Capsule Reviews: Lola (1961), Safety Last!, Parks and Recreation—Season 1

Lola (Jacques Demy, 1961)

If character dramas unfold in arcs, the lines of the people in Jacques Demy's debut form asymptotes. Demy's New Wave-cum-classical style creates a self-contained world that gives a softly lift haze to reality as characters constantly aim for each other and miss, sometimes passing within mere inches of each other before carrying on or being redirected. The linking of characters—the ennui-ridden Roland and the American sailor looking to stay outside his homeland, the titular dancer and the sweet but equally restless teenager Cécile—only serves to compound and make mutually perpetuating cycles of the sense of missed chances and empty dreams that cool the film's fits of aspirational jauntiness. Roland is the Ghost of Christmas Future of Frankie's desire to stay in France, whose quixotic quest to win Lola's spoken-for heart suggests the endpoint of Roland's own courtship. A spoken-word film has never wanted so badly to be a musical, but everyone's too confused and sad to dance around and sing. Raoul Coutard's cinematography is deftly composed but as antsy and fidgety as the characters, creating a balance between formalism and rawness worthy of the title card's dedication to another master of technical, grim melodrama, Max Ophüls. The camera certainly moves enough to betray aspirations to Ophüls, but Demy accomplishes similar acts of formal rigor on real port city streets, replacing Max's almost clinical touch with more deeply felt longing and obliviousness. Grade: A

Safety Last (Fred C. Newmeyer & Sam Taylor, 1923)

From the opening misdirect—threatening bars and a hanging noose revealed to be a harmless train station—Safety Last! advertises a keen sense of cheek that makes use of Harold Lloyd's perpetual look of having been forced into a situation that, despite his undiluted confidence, exists wholly outside his understanding and, unless you pay attention, his physical capacity. Yet Lloyd, with his anti-Keaton arsenal of beguiling smiles, also demonstrates the hucksterism implanted by his father, and his perpetually unassuming nature masks a capacity to play at levels no less minutely planned and vast as his contemporaries. Lloyd knew how to cater to an audience without letting it come off as condescension, and his eager young worker makes for a more identifiable and empathetic character than Chaplin's pitiable, idealistic Tramp. He'll find a way to push through any moment, turning a pratfall into a desperate rep of push-ups in a flash as if to convince an onlooking crowd that he meant to do that, demonstrating the indefatigable nature of the American spirit, even if he made it look ridiculous.

Lloyd also knew how to set up a gag as well as anyone: that wry open is merely the first of many jokes that call for physical dexterity but work best for their staging and the mad logic of their comic crescendos and expectation-shattering fakeouts. The best of these, of course, is the legendary sequence in which Lloyd, an amateur forced to double for an expert climber, scales a building façade as everything goes wrong to impede him, most famously him falling on a clock hand that then pulls the whole face of it out of the building. And even when he recovers, he gets caught in a damn spring. It's always something. But even the scenes of working life in a department store, with its two-pronged assault of employee-dehumanizing surveillance and rampaging customers engaged into open war for the best deals, show off Lloyd's body language and his ability to frame big scenes with coherent economy. Lloyd may not mine the same thematic depth as Chaplin, nor the technical brilliance of Keaton's setpieces and innovative camera techniques, but he had the purest laughs, and this is one of the few silents where intertitles are almost as funny as the sight gags. Not a hair out of place. Grade: A+

Parks and Recreation—Season 1 (2009)

Granted, the American version of The Office started off weakly too, but it's amazing the Parks and Rec we know and love emerged from this six-episode mid-season replacement. If the first six episodes of The Office's own truncated season felt too tethered to the original, Parks and Recreation feels downright chained to the American Office, an exhibition of Plato's argument against art as being thrice removed from reality, only this is thrice removed from yet more art. The show does manage to ground itself in the intriguing setting of small-town government, and some characters—chiefly Tom and Ron Swanson—are winners from the start. But the rest of its considerably talented cast is largely wasted, and Leslie Knope's laminated Michael Scott copy is too clueless even as Poehler uncomfortably draws on Hillary Clinton-esque ambition that should (and eventually would) come across as bucking gender norms but here plays into the most aggravating types of career-driven women. The last episode represents a notable uptick in quality, but not until the writers came back that fall, armed with feedback they wisely did not ignore, the show soon found its feet and became one of the best shows on TV. Say what you will about NBC (I have), but you've got to admire their confidence in letting not one but three major creative investments pay off despite initially poor results (see also The Office and 30 Rock). Grade: C

