The Office - "Lice" - Review

As a fan of The Office, I’ve come to accept its diminishing returns in quality. While early in its run, for me, it used to be required viewing. That sentiment no longer remains. The series, on the one hand, has burned out all the story it really needed to tell. Michael Scott and the Jim-Pam relationship were the two things at the heart of the show. Now Michael is gone, and Jim and Pam are together, and it begs the question: why do we keep watching the show?

The series was going downhill long before Michael Scott left (If you don’t believe me, just remember even “Goodbye, Michael” has a really terrible sub-plot with Will Ferrell and Andy trying to make a sales pitch). But his absence made it even more apparent just how the series had lived longer than it ought to. The series is at its best when its people staving off boredom in the workplace or dealing with awkward work situations, and those rarely seem to be the focus anymore. The episode “The Target” where a bunch of the cast builds a tower out of customer complaint cards is an example of the small scale stuff that it could get a lot of mileage out of, but now shies away from.

By comparison, “Lice” feels like a stunt episode. It provides a really contrived way to create humor. May be if it had some big laughs, the show could get away with the premise. Happy Endings is a series with really contrived scenarios but it gets in so many funny jokes that it doesn’t matter. The Office, however, is not good (especially in recent years) at these situations.

We know Pam is going to get caught, and it’s going to end up badly for her. We can similarly see how Darryl’s breakup is going to end up failing. And the third storyline with Jim playing basketball with an, admittedly, great cameo from Dr. J feels so disconnected from everything (while also not being very funny) that it feels like an afterthought. 

When Cece ends up getting lice, Pam accidentally ends up bringing it to the office, and almost everyone gets it (except Dwight, who ends up wearing a hazmat suits, and a few others). Everyone blames it on Meredith and Pam wants to tell her but doesn’t want to people to judge her. But then Meredith shaves her head to get rid of the lice, and there’s simply no going back. When Pam’s mom, on speaker, reveals that Cece has lice, everyone flips out on Pam, but Meredith, always being the one looked down upon by the office, asks her for a drink and an unexpected connection is made.

Meanwhile, Darryl breaks up with Val, claiming he doesn’t think it’s worth it with him working in Philly. But when he plays the sympathy card with fellow liceless co-workers Nelly, Phyllis, and Kevin, they tell Val that she should take him back. And so she does, much to Darryl’s chagrin. 

It all feels very pointless, which isn’t a bad thing in of itself. But this just isn’t a very funny episode of a series we know is capable of being much, much better.

Stray Observations:

-The cold open with Jim biting his lips was similarly pointless and unfunny.

-“How would I feel if I was home, and she was off in the city… go carting with John Stamos”

-Darryl’s smile after his breakup - totally sold by Craig Robinson

-Dwight thinks that for 15 years, no one would be friends with him because he had lice when he was a kid.

-“The only thing that got me through it was pie and Brandi… the singer”

-“This won’t help him. This is muffin not cake” – Great delivery by Phyllis

-Of course, Creed got lice. How is that not surprising? Also, his reaction to getting partnered with Pam: “Oh, stuck with the weirdo”

-Catherine Tate’s monologue about being single was very, very funny.

-“I was re-entering the dating pool… then Kevin asked me out”

-The Erin-Pete thing continues to brew. Andy still hasn’t returned. What do you think of that?

Grade: C+

Thoughts on Season 2 of "The Shield"

 Spoilers on Season 2 of "The Shield" Below:

If The Shield was really good in its first season; then its second season strived for greatness, and didn’t stray too far from it. The series stepped up to match season one … and then some. I didn’t think it possible, but Vic found himself even more embattled than ever before, and this allowed for even better television.

The series had made things blow up in Vic’s face before and it had cornered him before. But it had never stacked the deck so thoroughly against him like it did in the second season. The more Vic pushed back; the more things just seemed to get worse and worse. His wife had run off with his kids. An auditor was scrutinizing Farmington. The Strike Team was selling drugs on the side without his knowledge. His CI Theo was killed, and the drug kingpin who had him burnt to death was out for vengeance. When Vic began beating the hell out of Armadillo in the second episode “Dead Soldiers” out of total frustration at how much had gotten out of his control, I was tempted to give him passing approval. Vic was starting to lose his sense of self early in the season. Without his family to anchor him with a sense of purpose, he was facing a major identity crisis. On one level, Vic does what he does for the sake of his family. 

