Awwww. She In Yo Class, Yo!

It is I, gentle readers! Arsenic Pie! Back from the netherworld of holidays, presents, and, yes, pie. So much pie, in fact, that I have not been able to roll myself from the couch to my computer due to my near-diabetic coma. So I apologize for my recent silence. But fear not!

It is now January and that means the return of many of our beloved programs since they went on hiatus during the bleak midwinter.

The first of the premieres that I have been looking forward to -- and there are many -- (OMG SEASON 4 OF DOWNTON ABBEY OMG YOU GUYS!!!) is Community. Yes, yes, it's true. Miss Arsenic Pie takes time away from her erudite Auntie Beeb costume dramas to watch comedy. I'm not a huge or dedicated Community fan like this devoted comrade, but this girl does love herself some Joel McHale. It's one of those shows where if I find it in reruns on TV on Comedy Central I will watch it. I long ago gave up on network comedies, but I found myself pleasantly surprised by how clever and -- okay, I'll say it -- how downright stinkin' meta it is. This show, along with Archer and Brooklyn 99, is starting to restore my faith in 'Murican comedy programming. 'Murica. McHale. Mostly McHale.

How is Joel McHale today? I don't know, but I'm sure he's fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine.

As you know, the show follows the exploits of Jeff (Cutie McHottie Joel McHale) as Jeff, the disbarred lawyer who is forced to attend community college as part of his court sentence. Along for the ride are Jeff's love interest, Britta (Gillian Jacobs); our favorite Trudy Campbell, Alison Brie, as Annie; the always hilarious Ken Jeong as psychotic Spanish instructor, Señor Chang;  the lovely and talented Yvette Nicole Brown as Shirley; Jim Rash as Dean Pelton and, last but not least, Donald Glover and Danny Pudi as Troy and Abed, respectively. Also? True story. Jim Rash's Twitter handle is @RashisTVUgly. Look it up.

So, the plot of the season premiere features Jeff down on his luck after a failed attempt at being a morally upstanding lawyer. 

Jeff's super sleazy ex legal partner, Alan (Rob Effin Corddry) drops by to help Jeff out of his financial jam. Alan wants Jeff to help out with a lawsuit Alan is planning against Greendale. An engineer educated at Greendale designed a bridge that collapsed and Alan wants to sue Greendale, claiming it was Greendale's fault. Jeff doesn't have much of a choice, so he returns to Greendale in search of the engineer's records. He has a creepily hilarious encounter with Dean Pelton, and Jeff convinces Pelton that he's there to "help" Greendale. Jeff forms a "Save Greendale" committee, and coincidentally runs into his old study group, who are all hanging out in the old study room. Which also happens to be the new records office. It's also where Señor Chang is now living under house arrest.

Jeff tries to convince his former study group members to join a lawsuit against the school, with the claim that their lives are not better four years after they started at Greendale. Britta is a bartender; Abed is a computer programmer/ failed film director; Annie is pushing pills for a big pharma company; Yvette's husband left her again and took the kids (and the DVR with her 166 unwatched episodes of Bones); and Troy is waiting around for Abed to get rich off his new smartphone app so Troy can sue him. Solid plan. The gang starts arguing, and Jeff thinks he's convinced them all to join a class action lawsuit. He leaves to tell Alan that he's taking over the case, tells Alan he's not worth his prepared evil monologue, and whips Alan with his own tie. He returns to the study group to find that they've all made up, and they've made a collective decision. Jeff thinks they're all going to sue, but they reveal that they're all going to re-enroll at Greendale. REPILOT. Dean Pelton offers Jeff a job as a law professor, and the gang decides to burn their table. Any episode of any show that ends in a fire/pyrotechnics is a win for me. 

Stick around for episode 2, which features Abed having a mental breakdown over his attempt to determine whether Nicolas Cage is a good or bad actor. My Nic Cage is just me saying, "There's a treasure map on the back of the Declaration of Independence." Abed puts this girl to shame. 

Community airs on The Peacock Thursday nights at 8 EST. The double-feature season premiere is available on demand.

Be sure to also catch McHale hosting The Soup Wednesdays at 10 on E!

You staged a robot fight?!?! In real life, the robot wins!!

