Recap Vomit: Trophy Wife (There's No Guy In Team)

The season finale of NBC’s ever-marvelous “Parks and Recreation” – and fear not, no spoilers shall be revealed – was essentially everything we expect from a sitcom season finale. It was an hour-long as opposed to a mere half-hour. It was packed with guest stars. It presented a looming life decision to its protagonist(s). It offered a ginormous Reveal that provided closure while also leaving everything open. There is nothing wrong with this approach. It was a fantastic episode. Yet, I wonder. I wonder why sitcoms are bound by Sitcom Law to conclude seasons this way, and I wondered about this as I watched the most recent episode of “Trophy Wife.”

Now understand, I don’t really wonder why Sitcom Law stipulates seasons wrap up with these cannonading episodes because I know why. It’s because of Network Execs and Ratings and Human Propensity To Gasp When Confronted With A Cliffhanger and because I’m someone who genuinely thinks “A Fish Called Wanda” is the funniest movie of all-time who recently told people this only to be met by confusion and disagreement whereupon I explained that it doesn’t have the most laughs per capita of other funny movies but that its quality of laughs outweighs all other films’ quantity of laughs and, seriously, when did we become a Quantity over Quality society even though I know full well when (i.e. When God Created The Heaven And The Earth) and…..well……uh……it’s a smoke screen?

Where was I? Right. Sitcom season finales. I thought a lot about this need to Go Big Home & Then Go Home (until next season) during “There Is No Guy In Team”, and this is because “Trophy Wife” has shown itself to be superior with its non-event episodes. I was talking with a friend recently who told me that since having kids he has found sports to be so un-suspenseful because how does it matter whether or not Kevin Durant makes a shot at the buzzer to win when just wanting your own flesh and blood to get to school okay can terrorize your thoughts. And that’s the truth “Trophy Wife” knows and explores so well (albeit comically) – that the family is the event. It’s very much a sitcom in the entanglements it offers week-to-week, yet at the same time it never needs (even if it sometimes resorts to) sitcom fireworks. The day-to-day is enough.

And that’s why I found myself wishing that “There Is No Guy In Team” had been the season finale (series finale?) of “Trophy Wife.” Which isn’t to say that the final two episodes won’t be good or that the season finale (series finale?) won’t be riveting and moving, but still. This episode was perfect. Not perfect so much in that it was as good as an episode of television could possibly be, but perfect in that it had all the quintessential characteristics of what makes “Trophy Wife” what it is and what it’s best at being. It was funny. It was really funny. Scout’s honor. (I feel like I have to convince people that show is actually funny, which is ridiculous. This episode was effing funny.) It was warm without being fuzzy, clever without being impressed with itself, a perfect piece of pecan pie without having to lather it in whipped cream and drown it in chocolate fondue and have some superstar make a cameo to serve it to you.

“Trophy Wife” may not be renewed by the ABC Mothership and if it isn't, that's okay. Sitcoms end, but the Harrison family has been so well-crafted by its writers and actors that it will continue to exist in the artistic firmament long after its plug is pulled.

Recap Vomit: Trophy Wife (The Minutes)

I confess, I may not have been the intended demographic for the latest episode of “Trophy Wife.” This is because “The Minutes” turns into a half-“Scandal” homage and I have not seen a single second of a single “Scandal” episode (unless Tina Fey and Amy Poehler dramatically saying “Scandal” at the Golden Globes counts). So, when the episode inevitably deviates from its “Trophy Wife”-ness to go straight “Scandal”, I had nothing to go on, nothing to gauge it against. For all I know, it was exactly like “Scandal”, though the attempts a rat-a-tat-tat dialogue seemed a little less potent than might be required. For me, it evoked memories of Harry Crumb and Nikki Downing, and I’m not certain whether that’s good or bad. Should it matter that I haven’t seen “Scandal”?