Community — Season 2

Community's second season improves so dramatically on the first that it's hard to believe the show was already, pound for pound, the funniest series currently on air. While it lacks the depth and ingenuity of Louie, Community achieves such a rapid-fire rate of jokes that it rises over the current crop of excellent television to be one of the finest shows around. Balancing old-school sitcom narrative style (self-contained episodes of ludicrous adventures) with modern TV storytelling (long arcs of both character and narrative), Community often gets away with having its cake and eating it too. It offers episodes so outlandish that the show often breaks even the loosest connection to reality, yet somehow the show manages to consolidate even something as possibility-shattering as a zombie outbreak into the core story of the study group septet of varying ages and backgrounds that resembles more and more the most touching family on-screen as time goes by.

The previous season ended on an emotional cliffhanger not unlike the second season finale of the American version of The Office.  A confession of love, a physical expression of another kind and various subplots resolved and opened new paths to be explored upon the show's return. From the moment Dan Harmon and his crew get back, they not only follow up on these stories but give unexpected spins on plots headed seemingly in the opposite direction. Where the series got off to a slow start with its first few episodes, the second season wastes no time assessing where it stands, where it needs to go and how it can get there in the strangest, most unorthodox way possible.


Given the alternately episodic and overarching progression of the show, discussion of Community necessarily falls to a focus on standout episodes even as that does not give an adequate overview of the show's more long-term strengths. Besides, it's an invitation to folly, as to talk about every episode of quality would force one to spend some time on each individual entry of this fantastic season, for even its isolated moments of weakness have enough jokes and/or development to make them worth several watches.

But let's talk about some of the finer moments for a sec. After two joke-heavy openers that reestablish this world of madcap humor and poke fun at the existing character relations, "The Psychology of Letting Go" moves away from filling in contextualizing blanks in the characters' stories to truly moving them forward. The death of Pierce's (Chevy Chase) mother prompts change, ironically, in several characters except Pierce, whose piety to a silly cult becomes deeply felt as a coping mechanism as the cynicism of some others sparks internal debates between showing Pierce the painful truth and respecting his means of self-comfort. Capturing the show's ability to turn between emotion and goofiness on a dime is an eerie yet sweet deathbed message recorded by Pierce's mom that ends with a punchline out of left field that turns a choked sob into a barked laugh, and Pierce's own reaction stands perfectly between sadness and comic oblivion.

That small-scale approach is then contrasted with wild genre parodies like "Basic Rocket Science" and "Epidemiology." The former uses a claustrophobic simulator to act out a parody of Apollo 13, while the latter features the aforementioned zombie outbreak at Halloween. In both cases, the writers find clever ways to justify such ridiculous subject matter, not merely as something that could conceivably happen in real life but something that comes about as the direct result of the cheap budget workarounds a failing community college could provide. Ergo, the simulator used in "Basic Rocket Science" is nothing more than an exhibition toy for kids that survived the '80s, inexplicably and hilariously sponsored and programmed by KFC. Such episodes continue the proud tradition of last season's "Modern Warfare" and "Contemporary American Poultry," broad homages that stylistically embody the sort of references that are spoken aloud throughout the series.

