Parks And Rec Season 4 Episode 19 - Tom Haverford's Apartment

Hump: Barney Stinson (Neil Patrick Harris) on How I Met Your Mother. No, we haven’t actually discovered how Ted met the mother yet. What we have learned is how legen — wait for it — dary his bro Barney is. He may be a raging womanizer (although his new relationship with Becki Newton’s Quinn may make a monogamist of him yet), but no one can deny how epic Barney’s ideas are.

On this week’s episode, he coerced Ted into starting a mariachi band at their favorite bar, eating everything on the menu, bringing a horse into the bar, and considering bungee jumping off the Statue of Liberty. Best of all, these whimsically random and amusing activities were meant to distract Barney from his very real feelings for his GF. Aww; Barney has a heart underneath his ubiquitous suit after all. Game on.

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Marry: Tom Haverford....’s apartment. While Tom (Aziz Ansari on Parks and Recreation) isn’t much of a catch, personality-wise, his apartment is basically every person’s dream. Here are some of the amenities you’ll find in Tom’s Pawnee paradise:
— A ridiculously soft blanket draped on every possible sitting location
— A whole shelf of coconut water in the fridge
— A constantly refreshed cheese plate with Adriatic figs
— Boutique eye cream
— Unisex cologne
— Lip exfoliator
— Chocolate-covered almonds
— A Sudoku book
— A steady temperature of 80 degrees, night and day
— DJ Roomba
Ann Perkins (Rashida Jones) herself warns, “he’s deeply in debt,” but I can’t hear her over the ever-present plate of cheese and artisanal figs. I will help Tom support his luxury lifestyle as long as he promises to love, obey, honor, and pick the best stuff from Sky Mall and Hammacher Schlemmer for me.

Kill: The producers, moms, and basically every other adult involved with Dance Moms: Miami. Every week, at the beginning of the show, the dance teachers at Stars Dance Academy slowly reveal “the list,” which ranks the seven to thirteen-year-old dancers based on their performances at last week’s competition, attitudes during rehearsals, overall behavior, and how their mothers behaved during the week. This week, the teachers told the kids that they were mediocre last week. They actually looked into children’s faces and called them mediocre. As if that wasn’t bad enough, we were then shown clips of the girls (and boy, Lucas) dancing in last week’s competition — with the most minute of flaws magnified. They weren’t even flaws, just close-up shots from cameramen who know nothing about dance.

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In a later segment, the girls and boy are forced to reveal their deepest insecurities on national television. One of them actually sobbed. I felt like I was witnessing the future therapy sessions she will most definitely need, once she escapes this horrible show. But all of this insecurity torture was just a prelude to the weekly group dance, a contemporary routine which was actually themed "insecurities." Hey, Dance Moms producers and dance teachers, The Glee Project already did this exact same thing. You're just trying way too hard.

While the kids learned the routine, the titular dance moms went through a weekly routine of their own. They started a whole to-do about one mom doing something mean to the newest mom in the group...honestly, it was like watching a horribly written version of Mean Girls 3: Momsense.

One mother ACTUALLY said this about a 12-year-old girl: “I’m not impressed with Sammi...I don’t understand why she is such a big deal.” Sammi is TWELVE. Might I remind this mother what a tenuous age that is? I don’t think most people of any age could hear that a statement like that about themselves and not fall into a funk. Luckily, Sammi is a ridiculously good dancer for her age and has the self-confidence to back it up. Still, that mother should be ashamed of herself.

Really, all of the moms should be ashamed of themselves. I highly recommend taking a step (or 309848243 steps) back and letting your daughters and son save the high drama for their emotional contemporary numbers.

Photo: Via CBS; Photo: Via NBC; Photo: Via Scott Gries/Lifetime