[7.4/10] A very solid episode. I appreciated the Louise-Frond connection here, where Louise loathes Frond, but recognizes his patheticness and her own frustrations at being wrongfully accused in a way that prompts her to go whole hog in defending him. The show trips over itself to try to create the mystery and come up with any plausible motivations for the whole situation underlying the mock trial business, but the emotional and character logic is sound, which goes a long way. Frond telling Louise he’s proud of her, and Louise apologizing for not believing him about the yogurt in the first place is a nice beat.
There’s also some good laughs in the courtroom setting. The kids misadventures are usually good for that. Zeke as the overprotective bailiff, Gene trying to be an old school southern lawyer, and Tina having “forbidden conversations” with Jimmy Jr. in the jury box were all fun. The line of the episode, however, was the kids’ teacher imploring the kids not to tell their parents how the class spent the last two days.
The B-story, with the adults (including Jimmy Pesto) trying to get back at a guy who scammed them for comps after pretending to find a hair in his food was, if you’ll pardon the expression a bit underdone. The Borat bit was amusing enough in its silliness, and I can sort of appreciate the slightly subversive anticlimax of the whole revenge scheme going wrong, but there just wasn’t much to it and the laughs weren’t as strong as they needed to be from something so slight.
Overall, perfectly enjoyable episode that gets most of its strength from Louise’s arc with Frond.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2017-03-07T02:15:39Z
[7.4/10] A very solid episode. I appreciated the Louise-Frond connection here, where Louise loathes Frond, but recognizes his patheticness and her own frustrations at being wrongfully accused in a way that prompts her to go whole hog in defending him. The show trips over itself to try to create the mystery and come up with any plausible motivations for the whole situation underlying the mock trial business, but the emotional and character logic is sound, which goes a long way. Frond telling Louise he’s proud of her, and Louise apologizing for not believing him about the yogurt in the first place is a nice beat.
There’s also some good laughs in the courtroom setting. The kids misadventures are usually good for that. Zeke as the overprotective bailiff, Gene trying to be an old school southern lawyer, and Tina having “forbidden conversations” with Jimmy Jr. in the jury box were all fun. The line of the episode, however, was the kids’ teacher imploring the kids not to tell their parents how the class spent the last two days.
The B-story, with the adults (including Jimmy Pesto) trying to get back at a guy who scammed them for comps after pretending to find a hair in his food was, if you’ll pardon the expression a bit underdone. The Borat bit was amusing enough in its silliness, and I can sort of appreciate the slightly subversive anticlimax of the whole revenge scheme going wrong, but there just wasn’t much to it and the laughs weren’t as strong as they needed to be from something so slight.
Overall, perfectly enjoyable episode that gets most of its strength from Louise’s arc with Frond.