Episode 615

There were only two things that could have softened the blow of Steve Carell leaving The Office: an absolutely perfect final episode or a huge "PSYCH!" displayed, Chuck Lorre-style, at the end of the hour.  I might have preferred the latter, given my embarrassingly tear-filled reaction to his departure, but I'll take what I can get - and they nailed it (that's what she said).  I feel like I'll somehow taint it if I try to dissect why it was so beautifully done, but it was absolutely a reward to those of us who followed Michael, for better or worse, through seven hilarious years.  And the fact that the episode was titled "Goodbye, Michael" reminded us perfectly of Michael at his "Goodbye, Toby" best.

With Steve Carell gone, and rumors that Alec Baldwin is next, I can only thank the NBC gods that Nick Offerman (Parks and Recreation's Ron Swanson) is going strong.  As brilliant as Aziz Ansari was on last week's episode - making it one of the most consistently funny half-hours in recent TV history - Nick Offerman once again stole the show this week, despite his limited screen-time.  The only way his speech at the art show could have been better is if Michael Scott had been waiting for him afterward at the bar, somehow proud of his own accomplishment.

Episode 614

It had been about two years since I'd watched an episode of Dawson's Creek, and the other day I decided to give it another go: a walk down memory lane, some face time with my old friend Pacey.  Well, I'm not sure if the transition from early- to mid-twenties gave me a few extra brain cells, but wow, what a terrible show.  Don't get me wrong, it will always be in my heart, and I will never stop relating my personal experiences to it and making everyone around me do the same, but I might not be breaking out those DVDs again until I'm sure that pure nostalgia will carry me through.

The friend who inadvertently got me hooked on Dawson's Creek (by rolling her eyes as I cried my heart out during Jen's dying monologue in the series finale, the first episode I'd ever seen) just pointed me to this: a list of TV shows that could have been a lot better, if only... I agree with 100% of them (as long as Marshall gets to stick around as Barney's sidekick on How I Met Your Mother 2.0), but since there are only 19, I thought I'd round it out with my own #20: Dawson's Creek would have been better if every time Katie Holmes or James Van Der Beek said anything, everyone responded in unison: "No one cares."  And while we're at it, perhaps we can discover why Jen's American grandma had a British accent.

Episode 613

A famous study, initiated at Bing Nursery School, tested children's capacities for delayed gratification.  They were given a marshmallow and told that they could either eat it right away, or, if they waited a certain amount of time, they would be given two marshmallows (basically a gold mine for a 3-year-old).  After following up with the participants decades later, researchers noticed that those who had waited for the second marshmallow had higher SAT scores and were generally described as more competent.  So: wait for the second one and not only do you get two marshmallows, but you apparently get life-long success.  You can see a rather hilarious repetition of the experiment here.

Television has recently decided to conduct this experiment on the American public.  NBC will be airing the final season of Friday Night Lights beginning next Friday, but because it was already aired on DirecTV, the DVDs were released last week.  This gave us all the option: buy the DVDs and watch them all at once for immediate but short-lived joy, or wait for them to air week by week, thus delaying (and extending) gratification.

In case you were wondering, I ate the marshmallow.  And it was absolutely worth a future of incompetence and failure.