Tonight’s NBC comedies were so good, I thought I’d write about them. I love all these shows so much, and yet that rarely gets an outlet here. Let’s change that.

Parks and Recreation has been so much better this year on every level that it’s not surprising it’s not a rating winner, but if this season gets any word of mouth at all, those ratings should start shooting up.

Since this episode was all about Valentine’s Day, it makes sense that it was all about romances.

Ann and Mark’s relationship was a bit of a shock at first but it’s grown on me, primarily because it’s never been the main story of any episode. And it makes it a lot easier to like Mark, who was a bit of a cad and a bunch of a douche last season. It doesn’t seem like this relationship is destined to be long-lived, though. Ann’s comments during her talking head scene sharply demonstrated that a really normal relationship can also mean a really uninteresting relationship. Nonetheless, this little relationship has done quite a bit of heavy lifting by making Mark more likable and by bringing Ann closer to the office environment.

Leslie and Justin’s relationship had a great path and the way it ended, while keeping Justin totally likable, was kind of scary for its intelligence. From the first time we saw Justin he’d been a storyteller, and making that the key thing that makes Leslie realize they’re not right for each other is one of those story touches that less capable shows would screw up.

Tom’s awkward attempts to woo his ex-wife are sweet and very fitting a person as bizarre as Tom Haverford. They didn’t end well, but they continued the work of making Tom empathetic after a season of him mostly being the weirdo. What makes this show interesting is that they’re putting the work in to make all their characters relatable and realistic. Not that The Office is a grab-bag of slapstick tomfoolery but its main comic sources are drawn a bit broader than real life; Parks and Recreation hopes to mine the world of humour and pathos that exists on the other edge of the line, skirting realism in a way that you would think would make the comedy harder to come by, but this show makes it look easy.

One of the most impressive developments of this season is the stealth romance of April and Andy. The undefined age difference aside, their flirtations — and Andy’s obliviousness to it all — are one of the more romantic story lines they’ve weaved into this season while still remaining wildly funny. And of course, it’s led to whole new avenues for April. She’s still basically that deadpan sardonic ironic apathetic chick, but the glimmer in her eye when she dotes on Andy is opening her up to the world beyond the ’15 layers of irony’ her boyfriend (and his boyfriend) revel in.

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Some nice things in this episode:

• ‘It makes The Notebook look like Saw 5.’
• ‘I’m gonna call him poo-pa.’
• Leslie: ‘Think of it this way: these songs are exactly like the songs you usually except instead of modern rock, they’re old jazzy standards from the 40′s.’
  Andy: ‘OK, yeah, you got a point.’
• ‘I never had a chance to get a girl a cliched Valentine’s Day gift before so… I got you all of them.’
• Mark in a tuxedo and red bow tie. Adorbs.
• A timely joke: ‘Stay away from John Mayer.’
• ‘I’m gonna throw up real quick and then we can leave!’
• The people on the show seem to be acknowledging the camera a little more in the recent episodes, I like it so far I just hope they don’t over-do it.
• ‘Uhh… I mean, that sucked, didn’t it?’
• Guitarist: ‘Maybe if you sang it like Louis Armstrong.’
  Andy: ‘Maybe yeah, I mean here’s the thing though… who is that?’
• ‘If I’m not mistaken, that was the old lady version of flashing.’
• Andy is too quotable.

I don’t get Ross Douthat. People I know keep telling me he’s not a total idiot (obviously, being a conservative implies a certain level of idiocy) but I’ve yet to find any of his words of any value, except perhaps to his own ego.

His most recent New York Times column, for example, extols the “romantic excess” that liberals seem to lack. He claims that “modern relationships have been drained of danger and purged of eros.”

Except he doesn’t think modern relationships are passionless, he think modern liberal relationships are passionless.

Our hyper-educated, socially-liberal elite is considerably more romantically conservative than its blasé attitude toward pornography or premarital sex would lead you to expect.

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This tameness has beneficial social consequences: When it comes to divorce rates and out-of-wedlock births, Americans with graduate degrees are still living in the 1950s. It’s the rest of the country that marries impulsively, divorces frequently, and bears a rising percentage of its children outside marriage.

