Yes, I Did Say Parks & Recreation
Anyone who dismissed this show after its first sorta underwhelming episode made a mistake. The show has only gotten tighter and sharper, culminating in last night's funny/sad finale. Leslie got kissed, Chris Pratt got his casts off, and Tom Haverford introduced us to his shockingly attractive wife. We love the small, wistful pacing and joke-making of this show. It's not quite as broad and Commedia Dell'arte as The Office. There's something wiser and a bit more weary at work here, especially in Amy Poehler's outta-the-park performance. Her scenes with her old man date were pitch-perfect and just a bit sorrowful, and the almost-at-the-end scene of her and Mark sitting by the pit, near about to kiss, was a heartbreaking little study in rumpled adults being rumpled adults. We're very glad this show got picked up for a second season.

The Office, Who Knew?
Though the season started off pretty weak and we started to write the show off, suddenly something changed or reversed. Everything from the Michael Scott Paper Company on has been basically golden. Though it was a bit of a logistical stretch to have all the branches coming together in one central place for the Dunder Mifflin corporate picnic last night, it was still an ingenious set up and a nice reminder that, even though we're all these seasons in, the writers can still come up with a scenario that feels familiar and banal but, you know, funny. Pam's volleyball prowess was charming where it would have been cloying just a few episodes ago, Michael and Holly (I mean, really, Steve Carell and the ridiculously wonderful Amy Ryan) have such touchingly awkward chemistry, Dwight's weirdo best friend was jolting and gonzo, while Stanley's little aside about not normally enjoying the theater elicited a loud hoot. Plus, you know, Jim and Pam and a baby! Has John Krasinksi ever actually acted like that on the show before? He should do it more often.

30 Rock, Of Course
This show has been on a steady climb most of the season, though this episode, for us, fell just slightly short of some of the other recent installments. Maybe it's because we don't really like music jokes all that much, because we're lame. That aside, Chris Parnell's brilliantly insane Dr. Spaceman is always welcome ("maybe it's the hard K sound that's getting me...") and "sexually transmitted crazy mouth" should enter the lexicon. Plus: Kenneth getting religiousy about science class, "Rainstorm Katrina," and the gay kid at graduation bit ("Who told?") all killed. If the closing, kinda-creaky "We Are the World" joke at the end felt a bit flat to you, well, you're not alone. But all the rest considered, it certainly wasn't a deal breaker.

If we are to believe that they ever really were. Or if we're to believe television, which has been lying a lot to us lately. But Heidi and Spencer may be the grandest lie of them all. Was this muddled, factory-cut couple ever really a couple? Or were they simply drawn into each other's hungry orbits by the pull of MTV's dark gravity? Did they see in each other a collection of warm pockets in which they could entrust their hearts and other body parts, or was it merely a cold transaction, like buying deli meats at the supermarket? I suspect it was probably somewhere in between—their relationship was probably akin to that of organ grinder and monkey assistant. They love each other a bit, yes, but mostly it's about the work, about the money. Plus one of them is covered in fur.

The episode began as most horrible episodes do, with Spencer the Fleshbeard chatting glumly with his horrible sister, Spencerina. Because this show has been straining for plotlines ever since Audrina hopped aboard that stagecoach made of spiderwebs and flew off into the night sky, the producers have been forced to shove the malformed Spencerina front and center. There she dances hideously in her soiled tutu, scary sideways accordion music playing, an old woman loudly sobbing somewhere unseen. "Aren't... I... a pretty... girl?" Spencerina plaintively asks through hacking coughs and toothless whistles. Her glass eye falls out and plink plink plinks down the hall. "Love... me?" she asks, as dust comes wheezing out of her ear holes.

Actually she talks to Spencer about his disappearing girlfriend and about how she was in Colorado and a boy named Cheddarblock was eying her like my dog eyes the stockings on Christmas morning; not much to look at on the outside, but what mysterious treats might lie within... So Spencer was like "evs" and Spencerina didn't seem to find anything wrong with playing both sides of this muddy, shit-filled field so MTV nodded its head and said "OK."

