Yeah, I'm a little late. Sue me. This week's crop: Cosmos, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., The Mindy Project, and Community — vague spoilers for all, but mostly for TMP.
Sunday, April 6:
Cosmos, "Hiding in the Light": We come to the subject of light! Neil deGrasse Tyson gave us possibly the best Cosmos episode yet this week, by which I mean that I spent the first half having awesome flashbacks to high school physics — flashbacks that were actually significantly more awesome than the physics classes themselves — and then the second half staring in wide-eyed awe at the screen, saying, "WHAT THE HELL," over and over again. I distantly knew that you can use light to find out the chemical composition of something, and I knew that our perceptions of what's going on in the world around us weren't objective, but it goes so far beyond that. (Developing a theory: gravity rules our universe, light defines it.) I think I'd have to study physics for at least two years before I even started to comprehend just how little about this subject I comprehend. Also, NdGT getting choked up about Joseph von Fraunhofer's experiments, the forerunners of astrophysics, was wonderful.
What I love about Cosmos is that it reminds me every week just how awesome science and the universe are. If this show had been around when I was a kid I probably would've wanted to be an astrophysicist when I grew up.
Tuesday, April 8:
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., "Turn, Turn, Turn": AoS suddenly crashed back onto people's radars, and also their Facebook newsfeeds, this week, which apparently caused some people a lot of confusion. (I saw a lot of "Wait, do we care about this show now?" comments.) It's definitely because Captain America 2 completely changed the game, and also re-sparked people's interests in the Marvel universe, but the AoS writers lived up to it by giving us the show's tightest episode since the train episode. Possibly of the entire season.
Basically, it's made all of us consistent viewers really smug that we've stuck with the show since the beginning. (And makes my post about investment viewing and AoS seem fairly prescient.) In hindsight, it seems like the showrunners must have been practically killing time just waiting for this — I still have a lot of things I wish they had done differently in the first half of the season, because A) a lot of the development was super weaksauce and B) slowly developing S.H.I.E.L.D. as a morally grey entity from the beginning would've added a different dimension to recent events, but I'm currently inclined to be lenient. Let's just hope that AoS can keep up the momentum without going haywire.
The Mindy Project, "Be Cool" and "Girl Crush": Honestly, I missed the first fifteen minutes of "Be Cool" because I was making a cake, and then I missed a fair amount of the rest of both episodes because of secondhand embarrassment. Nobody knows that Danny and Mindy are dating? Mindy and Morgan throw a party? Peter is Mindy's fairy god-bro, a role which I am super-enthused about, except Danny is insecure, often dumb, occasionally an asshole, and so convinced that he's going to ruin shit that he breaks up with Mindy preemptively to save their friendship. DANNY. WHAT ARE YOU DOING. I'M NOT SURE THIS IS THE RIGHT WAY TO SAVE YOUR FRIENDSHIP.
Which I'm totally right about, because when I tune back in to "Girl Crush" Mindy is checking out a different practice? They're all white blondes and they call her "spicy," which is how you immediately know that they're racist and just grabbing her for diversity reasons or something. The other doctors are apparently going out in a gynecology-van, which just seems like a bad idea. Danny is being an idiot again (still). Mindy saves all the doctors from their idiocy, except Danny, because his idiocy goes beyond the gyno-van. (There's a subplot about him and Peter's sister. I ignore it.) I just want these two losers to make out all the time.
Thursday, April 10:
Community, "Basic Story": After two weeks of amusing high-concept episodes with weak and undeserved endings — Community, I love you, and you know I love you because I spent the second half of season 3 crying constantly, but the resolution of "Advanced Advanced Dungeons and Dragons" was a little too quick and the explanation for "GI Jeff" came out of nowhere — Community took a step back to give us a solid set up for the season finale, "Basic Sandwich." Which is to say that I liked it, but I can't really say too much until I see how the two episodes tie together. I do, however, understand Abed's meta-meltdown on an existential level. (Try to stop yourself from thinking about the way you're thinking about something without getting distracted by the way you're thinking about the way you're thinking about the way you're thinking. Try.)
Also, part of me is sort of disappointed that there were no callbacks to "Digital Exploration of Interior Design," aka The 1984 Episode where Britta fell in love with Subway the Human. Dan Harmon! Where are the dizzyingly self-referential callbacks I've come to rely on from you??
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