MusicalGuest

One of the best (gr)episodes ever, seriously. Everything clicked into place beautifully. Paul doing four characters with no sign of strain, Gillian being perfectly committed to her insane gold-digger persona, a momentous chapter in what might be the show's most enjoyable ongoing storyline, and even the [Don Pardo voice] mmmmuuuuusical guest contributing productively to bits. The "agree to disagree" ceremony was a Scott/PFT all-timer. Even a throwaway Mr. Show callback with "soon, soon, you're a balloon." Just love it all.

In fairness, despite his cranky non-participation, Cross's "today we fish, no guppies" probably made me laugh more than anything else on this episode. The interplay between Zizek and "Corny Grandpa" was a lot of fun. Adomian can react to anything in character and spin gold out of it.

YEAH RIGHT

Is it verboten to be critical on these boards? I say this as someone who has been driven to ecstatic heights of laughter by Bob Ducca and Seth Morris generally, but everything with Seth's character on this episode was such a dud. Scott steers into the skid at one point and makes the dullness the joke, with the comically overextended Quickbooks chat, but the non-Chelsea portions of this episode fell so flat. It's interesting to see Scott's semi-hostile reaction to undercooked character ideas -- my favorite example of this is when Joe Wengert came on as a Men's Rights guy or something, but Scott wasn't feeling it so he seized on that insane "duck" thing instead. Quickbooks was basically a less funny version of that.

Like an old boxer, I have cauliflower ears. I stuffed too much cauliflower in my ears and now it's stuck there.

I think it's worth noting that Riddle Me This was working for a while, it just kind of flamed out for some reason. If I recall correctly, the exorcism ep with Cake Boss and H.R. Giger had a good one, as did the ep with Phil Lord and Chris Miller. But yeah, can't argue with Scott's poignant acknowledgment that he just can't seem to make the game work at this point.

Intern showdown between Gino and Wompler NEEDS TO HAPPEN.

Hilarious episode even though the gym teacher charac didn't really pan out. I almost would've rather had the third segment devoted to hearing Tiny and Victor participate in Riddle Me This (can you imagine a Victor riddle?), although then the numerology riff wouldn't have happened. I could see Borstein coming back and doing really well in a sort of co-host role a la Mantzoukas - she was vibing so well with Scott even though they'd never met (is this your card?). The "makes me think of cheeseburgers" bit (especially when extended to Star Wars - "doing a scene from Star Wars always makes me think of Star Wars") absolutely killed me.

Wurster and Aimee Mann are both at least comedy-adjacent, but ok, you got me with the National guy. Perhaps the weirdness was only in my head.

Can we talk about the weirdness of Paul Banks not playing music on this episode? I don't think Scott has ever booked a non-comedy musical guest* just for chit-chat. I'm thinking there must have been a misunderstanding, like Scott inviting Banks on with the assumption that he'd perform, but Banks thinking he was just coming on as a regular guest. The episode turned out well, but the presence of the Interpol guy was pretty awkward outside of a musical context. *muuuuusical guest