Meanwhile there were goings down at Fashion. Lauren, our wistful wind-blown heroine, had a meeting with the very scary Kelly Cutrone. Now that Whitney has been gone for a long time and she's already had her whole show "happen" and the world has forgotten her entirely, Kelly decided that it was time to have a meeting about "How do we replace Whitney?" Lauren suggested teaching one of those moving-eye cat clocks to talk, and Kelly admitted that it was a very good idea and a very close approximation to the real thing, but she still needed something else. After affixing googly eyes and a wig on a large ham, and finding that not quite right either, they decided to hold interviews. "Do you know anyone?" Kelly asked, bored and looking off into the distance almost as if she knew what Lauren would say next. "Spencerina," Lauren whispered into the quiet room. "Bring her in," Kelly mumbled. Then everyone—Kelly, Lauren, the camera crew, the people outside on the street, me, probably my dog in Boston—began weeping profusely.

So Lauren met with the shitty thing and told her that they were looking for interns. "How would one... hypotechnically ... go about... getting... a .... jorb... at... Fashion?" Spencerina asked, an earwig crawling around in her hair, her wooden leg mildewy and graying. "Like any other job," Lauren said. Like any other job that you get while being on a TV show. So Lauren got Spencerina an interview and she rushed home to iron her best Grown Up Girl clothes and write her little resume. "Work Experience..." she typed with one little be-Lee'd fingernail. "One time I helped gramma move some boxes to the attic. Another time I moved my friend Belinda's car out of Ryan McKenzie's driveway because Liam needed to take Marcy home because she was tripping but Belinda was too drunk to back her car out herself. The neighbors weren't too mad about the mailbox. Or the cat."

Back at Mordor, Spencer came home from God knows where—following a divining rod around looking for Patron, reading a finance book by Donald Trump upside down while some day-shift hooker bounced up and down on his lap, ominously lurking near a schoolyard fence whispering someone's name—and Heidi bellowed from the sex-making room "Spennnceerrr? Is that youuuu?" It was Spencer. And he lunked into the bedroom and they got into a fight because of Cheddarbob and because of Stacie the Waitress and Heidi was mad at Spencer for making her feel feelings when he knows that hurts her face so and Spencer was mad at Heidi for being mad because it was really harshing his mellow or something so they just stormed off in opposite directions, Spencer out the door, Heidi into the wall, which she hit and fell over, her legs and arms still moving as she lay on the floor. All around them buildings collapsed and cars and hydrants and people were sucked into the ground. The La Brea mammoth got up and walked away East, out to the Inland Empire, where he could disappear into that vast, empty desert.

Spencerina woke up and Hoku's "Perfect Day" was playing on the radio and she knew that the interview would go well. She put on her Big Girl trousers and her Believe In Yourself blouse and got into her car. After about twenty minutes she realized that she wasn't getting anywhere. So she went back into the house, got the keys, and went back to the car. When she showed up to People's Revolution, she was very nervous. She clutched her little resume and Lauren beamed at her bemusedly and said "I like your Successful Sistah shoes." Spencerina said "Thanks. A homeless woman threw them at me." So they sat there awkwardly for a while, elevator muzak playing, Spencerina flipping absent-mindedly through a copy of Ranger Rick. "I love this magazine, but the articles are just too long," she said to no one in particular. Finally it was time to go see Kelly. Spencerina gulped and headed up the stairs, whispering to herself "the penitent man shall pass, the penitent man, the penitent man... the penitent man... KNEELS!" and she deftly avoided the spinning blades that would have lopped her head off.