Taking things out of the characters’ control brought out the best in the show. Not just out of Vic, but all the major characters. The Dutch’s failures to save a victim brutally physically, and sexually violated by suspects he let go, caused him to sink down into a pit of self-doubt and despair. Danny found herself harassed by the wife of a man she was forced to shoot when he drew a gun on her (all the more complicated because he was an Arab-American who was being racially profiled by his neighbor). First, It costs her the chance to be a sergeant. To make matters worse, to save Vic from being ratted on by Armadillo, Shane and Curtis are forced to sneak in a knife to a person she brought in in order to kill Armadillo, thus getting Danny suspended. She just couldn’t catch a break this season; I felt terrible for Danny. She didn’t seem to deserve this treatment. Eventually she would even get fired over the knife incident, and it was the icing on the cake of a season where she was treated like the writer's proverbial punching bag. Vic and Acevada have earned whatever moral comeuppance is due for them, but Danny (if you disclude her affair with Vic, which is more on him than her) has done little to nothing wrong. 

The series put its characters into wonderful conflicts that highlighted the actors and writers’ strengths. Claudette was pushed to the limits as both Mackey and Aceveda blocked her every attempt to track down the man, Armadillo, who raped a twelve year old. After Julian continued to deny his homosexual orientation, and proposed to a woman he barely knew. Even as Danny attempted to convince him that he shouldn’t hide his feelings, he continued to suppress what he knew, and take reorientation services. (The scene where Julian tell his fiancé about being gay is Michael Jace’s performance at its finest). Covering up his gay identity continued to be a problem within his personal and professional life, and the last image we see of Julian is him lying bloody on the ground having been beaten up by officers who lost their job by harassing him for being gay. Acevada was so concerned for his political career, and still facing backlash after the riot that he found himself constantly working with Vic and allowing him to get away with more than usual. The interplay between the two as Acevada lets Vic take him down increasingly slippery slopes, feeling he has no other choice, created a welcome change of pace in the two characters’ relationship, and opened up some wonderful conflicts (particularly how it brought out the best in CCH Pounder’s great portrayal of Claudette).

CCH Pounder’s Claudette had always been my favorite supporting character. The kindhearted, steadfast detective who’s hopeful but incredibly realistic and grounded. She had always turned a blind eye to Vic and the Strike Team’s questionable activities; she had some inclination as to what they do, but the streets were clean and it hadn’t caused roadblocks for her investigations. That is, until now. Episode 2’s “Dead Soldiers” found her caught between the scheming of Acevada and Mackey, who screwed over every attempt to solve her investigation. Her monologue to the two of them where she lets them know that she’ll solve the case even if she has to get around their machinations is a season two highlight and some fine acting work by Pounder. Claudette ends up one of the few characters to survive the season unscathed. As new police captain to Farmington, I look forward to seeing how Vic manages to finagle his machinations past her scrutiny. 

Season 2 saw the series become more creative and inventive than ever, taking risks and acting with confidence not many series would have in their second season. The brilliant episode “Carte Blanche” had Vic going undercover as a “corrupt cop” to solve a case. The series felt as if it was making a shrewd, meta-commentary on the very nature of it premise. “Co-Pilot” was a structurally ambitious episode midway through the season that jumped the narrative back 14 months to the formation of the “Barn” and the establishment of the Strike Team. The season established drug kingpin Armadillo as the antagonist of the season only to kill him off in the 8^th episode.

Whatever my complaints may have been (and they were few), The Shield has built enough good faith in me and provided enough compelling, memorable drama to set it apart from many other series I’ve watched before and am watching now.

