5.5/10. I'm pretty tired of Jason's adventures with his sassy wheelchair friend. The idea of a supporting character who only exists to push and be the mildly-sarcastic Jiminy Crickett for a main character is a pretty annoying trope, and it didn't work for me here. The only silver lining is that it may be the end of this insipid love triangle storyline. Plus, the whole "Jason decides whether or not he should do something and gets lots of advice about it" formula is getting tired.
Speaking of the participants in that love triangle, Tim Riggins is one of the main focuses of this episode, and the episode doesn't get much from that. The idea that the Riggins brothers love one another but have a complicated relationship is a worthwhile idea, but centering it on differing ideas about their parents, and a cheesy brotherly scuffle, and all of that stuff just makes it feel like a trip to the cliche store, where the two of them are filling their cart with everything they can find. I appreciate the show's attempt to depict different kinds of families and the struggles they face, but the execution here was off.
The same goes for the hokey "parents sweat over their daughter dating" storyline. Anytime that Coach and Tami are interacting is a treat, and the the acting from the two of them carries a lot of this, but it doesn't take away from the corniness and triteness of the writing. This type of stuff would fit in on Full House almost as well as it would here, in a show striving for something that approaches verisimilitude much more closely.
But there's Smash, and while his quest for cash to do something that is equal parts bad and well-intentioned, and the twists and turns that leads him down, is not without hoary tropes of its own (poor kid steals from the till, cool kid doesn't work hard at part-time job, etc.), but the conflict he's in and the lived-in quality of both he and Matt makes the storyline the best one of the episode, even if that's not a high standard. The church collection for his "SAT class" is moving and full of pathos, and adds stakes to him "crossing the line," by taking these people's money and using it for steroids, even if he's doing it in the hopes of providing for his family. It's a story that's legitimately morally complex in a way that the other parts of the episode can only feign.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2016-06-19T03:19:49Z
5.5/10. I'm pretty tired of Jason's adventures with his sassy wheelchair friend. The idea of a supporting character who only exists to push and be the mildly-sarcastic Jiminy Crickett for a main character is a pretty annoying trope, and it didn't work for me here. The only silver lining is that it may be the end of this insipid love triangle storyline. Plus, the whole "Jason decides whether or not he should do something and gets lots of advice about it" formula is getting tired.
Speaking of the participants in that love triangle, Tim Riggins is one of the main focuses of this episode, and the episode doesn't get much from that. The idea that the Riggins brothers love one another but have a complicated relationship is a worthwhile idea, but centering it on differing ideas about their parents, and a cheesy brotherly scuffle, and all of that stuff just makes it feel like a trip to the cliche store, where the two of them are filling their cart with everything they can find. I appreciate the show's attempt to depict different kinds of families and the struggles they face, but the execution here was off.
The same goes for the hokey "parents sweat over their daughter dating" storyline. Anytime that Coach and Tami are interacting is a treat, and the the acting from the two of them carries a lot of this, but it doesn't take away from the corniness and triteness of the writing. This type of stuff would fit in on Full House almost as well as it would here, in a show striving for something that approaches verisimilitude much more closely.
But there's Smash, and while his quest for cash to do something that is equal parts bad and well-intentioned, and the twists and turns that leads him down, is not without hoary tropes of its own (poor kid steals from the till, cool kid doesn't work hard at part-time job, etc.), but the conflict he's in and the lived-in quality of both he and Matt makes the storyline the best one of the episode, even if that's not a high standard. The church collection for his "SAT class" is moving and full of pathos, and adds stakes to him "crossing the line," by taking these people's money and using it for steroids, even if he's doing it in the hopes of providing for his family. It's a story that's legitimately morally complex in a way that the other parts of the episode can only feign.