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S04.E11: LAXmas


Cranberry

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This episode started with a favorite premise of mine -- all the regulars in a cast milling around a transportation hub -- and then turned it into one of my least favorite: people just bail out of their expensive and hard-won transportation on a whim, because... "friendship!" Only on a sitcom.

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As much as I enjoyed Damon Wayans Jr on "Happy Endings", I just can't warm up to his Coach character.  Not the actor's fault, but I don't like Coach or his meh storylines.  Can he move out of the loft and be replaced with Billy Eichner (the airport ticket desk guy)?  Pleeeeeassse??

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Billy Eichner makes everything better. Loved the bit where he kept pushing Winston and Nick down on the wait list. Loved his calling Jess "Bangs LaRue."

 

"Where's Anna and Mr Bates?"

"God I'm drunk at work."

 

McDuck money. Hee.

 

Oh, and I love the title of the ep.

Edited by peeayebee
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McDuck money was the best.

 

I can't believe Mr. Belding was Santa.  I was half paying attention, so I didn't recognize his face under the beard/white hair, but I should have recognized the voice.

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I vote yes on this one. OK, the premise was a little shakey with all the delayed flights and last-minute boardings, and the fact that Nick would have been on his fifth free drink in first class by the time Jess called. But hey, it was a Christmas episode and everyone was supposed to live happily ever after, and they did (for this week anyway), so I liked it.

 

A great moment that was poignant rather than funny was Schmidt's mixed reaction when CeCe said how much she enjoyed being his friend, but leaving unsaid that she's not his lover. Max Greenfield can be a really fine actor.

Edited by tominboston
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As much as I enjoyed Damon Wayans Jr on "Happy Endings", I just can't warm up to his Coach character.  Not the actor's fault, but I don't like Coach or his meh storylines.  Can he move out of the loft and be replaced with Billy Eichner (the airport ticket desk guy)?  Pleeeeeassse??

Have you seen Benched?  Boy, does that show make me miss Jane!

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Oh the cameos! Mr. Belding (Sorry Dennis Haskins, this is your name now. Just accept it); Billy Eichner, Barry Bostwick, and a random Outdoor Dave/Steve Agee spot to handle the product placement.

 

The Schmidt/Cece and Winston/Nick storylines were working well on their own in my opinion. I think a stronger ending than the everyone off the planes (blech!) scenario would have been for Coach and Jess to address their issues of flying to family vs. running. But it's a sitcom, and I get the need for everyone to be in on the love fest.

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Reality interrupted my fun when I realized that security would never have let Winston and Nick off their plane, esp if it was so close to departure that he had to turn his phone off.

 

I enjoyed Winston's description of "in Chicago, i'm a 10!"

 

Jess - remember next time to TELL your boyfriend you're coming.

 

Baby Niece was ADORABLE.

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I definitely enjoyed the Schmidt/Cece portion of the episode the most.  I feel like these 2 have so much chemistry together... I actually want them to reunite - romantically.  But the friendship is sweet.  Coach generally annoys me (and I agree that he doesn't add much to the show, overall) but I did like that he ended up going to Detroit to see his family, and especially his niece. 

 

LOVE Billy Eichner and would love to see more of him - although I'm pretty sure his character is a one-off.

 

Do you think that the ending with Jess and Ryan was a homage to Friends (S4. Ep 17) or just a blatant rip-off? 

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Schmidt/Cece ("Goodnight Siagon, that's a sad one. Cry about that you dirty, old, bitch"), Billy Eichner ("Call me if you want to hang out this week. I was thinking about going to the mountains and crying at some point but that's flexible.") and Winston ("It's actually polio horse. Orginially they were bred as helper horses for people with polio but I don't think anything I said was correct so...") were the best part. Along with 'McDuck money'. 

 

I spent the whole time yelling at Jess to get on that damn plane. Who cares if his parents are too good for you. It's England at Christmas in a beautiful house with your beautiful boyfriend. Grow wings and fly there yourself if you have to. 

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The other thing that annoyed me about Jess deciding not to go to London was her assumption that because his parents have a bigass house, they will be snobs and look down on her. I'm not saying that all rich people are snobs or that they're all nice because duh, they're people and that means there is a wide range of possibilities, but Jess just assumed that they would dislike her simply because they have more money than she does. Sure, that's one possibility but another possibility is that Ryan learned his kindness from them and they will welcome her with open arms.

 

I also thought it was weird that she lied and said her flight was canceled. Whenever I visit someone, I give them my flight number so they can check to see if there are any delays before they come pick me up. There is no way I can lie and say my flight got canceled!

 

But take a chance and just go! What's the worst that happens? His family hates you. They have a huge house so you will probably only have to see them at dinner. That means you have all day to go sightseeing and spend time with your awesome boyfriend in London!

Edited by ElectricBoogaloo
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Do you think that the ending with Jess and Ryan was a homage to Friends (S4. Ep 17) or just a blatant rip-off?

I'd vote subconscious association coupled with laziness over either of the above.