For instance, I never saw (and still haven’t seen) a single second of a single “Melrose Place” episode and yet one of my 127 favorite “Seinfeld” episodes is the legendary “Melrose Place” episode. I remember hearing about the latter all the time, and I remember it always being referred to as a “guilty pleasure”. It was something people loved to watch but didn’t necessarily admit they loved to watch because it seemed so trashy. And that’s what “Seinfeld” played to, and they played to because it was universal. We all have things we love but don’t want to admit to, don’t we? So rather than act as a straight homage, it featured Jerry denying that he watched “Melrose Place” – even though he loved it – and being forced to take a lie detector test by his policewoman girlfriend to determine the truth. It’s incredible. It’s hilarious. And it didn’t matter one iota if you didn’t know what “Melrose Place” was or who was in it because “Seinfeld” effortlessly made it relatable to everyone. That’s why “Seinfeld” was and still is the greatest.

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INT. POLICE HEADQUARTERS – DAY 

NICK PRIGGE, infamous anti-Reality TV activist has been hooked up to a lie detector. A grizzly DETECTIVE stands above him. 

DETECTIVE: “Nick, have you ever watched Reality TV?” 
NICK: “No.” 
DETECTIVE: “Nick? (Clears throat.) Have you ever watched Reality TV?” 
NICK: (sweating) “No.” 
DETECTIVE: “Nick. (Dramatic pause.) Have you ever watched…… (Even more dramatic pause) ……‘Temptation Island?’” 
NICK: (Breaks down crying.) “Fine! FINE!!! I watched the first season of ‘Temptation Island!’ You wanna know why?! Because Reality TV is lewd and disgusting and EVERYTHING THAT’S WRONG WITH SOCIETY and ‘Temptation Island’ was the lewdest and most disgusting and EVERYTHING THAT’S WRONG WITH SOCIETY reality show of 'em all! And I loved it! Okay?! Are you happy?! I! Loved! It!" 
DETECTIVE: "And who was your favorite?" 
NICK: "Mandy! Mandy was totally my favorite! Yes, I remember her name!" (Falls to floor, writhing in a pool of his own tears.) 

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This isn’t to suggest “The Minutes” is an eyesore for any non-“Scandal” fanatic. Marcia Gay Harden is too good, first playing up the part of a binge-watching “Scandal” fanatic and then showing Kate how to play dirty when Kate runs afoul of the PTA and finds that her inflammatory comments about Harden’s Dr. Diane Buckley behind Dr. Diane Buckley’s back have officially been entered into The Minutes. (Scandal!!!). The idea of a PTA-related Scandal!!! is simply irresistible, but the means by which the Scandal!!! erupts – Person A saying things about Person B without Person B present only for Person A to realize Person B might hear them after all – and the follow-up – having to do with a PTA mom’s devotion to the sport of squash – come across so much less than juicy. And I suppose that’s partly the point – that in the world of the PTA, a Scandal!!! would be less than juicy. But shouldn’t it still feel juicy in spite of its non-juiciness? Like, to a bunch of PTA moms this Scandal!!! is as skandalouz as the Scandal!!! shown during the commercial for “Scandal” in the midst of “Trophy Wife” where some dude puts his hand around Kerry Washington’s throat and says “You killed the President” (Scandal!!!). I dunno. It just seems to me that aside from Marcia Gay Harden, everyone is playing Kerry Washington dress-up. It’s a cutesy homage, an aw-shucks, gee-whiz, “we’re family friendly!” scandal, and it doesn’t do much to invite non-“Scandal” watchers into the proceedings.

And the episode’s biggest problem is that the “Scandal” homage runs counter to the tale of Hillary wanting to go to the semi-formal dance with a boy who is the son of the neighbors with whom Pete and Jackie have a long-running feud involving a garden hose. There is a hint of potential Scandal!!! here involving the feud but that mostly gets ignored to instead build to a moment of fatherly heroism on account of Pete. It’s rather sweet but at odds with the other half of the episode. So too is Warren’s woebegone quest to get in on the Ask-A-Celebrity-To-The-Dance-Via-The-Internet craze by asking Vanessa Hudgens to the semi-formal by pretending to be gravely ill a misfire on a potential Scandal!!! I mean, if you’re gonna go for the fellow-ABC-drama gusto then, you know, go for it. “Trophy Wife” doesn’t quite go for it. So let’s all just watch this instead.....

