Jane The Virgin Looks To The Future in Chapter 54

-Generally I don't put spoiler warnings in my reviews because I figure it's a given that there will be spoilers but if you have not seen last night's "Jane", I would stop reading now unless you have no intention of ever watching it because seriously... SPOILERS!

-Um, wow. I don't even know where to start. This week in titles, I guess: Jane The Mom Covered In Vomit... Who Has A Cool New Job Opportunity!

-Ten episodes into the first season of Jane The Virgin, Michael, who was currently broken up from Jane, tells Xo that he'll never stop believing that he and Jane belong together, prompting this ominous line from the narrator that served as the episode's cliffhanger: "And for as long as Michael lived, until he drew his very last breath, he never did." Those words have hung over Michael's time on the show ever since, warning us not to get too detached because at some point he would draw his final breath. It was only a question of when. The problem was it was hard not to get attached to Michael. Brett Dier gave such a winning, likeable performance and he and Jane were so good together that Michael's initial character flaws eventually faded away and only the most hardcore of hardcore Rafael fans weren't eventually won over by sweet, loveable, beam of pure goodness Michael (I held out until the middle of the second season). So when the second season ended on him being shot in the chest on his and Jane's wedding night it was a gut punch of an ending that made the wait for season 3 almost unbearable, and when he pulled through in the season 3 premiere, it was such a relief that it was easy to put the fact that he was still going to die out of mind, even with the ominous hints that things weren't going to work out like Jane and Michael were planning. So when Michael suddenly drops dead out of the blue upon completing the LSATs, the victim of an Aortic Dissection that resulted from stress put on his heart following his shooting a few months back, it's absolutely devastating and totally unexpected, even with all the warnings and foreshadowing.

-Kudos to The CW advertising department for not hinting what an eventful episode this was going to be. Often when it comes to big moments on shows like this, especially the death of a major character, advertising is all over it with promises of an "unforgettable episode" to make sure ratings are as big as possible at the expense of the element of surprise (When Grey's Anatomy did a similar big death a couple years back, the promos basically spelled the whole thing out for us.). Going into Chapter Fifty-Four though, it seemed like the biggest thing that would happen would be lots of discussion about Rogelio's penis. That made the big moment much more shocking when it came.

-The thing that's really surprising about Michael's death is how ordinary and random it is. Because he was often tied to the more fantastical crime elements of the show, it seemed a given that he would die in heroic fashion, trying to bring Sin Rostro to justice or something like that. Yet, while you can trace his death back to the dramatic shooting at the end of the 2nd season, the suddenness and mundane nature of his death is a stark shot of reality into the fantastical world of Jane The Virgin. People don't just drop dead of a simple heart condition in telenovellas and yet here we are.

-I seldom ever cry and I made it through the collapse and the fading of Michael's heartlight all right, but I came incredibly close to full-on tears in the scene where Jane gets the news about Michael. Gina Rodriguez is terrific week in and week out and she is absolutely heartbreaking here. It starts with the look on her face right before her phone tumbles out of her hand and goes to the way she drops to the ground uncontrollably sobbing with a guttural scream that's going to haunt me for a while. You fully believe that this woman has just lost the love of her life and it's that moment that the reality that Michael has actually, truly died sets in.

-It's obvious in retrospect that the episode was building up to Michael's death. The episode opens on a Michael flashback instead of a Jane one, there's a lot of emphasis on memory and how we remember how we feel about the big moments, we spend a long time following Jane and Michael recreating their first date, showing how far they've come as a couple and serving as kind of a final tribute to their relationship, and there's a lot of focus on planning for the future, courtesy of a pregnancy false alarm that gets Jane and Michael thinking about moving up the timetable on their family. There's even a discussion about reliable and unreliable narrators, which reminds us of all the things the narrator promised would happen and whether we could trust him (Turns out we can.). It's subtle enough and typical enough for the show that if you didn't know what was coming, you wouldn't notice how you were being set up for it. The biggest indicator that something is about to go down is the memory spotlight (One of the better visual motifs the show has come up with) on Michael as he goes out the door after Jane tells him how proud she is, which becomes very significant once you realize this is the last time Jane will ever see Michael.

-I hope Jennie Urman and team realize that they can never use the heartlight motif again after making the audience watch Michael's (which is connected to Jane's in keeping with the "final breath" thing) go out. There's no way they'll ever be able to top that moment in terms of sheer emotional power.

-Of course Michael's death is only the first big twist "Jane" springs on us. As the narrator announces that we are at the end of Book 2 (Book 1 was the first season), Book 3 kicks off three years later with Jane and 4 and a half year old Mateo getting ready for a wedding. The time jump is smart for a few reasons, the biggest being that "Jane" is a comedy that has always been committed to honestly exploring the emotions of the characters. So if we were to explore Jane's grief in real time, it would either totally consume the tone of the show, which would drag down the quality or it'd be pushed aside in a way that'd be unfair to Jane's relationship with Michael. So by jumping ahead, the show allows itself the chance to have Jane farther along in the healing process, while still being free to jump back in time and show how she got to this point.

-The other good thing about the time jump is it allows the characters the time to have actually gone through with some significant changes. Rafael spends the episode trying to decide if he should just plead guilty and go to jail for those white collar crimes it turns out the show hadn't forgot about. If the show was continuing in real time, clearly he wouldn't wind up in jail because the show couldn't keep him offscreen for very long but with the jump, now he can go to jail for a time and we can catch up with him having gone through that. Likewise, it was hard to get invested in Xo and Rogelio's relationships with Bruce and Darci because it seemed clear that they'd eventually break up but the jump opens the possibility of those relationships continuing and thriving for three years. Xo goes into the jump ready to move in with Bruce having smoothed things over with Tess (Thanks to how she handled things with Bruce after Tess showed up at Jane's drunk) and Rogelio goes into it having shown Darci he cares about her enough to star in her reality show with her, even if that wasn't how he planned his acting career to go (After some more penis-related silliness and a hilarious rant that goes viral). Could one of them be the ones getting married? It's possible (I hope it's Rogelio and Darci, because I've become a huge De La Vega Factor shipper. All of the storylines in this episode set up promising possibilities for the future and now we get to see what became of those possibilities. It's very exciting.

-Before Jane gets that devastating phone call, she gets much, much, much better news when she secures a job as a publisher's assistant. After all she went through to get this job (Which she was able to secure even after accidentally sending naked pictures of Rogelio instead of the treatment she was supposed to submit thanks to help from Michael), it doesn't seem likely that she would quit it, even after the death of Michael. That means we'll get to see Jane further along in her quest to be a writer (hopefully), which I'm assuming will eventually lead her to write the books of the show we're watching (Hence why the show is putting things in books and all the literary references).

-Scott and Anezka are out and in the open now that they have Emilio's will to hold over Petra's head. The consequences of restoring that will have yet to happen but since we now know for sure that the narrator is reliable, the other shoe is bound to drop sooner or later.

-Also Rose is back, with a new identity (Eileen) and actress (Welcome Elisabeth Röhm). Turns out Luisa couldn't quit Rose after all and after taking the face of a woman she paid 10 million dollars to take a bunch of medical tests to satisfy Rafael and then leave the country, Rose is ready to give up crime for the love of her life. Based on how she threatened the woman though, that might not be so easy for Rose. This isn't going to end well.

-I'm going to miss Brett Dier. I wasn't a fan of Michael at all in the beginning, but Brett's earnest, goofy, loving performance wore me down and won me over. As Michael became more and more of a saint, I became concerned that he might grow boring as a character, but Dier always made him interesting a human, even as he grew more and more perfect. "Jane" just won't be the same without him.

-Following the episode, show creator Jennie Urman published this open letter to fans, where she gives tribute to Brett Dier and explains why Michael had to die and why we've jumped ahead three years. It's well worth a read if you still need help processing things.

-Seriously, for all the pain at the end, this was an incredible episode of television and I can't wait to see where the show goes from here.

Riverdale is a Fun, Fresh, Dark, Soapy Take on The Archie Mythos

-I'm exactly Riverdale's target audience. I'm a lifelong fan of Archie Comics. I love high school shows and crazy Teen Soaps like The O.C. and Pretty Little Liars full of twists and snappy dialogue and sexual tension, which Riverdale has in spades. I also love the "suburban noir" Twin Peaks-esque vibe Riverdale is totally going for with their small town full of secrets. Yet despite loving all these things and planning to watch every episode of Riverdale, I had no expectations that this show would be any good. It wasn't that I think Archie can't be a crazy Teen Soap Murder Mystery show (I definitely think that), it was the way the show was marketed. Every ad, every hint that Archie and the gang were carrying dark secrets, every glimpse of angry angst-filled Jughead, every time they went to that shot of Betty kissing Veronica, it all seemed calculated, like some kid trying to prove how dark and edgy and cool they are. The marketing wasn't that misleading and it clearly established that this wouldn't be your father's Archie but after watching Chapter One: The River's Edge, it became clear that the marketing was selling the show short. Yes, it's a darker and sexier Riverdale than we're used to, but there's a lot of fun and warmth to be found in Riverdale too. It's a different, subversive take on Archie but it's still Archie and Riverdale is shaping up to be a worthy addition to the Archie universe.

-Over the 75+ years of Archie comics, a certain image has developed around the character of clean, fun wholesomeness. The Archie gang is all about burgers and milkshakes and love triangles and goofy capers and an ever constant status quo. What you see is mostly like you get. It's an image that's definitely justified, but not entirely accurate anymore, particularly since Jon Goldwater took over as CEO of Archie Comics in 2009 and began pushing to make Archie relevant for the 21st century. This started in 2010 with the introduction of Life With Archie, a series that depicted two different futures for Archie (one where he married Betty, one where he married Veronica.) and tackled more adult themes and stories about growing up, as well as the introduction of Kevin Keller, the first openly gay Archie character. After the horror-themed Afterlife With Archie became a runaway success writer Roberto Aguire-Sacasa (The showrunner of Riverdale, who developed it with producer-of-basically-everything-comics-related Greg Berlanti) was awarded the position of Chief Creative Officer of in 2014, and kept pushing to modernize Archie, most significantly through a reboot of the whole Archie universe in 2015, led by comic superstars Mark Waid and Fiona Staples. Through it all, the Archie brand has proven that it's incredibly versatile and can tell literally any kind of story, while still remaining true to the characters and the world. Archie has faced zombies, Predator, and has even died. So while the grit and darkness of Riverdale will definitely be off-putting to some, it's nothing really that new for the character or his world, and if you can embrace it, you'll find plenty to love about Riverdale (even if it's not perfect).

