What kind of comedy does Running Point want to be? Its second episode, “Joe Pesci”, is a collection of scenes in search of an answer; at times feeling like it wants to be Ted Lasso, while other moments carry some heavy (and intriguing) Arrested Development vibes – and of course, the Isla-centric scenes that are an odd mix of American Auto and The Z-Suite in their Girlbossity (trust me, it’s a real word). As one can imagine, it makes for a strange, sputtering episode of television – and one, oddly enough, that seems to have no interest in being a basketball show, or at least a reasonably believable one.
“Joe Pesci” is half about Isla chasing down a new sponsorship for the Waves, and half about Jackie Moreno considering what path to take with his newfound family – two stories that are incredibly dichotomous in tone, and set the stage for what is an incredibly uneven, increasingly confusing (and disappointing) 32 minutes. Let’s start with the first half; as the fallout of Cam’s crack-induced accident continues to shake through the Waves, the two remaining brothers are immediately uncomfortable with Isla’s sudden ascent, and try to talk Cam (in a fancy rehab, begging orderlies for Sudafed) in order to shake his faith and support their attempts to build a vote of no confidence around Isla.
Justin Theroux’s scenes as Cam continue to be a series highlight, the only times Running Point has felt like it has any sort of comedic cadence – his big scarfs and bitchy stare downs also give the show a personality so much of the other scenes have lacked so far (especially Scott MacArthur’s, whose performance as Ness is a shade too subdued; you can tell when he hilariously hugs Jackie at the end of the episode what his character’s been missing). But with Cam dealing with “shitting black tar” as the two big plot lines play out, his influence on the episode’s personality – and most importantly, consistency with it – is limited to those moments, leaving Isla and Sandy as the two characters doing the heavy lifting for this episode.
Regrettably, Isla’s story is a remarkably empty one; after a disastrous meeting with the founder of the mattress company that was their main sponsor (+1 for a great Brian Huskey cameo!), there’s a noticeable lack of conflict in both the professional and personal elements of her arc in this episode. After about two seconds of consternation, Isla pivots and the episode turns into a Girlbossing story (with a script solely credited to Mindy Kaling, this isn’t entirely surprising), where she goes to Sephora and gets inspired to bring in Sephora as the main sponsor for the Los Angeles Waves – after one meeting with a thoroughly non-combative corporate CEO.
It’s shocking how flat and utterly unfunny Isla’s ‘conflict’ in this episode is; there’s no comedy or pathos to be found in her attempt to find a new sponsor, even though there’s a running undercurrent of Sandy trying to engineer a board-certified coup of his sister. She simply shops in Sephora, meets the CMO of Sephora for two minutes – where she convinces her six million people watch regular season NBA games, a figure so laughably wrong it’s kind of unforgivable – and boom, it’s done! There is nary an obstacle in her way, which leaves Hudson flailing as Isla, with nothing but facial emotions (which… let’s just say they are limited a bit) to drive the humor of her plot; though we’re supposed to believe she is a former fuck-up who’s anxious about finally having her opportunity, there’s nothing of that character in this episode, except in the one scene where she refers to herself as a fuck-up.
And while, I appreciate Isla’s story is absent of the more saccharine notes we see with characters like Sandy and Jackie; but without that, her character has no dramatic propulsion except “she’s great at everything!” – which… is not all that interesting (even her embracing the titular actor’s attitude from Casino leads to extremely muted results, having been inspired to see it for the first time by Ali).
It also doesn’t help that this episode has absolutely nothing from “Pilot” in it; had someone not said the word “basketball” halfway through, it would be hard to tell what sport this show is actually about. There are precisely no characters from the basketball half of the cast in this episode – though ostensibly we’re in the middle of the basketball season, there isn’t even a mention of them playing a game, nor a sight of a single player in the background. It’s an incredibly strange choice; though not every episode needs to be about the ins and outs of the team’s success, having the second episode set entirely in office settings and a Sephora (did I mention Sephora is mentioned in this episode? Because Sephora is in this episode) makes it feel like a completely different series – or even worse, a half hour divorced from the reality of the rest of the season.
The other half of “Joe Pesci” involves Jackie and his lawyer cousin negotiating a deal with the family (and their lawyer, noted Ryan O’Neal fan Bernie Berger); and at first, it feels like this might be the first time Running Point started to engage with the patriarchal hole at the heart of this series (and with all of the Gordon children)… but instead, the story just becomes some Ted Lasso-y bullshit about a kid who never had a family? Devoid of context, Jackie’s desperate attempts to embrace the first family he’s had in a long time (“I can finally go on Family Feud!” he exclaims) makes him a perfect character to unite the gently-fractured Gordon family – but Running Point turns this into some feel-good moment where Isla bonds with Jackie and brings him into the family; but it lands too softly, a moment of nicecore comedy in a series that, elsewhere, wants to rely on the deep emotional rifts between its characters, and the acerbic humor resulting from it.
“Joe Pesci” mostly just feels like an episode that doesn’t know what it wants to be; and in the pursuit of trying to find that with its central characters, abandons half its premise in pursuit of some really underwhelmingly simplistic resolutions to what were, at least initially, intriguing ideas for its characters. There’s still plenty of time for Running Point to find its focus, of course – if this is the blueprint for the series to follow, however, it’s already clear this particular design is not going to be a winning formula.
Grade: C-
Other thoughts/observations:
- Bernie Berger? Lev Levenson? What the fuck is with some of these names?
- We learn that Sandy has a dog groomer boyfriend he’s hiding from his family. I don’t know why this show is going so hard to make him completely unlikeable, but it’s working!
- Cam: “I tried to snort mouthwash last night. I feel like shit.”
- I don’t know why it is hilarious that Warner Bros. shoves its logo right after Netflix’s, but I laugh every time.
- Lev and Isla being engaged for three years is going to be a plot point later on, yeah?
- The first thing Isla does is try to chase down money from an app company called Yog-Flirt, which is too dumb to be funny or believable – it is a dating app for people who like frozen yogurt, by a couple on the verge of breaking up. It is painfully unfunny.
- Cam and Ness have a lot of potential as characters who drive the comedy of the story; the more the show lets them loose, the better and more comfortable with itself it seems.