[7.7/10] Hey, a good episode of the show written by the Schaffers! Whoda thunkit?
I quite liked two of the three major stories here, and the third one wasn’t bad.
First, Pete being fed up with Fantasy Football, but using his same league skills to do well at work is a fun premise. Him using his “line-up” skills to put together a good sales team and succeed with his boss is a good beat. But even better is the follow-up, when the effort is no fun to him when he has to, you know, have empathy for other human beings and not be vulgar. And of course, the second he ends up winning in FF, he’s back just like that. As with the “Flowers for Taco” episode, there’s an almost deconstructive element to this plotline that I appreciated.
I also really liked the insanity that spun off from Kevin leaving Taco money in his will. The fact that Taco uses his future interest in the will and sells it to Rafi is absurd, and then Rafi seeing Kevin’s death as the key to his getting cash leads to a perverse incentive in a typically loony comic way. Rafi is in rare form here, from brutally misunderstanding how debt/wills work, randomly stealing people’s lattes, and being comically unable to distinguish between winks and blinks.
The third story is the lesser light, with Ruxin representing Andre when a patient sues him to botching a toe operation because he was doing a fantasy football trade. It’s pretty mild as League plots go, but Ruxin and Andre’s stand/sit confusing was worth a laugh, and the show nicely pulls off its typical clockwork comic ending with the Kevin/Rafi inheritance situation nicely neutralizing Andre’s issue. Plus hey, we get our first appearance of Shiva so far, so that’s a plus!
Overall, it’s nice to see a regular episode of the show be this good, lean into the Rafi-lunacy, and even deconstruct itself just a tiny bit.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2019-09-19T23:13:47Z
[7.7/10] Hey, a good episode of the show written by the Schaffers! Whoda thunkit?
I quite liked two of the three major stories here, and the third one wasn’t bad.
First, Pete being fed up with Fantasy Football, but using his same league skills to do well at work is a fun premise. Him using his “line-up” skills to put together a good sales team and succeed with his boss is a good beat. But even better is the follow-up, when the effort is no fun to him when he has to, you know, have empathy for other human beings and not be vulgar. And of course, the second he ends up winning in FF, he’s back just like that. As with the “Flowers for Taco” episode, there’s an almost deconstructive element to this plotline that I appreciated.
I also really liked the insanity that spun off from Kevin leaving Taco money in his will. The fact that Taco uses his future interest in the will and sells it to Rafi is absurd, and then Rafi seeing Kevin’s death as the key to his getting cash leads to a perverse incentive in a typically loony comic way. Rafi is in rare form here, from brutally misunderstanding how debt/wills work, randomly stealing people’s lattes, and being comically unable to distinguish between winks and blinks.
The third story is the lesser light, with Ruxin representing Andre when a patient sues him to botching a toe operation because he was doing a fantasy football trade. It’s pretty mild as League plots go, but Ruxin and Andre’s stand/sit confusing was worth a laugh, and the show nicely pulls off its typical clockwork comic ending with the Kevin/Rafi inheritance situation nicely neutralizing Andre’s issue. Plus hey, we get our first appearance of Shiva so far, so that’s a plus!
Overall, it’s nice to see a regular episode of the show be this good, lean into the Rafi-lunacy, and even deconstruct itself just a tiny bit.