After almost dying several other times on the way to Kelly's office (at one point Lauren cried out at her desk "But in the Latin, Jehovah is spelled with an I..."), she finally pushed open the large doors and there was Kelly, sitting there in chain mail. "I brought... resume..." Spencerina stuttered. And it was all downhill from here. She started chatting aimlessly and dumbly about how she wanted to be a handbag designer and about how awesome Kelly's PR was and things were awesome and, um, handbags? Kelly gave her the hairy eyeball and said "So you want to come here and exploit my clients and techniques to make handbags?" Spencerina said, "No, I meant like long term handbags, like in ten years!" Kelly laughed and pressed the button under her desk that typically sends the interviewee up into a pneumatic tube but she forgot that the repair guy wasn't coming until Thursday and oh fuck this.

The thing about the handbag thing... Didn't Spencerina just seem so dumb at that moment? Like, the thing always seems like a hopping idiot, but this was special. Dumb because, really, this girl has clearly not taken one fucking honest hour's worth of her time to just sit down and think about what she wants to do with her life. So here's dumb, fattened, aimless youth, everyone. This hideous thing yipping about handbags as if that's a job. It's not a job. Neither is "I'm going to have my own skin care line," idiot on Real Housewives of Orange County. None of that is real. But more importantly, don't act like anyone owes you these ridiculous non-jobs. You aren't owed shit. You owe us. You, Spencerina the Brave Mumbling Idiot, you owe us.

As she left the interview, a car drove by, Hoku's "Another Dumb Blonde" playing softly on the radio.

Anyway, sorry. So Kelly decided to bring the potato sack onto the team, with a caveat issued to Lauren that if (when) she fucks up, Lauren has to fire her. Because Kelly don't play that. She bopped Lauren over the head and trotted off and as I watched her head back upstairs to her office I shook my head and thought to myself "She chose... poorly."

Then it was time for the real blowdown. Heidi was having fish dinner with Handbags and they decided to find Spencer out at the clurb. Miraculously, Handbags knew just where to find him. It was this totally off the hizzy new club called H.Wood, which is short for H. Wood Jeblome, a prominent Los Angeles financier and restaurateur. So there indeed was Spencer. He was lounging on a couch with the wicked bitch Stacie the Waitress and her two idiot friends who will look back on this experience one day and think "Oh god, oh god oh god oh god," their trembling hands clutching long cigarettes, the last desperate light of the day clinging to the sad red rocks of Sedona. "Where did I go?" they will think, their vodka lemonades just a little too strong, but they'll drink it anyway and they'll just chug a lug here in this pocket of Arizona, hoping that some vortex will one day work its magic and soothe this strange, clawing pain.

But in the present, there they were on couches with Spencer and his friend, Barney Rubble. Stacie is a really creative girl so she said she wanted to request "Pour Some Sugar On Me" by that great band "The 80's", and Spencer grinned and said he hoped that meant sexy dancing on bars and stuff. Stacie said of course it did, but sadly she didn't get the opportunity to prove it, because Heidi and Handbags showed up, their milk pails sloshing and the cows behind them mooing, their braids blowing softly in the Alpine winds. "What are you doiiiiiiiiinggggg?" Heidi bellowed. Spencer removed his penis from Stacie's mouth and was all "Nothing, stop getting mad, what the fuck, fuck." Handbags then called Stacie and her friends sluts, and Stacie got involved and everyone just started bickering at each other until Heidi fired a gun into the air and everyone went silent. "This... Ends... Here!!!" she yelled. She was done. It was over. She dropped the gun on the floor and ran out, Handbags flapping away in tow.

The next day it was time to rehearse the play, Manhattan Beach Memoirs: Heidi & Spencer Break Up: This Time It's Personal. They met at some airy outdoor cafe, safe and open, lots of witnesses, you know the drill. Heidi, having had a really dumb conversation with Handbags the night before, said that maybe the couple should try therapy. Hint hint, went the elbows and you could just see MTV's reality version of In Treatment with fucking Dr. Drew or something forming in the mind of some horrible programming exec, a bulge forming in the crotch of this lame 41-year-old's skinny jeans. But it was not to be. Spencer didn't understand why someone who went to "one extra year" of school should tell him how to live his life. Spencer, therapists have to do more than one year of college. Which is what I assume you meant. Because one more year of school than you would be freshman year of college. So. There you go.