-As most people who read Archie will tell you, Archie is always typically the least exciting part about Archie. He's the everyman, our identification figure who guides us through the world so he can't be as vibrant or splashy as Betty, Veronica, Jughead, Kevin, Reggie, Hiram Lodge or basically anyone else. It's not that he can't be interesting, it's just very difficult to make him interesting and he's easily the blandest part of Riverdale so far. Oh, K.J. Apa gives it his best go and brings a much needed affability and relatability to the character, but it's just not that exciting to watch him try and figure out how to pursue his music or tell his dad Luke Perry that he doesn't want to follow him into construction or decide if he wants to play varsity football. Also "Archie got hot over the summer working construction" is literally a plot point because that's the best way they could come up with to explain why Veronica would be into him (Betty was already interested). This is all par for the course for Archie though. There's a reason we're introduced to almost every other major character before him and a reason why the show's called Riverdale and not Archie. Hopefully he'll become more compelling down the road but if not, that's fine because almost everyone else is much more interesting.

-If you need a reason to watch Riverdale, I can give you two: Betty (Lili Reinhart) and Veronica (Camila Mendes). You'll fall in love with Betty immediately. She's bright and sweet and adorable, an overachiever who needs to be pushed to take action a bit, but once she takes charge, there's no stopping here. She more than holds her own against Mendes Veronica, who's sophisticated, confident, witty and sexy. Veronica has what I always felt was an unfair reputation for being kind of a unlikable rich snob in the comics, but the show avoids that by having her be someone who is trying to be a better person, even if she occasionally falls into old habits.

-If this episode has a key moment, it's when Veronica is accepted for cheerleading over Betty but tells Cheryl that "Betty and I come as a matching set. You want one, you take us both". Betty and Veronica have a super weird comics dynamic, where they're best friends but also fierce rivals and although both want Archie for themselves, they're basically cool with him dating both of them (The new Archie series thankfully changes that last part). Riverdale seems committed from the get-go to really developing an actual strong friendship between the two of them that's complex, but true and it's really nice to see. Yeah, there's a bit of a love triangle, but at the moment the love triangle is secondary to the relationship between Betty and Veronica. There's a really camaraderie between Reinhart and Mendes and you instantly start rooting for their friendship. Veronica is fun and feisty and drives Betty to be more assertive and confident and tries to help Betty and Archie get together. When she does kiss Archie during Seven Minutes in Heaven, it feels like a betrayal and you can tell she feels terrible about it, even if she doesn't quite regret it. I'm not excited to watch Archie mope around on the guitar or play football or whatever, but I'm really excited to see Betty and Veronica try to work out their friendship and figure out their dynamic.

-OK, I have serious apprehensions about Cole Sprouse's moody, angst-ridden take on Jughead. He's barely in the episode, beyond providing opening and closing narration and one scene with Archie so I can't really judge it yet, but beyond the good advice he gave to Archie, he just doesn't feel like Jughead yet. Also, the narration is presented to us as part of a novel Jughead is writing about the town and he seems to be writing it in real-time with the events of the narrative, but then it becomes omniscient in the last scene and I don't know how I feel about that. The show needs to establish clear rules for how the narration works and fast.

-I'm not super familiar with Kevin Keller, beyond his portrayal in Life With Archie and the relaunched Archie comics, but Casey Cott is a lot of fun and immediately the most interesting male character. The Gay Best Friend character is a well-worn trope and Riverdale is aware that it's a well-worn trope, but Cott brings a lot of energy and sass to the role, providing a nice counterbalance to Archie's sulkiness and Betty's uncertainty that complements nicely with Veronica's assertiveness. He also sells lines like "Game-Changer. Archie got hot! He's got abs now", like they're the most normal thing in the world. Kevin's still a relatively new character in the Archie universe, but it's great to see him getting so much exposure.

-Ashleigh Murray doesn't get a whole lot to do as Josie McCoy, leader of Josie and the Pussycats, but the small amount of screentime she does get makes me desperate to see more of her. She makes an instant impression.

-Every Teen Soap needs a great villain and Riverdale sets up two of them with Betty's Adderall-pushing perfectionist mother Alice (Mädchen Amick) and Riverdale High Queen Bee Cheryl Blossom (Madelaine Petsch). Alice is introduced dramatically declaring that Jason Blossom can burn in hell and she quickly establishes Alice as someone to root against, a toxic person who emotionally abuses Betty (while basically forcing her to take her medication) and is definitely responsible for the mental breakdown of Betty's sister Polly, even if she would rather blame Jason. Petsch's Cheryl meanwhile is a lot of fun as Riverdale's resident "shady bitch", relishing in stirring up chaos and tossing barbed quips. Her one-dimensional brand of villainy could get old pretty fast, but for now it's very watchable.

-It should be noted that if you like shows with naturalistic dialogue that sound like how real people talk, Riverdale is not that show. If however, you like super stylized, pop culture reference-laden dialogue where people say things like "I'm like Breakfast At Tiffany's but this place is strictly In Cold Blood" or use "too season 5 Betty Draper" as an insult (Maybe the best insult of all time by the way, provided you're familiar with Mad Men, which all the characters apparently are), you're going to love how ridiculous a lot of this dialogue is. The dialogue is also nice, because it helps keep the show from being too dark or self-serious.

-Teen Dramas have a long-standing tradition of focusing on the adult characters almost as much as they focus on the kids. So beyond Alice, you get Luke Perry as Archie's dad Fred (Amicably divorced from Archie's mother in this version) and Marisol Nichols as Veronica's mom Hermione (Dealing with the fallout of Hiram being arrested for fraud and embezzlement). They're not super interesting yet, but you just know that Fred and Hermione are going to hook up at some point (They used to date) so I'm stoked for that. Also when Archie's mom does show up, she'll be played by Molly Ringwald, so that could be a lot of fun.

-If Riverdale was going to murder someone to kick off their story, Jason Blossom is a good candidate. He's the also-ran of the Blossom siblings and a 3rd-stringer Archie character, but notable enough that his death has instant stakes to it. Also, although I knew how the episode would end the moment Jughead tells us that the death was ruled an accident because no body was ever found, but I was still pumped for that last scene when surprise, surprise, the body does show up with a big bullet hole in the head. The murder isn't the most exciting aspect of Riverdale, but as long as it's kept relatively in the background to these characters and their development, it could be a lot of fun.

-Archie's summer love affair with Ms. Grundy (Sarah Habel) got a lot of publicity before Riverdale started for obvious reasons and looks to be a big plot driver, since it's connected to the death of Jason and it's the main reason Archie can't commit to the idea of a relationship with Betty. I'm not a big fan of this story so far. I can understand why it's in the show. It gives Archie a secret and connects him to the murder in a way that's natural, but television has a bad track record at portraying student-teacher relationships, tending to focus on the forbidden love aspect without engaging with all the dark, ethically murky implications of a person in authority sleeping with a minor and the reasons why they're a crime in the first place (See: Pretty Little Liars). Riverdale doesn't seem to be romanticizing Archie's relationship with Ms. Grundy but I'll remain skeptical for now.

-Really, the only misstep in how Betty and Veronica are being handled so far was the kiss. Having Veronica kiss Betty to play on outdated taboos for shock value and then immediately having another character call the kiss out as playing on outdated taboos for shock value doesn't really change the fact that the kiss was unnecessary, flimsily justified, and just there so they could throw another shocking thing into the promos.

-Also Betty was introduced in her underwear and Archie is introduced shirtless, both of which seemed excessive, but in a fun way.

-Kudos to Riverdale for bringing more diversity into Riverdale. Veronica and her mom are Latina, Reggie's Indonesian, and Josie, The Pussycats, and Pop are African-American. It's a small thing really, but something that makes Riverdale better reflect our world.

-Moose being closeted is definitely a different take on the character, but I'm willing to see where it goes. It's mostly played for laughs here before leading to the discovery of Jason's body.

-Reggie is probably the 5th most important Archie character in the comics, but he's basically an extra here, reimagined as a total bro jock who doesn't seem to have much of a rivalry with Archie. I'm assuming that'll change as the season goes on though. Reggie is much too interesting a character to just let go to waste.

-Keeping Hiram Lodge off the board for now is smart. He's the best antagonist in all of Archie and the most well-defined adult character, so having him in prison gives everyone else a chance to develop and become compelling in their own right (Plus maybe get a romance between Fred and Hermione going) before he inevitably comes on the scene to stir everything up. He's already covertly sending Hermione money. Who knows what he'll do next?

-Riverdale, like most Teen Soaps, has a strong soundtrack full of solid indie pop and alternative music. It's great!

-Riverdale's slogan is "The Town With Pep". Archie originally debuted in Pep comics so that's a fun little Easter Egg.

-If you are interested in exploring the world of Archie Comics further, I definitely recommend Mark Waid's relaunched Archie series. It's an all-ages contemporary take on Archie and his friends that actually manages to make Archie interesting and relevant for today's times. I'm less familiar with the relaunched Jughead, but I also hear nothing but good things about it.

-Murder Theory Corner: In which I try and figure out who the murderer is. Right now, I'm going with Josie. Why? Because she's a regular cast member who doesn't seem suspicious, isn't super connected to any of the storylines right now (Though I imagine she'll have a part to play as Archie's exploration into music develops), and she's a big enough character that it'd be shocking, without coming off as a massive betrayal for fans of the character. Actually, it could be seen as a massive betrayal. But guaranteed, whatever happened to Jason, Josie is connected to it somehow.

-So yeah, overall it was a strong start for Riverdale. I'm planning to cover this show weekly so stay tuned for much more sexy Archie shenanigans.

Import Gems: Borderline is The Office Meets Border Security

One of the cool things about Netflix is that it has quite the collection of terrific foreign shows that you've never heard of just waiting to be discovered. Import Gems is a new feature where I'll be highlighting some of these shows, all of which are available on Netflix (Or at least Netflix Canada) for your viewing pleasure. For the first installment, we'll be looking at Borderline, a British retroscripted mockumentary created by Chris Gau and Michael Orten-Toliver

When I fired up the first episode of Borderline on a whim the other night, I groaned a little when I realized it was a mockumentary show. Now I don't mind the mockumentary format- where everything is filmed "fly on the wall" documentary style with camera confessionals for the characters to express their thoughts- but it's pretty well-trodden territory at this point and it's hard to do something new with it. Add in that Borderline was a workplace comedy about people making the best at a mundane job (Here, airport border security at the fictitious Northend Regional Airport) with a boss no one respects and by midway through the first episode, I was ready to write the show off as a clone of "The Office", though I did think it was a fairly clever and funny clone. I kept watching though and quickly realized I wasn't giving Borderline enough credit. The elements (The format, the mundane job, the awkward boss, the wacky co-workers, the charming "normal" leads with the slow-burning flirtation, the slice-of-life plots) were nothing new but they kept developing and playing out in ways that I didn't expect, finding new life, nuance, and humour in old standbys. By the end of the second episode I was hooked, and when the 6-episode season ended I no longer thought of Borderline as just an Office clone. It was a lot more than that.

