The British Are Coming! (Reviewing BBC's 'Sherlock,' 'Death Comes to Pemberley,' and 'Doctor Who')

I’ve only been to London once on a layover to Italy. And though it was dreary and cold, and though I had been on a plane overnight, was both jetlagged and probably smelled, I loved every minute of the bit of the city that I got to experience. I’m an English nerd – I love literary history and everything that entails. So it’s still a dream of mine, someday, to return to London. But until that time comes, I’ll pretend that I am cultured by watching as much BBC/BBC America as I can. 

And watch I do. So much so that I decided to compile a post of three BBC series that have infiltrated my life: the influential, addicting sci-fi series Doctor Who, the intense and captivating Sherlock, and the mini-series based on Jane Austen’s beloved characters, Death Comes to Pemberley. So I thought that I would take the opportunity to reflect on each of these, now that they have ended their seasons/series and encourage you all – if you aren’t – to watch. There are still other BBC dramas I have yet to watch but desperately need to (looking at you, Orphan Black) as well and I look forward to enriching my life with more beautiful British people soon.

Grab your jammie dodgers, a cuppa, and practice your best British accent because we’re going to talk about three delightful series starting… now!

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Jenn's Pick: Top 10 Episodes of "Parks and Recreation"

Sometimes, peer pressure is a good thing. It is because of peer pressure – because of everyone talking about and flailing over and quoting the series – that I started marathoning Parks and Recreation. I had seen some episodes, of course, because the show is on directly after Community, but I usually only half-watched at best. I decided that until I could give my full attention to the show, I would hold off on a marathon. So when I began the series, I already anticipated enjoying it. I didn’t expect that I would love it as much as I do, nor that I would find it to be one of the most positive, cohesive, astounding little comedies ever.

Parks and Recreation recently celebrated their 100th episode, which is an amazing feat in and of itself. In honor of their 100th episode, I decided that I would count down ten of my absolute favorite Parks episodes of all time. As I compiled my list, I found it to be quite difficult. Reading through the episode names and descriptions, I was constantly struck with “oh but I LOVED this episode” or “but this one had THAT scene in it,” making my narrowing to ten a troublesome feat. After much inward debate (and a smidge of cheating on my part), I managed to compile my list.

So grab your waffles and your Li’l Sebastian plushy, because we’re about to count down my favorite Parks and Recreation episodes!

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5x05 "Geothermal Escapism" (The End of an Era)

"Geothermal Escapism"

Original Airdate: January 23, 2014

When I was a kid, I moved around a few times. I remember, quite vividly, being an elementary school student and sitting in my class on the last day I would be there. Right before my mom picked me up, my teacher and the rest of my elementary school class gathered around my desk and handed me a present. It was a book – Where the Sidewalk Ends – and every member of the class, including my teacher, had signed it and wrote me a sweet note. It made me cry when I was handed it.

I just moved this summer and I still have that signed book in my library.

The fact of the matter is that moving is hard when you have roots somewhere. My biggest move was from Pennsylvania to Florida when I was thirteen. I hated everything about my parents’ decision to uproot us. I resented them. I was leaving my friends and the only home I had ever known up north. I thought I would never adjust. Looking back on it, I remember we moved down to Florida in September. In October, I was still instant messaging with my friends up north, sitting at home while I should have been trick-or-treating with people in my neighborhood. I tried desperately to cling to the last bit of normalcy I knew. I had said goodbye, but I hadn’t REALLY said goodbye and until I did, I couldn’t really come to terms with moving on.

I hate saying goodbye, but that’s what “Geothermal Escapism” urged us to do. It thrust us back into the crazy world of Greendale, where seemingly insignificant games acquire massive stakes within seconds and the games always somehow manage to teach you about yourself and life. Troy is preparing to leave Greendale, but Abed wants to spend the day sending him off in style. Namely, he wants the group to participate in one, huge game of “Hot Lava” with the entire school. It’s all fun and games until Abed reveals that the prize is a comic book valued at $50,000. Then, Greendale descends into madness quicker than you can say The Heart of Darkness. Britta, meanwhile, is insistent that Abed’s game and the group’s cheerful going-away party are just ways to deny the fact that Troy is really leaving. She needs to not just play therapist in this episode – she needs to play REALIST and remind everyone that they need to grieve the loss of their friend from the group just like they grieved Pierce.

I spent the majority of the episode believing Britta to be right: that Abed was really playing the game so that he wouldn’t have to face reality, as he’s done so many times before (remember “Contemporary Impressionists”? Or “Virtual Systems Analysis”?), but I was wrong. And Britta was, too. But that revelation will be explained and elaborated on once I’ve recapped the rest of the episode.

