Recap Vomit: Trophy Wife (The Wedding Part One)

As the part one preamble to Kate & Pete's wedding (not marriage, mind you, but an actual wedding), something crucial in regards to "Trophy Wife" and its surprising subtlety dawned on me for the first time - that is, I had never considered the legitimacy of Kate & Pete's marriage. Which is to say, I had never considered if they really were convincing as not only man & wife but as a couple in, for lack of a better term, love. I had not failed to consider this, however, because I simply accepted it per Sitcom Law. Nor did I fail to consider this per trusty Sitcom Denial. I had failed to consider this specifically because the relationship's believability was so subtly plausible and lovingly convincing that I just sort of mentally nodded the first time I saw them and moved on. You know, like when you see Jesse and Celine and you know that if these two were ever to wind up in, say, a pseudo-marriage with two daughters that everything would be hipstery keen and......whoops. NOTHING TO SEE HERE! PLEASE DISPERSE!

When Kate stumbles across Pete’s old wedding videos to Dr. Diane Buckley (Wife #1) and Jackie (Wife #2) and sees the extravagance of each ceremony, she naturally becomes despondent that her and Pete’s ceremony was merely of the civil variety. These old wedding videos also allow for the classic gag of WACKY HAIR! Because it was a DIFFERENT ERA! And in DIFFERENT ERAS people had WACKY HAIR! These are the sorts of jokes “Trophy Wife” is frequently above and yet occasionally still resorts to and which frustrates me but I will allow it if only because at Jackie’s wedding Pete recited his vows by going straight Bangle. We continue.

Sensing and believing in Kate’s desire, Pete re-proposes and the wedding planning begins. This leads to Pete and the Harrison boys wearing kilts because Pete wants to embrace his Scottish heritage which leads to Warren becoming obsessed with Scottish culture and painting his face like the Mel Gibson version of William Wallace which is simply perfect because as a dude who went through a “Braveheart”-obsessive phase too it elicited all sorts of wonderful nostalgia flashbacks, recalling the innocent era before I was made to realize that they can, in fact, take our lives and take our freedom. It also leads to the obligatory maid-of-honor tug-of-war between Meg and Hillary - the former's got the novelty penises, the latter's got the finger sandwiches. Meanwhile, Dr. Diane Buckley decides to go public with her relationship to fellow taskmaster Russ Bradley Morrison and Jackie is more or less forced to tell precocious Bert about her relationship with faux-bagel delivery man Sad Steve.

The real problem emerges when Kate decides to finally change her name in keeping with the wedding bell spirit. Alas, being a Canadian expatriate, a potential name change leads to an INS interview and Kate and Pete become so paranoid that the INS interviewer will take the sitcom’s ironic title to heart and deport her that they go ridiculously overboard in playing up American stereotypes to make it seem as if there is no possible way this could merely be a marriage of money and/or trophies. So Pete dons a fanny pack and the worst polo imaginable and Kate does laundry and references Pete’s “man cave”. They go even further overboard, of course, and eventually everyone in the family bursts into the living room in the midst of the INS interview and, thus, the interviewer deduces that in the face of such commotion and annoyance there is no way this is a marriage of convenience.

My rival re-capper at The AV Club faults this logic by actually employing that term – “seriously faulty logic”. But the point here, I would argue, is not the madcap nature of this everyone-on-the-stage-at-the-same-time conclusion, nor the incident in question swaying the INS interviewer being "logical" within the parameters of "the real world" (because come the eff on), but a gorgeously farcial reminder that Kate and Pete don’t need this sorta sitcom crap to prove they belong together.

Lies giving way to truth, that’s the crux of “The Wedding Part 1.” Because once Warren’s obsession with all things Scottish leads him to over-analyzing the family tree, he learns they are, in fact, not Scottish at all. They are Flemish. Wracked with guilt, he spills the beans to his dad. Pete decides he doesn’t care. He wants to wear a kilt at his wedding. That’s the truth, just like Dr. Diane Buckley & Russ Bradley Morrison's mutual desiccation is the truth and Jackie making Sad Steve Happy is the truth and Kate not being a Trophy Wife but the Woman Pete Loves is the truth. And the truth is that even as Marcia Gay Harden and Michaela Watkins remain so routinely comically brilliant on the periphery, it is Malin Akerman and Bradley Whitford that cannily give us something to believe in.

