St(e)at(ot)ic!: (Unfinished Post) The Best of the Latter Half of the 2011-2012 TV Season (Comedy)

I'm quoting mostly AVClub reviews for my reasons, but I've linked some to other sites as well. Click on the links to read the full reviews.

1. 2 Broke Girls, “And Martha Stewart Have A Ball”

"I also liked that Martha Stewart was such a game guest star and that the episode played like a weird collection of a bunch of stuff season one had left hanging out there, like Johnny or that weird bacon cupcake the girls came up with over spring break (which has become a recurring character)."

2. Apartment 23, "It's Just Sex"

'This episode involved lady-type sexuality that felt less cartoony than Chloe’s vague promiscuity or her endless synonyms for “vagina” in previous episodes. Because in addition to “How to do casual sex,” we have June masturbating! In primetime! On ABC!"

3. Apartment 23, "The Wedding"

"But here, June is likeable, and funny. Her behavior in this episode suggests that she’s getting acclimated to the weirdness of her living space and new friends — her reaction to opening the door to find Robin creepily standing there with Chloe’s mail is now a mere eye-rolling “Oh, hi,” and she’s similarly blasé when JVDB emerges from behind the coat racks after performing his duty as a freebie with her friend the bride. She’s also picked up some of Chloe’s self-centered nature here, as bringing a novelty celebrity date to a wedding is the equivalent of showing up in a red sequined dress cut down to your navel. It helps with June’s likeability that Walker kills it at playing adorable happy-drunk — her delight over complimentary magnets and huge shrimp is incredibly endearing."

4. Bent, "HD"

"I’m not going to argue there’s anything groundbreaking about this show, but sometimes, the simple pleasantness of something can be reason enough to recommend it. In particular, I’m enjoying the ways the supporting characters dart in and around and out of the stories, offering up plenty of opportunities to toss jokes at the protagonists as they wander by."

5. Community, "Pillows and Blankets"

"Any time you’re in a fight with somebody you know well, you have the option to go nuclear. If you know them well enough, there’s probably something you can pull out that will utterly destroy everything—including your relationship, most likely—and cause the chaos to rain down on everyone around you. Both Troy and Abed go nuclear in this episode—with Abed’s e-mail about Troy’s weaknesses and Troy’s text message about how nobody else would put up with Abed—and what I like is that the pillow fight is increasingly seen less as a gimmick and more as an externalization of the war between the two of them, a war that has much of its roots in the fact that this season has driven a wedge between them that neither will ever be able to remove. Their lives are on different paths. They can apologize and make up—as they do—but they’ll never overcome that central problem, without real compromise and change."

6. Community, "Virtual Systems Analysis"

"Annie’s monologue to Abed about the similarities between them is deftly written and surprisingly sweet. You can’t know the future. You can’t even think you know it. Because once you start trying to predict things, you get almost as caught up in trying to make them come true as you do anything else. Anybody trying to predict the end of the world is inevitably trying to predict that their way of seeing things will be right, and something roughly similar is going on here. Abed foresees disaster for the group, because every future he foresees involves the group moving on from him. It’s what’s always happened to him. He’s not predicting that Troy and Britta coupling off will go poorly for them, actually; he’s predicting it will go poorly for him."

7. Community, "Digital Estate Planning"

Just because it was an homage to the era we grew up in: the 8-bit era.

8. Happy Endings, "The Butterfly Effect Effect"

"But I mostly just liked the episode for how it portrayed the group’s dynamic, how everyone secretly enjoys the fighting and strife because it fucks with their roles a little bit before reverting back to normal. Everyone gets to roleplay and then go back to their comfort zone. While sometimes this show’s characters can get too nasty, Penny and Dave’s behavior was the right side of mean, I thought—there wasn’t much malice behind it, even if their behavior was objectively douchey."

9. Happy Endings, "The St. Valentine's Day Maxssacre"