A lot of the charm of Borderline comes from how it's scripted. The show uses a technique called retroscripting, which is a form of improv where actors are given scene descriptions and make up their own dialogue as they move the story along. That gives the dialogue and most of the jokes a loose, natural feel that makes it seem like a genuine border security reality show, albeit a ridiculous one. It also allows the punchlines to genuinely sneak up on you. I was surprised by how often I was caught off-guard by a joke, even in scenes where I knew a joke was coming. The real impressive thing about the retroscripted approach though is that you would never know how much of it was improvised if you didn't look that up. Where a lesser comedy can be driven off the rails without a real script to serve as a backbone, Borderline feels controlled and focused throughout. Occasionally a joke won't mesh with the established narrative but the lines are so funny it's barely even noticeable.

Another benefit of the retroscripting approach is that without a full script to rely on, the actors have to look inward to create distinct characters full of depth and surprises. Chief Inspector Proctor (Jackie Clune) and Agents Tariq Mansoor (David Avery), Andy Church (Liz Kingsman), Clive Hassler (David Elms), and Grant Brodie (Jamie Michie) could feel like stock character types but they seem like real people with feelings and inner lives. Proctor is a boss that makes her employees feel uncomfortable and brings her personal problems to work, but Clune also gives her a lot of frustration and resentment about her life that deepens the character. Tariq and Andy are the Jim Halperts of the show, putting up with the insanity around them but Tariq is also an aspiring DJ who is constantly shocked by how much he doesn't hate his borderline job and Andy puts up with and partakes in the silliness but she's also an adult woman who knows exactly what she does and doesn't want, which pays off dividends throughout the season. Grant is introduced as the bigot of the team (He's unaware of what profiling is until he's informed he does it every day) but is shown trying to be aware of his prejudice and shows himself to be the heart of the group by the end of the season, and nervous, awkward Clive steals every scene he's in with his desperation to be part of the group. The improvised dialogue helps build a natural chemistry and sense of camaraderie within the ensemble that really resonates as the season goes on.

The strong character work and the loose feel of Borderline also work well with the storytelling of Borderline, which gets a lot of mileage out of it's podunk airport setting. From the first episode, which details the team getting a directive from head office to keep an eye for anything "Out Of the Ordinary" which seems an awful lot like racial profiling, the show isn't afraid to dive into every aspect of border security with sharp wit and a bit of insight. The show quickly establishes Northend as one of the smallest, least busy airports in the U.K., which helps keeps the stakes low, justifies a lot of the goofing off we see, and adds a sudden dramatic heft to a late-season episode where the airport gets it's first ever asylum seeker. Even when the plots are broad and sitcommy, like an episode where no one remembers Clive's birthday, Borderline is able to put a nice twist on it (Clive's birthday is partially forgotten because a beloved airport employee Tariq and Andy have no memory of has died, which gives the episode two stock plots that intertwine and pay off in interesting ways). The episodes all standalone but there is a nice subtle bit of serialization throughout the season which pays off nicely in the last couple episodes. Even the inevitable Will They/Won't They between Tariq and Andy is nicely handled. Their bond is played as less of an epic love story and more of a slowly growing flirtation that culminates in a way I wasn't expecting and was very pleased by.

Ultimately though the real secret weapon of Borderline is the very thing that made me apprehensive when I first started watching it: the mockumentary format, specifically the use of narration. Each episode of Borderline is held together by ongoing narration by Ralf Little setting up what we're about to watch or summarising the scene, adding authenticity to the faux-reality show we're watching. Initially I wasn't paying much attention to the narration, figuring it was superfluous until I began to realise there was often a significant disconnect between what was actually happening on screen and how the narration was contextualising it. The characters might be acting ridiculous but the narration frames their actions as totally normal and sometimes even commendable with little judgement on how they're acting (Which makes the times when it does judge comic highlights). In the second episode for example Grant detains an attractive woman for a bit so he can get to know her personally while the narration keeps praising him for how dedicated he is and what a thorough job he's doing with his interview (It does note when he gets her phone number at the end that. It's the classic mockumentary trope of a character's words being contradicted by their actions taken to new heights. Even when the narration is accurately describing the situation, it's done in a way that only heightens the absurdity, like when Mark Addy is detained for being what the narration calls "suspected of being on Game of Thrones". It's an ingenious way of ringing every possible drop of comedy from the scene and it breathes new life into the mockumentary format.

So yeah, on the surface Borderline is the kind of show you've seen many times before and there's nothing terribly new or innovative about it. If you stick with it though and pay attention to the remarkable acting and storytelling on display, you'll find yourself constantly delighted and surprised time and time again by how it makes use of it's familiar parts. Its simpleness is really a deception and it's a lot deeper and funnier than you might expect. It's a show that can be finished in a couple of hours but those couple of hours will stick with you long after you finish watching. It probably won't ever reach the popularity of The Office (both British and American) versions but if it did, it'd certainly be deserving of it.

Kenny Sage's Official Best TV of 2016 List, Yo!

It's that time of year where all the respected television critics and other assorted randos put together their lists celebrating the best TV of the year, and for the first time ever, I'm joining those randos. That's right, I'm jumping into the "Best Of List" game with my own list on what I believe to be the best TV of 2016. So a couple things to note before we jump in:

-This list is not ranked because I feel rankings are irrelevant and distract from the purpose of a "Best Of" list. Also it was hard enough narrowing my list down. I didn't want to add to that by ranking what I did have. All shows are listed alphabetically. For what it's worth, if it was a ranked list, The Americans would be at the top (The fact that the alphabetical format puts it at the top anyhow is a happy coincidence).

-This list is Top 12 instead of 10 because I've always found 10 to be an arbitrary number for ranking things. Plus once I settled on the Top 12 I couldn't bring myself to cut anything else and it's not a ranked list anyways so I figured why not 12?

-This list, like every "Best Of" list ever is entirely subjective, informed by my opinions and what I watched. I watched a lot of television this year but I didn't come close to watching everything out there. If I had gotten around to watching stuff like say Halt and Catch Fire, Queen of Sugar or Horace and Pete (The top three things I wish I had gotten around to watching this year), there's a strong chance this list would be different. So if you don't agree with my list, then that's cool. I'm just a guy with a blog. My word is hardly the final one. Feel free to make your own list.

-There were a lot of shows I wanted to put on the final list that didn't make a cut. Those shows will be featured on a "Best Of The Rest Of" list that will be published a few days from now (fingers crossed). So look forward to that.

-Anyways, enough pre-amble. Let's get to the list already!

The Americans (FX): The Americans is both the best show on television barely anyone watches and the best show on television period. A stunner of a period drama about two deep cover Soviet agents (Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell doing some of the best work of their careers) in 80's Washington who find the marriage and family they made as part of the cover has become very real, the 4th season (Of what was announced this year to be a six season run) may have been the best yet. As the weight and human cost of the work they do begins to seriously take it's toll on both Philip (Rhys) and Elizabeth Jennings (Russell), the first half of the season builds an increasing amount of dread both from the threat of their secrets being revealed and the deadly biological weapons they're tasked with obtaining before a second half that brings down the threat of exposure without losing the sense that the end is approaching. A number of long-simmering storylines come to inevitable yet still devastating conclusions and multiple long-time regulars die or leave but none of it feels like shock value. Beyond the greatness of Rhys and Russell, there is also constantly great work from the likes of Noah Emmerich (As Stan, the Jennings FBI Agent neighbor), Allison Wright (As Martha, The FBI secretary Philip married as part of an assignment), Costa Ronin (As Oleg, a KGB embassy officer who is starting to waver in his belief to the cause) and many more. As Paige, the teenage daughter who's struggling to come to terms with the truth about her family she learned last year and trying to manage the fallout of an impulsive decision she made to tell her pastor, Holly Taylor is giving one of the best Prestige Show Teenager performances on TV.  Dylan Baker is also present this season to bring some welcome levity as William, another Soviet agent who resents how much he's sacrificed for the cause and his presence adds a lot to the story. Ultimately it seems like The Americans is destined to be one of those shows whose greatness isn't truly appreciated until years from now when it's long over, but it's not too late to start watching now and let the methodical dread-filled thrill ride overtake you.

American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson (FX): I'll be honest. When it was announced that the first season of American Crime Story would be tackling O.J. I thought the whole thing would be a glorious disaster. Ryan Murphy (creator of such often self-indulgent messes as Glee and American Horror Story) tackling O.J.? Even with Murphy and frequent collaborator Brad Falchuck taking a backseat to show developers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszweski, my expectations were low (Although I was still going to watch it). So I was stunned by how good the series wound up being. Using Jeffrey Toobin's The Run Of His Life as a jumping-off point, Alexander and Karaszweski wove a complex tale about race, class, gender, celebrity, and the rise of the 24-hour news cycle among other things. Each episode is anchored around a key moment from the case like the Bronco chase or Marcia Clark's perm or the Mark Fuhrman Tapes, providing a clear focus for all the ideas on display to swirl around. The series is full of strong performances (with the exception of whatever John Travolta was trying to do with Robert Shapiro), with Sara Paulson, Sterling K. Brown and Courtney B. Vance in particular standing out as Marcia Clark, Christopher Darden, and Johnnie Cochran, bringing much needed humanity and insight to figures that have become fairly caricatured over the years. Even the odd tangents like the scenes of the young Kardashian sisters getting their first taste of fame work in the context of the greater story going on. Ultimately American Crime Story brought new life to a story that seemed like there was nothing left to tell (It wasn't even the only great TV project about O.J. released this year!) and that's truly remarkable.