No less enticing, however, are the handful of episodes that manage to act out such parodies without going through budget-breaking grandstanding. With the Halloween episode and a two-part return to paintball madness for a finale, Community surely used up a great deal of its allotted money in a few goes, and it finds creative avenues for dealing with other types of film. This often has the added benefit of shifting the focus to character growth to fill the gaps left by bigger stunts. Take "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons," an episode that uses a game of D&D to mock fantasy film but remains firmly within the library study room at all times without anything save good framing and camera movement to give the scenes any kinetic properties. Yet the episode proves not only to bring out some endearing humanity in these sarcastic characters but to develop a side character heretofore used only as a cruel punchline, and the character even enjoys a more prominent (if still tertiary) presence in the remainder of episodes. Likewise, one episode promises to be a full-on parody of Pulp Fiction before it derails almost immediately into a heartfelt dinner conversation between Jeff and Abed slowly revealed to be a parody not of Tarantino but the sort of movie one would never expect to be referenced in a freewheeling pop-culture explosion like Community.

Through it all, we see incremental growth in these people even as they deal with the same struggles that hounded them from the start. Joel McHale continues to sharpen Jeff's prickly warmth by pitting his sarcastic remove against the begrudging realization that the other six are really the only people he has in the world. The writers put Shirley's poison-tinged honey to the test with an unexpected pregnancy that pokes holes in her religious self-righteousness without mockingly pointing out hypocrisy; in the process, we learn more about her as well as the ex-husband whose mythic evil erodes in the face of reality. This nonjudgmental view of Shirley's unwitting contradictions is echoed in her secular foil Britta (Gillian Jacobs), whose feminist and liberal indignation increasingly seem a front for more conservative and harsh views that engender guilt in her. These deeper examinations demonstrate a logical progression, never reinventing characters and using even storytelling clichés like pregnancy to bring about gradual, contextual change.

As such, it's no wonder that the season's brightest light (among stiff competition) is "Cooperative Calligraphy." Though no less self-aware and parodic than the bigger episodes, this self-declared bottle episode uses its constricted setting and commentary on typical television tricks to clarify the shifting dynamics within the group and how those alterations both skew and reaffirm how these characters relate to each other. It even does so by undermining the show's usual tricks for getting out of a hairy emotional situation, knowingly sidestepping what was already feeling stale even as it inserts many of its usual elements such as a Jeff Winger speech, which is inspiring but dovetails off into exasperation and madness to leave the full payoff for later.

I admit I wasn't entirely on-board with everything this season. Pierce's descent into villainy is cartoonish without the tangible emotional payoff that tempers the show's other flights of fancy, and a humanizing touch inserted in the finale seems too small a gesture to combat the vicious unpleasantness Chase (with admitted skill and timing) plumbed in the latter half of the season. Furthermore, a few episodes hedge too closely to preceding half-hours, from an election episode that feels too much like lazy political commentary slapped onto the much-better "Debate 109." Having said that, the two-part finale mines the same basic setup as "Modern Warfare" yet finds a new stylistic inspiration (swapping out action movies for spaghetti Westerns and Star Wars) that makes it no less entertaining.

If Louie uses its episodes to deconstruct life and interpersonal comedy, Community takes the shallower approach of dismantling the funhouse mirror of televisual exaggeration. Nevertheless, its consistency in episode quality and character development make it no less than the third best show on TV after Louie and Breaking Bad. Whether hanging out with Troy and Abed or learning more about the hefty cast of background characters (many of whom openly resent how our leads hog all the attention), Community takes continues to turn what might be detached, self-satisfied hodgepodge of pop culture references into something resolutely sweet, perhaps the best and funniest "hugging and learning" sitcom since The Cosby Show's best days. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to watch a compilation of Donald Glover crying.

The West Wing — Season 6

After the mediocre (at best) fifth season expanded on the worst aspects of Sorkin's time on the show -- overblown storylines, optimism that verged on reality blindness -- and combined them with a sudden lack of clearly defined direction and an inability to maintain a dramatic arc. The new showrunner, John Wells, fumbled the admittedly ludicrous but dramatically tense finale of the fourth season and he spent the rest of the season trying to recover. Eventually, they found themselves in the same position as the last year, with a finale that sacrificed logic for a desperate grab for suspense.