"Django Unchained" - Film Review

Revisionist Westerns have had a good go of it in recent film history. The two most notable examples are Clint Eastwood’s 1992 Oscar winning masterpiece Unforgiven and HBO’s groundbreaking tv series Deadwood. Unforgiven was astounding for its time; it amped up the moral greyness that the Western was capable of, and Eastwood used his well-known persona and iconic stature within the genre to ask questions about the mythos of the films that had come before it. The protagonist William Munny is a reformed outlaw, still well-remembered and infamous for his violence and many murders of innocent people. He’s now settled down, and the woman, his wife, who made him give up his old ways, has passed on; his only remaining interests are his two children. It’s not the most likely of heroes, and Eastwood throws the whole question of the notion of the hero and romance of the Old West into scrutinizing inspection. Deadwood adopts the moral murkiness of Unforgiven but goes one step further: it dirties up everything. The streets of the camp town of Deadwood are filled with mud and muck. And everyone is more foulmouthed than the next, and the F-word is dropped regularly.

Django Unchained is a different breed of Western revisionism. There’s still a clear good versus evil struggle at the heart of it, which aligns it more with older Westerns, but it’s the way the story is told and unfolds that causes it to stand out (I mean, have you ever heard a rap song in a Western?). Django (Jamie Foxx) is freed by German bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), who is seeking out criminals that only Django knows the face of. Django, happy to be free, helps Schultz track down the Brittle brothers (vicious slave overseers wanted for murder). Grown to like Django, Schultz agrees to help him save his wife from the clutches of the evil plantation owner Calvin J. Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio).

Quentin Tarantino has established a brand for himself: “The Tarantino Film”. No one quite makes a film with the auteur-like grandeur of Tarantino. His films contain pastiche, homage, genre bending, unique dialogue, and slow builds that boil over into immense violence. Many have attempted to re-create this delicious blend that has made him so popular, iconic, and successful, and many and more have failed. Django is another display of how capable and assured the director is, and with the success he’s achieved how willing he is to try ambitious, interesting things that other people shy away from. Django is stylish and cool, but never without substance. It’s excessively violent, but never lacking intelligence. Whether you’re a fan of his films or not, it’s impossible not to stop and take notice of his films. They’re so unlike anything else on the market that they stand out by comparison. While recent works of his such as Ingrlourious Basterds and Grindhouse (and even Django) never reach the dizzying heights of brilliance that made Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction put him on the map, they’re still some of the best films of recent years.     

Foxx ‘s stoic, quiet rage and Waltz’s untapped enthusiasm and liveliness, along with an unexpected but memorable turn by DiCaprio as skeethy slaveowner Candie breathe vibrancy and life into an already entertaining film. Django Unchained is a bloody good time and well-worth seeing.

Grade: A-

Cougar Town - "Blue Sunday" - Review

The quirky, wine drenched, awfully titled Cougar Town returned last Tuesday on a new network (TBS). The fate of the series had been up in the air for while there, which was a shame because the series is one of the most underrated comedies on television. Running gags, a sense of place, and a great big heart make stopping in with the Cul-de-Sac Crew required viewing. It may not always go for big laughs but it has such great, well-defined characters that deeply care for one another, and in their own co-dependent way they help eachother through all of life’s problems, no matter how small they may seem. The series returned in top form in “Blue Sunday”.  

Jules Cobb is the center of this crazy group of people. Grayson may begrudgingly accept some of her ideas, but he knows as well as everyone else that she’s the “light” at heart of the show, and “as she goes, so do we all”. I don’t know if I’d call her the "heart" of the show (that role often feels more true for Bobby, and even sometimes Andy and Laurie who are all three so very goodnatured and sweet), but if Jules is feeling the “blues” than it’s going to drag down the whole group (who seem to perpetually be in her home).

 The episode confronts the question of how we deal with our problems. Do we confront them head on or do we run away (in this case quite literally run) from them? 