Atlanta (FX): Is there anything Donald Glover can't do? He's funny, he can act, he can write, he can definitely rap, and he can create and star in a pretty damn good television series too. Atlanta is unlike any TV show in recent memory. The show has no set structure or template and doesn't follow any typical TV comedy rhythms (If it follows any rhythms at all). Donald Glover stars as Earn, a basically homeless Princeton dropout trying to make money and provide for his ex-girlfriend Vanessa (Zazie Beetz) and their infant daughter, while managing his cousin Alfred "Paper Boi" Miles, a local rapper trying to make a name for himself. This basic premise is used to support what's essentially a series of fascinating, unpredictable and often hilarious (though the show feels no need to constantly be spouting jokes) short stories about being black, poverty, the Hip-hop world, and life in Atlanta. Fire up an episode of Atlanta and there's no telling what you might find within. You might see Paper Boi facing off with a very black Justin Bieber or Earn trying to take Van for a nice dinner with no money or Paper Boi's right-hand man Darius (Keith Stanfield) getting in trouble for bringing a dog-shaped target to a shooting range or a whole episode of a fake talk show on a fake BET-network. Through it all, the well-defined characters keep the whole thing grounded and believable, even with ridiculous gags like an invisible car or a punk kid in whiteface popping up when you least expect them. The result is a viewing experience that sticks with you long after the season has ended. TV could use more shows like Atlanta.

Better Call Saul (AMC): Breaking Bad, one of the best TV dramas of all time was in many ways a horror story. An ordinary man turns out to be a monster but doesn't realize what a monster he is until he's ruined the lives of everyone around him. Better Call Saul, a spin-off/prequel focused on the early days of amoral attorney Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk) and seasoned enforcer Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks) is more of a tragedy and that tragedy helps set itself apart from it's predecessor for a show that's really come into it's own this year. Jimmy McGill is a lawyer whose efforts to be a good person and do the right thing are blocked at every turn by forces ranging from Jimmy's brother Chuck (Michael McKean), an accomplished lawyer who suffers from a psychosomatic sensitivity to electromagnetism and a deep-seated resentment of Jimmy to Jimmy's own instincts to take ethical shortcuts and play fast and loose with the truth. We know eventually he'll become the sleazy Saul Goodman and wind up in exile to Omaha following the events of Breaking Bad, but Jimmy doesn't and the knowledge of the destination makes the journey that more heartbreaking. Odenkirk brings depth and dimension to Jimmy that Breaking Bad only ever hinted at and Rhea Seehorn stands out as Kim Wexler, Jimmy's friend and love interest who finds her professional life tied to Jimmy's for better and for worse. For people who loved Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul gives plenty of focus to Mike too as he finds himself drawn into the orbit of the Salamenca's and on a road that will lead to a certain chicken man. Jimmy's stuff is just as compelling though and Better Call Saul excels at making  potentially boring sequences like Jimmy acting out at work, or spending hours at a copy shop for a scheme into brilliant setpieces. The show has also maintained Breaking Bad's sense of humour, which it uses for great effect. The second season builds to a climax similar to the second season of Breaking Bad, but with a much different conclusion that highlights the difference between Jimmy McGill and Walter White. Better Call Saul may never reach the heights of Breaking Bad, but it's a must-watch experience all the same.

Bojack Horseman (Netflix): One of the most emotionally rich, surprisingly dark and existential shows on TV is also an uproarious satirical animated comedy about a washed-up 90's sitcom actor who is also a horse (Well horse/human hybrid but same diff.). If you've never seen Bojack Horseman or stopped watching during the rockier early episodes before it coalesced into something special, the above sentence probably sounds absurd, but it's absolutely true and the third season proved to be the darkest and funniest season yet. If the second season of Bojack made it seem like he had finally hit rock bottom, Season 3 proved there was a lot more bottom to go as Bojack's quest for an Oscar nomination/happiness led to him finally alienating the people closest to him. This season contained maybe the best episode of television this year in Fish Out Of Water, an almost completely silent episode that sent Bojack to an under the sea film festival best described as "Lost In Translation Meets Looney Tunes" in the best way possible. Other highlights included a period piece set in the good ol' days of 2007, a nuanced and sensitive take on abortion issues, an episode-long phone conversation with guest star Candice Bergen trying to talk Bojack out of canceling his newspaper subscription, Todd starting an Uber-esque service targeted at women that quickly goes awry, the return of Character Actress and Fugitive Margo Martindale and a season-long joke about Mr. Peanutbutter buying hundreds of spaghetti strainers and waiting for them to pay off that has the best pay-off imaginable. Through it all, Will Arnett, Aaron Paul, Amy Sedaris, Allison Brie, and Paul F. Tompkins bring their characters to life with expert precision and the beautiful animation ensures that every scene is crammed with more jokes than you'll ever manage to find. Bojack Horseman can seem offputting at first glance, but under the surface is a treasure trove of narrative and comedic riches just waiting to be discovered.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (CW): When it debuted last fall, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (One of the two shows on the list I constantly talk about on this blog) was pleasant and charming, but didn't seem that essential or sustainable. A quirky musical comedy about a successful lawyer who drops everything to move from New York City to West Covina, California after a chance encounter with her ex-boyfriend from camp 10 years ago who's moving back there? OK sure. I enjoyed it but figured it would run out of steam fairly fast. In 2016 though, Creators Rachel Bloom (Who also stars) and Aline Brosh McKenna began to dig deep into ideas of addiction, depression, mental health, feminism, self-worth, personal happiness, creating narrative and the complete fabrication of Rom-Coms and showed just how deep and rewarding the show could be. Rebecca Bunch (Bloom) is a self-obsessed anti-hero but we root for her anyways because we understand where she's coming from. She's surrounded by people who are equally easy to root for, even when they're being despicable. The show can veer from comedy to tragedy back to comedy in an instant without skipping a beat. It's lovingly crafted and the world is built out in such a way that even the smallest character like the local bar owner or the grocery store checkout clerk feels like a unique individual. The songs are also brilliant and dabble in every genre and style of music imaginable from Broadway to Country to Beyonce to Spice Girls to 80's Power Ballads to 90's Pop Punk and everything in between. With ratings consistently low and the premise as ridiculous as it is, it seems unlikely that the show will last past season 2, but no matter how long it's run Bloom and McKenna have truly created something special and 2016 was when it got to fully show off how special it was.

Jane The Virgin (CW): The other show I constantly talk about on this blog, Jane The Virgin might be the most consistently great network show on television, which is remarkable considering how small a target it has to hit every week. A comical family show that's a spoof of the telenovella formula, but also an actual telenovella with tons of crazy plot twists including criminal family members, secret twins, stolen identities, and egregious product placement? It's a hard needle to thread but somehow "Jane" pulls it off week in and week out. As Jane (Gina Rodriguez) navigates her way through motherhood, co-parenting, grad school, criminal masterminds, famous fathers, marriage, brushes with tragedy, family secrets, and the lost of her virginity, the show always keeps the focus on the characters, which manages to anchor the show in reality, even if that reality is heightened. Three seasons in and the show still has plenty of narrative tricks up it's sleeve. They don't always work (Last season featured a multi-episode plot where Jane's father was kidnapped by a stalker that was a little too ridiculous) but the show hits way more than it misses, which is impressive this deep into it's run. It's also a very optimistic and joyful show, which is something you don't see enough of on TV these days. There's always a chance that eventually this show will go totally off the rails, but I have a feeling that as long as it runs, "Jane" will continue to be a fixture on my "Best Of" list.

Lady Dynamite (Netflix): Lady Dynamite is the kind of show where it's hard to explain the appeal in mere words but I'll give it my best shot. Created by Mitch Hurwitz and Pam Brady, Lady Dynamite is a loosely-autobiographical comedy about Maria Bamford (Who stars as herself) trying to get her life and career back on track following six months being treated for bipolar disorder. The show jumps between the present, the past as we see the events that led to a major breakdown and an inbetween period as we see her living with her parents while attending recovery in Duluth. It's a hilarious, surrealist romp with no 4th wall, the kind of show where Patton Oswalt will keep breaking character to advise Maria against using stand-up as a storytelling device, John Ridley and the Lucas Brothers will debate if the episode about race actually made any compelling points and the theme song is an out-of-nowhere spoof of Blaxploitation films. It's the kind of show where Maria's pug Bert might casually talk to her and give advice, her well-meaning but completely ineffectual manager Bruce (A brilliant Fred Malamed) might write a song about a Seamen-loving shark or accidentally ship a ton of T-Shirts with her face to child soldiers in Sudan and every predatory force in Maria's life past and present happens to be named Karen Grisham. Through it all Bamford guides us with a manic smile, and though the show threatens to come apart at the seams sometimes it always manages to stay on track right to it's powerful conclusion. The result is a bold show that manages to stand out among the many great Netflix comedies.

Orange Is The New Black (Netflix): The 3rd season of OITNB was lighter and less-focused than the first two but ended on a foreboding note that led to it's best season yet as things got dark for the ladies of Litchfield. As the privatization of the prison led to both an influx of new inmates and a host of new, more brutal and malicious guards, the show continued to make excellent use of it's large ensemble to tell moving stories about trying to maintain your humanity in a system that constantly denies it. One-time lead Piper (Taylor Schilling) became as unlikeable as she's ever been as her attempts to maintain control of her "Prison Panty" empire led to serious consequences and the accidental creation of a white supremacist gang, but as always the best moments of the season belonged to the women around Piper. From Taystee becoming Caputo's assistant to Pennsatucky trying to deal with being around the guard who raped her last season to Maria and Blanca making a play for power to Yoga Jones falling under the sway of celebrity inmate Judy King and the privilege that comes with her to Poussey and Soso's adorable romance to Alex and Red trying to keep schizophrenic inmate Lolly in line after a traumatic event, there was plenty to latch onto this season. The show also continued it's attempt to create empathy for almost every character (Save for captain of the guard Piscatella and a couple of his more sadistic guards), which adds many layers to the building conflict. The season builds to a tragedy that's horrible on every level but feels like it was sadly inevitable and the season ends on a powerful note that will leave you begging for season 5.

Rectify (Sundance): As of this writing, there is still one episode of Rectify left to air and there's a chance the episode will be totally underwhelming and end the series on a bum note, but it's an incredibly small chance. Even if the finale winds up being a disappointment (And again, I doubt it), it would not be enough to knock Rectify's beautiful final season off my list. The last season of Rectify finds former death row resident Daniel Holden (Aden Young giving one of the best performances on TV) living in Nashville in a program designed to help former convicts reintegrate into the world. The trauma of all he's been through is still with him though and season 4 confronts the idea of he'll ever be able to move past this trauma head on. Meanwhile back in Paulie, as the truth of what really happened on the night Hannah Dean (the girl he was convicted of raping and murdering) died comes ever closer to finally being unraveled, Daniel's family find themselves confronting the idea of moving on and finding their own freedom. The show is methodically paced as ever, which allows you to really be drawn into the world of Paulie and find the beauty in the smallest moments. The cast includes such standouts as J. Smith-Cameron, Abigail Spencer, and Clayne Crawford, and really enough can't be said about Young's performance as Daniel (A sequence in the penultimate episode where he listens to a tape of himself describing being sexually assaulted in prison might be one of the best things to air on TV this year). No matter how Rectify wraps up, I'm definitely going to miss it.