The Henriad

It should come to no surprise to my fellow erudite TV Sluts that the folks across the pond are adept at creating one hell of a Shakespeare adaptation.  After all, THEY INVENTED SHAKESPEARE. It should also come as no surprise to any Anglophiles that Ben Whishaw is adorable and an amazingly talented actor. Anyone who has seen him in The Hour or Bright Star knows what a mad gifted artist he is.

Usurping my crown is, like, way not cool, bro.

But did you also know that Tom Hiddleston (aka our favorite comic villain, Loki)  is also hot and is playing Prince Hal in the BBC adaptation of The Henriad, entitled The Hollow Crown, airing in the U.S. on most PBS stations? That is a true fact that I just said. 

Drinking and whoring? Yeah, I can handle that. 

Yes, the Brits have gone and done it again. If you're feeling like you need a brush-up on your Willie Shakes, and you weren't able to make it up to the Stratford Festival in Ontario this year, take heart. The BBC adaptation is, SHOCKINGLY, very good. I have borne witness to so much bad Shakespeare in my life, that it does me little heart good to see it done well. Last night, PBS aired the oft-forgotten Richard II. True, it doesn't have the name-recognition and cache of the more popular and commonly performed plays, but it has a driving plot and some damn good soliloquies. We all know that performing Shakespeare is the litmus test of an English-speaking actor, and I was pleased with the Richard II cast. Shakespeare really is one of those cases where the actors' job basically is to get out of the way of the language. In this production, the cast performs with such honesty and the language percolates off the actors' tongues with crystal clarity, which just makes the whole production that much more compelling. 

The plot of Richard II is thus:  Richard II (Whishaw) was the last Plantagenet king of England. ("What's a Plantagenet," you ask? Go back to school!). He is replaced by the first Lancaster king, Henry Bolingbroke/Henry IV (Rory Kinnear). Richard is a young and ambitious king, but he's very wasteful and he spends too much time on buying useless crap from Italy. He also doesn't choose his counselors very well, which seems to have been a common thread among European royals. Richard starts renting out parcels of land to wealthy noblemen to raise money to fund his wars against Ireland. (That England. Always picking on the Irish.) He also seizes the land of his well-respected uncle, John of Gaunt (FUCKING PATRICK STEWART), after John of Gaunt dies.

But wait! There's more! Richard has a cousin named Henry Bolingbroke, who was John of Gaunt's son, and he is PISSED. Not only did Richard seize his land, but he had also exiled Henry six years earlier. 

You were in Skyfall? No way. Me, too.

Richard leaves England to fight a war in Ireland. (Again. WTF. Stop with the Ireland invading already.) While he's gone, Henry assembles an army and invades England. Richard's allies all desert him in his absence, and he returns to England. Henry takes him prisoner and ensconces him in a castle in Pomfret, where he languishes until a plot against Henry unfolds. An assassin takes it upon himself to murder Richard. Henry now feels like he has blood on his hands and jaunts off to Jerusalem to absolve himself of sin. Because that'll help.

I guess that didn't go well.

The only thing that bugged me about this production was, at the end, Richard's body is dragged into Henry's throne room (which is apparently where he sits all day...yawn). The scene pans up from two men standing over Richard's diapered dead body, to a sculpture of Christ and two disciples that is hanging from the ceiling. I was like, come on. COME ON. Come, on really? It's not that I found that offensive in a religious way (since I'm pretty much a heathen). I simply found it heavy-handed from an artistic standpoint. Richard II was murdered by political enemies, but martyred? Really? CAMMAHHHN.

The next installment of The Hollow Crown is Henry IV Part I, with Jeremy Irons as the much older Henry IV and Tom Hiddleston as Prince Hal. Michelle Dockery is apparently taking a break from being all weepy over Matthew to make an appearance as Lady Percy. 

I may be too sexy for this crown.

The Hollow Crown is airing on PBS as part of Great Performances. You can watch it online  or check your local PBS listings for air dates and times. 

Is this why I had a dream that I was Rosalind in As You Like It last night? Imma gonna go with yes 

Please Stop Saying "Uniball"

So. Have you missed your weekly dose of office intrigue since the sixth season of Mad Men ended? Folks, have I got a remedy for this particular type of summer malaise. It's called Suits and it's on the USA network, and if you haven't seen it, you need to get on board. And don't fall off said metaphorical boat. Like Pete's mom. Haha. Pete's mom. Who fell of an actual boat. Hahaha. Pete.

