Heart

Television this week has been strong in the soul department. I just finished watching yesterday's Raising Hope, which found Burt offering Virginia the idealized Vegas wedding she'd dreamed of since she was a child. Meanwhile, Jimmy brought Sabrina along for the ride, hoping for a little "happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" type hanky panky. Instead, he spent the entire episode trying to help his father raise money for the perfect second wedding. Even at the end of the episode, he gives Sabrina her "wild" moment with a slow dance on the roof. It was truly adorable, and it was exactly the kind of heart melting comedy that Raising Hope has somehow managed to perfect.

At the core of the show is the Chance family, one of the most loyal, loving families on modern television. As Jimmy says to Sabrina in the episode, "you've only ever seen dad Jimmy. You've never seen sex in the back of the van with a serial killer Jimmy." But we, the viewers, have. What Raising Hope does weekly is give us a heartwarming story of love and fellowship, while subverting our expectations for comedic value. True, the show is a class comedy, and has its occasional poorly written (but never poorly executed) one liners about how hilarious uneducated people are, but nine times out of ten, the reason you laugh is because the unexpected, but never absurd, just surprised a laugh from your gut. Classic sitcom plot says the protagonist (Jimmy) takes his love interest (Sabrina) to a place of debauchery (Vegas) with the end goal being some sexy fun. In the end, he realizes he's a good guy and doesn't go through with it. You've seen it on Friends and How I Met Your Mother, and Chuck, just to name a few off the top of my head. It's the 'Superbad' plot, in a nutshell. Essentially, that's what happened in this episode, but it never felt like a cliche sitcom staple. It felt like a new story, because the episode wasn't about Jimmy. It was about Virginia, as so many of the best Raising Hope episodes are. I laughed so hard when Virginia showed up in spray-tanned black-face, despite the best efforts of my middle class white guilt and even harder when Burt actively commented on its all too predictable disappearance. Then I almost cried during the end-of-episode voice over (during a VOICE OVER!) as Burt and Virginia danced in the corner of the ballroom. The best episodes of television should make us do both, and sometimes I think we forget, and settle for a couple of half-hearted laughs, or a bit of suspense.

Speaking of suspense, I followed up my Raising Hope viewing by finally catching up on Castle, and this week's episode was a doozey. Castle is doing its damnedest to debunk my three season rule. The episode was great for Seamus Dever, who plays the less ethnic half of Beckett's team, Ryan. Once again, the episode started with some bad Castle puns about "concrete evidence" that reminded us of the show's goofy side, and then quickly took a spin for the dramatic when Ryan's stolen pistol turns out to be the murder weapon. The turn was so dramatic, that the show even attempted a subtly different title sequence. I don't know about the opinions of the rest of you, but I think that this might have been my favorite episode of Castle in the entire run of the series thus far. Certainly the strongest of the season, overthrowing my much praised former favorite, the season premiere.

It's been a good week for TV.

You know, if you ignore NBC.



That's not fair, I haven't watched Community yet. NBC might have an ace up its sleeve this week.

Or so my exploding Twitter feed would have me believe.