So hop up onto the desks and tables and chairs (you might want to bring your laptop or phone to finish this review) and head beneath the cut because the floor is lava!

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New Girl 3x13 "Birthday" (You Are Who Loves You)

"Birthday"

Original Airdate: January 21, 2014

At this moment, it is exactly four days until my 25th birthday. So, naturally, I struggled over what to do for this occasion. I haven’t really been into throwing birthday parties since before I turned 21, but 25 is too momentous of an occasion to forgo celebration altogether. Since my birthday is on a Sunday, I decided that I would spend the weekend celebrating with the people I love – Friday night would be devoted to a girls’ fancy birthday dinner at an Italian restaurant; Saturday would be brunch and the farmer’s market with my roommate; and Sunday would be spent with my family, enjoying a home-cooked meal.

(I’m Italian, if you couldn’t tell by the fact that all of those celebrations revolve around food.)

I’m a natural-born planner, an annoyingly type-A personality, but I’ve never had high expectations when it comes to birthday celebrations. I’ve never desired a surprise party; I haven’t ever expected my friends or relatives to plot some elaborate spectacle. Even when I was dating, I didn’t expect my boyfriend to do much more than take me to a nice dinner and spend time with me. I’m a lot different from Jessica Day, I suppose, in that regard. “Birthday” is a pretty obvious title: New Girl’s most recent episode centers around the woman’s birthday and Nick’s seeming lack of planning anything for her. We know, of course, that he does have something special planned and the rest of the group is helping him. But Jess is out of the loop, and it actually shines a light on her as a character as a result.

You see, Jess has high expectations for people in her life and people in general. She doesn’t just see people for who they are. No, she sees them for who she believes they can become. Jess admits to setting the standards high, which leads to her disappointment quite often. That’s why, at the beginning of the episode, she tells Cece and Rose that she spends every year by herself at the movies on her birthday. She always expects too much from people and – inevitably – they let her down. So she decides that it’s best if she doesn’t give them the opportunity to. The opening scene reminded me a lot of one from Ben and Kate (the show is smiling down on us from TV Heaven), where Ben laments Kate having to spend every birthday alone at her favorite diner. Kate, bless her, says that she was never really alone and it’s revealed to the audience that Maddie was always with her during every birthday she celebrated. It was a sweet, touching sentiment and one that I couldn’t help but think of as Jess explained how she attends movies alone on her birthday as well.

Jess, of course, is never truly alone either. But she doesn’t realize that quite yet. So before we discuss the fact that I cried for the last few minutes of “Birthday,” let’s recap the plot, shall we?

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5x04 "Cooperative Polygraphy" (The Lying Game)

"Cooperative Polygraphy"

Original Airdate: January 16, 2014

My friends and I sat around on Tuesday night and discussed our lives, and then the conversation turned more personal. They’re a close group of friends so we had an intense heart-to-heart about how much we lie to ourselves and others on a daily basis. As the room grew silent, we began to ponder exactly when the last time we lied was and what that lie was about. Moreover, we began debating what constituted a lie – if we chose a major to appease our parents and were now stuck in a job we never really were passionate about to begin with, did that constitute a lie? What we found was this: more often than not, our lies are white lies or lies of omission. We lie to our bosses, feigning excitement or interest or else pretending that we can handle ONE more project when really we’re five minutes away from a nervous breakdown. Our lies of omission come in the form of half-true text messages. We tell our friends that we have “plans,” when those plans really include take-out food, sweatpants, and Netflix. And it seems that we can’t quite avoid telling these tiny, little lies. It makes us human and it makes the study group in Community’s latest bottle episode “Cooperative Polygraphy” human, too.

The study group has been together for five years now, which would make you think that they probably know every annoying tick, every dirty secret, and nearly everything about each other. But when I think about my own friendships, even those that I have had for eleven years, I realize that I don’t know everything about the people I’m closest to. There are still secrets that people keep buried because of shame or guilt or laziness and though those often bubble to the surface after years of friendship, sometimes they merely simmer. Unless, of course, you’re in the episode “Cooperative Polygraphy.” With Pierce’s recent passing, the study group has been instructed that they each are being investigated for the potential murder of Pierce Hawthorne. Pierce wasn’t murdered, of course, but that doesn’t stop him from hiring Mr. Stone to hook each member of the group up to a polygraph. If the study group members pass the test, they are bequeathed a part of Pierce’s million dollar estate.