Westworld (HBO): OK, if The Americans were at the top of a ranked version of this list, Westworld would be at the bottom. I've moved it on and off the list more times than I could count before ultimately deciding to put it on. Chances are I'll keep moving it on and off the list even after it gets published. Of all the shows on here, Westworld is certainly the most flawed. The first season introduced a complex, fascinating world and conceit (An amusement park populated by robot hosts who slowly become aware) but then seemed content to tease out endless mysteries and twists instead of fulling embracing it's premise, consistently keeping the audience at a distance and making it hard to figure out what exactly the show was trying to say until the very end. Many of the twists were also easily guessable, which made it kind of frustrating when they kept putting off the reveals It's a show that can't be really appreciated on more than a basic level until it's watched twice, which isn't ideal for any show. Despite that though, as I sat to watch the finale, I realized that I had become incredibly invested in what was going on. The show was messy and somewhat impenetrable but also ambitious and beautiful and daring in a way I could appreciate and even if the journey was occasionally tedious, the conclusion came together stunningly, setting the stage for what could be a brilliant season 2 as long as creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy stop playing games. As the park's oldest host, Delores, Evan Rachel Wood gave an incredibly complex and involved performance (The kind that will look even better on rewatch). Thandie Newton and Jeffrey Wright gave equally stunning performances as Westworld madam Maeve and head programmer Bernard, respectively. Again, Westworld wasn't perfect (The show somehow wasted Anthony Hopkins, despite giving him plenty of screentime), but it was fascinating and compelling in ways that are going to stick with me for a long time and that's why it ultimately made my "Best Of" list.

You're The Worst (FXX): The third season of You're The Worst had a tough act to follow to say the least. After a brilliant second season that provided an honest, stunning look at grappling with depression, season 3 with a broader, looser, shaggier story about family and looking for meaning and happiness in life couldn't help but suffer a bit in comparison. But even if it didn't frequently hit the heights of the second season (Though multiple episodes including one totally focused on Edgar and his struggles with quitting his PTSD meds cold turkey), the third season was still excellent, telling a darkly funny, frequently melancholic story with plenty of interesting twists and turns along the way. Even if the awful behavior of Jimmy (Chris Geere), Gretchen (Aya Cash), and Lindsay (Kether Donohue) plus the significantly less awful behavior of Edgar (Desmin Borges) isn't quite as fresh as it once was, the characters still manage to surprise us as Gretchen goes through therapy for her depression, Jimmy has an unconventional grieving process following the sudden death of his father, Lindsay struggles with a pregnancy and a husband she's starting to realize she might not want and Edgar goes off his meds and starts finding new ways to cope with PTSD. The show continues to be daring too with it's structure. Beyond the Edgar-focused one mentioned above, one episode focuses completely on side characters Paul and Vernon, while another utilizes a series of long single-takes and another completely focuses on three arguments between the three main couples. The show continues to be hilarious too from an out-of-nowhere Mad Men homage to Lindsay demonstrating her unique brand of mindfulness to Vernon's continued desire to be heckled. The ending of season 3 also ties the season together beautifully, ending on a devastating note that promises lots of possibilities for season 4. Wherever the show goes, I will be awaiting it eagerly because You're The Worst is simply the best.

And boom, that's my "Best Of List" for 2016. Thanks for reading it. It was hard to put together (There's just too much great television) but I'm glad I did it. It was a strong year for TV (As we'll see when my list of the shows that almost made this list comes out) and I have hopes that next year will be equally strong. Anyways I hope that this list might inspire you to check out some of the shows you might have missed this year. I know I'll be doing that. Anyways until my next post (whenever that is), keep watching TV and talking TV.

All-Time Faves: Booze Cruise Gave The Office Something To Believe In

All-Time Faves is a new feature I'll be doing on occasion where I talk about some of my favourite episodes of television and what makes them special. To kick it off we'll be looking at my all-time favourite episode of my all-time favourite show: Booze Cruise, the 11th episode of the 2nd season of The Office, which originally aired January 5th 2006.

"Never, ever, ever give up"

There are many episodes of The Office that serve as good entry points for the show for someone who has never seen an episode. The Pilot is a pale imitation of the British originals pilot and nowhere close to what the show would become but it introduces the main characters well enough and if you haven't seen the British version, it plays better. The season 2 premiere, The Dundies is a better entry point. The writers have figured out the tone that works best for writing Michael and for the show, and it's packed full of great little jokes and character beats plus the first "kiss" for Jim and Pam. My first episode back in the day was the episode that follows this one, The Injury. It's hands-down one of the funniest episodes the show ever did and it gave me a good sense of what the characters and comedy of the show were like, instantly making me want to see more. However if you were to ask me what episode of The Office to start with, I would point you to Booze Cruise each and every time.

Written by Greg Daniels who developed the show for American Television, and directed by Ken Kwapis who directed several crucial installments of the show, including both the first and last episodes, and Casino Night, Booze Cruise is my absolute favourite episode of The Office. It features an incredibly funny first half with classic joke after classic joke before seamlessly seguing into a second half that's heartbreaking and introspective, but still hilarious, a perfect blend of everything The Office was so good at in its prime. It has not one but two of the very best scenes the show ever did. It's a key turning point in the Jim/Pam relationship, but also a turning point in the Jim/Michael relationship. Also, unlike some of the other best episodes of the show, it requires no previous knowledge of The Office to be impactful, which is why I recommend it as a starting point. Casino Night (my second-favourite episode) is incredible television and arguably better than Booze Cruise, but it's also the culmination of the season that preceded it, full of callbacks and pay-offs to character relationships that are going to mean nothing to you if you haven't seen at least part of the season up to this point, particularly Booze Cruise, which sets up the emotional through line for the back half of the season. By the end of Booze Cruise, you have a good idea of who Michael, Jim, Pam, and Dwight are, a good grasp of the actual office dynamics, a clear understanding of Jim's feelings towards Pam, and most crucially a reason to believe in their love story beyond "the show wants us to".

The trick Booze Cruise pulls though is that if you were to go into it having heard nothing about it, you'd have no idea how important it was. The first half is standard Office, largely focused on Michael's antics with the rest of the Dunder Mifflin team reluctantly along for the ride. This time, Michael has planned a top secret "first quarter camaraderie event", which turns out to be a January booze cruise (When it's cheaper) along Lake Wallenpaupack. It's not just another party though. Michael has also planned what he hopes will be an inspirational presentation on leadership (which is entirely based on the word ship being part of the word leadership as it's "derivation"). That desire to be an inspiring boss who is going to turn lives around with what he has to say is what becomes Michael's motivation for the episode and what keeps his antics from feeling too grating. Michael's intentions to inspire though bump up with the intentions of Captain Jack, the ship's captain and "party captain" who takes both of his jobs very seriously. Portrayed by Rob Riggle in one of his best performances, Captain Jack is one of the best one-time guest characters The Office ever had, a reasonable guy with the right amount of "loudmouth alpha dog" typically found in a Rob Riggle character who just wants to do his job and have a good time, and who becomes increasingly firm on shutting down Michael's presentation when it interferes with his schedule. He's given enough personality to feel like more of a character than the plot device he could've been reduced to and that makes his pseudo-power struggle with Michael all the funnier and an episode solely based on that power struggle would still have been one of the better episodes of The Office. Just when you think you know where the episode is going however, Pam steps away from her fiance and the snorkel shot crowd for a minute to talk to Jim.

The best 30 seconds The Office ever did contains no jokes and barely any dialogue. It's so strong I had forgotten it happens at the episode's mid-point instead of near the end. It starts when Pam jokingly asks Jim what it's like to date a cheerleader. Jim chuckles and starts to answer but then just doesn't. He simply stares at Pam as if he wants to tell her what he really wants while she waits for him to say something, anything. For 27 whole seconds neither of them say nothing at all, but those 27 seconds tell us everything. Greg Daniels has said as he watched the scene in the edit bay he was yelling for Jim to kiss Pam and you can't blame him. The episode has stealthily reminded us that Pam's engagement has no end in sight and that Roy just isn't a good fit for her. You get the sense that if Jim were to kiss Pam then that would be it and Pam would break it off with Roy while Jim broke it off with Katie and they would get together at last. Except Jim isn't ready to let Pam know what has been clear from the start so he doesn't kiss her because he can't do it now. He just can't. So Pam breaks the silence, makes an excuse and leaves. The moment has passed. It's a beautiful sequence from beginning to end with some of the best acting John Krasinski and Jenna Fischer ever did, but it's also a lot more than that.

It was always easy to root for Jim and Pam. Krasinski and Fischer had terrific chemistry from the beginning and the source material of the British original gave it a real and relatable hook: the struggles of being in love with someone who loves someone else. The best Will They/Won't They romances need a big obstacle to make the question an actual question and Pam's engagement was a big one. The thing is, as easy as it was to root for Jim and Pam, it was easy to get the sense that you just wanted them to get together because that's how shows like this works and that's what The Office wanted you to do. The attractive people with strong chemistry get together because why not? Yeah you were invested, but you had to be invested. What makes the 27 seconds of silence on Booze Cruise so powerful is that it sells you on the idea of a powerful emotional bond between Jim and Pam that transcends television conventions and writing. You believe Jim is in love with this girl not because he's the romantic lead of a television sitcom, but because he deeply, truly loves her and when you believe that, you believe in love. Suddenly rooting for Jim and Pam isn't an obligation but something you actually truly want to see in your heart of hearts. And that honest investment is crucial to the success of the back half of the season, which I know from experience. When I originally watched the 2nd season of The Office, it was on DVDs I rented one disc at a time from the video store that I viewed in the odd order of discs 3-4-1-2. So Booze Cruise was actually the last episode of the second season that I watched, and once I rewatched the second half of the season (which I believe I did immediately), all the Jim/Pam moments that I liked before became that much more powerful. The Casino Night confession, rejection, and kiss became that much more powerful because it actually felt like it meant something. Those 27 seconds are some of the most meaningful seconds The Office ever did and they become amplified by the heartbreak that happens next.

