Ben and Crystal’s relationship is often very similar to that of Liz and Jack on 30 Rock: an outwardly confident and capable supervisor who is secretly an insecure mess — and their high-level subordinate who is obviously a mess — who frequently has to come to the supervisor’s emotional rescue by providing the comfort, stability and reassurance that they ironically lack in their own life. Upon first glance, Crystal doesn’t seem the type to pine for a lost romance, but pine she does, for her third husband (out of six), played by James Taylor. As she eats pie, drinks rum, and plays piano standards in her secret office — under the artifice of being stressed about an audit — I couldn’t tell if Ben was wearing a WWLLD (What Would Liz Lemon Do) rubber bracelet. However, it was just a matter of time and detailing of ridiculously extravagant line items in the company books (a cheetah and Ecuador among them) before Ben blew off his romp with the quarterback of the visiting lingerie football team, to force an ill-advised reunion of the band that she and her ex were in, “Billy, Crystal and Friends” (“that comma saved us from a lot of lawsuits”) at the old dive bar where they used to perform. At least we found out Allison Janney can sing.
Roman was given nothing to do, which is fitting, since his character can’t actually do anything other than babysit the quarterback until Ben returns, from whom he gets advice on how to overcome his inability to talk to Heather. I don’t know if they’re showing these episodes out of sequence but I could have sworn Roman cleared that hurdle at least once already.
Once again, Alice and Alonzo served no purpose whatsoever, with a B story about wooing a donation for a children’s center (whatever that is; rec center or health clinic or just something that sounds vaguely charity-ish tossed off by lazy writers) from a pair of narcissistic dot com billionaire brothers. I don’t know how Alonzo justifies working on his many charitable efforts on company time or why Alice helps him. The $2.5+ million she eventually gets out of them (that’s right, she wins this round) would be a pretty nice infusion of sponsorship money for the Sunshine Center, her employer.
Overall, this episode was a disappointment, as it didn’t deviate from the show’s standard template at all. The characters did what they always do. Suddenly dropping in James Taylor — a fine and legendary entertainer to be sure — is not exactly the blockbuster reveal that’s going to wow a post-1975 audience. Once again, the show fails to exploit a potential gold mine of comedic opportunity: the arena industry. The event they hosted this week was lingerie football. They used that for a gratuitous shot of women running in skimpy outfits during the opening, the source of Ben’s hookup interest of the week and a joke about this being a great country (which was used twice) and that was it.
Clark Brooks (@clarkbrooks) is a professional writer living in Tampa, Florida “which is another way of saying I have no idea how I’m going to pay my light bill next month.” Also, thanks to the internet, he’s an ordained minister and will gladly commit your wedding in exchange for an invitation to the reception and a seat next to a morally-liberal bridesmaid.
Clacked by Guest Clacker
on Mar 17, 2011 @ 13:00 EST5EDT
I thought the best part of the episode was Alison Janney singing with James Taylor. Other than that, it was good as living wallpaper. I can find better ways to check out lingerie and Alice and Alonzo were a huge waste of time, the plot wasn’t even funny.