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 (Happy Bert Day)

“What are friends for?” No. Seriously. What are they for? That’s the question posed by “Happy Bert Day”, the newest “Trophy Wife” episode. The episode may theoretically revolved around precocious Bert’s birthday and his right to have whatever kind of party he wants on the basis of reading 100 books but it’s really about friends – making them, not having them, retaining them, craving them, insulting them, not understanding their importance and coming to understand that importance quite well. The episode is also about Malin Akerman’s pants – in this case, a so fetch pair of black leather lightning strikes bracketed to each leg. If those pants challenged Usain Bolt to a 100 meter dash…..well, I’m not saying they’d win, but they’d make him earn it. They’d probably clock a 9.86.

She is wearing those pants at Bert’s soccer game when she chooses to try and make friends with a few fellow soccer moms who “purse check her” and leave her out in the cold. This sticks in her craw and so she decides that volunteering to coordinate Bert’s birthday will give her an excuse to invite the soccer moms to prove her self-worth and earn their friendship. Ask not what you can do for your stepson, ask what you can do for yourself. Well, she sort of asks what she can do for her stepson. Bert just wants ice cream (and napkins) and so Kate suggests an “Aladdin” theme which leads to a magic carpet and a horse and firewalker on stilts, though strangely not as many hijinks as such a set-up might imply.

Well, the firewalker on stilts gets run into and falls over. Sure. Of course, he does. Twice! If any network exec attending a pitch meeting was told a firewalker on stilts was NOT going to be run into and fall down, he/she would have a luxury suite-styled meltdown. But I like that each time the firewalker on stilts gets run to – by, respectively Warren and Kate – it is the not the actual firewalker on stilts the camera is paying attention to. Rather, the joke hinges on Warren and Kate professing they are okay while the firewalker on stilts writhes in pain, a nice nod to the show being all about how each character makes it all about them.

Hillary has eyes for a comely young dude. Warren volunteers to talk to the comely young dude and see if he’s dating-worthy. But when Warren finds out the comely young dude is a dancer AND a surfer, Warren wants to “purse check” Hillary right out of the picture and have the dude be his friend. Meanwhile Dr. Diane Buckley, tasked with returning the wrong birthday cake for the right birthday cake, accompanied reluctantly by Pete, cuts in line at the bakery, runs red lights, cuts off cars and finagles her way out of a traffic ticket with bald-faced lies. In other words, the rest of these measly humans surrounding her are not to be treated with friendliness but as if they are pawns that Dr. Diane Buckley can rearrange on a whim. (She gets her comeuppance when the cake inevitably splatters all over her, but that’s less a comeuppance than a sugary irritant.)

And that brings us back to Kate’s woebegone quest to befriend the soccer moms whom Kate overhears referring to her as a stripper. Egads. “Legs for days. You always have singles for the vending machine. I could see it,” says Jackie. Kate quickly ascertains, however, that it was Jackie who told the soccer moms that Kate was a stripper all in her own woebegone effort to befriend them.

This is a Michaela Watkins episode through and through. She’s not only funny (her massively ill-fated attempt to hypnotize Kate at a delicate moment – “Two, one, and you’re under” – is the episode’s singular moment), she conveys the utter out-of-her-element desperation Jackie must feel every second of every hour of every day. (With each episode, the more I'm convinced Jackie belongs in northern California as opposed to southern California.) She wants a few new friends so bad that she's willing to sell out one of the few friends she really has (even though Kate's status a friend is open for debate). It's not that she wants to be mean to Kate, far from it, but rather that she fails to think ahead. She's a left coast Jimmy the Gent, her mind going in eight different directions at once.

But Kate and Jackie both realize the soccer moms are judgmental bee-yotches, square up and re-unite to watch Bert cap off his special day with his very own song and dance number. Usually that's a pretty trite conclusion but here it feels just right - everyone ignores themselves for a precious moment to let the birthday boy have his.

