[7.3/10] Hey, we’re in HD! Or at least widescreen format now! This was a perfectly good kickoff to the new season. Again, it’s funny watching this series for the first time all these years later how topical it is in a way I never really got from the handful of episodes I’d seen before starting the series in earnest. Tackling the mortgage crisis feels very of the time.
Still, plenty of the usual IASIP capers to explore based on that. My favorite part of the episode was Charlie being somehow convinced he’s a lawyer, talking about bird law and filibusters and confusing boilerplate with hot plates. His combination of confidence and incompetence is a recipe for comedy. And the real lawyer gleefully shutting him down, replete with agreeing to his duel, was grand.
The actual house flipping efforts were pretty good. Dennis and Mac as “Honey and Vinegar” was an amusing bit, and I couldn’t tell you why, but Danny DeVito bossing around children meanly is still oddly funny (maybe it’s leftover from Matilda). There’s not much to it beyond the conflict with the current family, but watching Dennis and Mac try to sell the house was good for a laugh. (And as someone who’s watching The Legend of Korra concurrently with IASIP, it was a real treat to see P.J. Byrne show up here.)
Dee’s storyline where she turns being a surrogate mother into an opportunity to mooch had its moments. I’m a little tired of the jokes that turn her into the butt monkey of the show, but surrogacy is an interesting direction to take the gang’s “we’re all terrible people” brand of selfishness. There’s some meta gags there (with Dennis trying to figure out how to combine the mortgage and baby ideas), and the fact that everyone ends up in the pool of the parents-to-be feels like an easy way to try to bring everyone in the same scene at the end. Still, amusing enough.
Overall, not a slam dunk, but a fun episode with the show’s usual brand of humor on display.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2017-09-22T20:39:59Z
[7.3/10] Hey, we’re in HD! Or at least widescreen format now! This was a perfectly good kickoff to the new season. Again, it’s funny watching this series for the first time all these years later how topical it is in a way I never really got from the handful of episodes I’d seen before starting the series in earnest. Tackling the mortgage crisis feels very of the time.
Still, plenty of the usual IASIP capers to explore based on that. My favorite part of the episode was Charlie being somehow convinced he’s a lawyer, talking about bird law and filibusters and confusing boilerplate with hot plates. His combination of confidence and incompetence is a recipe for comedy. And the real lawyer gleefully shutting him down, replete with agreeing to his duel, was grand.
The actual house flipping efforts were pretty good. Dennis and Mac as “Honey and Vinegar” was an amusing bit, and I couldn’t tell you why, but Danny DeVito bossing around children meanly is still oddly funny (maybe it’s leftover from Matilda). There’s not much to it beyond the conflict with the current family, but watching Dennis and Mac try to sell the house was good for a laugh. (And as someone who’s watching The Legend of Korra concurrently with IASIP, it was a real treat to see P.J. Byrne show up here.)
Dee’s storyline where she turns being a surrogate mother into an opportunity to mooch had its moments. I’m a little tired of the jokes that turn her into the butt monkey of the show, but surrogacy is an interesting direction to take the gang’s “we’re all terrible people” brand of selfishness. There’s some meta gags there (with Dennis trying to figure out how to combine the mortgage and baby ideas), and the fact that everyone ends up in the pool of the parents-to-be feels like an easy way to try to bring everyone in the same scene at the end. Still, amusing enough.
Overall, not a slam dunk, but a fun episode with the show’s usual brand of humor on display.