If the central issue of the fifth season was the sudden upswing in major political problems being wrapped up with stupefying expediency, the sixth season of The West Wing hardly inspires much confidence for a return to the unrealistic but at least vaguely plausible political dealing of the show's early years. Setting a new high for Jed Bartlet's capacity as a groundbreaking leader and a new low for understanding of the complexities of international tensions, the writers use the first two episodes to -- I am not kidding -- solve the bitter struggle between Palestine and Israel. There is some small measure taken to acknowledge how absurd this is and how difficult a peace would be to ensure, but after only a few episodes, even the matter of U.S. peacekeepers sent to monitor the situation cease to rate a mention. It is yet another embarrassing development for a show that seems at this point capable only of making plainly clear the thin line between sharply written off-reality and stilted, cockeyed idealism.

But diffusing one of the world's most dangerous time bombs thankfully does not set a precedent for superhuman achievements on Bartlet's part. Instead, it captures, or at least attempts to capture, the uncertainty of a lame-duck session. After winning reelection despite the massive controversy of lying about his multiple sclerosis and then resigning his post for a brief time to hunt for his daughter without emotionally compromising the position of the most powerful man in the world, Bartlet suddenly finds himself staring down his biggest challenge: retirement.

Unfortunately, the ennui and mounting sense of regret for policies left undone spreads to the pacing of the season. The first half of the season drags so badly I feel as if I could have watched two seasons of the show's early years in the same time span. Compounding Bartlet's feelings of being trapped in the office is the blatant metaphor of a sudden onset of advanced MS symptoms, leaving Bartlet paralyzed for a time and wearied for the rest of the episodes. Had this occurred sooner, the paralysis would have carried weight, impeding his bold plans for bettering America. Instead, it only exacerbates the feelings of aimlessness, miring the series in a loop that works like so: Bartlet discusses fatigue, Abigail begins edging into decision-making in full-on Edith Wilson mode, the staff gently grumbles about not doing anything, and everyone misses Leo, who had a hear attack, because why not?

Whatever shrewdness might have motivated the writers to suddenly scale back the sense of accomplishment and fire to the Bartlet administration, this exaggerated nonsense makes the already struggling series unbearable. One episode, involving Bartlet accidentally accepting the flag of the Taiwanese independence movement mere hours before he must deal with the Chinese on economic and diplomatic issues, manages to rival the badness of the fifth season's gimmick episode "Access" by simply being bad within canon. In some ways, that's even worse than "Access." (And what the hell was with that officious, and nonsensically British, guy down in archives?). Another story of note includes Josh lightly hitting a Prius while test-driving a gas-guzzling SUV, setting off the dumbest media frenzy in the history of Beltway echo-chamber frenzies. This laziness can be seen all over the place, even in minor details such as dragging Lily Tomlin out on location for the Camp David episode and giving her no lines.

Then, something miraculous happens: The West Wing rights itself, and in a wholly unexpected way. Rather than attempt to find that old spark, the writers finally understand that, after five seasons of dramatic arcs and single-episode issues, the show simply has nothing left to say about the Bartlet administration. Instead, Wells and co. turn their attention to the next generation of politics, splitting focus between drudging White House-centric episodes and vibrant, intriguing and rewarding looks at the campaign trail for the Democrats seeking not only to secure the presidential nomination.

Previously, presidential elections on The West Wing were covered primarily through flashbacks of the staffers coming to Bartlet's original campaign. But those episodes concerned what it was about Bartlet that made the characters decide to throw their time and effort behind the then-governor. Here, the writers focus on the nitty-gritty of the campaign trail, treating the mad house that is the election cycle with the same meticulous, if exaggerated, detail with which Aaron Sorkin plotted the inner workings of the White House through the staff, back before most of these decisions were filtered through the broader prism of the president's involvement.