Recap Vomit: Trophy Wife (The Date)

The ecosystem on sitcoms is often extremely insular. A series starts and characters are established and the characters’ behaviors are prescribed and those behaviors lead to readymade routines. This is mostly, okay, I guess, if the characters’ behaviors are humorous and the routines effectively utilize those behaviors and so on and so forth. But it can also become frustrating. I’m not talking about stasis necessarily, but characters not being allowed to recognize their own behaviors and, in turn, their own foibles and shortcomings. And that is why a moment near the end of this week’s episode of “Trophy Wife” is the best thus far in its infant run.

Kate and Pete want to throw a Party For Grown-Ups. But this means unloading the kids. So they call Jackie, who is landscaping right there in Kate and Pete’s backyard unbeknownst to them, because personal space to Jackie is as meaningful as name brand toothpaste (she makes her own), to ask if she can babysit. Jackie quickly agrees and then quickly calls Dr. Diane Buckley to see if she can babysit instead so Jackie can go to the party to which she was most decidedly not invited. Dr. Diane Buckley quickly agrees. I’m still not sure Hillary and Warren have not outgrown babysitting age, but this is underscored when Dr. Diane Buckley makes Hillary official babysitter so she can go to Kate and Pete’s party to rescue Hillary’s math book for studying. (BTW: Marcia Gay Harden speaking French……for the WIN!!!)

The party, as it must, leads to all sorts of complications, and I’m not talking about Kate’s hipsters mingling with Pete’s lawyers. I’m talking about Dr. Diane Buckley getting Instagramed by Meg (Natalie Morales), Kate’s bestie, with Solo cups as if she’s a PTA mom on a bender, which leads to Dr. Diane Buckley traipsing into the dank dive bar Meg tends to demand the photo be removed which leads to Meg challenging Dr. Diane Buckley to beer pong for the right to leave the photo up or erase it. (“Is that how you and the hobos settle disputes around here?”) It also leads to Jackie shacking up with Sad Steve (Nat Faxon), the aptly named lawyering pal of Pete who is blissfully unaware of his nickname (until he isn’t), who has accrued 110 days of sick leave and just wants someone with which to spend them. So, sniffing opportunity, Kate and Pete play forceful matchmaker to Jackie and Sad Steve, which goes about how you’d expect, both hilariously awful and weirdly perfect.

Jackie is, as Jackie will be, amusing the whole episode, attaching herself to the Harrison household like a mango margarita sipping organism, the sort that criticizes everyone else for crossing boundaries while she barrels right across those same boundaries like the unbalanced entrepreneur/inventor she “is”. There is so much Jackie in this episode, though, that I actually started to suffer a slight case of Jackie Overload. It was……too much. I swear to God. That’s what I said to myself. “Too much.” And then I tried to square with that in the midst of the episode because I was confused how I, an avowed Michaela Watkins fan, could be wishing for less Jackie. It made no sense!

Except it did. See, most sitcoms don’t expound the effort to put you in their characters’ shoes (or into their short-shorts, as in the case of Kate, which seems disturbing, which is why this is in parentheses). Instead they wash over you like the breeze on the beach where you’ve lived all your life. Watch it, laugh, move on to the next thing saved to the DVR. But this episode, written by Gail Lerner, put me side by side with Kate and Pete, so that I was feeling what they were feeling. They wanted less Jackie (“maybe she could get lost in a bazaar”). I wanted less Jackie. And then, in the midst of a double date with Kate & Pete and Jackie & Sad Steve, when Jackie panics because she’s Jackie and escapes to the alley outside the restaurant and ruminates her fashion choices with the bus boys, when Kate finds her for the requisite “talk”, Jackie makes an admission. She says: “I’m too much.”

