Wilfred ‘Now’: A Little Peace of Mind

Most of Wilfred‘s episodes work because even when Wilfred’s in the middle of one of his many emotional manipulations of Ryan, he’s not doing it for completely self-serving reasons. Part of Wilfred’s role in Ryan’s life is to help him learn how to love life again, and so the premise of ‘Now’ – where Wilfred and Ryan are held up at gun point – held a lot of potential to explore the ideas of “living in the now.” It’s something every show, drama or comedy, tends to do at least once in its run, if not always an overt center point of the episode’s tone.

Unfortunately, the concept of ‘Now’ doesn’t hold up from the beginning of the episode. Wilfred pulls a gun on Ryan to force him to cherish his life a little more, and seconds later, Ryan gets robbed at gun point. This turns out to be more traumatic for Wilfred, and we’re forced to sit through some painful scenes of Wilfred becoming smarter and more thoughtful with the absence of his sense of smell – a story line Seinfeld did much better 15 years ago when George stops having sex and sees his mental capacity balloon.

What follows is even worse, as Wilfred again manipulates Ryan out of a situation to better his own life, by going off on a selfish rant about some shitty dog park and tries to hang himself – all an elaborate ruse to get Ryan to buy him a dog house. What began with strong material – Wilfred getting mad about Jenna being gone, Ryan’s new outlook on life that’s pushing him to secure a financial future – quickly descends into a half-hour of Wilfred being an selfish asshole, and a highly pretentious one, at that.

I’m not really sure what the show was trying to say in the end. Is it better to live in the now, where decisions are based on emotion and necessity, rather than calculated decisions? The show certainly seemed to suggest that thinking ahead of the present is a bad and wholly selfish idea (as we see with Ryan’s co-worker, the rich investor, and Wilfred’s long con of Ryan), but the thematic material largely felt empty, and the emotional realization Ryan always has at the end felt contrived and dull.

Not a whole lot to talk about in this episode, as it’s mostly just Ryan staring at Wilfred while he reads books, complains about life, and petitions in the dog park. Definitely a step back for the show, a subpar episode that was neither poignant, funny, or weird in the ways that make Wilfred one of my favorite comedies to watch on television.

Grade: C-

Other thoughts/observations:

– Continuing the disturbingly unfunny trend is Rob Riggle’s character, who says some unfunny stuff about his kid, and by the end, is just blabbering lines with the word ‘scrotum’ in there to get attention.

– before I get any complaints, yes, I understand the philosophies being played out on screen. I just didn’t think they played out in an interesting way, or took any sort of unique angle to its story.

– I’m not sure why, but everything in the writing of the episode feels off. It was written by Dave Baldy, a former writer on Lewis Black’s ill-fated Comedy Central series Root of All Evil,  which was a terribly unfunny show of Lewis Black ranting while his head rocked his hair back and forth while holding ‘court’. In some ways, the self-indulgence of Wilfred’s behavior seems to echo the tone of many of Black’s dialogues on the show.

– every other suit in the dog park was dark, while Ryan’s was light brown. A little bit too obvious visualy on him “not fitting in” with the other uppity 1% types.

– why CGI squirrels? They looked really fake, and it was really distracting from everything else going on in the scene.

– No Jenna, no Amanda… I demand to see Elijah Wood in the company of these beauties on a weekly basis. I need me some Gubelmann and Mack on Thursday nights.

– Even the tag wasn’t that funny. Seeing Wilfred hump Bear with a noose still around his neck is a poor first appearance for everyone’s cum-stained bear in season 2.