“The Wedding…” felt very similar to Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23‘s pilot episode: it begins with a flashback, a lot of it deals with June’s personality and her former fiancee, and there’s a plethora of really bad Robin scenes. It was a still a decent episode, mostly in part to James Van Der Beek’s self-parody, continuing to find hilarity in his own career. I wonder how long those jokes can really last, but through four episodes, it hasn’t turned me off yet.
This episode is really about insecurity, both for June and Chloe. For June, these are easy to realize and understand: anyone who’s had their fiancee cheating on them behind their back for a long period of time might, doubly if they find out right after moving to NYC in a very stressful situation of having no job or career. To help her develop some confidence, Chloe inserts a little bit of herself into June, and needless to say, isn’t happy with what she ends up creating.
That’s not to say June turns into some loose cannon of silly ‘out of character’ comedy: as always, June is up to the wacky challenges laid out to her by Chloe, and it’s not long before James Van Der Beek is taking her out for wild nights on the town instead of her. And that’s where Chloe’s insecurities come in: she doesn’t have a lot of close friends, and we finally get an episode that shows a bit of a crack in Chloe’s armor. While June is stealing her photo ops with James, and benefiting from him being the center of attention anywhere, she’s left to her own devices, and can only find a date to a wedding by lying to Kevin Sorbo (from Hercules) about speaking at an MS benefit.
No matter how June’s newfound confidence maker her feel happy (or Chloe mad) the veil is lifted when her ex manages to hurt her feelings one more time, by telling her she was boring (like Chloe says, that’s one of the worst insults in the world), and attempting to sleep with her while he’s dating another girl – one of the reasons June doesn’t have a lot of confidence in the first place.
Of course, Chloe’s realization of her and June switching the roles of the confident and the insecure, leads her to June, and the inevitable reconciliation of their friendship. Thankfully, this week Chloe isn’t apologizing for something heinous she did to June, rather reminding her that change is difficult – but a little bit easier when you have awesome friends like her and James to help them out.
Like I said earlier, this episode is structurally quite similar to the pilot, but differentiates enough in the way it plays out to keep it from feeling like a lazy re-hash. Eli finally gets out from behind his window perch, and thankfully, they’ve toned down his weirder sexual cravings this week – he’s much funnier saying things like “Your spine is so straight” than he does saying “Normally motionless girls on the floor turn me on”). Robin continues to suck, however, with some throwaway scenes reminding us that her character is desperate to be accepted by Chloe (although it was suggested in the pilot that she hated her, and moved out of their apartment together, a bad little piece of continuation).
I did find JVDB’s Dancing with the Stars gag pretty funny (if not a blatant exercise by ABC in self-promotion). There might be one too many jokes, but that twirl he busts out in their staged fight at the end was fucking brilliant. It’s amazing the comedic timing he possesses, and how willing he is to throw his inhibitions to the side and embrace this whacky caricature of himself. The show hasn’t really incorporated him into the main plot well – him hanging out with June never really came up between him and Chloe, instead focusing on the friction it caused between the two women exclusively.
All things considered, it was a solid episode, continuing to produce a lot of funny lines, and willing to paint its female characters as strong and nuanced characters on equal intellectual ground. There are still some troublesome pieces: JVDB’s character can’t be a punching bag forever, and while Eli’s been slightly improved, Robin and Mark (who isn’t even seen in this episode) really need some serious re-tooling. But it’s being carried by its two fantastic female leads and great jokes, and with only four episodes aired, there’s still time to work out the kinks, as any new comedy needs to.
Other thoughts/observations:
- Best line of the episode: “Walk like you have George Clooney between your legs.” Nice one, Chloe.
- did anyone else think that ending felt rushed, like the producers ran out of time? weird place to finish.
- the Guy Ritchie cutaway gags were great. “I ad-libbed that last line, and they liked it so much, they made it the title of the movie.”
- James non-chalantly walking from behind the clothing rack where he was having sex with the bride was a nice little comedic touch.
- Eli continues to be the voice of reason for Chloe. I’d really like to find out more about how he understands her so well, and why she’s willing to listen to him, of all people.