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Better, perhaps, if this dynamic were reversed. Our meritocrats could stand to leaven their careerism with a little more romantic excess.

Ignoring the self-pitying Douthat sneaks into that first sentence, as all proper right-wingers must, it speaks to a massive misunderstanding on his part of the difference between passion and responsibility. To say that I’m not passionate because I’m capable of putting a condom on or willing to not pick up the first girl I see at the bar — not that either of those statements apply to me personally; for the moment, I’m speaking for other liberals with more game — is an utterly foolish thing to say.

The idea that something is not passionate unless is it reckless and stupid and embarrassing, exemplified by countless romantic comedies over the years, is a childish belief that most liberals have grown out of. Put bluntly, passion isn’t a quickie marriage, it’s a safeword.

Piling on, I’m not sure why Douthat is cheering on reckless marriage, frivolous divorce, and bastard children (I’m a bastard myself, so no insult intended) seeing as he’s the conservative between the two of us. But, let’s not get bogged down with logic. There’s columns that need writing.

Last night’s Chuck was a spectacular hour of television, but the moment being touted as a “game-changer” didn’t feel like that to me. The moment of realization at the end of season three of Lost was a game changing one: the entire dynamic of the show was thrown in a drastically different direction. Last night’s Chuck felt more like Lost’s season one finale and season two premiere: we’ve arrived at a pivotal moment in the mythology of the series, and realized that what we have seen thus far was merely prelude. Like the deep endless chasm Jack and Locke stared into, Chuck’s finale left us desperate for more, but things hadn’t really changed. The camera had simply pulled back to reveal that the rope was actually an elephant’s tail. So while the story has grown much grander, its elements are the same, which I would say means it’s not a game-changer; an amazing episode, but not a game-changer.

Admittedly, this could just be my view of what a game-changer is. If you consider the introduction of the Dharma Initiative on Lost a game-changing event, then Chuck’s finale was more definitely a game-changer.

Regardless, this finale proved that Chuck is one of the best shows on TV. It manages to intertwine overarching mythology, spy action, drama, romance, humour, and geeky references better than any other show. And what’s more astounding is that none of these suffer for any other. The characters are fleshed out, they grow and change over time, the Chuck/Sarah romance is always there and develops and evolves with each new circumstance, and the action is more dynamic than most other television shows. Chuck is undoubtedly the best show NBC has right now, and to cancel it now would be more than foolish, it would be tragic.

Many people are spreading the word about the “Save Chuck” campaign, and Alan Sepinwall’s open letter to NBC is stellar. The best advice, however, is the simplest. Watch the show. Buy it on DVD. Contact NBC and voice your support of the show. Chuck is a show worth fighting for. So fight.

Cupid, a remake of a cancelled show barely a decade old and written by one of the original writers, premiered Tuesday night. The basis of the show is the interplay between a man, who claims to be Cupid of Roman mythology on a mission to put together 100 couples, and a female psychiatrist, and novelist, determined to shatter this man’s deific delusion and a steadfast believer in the slow death of “True Love.” Each week, there will be a couple that Cupid (AKA Trevor Pierce) will try to put together, and I imagine he’ll succeed more often than not.

Earlier this year, CW aired, and quickly cancelled, a show on their Sunday night block called Valentine, about a female romance novelist recruited by Aphrodite and Cupid, along with a few of their Olympian friends, to help reinvigorate the world with Love, one couple at a time. In many ways, the shows are very similar. Obviously, the former is going to emphasize the ambiguity of Trevor Pierce’s situation — is he a broken man, or an exiled god? — and the latter was quite explicit, and delightfully mythological, about the history of their Cupid. But overall, both shows will follow that structure of a weekly romance unfurling as the overarching story develops in the background.

I’ve admitted in the past to being an unabashed romantic and lover of love stories, which why it’s no surprise I enjoyed Valentine, and really enjoyed Cupid. I’ve also been re-watching Gilmore Girls from the beginning and find myself very much caught up in the girlie moments of the show, tittering when they describe their first kiss or sighing during that all-important first dance. So I guess what I’m trying to tell all of you, is that I’m a huge girl when it comes to these things, so my judgement of this sort of material is likely biased. But, hey, if you’re got an hour free Tuesday nights, might as well watch two people fall in love, right?