Finally! It’s about time that this long-dormant story line returned. After weeks of begging on my part, last night Rules of Engagement got back to the once existent arc of Audrey and Jeff’s attempts to conceive. I doubt I had anything to do with it, but I sprained my wrist patting myself on the back nonetheless.
But even as much as I was glad to see it, I definitely rolled my eyes at the stereotypical “Jeff shot himself with estrogen” nonsense that was batted about for most of the episode. Not that there’s anything particularly wrong with the jokes, but if you’ve heard tender breast jokes once, you’ve heard them a million times. A little original creativity would not have been unappreciated.
But Jeff and Audrey still managed to make it happen in a big way at Audrey’s boss’ party. Jeff has got to be the most socially awkward human being in existence, and he never misses an opportunity to make a situation as uncomfortable as he possibly can. How funny was he after continuing to imply that the pregnant woman was fat even after he learned that she was pregnant? “That was a close one,” as he put it to Audrey. Is he insane?
And I unexpectedly enjoyed Jeff’s reaction to the spoiler about the Rangers game. I wanted him to explode, but his estrogen-induced response was the kind of originality that I was looking for.
What does it say about Adam that he was so funny with 12 year-old Matthew, yet he remains unbearable when with Jen? And actually, when he, Jeff, and Russell were alone in the coffee shop, Adam was back to his old self: a little dim, but not stupid. I think it’s adding Jen to the equation that does it to him.
Russell and Timmy at a Bruins/Rangers game was a weak story for both of them, although it did give us a week off from Russell being little more than a parody of himself. To be honest I thought Russell as a Bruins fan was farfetched — we’ve never seen him into sports, but he seems to be all New Yorker — yet there was authenticity behind the comedy.
I’ve been to Yankees games where some not nice (and probably not legal) things were done to fans wearing Orioles paraphernalia. And I remember the Knicks/Pacers rivalry years, when wearing Indiana colors to the Garden was akin to signing your own death warrant. I wouldn’t say that the animosity between the Bruins and the Rangers is the same, but there’s no love lost between New Yorkers and the rest of the country’s sports teams. I’m surprised no none physically assaulted Timmy.
Anyway, I’m taking this week’s return to the Jeff and Audrey baby plot as a sign that the writers plan to focus on that story for the remainder of the season (and possibly beyond). If they’re currently trying in vitro, and that fails, the decision will have to be made soon about how to proceed. And with surrogacy (if they so choose) comes surrogate mothers … I smell a guest star coming!
Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Apr 27, 2010 @ 12:00 EST5EDT
Hey nice we do think alike – sometimes.
I totally agree that Jen is the problem in that relationship. Problem is she works with all the other castmembers. I don’t know what I’d do about it – they both, on their own, work in jokes and situations that does not involve them both together. To be frank I think if those two would break up and still be on the show that would kind of work – or if they’d never been together in the first place but rather male friends of Jeff and Audrey. Too bad… then again if you can remember the first episodes of this show – there certainly ARE a couple of jokes you just had to enjoy between those two but I don’t enjoy it anymore. It’s gotten stale. The “I’m already wearing a dress/skirt” joke had me throwing things at my screen. It’s just lame. Or better: not as classy as the rest of the stuff going on on this show.
Anyway, here’s some german folklore: since the country has 82 million citizens and is only roughly the size of California, it’s fairly common that fans make trips to the away games. In soccer it’s actually quite a substantial amount of income for the home team – the tickets sold to the away team I mean. There are blocks of seats/standing areas where the fans of the guest team are sitting/standing and usually because of the violence between the fans they also are fenced in. Until the Sheffield and other disasters where people where trampled/squeezed to death fences were commonplace in soccer stadiums, but they got rid of those. Currently in Italy there’s a huge problem with “Ultra” fans who go to away games and beat the opposing team’s fans, policemen and each other to death. Just to give you a little bit o’ perspective into what’s really tough :-) The only seats you can safely sit in are the ones on the sidelines that cost a ton of money – kinda like those problems Timmy and Russel had on the show with the “soft” pretzels (which are called “Bretzeln” over here by the way).
The more you learn (bla bla bla ^^;)
*POST AUTHOR*
I definitely wouldn’t presume that NY fans would be anything like European soccer fans … we’re not insane! :)