Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant originally conceived of Reno 911! as a sketch show, just with police. In practice, they haven’t strayed far from their first concept, as Reno is basically a collection of bits, with a few plot elements here and there to advance a very loosely defined story. Tonight’s stories: The female deputies get special, cleavage-revealing bulletproof vests, and an ex-con intent on revenge stalks Dangle and Jones.

As usual, the plot elements are secondary to the bits, but no one’s expecting The Wire here. The vests, with their plunging necklines, give the female officers new powers, and Jones and Dangle have no memory of their stalker, much to his consternation. That’s essentially the plot of episode three, summarized in 26 words.

But Reno’s hybrid of sketch and situation comedy has always been compelling, even though The Office gets a lot more credit for improvisation than it perhaps deserves. Where The Office veers serious and sentimental, Reno aims squarely for ridiculous, censor-baiting comedy. Consider last week’s episode, which featured David Wain masturbating furiously while Wiegel bathed him. As one of the commenters pointed out, they pixilated his arm a bit, but there was no doubt about what he was doing. I really can’t think of another show that could pull that off. It ain’t classy, but damn if it isn’t funny.

Anyway, back to episode three. It had the usual array of killer lines, such as…

• “Do we get special penis guards? Special schlong protectors?” —Jones, on the ladies getting special bulletproof vests

• “You’re not the guy who used to fuck feet?” —Dangle, to his stalker

• “Today…is the first day…of the rest of your life. And I’m gonna fish the rest of your dad’s corpse out of the chimney, okay?” —Dangle, to a little boy

• “I am the last samurai on this block!” —Big Mike

• “I’m gonna hoist these puppies up and see if I can’t get us a popcorn machine.” —Wiegel

I’d love to see Reno’s raw footage one day, to get a sense of how much they film each scene. How much gets cut for every line like “You’re not the guy who used to fuck feet”? When I interviewed Lennon and Garant last year for the Reno film, they mentioned having something like four hours of footage, which sounds about right for an improv-heavy comedy. Jake Kasdan, director of Walk Hard, talked about shooting scenes over and over again—first as the script dictated, then just going with it—to get to the funniest stuff. In a sense, you’d expect that movie and Reno to be wall-to-wall hilarity. (Just like you’d think The Simpsons would never drop a steaming pile like this week’s “’90s episode” or the one about Skinner being an imposter. You’d think there’s too much talent in that writers’ room to let something like that happen. I say this as a die-hard Simpsons fan.) But good improv just looks easy—ever endured bad improv?—and they’re lucky to get as much good stuff as they do.

They’re also a continually overlooked ensemble with some of the sharpest skills on TV. If they didn’t have such affection for the lowbrow—“special schlong protectors”—they’d probably get more critical adulation. But dammit, this is one critic who laughed out loud when Dangle asked that guy if he fucks feet.

Grade: B- Despite its laughs, this episode was a little slow.

Etc.

• Who needs critical adulation when Night At The Museum grossed nearly $600 million? Unsurprisingly, Lennon and Garant are in the preproduction stage of Night At The Museum 2: Escape From The Smithsonian, supposedly the first feature ever filmed at the Smithsonian. And you can rest easy, fans: Robin Williams will be back for it! (Actually, I thought he was fine in that movie.) The bad news: The writers’ strike has delayed its release until at least summer ’09—plenty of time for Ben Stiller to crank out a few more terrible movies and stoke the public’s apathy.

• Tom Lennon also voiced a TV show called Brandy & Mr. Whiskers. Its synopsis from IMDB: “A snobbish dog and a half crazed rabbit try to make the best of things when they get stranded in the Amazon rain forrest [sic] together.” IMDB: You never know what you’ll find.