The Office 807 Review- Guitar Hero

Val- "Not bad fellas. You're better than you look."

Kevin- "Hey screw you!"

Through the first six episodes of The Office's eighth season, I have been right on board with the popular critique that the series has lost its focus.*

(*"Garden Party" is the exception to that rule.)

But "Pam's Replacement" helped sideline the show's recent problems with a multitude of laughs and an improvement to its most glaring problems lately: the misuse of Ed Helms and James Spader.

After being thrust into the lead of the show, with a similar role and similar character to that of Steve Carrell, it seemed as if the Andy as branch manager project had failed. By giving him a smaller piece of the pie here, though, and fortunately creating a tasty flavor of pie, both Helms and The Office were much more enjoyable.

And how tasty was that pie? Andy, Kevin, and Darryl were great in their showcase of the rise and fall of Kevin and the Zits. And while Robert California didn't do anything all that overtly funny, quietly bringing in new great musicians to slowly hijack Andy's band was some of the best stuff from the Sabre CEO since last year's finale.

To read the rest of my review of last night's The Office, head over to TV Fanatic.

The Office 807 - "Pam's Replacement"
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The Office 803 Review- How Darryl Got His Groove Back

Pam- "I think we should get a townhouse in SoHo."

Ryan- "SoHo's mostly lofts but okay."

In "Lotto" we were treated to an interesting buddy story featuring Darryl Philbin going from down in the dumps about not winning the lottery to finally getting his groove back, and Andy Bernard continuing to grow as a leader as he helped Darryl crawl out from rock bottom.

It all culminated in a tremendously inspiring speech from Andy to Darryl, who finally figured out that his future was "going to be determined by two big black balls." His words, not mine.

A perfectly interesting story of character development on The Office, but the problem with this screen-stealing story was that it really wasn't all that funny. The quote above from Darryl was really the only thing going for it.

Some may enjoy themselves some Darryl Philbin, but I've never cared for regular Darryl from a comedic standpoint, so a deeply depressed Darryl was just the worst.

To read the rest of my review of last night's The Office, head over to TV Fanatic.

The Office 803 - "Lotto"
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The Office 802 Review- The Hard Dog

Robert- "There's something about an underdog that really inspires the unexceptional."

Robert California's words rang true as "The Incentive" may have proved that in his own backward way, Andy Bernard can get this group of misfits to work hard.

Unfortunately, allowing this Nard Dog to be the lead character of The Office is not off to a strong start. Other than Kevin screaming "Nooooooo!" when Dwight poured a bunch of walnuts into the brownie mix, the episode was hurting for laughs.

Andy works in bits and pieces, and even in that sense his comic stylings have waned over the past few years. To compound the problem, Dwight has seemingly taken more of backseat than normal over the first two episodes of the season.

Everyone loved the Jim/Dwight prank dynamic of the first three years or so. When they brought it back in full force last season, it was a shot in the arm for the series. Why not allow those two to step up into bigger roles? Jim has seemingly remained in a similar standing in terms of camera time, but Dwight had maybe three or four lines of dialogue tonight? That's silly.

To read the rest of my review of last night's The Office, head over to TV Fanatic.

The Office 802 - "The Incentive"
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The Office 801 Review- Such A Right-Sider

Stanley- "It might be easier if you take a deep breath, lift from the knees, and shove it up your butt!"

This was the first season premiere of The Office without Michael Scott, and, simply put, that is not a good thing.

"The List" did a lot of things well, but at the end of the day Steve Carell created such an iconic character - with an aura that will be extremely difficult to replace - that there's really no way to compete with what The Office once was.

It's a new era, but it's one that still has promise. Andy Bernard was a great choice as the new regional manager. Let me clarify: Andy was a great choice by the people of The Office because he is similar enough to Michael that the fabric of the series won't have to change all that much, but he's also different enough that it won't be all repeats stories... like it might have been with Deangelo Vickers.

On the other hand, Andy was a terrible choice as regional manager for Robert California. The dude put losing their biggest client as number-three on his to do list!

To read the rest of my review of last night's The Office season premiere, head over to TV Fanatic.

The Office 801 - "The List"
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A Bit Too Hungover

Well Jon the Bon wasn't in attendance so I don't think I can actually count this as a Quiet Pool summer movie, but if I were to compare The Hangover to summer comedies of the past, it would be last by a mile. The past five years I've seen Meet the Fockers, Wedding Crashers, You Me and Dupree, Chuck and Larry, and Step Brothers. Crashers, Dupree and Stepbrothers were instant classics, while Fockers and Chuck and Larry were just good. The Hangover was just not a funny movie.

As Seth Cohen claims in an episode of The OC, "big isn't funny." Like Summer's new boyfriend Danny, The Hangover was big, obvious, over the top and unclever. From watching the trailer and listening to the hype from the masses I knew this would be the case. I also knew that everyone would love it. And without a doubt everyone in the theatre was cracking up at some of the most unfunny gags I've seen in a while.

This is what is wrong with people. They find it funny when a guy gets hit in the head with a car door? There's a tiger in the hotel room, a lost baby, and a dude who loses a tooth and they go nuts. Does Hollywood not have to work for a laugh anymore?

Skip Bayless has been tweeting about all of his movie viewings recently and although I obviously agree with him about The Hangover not being good, I completely disagree with his analysis on why. The scenes from the trailer were not funny, just I had assumed. And there were a few, and I mean a few (two to three) times where I laughed out loud, which were not in the trailer.

All of them were from Zach Galifianakis's character, Beardy. When he wanted to be like Phil, Bradley Cooper's character, it was hillarious. The best part of the movie was at the wedding when Beardy had his hair slicked back and asked if his hair looked good. The Nard Dog said yeah, and Beardy asked if "it was good like Phil's." So good. Other than that there were a couple times when he laughed at the things that had happened that showed great comedic timing. A few other moments from Bradley as well as Matt Walsh as the doctor made me chuckle, but that was about it.

Bradley is fantastic, but he was basically the straight man in this three dude comedy group. He wasn't quite 'Sack master' enough to bring out comedy gold. Ed Helms proved once again JJ's theory that no one from the Office can branch out and do well out of Scranton.

I didn't know Galifianakis before this and I was impressed. He seems pretty funny, but he wasn't given enough funny material. He pulled a lot of things off well, as mentioned before, but was given too much unfunny and obvious material to make his character truly hilarious. Beardy got much better as the movie went on, but it seemed those in the theatre with laughing histerically at his early movie doings (this threw me through a loop).

I commend Todd Phillips for making a movie that a lot of people seem to like, and making a lot of money for himself on this one, but The Hangover is definitely not up to snuff.