Wilfred - "Progress"

Season 2, Episode 1

“Discontent is the first necessity of progress.”

                                                                        - Thomas Edison

For reasons unknown, FX decided to release tonight’s season premiere of Wilfred, an episode that deals with the fallout to last season’s excellent finale, a week early on the internet, and label it has a “special preview episode”, which would imply that it would be much less serialized than it actually is. And even though they went through the motions of making sure it aired, they also did it with very little promotion, airing it a week before the much higher-profiled Louie is set to premiere, and even placing it in a slightly later timeslot. It would seem as if FX is trying to kill the show, and given how tonight’s premiere seems to have shifted it from a stoner comedy to something much weirder – but much better – I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest.

I had some problems with the show’s first season, as I often felt that it would too often take wild tonal shifts between simple stoner humor and something much weirder, never really settling down on tone and just sticking with it. Both were fine tones on their own, but they didn’t always mesh well together, and it seemed as if there was a better show struggling to burst out of the more conventional, commercial comedic framework. On a similar note, I also had a problem with Wilfred as a character/symbol, as the exact part of Ryan’s psyche that he was supposed to be representing would change from week-to-week, often without reason.

As such, I quite enjoyed tonight premiere, which set about fixing both of those problems. As to the first, the episode makes it very clear that it’s much more interested in being weird and interesting than it is in being merely funny. From the slightly offset way the word “progress” fades from the rest of the opening quote, to the initial “dream sequence” of Ryan in the office, there’s an obvious sense that the show doesn’t care about attracting new viewers. There’s not much catch-up done – the “previously on” segment is more interested in laying out the show’s premise, and skips highlighting some of the more important events of the finale – and it seems that the show is trusting the audience to follow along and remember on its own. Instead, the episode revels in the weirdness of everything that is happening, and the structure of the entire episodes helps to realize this.

Of course, that part of that structure involves an episode-long “what is reality” dream sequence/fake-out both helps and harms the episode. Though it become pretty obvious during the episode’s second act that it’s all a dream, the weirdness of said dream helps to sell the complexity of the story that “Progress” is trying tell. The mish-mash of items like Robin Williams playing himself playing his Good Will Hunting character, or Ryan’s father being the one that consented to electroshock, along with the more obvious things like Jenna driving six hours to see him and Wilfred just generally causing mayhem (and stealing a van) all paint a vivid picture of the swirl of information that exists inside Ryan’s head. He’s still a psychological mess, and all of his warring desires, fears, and memories seem to be driving him even more insane.

But even before that ending twist, the episode is still very entertaining in its own right, even if it’s not the funniest outing that the show has produced thus far. With Wilfred somewhat relegated for the half-hour, the focus remain on Ryan more than it has in the past. Since Ryan himself isn’t a inherently humorous character, this make for an episode that intentionally lighter on the laughs – but one that’s stronger for it. By getting down the basics of things like characters, we become invested in Ryan’s progress and prognosis, while simultaneously being goaded on by the weird things happening on the periphery. Of course the episode is so weird that it wouldn’t work entirely work without the “it was all a dream” reveal, but it is still highly entertaining up to that point.

It’s also this laugh-less nature of the episode that lends itself to fixing the second problem I outlined above, that of Wilfred identity. Though dealt with in a more literal fashion, when Ryan calls Wilfred “the part of me that lies to me”, it’s admittedly as questionable assessment, given that A) it’s an incredibly vague assessment and B) it happens as part of a dream. We can’t be sure what that means – I highly doubt that Wilfred is in anyway Ryan’s denial, when he’s much more likely the id – it speaks to the fact that the show seems interested in giving us an answer – eventually.

The dream nature of the episode also has another other effect on the series as a whole – it allows the show to reset some of the elements that wouldn’t play long term, while keeping some of the more important game-changing and character-developing aspects of it. While the episode writes away things like Wilfred’s amnesia, and ends with Ryan fixing the basement up again – thus suggesting that we will settle back to the more “normal” format next week – there still exists an slight change in what all of it means. Wilfred note telling Ryan to “keep digging” doesn’t serve as just a narrative placeholder, but also as a signpost to the audience. The show is going to go deeper into Ryan’s psyche this season, and you better be okay with that, because things are about to get really weird.

Quotes and Other Thoughts:

Yes, Robin Williams was the big get for this episode, but they also were able to get Rob Riggle, Brain Baumgartner, and Steven Webber for incredibly small roles. This show had a pretty good track record guest stars in its first season, and I hope that continues this season as well.

“Ryan, when I was lying in that hospital bed, crumpled up like some metaphor of a crumpled up aluminum can…”

“You mean wires?” “I don’t know words, Ryan. We didn’t all go to Stanford Law School.”

“Christ, will somebody get this bloody Tic-Tac from under my wheel!?”

“Kevin, you need to get some antibiotics. Seriously, that’s annoying.”