows down the lightening fast pace of “Pilot,” and pauses to illuminate some of the other things going on the in the story: George needing to make a living, Reggie’s rebellion, Joy and Clancy’s arguments. The problem though was that it was too slow. Aside from introducing some of these problems, it was clunky at points, and slow at others. Betty and George’s reaping was clearly designed to remind us of how that process works, but with George also taking the soul of the man at Der Waffle House, it seemed like the same point was being brought across too many times.

But I like all the bits with Mason, and the idea of a grim reaper working at a temp agency is actually very funny to me. “Dead Girl Walking” is far from a perfect episode, but it once again shows the potential of the show seen in “Pilot,” and adds to an already creative premise.

Michael’s Score: 65
TUiW Grade: B-

For more on our summer TV club, including the schedule and where to watch some of the shows, go here.

“Meet John Smith”

Today’s first Veronica Mars episode is all about parenting and, more specifically, mothers. There’s Celeste Kane, the overbearing 09er matriarch who wants to keep Duncan on the antidepressants that have been stifling his personality. He goes off them and starts to get a little loopy, most notably being driven to jump off a balcony by the sight of Troy and Veronica getting close. After a chat with the doctor and, just as importantly, Celeste, Duncan goes back on the meds; but not before he gets a visit from/hallucination of his sister who tells him what we’ve known for weeks: something’s not right about the official story of her murder.

Meanwhile, in the case of the week, a young nerd asks for Veronica’s help in tracking down his dead-beat dad. But all is not as it appears, and when Veronica has Wallace pull the kid’s profile, she finds out that his dad died a while ago. The kid confesses that he was just lying to try and trick Veronica into spending time with him. However, much to his surprise, they actually get a response to one of the letters they sent looking for the dad. It turns out that Dad is still alive; he’s just had a sex change and turned into the nice woman who hangs out at the kid’s video store. Though the kid lashes out at her when he first finds out, he gets over it and the two bond.

For Veronica, Mom is as much an idea as a person at this point, and not a very flattering one at that. She lashes out at Keith and the client of the week, saying that the parent who stays is the hero and the one who leaves is the villain. Veronica’s jaded and cynical edge are an attempt to shield herself and deal with the psychic trauma of being ditched by her mom. She’s even gone a step further and taken to solving crimes and acting like Sam Spade in an attempt to cut out any memory of her mother from her personality and be more like her dad. But Veronica also isn’t ready to let go and so she decides to drive to the address she has for her mom. All she finds there is an old college friend of Mom’s who tells Veronica that her mom bailed and didn’t leave an address so Keith couldn’t find her. The woman’s attempt at comforting Veronica and assurances that her mom still cares for her are of little value to Veronica, who has once again been abandoned by her on the run parent.

“Meet John Smith” has a more satisfying emotional core than the first couple episodes and that, combined with the solid twist, made for my favorite episode so far.

“The Wrath of Con”

The weekly mysteries are kind of a mixed bag right now and “Wrath of Con” feels especially frivolous. More an excuse to put Kristen Bell in some Sydney Bristow-esque disguises (Veronica’s later characters and disguises will feel a little more natural than they did here), the episode has Veronica going toe-to-toe with a couple of con artists who stole money from a girl Wallace likes. Veronica infiltrates their game club and a college party before eventually figuring out that they’re raising money for a new computer game that will make them millions. She gets the girl’s money back and turns the guys over to the FBI.

Meanwhile, we find out that, like Veronica, Logan’s psychotic jackassery is as much a reaction to the emotional trauma of the last year as anything else. When put on the task of creating a video montage celebrating Lilly, Logan bypasses the syrupy, Hallmark stuff and decides to create one that Lilly herself would have liked. By all accounts he does a great job too: everyone except Celeste loves the montage and even Weevil is a little weepy by the end. Logan may be an ass, but he cared for Lilly and losing her has affected him in a very profound way.

The real main character of this episode is Lilly. Originally, the plan was for her to just appear in the flashbacks in “Pilot,” but the crew loved Amanda Seyfried’s performance and decided to keep her around for more episodes. Its a great choice and it especially works here as we get a feel for why, exactly, everyone loved Lilly so much and what a sad loss it is for the Neptune community. One of the show’s big ideas is showing how behind the media circus that comes with sensationalized crime stories like this one, there exist real people who are really hurting.