The desire for the staffers to continue working leads to an ideological split: some stay with Bartlet to try and ensure that his last year is as productive and meaningful as his first seven, while others head out to find the next major player. John Hoynes, the disgraced ex-vice president, feels enough time has lapsed from his public scandal to consider a run, especially since his only real competition is Bob Russell, current VP and target for every joke about dumb politicians that people have saved up since Dan Quayle disappeared from the public eye. Will Bailey, who already aligned himself with Russell when he spotted the shrewd politician underneath the bumbling facade, becomes the vice president's primary campaign adviser in addition to being chief of staff. Donna, as fed up with the drawn-out sexual tension with Josh as the show's audience, also jumps onto Russell's campaign.

But the most interesting development is Josh's decision to hunt down a Texan congressman who had been considering retiring from public service while still young to effect more direct change at home. Matt Santos (Jimmy Smits) has no aspirations to run, but Josh's dealings with the representative nag at him until he heads to Texas to convince Santos to run. For the remainder of the season, Josh toils to make his candidate look like more than a joke as more and more come to believe he's running Santos just to split votes from Russell to benefit Hoynes, his boss before Josh jumped onto Bartlet's ship.

The writers based Santos on then-Senator Barack Obama, and it's remarkable how prescient his campaign is: an also-ran against presumptive front-runners, Santos slowly gains ground when he sticks to pushing issues instead of getting bogged down in the usual attacks (remember when Obama's unwillingness to stay on the offensive was a sign of integrity and not a routinely disappointing display of his reluctance to stand by his beliefs?). His unexpected rise throws the Democratic caucus into pandemonium, preventing a clear choice for nomination when the Republicans immediately fall behind Sen. Arnold Vinick of California (Alan Alda).

At last, The West Wing returns to gripping television. Both the confusing nature of the Democratic situation and the plans of the Vinick campaign make for fascinating stories. Part of this, of course, can be attributed to the actors. Jimmy Smits has always struck me as an actor I shouldn't like until he unloads a heap of talent while you're not paying attention. He looks as if acting excites him more than anything, like a boy wondering onto a set in the middle of classic Hollywood and managing to get on-screen. I almost expect him to stop in whatever performance he's giving and wave "hello" to his mother at the camera, and that eternal, endearing boyishness makes him magnetic. When he combines that with the conviction of belief he brings to Santos, I couldn't take my eyes off him, and I noticed more about this actor I adore than I ever had previously. His physicality matches his acting style: slight pockmarks lay off the side of his still-youthful face, adding a hint of wisdom and calm to his enthusiasm. When Santos walks around New Hampshire before the primaries, insisting on discussing policy instead of simply hunting photo-ops with average citizens, he still comes off as the most likable of the candidates.

At the other end is Alda, whose casting as the Republican senator only compounds the unlikelihood of Vinick's complexity. Not only do the writers at last come up with a conservative character who does not serve as a punching bag for our pent-up frustrations with Bush et al., they picked one of Hollywood's most committed liberals to play him. While Santos struggles to stand by his idealism as Josh attempts to soften him, Vinick has the voice of authority of a longtime politician, sticking to his guns even when it could cost him among the conservative base. His commitment to hands-off policy causes him to butt heads with social conservatives on issues like abortion, and his religious doubts lead him to denounce his castigation among the press for not attending church regularly. Perhaps it is a byproduct of The West Wing's tangential relationship to reality, but Vinick's more libertarian policies actually sound as if they could work. Modeled loosely after Barry Goldwater, Vinick lacks his inspiration's hawkish qualities but shares a commitment to fiscal conservatism over the Religious Right and an unwillingness to simplify or soften his message for the sake of easily digestible rhetoric. If Santos comes off as a man of the people, a young gun who can connect seemingly with anyone even if his beliefs clash with his or hers, Vinick emits an authoritative tone, fatherly without being patriarchal.

The caliber of these two candidates makes for riveting television, taking Bartlet's magnetism and splitting between two completely opposed but respectful men. Though the sixth season deals with the tension among Democrats as the race for nomination is too close to call even heading into the Democratic National Conference, one instantly hopes that the final race will pit Vinick against Santos, for the two of them continue to display such honesty that I would set aside any hopes for truly realistic politics just to see what it might be like if two candidates would conduct themselves honorably and truthfully. So enraptured was I by the pair of them that I never stopped to consider that, in real life, we finally got one such candidate in the last presidential cycle, only for him to sorely disappoint on many of the core issues that defined the courage of his beliefs.

