[6.2/10] So this one isn’t great, but it has a few funny bits! I like Lindsay going on a “spiritual retreat” find yourself-type journey, only to be as materialistic and driven by money as ever when she’s trying to “live with less.” I like Tobias once again mistaking a support group for an acting class with the “Method One” clinic. And the 2008 housing crisis jokes are more dated now than they were in 2013, but the “‘Cause then we’ll have it” bits of escalation are amusing in a dark sort of way. It’s not much, but these are a funnier collection of bits than anything in the last two episodes combined.
But that’s still thin gruel. Again, each of these episodes feels really incomplete, with little in the way of story and more of a sense of random bits of plot sewn together. This is theoretically about Lindsay leaving to find herself, believing it requires her to go back home and get back together with Tobias, and then leaving it all behind once more to go flaunt and flail about with Marky Bark. But there’s very little progression to any of it. These events just sort of happen one after another, without enough build or motivation between them. The result is an episode that feels like a bunch of sketches taped together rather than a cohesive episode.
Plus, for all of the solid comedy bits in this one, there’s also some really weak humor. Mark Bark the quasi-activist and his face blindness is just DOA. (Poor Chris Diamantopolous. His arrival on a favorite comedy show -- this, Community, The Office, is an unfortunate signal that things have gone off the rails.) The humor about India is awkward at best. The scenes of the Funkes wandering around their cavernous mansion trying to get in contact with another played as really hacky. For every good gag in this one, there’s about two that land with a thud.
(That said, credit for the dark as hell Thanksgiving gag here.)
I don’t know, folks. I remember some of the payoffs to things set up here, and I want to give the show some leeway. But so much setup without any kind of in-episode payoff makes each of these installments seem so halting and contrived. If the original seasons felt like a master completing a beautiful painting stroke by stroke, this season feels like a toddler putting together a puzzle -- eventually you can see the picture, but it’s a bumpy haphazard path to get there.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2021-05-21T01:45:05Z
[6.2/10] So this one isn’t great, but it has a few funny bits! I like Lindsay going on a “spiritual retreat” find yourself-type journey, only to be as materialistic and driven by money as ever when she’s trying to “live with less.” I like Tobias once again mistaking a support group for an acting class with the “Method One” clinic. And the 2008 housing crisis jokes are more dated now than they were in 2013, but the “‘Cause then we’ll have it” bits of escalation are amusing in a dark sort of way. It’s not much, but these are a funnier collection of bits than anything in the last two episodes combined.
But that’s still thin gruel. Again, each of these episodes feels really incomplete, with little in the way of story and more of a sense of random bits of plot sewn together. This is theoretically about Lindsay leaving to find herself, believing it requires her to go back home and get back together with Tobias, and then leaving it all behind once more to go flaunt and flail about with Marky Bark. But there’s very little progression to any of it. These events just sort of happen one after another, without enough build or motivation between them. The result is an episode that feels like a bunch of sketches taped together rather than a cohesive episode.
Plus, for all of the solid comedy bits in this one, there’s also some really weak humor. Mark Bark the quasi-activist and his face blindness is just DOA. (Poor Chris Diamantopolous. His arrival on a favorite comedy show -- this, Community, The Office, is an unfortunate signal that things have gone off the rails.) The humor about India is awkward at best. The scenes of the Funkes wandering around their cavernous mansion trying to get in contact with another played as really hacky. For every good gag in this one, there’s about two that land with a thud.
(That said, credit for the dark as hell Thanksgiving gag here.)
I don’t know, folks. I remember some of the payoffs to things set up here, and I want to give the show some leeway. But so much setup without any kind of in-episode payoff makes each of these installments seem so halting and contrived. If the original seasons felt like a master completing a beautiful painting stroke by stroke, this season feels like a toddler putting together a puzzle -- eventually you can see the picture, but it’s a bumpy haphazard path to get there.