Meanwhile, Veronica has grown closer to Troy an 09er who is also somewhat new to Neptune and thus not as caught up in the anti-Mars drama. Although Veronica has been resistent, by the end of this episode, things seem to be going better.

“The Wrath of Con” saves a weak A-story with a lot of nice character work, bur for those of you still waiting to see what the fuss is about, don’t worry. If my memory serves, next week’s pair of episodes really sees the show start to kick it into high gear.

Jonah’s Scores:
“Meet John Smith” – 82
“The Wrath of Con” – 67

TUIW Grades:
“Meet John Smith” – A-
“The Wrath of Con” – B

“Ghost of a Chance” directly refers to a case Howard was investigating, but it seems to have more to do with Bayliss’ trial by fire of a first case. No homicide case would be easy, but to have to start with one that has the attention of the entire police force and local media is like learning to play golf at Augusta National. Bayliss hasn’t gotten used to the idea of seeing a dead body or telling a family, heck he doesn’t even have a desk. Making matters worse, Pembleton wants to take over the case and Gee is on his case about not showing enough fire about the case. Then the local media finds out that this is his first ever homicide case. Oh, and there’s no evidence at the scene and every lead goes nowhere. Here comes Bayliss’ chance to prove himself and solve a big case in the spotlight, but he doesn’t yet have the stomach or the confidence to do it. He barks orders at Pembleton, Lewis, and Crosetti, but he goes silent in a group meeting and in the coroner’s office. It’s easy for the other detectives to ask the contents of Adena Watson’s stomach or whether or not she was raped, but Bayliss still can’t differentiate between Adena Watson the 11-year-old girl and Adena Watson the case. It’s perfectly understandable, and I think in a lot of ways, Bayliss is the a stand in for the audience, who also may not have the steel facade to cover up for their own emotion in the murder of a little girl.

While Bayliss is wrestling with his internal demons, Howard is dealing with the supernatural, much to the amusement of Felton. After being visited by Ed Danvers, a prosecuting attorney (played by a not yet bald Željko Ivanek, who has become in recent years my favorite go-to villain), Howard makes it her mission to get enough evidence out of a suspected murderer, Ralph Fenwick, to convict him of a brutal murder. Without any new leads and not knowing where to start, Howard tells Felton she was visited by the ghost of the murder victim, telling her where the murder weapon is hiding. She can’t find it though, and Felton enlists Lewis and Crosetti to help mock her for her ghostly tips. But Fenwick isn’t sleeping and is incoherent when they go to talk to him again, and they nab him trying to move the gun late at night. They catch him thanks to a tip Felton got from a tarot card reader, which helps patch things up with his partner.

The best humor of the night came from the adventures of Munch and Bolander, who are investigating the possible murder of an elderly man. They show up to find that the man is in fact alive, having just passed out, and when he wakes up, he begins yelling at his wife, with her retorting that she wished he didn’t wake up. It’s a hilarious scene that turns gruesome a while later, when they’re called back, this time with the man actually dead in the cellar. It seems he collapsed again, and this time, his wife dragged him down the stairs and out to the cellar. Bolander doesn’t think it’s a homicide, which conflicts with the opinion of the coroner, Blythe, who he’s also working up the courage to ask out. Munch is looking out for his friend though, and he arranges to have flowers sent to Blythe under Bolander’s name, and things seems smoothed out. Munch again had my favorite moment of the episode, this time coming as he yells at a rat.

“Ghost of a Chance” was again filled with moments where it’s shown that homicide is just as job, mostly seen through Lewis and Crosetti, you alternately joke about the true events of the Lincoln Assassination and filling old Memorial Stadium with water. And yet, the episode is much heavier than it’s predecessor, mostly with emotional scenes of Bayliss telling Adena Watson’s mother her daughter was dead and the powerful scenes like the one where Gee and Bayliss argue over his lack of intensity. Homicide in just two episodes has found the line between the lighter side of a dark job and the super dark side of a dark job. I’m looking forward to understanding the characters a little bit better, but already, I’m finding myself comfortable in this show.

