Hey folks, I haven’t had a chance to write about this in a few weeks, so I thought now would be a good time to jump back in. This writeup is primarily going to focus on Tuesday’s episode, “The Dump,” but I’ll try to make some mention of the last few as well, since I didn’t cover them.
The titular dump is the location of a field trip Ben’s class heads to, that Mickey and Alba chaperone. Mickey rightly wonders why Ben’s school is taking such crappy field trips… but she soon has bigger problems, as a kid who doesn’t go to Ben’s school jumped on the bus leaving the dump.
Mickey quickly christens the kid “Dump” and tries to figure out the best way to return him without getting them in trouble. She freaks out when she and Alba drive back by the dump and see the cops… which makes them officially kidnappers. So they decide to reach out to the cops from a pay phone, which leads to some hilariously inappropriate fake voices.
Ben has made friends with Dump (Mickey rejects Alba’s suggestion of “Ignacio”) and won’t let Mickey and Alba take him, leading to a good cop / bad cop situation where Alba smashes Ben’s video games (“It was implied”) and eventually to Ben and Dump taking off and going back to the dump. Sneaking in proves trickier than expected; Mickey gets a needle in her foot for her troubles, and Alba, all episode demanding Mickey treat her as an equal, agrees to take on the junkyard dog. We don’t see it, but Alba’s reaction (and appearance) afterward tell us all we need.
Meanwhile, Jimmy shames Chip and Sabrina into taking care of the Colonel for the day, because he’s “got plans,” and they’re the Colonel’s family anyway, not him. Chip and Sabrina resent this, of course, each trying to pawn him off on the other, until Chip steps out of line waiting for the newest pair of Kevin Durants, and a store worker lets him in anyway: “You shouldn’t have to choose between shoes and family.” Chip and Sabrina immediately exploit this, with the requisite self-justifications: “He’s out there, getting fresh air, the respect he deserves…” This of course leads to them losing the Colonel while they’re ordering drinks at a bar “for him”– the scene of him slowly rolling out in the background is another highlight. Eventually, they track him down, but the pair of Durants the store gave him have been stolen. Chip’s certainly not going to give the Colonel his.
Something of a slight episode, especially compared to the last two, but fun nonethelss.
STRAY OBSERVATIONS
- Alba describes her fake voice as “cool white lady,” calling Mickey racist for finding it to be a stereotypical black woman from the hood. Mickey tries to turn this around on Alba after Alba calls her horrible Asian accent racist. Alba: “You said ‘arigato.'” Mickey: “Well, that’s just out of respect… the Chinese are a mystical people.” Alba: “‘Arigato’ is Japanese.”
- I can’t say enough how funny Carla Jimenez is doing her “cool white lady” voice, in part because it’s so unexpected coming from Alba.
- Mickey has agreed to continue to chaperone Ben, and the next field trip is to a mustard factory. (Seriously, who comes up with this curriculum?) Mickey is of course angry that kids keep getting mustard on her, which of course makes it worse.
- Oh, and Jimmy? Jimmy spent the whole day playing arcade games.
Let’s go over the last two episodes in brief:
Season 2, Episode 11, “The Trip”
Alba’s cousin, who doesn’t know she’s no longer a housekeeper but pretty much just hanging out and drinking beer all day, comes to visit. She asks Chip to treat her like the help to keep up the ruse; Chip not only immediately abuses this, but hires her cousin so he can keep it up indefinitely. This lasts as long as it takes Alba to discover something about Chip she can use for blackmail; namely, his use of fake pubes in the locker room. Once again, wussy Chip tries to leverage any meager power he has over someone, and comes out humiliated in the end.
Meanwhile, the titular trip of the episode doesn’t belong to Alba’s cousin, but Sabrina. After borrowing a jacket from Mickey (which of course she immediately declares is too good a piece of clothing for Mickey), Sabrina takes the LSD in the pocket while at school, and freaks out about as much as you’d expect an 18-year-old who’s never taken acid before and is stuck in an institutional setting to freak out. Her trip partner is useless, so Mickey comes to the rescue, eventually dosing herself to join Sabrina in her current state of mind. This all happens on the day of Sabrina’s Yale interview (she’s a Pemberton, so she’s a legacy, so she wasn’t taking it seriously when the day began), but in a fun twist, Sabrina’s trip leads her to reexamine whether or not she just wants to follow in her family’s footsteps… and then she goes and actually aces the interview, because she wants to.
Season 2, Episode 12, “The City”
Lots happens this episode. Chip decides to make a pilgrimage to visit his real dad, a strip-club owner played by Jay Mohr. This leads the whole crew to visit the family penthouse in Manhattan… where it turns out Jimmy has been staying, having turned himself into a successful gofer for a couple of upstart investment bankers. Mickey of course tries to sabotage this, because she’s Mickey and she can’t let Jimmy “win” the breakup, because she’s a toxic and co-dependent person.
Mohr is hilarious as Bert, the sleazy strip club owner; he reveals at some point he’s been stashing cash away for his dream: a strip club in Florida. This dovetails nicely with Jimmy’s need to bring his new bosses a big client; this all goes belly-up at a dinner where Bert brings about $400,000 in cash in a briefcase, and runs as soon as someone mentions the word “SEC.” Mohr does give us “I’m Chet’s dad,” though, and there’s also this exchange when Jimmy is telling him about the pedigree of his startup:
“You ever hear of Goldman Sachs?”
“That’s that guy that O.J. cut up?”
A fun episode that also brings Jimmy back into the fold; I was worried he’d be departing (from in front of the camera, at least) but it looks like we’ll still get some Intermittent Jimmy (new band name, I called it).
Anyway, anyone still keeping up with this show? I’ll try to get reviews out more regularly, but my schedule makes it tough to see everything live, let alone write about it in a timely manner. (Any volunteers for the job?)