But I digress. Suits follows the exploits of young Mike Ross, who, while running from police a couple years ago, happened to fall -- or was, rather, pushed -- into the Harvard-grad-only-hiring law firm of Pearson Hardman. Mike, armed only with boyishly rakish good looks, charm and chutzpah, was hired by Harvey Specter, a ballsy, if somewhat dickish, attorney at the firm. 

No law degree? Criminal record? Young man, you've got yourself a job!

Long story short, one of these handsome devils is Don Draper. Not sure which. It changes every episode. 

Bestill my lady heart.

Harvey knows full well that Mike doesn't have a law degree of any kind, let alone one from Harvard, but he hires him anyway and allows Mike to practice law, allowing the firm to win case after case. Harvey lets his boss Jessica in on this fact, and Jessica also does not give a damn. If you can suspend your disbelief long enough to get into the show,  and you aren't expecting each and every one of these people to end up in federal prison, it's worth watching. If you can't, then, I mean...Come on...There's eye candy. Because I mean...

What's that you hear? Just me standing out your window and not being creepy in any way.

Oh and also:

He's so pretty, it makes me want to cry.

When we left our friends at Pearson last season, we saw no-nonsense lady attorney Jessica Pearson about to merge with British dandy Darby. There's all sorts of intrigue. At the end of last season, Jessica went behind Harvey's back, and Mike went behind Harvey's back, and Harvey went behind Jessica's back and Mike and Harvey stopped being friends and as this season opens, everyone is just pissed at each other. 

Okay, Zoe's on the show, too.

And yes, Firefly fans. That is Gina Torres as Jessica Pearson. She's traded in her spaceship pilot's license for a power suit and some bitch heels. Seriously, I love her. I love her characterization on this show. While it's obvious to anyone with eyes that Jessica is an unmarried minority female, no one mentions it or makes it into a big issue. Or an issue at all. It's almost as if...as if...as if she's equal to her white male counterparts. Like. OMG. Whouda thunk it? She's got these boys on a leash, and if one of them (*coughcoughHarveycoughcough*) plays her, tries to play or thinks about playing her, she will eventually turn the tables on them and get them right smack in the balls. RAWR. Grrr. And the whole time she stays sexy, but she has no interest in sleeping with ANY of these jerk-offs that she works with. Seriously, I love this bitch.

So, yes. Jessica's awesome.

But back to Mike.

Mike's having some personal issues during the season opener, because his erstwhile girlfriend, adorable paralegal Rachel, is mad at Mike because Mike revealed to Rachel that he's been practicing law without a degree. Then they banged in the file storage room. Up against some legal briefs. Cha-ching. You see, this is problematic for Rachel because Rachel wants desperately to get into Harvard Law, and we saw her be rejected at the end of last season. She tells Mike that if he ever wants to file her motion again, he needs to quit the firm. Mike is all ready to do that when Jessica hands him HIS OWN OFFICE as payment for siding with her against Harvey to push through the merger, and for his help with a lawsuit. Jessica, LIKE A BOSS, tells Mike that he's staying in the firm and he will be using this new office. Or. Else.

Rachel's angry with Mike for a while because he decides to hang onto his job, but then she decides what the hell and sleeps with him again. Can we blame Rachel? No. No we cannot.

We do have to give props to Rachel for feeling a modicum of anger toward Mike being total fraud. I mean, she is, after all, the only regular character on the show who displays anything resembling a realistic reaction to this information. But Mike's still getting tail out of it. So...a net win?

So, the merger with Darby goes through without too many glitches. Harvey starts to work behind Jessica's back because he felt Jessica betrayed him last season on the merger. Harvey's not happy with the merger, and makes an agreement with Darby that if Harvey wins the case that Darby assigned him to (with the help of Harvey's erstwhile lady friend, Scottie), Darby will allow Harvey to break his non-compete and end his contract. Meanwhile, Mike tries to get back into Harvey's good graces by clandestinely helping Harvey with his case. However, what Harvey REALLY wants is to take over Jessica's position as managing partner and oust Jessica in a coup. Oh, the game. She is afoot.

Suits airs at 10 p.m. Tuesdays on USA.