With Wilfred moving out of Ryan’s head and back into reality, ‘Letting Go’ tones down the weirdness and surrealism of ‘Progress’ and brings back the story threads from last season, bringing things up to date and setting the table for the season coming forward. It’s an episode that re-establishes the status quo from last season, but does so with enough interesting twists to keep it feeling fresh moving forward.
When we left Ryan standing in front of his closet door last season, Jenna was dealing with the news of a (fake, but unkown to her) pregnancy, and Wilfred was laid up in a hospital. We’re still not really sure what Ryan was doing in that time, but he was clearly freaked out, running back to the corporate life he hated, and avoiding Wilfred and Jenna at any cost. And when he stops in to see how everyone is doing, Ryan finds things a lot different than he left. Jenna and Drew are engaged, Drew is finally going to move to LA, and Wilfred’s not only become a Packers fan, but trying to emulate the guy’s he been trying to get Jenna to break up with forever.
The biggest thing here are the obvious cracks in Drew and Jenna’s relationship, something Ryan’s always been perceptive of, and normally unwilling to try and manipulate in his favor – and the one time he did, it ended up with him staring at his boarded-up basement. And if the show was going to put us through a second season of Ryan timidly hanging on the fringes with Wilfred constantly trying to push him to the dark side, Wilfred might become a little stale.
But part of letting go is getting rid of old habits and emotions, and that’s what ‘Letting Go’ is all about for the different characters in Wilfred. Wilfred’s gotta give up this idea of Drew respecting him as more than a stupid mutt, and Ryan’s gotta stop letting Jenna’s erratic behavior and decisions define his existence – and the first appearance of Amanda, a co-worker with very appealing sense of humor, suggests that he’s not only letting go because he feels bad about getting in the way.
Most of ‘Letting Go’ is giving Wilfred the opportunity to be funny (having been on the sidelines for a lot of ‘Progress’), most of which revolve around jokes about the Packers, and competing with a dog named Jellybean in a local agility course competition. One of Wilfred’s big themes is its exploration of masculinity between males, and those ideas are shown in a variety of scenes regarding Wilfred’s amazing lack of confidence around other animals (“Let me see your papers, immigrant!”)
The weirder spots of the show still hung on the fridge (mainly that damn green ball from the closet), but ‘Letting Go’ felt like a nice, subtle evolution from season one – just a little less hazy without all the pot-smoking.
Grade: B+
Other thoughts/observations:
– “Ok, I’m just going to go have sex with whoever is in the men’s bathroom right now then.”
– it remains to be seen how long Jenna and Drew can maintain a believable relationship. Their unhappiness was not at all subtle, even in the opening, smiley scenes, and it raises some red flags on what kind of girlfriend Jenna is. Maybe getting her isn’t everything he’s looking for in life?
– Don Swayze’s cameo as a love-seeking drug dealer was fucking hilarious… I’d love to see him hang out on the fringes of the show and pop in once in awhile, selling Wilfred weed and whatnot.
– Jenna’s passive-aggressive flirting with Ryan is a little off-putting, but Fiona Gubelman’s smile makes up for any of these shortcomings.
– where the fuck is Bear???
– “I took 37 shits in it.”
what did you think of ‘Letting Go’? Feel free to leave your thoughts/comments below!
I welcomed the return of Wilfred with open arms. It is going to be interesting to see Ryan in the work environment and hilarious to see Wilfred there as well. I had to replay the drug dealer bit three times. I think the stitch in my side actually saved me from suffocating due to laughter. A co-worker told me about Wilfred and I cannot thank him enough. If you haven’t watched the show you owe it to yourself to see at least one episode.