Season 2, Episode 2
The right kind of
episode
If “Blax, Snake, Home” was a solid if not perfect return
for Happy Endings, then “Baby Steps”
represents the type of episode that should have opened the season and the
quality that I hope the show strives for going forward. And that’s a good deal
of praise for a fairly simplistic episode.
Surprisingly, the plots of tonight’s episode were perhaps
sparser than last’s weeks, but it made for a stronger episode overall. By
splitting the group off into three pairs – Alex and Penny at the store, Max and
Dave working together in the food truck, and Jane and Brad went on down to
crazy town – and allowing the pairs to just mostly riff on their situations, it
allowed for the maximum amount of laughs a show like this could pull off.
The strongest of the three plots of course belonged to
Max and Dave, not only because Adam Pally continues to give the show’s strongest
performance, but because this was the storyline with the greatest opportunity for
comedic tete-a-tete, an opportunity the show took great advantage of. (Best exchange
of the night: “I’ll
see you in Hell!” “I’ll see you in Hell, too, but I’ll see you at home first
for the Bears game!” “Fine, I’ll get the hummus!” “Fine, get baby carrots too,
’cause I like to dip!”) I’m not going to pretend that this plot had a
great deal of resolution, or that it told us anything new about the characters,
but it was uproariously entertaining, and that’s all this show seeks to be.
Brad and Jane’s (the second and third best performances, in
case you were wondering) storyline comes a close second, as Damon Wayan’s Jr.
and Eliza Coupe have developed this weird married-coupled-chemistry that makes
for great exchanges between the two. Like most of the story’s that revolve
around the pair, tonight one half (in this case, Jane) was the driving force
behind the story, while the other went along for the ride and commented on the
proceedings.
As a character, Jane has always been a bit of a high-strung, and
she’s always this close to becoming
too cartoony for the rest of the show, and nothing tends to drive TV women
crazier than babies. Luckily, the show was able to couch her weird insistence
in being a part of Julia’s Dora’s life with her worries over what she
will be like with a mother, and Coupe managed to keep her performance just
contained enough to work. (Also, bonus points for making Jane the strong-willed
woman who would donate an egg and never look back, but still have enough heart
that she would worry about the child once somebody put the idea in her head.)
At that leaves the story involving Penny (fourth!) and Alex
(sixth, coming after Dave) and their bottle-episode-esque plot that took place
entirely inside Alex’s shop. While the idea of teenage girls using baby onsies
as tight t-shirts is a hilarious idea, what followed – with Penny and Alex
getting sucked in by the popular girls that never would have given them the
time of day when they were in high school, and the shop generally going to pot because
of it – was a bit tired, even if the actual performances from Casey Wilson and Elisha
Cuthbert were generally funny indeed. And considering I originally thought that
the girls were just playing the two of them, it still subverted some of my
expectations, and I can’t hate a plot that does that.
In short, this is the kind of episode that convinced me to
watch last season, and it’s the kind of episode the show should have aired last
week to keep as many viewers on board as possible. (Even though it’s in the
night cushiest time-slot, right after Modern
Family, the premier saw a loss of 6 million viewers, and who know how many
of them were the standard first-time viewers that tend to drop off in the
second week.) The show is technically just a “cult hit” now, and ABC’s in a
strong enough position (read: it’s not NBC) that it could afford to cancel this
show for something that might get bigger numbers (I hope it’s not Work It, knock on wood.) I would like to
see the show survive, and it needs to be at its best – like it was tonight – in
order to do that.
Quotes, Etc:
My ordering of the best performances, as well as tonight’s
riff-heave episode, might make a bit more sense once you read this interviewthe AV Club conducted with Eliza Coupe.
I know that I placed her fourth, but I still really like
Wilson’s performance. Maybe it would help if I visualize the strength of each
performance amid a spectrum:
Pally Wayans Coupe
Wilson Knighton
Cuthbert
“What kind of bank won’t let you make a deposit?” “Give
it a minute….”
“Why would you deposit money in a sperm bank?”
“The price is right and baby likes a deep tuck.”
“We could go the airport and get some Tom Clancy novels
and just get hammered.”
“Max, how many time you I have to tell you, Scotty Pippin
is in the financial position to hire a sassy butler.”
“Oh, of course the white lady’s airbag deploys.”
“Which one should I wear? ‘Put me to bed’ or ‘I pooped’?...I
just answered my own question.”
“This chest hair is majestic. People could get lost in
it.”
“I’ll tell you who else isn’t allowed to just walk in
there and be the boss: Tony Danza. And that’s why his talk show was a creative failure.”
“Not perpetrator. Just a friendly stranger with advice
about the future.”
“Cause you know if I don’t know what a word means, I automatically
think it means testicles.”
“Just a little Shakespeare joke…and speaking of the arts…”
“I dunno, I kind of like Madison. It’s Madison who is a
real bitch.”
“And by the way, Jews are actually great tippers, so I
don’t know where that came from."
Great review. What's going on with 30 Rock?
ReplyDeleteTina Fey's busy popping out a kid. The show will return in January, though I'm not sure in what time slot.
ReplyDelete