Up to this point, Pam's engagement had been nothing but a plot device, a contrivance to keep Pam unavailable and Jim pining, letting the pair have sweet moments while also giving them a good reason to never do anything about their feelings. It was a reliable story engine but there was no stakes to it, no investment in the idea of Pam actually marrying Roy beyond occasional lip service to the idea and no reason to assume that this would change anytime soon. Even after those 27 seconds, shortly followed by Jim's private assertion to the camera (and to us viewers) that if the office was on fire he would save the receptionist (the closest he's ever come to verbalizing his feelings), it feels like we're about to go back to business as usual. So when a very drunk Roy is inspired by Captain Jack's story of marrying his first wife the day after he got back from Desert Storm and finally decides to set a date for the wedding, it's a bigger shock than it should be. Suddenly Pam's engagement isn't something that can easily be cast off, but a very real thing that feels urgent and can't be ignored anymore. We had a reason to believe in Jim and Pam's love and now suddenly we don't. That moment between them happened two minutes earlier but now it feels like an eternity ago. Tellingly, Jim and Pam don't interact for the remainder of the episode and Pam doesn't even look at him, caught up in the rekindled passion of her engagement. Jim doesn't say much but just like before, his face tells us everything. This is the worst night of his life.

If Booze Cruise has a false note it's the episode's treatment of Jim's girlfriend Katie, who is played by Amy Adams of all people. Katie was introduced in the season 1 finale Hot Girl as pretty much that, a hot girl for Jim to date so we knew he had a love life outside of pining for Pam. She was never going to stick around the show for long (Adams was weeks way from her first-ever Oscar nomination for Junebug when this aired) so the show never bothered to define her or make her more than "Jim's temporary girlfriend". It's not the worst thing in the world, but Adams brought so much personality and life to what little she was given that it feels like a waste when a heartbroken Jim callously breaks up with her. Hindsight also definitely plays a part in why the Katie break-up feels so off. The Office definitely wasn't the first or the last show to have a disposable love interest, but the fact that Amy Adams became such a high-profile actress winds up drawing a lot more attention to how superfluous Katie is than it would with someone lesser-known in the role. It's a small blip and doesn't detract from my overall enjoyment of the episode (It is my favourite after all), but it always manages to take me out of the episode for a moment. Just a moment though.

Because the Jim/Pam/Roy triangle becomes such a huge part of the episode, it's easy to forget how funny Booze Cruise is. It starts with a classic Jim prank on Dwight where he puts all of his stuff in vending machines and doesn't let up from there. Jim and Pam feigning ignorance about the movie Titanic ("I think you're thinking of The Hunt For Red October" is one of my all-time favourite lines). One of Steve Carrell's best line deliveries as he responds to Daryl's suggestion that if the office was a ship the sales department would be the sails with an incredibly ignorant and condescending "Yes Daryl, The sales department makes sales". Captain Jack letting Dwight "steer" the ship and Dwight having no clue it's a fake wheel. Michael tearing up the dance floor. Even the bittersweetness of Pam and Roy setting a date gets a comic boost from Michael's power struggle with Captain Jack leading him to suggest that he give Pam away at her wedding. There is a lot of comic brilliance in this episode which helps keep it from getting bogged down in the melancholy, emotional moments while also making those moments more potent. The comedy does tone down once Jim and Pam have their moment and Pam reaffirms her engagement but it never goes away totally and it comes back in full force when Captain Jack sneaks off for a quickie with Meredith and Michael takes control.

The mundane setting of Dunder Mifflin means that big-scale comic set pieces were rare in The Office, particularly the early days (After Dwight's insane fire drill in season 5's Superbowl episode, they became more frequent). So when a frustrated and seasick Michael decides to finally kick off his presentation by announcing that the ship is sinking, the chaos of the moment was still a relative novelty. Even after seeing this episode dozens of times, the scene still never fails to be funny because of how well-constructed it is. We know what's going on and the annoyed employees of Dunder Mifflin know what's going on, but as Captain Jack reminded us at the beginning of the cruise, the Dunder Mifflin employees are not the only people on the boat, and once Michael tells people that "Captain Jack is gone", those poor confused souls stop listening and start panicking. It's a brilliant scene that builds and builds, getting more absurd until someone literally jumps overboard, paying off a joke quietly set up earlier when Captain Jack explained where the life preservers and emergency exits (anywhere over the side) were. Michael had good intentions with what he wanted to accomplish, but he let jealousy and poor judgement get the best of those intentions until they turned to cringe-worthy chaos the way they often do. So it's no surprise that Michael ultimately winds up in the brig, complaining that the boat wasn't as "corporate friendly as advertised" and unaware that he's done anything wrong.

If Booze Cruise were to end on a dark note with Michael's best intentions falling apart spectacularly and Jim miserable, it would still be one of the best episodes the show has ever done but it would probably not be my all-time favourite. It's a great, great episode but the thing that pushes it over the top is the ending. Trying to get away from the girl he loves and the girl he broke up with, Jim goes to the front of the ship where he finds Michael. They talk a bit about what a terrible night it's been and when Michael points out that at least Jim's friend got engaged (She was always engaged but Roy claimed the first one didn't count), Jim admits how he really feels to an extent. He says he used to have a big thing for Pam, much to the surprise of Michael who never would've put Jim and Pam together. This episode really is a tour de force for John Krasinski as he delivers yet another all-time great Jim performances just minutes after the last one. Before this episode Jim has never said a word about how he feels about Pam and now he's done it twice, and he's told Michael of all people, even if he tries to play it as in the past. We have never seen Jim so vulnerable before. This is big but it's nothing compared to what Michael says. "Well, if you like her so much, don't give up". It's a line Steve Carrell delivers with a shrug, said as casually as if they were discussing the weather and it throws Jim off. "She's engaged", he says but Michael shrugs that off too. "BFD. Engaged ain't married". Then the casualness is gone and suddenly Michael sounds like the inspirational speaker he's been trying to be all night. "Never, ever, ever give up" he says, and you can watch every one of those words slowly sink into Jim's face.

The thing about inspiration is that it's not something that can be planned or manufactured, it has to come from the heart. Michael wasn't trying to inspire Jim or prove what a great boss or friend he was. He simply reached out as a human being talking to another human being and tried to say something encouraging. He had given up on trying to inspire only to do it without even realizing what he had done and in that moment, we have our reason to believe in Jim and Pam back again because we have been given hope. With those words, the dark night suddenly turns into a hopeful one and a new friendship is forged between Jim and Michael that will persist until Michael finally left to get his own happy ending, his words paying off for him at last. As for Jim and Pam, Jim doesn't give up. He tries to distance himself from Pam but he still puts it all on the line on Casino Night. When he fails, he tries to. He moves away and he moves on but he doesn't really give up. Eventually he gets his chance. Eventually Jim and Pam date and marry and have children together like we all knew they would and it all comes back to that moment on the boat where he decided to not give up.

"Never, ever, ever give up". From the moment I saw Booze Cruise almost a decade ago that line hit hard and in the years since, it has stuck with me. The world can be a hard place and it's not easy to get the things you want most in life. It takes a lot of courage and a lot of effort and a lot of hope. The Office was not a hopeful show in the beginning. It was about compromise, wasting your potential away, giving up on your dreams, the drudgery of daily existence and the small things you did to try and make it better. It hid all this with a laugh and a smile and never explored it the way the British version did (And even the British version had a happy ending) but it was always under the surface. Even in the later seasons when the show became about finding happiness and family and beauty in the unlikeliest of places, that early darkness never truly went away. Booze Cruise is the most hopeful that The Office has been up to this point and it's remarkable because it suggests that even in your lowest moments, there's a light at the end of the tunnel if you're willing to find the strength to fight for it, to never, ever, ever give up. It's a powerful sentiment and one that we all need reminding of from time to time, especially in trying times like these where fear seems to have overrun everything. "Never, ever, ever give up". Things will get better, but they won't if you give up. You need to have hope. That's why Booze Cruise is my favourite episode of The Office and why it's the one I show to people trying to start watching the show. There's a lot to love about the episode, but in the end it all comes down to a pure and earnest hope that elevates everything else and makes it all better. The Office was great at being cringe-worthy and cynical, but when it looked through all that darkness and cringe to find a bit of honest hope, that's when it became special.

Jane The Virgin Is The Funny, Charming, and Magical Show You Need In Your Life

When Jane the Virgin first debuted two years ago, I was sceptical to say the least. A show about a virgin who gets accidentally inseminated and becomes pregnant? How could that possibly be good? So despite fairly positive buzz I opted to ignore it. I was watching enough shows that year and just didn't have time to watch something that sounded that dumb. Then about six weeks later, I found myself with nothing to do one afternoon and tried the first episode on a lark. I was immediately hooked, caught up with the other episodes aired in one sitting and never missed an episode again. That's because despite the goofy title and terrible-sounding initial premise, Jane the Virgin (which is about to start it's 3rd season tonight and which I'll be trying to write about week to week) is one of TV's best shows, expertly blending over-the-top Telenovella-style soap opera plotting and crazy drama with strong characters, and a charmingly self-aware sense of humour into a very addictive mixture that's a must-watch.

As mentioned earlier, the initial premise of Jane The Virgin (Created by Jennie Snyder Urman and loosely adapted from the Venezuelan Telenovella Juana la virgen) is a little ridiculous. Jane Villanueva (played by Gina Rodriguez, who won a Golden Globe for her performance) is a young waitress with aspirations of writerdom who lives with her devoted but irresponsible mother Xiomara, or "Xo", (Andrea Navedo) and her devoted and very religious grandmother Alba (Ivonne Coll), who instilled in her a protectiveness of her virginity at a young age. Jane has a loving police detective boyfriend Michael (Brett Dier) who plans to marry her. One day all her plans are thrown off course when she goes in for a routine pap smear and gets accidentally artificially inseminated, becoming pregnant. Complicating things is the fact that the "father" Rafael Solano (Justin Baldoni) owns The Marbella, the hotel Jane works at and is both a former crush of Jane's and the half-brother of Luisa (Yara Martinez), the doctor who inseminated Jane instead of Petra (Yael Grobglas), Rafael's gold-digging wife with a secretive past. Also Jane's father Rogelio (Jaime Camil), a famous Telenovella star who never knew about Jane has finally learned about her from Xo and wants to be part of her life. Also The Marbella and possibly Rafael's family are connected to an elusive crime lord named Sin Rostro who Michael is investigating. And that's just the first episode. The show only gets bigger and crazier from there with more twists and turns than you could ever count.

