This season had one of the funniest episodes of all time, PTSDee, along with The Gang Goes to the Water Park, pure comedy gold, so it gave us all hope that this show is not in decline.
This episode tells another story and now I'm not sure what to think of this season.
To be fair, I'd rather have 5 crap episodes and 5 great ones than 10 okay ones, but that's just me.
Where to start?
The show's strength is... someone smarter than me called it "the Game of Thrones of comedy." That's not a reference to its quality or effect on culture. It's that it's a multi-character show, where someone does something and it has an effect on the other. Actions have consequences, intended or unintended. Finding a wallet in a bar leads to identity theft, Dennis getting off, a company getting sold, mass layoffs and a missing finger. All in one episode. Running jokes and recurring themes/characters make the story richer. It's not a show built on throwaway characters. Everything counts.
This episode, unfortunately, has a strange formula. By focusing on Cricket, we are cut off from the gang. The gang offer him a job-for-lemons deal, but that's it. The rest is linear. He gets high. He screws up. There's no twist, there's no other moving parts, you're just watching someone screw up. Where's the fun in that?
Cricket making out with a dog is not funny. I'm not disgusted but I didn't laugh. The sound he does while eating lemons got a chuckle the first time, but not after that. His family are throwaway characters - never heard about them, probably never will again.
So I didn't laugh at the jokes, fine. But where are the jokes? It's not just "failed jokes" but "no jokes" - really. Cricket gets a job. There's two action scenes where he does some street parkour stuff with backflips, etc. Two of them. There's a romantic story where he meets a girl, etc. They talk, they go on a date, etc. All this is buildup for the joke at the end. So all this time, the jokes per minute were really low. It's all buildup. But the joke at the end was so obvious. The girl named "Bell" who wears a collar bell is not a girl, but a dog.
Even if one were to find that funny, the whole episode was build up for one single joke. The rest is just family drama (dad wants his son to take over the business), romance, addict trying to kick the habit, etc.
Not for me. I give this episode a 6, but I'm biased towards this show.
On a side note, I've been telling a friend to watch this show and tried to get him to watch this one with us. Something came up and he couldn't. Glad he missed out. We showed him Charlie and Dee Find Love instead.
This episode tells another story and now I'm not sure what to think of this season.
To be fair, I'd rather have 5 crap episodes and 5 great ones than 10 okay ones, but that's just me.
Where to start?
The show's strength is... someone smarter than me called it "the Game of Thrones of comedy." That's not a reference to its quality or effect on culture. It's that it's a multi-character show, where someone does something and it has an effect on the other. Actions have consequences, intended or unintended. Finding a wallet in a bar leads to identity theft, Dennis getting off, a company getting sold, mass layoffs and a missing finger. All in one episode. Running jokes and recurring themes/characters make the story richer. It's not a show built on throwaway characters. Everything counts.
This episode, unfortunately, has a strange formula. By focusing on Cricket, we are cut off from the gang. The gang offer him a job-for-lemons deal, but that's it. The rest is linear. He gets high. He screws up. There's no twist, there's no other moving parts, you're just watching someone screw up. Where's the fun in that?
Cricket making out with a dog is not funny. I'm not disgusted but I didn't laugh. The sound he does while eating lemons got a chuckle the first time, but not after that. His family are throwaway characters - never heard about them, probably never will again.
So I didn't laugh at the jokes, fine. But where are the jokes? It's not just "failed jokes" but "no jokes" - really. Cricket gets a job. There's two action scenes where he does some street parkour stuff with backflips, etc. Two of them. There's a romantic story where he meets a girl, etc. They talk, they go on a date, etc. All this is buildup for the joke at the end. So all this time, the jokes per minute were really low. It's all buildup. But the joke at the end was so obvious. The girl named "Bell" who wears a collar bell is not a girl, but a dog.
Even if one were to find that funny, the whole episode was build up for one single joke. The rest is just family drama (dad wants his son to take over the business), romance, addict trying to kick the habit, etc.
Not for me. I give this episode a 6, but I'm biased towards this show.
On a side note, I've been telling a friend to watch this show and tried to get him to watch this one with us. Something came up and he couldn't. Glad he missed out. We showed him Charlie and Dee Find Love instead.