(Understandably, the study group decides to go through with the test.)

What ensues, of course, is not only chaotic but also painful, like every good bottle episode. When I reviewed “Cooperative Calligraphy,” this is what I said regarding bottle episodes like Community’s and Friends’:

What is beneficial and integral in bottle episodes is the escalation of emotions between characters. When characters such as the study group or the friends from Central Perk are unconfined, they are a lot less likely to confront each other about things that they have personally buried. See, the benefit of life is that we are usually free to walk away from people who irritate us and to escape situations where we just barely are able to control our tongues. But bottle episodes are not the case. These episodes force characters into a room or an apartment. The confined space and the emotional stability of the characters seem to crumble (as seen by the dissolving of the study group in Community and the escalation of Ross’ anger and the Joey/Chandler fight in Friends). 

So is the point of a bottle episode then merely to watch characters slowly turn into Lord of the Flies? To watch as a group of people dissolves slowly into chaos and madness until they blow up at each other? No, though tension is an important part of the bottle episode format, it’s not necessarily the point of it. What the study group learns and what our friends from Friends learn is pretty simple – they need each other, regardless of if they’re searching for a purple pen or trying to get ready for an important event.

The point of a bottle episode is to escalate tension, but behind that tension is a purpose: to, as I said above, expose the most vulnerable, agitated, weak sides of their character and yet ensure that they still learn from and love each other. The study group reveals a LOT to one another in the episode, whether begrudgingly or accidentally and it pushes them apart for a while before Jeff tries (feebly) to tie the threads of purpose together. But before we understand exactly why it is important for the study group to air their dirty laundry and WHY Pierce wanted them to do so before he hit them with an emotional, forceful blow, let’s discuss the plot of the episode, shall we?

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New Girl 3x12 "Basketsball" (You've Got a Friend in Me)

"Basketsball"

Original Airdate: January 14, 2014

Every Sunday morning, I teach fourth and fifth grade students at my church. They’re all quite adorable, but tend to become problematic when they lose focus (which happens a lot) and distract their friends (which happens a lot). One Sunday morning, I was playing Jenga with this little girl named Hailey who is a self-proclaimed tomboy. She hates anything girly or frilly and was complaining to me about how her mother was going to make her wear a dress and go to the symphony in a few weeks. Soon, another little girl – fresh from being dropped off by her parents – asked Hailey if she could play Jenga with her. The little girl agreed and then, out of the blue, the newcomer asked: “Do you like dragons?” Hailey’s eyes lit up and she excitedly said: “Yes! I love dragons!” And the two girls were inseparable for the remainder of the morning.

As I walked away from their exchange, I was struck with the notion that making friends as a child is as simple as asking someone if they like dragons. Boom! Friendship immediately forged. It delighted me that those two little girls didn’t bring their own baggage or expectations into a friendship. Their connection was so simple and, moreover, it was EASY. I thought a lot about friendships later that afternoon and how different it is when you make friends as adults. We don’t bring that same innocence and energy into our relationships. It’s a lot more difficult to befriend someone as an adult than it is to make friendships on the schoolyard.

“Basketsball” is an episode that is primarily dedicated to the idea that sometimes it IS really difficult to forge a friendship, especially if they only see you as their friend’s girlfriend. In our New Girl episode this week, we found out that Jess was struggling to make a connection with Coach, even though he moved into the loft months ago. Jess wants people to like her and I loved that “Basketsball” was a return to season one Jess (rightfully so, as it focuses on the fact that Jess wormed her way into friendships with Nick, Schmidt, and Winston as well over the years), who is well-meaning and endearing and slightly awkward. I love that the series has learned that it doesn’t have to lean on these qualities too hard, but that they’re also inseparable from Jess as an individual and often manifest themselves whenever she’s feeling particularly insecure. Nick and Jess spend the episode at odds in the actual best way possible, while Jess forges a fake bond with Coach over his favorite basketball team, the Detroit Pistons.

Elsewhere in the episode, Schmidt has been recruited to train a new (elderly) hire at work, and Winston shadows his friend in an attempt to decide what he wants his new career path to be. (Cece, meanwhile, is manning the bar in Nick’s absence which provides us with some non-awkward Schmidt/Cece scenes and some adorable Winston/Cece ones. I’m quite enjoying the way they’re choosing to integrate Cece into more central storylines with other members of the loft. It’s a nice way for the New Girl writers to ensure she’s a part of the ensemble, rather than an outlying piece of it.)

