1x05 An Open Book

[7.3/10] Two thirds of this one are quite good, which I’m here for! The weak link on the show is still Nate and Brenda. The weird mystery box thing the show has going with Brenda’s past and, frankly, her general demeanor, are a drag. We get the reveal that Brenda was identified as a genius as a kid and hated her parents so much that she and her brother related to literary orphans escaping a “malevolent” nurse. (It’s revealed to be the origin of their tattoos.)

It’s all just tiresome. I don’t get much out of Nate being psychoanalyzed by Brenda or the rest of the Chenowith crew. The “dark secrets” don’t do much for me either. And the dark-tinged MPDG routine continues to have diminishing returns. I get that this show wants to show a tumultuous relationship that isn’t sanitized for television, but Brenda is still such a cartoon character that it doesn’t really work.

Thankfully, the relationship between Ruth and Claire is an attempt at the same sort of thing with much greater success. Ruth wants to connect with her daughter, and Claire is, naturally, a seventeen-year-old girl who doesn’t want to hang out with her mom. The two seem pretty different, and attempts to bond over movies and the like go pretty poorly.

Their segments in the episode are basically a broadside against “touchy-feely mother daughter relationships like the ones on TV and movies”. They explcitiyl call out good ol’ Gilmore Girls, which I will not stand for, damn you! They even have their own Gilmore equivalent, with a pair of mother-daughter friends in San Bernadino who Ruth and Claire bond over making fun of and kind of being bewildered and creeped out by. It’s a nice, sideways method to show how they do have things in common, in little moments like using the word “deft” or laughing about not wanting to go to spin class.

But there’s also moments of genuine honesty. Claire comes clean about why she took the foot, and more seriously to Ruth’s mind, admits that she’s having sex. Ruth eventually reciprocates by telling her daughter that she was having an affair, because whatever their relationship is, she wants there to be honesty. It’s a nice way to bring them together, having a rocky relationship but also being confessional to each other. Claire recognizes that her mom is sad and wants to help, even if it just means going to the movies with her. They’re not the picture-perfect parent-kid combo, but that just makes their little breakthroughs and moments of solidarity all the more heartening.

David’s situation is more complicated, as he’s again pulled back and forth between his sexuality and conservatism. Here, that means struggling with becoming a deacon at his conservative church on the one hand and being more out and open with Keith on the other. You can see Nate struggling with his self ugilt, which is understandable given the clash between his button-down upbringing and his sexual orientation. But you can also see him being mercenary about the Deacon thing, reasoning that it’ll help get more business for the funeral home, while sacrificing his bonding time with Keith and sweeping their relationship under the rug.

Keith is, frankly, better than David deserves, and you totally understand his frustration. At the same time, David is just an interesting character, the way he labors under all these competing sides of him that don’t quite fit together. It’s encouraging when he all but comes out to his brother, and just as disheartening when he tries to put Keith on the down low afterward. David’s all over the place, which would be frustrating in real life, but is compelling for a fictional character.

That just leaves the corpse of the week, who’s a porn star. There’s some thematic meat there, with David weighing his “deviancy” in the eyes of the church he’s about to represent against hers. But for the most part, it’s just fodder for a lot of broad jokes about fake boobs and fellatio. The funeral itself is a raft of these, and it gets boring fast. That said, the potential customer’s line that “I think we’ll have dad’s funeral in the church” after one of the mourners compliments David on the presentation of the deceased’s breasts is a laugh.

Overall, I still wish we could just excise the Nate/Brenda portions of the show, but the other sections have improved considerably, and are worth the price of admission.