Bobby Cobb is always literally running from his problems (that’s how he’s gotten by all his life), and when he owes money, Travis tries to convince him to be a bigger man and deal with his problem (Although he ends up running away and crosses paths with Jules who is also doing the same – “It’s amazing I’m normal,” Travis says). Bobby’s partner in crime Andy ran away as well, in this case from work when he wasn’t finished with an assignment. And Ellie avoiding the reveal of what seemingingly unsexy sexual thing her husband Andy did to her while she was out of it on ambien (which somehow the series also makes seems sweet in its own strange way) is its own weird form of running away.

Travis thinks he’s above all this: He’s a “nerd”, as Laurie puts it. He talks through things. But then he’s given the trump card that he can’t talk about: his feelings for Laurie, and we find out that he’s no better than anyone else when it comes to dealing with his problems. When she confronts him, much as he’s been telling his dad is the right thing to do, he instead takes his father’s advice and runs away from his problems. The Laurie-Travis question has been simmering for a long time now, and while they seem oddly well-suited for eachother, the age difference remains a hindrance to them getting together. While Laurie thinks its sweet that Travis has a crush, she really can’t see him as anything more than a sibling (or can she? Is her black army boyfriend the only thing stopping this pairing?). 

But as the A-plot suggests, this kind of avoidance of problems isn’t a good thing. Grayson is getting used to being married to Jules, who has a few tricks up her sleeve of quirks she has yet to reveal. She dreams that Grayson flirted with another woman, which sets her off into a depressed bout (“like dark blue. Like one notch over suicidal,” as Laurie, who had great episode, put it). Ellie keeps telling him that he should simply apologize for the dream, as crazy as that may seem. As Jules keeps descending into unhappiness (pretending to be positive at the behest of her therapist - another example someone avoiding their problem), she blows up over ice cream falling off her cone and onto the ground. Ellie, to the anger of Jules, tells Grayson about how she gets with her “blues”, and he confronts the problem, apologizing for the dream. He may not have wanted to apologize, but he realized that letting problems churn does no one any good. Eventually they’ll catch up to you.

All in all, a welcome return of one of the most delightful tv comedies. New showrunners and a new network have done little to change its DNA. And that's a good thing!

Stray Observations:

-“It feels like it’s been over a year” – Cougar Town gets appropriately meta in its cold open.

-“Are you alcoholics? Are you in AA?” “That’s two questions”

-“I read something” “Story’s really not true” “Alright I heard it”

-“Do I want to find out why my neck is stiff?” “Never”

-Jules likes pulling out Grayson’s old man hairs.

-Laurie really likes monopoly: “I once had a quickie in a backseat cause the guy was named Marvin Gardens”, “That’s why they called me community chest”

-Of course Bobby doesn’t get sarcasm

-Laurie is "lasered smooth hairless": Jules: “I’m gonna need to see that later”

-Another change in phrase meaning by Jules: “Junk in trunk” now = Having emotional baggage

-“He’s so black I feel like I’m in a sensory deprivation tank when he’s on top of me”

-For the delivery of it: “You never don’t pee in there, right?” “No”

-Tom dancing outside, looking through the window as everyone dances inside. - They've gotten some great mileage out of the character
-The fake preview for version of the series that's action packed, soap opera was hilarious. Great cameo by Michelle Williams.

Grade: B+

"The Perks of Being a Wallflower" - Film Review

My streak of watching film based on “unadaptable” books continues with The Perks of Bring a Wallflower. The cult novel’s author Stephen Chbosky wrote and directed the movie and much of the novels appeal remains intact with his guidance. Like the novel it takes its title from, Perks is a film about all those scary, dark, uncomfortable places life takes us, and with sincerity, honesty and heart it tells a narrative about high school that’s about so much more than high school (the story ends up dealing with a range of topics including abuse, drugs, and sexuality).