I gasped. Literally gasped. I’ve written so many times before how much I adore films that reveal themselves in full to me with their final shots, and that’s precisely what “Trophy Wife” did in this episode. You feel one with Kate in that instant, because you felt what she felt. We all misjudged Jackie, and she deftly undercuts us with a moment of recognition that most sitcom characters are simply not allowed to have because to recognize their own flaws is to threaten the lifeblood of the ecosystem. That’s not to suggest Jackie is about to become a whole new person. She’s in touch enough to diagnose her problem, but her likely prevalence for a journey to a Navajo Medicine Man to offer the proper cure means it may not happen anytime soon. And besides, I don’t think we want it to, and neither does she.

Jackie needn’t be “too much.” Just being, you know, much will do.

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.)

Recap Vomit: Trophy Wife (The Tryst)

At the end of “The Tryst” – which is named “The Tryst” for reasons that simply escape me, because Trysts denote something illicit and this episode felt about as illicit as “According to Jim” (is that still on the air? I'll assume yes) – Kate and Pete, who have been clamoring all episode for a precious “adult’s night out”, sit down to a dinner of dino nuggets and gummy bears (and whiskey). An adult’s night out has more or less transformed into a kid’s night in. And that is sort of what “The Tryst” feels like – adults reverting to kids, kids acting like adults. This is supposed to be a Halloween episode (I think?) and, thus, this is “Trophy Wife’s” version of a madhouse.

Dr. Diane Buckley is running some sort of vaguely defined 80's-themed costume charity ball only for parents at the high school and enlists Pete’s assistance, not so much because she needs Pete’s assistance but because she wishes – in classic Dr. Diane Buckley fashion – to let Pete know that she owns him. Kate is not amused but tags along anyway, dressed as “Working Girl” Melanie Griffith (why couldn't she dress like Samantha Fox?!). Eventually she will urge Pete to stand up to his ex-wife although I bet you can’t guess where she provides this urging.

Or maybe you can. It’s a sitcom, after all, and Kate and Pete get locked in a janitor’s closet. (Hangs head.) Maybe it could have been cutesy if it had gone more self-referential about the 1492-era trope, except “Community’s” dissection of the so-called Bottle Episode really should have provided the final word on Bottle Episodes forever and ever, amen. It’s all just so poorly done, what with “the clock” being Kate’s need to pee (Malin Akerman peed on Ben Stiller in "The Heartbreak Kid", people, so don’t tell me she wouldn’t willingly pee in a mop bucket). Thankfully, however, they’re not stuck in the closet the whole episode, probably because the writers midway through the script meeting we’re all like: “Shit! Did you realize we put them in a janitor’s closet to resolve their problems?!”

Meanwhile, off in Never Never Land, Jackie is tasked with babysitting for Hillary and Warren, both of whom seem too old for a babysitter, but nevertheless! The kids stumble upon a Jackie-created video for an online dating profile, which is suitably Jackie-esque (read: a trainwreck), and decide to re-dress, re-shoot and re-edit the video for her. Jackie complies, leading to her affection for Pete’s bedspread as a potentially chic outfit. I loved this subplot, this idea of Jackie ostensibly being in charge as babysitter only to have the tables turned without her even realizing it and the kids taking charge of what they are able to read as her helplessness, and wish they had even pushed it a little further. It must be said that these are two knowing performances from Bailee Madison and Ryan Lee as, respectively, Hillary and Warren, portraying kids of genuine intelligence who are also saddled by the blinders of youth.

Alas, precocious Bert feels a twinge of sadness that his mom wants to date and potentially provide him with another dad, but possible slop is made tasteful by the deft manner in which Michaela Watkins plays it. She has a real skill for displaying wisdom without ever coming across wise, and also for being in tune to what really matters in life despite her obvious self-involvement. Each week Watkins has walked the high wire (even as the character crash lands into the safety net below the high wire repeatedly), and if the few reading these recaps find themselves rolling their eyes at my relentless rhapsodizing about her work, well, ya best deal cuz when my infamous Actress O.C.D. kicks in, it's no holds barred.