If that sounds insanely complicated and impenetrable, it surprisingly isn't, thanks to a couple key factors. The first is the presence of the Latin Love Narrator (Anthony Mendez), a Third-person mostly Omniscient narrator who keeps the story moving, explaining or recapping things we might be confused about, while offering his own commentary on the story as it unfolds. It's maybe the best, most entertaining use of narration ever deployed on television, and never detracts or obtrudes on the action too much. Mendez gives The Narrator a vibrant, welcoming personality that makes it feel like he's right beside you watching the action unfold with you. The other key to keeping this all accessible is that while the situations are ridiculous and wild, the characters emotions are grounded and real and the show never loses track of that for the most part (The one exception being the crime element, which is grounded in character on occasion but can get pretty tedious and disconnected from everything else at times, especially in the second season.). So even when things are at their most heightened (Typically, when Rogelio or Petra is involved), you have a clear understanding of the emotions of the characters and that's usually enough to get you through it.

There's a lot to love about Jane The Virgin and the most important thing is Jane herself. Gina Rodriguez brings to life a fully-formed, multi-faceted human being who is the kind of complex female lead we need more of on television. Rodriguez brings a warmth and a relatability to Jane that invites instant empathy for the character. Jane is our entry-point into this crazy world and Rodriguez's grounded performance helps keep things from spiralling too far out of reality. Being the grounded one doesn't mean she has to be devoid of personality and there's plenty of spark to Jane's. Jane has a passion for everything she loves from her family to her writing to grilled cheese sandwiches and this passion is allowed to manifest itself in many ways, including anger, frustration, and despair that help add to our impression of Jane as a person. After two seasons, you can pretty much guess how Jane is going to react to most situations, but Rodriguez keeps it from getting repetitive by constantly finding new nuances to Jane. And when she really gets a chance to cut loose in the shows many fantasy sequences, she becomes even more of a delight, whether being the "romance novel" version of Jane or showing off her various skills such as dancing or rapping.

Also bolstering the show is how it approaches it's main love triangle between Jane, Michael, and Rafael. Like any good love triangle, both men are different in a lot of ways. Michael's a detective with a goofy side and his interactions with Jane suggest a deep connection and a lived-in history between them. Rafael's a former playboy with a lot of pain in his past who's a bit more guarded, but he's very encouraging of Jane's dreams and brings out a different kind of passion in her while being a great father (in season 2) to boot.  And although the show begins with Rafael being shown in a more positive light than Michael, it soon equalizes things so that both men are good and viable choices for Jane, despite their flaws. Viewers will probably switch "teams" as it were a few times throughout the show (I certainly have). The most important thing the show does with the love triangle though is make it so that whether you're on Team Michael or Team Rafael, you're first and foremost on Team Jane so that when she does make her final decision (and she makes it partway through the second season), you're happy for her and willing to give it a shot even if it wasn't the choice you would've made.

Of course the other important thing about how Jane The Virgin handles it's love triangle is that the love triangle isn't at the core of the show. The most important relationships in Jane's life are the ones with her family. Jane, Xo, and Alba have a bond and a love that feels real and which is given weight by many of the flashback scenes that start off every episode. Xo and Alba could've felt like caricatures of the "flighty, irresponsible parent" and the "tough, religiously devout grandparent" respectively (Ivonne Coll even played that caricature on Glee a few years back). Instead they feel like real people as human and flawed as Jane is, with Alba's faith being treated as seriously as Xo's dreams of being a singer. The show is as interested in Xo trying to be a better mother or Alba's fight to get legal status after years of being an undocumented immigrant as it is in Jane navigating pregnancy and parenthood. So when Xo and Alba or Xo and Jane or Jane and Alba fight, it hurts a lot more to watch than when Jane is fighting with Michael or Rafael. The Villanueva women's relationship with Rogelio as he enters or re-enters their lives is also compelling. Jaime Camill is playing the broadest, most comedic character on the show: an actor with a big ego and little self-awareness, but he gives Rogelio enough depth and nuance to avoid feeling out of place on the show. Rogelio's desire to have a family and be part of Jane's life is the most important thing about him and comes through even with his wackier subplots.

Another great thing about Jane the Virgin is how pretty much every character, no matter how one-note eventually gets depth and empathy, from trainwreck Luisa to even Sin Rostro. This is especially true of Petra (Yael Grobglas), who could easily come off as a one-dimensional villain, but doesn't thanks to a surprisingly genuine love of Rafael and a lot of pain in her past, that makes it easy to feel bad for her even when she's at her most villainous in season 1. Petra often gets straddled with the soapier elements on the show (A manipulative, seemingly wheel-chair bound mother who might be the exception to the "everyone gets depth" rule and a psychotic ex-boyfriend or two for starters), but Grobglas keeps things from getting too wild by giving Petra a fierce dignity that makes her real, even as she's caught up in stories about blackmail and evil twins. She also gets to show real pathos in season two as Petra struggles with a complex real-life issue I dare not spoil here.

Jane The Virgin is also a very creative show and that creativity comes through in every ounce of the production. The show splashes it's Miami setting with a burst of colour that makes every episode a visual delight. On-screen text constantly pops up on screen for extra joke or to add emphasis to certain points or hashtags to use so you constantly need to pay attention to the screen. The show is comfortable with having a good portion of it's dialogue in Spanish, which Alba speaks almost exclusively, adding extra realism to the characters. Glimpses of Rogelio's Telenovella projects will tie into the plot and themes of the episode in surprising ways. Episodes will makes use of various narrative gimmicks and conceits, ranging from small things like a growing light over Jane's heart in an early episode as her feelings for Rafael grow or Wrestling title cards popping up in an episode where many of the characters are in conflict to big things like a season 2 episode that spans six months or past versions of Jane and Rafael that advise her when the two are facing serious conflict late in season 1 or the show depicting short stories Jane is writing for a grad school exercise. You never know what to expect when watching Jane and that unpredictability becomes half the fun.

Look, blending grounded human stories about family and growing up with high-concept soap opera craziness shouldn't work but Jane the Virgin does. It also shouldn't be as nearly a consistent show as it is, but I have yet to dislike or be disappointed by the show 44 episodes in. Not every element of it works, but the overall performances and writing are so strong, that the little grievances pale in comparison to the whole. So don't make the mistake of letting the title throw you off the way it threw me off. Give Jane The Virgin a shot. You just might fall in love.

Superstore Has A Lot Of Fun With A Terrible Spokesman Scandal

I have to admit Spokesman Scandal caught me off guard. I was aware that it would involve a spokesman scandal of some kind but if you were to ask me what that scandal would be before watching the episode, I never would've guessed "the spokesman is a serial killer cannibal". It's an incredibly dark set-up for an episode of a network comedy. Incredibly dark. Yet Spokesman Scandal manages to be the funniest episode of Superstore yet, by using the insanity of its premise as a springboard for character stories that are a lot of fun.

Having the scandal be the set-up for the two main stories tonight instead of being a major story itself is a smart call. The crimes of Kyle the Cloud (portrayed by Nate Torrence who is unnerving enough to be believable as both a superstore spokesman and an unhinged serial killer cannibal in his brief screentime) are awful and are depicted as such. It doesn't stop the characters from making morbid jokes about the situation as people are prone to do in real life, but it's something that could make Superstore seem callous and cruel if the whole episode was about the characters making light of these crimes. It also could've given the episode an overly wacky detached feel by focusing on a character we've never seen or heard of before tonight instead of our regulars. Instead Kyle and the scandal fade into the background after the first act, letting the show get in a bunch of dark jokes before letting the character stories take over.

Glenn gets a chance to take the lead tonight as the person most shaken by the revelations about Kyle the Cloud (who is actually named Daniel, but gets referred to as Kyle by all the characters so that's what we're going with here). Glenn is convinced the allegations against him can't be true because he met Kyle once and he seemed like a good guy. Glenn, like most of us, wants to trust in his instincts and believe he'd be able to tell if someone was a terrible person. Unfortunately his confidence in Kyle's innocence is shattered when a dungeon where Kyle videotaped his crimes is found. The discovery of bags of marijuana at the scene gives Glenn new faith though and he convinces himself that Kyle wasn't really a cannibal and that he only did those things because he was on marijuana. It's a very misguided and uneducated perception of how marijuana works that feels like it was ripped from Reefer Madness but it feels very in-character that Glenn would latch onto this idea rather than admit he was wrong about Kyle. When Amy and Jonah inform him that's not how it works though and that they'd be surrounded by killers otherwise, Glenn becomes horrified at the idea that he can't even trust his feelings about his own employees and authorises Dina to conduct drug testing, despite having always been against it. It's an extreme decision and one Glenn is uneasy about making, but if he was that wrong about Kyle, what does he really know about his employees? It's a much more nuanced, effective story for Glenn than his morning after pill dilemma last week and Mark Mckinney portrays every step of Glenn's crisis of confidence expertly and humorously. Ultimately, Amy is able to convince him through a very analogy-filled speech that he knows the things that matter about his employees and it restores confidence in him to the point where he halts the testing and pours all the urine down the sink where Sandra's coffee mug is. It's a funny conclusion that ties in Glenn's story with the much goofier Amy/Jonah story in a great way.

Amy gets to cut loose and have some fun this week in a way she hasn't been able to do since sometime in season 1 and it's delightful, especially after all she's had to deal with in the first three episodes. America Ferrara is great at playing the sadness and anger at the core of Amy, but she's also great at playing the mischievous, playful side who lets herself get sucked into a dare war with Jonah instead of doing the tedious work of removing Kyle's visage from the store. Feldman and Ferrara have a natural easy-flowing chemistry and it helps make the escalating series of dares charming and delightful. The dares are also quite funny with Amy singing the theme song to Charles in Charge over the store intercom being the highlight (Although the two of them passing off their kayaking on wheels through the store to Jeff as product testing comes close to topping it). They even tie into Glenn's story in hilarious fashion when Amy's inspiring speech is dependant on metaphors and similes chosen by Jonah who's in the background lifting up objects for her to incorporate into her speech. There's an unspoken flirtiness at the heart of these dares though that lies dormant until the end when Jonah strolls through the store wearing only an apron and comes face to face with Adam, who is picking Amy up to go home for the day. Adam isn't angry about a basically naked Jonah talking to his wife (Though he thinks Jonah is gay, which probably explains his response being more confusion than anything else.), but his appearance is a reminder that the Will They/Won't They between Amy and Jonah is still heavily on the Won't They side. The show handles this well too. There's no melodramatic look of longing from Amy or Jonah as they go their separate ways and no real indication that they have actual feelings for each other, just the presence of Adam (who is actually able to show a bit of a softer side this time rather than the inconsiderateness that's marked his last two appearances) to remind us that as much fun as Amy and Jonah have at work, at the end of the day Amy is still married.