Logan Lerman is rather well-suited for the titular “wallflower” role of unreliable narrator Charlie Kelmeckis. Awkward, lanky, friendless as he enters freshman year, Charlie has had a rough go the past few years. His medical history is hinted at enough to give us the sense that he was in a mentally dark place in middle school (most of this relating to an incident involving his dead aunt, which much the like the novel never feels like it fits in with the rest of the story, but unfortunately needs to be told). Charlie flounders around, bullied, misunderstood, and too meek, shy, and mentally scarred to form any meaningful connections. That is until he meets Patrick and Sam. Ezra Miller gives the right amount of happy-go-lucky flamboyance to Patrick, while Emma Watson turns out to be surprisingly well-suited for enigmatic, anti-Manic Pixie Dream Girl Sam, who has a lot more shades of grey than Hermione Granger ever showed. The brother and sister begin to see how kind the quiet, gentle Charlie is and how desperately he needs friends, and they bring him into their world where he finally belongs amongst the “Island of Misfit Toys”

It was an early scene that made me realize how good the film would be both as film itself and an adaptation of the book: Charlie tells Sam about how his best friend killed himself. It’s the little beats of the rhythm of telling this that make it work so well. For example, the moment after where a scared, heartbroken Sam whispers to Patrick, “Charlie just told me his best friend killed himself. I don’t think he has any friends” where I told myself: “Woe, this is going to be good”. And it really is in its own idiosyncratic, honest, heartfelt way. The little touches to solid scenes like this are played with emotions on their sleeves and captured by strong performances and a great script. 

Charlie “wallflowers” his way through one situation after another, but fails to actually live life for himself. He just wants other people to be happy. Thus he doesn’t ask out Sam, who he has an undying crush on, because he doesn’t feel it’s what she wants. He dates Mary Elizabeth even though he doesn’t actually have feelings for her (and then goes on in devastating fashion to break her heart). He lets his sister get beat up by her deadbeat boyfriend (and in fact way more and worse things happen to his sister in the book– which is a shame because Nina Dobrev is actually a really good actress and she’s underutilized). And the consequences, both good and bad, of his “wallflowering” are played out with careful attention to detail.  

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a charming, surprisingly good adaptation of Stephen Chbosky’s great novel.

Grade: B+

Modern Family - "New Year' Eve" - Review

Modern Family was once a series that might have deserved all those excessive Emmy noms it’s received. Its first season provided a sitcom that appeared to nicely balance traditional sitcom situations and heart with a less traditional style and format. But recently (and particularly during its 3^rd season – which had me doubting the series enough that I considered not watching any longer), the series has failed to earn its emotional moments and tried too hard and too broadly to achieve its laughs. As tv critic Donna Bowman so accurately put it “it’s all business, no heart.”

But Modern Family, although much less frequently than its earliest episodes, continues to hint at what the series could be excelling at if it had used its massive fan base and great ratings to experiment more with its format and tell stories that are grounded but not done with a paper-thin lack of enthusiasm, as if it’s merely going through the motions. It can be seen in the well-earned emotional resolutions of early season four episodes such as “Bringing up Baby” and “Schooled”. It can be seen in how effectively it tells the many, many (almost too many stories) of “When a Tree Falls”. Just last season the series had too many episodes that were so clearly overstuffed, and yet that lacked conviction to tell those stories or let them breathe (“The Last Walt” and “Planes, Trains, and Cars”). Yet the fourth season has proven itself much more confident in telling its stories. It’s not nearly as ambitious or completely satisfying as its first two seasons, but it feels like a much needed course correction.  

Take tonight’s episode “New Year’s Eve”. It’s not the funniest of episodes that the series has done, but for the most part it’s an amusing and interesting examination of growing old (the endings for the various stories don’t necessarily stack up with just how good it was up until that point – But Haleigh’s voiceover noting how you don’t always end up where you expect on New Years seems fitting for some of the stranger turns, including a nudist New Years group crashing Phil and Claire’s outing). 

Jay takes all the adults to a hotel he used go to a lot when he was younger. The place is in a bit of disarray; it’s seen better years, and appears to be incredibly dirty (Mitchell steps in something and yells out, “There’s something sticky here”. A staff member states in horror, “That wasn’t supposed to come back”). The hotel is symbol for aging. Some time passes, and then you re-examine yourself, and you don’t recognize who you are anymore. This can be scary or worrisome or troublesome, and it can be hard to deal with. 