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5x03 "Basic Intergluteal Numismatics" (The Game Continues to Be Afoot)

"Basic Intergluteal Numismatics"

Original Airdate: January 9, 2014

Community is a show that takes a lot of risks. It’s a series that at any given moment can be a Western or a zombie movie or an action parody. It’s unafraid to be bold and brash and weird and wonderful. And that’s why it has always been endearing to me. It’s this unflinching where other series would flee that has made Community what it is – made it have a cult-like following of individuals who are willing to try everything and anything to save their beloved show. There is, however, one particular element that this series has never quite mastered: romance. Where series like New Girl and Parks and Recreation and The Office (and even recently The Crazy Ones) seem to excel in this department (or at least try their hand), Community often slides into something much worse than failure. They simply fall onto this trajectory of doing nothing at all.

I love Jeff and Annie as a pairing and I have loved the idea of them since “Football, Feminism and You.” And though I truly did love “Basic Intergluteal Nuministics” and (most of) their dynamic throughout… well, flirtation and romantic games have expiration dates and I’m fearing that the writers are attempting to draw out Jeff and Annie’s for as long as humanly possible. When Liz Meriwether was interviewed after “Cooler,” she said this when asked why she chose to have Nick and Jess finally kiss and it has always truly stuck with me and made her stand out as a showrunner:

It just felt right. I mean we’ve sort of gotten to a place where it felt like organically in their relationship something like this could happen. I mean, we spent the season watching them get closer and closer as friends and then, the original draft of “Cooler” didn’t have them kissing and then we, you know, it was a really good script and we went to table as a draft of the script without them kissing and then we just all sort of looked at each other and felt like it sort of felt right. It also felt like if we didn’t have them kiss, it was kind of like pulling our punches; like we were not really being true to the characters in this moment.

New Girl had spent its first season and first half of the second season exploring the possibility of a Nick and Jess romance. The idea first percolated in “Cece Crashes” and continued to be explored throughout episodes like “Injured” and “See Ya,” finally culminating in the second season episode “Fluffer” where Nick and Jess confronted their chemistry. The New Girl writers and Liz knew one thing: if they were to be true to who they knew these characters to be, eventually they would HAVE to address those feelings and either move on or grow together. So they took a risk with “Cooler” and haven’t looked back since. It would have been easy for the team to try and keep their audience guessing for another year – to write moments of tension and romantic chemistry that ultimately amounted to nothing. But that, they knew, would be detrimental to their characters and would alienate part of their fanbase. They knew that even if they failed, they had to TRY to write Nick and Jess in a romantic light in order to be true to the characters. Because after two years of living together and chemistry simmering and long looks and stolen glances, I think Liz and her team knew that Nick and Jess WOULD have had no choice but to do something about that chemistry.

I have to hand it to the Jeff and Annie shippers: they’re a devoted bunch (I, of course, being one of them) and they’re resilient. Even in the worst of circumstances (“Anthropology 101”), this section of the fandom manages to keep their faith in the couple alive. And I believe that the Community writers are aware that their fandom is split into these factions of shippers. I KNOW they are aware of this. And to appease Jeff/Annie fans, they continue to write scenes and episodes tinged with romantic chemistry because Joel McHale and Alison Brie work so well together. “Basic Intergluteal Nuministics” dances around the “Jeff and Annie of it all” without giving us much progression but also without demeaning Annie as a naïve schoolgirl or OVERLY emphasizing the age difference/creepy factor of their relationship (the word “creepy” is mentioned which irks me, but I’m sure I’ll rant about that momentarily). Additionally, while it doesn’t seek to resolve their chemistry or make any firm decision regarding their relationship, it DOES provide evidence of growth and some great parallelism between both “Conspiracy Theories and Interior Design” and “Basic Lupine Urology.” I have to commend Erik Sommers on his work, because while those above paragraphs may give the indication that I did not care for the episode, I quite enjoyed it. I enjoy when Jeff and Annie go on adventures together and solve cases. But – and here is the BIG but – I will discuss below while this ultimately is unsatisfying to me not as a shipper but as a lover of character growth and development. The Community writers are NEARLY there, but they’re still hesitant when it comes to completely committing to or developing the show’s romantic element. And whether you ship Jeff/Annie or Duncan/Britta or Troy/Abed for all I know, this unsatisfaction, this not-quite-there element WILL leave a tiny, gerbil-sized void in the series as a whole.

But before we delve too deeply into what was, this week, essentially the Jeff and Annie Show, let’s backtrack and discuss the plot of the episode, shall we?

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