But Heidi made it an ultimatorium: either therapy or we are over, Spence. Spencer just sat there glowering. And then The Hills did something I've never actually seen them have the balls to do before. They hired an extra to play a waiter, who, with convenient timing, came over and asked the warring couple: "Can I get you anything else?" Heidi shook her head, overcome by, but secretly proud of, all of this swelling drama, and said "No. We're done." And they were! She got up and walked off, her dumb butt swaying down the filthy LA street.

But of course they're not really done. Nothing is ever really done on this show. They'll get back together and continue to bicker and Handbags will try desperately to keep them together because otherwise she has no reason to be on the show and then she might actually have to try to get a real job and be a real person and enter into the world and in thirty years she'll hop in the LeBaron and leave Bakersfield behind and she'll drive all night to Sedona and there will be those two slutty whores, sitting on a deck, overlooking a Red Robin parking lot, and they'll drink grapefruit juice and vodkas and they'll smoke Dunhills that some old boyfriend brought back from Europe, years and years ago, and that will be a few afternoons. And when she dies, there will be a small break in the clouds, out above some stony mesa, and you'll know that some glimmer, a logo, a designer nametag, some tiny bit of soul has escaped this earth.

In the meantime though, she'll sit and watch the ocean pound the surf, over and over again, and wonder where all the little bits of sand came from. If they were always there, or if it just took a long time for some large thing to break down, to bust, to burst, to scatter bravely into pieces.

Handbag wishes, to you and yours.

· Matt, for the moment free of his lingering addiction to feel-good pills, reunited romantically with the religious one whose name always escapes us. Marion, we think. Esther? Eh, whatever, at least we remember her character type.

· Jordan survived the complications from her pregnancy, drew up adoption papers allowing new fiance Danny to legally become the father of her newborn daughter, and for one blissful moment, finally stopped worrying about the ratings.

· Jack from Wings and D.L. Hughley found Matt's well-hidden bottle of emergency Scotch, then spent a tense night getting wasted and reliving the corporate censorship issues of NBS's wrongheaded, spineless past. No high fives or one-armed hugs were exchanged, though it was apparent both men would have liked that.

· Just as Tom Jeter was giving the OK to send millions of dollars to mercenaries to save his brother from his terrorist captors in Afghanistan, God sent a Blackhawk helicopter to rescue the hostages from certain death and Tom from choosing the selfish side of a morally compromising dilemma. And once Tom concluded a tearful cellphone chat with his liberated sibling, the Gruff Military Guy with the Heart of Gold informed the entire Studio 60 gang that the President had ordered an immediate and total withdrawal of all troops from Iraq, an announcement that kicked off the most jubilent wrap party in the show's long history.

· The ferret ate the snake, the coyote ate the ferret, and, even though there was no explanation of how it came to roam the crawlspace underneath the studio, a mountain lion ate the coyote.

· Lobster Boy and Peripheral Vision Man were married by just-ordained minister Fake Nic Cage in a quiet ceremony in Matt's office.

· Because he was never real to begin with, Tim Batale did not make an appearance; however, it will eventually be revealed in the DVD collection that if one freeze-frames Matt looking out from his office window during the marriage ceremony, his reflection in the glass is briefly swapped with Tim's.

· The blacklisted, Alzheimer's-afflicted writer got both his memory and his career back, penning a sketch savagely satirizing the mistakes of HUAC-era Hollywood.

· Perched in a catwalk high above the soundstage, Sting quietly strummed a lute, but everyone was far too busy enjoying their happy endings to even notice.

[Image: An ad taken about by fans in yesterday's THR]

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