TVSquad

(S04E07) After taking a week off for the William Shatner Roast, Reno 911! returns for the season finale, and we finally get to find out who it was that murdered Sheriff Chechekevitch with peanuts.

While the gang tries to figure out who did it, they also have to attend to the usually police business, which includes confronting a man at a carnival with a stage built into the front of his pants that hides what he refers to as an albino snake that "grows rigid in your grasp." Jones and Garcia can't see nor touch it though, because it's very sensitive to light and it's really more for women. The officers also answer a call from a pot dealer who's complaining about people trying to buy pot on a Sunday when he's closed. The officers threaten to arrest him for selling pot and the dealer threatens to arrest them for trespassing. When Garcia points out he can see the marijuana through the window, the dealer insists that's only ditch weed, and the good stuff is in the back with the cocaine.

(S04E05) Maybe I have some kind of chemical imbalance, or I just wasn't in a comedy kind of mood, but I didn't think this episode was that great. Normally I love this show, but this episode just kind of left me cold.

Fans might recall that in the first season there was a two-part episode where some officials from Home Land Security came to Reno to teach the deputies about terrorist training. It turns out they were actually con artists and they wound up stealing a bunch of stuff from the evidence lockers. In this episode, one of the con artists, "Spanish Mike" Alvarez, is placed in custody in the Reno jail where he tries to get inside the heads of each of the deputies. My favorite scene was with Junior, who he convinces to hand over his gun, but little does he know that Junior took the bullets out of the gun first. Junior taunts him: "Now who's in whose head?" That was pretty funny.

(S04E04) After a pre-credit opening where the male deputies try to conduct a "panty raid" and end up face to face with a completely naked and pregnant Wiegel, we cut to the first real scene of the episode where a motivational speaker Dangle found on the internet gives the deputies some rather confounding advice, including this diatribe:

"I ask you, does the belt not go through all the loops? You all see yourselves as brilliant little pebbles just waiting for your code word. Well, what if your code word doesn't come, huh? Are you gonna sit around in your cruiser and wind up ejected from somebody's crazy physics package?"

More profound advice I've never heard. Let's move on.

(S04E03) Typically, an episode of Reno 911! will have some semblance of a plot, but the bulk of the episode will be random scenes involving the officers. This particular episode actually stuck with its main plot of the officers discovering a jet ski once owned by a deceased officer, and only veered from that plot a couple of times.

One of the best "extra" scenes involved Trudi going to Lamaze class, once again with Paul Rudd playing the instructor. The two become rather cozy in front of the class, with Rudd's character showing Trudi the proper way to massage her breasts to get them to produce milk, and ending with her bent over and him behind her for some inexplicable reason. I'm not positive, but I think right before the scene changes you can see Rudd actually starting to crack up. That's actually one of many great things about this show being completely improvised; if you watch closely there are a lot of scenes where someone begins to lose it. Pay close attention to Tom Lennon whenever they do their PSAs, because he's almost always on the verge of completely cracking up.

The other day I talked about the questions I got asked during The Sopranos premiere on Sunday evening, and how "Who's that Gene guy?" was the reigning champ. Since then, I could easily add "What did Junior say before he shot Tony?" to the list of growing curiosities. So, after some intense research (called a friend who called a friend who speaks italian, and whom I apparently owe a drink to at a bar now), I've discovered just what he said. Even turning on the subtitles for the episode didn't help, they just read Junior: (mumbles in italian) Malanga!, so it may not have been the clearest recording that I emailed, but I was told that it sounded like Junior said "Cazzata Malanga!"

So what does Cazzata Malanga mean? Cazzata translates (I was told) into "worthless" or "piece of garbage", definitely derogatory. Malanga, for those long term and keen-eared fans, you'll remember as being the guy that Junior wanted to whack all the way back in season 1. Junior wanted the deed done at Vesuvio's (Artie's place) and Tony didn't, which is what led to the fallout between uncle and nephew. To me, this is just to further the point that Junior is finally senile; he's not faking, he's not lying, he just actually is crazy. Let me know what you think.