Even so, this was my least favorite episode of “Trophy Wife” thus far. Early on, Pete finds Kate sitting on their bathroom floor eating potato chips that she keeps hidden behind the bleach. “Sometimes,” she explains, “I just want to eat chips before dinner.” This is an exemplary moment, an illustration of the parental balancing act, the need to set an example but the craving for a little middle-aged delinquency. “Eat your vegetables! Not the Frito-Lay’s! I WANT FRITO-LAY’S! WE ALL WANT FRITO-LAY’S!” We need more of this, less of being stuck in janitor’s closets. It’s like when Hillary and Warren are trying to makeover Jackie into something she’s not all for the goodness (horribleness) of online dating. Jackie doesn’t wear cocktail dresses, Jackie wears bedspreads.

Be you, “Trophy Wife.” Wear the bedspread.

Recap Vomit: Trophy Wife (Cold File)

One of the unique things about having a show with multiple moms is the way in which parenting styles and successes and ineptitude can be compared and contrasted. Kate is the newbie, Dr. Diane Buckley is the old pro and Jackie is, well, we’ll get to her.

I remember when I was a kid and for reasons that escape me (and likely escaped me then) I went through a phase where I could not and/or would not sleep. This is the prase precocious Bert is going through and so when Kate insists she wants to play a bigger role in parenting, she is tasked with getting Bert to sleep. Needless to say, this goes poorly. He stays up all night watching TV and she feeds him coffee in the morning to get him going. Kiddo Crash & Burn awaits.

I remember when I was a kid that perhaps the most terrifying sensation was knowing you had done something wrong and covering up that something from your parents but becoming convinced your parents had through their sixth parental sense picked up on what you had done wrong and were now just letting you live in fear and waiting for you to trip up. This is what happens when Warren and Hillary spill salsa on the couch of their mom, Dr. Diane Buckley, and then spend the remainder of the episode convinced their mom is playing mind games with them even if they can’t be truly certain she is playing mind games with them. (She is.)

One mom is in control, one mom is in over her head, and so it goes. The show itself seems to have laid a strong foundation for its premise, which is reassuring, and employing one story to work as a reflection of the other story is simply beyond the grasp of most television Big Four fluff. Even so, if I had a wish it would be that they move away from these refried sitcom tropes and twists. How many times can something be spilled on a couch? (Though this is partially excused for the simple fact that we get to see Marcia Gay Harden salsa dance.) Did the precocious Bert really need to get kicked in the gonads by a soccer ball? (I envision the writer’s room late at night and one writer railing against this scene and another writer explaining that they were already in too deep, that they had to abide by “Chekhov’s Soccer Ball”. It stipulates: “If you show a soccer ball in the first ten minutes then in the last ten minutes someone has to get hit in the gonads with it.”) Do secrets need to snowball until their inevitable unraveling? Please don’t misunderstand, this doesn’t render the show unwatchable and it’s only two episodes in, but…..come on, “Trophy Wife”, play up to your potential.

The potential can be seen in Jackie – or, more accurately, Michaela Watkins who, at the risk of overstating it, is quickly selling me on the fact that she is a goddam genius. I centered my entire “Wanderlust” review around her performance – a brilliant turn with severely dry line readings as a Reality Atlanta Housewife who institutes a 4:00 Happy Hour and blows everyone (including Jennifer Aniston, Paul Rudd and, yes, Malin Akerman) right off the freaking screen. I sang her praises in “In A World…” where she helped to create a funny and real sisterly relationship. And now this, the stressed second ex-wife, waging psychological warfare with new wife while simultaneously providing potent parenting tips. “Half these kids only eat peanuts, half these kids can’t eat peanuts. One wrong bite and half the team is dead.”

She then leaves her own (adopted) child's soccer game to go on a pub crawl with her tai chi class. I wonder what happened there?

