[5.9/10] I have to admit, I was disappointed in this one. I was excited to finally get to Danny DeVito’s joining the show after getting to know the rest of the gang over the show’s first season, and I was pretty underwhelmed by his first outing here. There’s some comedic juice to the idea of everyone pretending to be disabled in order to get special treatment and having it blow up in their faces, but the show just hits that same gag over and over again to quickly diminishing returns.
There’s shock humor involved, which I definitely like at times, but its melded with hacky sitcom-level storytelling, and that makes it seem like shock for the sake of shock. There’s some amusing moments, mostly Mac and Dennis’s awkwardness when running into an actual disabled person. The irony of the whole gang getting injured at the end of the episode after pretending for so long is solid stuff. And I even enjoyed the quiet thread of Mac losing every competition he’s involved in. But for the most part, every story within the episode is pretty much the same, and the writing isn’t sharp enough to distinguish them. (And the Dennis-Dee rivalry over their parents’ stuff went nowhere.)
I’m still hopefully for DeVito’s contributions to the series, but this wasn’t the best start.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2017-03-20T22:01:56Z
[5.9/10] I have to admit, I was disappointed in this one. I was excited to finally get to Danny DeVito’s joining the show after getting to know the rest of the gang over the show’s first season, and I was pretty underwhelmed by his first outing here. There’s some comedic juice to the idea of everyone pretending to be disabled in order to get special treatment and having it blow up in their faces, but the show just hits that same gag over and over again to quickly diminishing returns.
There’s shock humor involved, which I definitely like at times, but its melded with hacky sitcom-level storytelling, and that makes it seem like shock for the sake of shock. There’s some amusing moments, mostly Mac and Dennis’s awkwardness when running into an actual disabled person. The irony of the whole gang getting injured at the end of the episode after pretending for so long is solid stuff. And I even enjoyed the quiet thread of Mac losing every competition he’s involved in. But for the most part, every story within the episode is pretty much the same, and the writing isn’t sharp enough to distinguish them. (And the Dennis-Dee rivalry over their parents’ stuff went nowhere.)
I’m still hopefully for DeVito’s contributions to the series, but this wasn’t the best start.