Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25892460-20150223132732/@comment-24330788-20150227043941

For me it’s been a bit of a hit and miss season especially in these last few weeks, but like the others I still enjoyed the majority of it. White Elephant Exchange was one of the funniest episodes I've seen in a long time and while the twist was arguably out of left field, I thought The Real Thomas special was pretty kickass. Special props to the strong season opener Maxin' and Relaxin'. Also, considering it being the current lowest rated episode of the season I'm probably in a minority on this, but I thoroughly enjoyed The End of Muscle Man. Yeah it all came down to "Muscle Man is an idiot at wedding announcements", but I thought it was funny and had some genuinely nice moments.

As for the misses, I personally think Format Wars II and Happy Birthday Song Contest could have been better. Both felt too much like rehashes of past episodes to me, Format Wars’ naturally being The Last Laser Disc Player while Happy Birthday Song Contest borrowed heavily from Free Cake and The Thanksgiving Special. To be fair, I don't think re-using previously done jokes or ideas is necessarily a bad thing if the episode can make it relevant to the characters in a new way. However, weak episodes don't do this well and it ends up feeling like the guys are just going through the same recycled plot elements but with little to no investment in what’s happening around them.

I felt this especially for Benson in Format Wars. Finishing the episode, I thought they could have easily replaced him with another character here without affecting the overall story. And that shouldn’t be, not in an episode where he is a starring character who’s in a new group situation that’s never been done by the show before. Yes they used his head to find the universal remote and he was the one who pulled it out, but in terms of actual characterization they didn’t do much to tie him to the plot at all. Aside from tagging along to get the movie, when had Benson ever expressed an interest in laser discs? And for that matter, when had they ever brought up his apparent inferiority complex with Muscle Man, not just earlier in the episode, but ever? I bring this up because Benson pulling out that remote was obviously meant to be a key character moment, yet they never build up to that payoff. As a result it felt kind of tagged on to me, like it was just there to justify his presence in the episode and nothing more. While I don’t think this makes it the most terrible episode ever, I do think it makes it less well done than its predecessor, which did have time to build up the personal stakes of its starring characters relative to the story.