“And The Egg Special” certainly doesn’t enter the offensive nature of last week’s episode – for once, the jokes were relatively tame (notice the absence of the “OOOOO SNAAAAP”! exclamations from the audience). Although this is not to say its a good episode: while last week suffered greatly from the jokes (the show’s biggest problem), this week’s ultimately failed because of poor plot construction, and a whole lot of contriving to reach the ending.
For awhile, I’ve been trying to put my finger on what bothers me about Max’s character besides her constant sex jokes and or self-deprecating humor, and after tonight’s Max-dialogue heavy episode, it became pretty clear: Max is a cardboard cut out with a mouth. By that, I mean she talks a shitload about the terrible things she’s done, did, or wants to do, but we never actually see her do any of these. The only guy she’s been with over the past two seasons has been the graffiti dude from early on in season one (and in the season finale, of course), and she’s never in a scene without Caroline, where she projects her character onto her and the audience through words.
Well, there’s an old saying about actions and words, and I think its exemplifies the problems with her character. In reality, the writers and producers can’t make her the drug-addicted, felony-committing slut she prides herself on being; the show wants to be edgy without having to be edgy, and can’t show Max gang-banging a bunch of hipsters while she shoots heroin and complains about her mother. Which begs the question: why write her character to such an extreme? If you can’t show us the things that personify Max’s character, is she really even a character at all? The answer is clearly no: she’s a completely inanimate character on the show, disagreeing with everyone and refusing to do anything but make references to her boobs and her almost-pregnancy scares. Have we even seen her bake a fucking cupcake? If so, I sure as hell don’t remember seeing it.
What compounds the problem is the writers complete ignorance of it: in tonight’s episode, she literally earns $20,000 for doing absolutely nothing. In fact, she’s counter productive to the whole plot of the episode: Caroline wants to move their business forward, and Max just wants to stay settled in her depressing life which she hates, but doesn’t want to leave behind. Only when the money appears is she ready to start pursuing her ‘dream’ for real – a real bait and switch from the Max of previous scenes, who spends an entire scene trying to shoot down Caroline’s idea to rent the murder scene across from Andy’s candy shop (HAHAHAHA it rhymes… HOW WITTY).
But these problems don’t stop with Max: Caroline is just as badly written a character as her counterpart. In the opening scene, she complains about how far she’s fallen to be taking scrunchies from a lost and found, and the next, she’s babbling on about how her life can’t get any better because she’s having sex with Andy, and their cupcake shop made it into a magazine (another note: I find it hard to believe a magazine would print something about somebody without telling them first, no matter how unrealistic the show). Despite her desperate financial situation (they get turned down for a business loan from a girl-on-girl financing operation), she still manages to wear FIVE different non-work outfits in the episode, AND has a 5-figure pearl necklace around her neck – yes, the one that shows up in every episode that I complain about.
It’s those little touches that drive me nuts about the show: like why the fuck would Sophie all of a sudden give them a $20,000 check right after saying she didn’t like to lend out money to friends? Why is Max always wearing new clothes? … would a egg donation bank really give a fuck what college a woman went to? Without any attention to detail – especially when there’s no effort being put into the broader strokes of character and plot – the emotional core of 2 Broke Girls feels about as authentic as their exteriors of the city look. At some point, a show has to operate within some loose boundary of reality and/or common sense and 2BG shows us time and time again how inept they are at doing so.
Grade: D
Other thoughts/observations:
– why a D? Because last week’s episode redefined what an F for this show is. I didn’t wince in pain enough times for it to earn the F it seems to strive for every week.
– another example of lazy joke construction: right after Han puts on the wig that’s been in the lost and found for SIX MONTHS, some bald dude walks in looking for his toupee… i think after six months, he may have moved on from walking into diners and asking about his wig.
– Jennifer Coolidge can’t walk around in the dresses they have her wearing… she’s either going to fall and break her neck, or die from suffocation. And why the fuck does the studio audience get so excited to see her? She’s is hands down the worst “international” character on television right now, particularly insulting to Polish people (like myself, being of Polish-Russian heritage).
– mass suicide is hilarious… but drug violence in NY is even funnier, right? Sexual abuse only got mild giggles tonight, so it wasn’t in the running.
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Like always, great review, you hit the nail on the head for the most part. What bothers me so much about this, is that I don’t think the writers understand how to construct a narrative. For one, the first 3 minutes of the show is always wasted by having some lame diner set-up/max insult a customer or another lame gag and never spent on setting up the plot. Such as tonight’s lost and found box had nothing to do with the plot. Also nothing ever makes sense and one scene doesn’t correlate with the next. For example, they get a blurb in a magazine, then they visit Andy’s shop and by happenstance they visit a murder scene. Then Caroline gets the idea to put a shop there and the rest of the episode is the equivalent of them roaming around the city trying to make money and screwing up every opportunity they have. And at the end of the episode do they learn anything about hard work? Or making the best of their opportunities or maybe about saving there money more responsibly or perhaps does Max come to a realization that she needs to stop behaving like a pessimistic downer and be more helpful? No but rather they are bailed out with a loan from Sophie, for NO REASON! The show provides no explanation for her changing one of her two rules. She just decides to do it out of the blue. I figured it would make more sense for Sophie to be their business partner, it would give the character a reason to be there, and also set up potential complicated and conflict filled scenarios with plenty of room for comedic material. They ignore this rather, and just have her give them the money, which causes me to feel more anger toward the main characters because they really aren’t earning anything but being handed the shop, and they didn’t even make much of an effort to make the money. I agree the jokes were better than normal, this episode, I honestly thought that the bank scene with the loan officer was one of the best scenes in the show’s history. However, the scene didn’t go anywhere as they failed to get a loan and went back home and decided to give eggs, I mean there is no reason for that scene or the scenes that follow it to be there. I think the writers are really just creating scenario’s, such as “wouldn’t it be funny it they went a hospital and blood was splattered on the wall,” and connecting these vintages to an overarching story. Rather than constructing any coherant plot and creating humorous scenarios within. Also I don’t know if you noticed this (or maybe it was just me) but it seemed like the live T.V. audience wasn’t even laughing at most of the jokes or not as loud as they normally do, and they didn’t even give Sophie a big applause like normal, I noticed this particularly with the basket joke at the end of act 2 I believe (if you can even split this show up into acts). Also I just want to applaud you for your analysis on Max’s character I agree with it 100% she acts like a “bad-ass,” and brags about her drug use all the time but we never see her doing any of this, rather we see her going app shit over free candy. In conclusion, keep up the good work, great review, I think you were being more kind to it than you should have however, they set the bar so low that when you see them to anything competently such as actually telling relevant jokes and not just pop culture references you have to give them some points for trying.
Also another thing about Max’s character, you could argue that her only redeemable quality is her ability to make good cupcakes (even though that would be pathetic as a “quality). However, I’m not sure if you watched this episode in the 1st season but it’s revealed that her “great” cupcakes or nothing more than two different boxed cupcake mixes mixed together. There not homemade but rather store bought… Which brings into question the sanity of their business venture, if they are doing nothing more than mixing these store bought ingredients together how could these cupcakes possibly be that good? Also why would the writers even choose to go this route with Max? Wouldn’t it be better for her to have a good baking ability or through years of suppose child abuse perhaps found solace in the kitchen with her ability to bake? No, rather she just buys the pre-mixed store ingredients and mixes it with another brand and that’s what makes her cupcakes so “special.” Really Fuck this show it is a disgrace on so many levels.