Michael’s Grade: 80
TUiW Grade: B+

And so, that leads us to “Party Down Company Picnic,” which had me from the first line (“And this recession’s been great!”). Getting the Party Down crew away from work seems to have been a goal of the writers this season, and by first having them attend a party they were supposed to cater for Steve Guttenberg, and then getting everyone out of their white shirts and pink ties. It was a little disorienting at first to see the gang in normal clothes, but it was an effective way to focus on the characters in a different way. Yet, even without their white shirts and pink ties, the Party Down crew is still the same bunch of delusion fueled optimists, with the exception of course of Henry, who is just comfortable finding some way to tie.

The Party Down staff was looking for smaller wins at their company picnic. While Casey went hard after the all around points title, Roman and Kyle battled the Valhalla catering staff to prove they were equals, Lydia strived to become Escapade’s manager again, and poor Ron tried, in vain, to get a promotion to corporate out of the new head of the company, Bolus Lugozshe. The results were largely a mix of success and failure, or in Ron’s case both. Casey defeated Garlan Greenbush (“What are you, an unemployed wizard or something?”), the defending champ of the picnic, and Lydia took Roman’s advice on being an asshole and won back her daughter from Kyle and got her a job as a singing shoe. But Roman and Kyle were defeated by their rivals at Valhalla, who on aggregate, are better looking, and definitely more douchey. Ron had the weirdest day, being turned down for the job before he was hit in the back by a horseshoe thrown by Lugozshe’s daughter, who then helped him try to blackmail his way into the job. It almost seemed like a rare sweet episode for Ron, until the end when he discovered this perfect girl he’d just hooked up with was engaged.

Henry had issues of his own, specifically handling his newly rekindled relationship with Casey and his already in place relationship with Uda, who was catering the party. It was another great appearance by Veronica Mars herself, Kristen Bell, who was firing it all cylinders as the way too uptight rival caterer. Yet, Uda isn’t as cold as we’ve come to assume. She wants to make her and Henry work, and when she realizes that isn’t going to happen and the two break up, it almost seemed like Uda was slightly hurt by it, but more so, anxious about being alone again. It couldn’t have been pulled off without Bell, who was able to pull off great lines (“What is it about ‘more wieners’ that you do not understand?”) without overselling it. That seems to be a basic principle of comedic acting, yet there is no wink at the camera from Bell, as there was from Steve Guttenberg.

The centerpiece of episode was a kickball game between Valhalla and Party Down, that couldn’t have played out any better. Here are the Party Down crew, fueled by their deep hatred of Valhalla and ready to show them who they are, but instead, Lydia doesn’t understand the rules, Roman gets pegged in the face, Ron gets a devastating crotch shot, and his replacement, Greenbush, collapses in his own vomit after the hot dog eating contest. It’s a Party Down ending, one in which the good guys don’t win, and are left in their mediocrity. Even on this one day, when they all momentarily set aside their professional ambitions, every one got shut down by their superior rivals. There’s a reason they all work at Party Down, and at their own company picnic, they got a painful reminder as to why.

This episode did so many things well. My favorite part had to be the ultra competitive Casey, who was constantly delivering laughs. For much of the show, Casey hasn’t had much to do other than hook up with Henry and bitch about the pitfalls of trying to make it big, but Lizzie Caplan shined in this episode, adding depth to her character and showing off some really strong comedic chops. I almost wondered if her lack of emotion when Henry told her he was going to “roll the dice” with her and break up with Uda meant that she was really just showing off her competitive side, trying to win Henry.

The other two things that worked pretty well were Henry’s transition of power to Ron (minus the pay raise and benefits), and Lydia’s funny storyline. It seemed that Henry was destined to turn Team Leader back over to Ron at some point, and I think having him go back to his old, responsibility free position this close to the end of the season is going to make things really interesting. Getting Lydia finally involved in an interesting story of her own was great too. Megan Mullally is a hell of a lot funnier than I ever gave her credit for, and she finally got a chance to come out of the background, and didn’t disappoint. I think from now on, I’m going to start calling people “shit morsels.”

As Party Down hits its home stretch, it’s really proven that it belongs in the same conversation as the other great comedies on television right now. If this show was on an HBO or Showtime, or even on a cable network like FX, it would be insanely popular. At the same time though, Starz has done as good of a job as it can at promoting the show, and I think it’s slowly but surely gaining a bigger following. It seems fitting that a possible third season doesn’t seem likely, and that just like its characters, Party Down is just fighting to be noticed and respected, but with minimal returns. In the meantime though, I’m excited to see if the show can top its last three episodes with the final three of the season.

Michael’s Score: 96
TUiW Grade: A