Archer — Never a show to worry about bad taste, this week’s episode of Archer focused on Sterling’s breast cancer scare. While the subject matter may not be for everybody, the final scene which involved a slow-talking doctor calling to reverse his diagnosis over and over again was a masterpiece of uncomfortable comedy.
Kitchen Nightmares – Gordon Ramsay’s show has fallen into a bit of a rut lately. Mind you, we’ll never get tired of seeing Gordon yell at people and then make their lives better. However, the last season or so of Nightmares has brought us a succession of basically well-meaning people who just happened to be terrible at running restaurants. We miss the old days when the owners were real wingnuts with severe social disorders. Well, Gordon’s trip to Down City in Providence brought us Abby. An angry woman who’s openly disliked by her staff, Abby doesn’t really get that when people complain about the food, it might indicate that something is wrong with the food. The people who send back food clearly are mistaken about what they do and do not enjoy. She even bragged about her history of “firing” customers, and dropped the great line “I’m not getting defensive, I’m defending what we do”. Her best move, even better than loudly defending the menu’s misspelling of “pepppers”, might have been telling Gordon he was wrong about the food before he’d eaten anything. There was a happy ending eventually, with Gordon bringing in a new chef and revamping the menu, but right up until then, it was a really entertaining battle of wills.