Recap Vomit: Trophy Wife (Halloween)

As it turns out, last week’s episode of “Trophy Wife” was not the Halloween episode. This week’s episode – the aptly named “Halloween” – is, and Halloween, it seems, brings out the best and worst (best?) in our whole generally functional –give or take – clan. It splits the family into two groups – three and four – and views what happens out on the streets amidst so many little kid Iron Men and what happens on the home front when the cows come home to roost (coinage: Frank Drebin).

Bradley Whitford’s Pete has been established as a lawyer but we have rarely seen him in a lawyering light, aside from that mysterious phone call he fielded that led to him declaring how much he hates his job (which is just so tragic). Unless he doesn’t really hate his job, because “Halloween” suggests that aside from his legal puns (Marcia Hay Garden’s dismissal of this had me in stitches) he really might have the legal shark blood. This is because when a mystery kid in a mask shows up at the front door demanding candy, Pete recognizes the voice. It’s the voice of the kid that egged his house last year. Thus, exercising his right to indefinitely detain an American in accordance with the National Defense Authorization Act (at least I think this is how the NDAA works), Pete drags the kid inside, apparently turns off the porch light and sets up a suburban kangaroo court.

The interesting thing here is not how it ends, which is inevitable, which is to say the kid is guilty despite being “released” and Pete literally winds up with egg all over his face, but in how the family professes to taking issue with Pete’s tactics while idly sitting by and sort of quietly encouraging it. Consider Dr. Diane Buckley. She professes sorrow for this detainee and keeps offering him candy, but Gay Harden delicately conveys how she’s really on Pete’s side. I suspect she just wants to elicit sympathy from the accused in case the authorities turn up and question everyone involved. In these moments you can see what a Pete/Dr. Diane Buckley wedded consortium must have been like, sub-levels upon sub-levels (flashback episode?).

Meanwhile, off in never never land, Jackie has failed to score an Iron Man costume for precocious Bert, apparently because she has no idea who Iron Man is nor any idea who Lady Gaga is (which is a shame because I suspect Jackie would dig Lady Gaga and her ability to turn anything into “acceptable” evening wear). Kate to the rescue! She cuts in line at a costume store by posing as the rich stepmom of a couple eager lads (after offering to buy a couple teenage girls booze who decline because they're, like, you know, totally "straight-edge"[which suggests a potentially dire irresponsibility lurking within Kate that I hope is explored]). So now Bert wants Kate to take her trick or treating rather than his mom which leaves Kate flattered and Jackie forlorn, though Jackie schemes her way into the mix. Needless to say, hijinks ensue. Leaving Jackie & Kate in charge of a kid on Beggar’s Night is like putting Laverne & Shirley in charge of a Christmas pageant.

Their trick or treating sojourn ends with a woman mistaking Kate & Jackie for a proud lesbian Mom & Mom of precocious Bert, which is sorta obvious and I only mention because it shines a spotlight on a more subtle and more clever demonstration on how sitcom sexual civics have evolved.

Warren’s Halloween costume is Ellen. As in, Ellen DeGeneres. The script does not do much with this idea, instead focusing (unfortunately) on Warren’s visit to the dentist the same day which renders his enjoyment of candy mute which just feels like the disgusting taffy that – as Kate explains – is handed out at apartments which is why apartments are to be avoided. Nevertheless, if most sitcoms had teenage sons dressing up as Ellen, the entire episode would revolve around insecure fathers having major freak-outs over their sons’ orientations. Not here.

Pete may have a little Col. Nathan Jessup in him, but he’s tolerant too. And we know he’s tolerant because he never bats an eye at his son wanting to dress up like Ellen. Maybe next Halloween, after Jackie does a little research, she’ll let precocious Bert dress up in Lady Gaga’s soda can curler wig? (Not that I dream of forcing my hypothetical children to dress up for Halloween in Lady Gaga’s soda can curler wig.)