If Santos brought up the Barack Obama connection openly, the end days of Bartlet's administration blurred the line of who might best embody our current president. Though Bartlet is entering his final year of a second term having accomplished much, the single year we see in this season mirrors the two Obama has presided over since taking office: Bartlet is besieged by compromise and regret, unable to get anything past a partisan Congress (though at least Bartlet has the decency to be gridlocked by a Republican majority and not a small but militant minority), and idealism takes a back seat to politicking. If the writers called Obama's meteoric rise three years ahead of time, they also anticipated the cynicism that would take foot when certain things beyond the leader's control spiraled out of control and some of the policies he enacted to right them only made matters worse. After suffering through a season I originally pegged as mediocre but not entirely terrible before revising my opinion to something even less positive, I needed to see this shift from dragging plots to ahead-of-the-curve projection. Though it appears as if The West Wing will never return to its original format before its finale in the next season, I no longer mind. By changing course, it saved itself, and I can at last look forward to completing a series that instantly leaped into the high reaches of my favorite programs when I dove into its mesmerizing early seasons so long ago.

Shut It Down: On the Rise and Neverending Fall of 30 Rock

When it first premiered, 30 Rock promised to at least partially fill the gaping hole left by the cancellation of Arrested Development, the most brilliant sitcom that ever existed. Arrested Development marked the zenith of the "no hugging, no learning" style of situation comedy promoted by Seinfeld, its cast a hodgepodge of vain, arrogant and thoroughly unlikable people who were so uproarious together you couldn't help but watch. 30 Rock thus softened the approach, giving us a cast of characters who didn't really deserve love but were so goofy you gave it to them anyway.


For two seasons, it was the funniest show on TV, picking up the occasional slack in the American Office with a show revolving around meta-humor and a constant critique of the network that kept them on the air despite low ratings -- in the 30 Rock world, even allowing them to exist was proof of the infamous negligence and mismanagement that sent NBC into a tailspin these last few years even as some of its best programming ever has hit the airwaves. Yet as the show moves into its fifth season, there's a sad truth that must be acknowledged: 30 Rock is so far past its prime that the only humane thing to do is put it down.

Like Arrested Development and any other show that ignores emotion for laughs, 30 Rock excelled when the writing clicked. When a single joke failed, however, the dead air created was deadlier than a missed mark in a more lighthearted comedy.

In the third season, the cracks started forming. For every magnificent episode -- "The Funcooker," "Apollo, Apollo" -- there was a corresponding dud -- "The One With the Cast of Night Court," "Goodbye, My Friend." When an episode failed, it generally did so for one of two reasons: one, it reached too far within the meta framework of the show's humor, delving too far into esoterica while still remaining facile enough for the show's younger audience, almost none of whom would be familiar with something like Night Court. Two, it made the fatal error of assuming that anyone cared about the characters beyond their silly adorableness.

So when the show threw episode after episode at us about Liz Lemon struggling to adopt, or wanted us to empathize, even jokingly, with Jack Donaghy's stalled career ambitions. That these two stories represent 40 percent of the only narratives 30 Rock uses -- the others being Tracy's insanity, Kenneth's naïveté and Jenna's insecurity -- only compound the frustration felt when we must watch these stories over and over again.

30 Rock began to act like a character-driven show to stave off the burnout that comes with relentlessly writing jokes, an understandable fear. (Look at the writing staff across a few seasons of The Simpsons in its prime, or even now; the rate changeover is horrifying.) But you can't make two seasons of Seinfeld and then start making The Cosby Show; one is the direct and intended antithesis of the other, and to suddenly be expected to empathize with these two-dimensional punchline setups was absurd.

