' ' Cinema Romantico: New Girl & Lines

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

New Girl & Lines

On account of the Major League Baseball Playoffs taking over Fox TV for the next few weeks, "New Girl" is not set to air a new episode again until the first week of November. Thus, my "New Girl" blogging will have no choice but to go on hiatus. Sigh...just when it was starting to win me over (read: wear me down). But I thought I'd write about something I'd been thinking about for the last week and a half or so.

A couple Thursdays back on my current favorite TV show "Parks and Recreation" there is a moment when Ron Swanson's villainous ex-wife Tammy #1 (indie queen Patricia Clarkson) has shown up at his office on account of him being audited by the IRS and her leading the charge. In an attempt to save Ron, his friend and co-worker, the ever valiantly clueless Leslie Knope, tries to explain Ron is needed in a meeting. Tammy #1 replies: "I'm sure Ron will remember the meeting fondly when he's making toilet wine in federal prison in Terre Haute."


That line made me laugh so hard I cried. Honest to goodness. I cried. I had tears streaming down my face. It's not just a great comedic line but a great phonetic line. Go ahead and say it out loud. ......I'm waiting...... "I'm sure Ron will remember the meeting fondly when he's making toilet wine in federal prison in Terre Haute." And it dawned on me right then and there - in four episodes "New Girl" hasn't had a line in the same hemisphere as that line.

TV shows are all about quotable lines. That's what allows for word of mouth. I love "Parks and Recreation" so much partly because it's so sweet and genuine and partly because all the characters are awesome but I also love it because week after week after week it serves up deft, hilarious lines. They keep coming. It never ends. Stacked right on top of one another, kinda like how moments after Tammy #1 says this, the mega-brilliant Aubrey Plaza's dryer-than-Death-Valley April Ludgate says to the camera "She's like the cold, distant mother I never had - I love her" which just made the tears stream faster.

So get it together "New Girl." No buzz for your show is gonna build if you don't have people saying to one another things like, "Last night, was LITERALLY the funniest line I've ever heard." 

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