Amy and Jonah might still have a long way to go before possibly finding love with each other, but Mateo's love life is on much better ground after this week. The scandal allows for the return of Jeff, as delightfully normal as ever and follows up on his possible pass at Mateo a couple weeks back. It follows a familiar pattern as Mateo attempts to prove to Garrett and the rest that he isn't imagining things and that Jeff is interested in him but his efforts prove for naught (save for a commendation for cleaning up lots of vomit that's going in the wrong file when Mateo mistakes a request for his employee number as a request for his phone number). At least until the end when Jeff asks him out on a date and Mateo turns out to have been right all along. He can't say anything about it to Garrett (Jeff swears him to secrecy since a manager shouldn't be dating an employee), but he has a date for the night. It's a small story, but an amusing one and the beat at the end where Mateo actually has to think before saying yes because he hasn't thought about if he likes Jeff is a welcome one.

Ultimately Spokesman Scandal is such a success because it focuses not on the lurid details of Kyle the Cloud's murder spree (although the details we do get are appropriately horrifying), but on the characters and how they try to get through a normal day that happens to feature news of a serial killer very connected to the company they work for. It allows the darkness to be funny and gives the characters a chance to just have fun after the turmoil and issues of the first few episodes, while advancing their arcs ever so slightly. In the end, it's another promising sign that early in this second season, Superstore has found it's stride.

Memorable Moments

-Garrett, Sandra, and Cheyenne also had a really slight story that I didn't find the space for in the main review. Basically Cheyenne is talking about her baby too much, Garrett and Sandra get sick of it and Cheyenne understands when they tell her. Garrett is less understanding when he hears he talks about his new sneakers too much though. It's funny enough and notable for letting Sandra be part of a story for once, which makes sense because she's probably the first supporting player to get bumped up to regular if Superstore lasts long enough to do that.

-Best Interstitial: I didn't really notice any interstitial scenes this episode, so I'm giving this to the beat of the customer who takes a urine sample and keeps walking when Dina informs them they've taken urine.

-"We pretty much still have the market cornered on serial killing. It's one of the last non-integrated industries."- Jonah explains white person craziness to Garrett.

-The opening sequence of everyone trying to turn off the TV telling the news of Kyle the Cloud's crimes only to spread it to every TV in the store and have the audio play over the speakers is a great example of comic escalation and Glenn leading a sing-along of "Cry, Ezekiel Cry" was equally great.

-Jeff addresses the situation to the staff. "As most of you may have heard, our company spokesman has been accused of some improprieties." "By improprieties, you mean killing and eating people, right? Or is there a tax evasion thing going on as well?" "The killing and eating. I can't speak to his tax situation."

-Jeff's terrible experience in the hotel Corporate has put him in continues to be a great running gag. "Hi, yes, while I have you on the phone, I wanted to ask you why the curtains were gone when I got back last night. I'd prefer to have them."

-Garrett doesn't like baby or dog photos but he can't resist pictures of Sandra's dogs dressed like Ewoks.

-Dina notices Glenn smelling employees. "If you're smelling the workers, you gotta smell Elias. On Thursdays he smells like ham. It's hilarious."

-Also Dina humming the Charles in Charge theme is a good callback to Amy's performance (which she also does in Spanish).

Jason Mendoza Wants To Be True To Himself In The Good Place

While I was watching the first two episodes of The Good Place one of the biggest questions I had was how the show would handle Jianyu (Manny Jacinto) going forward. Blabbermouth Tahani having a silent monk as a soulmate was a funny concept but one that seemed like it was quickly going to go stale. The end of last week's episode however revealed that there was much more to Jianyu than had been let on and Jason Mendoza takes that revealing and runs with it, giving Jacinto an excellent showcase for his comedic chops and making "Jianyu" a much better and funnier character in the process.

Now that he can talk, we learn a ton of information about Jianyu this week. His name is Jason for starters, he's Filipino not Taiwanese like everyone thinks he is. ("Heaven is so racist", he bemoans), and he was an amateur EDM DJ from Jacksonville, along with being an amateur hip-hop back-up dancer and body spray inventor who made money selling fake drugs to college kids. He's also shallow, simple-minded and not that bright, only managing to avoid detection through dumb luck (The first thing Michael brings up when he arrives is the vow of silence the real Jianyu is under so he latches onto that). Now the "dumb guy" is a classic sitcom staple that Good Place creator Mike Schur is quite familiar with (and which he practically perfected on Parks and Rec with Andy Dwyer), and Jason with his perpetually stoned bro vibe, lazy pronunciation (there's much confusion when he shows Eleanor his "bud hole"), and low ambition (His dream was to DJ all around Florida) is a fresh variation on the archetype. Jason also gives The Good Place a purely comedic character they can lean on for quick, fast punchlines, something the show could definitely use more of in this early-going period. Sure enough, Jason Mendoza is probably the funniest episode of The Good Place so far, with lots of humour derived from the goofy dumbness of Jason and Jacinto's stellar delivery and mannerisms. It turns out last week's "I'm freaking out homie!" was just the beginning of Jason's charm. Jason Mendoza is also probably the most tension-filled episode of The Good Place so far, as Jason proves to be the biggest threat to Eleanor's secret yet.

See Jason is driven by desire and his key desire is to always be himself. Flashbacks (the first time the flashback aren't about Eleanor and hopefully not the last) take us back to Jason's DJ days where he gets a chance to fill in for DJ Acidcat, wearing a big helmet and pushing a button every night while the real deal is elsewhere. It's more recognition than he's probably ever gotten as Mr. Music, the DJ (best DJ name ever, by the way) but it's not good enough for him so he unmasks, plays one of his own beats and gets promptly booed and pelted with garbage. Sued for breach of contract, Jason decides never to pretend to be someone else again, lest it cost him his dreams in life and then blows up DJ Acidcat's speedboat in retaliation. Now though he finds himself forced to be someone he isn't once again, with his "bud hole" (described as 12-Year-Old Boy meets 13-Year-Old Boy by Eleanor) the only place he can be himself. This isn't sitting right with him though and coming clean to Eleanor has made him decide to stop pretending and be himself again. It doesn't matter how much danger this puts himself, Eleanor, and Chidi in or how it might affect Tahani (still sad about her inability to click with who she thinks is his soulmate). Jason just can't take being Jianyu for one more minute so at The grand opening of The Good Plates (a new restaurant where you're served your favourite dish in the world.) where Michael and Tahani are under the impression that Jianyu has gained the courage to start talking, he decides to start talking about his real favourite meal (Jianyu's is a block of tofu), the buffalo wings at Stupid Nick's Wing Dump. It's an act that's understandable and relatable. No one wants to be someone they're not after all, but it's also incredibly selfish and dangerous. So to protect herself, Eleanor does something equally understandable, but equally selfish and dangerous.

Destroying the cake the chef at The Good Plates has spent all week working on is the first time since arriving that Eleanor does a bad thing on purpose with the intention of creating havoc. It's something she has to do to protect her secret but it doesn't make it right and the consequences reflect that. Selfishness has only begat more selfishness and the sinkhole that results is the most destructive thing she's caused since the storm. She tells Jason she did it to save him from himself but really she did it to save her and she knows it. It hasn't fixed anything either. Jason still wants to be himself, even rejecting Chidi's gracious offer of a spot in his Ethics class. This is when The Good Place flips the traditional lesson of "Be true to yourself" on it's head. Jason wants to be himself, but "himself" sucks. "Himself" is a selfish person who puts his desires above everyone else. Sometimes you need to change and become a better version of yourself. Eleanor has been trying to better herself, but she hasn't been giving it as much effort as she should or given Chidi the appreciation he deserves. It's when she sees Jason reject Chidi's offer that she gains a new appreciation for what Chidi has been doing and is able to recognise that they both need to be better, even if it's not as easy as just being themselves. This allows her to give Jason the wake-up call he needs to accept Chidi's help and learn "ethnics" as he calls it. It's not going to be easy and Jason's "dumb guy" status makes him a much tougher student than Eleanor but it's worth a try to be someone better than himself.

It might be too-little too-late for Eleanor and Jason though as the damage their actions led to in the restaurant proves more significant than initially thought. Michael assures Tahani that the sinkhole should fix itself within a few days but the end of the episode shows it's still growing. Eleanor was able to clean up the garbage storm and make Tahani's plant go from on fire to blooming but this sinkhole won't be as easily fixed it seems. This is an interesting but welcome note for the episode to end on because although it's not a huge twist like the Jason reveal, it doesn't let us feel at ease with how things are. Just like the aftermath of a cruel act in life, the danger has subsided but the damage remains and it's not going to magically fix itself. It'll be interesting to see what it will take to fix it.

Memorable Moments

-Tahani and Michael spend the episode getting ready for the restaurant opening, dealing with Tahani's soulmate issues (Michael assures her that her problems are normal and most soulmates take a few months to click) and deciding to help keep the neighbourhood together. It doesn't do much beyond keep the story in motion but that's fine. Hopefully they'll have more to do next week though.

-William Jackson-Harper continues to delight as Chidi. His shock and "You broke Jianyu" reaction to seeing Jason in all his douchey glory has to be seen to be believed.

-The "bud hole" confusion was funnier the first time than the second. Hopefully that's a one-episode gag and not a recurring thing.

-Michael drops an interesting fact. "Any place or thing in the universe can be up to 104% perfect. That's how you got Beyoncé."

-If we don't see more of the restaurant, I at least hope we see more of Chef Patricia, a very intense woman who angrily yells positive statements and remarks ("Change the floor plan an hour before opening?! Of course! The more the merrier!").

-The other Eleanor's favourite meal was the hunger strike she went on to protest Bolivian sex trafficking so our Eleanor doesn't get a meal at The Good Plates.

-Michael reassures someone who fell in the sink hole. "Glenn, stay calm. We're gonna get you out of there. And we'll put your soup in the fridge so it won't go to waste. I know that may not be your number one concern right now, but-" "It was up there. It's real good soup."

-Jason has two questions about the ethics class. "When are football tryouts and does this school have a prom?" This won't be easy.