Wanderlust

One of the movies’ most ancient tropes is the Big City Man/Woman who through a fortuitous circumstance finds him or herself in Small Town America where his or her enthusiasm for life is resurrected. "Wanderlust", the new film from director David Wain, provides a miniscule twist on the concept. The careers of George (Paul Rudd) and Linda (Jennifer Aniston) are magically ruined on the exact same day leading them to abandon their brand new New York City “microloft” for George’s brother’s McMansion in sprawling Atlanta. On the way there, tired and desperate for a place to crash, our wedded duo winds up in Elysium Cove, not so much a Bed & Breakfast as a hippie commune, governed by the good-willed if slightly amnesiac Carvin (Alan Alda) but run by Seth (Justin Theroux) who is like a more whimsical John Hawkes in "Martha Marcy May Marlene."

Maybe it’s the commune’s disregard for the bourgesoie of normal life, or maybe it’s the pot, but George and Linda seem taken with this north Georgia haven, but not so much that they stop from pressing onward to Atlanta. Alas, George’s brother (Jordan Peele) turns out to be more obnoxious than Danny McBride, causing his wife Marissa (Michaela Watkins) to institute a rule that stipulates a 4:30 Happy Hour as opposed to the traditional 5:00 and in no time George has convinced Linda to flee back to Elysium Cove and give it a 2 week trial run.

From this point, Wain and his co-writer Ken Marino essentially follow the play-by-play of these sorts of Urbanites Out Of The City manuscripts down to the letter, just with a bit of new age wackadooness and organic farming thrown into the mix. At first George is urging them forward and Linda is reluctant so what do you suppose? A reversal? Do you suppose Seth, who has instituted a policy of free love between he and his ultra-beguiling lady friend Eva (ultra-beguiling Malin Akerman), will eventually have eyes for Linda? Do you suppose there will be a greedy businessman who wants to buy the land to open up an evil casino? Do you suppose if there is a nudist (Joe Lo Truglio) there will be lots of penis jokes? Do you suppose if there is a pregnant woman she will…… The greatest irony is that the nudist doubles as an aspiring mystery writer and is currently composing a novel with a brilliant twist that leaves every reader spellbound. Alas, Wain and Marino’s writing cannot match their own nudist.

So when the screenplay becomes a basic trail guide it must then hope its actors can become tour guides who spice up the proceedings. And they do all admiringly apply their game faces and get on with it, though Aniston still seems just a bit too anal retentive even when she’s supposed to be all loosey and all goosey. Seriously, you’ve never seen such a tightly wound woman re-enact Russell Hammond’s “I am a golden god!” sequence. Rudd is Rudd, ab-libbing lines on top of lines on top lines, so much to the point that I’m beginning to suspect in the very near future he’s going to make a movie where all he does is ad lib. For two hours. Theroux (an actor I’ve always liked) is really just a caricature but also at least makes it believable that his vibes would attract the peace, love and understanding eccentrics as opposed to the extremist eccentrics. And Ms. Akerman, plagued as always by so little to do (no arc whatsoever), still re-asserts her underrated and understated comedic chops. Few people can make such absurd lines sound so sincere.

"Wanderlust", though, has a secret weapon, and her name is Michaela Watkins. Essentially appearing in but two scenes, she is no doubt meant to skewer the persona of so many Real Housewives Of Atlanta. And while in that first instant or two you might suspect her lone trait will be Annoyance, she mines for something funnier and, ultimately, surprisingly, truer. Her line readings evoke a Female Walken clouded by a tequila and lime haze, the words and punchlines never quite arriving at the expected time and place. And while "Wanderlust" is, of course, partly just meant to be a “fun-filled comedy!” it also can’t hide the fact it wants to comment on society’s alienation, where we fit in and how we reach an understanding of our deeper selves. The film, however, chooses to wrap this all up with a pitiful news station montage. It is difficult to believe anyone has reached a higher plain, save for Marissa because, as it turns out, she was the only one with any sense of herself all along.

A glorious scene that’s meant to function as George’s wake-up call (because, of course, he can’t wake himself up) instead shows that Marissa’s stasis was a slow-burning trap that she springs at just right the moment, allowing her to utter that which bursts out of the gate to take the lead in the Line Of The Year Sweepstakes. “Reality shift.”