Welcome to Last Night on TV, our new daily column that looks back at what happened on television the night before. If we’re going to stay up all night and watch TV, we might as well talk about it the next morning.
Last night, The Flash returned from its midseason break. New Girl went downtown for some jury duty. Brooklyn Nine Nine quarantines its most magic duo. And we stretch the rules of this brand new column and talk about a two-day old episode of Superstore. I started this column and I’ll do what I want!
The Flash Crushes The Dreams of Team Patty
The inevitable is what kills me. From the moment the episode kicked off with Barry’s dream about losing Patty, I knew that Team Patty was headed for disaster. And I’ve been on Team Patty since the beginning. It was naive to think that Barry Allen would be allowed to remain happy and un-tortured by his love for Iris West for any significant amount of time. Even though this is The Flash and it doesn’t play by the same hyper-dour rules as Arrow, it was foolish to think that happiness was in the cards for our favorite Speedster.
“Potential Energy” is one of those gut-check from a mile away episodes, but it was also a pretty lukewarm return. The midseason finale didn’t leave us with any big cliffhangers, but it did create some new threads. We needed to check in on Barry and Patty, we needed to see Joe trying to get to know his son Wally, and we needed to keep track of Wells’ Zoom-connection to keep the season’s larger narrative moving forward. It also gave us a single episode villain that was just threatening enough to be useful in the episode’s biggest goal (the heart-ripping destruction of Barry and Patty’s relationship), but whose powers were relatively easily defeated by a Cisco throwaway line. It’s good to have Cisco back. Caitlin and Jay Garrick seem cozy (that ought to end well). And West Family 2.0 is interesting because we know where Wally West’s story is headed. I love hanging out with Team Flash.
The problem is that the episode is a parlor trick that we see coming. It lulled us into a sense of comfort. Maybe Barry will tell Patty that he’s The Flash and everything will be fine. Then it turns around and rips away Patty Spivot. Poor Team Patty. We were so happy and confident. Now we have nothing to look forward to (until the preview of next week’s episode, which includes the return of Reverse Flash!)
New Girl Solves Its Jess Problem
For three episodes to open season 5, New Girl has expended a lot of effort dealing with its number one problem: Zooey Deschanel was pregnant in real life, but the character Jess is not. They’ve found a number of clever ways to deal with this. Jess has been holding things. She has been sitting down a lot. Plenty of close-ups. But at some point, the show had to deal with the fact that Zooey Deschanel was going to actually have a baby.
Which brings us to this week’s episode, “Jury Duty.” The show is going to use Jess’ sequestered jury situation to explain why she will be gone for several episodes. At some point the show will introduce Megan Fox as a placeholder, but next week’s episode is called “No Girl,” so maybe not right away.
What does work smoothly this week is the B-story, involving Nick and Cece butting heads over the state of affairs in the loft. We’re seeing the continued fallout from season 4’s big finishing move (Schmidt and Cece’s engagement). It’s one thing to try to win over Big Mama P. It’s another for Schmidt and Nick to have disagreements about how to run their bar. Cohabitation is another thing entirely. The Loft is a sacred place, as we see in the scene that involves the explanation of the loft contract. It makes for a nice diversion, one that leads to a heartfelt moment between Schmidt and denim, while the show is doing the busy work of sending Jess off for a few weeks. The show is no clear of its biggest challenge and the lack of Jess will undoubtedly propel the season forward. Plenty of sitcoms create episodes that exist in a vacuum, but New Girl seems to flourish when it has episode-to-episode momentum. The Jess Problem was real. Now it’s solved. For the first time this season, I’m anxious to see what happens next.
Schmidt-ism of the Week: “How does a man stand up to the sunset?”
Brooklyn Nine-Nine Finds Magic in The Mumps
Brooklyn Nine-Nine has what I like to call magic pairings. There’s a lot of comedic equity in the more natural pairings on the show — Jake and Amy, Jake and Boyle, Holt and Gina — but there are two specific pairings that have a little extra magic: Holt and Jake, and Rosa and Boyle. This episode delivers both in splendid fashion, with an A story that involves Jake showing compassion for Holt’s loneliness and doing something so dumb about it that they both end up quarantined. The B story involves the melting of Rosa’s motorcycle helmet heart. Both of these get a little connective tissue with another round of Terry Takes On Responsibility while Gina makes fun of him.
What’s most important is that this is the fifth straight episode that hasn’t had a big to-do about Jake and Amy. This is the kind of balance I’ve been hoping the show would find. Because I enjoy the Amy and Jake relationship. Andy Samberg and Melissa Fumero have excellent chemistry. So without some major consequences, there doesn’t appear to be a way for the show to split the pair up. So we get episodes like “9 Days,” focused on the other relationships with a little bit of Jake and Amy magic sprinkled in for good measure. Also, “Balthazar is a thirsty bitch” is a line that I’ve always hoped I’d hear come out of Andre Braugher’s mouth, even if I didn’t know it. Consider this episode a deeply repressed dream come true.
This Week in Boyle: “Real men don’t cry… for more than 3 days.”
Superstore Airs on Monday Nights, We Think
This is a Monday show, and henceforth I’ll be covering it in the Tuesday edition of this column. But this week, I’d like to throw a little praise at Superstore. It seems to be an underrated and under-the-radar little comedy that I’m enjoying. It has a lot working against it. The terribly trite setting of inside a retail store. The trappings of a very generic and repetitive comedic rhythm. But there’s a lot that it gets right. Having worked in numerous retail environments over the course of my still-young life, the most fun part of this show is the little interstitial moments. Random customers doing strange things. These are interspersed between the story we’re supposed to be following. Kudos to showrunner Justin Spitzer, alum of The Office, for finding the little moments that make working in a retail store somewhat entertaining (when it’s not completely depressing).
The other thing Superstore has going for it is a charming cast. It’s akin to Chuck in that it has a lot of personality that supersedes otherwise stale plot devices. This week’s episode was all about the store being held emotionally hostage by the prospect of a secret shopper. But the character work from America Ferrera and her co-star Ben Feldman turned it into an interesting little arc about ambition and the fear of failure. Ferrera’s performance is especially strong. There’s humanity and empathy in her delivery. It’s not all just a long-running People of Walmart joke. Though there’s a little bit of that, too, just for fun.
WTF Commercial of the Night
For the first time, I saw a trailer for The Boy. I’m not sure how this snuck by me. I’m sure that Rob Hunter will be disappointed that I’m just now learning about its existence. Though now that I know of it, I have to ask: “What the hell is this?”
GIF of the Night
“This is Balthazar.”
What did you watch last night? Tell us in the comments below.
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