NEW SHOWS
Brooklyn Nine-Nine – “Beach House” (A-)
Holt in a hot tub. Six-Drink Amy. Hitchcock and Sully wanting to pull a sunken ship from the ocean and turn it into a casino. What’s not to love? Maybe Boyle playing Cyrano de Bergerac to Diaz. But nothing was less than great, really. Still, this episode wasn’t quite as polished as its recent highs.
The Mindy Project – “Stanford” (B+)
So far so good for the show’s serious change (Mindy doing a fellowship at Stanford). Solid A-plot, because Mindy and Danny have the best stories together. But the basketball team was seriously underdeveloped. I needed more of Yeardley Smith’s NBA Street skills! That’s such a genius idea and they didn’t really give us enough of it. Ana Gasteyer was also great as the wildly inappropriate wife of Mindy’s professor, but Adam Pally could not have been more checked out. C’mon, man! You’ve only got a couple episodes left!
OLD SHOWS
The Weird Al Show – Season 1 (average: B+)
Never quite as magical as its obvious influence (Pee-Wee’s Playhouse), but this was still a brilliant show cut down too soon. It almost bypassed kids entire and went straight for stoners and off-beat comedy nerds. On that level, it was a wild success.