Men of a Certain Age: "The Pickup"

Season 2, Episode 8

A fantastic setup to plots that may or may not pan out

“It’s your 50^th. It’s a special occasion and shit, bro.”

-Steve

For an episode entitled “The Pickup”, tonight’s episode was all about the backslide for our characters – or at least two of them. There are two ways to look at this episode – either you can view it positively that the characters once again had thematically related stories, or you can bemoan the fact that MOACA is doing a backslide arc, one of the most irritating and wheel-spinning tropes to ever grace our television sets. And I while I do still has some reservations about how these backslide arcs are going to play out, I can take heart in two things. First, the strides that these men have made in their lives have been short lived; if the first season was all about how shitty their lives were, these steps forward they’ve taken have been attempts to escape those black holes, and they pale by comparison. Suddenly their progress seems less triumphant, and their relapses seem far more imminent. Secondly, the show seems to be using these returns to familiar territory to tell us something new about the characters.

Terry, for instance, who was introduced to us as a womanizing, pot smoking slacker actor, but has made great strides in both his personal and professional lives by giving up the bimbos and getting a grown-up job. That new life included Erin, who was perhaps the pinnacle of Terry’s personal achievements. But without her, he feels lost in this new role, so he retreats to his old one, just like most hurt people do. But here’s the difference: Terry knows that what he’s doing is the wrong choice, and it does seems like he honestly and truly wants to get back to normal, which should provide some good tension as he struggles between the two modes of his life

And adding to this tension going forward is the fact that Owen is going to drag Terry, kicking and screaming if he has to, back into adulthood. Owen didn’t really have a storyline tonight, and he was mostly relegated to the sidelines as a kind of court jester for the show, which is fine because Andre Braugher is a fantastic comedic actor and I always enjoy when the show allows him to flex that particular muscle. Plus by keeping Owen as a heckler for most of the episode, it added some real weight when he sat Terry down in his office at the end of the episode, where he turned what seemed like a reward for Terry’s bad behavior (getting to keep his job) into a punishment. Owen’s back is to the wall as he is trying to both reorient the business and fight off Scarpula, and while this storyline has been so frequent as to be rote, I think by couching it in the personal relationship of him and Terry, the show can get some new mileage out of an old story.

Joe’s backslide is a bit more complicated, and in that respect it didn’t seem to land as well. Joe seems to be the kind of man who can only keep one or two good things in the air, while letting the rest of his life fall to shit, so now that he had a more friendly relationship with Sonia and he doesn’t have to worry about Albert’s anxiety, it only makes sense that his more personal problems will start to rise up again. There was an over-obvious parallel drawn tonight between Joe in his son with regards to their respective anxiety issues, and I believe it was meant to be highlighting the Joe’s problems were creeping back up again. But what wasn’t clear – and what made this plotline land with a little less force than it should have – was the fact that it was never clear why Joe’s anxiety was returning. I’m assuming it’s due to the fact that the Senior Tour is coming up, so he is psyching himself out, but I can’t be sure. For all I know it’s just his own issues with age, or with the store, or with his family. Maybe Albert’s success with his anxiety makes Joe feel like a failure at his. I don’t know, and I wish that this episode had spent the episode making this (something we don’t really know) clearer, and spent less time on the parallels between Joe and Albert (something which we’ve seen before).

Complicating this problem was that most of this stuff was kept in the first half of the episode, which thankfully left the more powerful backslide into gambling operate free of distractions. This plotline is more clear – Joe, much like Terry, is retreating to the nasty habit he knows in the face of adversity and possible failure. But as opposed to the mind bets, which were a very simple substitute for regular bets, being a temp bookie is far more complicated, both because it’s still like an actual bet (just kind of in reverse) and also because while these actions could still negatively affect Joe’s family and friends, they could also wreck the lives of the currently incapacitated Manfro and his clients. And with the Senior Tour still calling Joe, things are going to get a lot messier for him before they get better.

Quotes, Etc.:

“Ain’t anywhere to go but up from bullshit.”

“You listening Joe? I was just getting to the part about my diarrhea.”

“I have to stop now, because if I get a hard-on, I’ll faint.”

Ass-Bone Trouble: The worst name for a blues singer ever.

“You see, he’s saying you’re also a dick, which certainly isn’t a great joke, and doesn’t deserve that laugh…”

“You see his ass is right between yours and mine.” “Yeah, he’s got a great ass.”

“You didn’t think we were just gonna let you get a camera up your butt for you 50^th, did you?”

“See? Carlin.” “No.”