Wilfred: "Trust"

Season 1, Episode 2

Working out that dog/man/conscience dynamic

“Trust thy self only, and another shall not betray thee.”

-William Penn

In the advance press for Wilfred, various critics referred to “Trust” as either the best or the worst of the three episodes they were sent out as screeners. This of course put me on edge a little bit, because more often than not, when something gets greeted with mixed reviews, I find myself in line with the detractors.

But the problem with these mixed reviews – and something I didn’t account for after seeing the pilot last week – is that I don’t think I’m watching this show for the same reason that most other people are. While Wilfred is ostensibly a comedy, I’m more interested in it for the other aspects, the growing moments for Ryan and figuring out just what his version of Wilfred tells us about his subconscious. I don’t require Wilfred to be funny, but apparently other critics do as they based their reaction to this episode on how funny it was to them.

I’m not saying that I didn’t find this episode funny – the scenes at both the beach and the vet certainly made me laugh – but I didn’t find most of the rest of the episode funny, and I’m actually okay with that. Instead, I was far more concerned with analyzing out Ryan’s interactions with Wilfred this week.

I certainly liked the idea of Ryan throwing up mental roadblocks to being with girls, as it revealed something about his personality (even if that something was a bit trite), and it used Wilfred gloriously to do it, as he needled Ryan for his chicken-shit risk aversion in much the way a person’s conscience might needle them. In truth, it was quite fun to watch a psychical manifestation of Ryan’s internal arguments with himself.

My problem with the episode began, however, when the show decided to give us the whole “Jenna has a secret” subplot, and has little to do with fact that that secret was supposedly a dick. (Though the fact that Ryan’s made up fear is that Jenna may have a dick certainly does say a whole lot of weird things about him.) No, my problem is two-fold. First, I can’t really buy that the Wilfred on Ryan’s mind might have a secret that Ryan himself wouldn’t no, even if I get that this is maybe supposed to represent Ryan’s doubt. (Maybe.) The second – and bigger – problem, is that Wilfred’s like about “Jenna has a dick…of a boyfriend” seems oddly prescient thing for Ryan’s mind to come up with, which either means that it’s a plothole, that the show is about to go on a weird sci-fi/fantasy bender, or that Ryan knew about the boyfriend already and forgot that fact, and that makes him all kinds of stupid.

The other, smaller problem I had is that the show hasn’t quite figured out how Ryan’s interactions with Wilfred are meant to appear to the real world. “Happiness” seemed to act as if anything Ryan says to Wilfred is something he’s actually saying out loud, while this week acted as if this wasn’t the case. I know it’s a little thing, but I don’t think it’s too much to ask that the show gives us some consistency on that front.

If Wilfred is going to ask to care about Wilfred as a window into Ryan’s subconscious – and if by extension, they’re asking us to care about Ryan – than the writers need to better work out how all of the interactions work out, or else the episode’s logic starts to fall flat, bringing down everything else with it.

Quotes, Etc:

“There’s a deeper issue here, deeper than Paula’s finger got ever reach.”

“Ryan, it’s a pelican! It’s a pelican!”

“I thought you might want to play a bit of ball first, buy me a drink, but no, now that we’re friends, you go straight to roofing me in the ass!”

“The puppet master is Bob Barker!”

“I need a doctor, not tech support.”

“You’re gonna spend the whole night cock-blocking yourself.”

“It’s not a big deal. Mark Wahlberg has three nipples, as he’s a big star.”

I should totally use that “I’m awkward” line in the future. It’s totally true.

“Seriously, what does he see in Ben Affleck?”