Review: 2 Broke Girls ‘And The Cupcake War’ – Max’s Narcissistic Cupcakes

Sometimes 2 Broke Girls makes an episode that’s just bad television. Other times, it makes frustrating, annoying television. And then there’s a third category – the kind ‘And The Cupcake War’ fits into. It was one of those: the painful half hours of television where offensive jokes are punctuated uncomfortably by laugh tracks, every other scene packed to the brim with tired pop culture references and jokes.

Whenever 2BG tries to handle a gimmicky premise (“the girls meet Martha Stewart!” or “The girls have a horse!”), the episodes tend to run out of gas by the end of the first segment. The reasons are simple: every single joke is tied to the same repetitive say-it-three-times-in-a-row structure, and any sort of character theme or emotional arc is tacked onto the last ten seconds, reminding us that nobody gave a shit to write anything in the script but jokes about rape and Max being a whore.

This laziness shows in an early scene where Caroline is prodding Max about watching Cupcake Wars and wanting to be on the show. Max as always, is deflecting everything with a sneering, self-deprecating remark – even though she’s proven time and time again she’s all rebel talk, and no rebel walk whatsoever. Instead of making the conversation real for a second and having Caroline take Max to task from backing away from her dreams constantly, she giggles along with Max when she makes suicide jokes. Then, Max obviously gets talked into the idea, and all of a sudden, Caroline’s happy that Max is finally going to fulfill her dream to be on Cupcake Wars.

Here’s the problem: Max’s dream isn’t to be on Cupcake Wars… at least, it hasn’t been up to this point, so Caroline contradicts the whole point of the show with her misguided excitement. Furthermore, even though Caroline is so supportive of the idea (and supposedly an equal member of the team) she’s never actually made a cupcake, and of course, proceed to fuck it up slapstick-style on the set of the show (which featured a really racist and false portrayal of a New Orleans woman, and more importantly, what Katrina meant to them). Now I’m not asking the show to be a psychological insight into why Max hates herself so damn much, but fuck, can we at least make some of this stuff believable?

(A note to the creative team: having one camera man and a host that clearly looks bored doesn’t make for a realistic environment. The reality show set and scenes were so thrown together, it was insulting on just how little anyone cared to try and make that look at least somewhat authentic. Then again, the show’s idea of Brooklyn leaves a lot to be desired.)

Surprisingly, there is a moment of intelligence buried underneath the flooding and pot smoking jokes. At the end, Sophie (the worst character on television right now) points out that Max and Caroline tried to take the easy way to fame, and ended up with nothing but a “mouthful of confetti”. Of course, it’s a very obvious point to make, but one that speaks a lot to these characters, and how little they’ve really focused themselves on succeeding, even after a year of trying (and only raising a grand, according to that annoying fucking tally at the end).

Max still can’t sell a cupcake and Caroline still can’t make one – just like the writers still can’t see when they have something interesting staring them right in the face. Instead of making jokes about Max being a whore because she had no parents, maybe make her less of a snarky, thoroughly unoriginal bitch and give us a reason to actually like her. Coming from a fucked up home has obviously done some damage to Max’s self image, and there could be a lot of humor in making this season about Max fighting her own worst instincts, and trying to become a likable human being.

But this is 2 Broke Girls… instead we get jokes about fake Polish holidays and TLC reality shows.

Grade: F

Other thoughts/observations:

– the Katrina jokes started out bad, and quickly dropped to awful after ‘soul food’ was introduced as the secret ingredient on the fake Cupcake Wars.

– Beth Behrs has small moments of being funny, but her physical talents are buried under the bash-jokes-until-they-die-screaming design of everything she does.

– PEOPLE THAT SMOKE POT GET MUNCHIES… what a hilarious, original bit of comedy.

– getting back to that money count, how the fuck did they make money in this episode? It’s like Max making constant slut jokes about herself: if you’re not going to show her with a guy once in awhile, it becomes unbelievable.

– why does the audience scream and whoop EVERY time someone says ‘bitch’? Is this being filmed at a frat house?

– Han as the gossip was kind of amusing, but it was completely forgotten once the scene ended. Back to: HAHAH Han is short Asian man with funny voice who no get ladies!

– Sophie just decides to help them all of a sudden… why is this? She’s never cared enough before, why now? Oh, for a stupid Polish bit.

What did you think of ‘And The Cupcake War’? Feel free to leave your thoughts/comments below!