14x03 The Pickleorette

[7.2/10] This one was pretty thin on story, but big on gags, so still a winner in my book.

I do enjoy an elaborate scheme that just requires more and more improvising. Linda trying to help Gretchen throw a poorly planned bachelorette party for Gretchen’s little sister is a good setup. Linda having to scramble to get more guests, enlist Bob as a driver, manage the strip club situation, and otherwise cover for the fact that Gretchen did basically no advanced planning or reservations for this thing led to some good laughs as everybody frantically tries to cover for Gretchen.

Bob’s terrible attempt at an Italian accent and pseudonym of “Dob” (a la Tina/Dina) is worth a yuk. Gretchen inviting her sister’s third grade teacher, who’s into it and brought stickers, got a smile out of me. And as always, Gail is hilarious, from her wearing a renaissance fair dress and admitting to sleeping in it, to coming up with an elaborate backstory for Bob’s character, to her declaring that Linda tried to sleep with her husband and responding, “That’s not how I remember it” when corrected. This is mostly an aimless gag fest, but gags are good! Which helps.

The emotional climax, with Gretchen admitting her mistakes, but her sister still being glad to spend her big day together is sweet, but pretty thin. It’s nice for them to try to develop Gretchen a bit, but I don’t know if the character has the depth to withstand it. Likewise, the C-story about Bob having a hemorrhoid isn’t particularly funny, but H. Jon Benjamin’s line reads save it a bit.

The B-story, with Tina babysitting her siblings and playing an old veterinarian game with them has a few chuckles. The way Tina all but insisted her siblings play the old board game, only to find that she both loses and has a lot of imaginary pet blood on her hands, much to her dismay, is an amusing twist. Her going to great lengths to try to spy on the slapped together strip show didn’t do much for me, but her line about not being sure how to get out of the situation once they’ve shimmied into the crawl space is a cute enough gag.

Overall, this is a pretty slight episode of the show, but there’s a handful of really good laughs, and plenty of solid chuckles in between, so it’s still worth watching on that basis alone.