[5.6/10] I like the general approach that Enterprise takes with its penultimate episode, Doing an episode with a bunch of smaller, lighter, and more intimate little stories than another standard crisis of the week is a monotony-breaker, and gives the audience the chance to see its heroes in a different light. The tack reminds me of Avatar: The Last Airbender’s “Tales of Ba Sing Se” installment, one of that show’s finest hours.
But “Two Day and Two Nights” falls far far short of that standard in a well-intentioned but ultimately failing outing. The episode tracks four separate stories as our heroes finally get the chance to make their visit to Risa: Archer flirting with his attractive neighbor at the resort, Trip and Malcolm trying to get laid and getting mugged instead, Hoshi aiming to learn the local language and ending up with an island crush, and Dr. Phlox trying to hibernate but being awoken for a medical emergency.
The first story is the meatiest bit in the episode, but it takes a long time to get there. Most of Archer’s story just involves awkward, stilted flirting between the captain and the fashionable woman in a neighboring villa, who brought her dog on vacation too. This is the third time that Enterprise has attempted to show Archer having romantic chemistry with a random stranger, and it’s the third time that effort has fallen completely flat. For the twist at the end of Archer’s story to feel meaningful and significant, you have to buy into Archer and Keyla’s romance, and this show just does not have the chops to pull the “attraction by fiat” schtick off.
The same goes for Reed and Trip’s efforts to play the characters from “Night at the Roxbury.” The show makes a couple of dispiriting attempts at comedy here, and the humor is sitcom-level at best. Even if you’re willing to forgive a few “what gender is that alien” gags that feel transphobic in 2019, the whole “couple of bachelors trying to get some” setup comes off as hacky from the jump. It doesn't help that, for a show made in 2002 and set in the 2150s, the clothing, atmosphere, and attitude of this whole thing feels like something out of the 1980s. (I was thinking of The Love Boat, personally.)
There’s at least the mildest of amusing twists when the ladies who are fawning over Malcolm and Trip’s every word turn out to be shape-shifters who mean to rob them. But even there, the whole “they don’t have any valuables, let’s sell their clothes instead” comes off like a proto-Hangover bit of a dumb comic premise. And the bit goes nowhere after that either, with some lame “look they’re wandering around in their underwear” gags that sputter and collapse as soon as they’re unleashed.
Broad comedy seems to be the order of the day in “Two Days and Two Nights”, as its firmly present in Dr. Phlox’s story as well. The setup is that Dr. Phlox is planning to hibernate during the crew’s shore leave, but a Mayweather injury on Risa forces acting-captain T’Pol and Crewman Cutler to wake him up early. With that bit of somnum interruptus, Phlox is basically high as a kite, but still trying to do some doctoring, which leads to no end of shenanigans.
Honestly, this is probably the best storyline of the four which, given its meager successes, is telling as to the quality of the episode. John Billingsley continues to make a lot out of a little, clowning around, Frasier-style, with T’Pol in particular making an excellent straight man to his buffoonery. It’s big, outsized comedy, but it’s glancing enough to work in this context given the small stakes, and its fun to see Billingsley showing some zany comic range. Plus, it has some just a hint of that wider perspective that can elevate Enterprise when an exasperated Mayweather asks T’Pol if she’s ever had to go to an alien hospital, and she responds, “Yes, in San Francisco.”
Sadly, such small bits of depth are thoroughly absent from Hoshi’s story, where her linguistic efforts end up connecting her with a hunky alien with whom she trades both conjugations and kisses. There’s nothing wrong with this storyline exactly. It offers an amiable enough meetcute and their little island romance is rushed but serviceable. There’s just nothing to it.
There’s the hint of a twist in the fact that rowdy Reed and Trip aimed to find hook-ups on vacation and ended up embarrassed, while Hoshi aimed to do something constructive and instead found romance. But Hoshi’s briefly-sketched, by-the-numbers romcom routine never rises above “fine but kind of pointless.” We don’t really learn anything about her from it; I doubt there’ll be any lasting effects, and it seems to only provide an excuse for a corny title drop.
