coles_notes

Created by Steve Franks for USA, we follow Shawn Spencer (James Roday Rodriguez), an extremely mentally gifted but generally aloof adult, who pretends to have psychic powers in order to consult with the local Santa Barbara police department and solve crime. Dulé Hill joins as childhood friend Burton Custer, who tags along on most mysteries, and whose friendship with Shawn is a large focus of the series. I quite liked the sarcastic tone of the first few seasons, however as it grew I often found it more closer to a parody-of-the-week as they satirized other famous shows or films. I think the show peaks silliness in late season four when John Cena appears as a secret agent, and the show kinda remains at this level of bizarre for the rest of its run as Shawn now has to contend with serial killers, international crime thieves, and even the odd ghost. Again the show is fun, however as they run out of typical murders for him to solve and as the series puts romance storylines in its forefront things really declined in interest for me. It took me a long time to get through towards the latter half. Overall, I can see why so many like this, I laughed a decent number of times and can't deny the show's charm, but started to lose its luster after a hundred episodes. If you like these types of detective series a la Monk meets the Mentalist, yeah, would recommend.

A classic restarted for the somethingth time immediately after finishing again the US run of The Office. I love Parks and Recreation, if you haven't seen it just go give it a go, it is great. Created by Greg Daniels and Michael Schur for NBC, we follow deputy director Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) of the Pawnee, Indiana parks and recreation department. Styled similarly of course off the success of The Office, its all filmed documentary style with the familiar talking heads, but luckily this time around no unneeded justification. Also a show much more uplifting and good spirited than its predecessor, the series really becomes its own with its character dynamics and relationships, the comedy is peak feel good laughs. Poehler as a lead shines, and of course this show essentially made Nick Offerman a star with his performance of her boss Ron Swanson, he's great. The series also builds nicely and ends well, even if a bit ridiculous at points. It some how always gets away with it for me, I enjoyed its entire 7 season run. I already want to restart it again. Would highly recommend, treat yo self.

A spin-off of the original Taskmaster, we follow the same format of somewhat nonsense games requiring executing tasks, except now with kids instead of adult comedians as contestants. Hosted by Rose Matafeo as Taskmaster with Mike Wozniak as her assistant, I quite enjoyed the twist on the original, the games were often clever and fun to watch as you'd hope, and the hosts were both quite fun, I'm a fan of both. Unlike the original with the same cast of contestants over the full season we instead see new kids each episode taking on the games with the finalists from those episodes making their way to a grand finale to crown a series winner. Again, the kids are cute in that "kids say the darnedest things" way if you're one to love that. I'll never say no to more Taskmaster, was good.