The writers understood this, but rather than go for broke in the Arrested Development fashion, they made the same lazy choice that so many do these days: pad their shortcomings with broad irony. "We really want you to care about the latest fight between Jenna and Liz, which is no different from earlier ones only we're supposed to feel good about ourselves at the end of this one, but since no reasonable person could expect that with these characters, we'll add in a wink at the end like a passive-aggressive emoticon at the end of a clearly insulting post."

Yet still, I watched, and I even bought the third season on DVD because enough episodes were gems. The fourth season, though, took a turn for the worse. The very first moments of the fourth season announced how tired its self-reflexivity had become, how the cheekiness of earlier broad references had given way to bored, limp looks to the camera. Even as Tina Fey was growing as an actress, her and her staff's writing abilities had hit the walls, and everyone started to suffer. No longer did Alec Baldwin come off as the offensive but affable version of the cardboard devil Republicans Aaron Sorkin used to prop up in The West Wing. Tracy Morgan lost his edge when his act just got old, while Jack McBrayer finally succeeded in making us feel the annoyance Kenneth's do-gooder nonsense engenders in other characters.

I could not even make it past the mid-season break, though the episode that preceded the Christmas special, "Dealbreakers," was easily one of the series' best, returning to the pure ridiculousness that made the show great. Watching Liz having to receive guidance on how to "wave your arms like a human being" made me cry with laughter in a way I hadn't with any comedy since 30 Rock's own "Rosemary's Baby." But that was the only episode of the entire first half that completely connected, and the Christmas episode was so uneventful that when the show finally came back, I'd just lost interest.

Still, I tried to give it another go when the new season started, and if they got back on track, I'd gladly fall in line once more. Sadly, the damage has been done. Though none of the episodes so far have been outright "bad" -- and there weren't more than a handful in the third or fourth seasons -- not one has the feel of what made 30 Rock so irresistible initially. That the show has devolved not into true badness but banality, it still has people hoping for the best. Even a critic as insightful and on top of things as Alan Sepinwall continues to let mediocre episodes pass because they're an improvement over some of the fourth season.

But I can no longer justify following around a show that has been on tenuous ground for half of its run, and not even the immense joy I take from the first two seasons can keep me coming back for another 22 minutes of faint chuckles and watch-checking. Even the live episode, the ultimate display of ratings-chasing desperation for any show, didn't pass muster, and 30 Rock had the advantage of being populated with a writing staff cherry-picked from live comedy television. Ultimately, I was only mildly impressed by the staging of the episode and the way the crew handled the show's typical cutaway format in a live setting. But I didn't laugh, and the tame sense of admiration I had for the gang not crashing and burning couldn't conquer the sense of ennui of watching them continue to peter out with a whimper.

I was struck recently by catching up on Community how a show can really deserve the reaction Sepinwall gives to lackluster episodes of the latest 30 Rock. When part of a Community episode misses the mark, at least one other aspect picks up the slack. The latest episode, for example, couldn't keep track of both Annie and Abed's stories and should have just focused on one without regressing both to their initial, more stereotypical personalities. Yet the episode itself was so damn funny that it genuinely excused what is hopefully nothing more than a momentary lapse in reason. On the other hand, the episode that preceded that one focused more on the heart than the laughs (though they were certainly there), and the results were moving without segueing too harshly from the irreverent tone of much of the series' comedy. Even when it doesn't measure up, some part of Community is so entertaining that it invites all those lazy add-ons of "but it's still better than 99% of what's out there."

When 30 Rock attempts to move out of the narrow box it built for itself, everything completely falls apart. And it's fallen apart so many times that I no longer care about the few occasions in which the writers get their act together. I love what Fey and the rest accomplished with the series' best moments, and it will be sad to see such a great cast go their separate ways, but I wish they'd go ahead and do it so they don't continue down this path until no one will shed a tear when they get canceled. Fey will rebound, Morgan will continue to capitalize on his remarkable mania and Baldwin can do whatever he pleases, secure in the knowledge that he reversed a decade-long slide into irrelevance with the most entertaining role of his career. That should be enough to lift the spirits of those involved. If only it could make me get over the crushing disappointment of 30 Rock's decline.