Still, “fine” is better than where Archer’s story ends up, as it’s revealed that Keyla is Tandaran and this whole deal is an elaborate honeypot scheme. I’ll give the Tandaran’s credit -- trying to set up Archer up with an age-appropriate partner who also has a little dog, in an effort to pump him for information, is a pretty good plan. But all it leads to is soap opera-esque dramatics between him and Keyla, and a cheesy, sub-James Bond bit of espionage and subterfuge. The notion of the Tandarans trying to scam Archer out of more info about the Suliban is a good one, but the execution is dismal.
That pretty much goes for “Two Days and Two Nights” as a whole. It’s a solid concept for a format-bending episode, particularly one meant to take the edge off before the fireworks of the season finale. But the actual stories told are so shallow and uninteresting and downright boring that the whole outing feels like a giant waste of time. Taking a break from the usual rhythm in a series can be great, letting writers and actors flex different muscles than usual. The catch, though, is that gear-changing presentation has to be, well, you know, actually good in order for it to work.
Boing episode containing multiple dead-end stories.
They never explained how the woman's dog got up to Archer's balcony which was much higher and had no way to traverse between, especially for a small dog. Archer didn't get even a clue to go after the woman after she drugged him to sleep and ran away? Is Archer going to somehow go after her in a future episode or is that story a dead end? And Hoshi's story here was basically she learned 2 languages and had sex, like that's it? No conflict/climax/resolution in Hoshi's story? Barely a story at all. At least it was implied that she climaxed. I was so bored watching her scenes that I noticed she never does a full blink with her eyes; she does frequent half-blinks instead. Trip and Malcolm's story ended like Archer's, no hint that they will be able to chase the disguised aliens who stole their clothes. Yes, clothes, how boring.
The writers really should have just done one good story instead of the 3 abysmal stories that we got in this episode. In the past few episodes leading up to this one, there was so much buildup to finally getting to Risa! And then the crew gets there, and it's nothing. Also strangely only half the crew is allowed to go, with a lottery being used to select who goes. If they are worried about the NX-01 being boarded and looted or stolen, then surely only a skeleton crew of 5 to 10 people fully armed would be needed? Why does half the crew need to stay? Archer jokingly stated there would have been a mutiny if the crew didn't get shore leave, but that's exactly what happened - crew members not getting shore leave! Maybe we were supposed to assume that the other half of the crew would get their own 2 days and 2 nights on Risa after the first half is done with their stay.
About the doctor's story in this episode. It was nothing. I'm guessing it was meant to be funny to see him wake up, but it wasn't. While watching I was hoping they would give more details about how their hibernation works; all we really know is that their hibernation is normally 6 days but 2 is somehow sufficient, and if it's interrupted they will get really dumb and forget everyone's name, thinking they are all the captain. Does the doctor never sleep until their annual hibernation? What are the consequences of getting 2 days instead of 6? Can the missing 4 days be made up later or does the doctor have to wait for the next annual hibernation? I must know more.
Review by dgwVIP 9BlockedParent2018-01-31T04:14:23Z
I think this episode suffered from trying to include too many subplots. In the end none of the stories got any real closure.
Perhaps it was intentional that all of the plot lines were so superficial, but I don't have to like it.
What does it say about this episode that its only real effect was to make me like Hoshi even more? (For that matter, what does it say about me?) None of these little vignettes had any real character insight to offer. We already knew that Trip and Reed are perhaps a bit incautious when it comes to booze and women. (I'll leave aside the contradictions I see with their previously established backstories.) We already knew that Archer is inclined to distrust anyone who talks too much about the Suliban. We also already knew that Hoshi is amazing at learning languages—it's literally the reason Archer wanted her on his ship in the first place. (Doesn't make it any less interesting to "see" the character "learn" new languages.) I guess we didn't know that Phlox gets silly when he's woken up mid-hibernation, but that felt more like a shoehorned-in comic relief plot than anything.
To sum up: Hoshi is adorable. Phlox gets a chance to be supremely silly, though it doesn't really work with the tone of the show for me. Trip and Malcolm don't really have any presence, just a one-off gag (of sorts) scene that just gets left. Archer meets a mysterious woman who can only be a hint at things to come. (For that reason, his is the most fulfilling subplot—though it is fulfilling only in that it promises more intrigue next season and beyond.)