Claire and Phil haven’t had sex in a month. Claire is freaking out, not just because she wants to get laid, but she fears that lack of intimacy means that she and Phil are growing apart as they grow older. As she mad dashes to the hot spring their weird hotel footman suggested, Phil asks her why she’s in such a rush to get there. Claire type-A babbles about all her fears, how she thinks life is just going to pass them by, and tear them apart. Phil (Tyler Burrell is having a great season) simply ignores this and kisses her. Sometimes life happens. And sometimes that means getting older. And that means that every day concerns can get in the way of things like having sex frequently. 

Mitchell and Cam had a nice, quiet dinner planned, but Mitchell worries that they’re becoming old fogies. Last year they didn’t even manage to stay up until midnight. He begs Cam to go club hopping with him like they did when they were younger. However, they’re quickly turned off, as club after club is too sweaty and noisy to be enjoyable. Finally, they stumble upon a club for older gays. It’s classy, and quiet; people are paying them compliments and buying them free drinks. Mitch and Cam realize that may be, sometimes getting old isn’t such a bad thing. Most people are jealous of the married couple with the kid, especially once you reach a certain age; people who lack a partner can feel totally rudderless. Yea, when you’re younger going to the club, and having a lot of sex seem like a lot of fun. But as we get older, we often realize that getting old isn’t always such a dreadful thing. Even though occasionally we doubt it and become wistful for youth.

The most pleasantly surprising exploration of growing old takes place back at the Dunphys where Haleigh (but in reality Alex, as everyone keeps joking) is in charge of watching Luke, Manny, and Lily on New Years. When Luke invites over girls, and goes up to his room to make out with one, Haleigh and Alex’s motherly instincts kick in. They fret over whether it’s appropriate for their baby brother to be allowed to do this. They fight against letting him grow up. In the process, they realize that not only is Luke getting older, but they are too. They’re, to their own surprise, unexpectedly starting to mature. Life can do that to you. “I think I owe mom a huge apology,” Haleigh says with wonderful self-awareness after scolding her brother. 

There are a couple other more minor, less interesting subplots that get lost in the shuffle involving Manny trying to win over the other girl Luke invited over, and Jay playing poker with a wasted cameo of Billy Dee Williams. However, at its heart, the three above stories paralleled eachother in such nice ways and told such honest stories about what it means to grow old that the rest didn’t matter. 

Stray Observations:

-Lily had some great lines: “Who’s watching me?” “Haleigh” “No, really? “Alex”, “I’m cold and saw a cyote”

“We should call her a ranch house. She doesn’t have a second story”

-“He’s gay” “Good I didn’t want to be the one to tell you”

-“Well, you wanted to feel young” “And I do…”

-“If you didn’t drive a car like this you couldn’t call yourself a drug lord”

Grade: B

The grade should have been a grade higher, but the Manny and Jay/Gloria stories are so totally disconnected from everything else and go nowhere. Plus, the way the Phil/Claire story ended completely undermined the sentiment of it.

Happy Endings - "Ordinary Extraordinary Love" - Review

ABC has decided to burn off episodes of Happy Endings, airing them on Sundays as well as Tuesdays. This totally doesn’t bode well for the lifespan of the show. We may very well be seeing cancellation of the series soon. Which is a shame because I really liked last night’s episode (even if I still don't think it was the series best work).

Happy Endings doesn’t really have likable characters. They’re selfish, self-involved, co-dependent people, and many of the series best jokes are about them being oblivious or douchey or narcissistic. This has been a trend in comedies in the last two to three decades. It grew out of Seinfeld who’s four main characters did some thoroughly unredeemable things over the show’s run, but never really felt bad about those terrible things. Characters have continually been drawn as unsympathetic assholes beyond saving. The Bluths in Arrested Development are total jackasses when it comes down to it, and without money or power to anchor them, they’re worse tendencies come to the forefront. It’s Always Sunny is almost always about the gang flirting with doing some morally reprehensible thing and not giving a fuck what other people think. And a lot can be mined from this when done properly. “Fowl Play/Date” did it much less successfully Sunday, but “Ordinary Extraordinary Love” is much better about it. Two of the three of this episodes storylines are about the characters being stupid asses without really realizing it.  