 

I hate this type of plot. Holiday flights are expensive. I cannot abide the spur of the moment flight changes/not going/going somewhere else, etc when you're already at the airport and checked in and weather delayed and surrounded by people, and none of these folks except Schmidt make enough money for that not to hurt financially.

 

Plus if as many flights were delayed/cancelled as implied in the first five seconds, they probably would've been offered vouchers or credits to NOT fly. So especially for someone like Nick, I can't believe he wouldn't have taken that offer the second it happened, five minutes after the original announcement. Try to get off after you've already boarded? Cause a security nightmare and piss off everyone else on the plane as you ruin more flights and make them miss the departure window and all sorts of domino.

 

Schmidt's Long Island rant was awesome. Everything Schmidt and Cece was awesome. The rest made me want to throw things.

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I hate this type of plot.

So do I. The pragmatist in me rebels at those sorts of shenanigans, and I'm not enough of a sentimentalist for the "aw, friendship!" stuff to make up for it. I didn't particularly care for this episode, mostly because everyone was acting like an idiot.

 

And I thought the Ryan plot was super-tired: of course the English guy comes from a rich family who owns a country house. I was hoping against hope that they were going to do something more interesting with that, like it would turn out that he was just messing with her by feeding into her Downtown fantasies, and in fact when she arrived his family would be solidly middle-class (or, perhaps better, tacky in a supremely British way).

 

Not only was the premise stale, but Ryan himself is completely uncompelling because he's so perfect: super-cute, charming accent, kind and thoughtful, dedicated to teaching, unflaggingly forgiving of Jess acting like a moron. In other words, bland.

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And I thought the Ryan plot was super-tired: of course the English guy comes from a rich family who owns a country house.

Yeah, and now this might only be me and my terrible vision/depth perception, but I thought the framing of the photo of the house was a little weird. It might've just been conspicuously bad sitcom photoshop and I was supposed to ignore it, but it sort of read like maybe it were an optical illusion and she were assuming it was a giant English country house but actually it was just a misdirect and actually in person was just...a cottage. So for a little while that's where I thought they were going. She freaked out for nothing. Where they actually went was equally trite.

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I hate this type of plot. Holiday flights are expensive. I cannot abide the spur of the moment flight changes/not going/going somewhere else, etc when you're already at the airport and checked in and weather delayed and surrounded by people, and none of these folks except Schmidt make enough money for that not to hurt financially.

 

Yes, and the whole time I couldn't help wondering how a public school vice principle can afford to take a last-minute flight from LA to London during the holidays. Not cheap.

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Yes, and the whole time I couldn't help wondering how a public school vice principle can afford to take a last-minute flight from LA to London during the holidays. Not cheap.

 

Depending on the school district, a California public school VP can make $70-100K/year. The ticket would only be a couple thousand dollars. Jess has a bunch of roommates. Jess being able to afford the ticket was more realistic to me than Jess being a VP in the first place. 

 

 

I hate this type of plot. Holiday flights are expensive. I cannot abide the spur of the moment flight changes/not going/going somewhere else, etc when you're already at the airport and checked in and weather delayed and surrounded by people, and none of these folks except Schmidt make enough money for that not to hurt financially.

 

According to the LAPD website " Upon entering the academy, the starting base salary for Police Officer I shall be $57,420. The officer will earn this rate until graduation from the Police Academy. Upon completion of the academy and assignment to the field as a probationary Police Officer I, the officer shall be paid $60,552." 

 

Nick and Coach could be making at least as much as Winston is making at the academy. Still, it was an annoying plot. 

Edited by RaeSpellman
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As much as I enjoyed Damon Wayans Jr on "Happy Endings", I just can't warm up to his Coach character. Not the actor's fault, but I don't like Coach or his meh storylines. Can he move out of the loft and be replaced with Billy Eichner (the airport ticket desk guy)? Pleeeeeassse??

I can't sell that idea fast enough. A little of that guy goes a long way.
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I spent the whole time yelling at Jess to get on that damn plane. Who cares if his parents are too good for you. It's England at Christmas in a beautiful house with your beautiful boyfriend. Grow wings and fly there yourself if you have to. 

Surely she comes equipped with enough manic pixie dust to make airline tickets unnecessary?

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I think I only saw one episode last season, and it didn't make me want to continue watching. However, the DVR kept recording this season so I thought I'd watch some of them and see how things were going.  Like another poster, I can't warm up to the Coach character. I haven't seen him on anything else so I don't know if it's the actor or the character, but he just seems perpetually down, and kind of an asshole. From the few episodes I've seen of this season, it seems like Winston's character has suffered in the writing from the addition of another roommate. Schmidt and Nick still entertain, but Jess has become somewhat tiresome to me. How did CeCe go from being a model to bartending? What did I miss?

 

Probably should watch this episode again, I think I missed some funny lines.

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How did CeCe go from being a model to bartending? What did I miss?

 

I think she still models, but opportunities were drying up for her. Nick offered her a job at the bar, and she is working there until she finishes school (I think). She dropped out of high school to model, so she has no education to fall back on just yet. 

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