 

In the storyline that stretches plausibility the most, (as well as being the least interesting and entertaining) Penny and Alex attempt to exploit their knowledge of a popstar being in town to re-brand Alex’s store. After the singer buys a dress from Alex, Penny sees an opportunity to stir up publicity. But ultimately, the two of them end up feeling terrible once they end up ruining the singer’s date. They apologize and use Dave’s food van to help her secure a quiet, normal date unaffected by the paparazzi. Despite this typical sitcom fix at the end, Alex and particularly Penny are awful throughout the episode. Penny is more concerned for her car than the singer after she has a mental breakdown; Alex notifies the paparazzi that the singer is in their store when she comes to talk things out with them.

Meanwhile, Brad is in, as Penny describes it, “post-gender city”. In an also pretty cliched, but still more entertaining storyline, he is no longer the breadwinner of the family as Jane is the one who’s bringing home the bacon. Brad begins to feels like less of a man, and enlists the help of Dave to fix a light dimmer, which quickly devolves into displays of masculinity and competitions of manliness. This includes lifting chairs with plates taped to them, “arm wrestling, toaster tossing, shark naming”. “What is this a pissing contest?” Jane asks. “Oh, I already won that,” Dave gleefully responds. Dave is already sort of the token douchebag of the show and he brings out the worst qualities in Brad. But Jane lets Brad know that he’s still every bit of man as he was before he lost his job ("Stupid, stubborn, smelly" = Yep, seems pretty manly). 

On the other hand, there’s the one story where Jane tries to help Max find a boyfriend, which provides the more heartful side of the episode. Max has hit a dry patch, and can’t seem to get any boyfriends. Jane enlists the help of their stereotypically gay friend Derrick, who, as Max says, “You’re ‘Gay Yoda-ing’ me … wait, is that redundant?” Derrick and Jane go to every gay bar in the city to help Max determine what subgroup of the gay culture he fits into. But none of them match up. In the end, Max is left to create his own subgroup which he dubs “Optimistic Red Velvet Walrus”, and there appears to be promise with another guy showing up who’s similarly unsure of what gay subculture he belongs to. And the whole Happy Endings gang is there to support him. 

As I mentioned in my review of the last episode, Happy Endings can feel too inconsequential when its stories don’t focus on the characters. Brad confronting his manhood and Max confronting his feelings of disillusionment and loneliness ground those stories in a way that provides them with a sense of purpose. It elevates the characters above how stupid and mean and petty and selfish they can often be. Brad is being an idiot throughout his identity crisis, but it works because it comes from a believable place. The Penny/Alex stuff is funny at times, but it’s all about them taking advantage of someone for their own self-gain, which comes off as a little too mean-spirited (on top of being incredibly cliched). 

Stray Observations:

-Douchey Dave trying to guess the mystery drink Jane’s bought him: I smell a hint of liggenberry…” “It’s flat gingerale”

-“My baby could sell snow to an eskimo. And by snow, I mean cocaine. Which is impressive because eskimos don’t have a lot of disposable income”

-The whole pizza delivery/prostitution rant by Max is great showcase for Adam Pally. Even better still, cutting away to see everyone has left the table by the time he’s finished.

-“I’m gonna go to the therapist to see if we can’t deal with her control problems”

-“Duh … was the name of her last album”

-After Jane rattles off stereotypical gay bar names, Max replies: “The gaybar was called Greg’s”

-“I’m a soft, soft, soft, soft butch”

-“I can spin this. It’s why at work they call me the old spinster”, “That’s why they call me undatable at work. There’s not a date I can’t put to a PR spin.”, “I went ahead with it like a train. That’s why at work they call me a train wreck”.

-Best gay bars they go to: “The Chamelion” “Sitcom Gays”

-You’re rock bottom … that’s also the name of the next gay bar we’re going to”

-“How are we the first people to think of stud finder jokes?”

Grade: B+