 

Recap Vomit: Trophy Wife (Couples Therapy)

We live in (…varnishing trumpet to herald phrase…) THE GOLDEN AGE OF TELEVISION!!!, which does not merely mean that TV is grrrrrreat! but that so many of the stories in so many of the TV shows have become long and winding texts of multi-layers and penetrating themes. It all supposedly makes the cinema look like the kid’s table. Even though I will argue until they put me in my grave and chloroform me just to make sure I can’t argue anymore that “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints” could ring out loud with meaning and beauty and tragedy over the course of 5 seconds in a way no TV show could do in 5 years, but I’ve made that argument before and so I won’t again (even though I just did).

All this is a way to indicate that episodic television, episodes of the standalone variety, an individual story this week and an individual story next week and so on, is becoming is becoming less popular. Well, maybe “popular” isn’t the right word. Maybe “critically acclaimed” is the term I seek. After all, something like eleventy billion people watch “The Big Bang Theory” so at least in that sense episodic television still thrives. Unless “The Big Bang Theory”, which I don’t watch, really does have multiple storylines threaded throughout its varying seasons, a CBS-esque novel, and that’s what people are responding to. I somehow doubt it. But I don’t care. I’m not watching to find out. Two regular TV shows is already enough burden on my pure-movie sensibilities.

At the conclusion of “Couples Therapy” I first thought I’d type up some hooey about confrontation – avoiding it, initiating it, stumbling into it, and so forth, since the episode is triggered by Pete refusing to tell Kate that he is thrown out her pot of chili since it’s awful (Kate can’t cook! Ha ha ha!) and made his own and not told her so she thinks she made it except that Dr. Diane Buckley sniffs out the scheme in, like, four seconds and calls Pete on it and Pete avoids further confrontation by claiming he and Kate are in couples therapy even though they aren’t and……well, the ensuing hijinks are most obvious.

But what’s so bad about hijinks? What’s so bad if the confrontational “theme” is really just the means to deliver a rip-roaring twenty-two minutes of sheer joy minus any meaning? Nothing, that’s what. It’s an episode – written and directed by Gail Lerner – that knows its characters to their truest extent, expertly works all of them into the episode in a delightful way and then lets them play off each other while giving each actor a chance to excel at what they do best. It’s a rum-encrusted Rice Krispie treat for the “Trophy Wife” Lifers. (And yes, in this day and age, sticking around for 18 episodes and watching almost all of them at the exact time they actually air makes you a “Lifer”.)

Seriously. Seriously. I cannot convey just how this episode made me mentally jump for joy. Bradley Whitford’s lawyer-esque line readings, always stomping on the other person’s line before it can resonate with the non-existent jury (“I followed Duran Duran on the ‘Hungry Like A Wolf’ Tour” – “So did my dad” – “Get out of my house”) and Michaela Watkins’ line readings that always come from obtuse angles (“If I could pick any time period to live in, it would be 1996”) and Marcia Gay Harden’s line readings that are 17 degrees below freezing (“I always say if it appeals to the masses, it must be the best”) and Bailee Madison’s line readings that are still above freezing but dropping and will one day be just like her mother’s and Ryan Lee’s line readings that are a teenage boy’s utterly awkward and hopeless attempts at playing it cool (“I've gotta work on my wink timing”) and Bert's line readings of grown-up eagerness in a kiddie voice (“Now where's my iron?”) and Meg mellowy putting the kibosh on Hillary’s attempts to perform sociological research and Dr. Diane Buckley and Hillary standing beside each other at the exact same angle and looking so much like mother and daughter that it will make you wistful AND make you laugh and Dr. Diane Buckley and precocious Bert conversing in mandarin and Warren listening to “Up Where We Belong” on his Dad’s old Walkman and Pete expressing his Andre Agassi idolization (“That's why you've always wanted to get an earring” - “He's so cool”) and sweet Jesus did I mention the shorts Malin Akerman played tennis in which I’m well aware makes me a shallow male but in certain life situations we males are left choiceless and can only-

(Reader grabs keyboard. Nick: “Hey! What are you doing?!” Reader: “For the love of God, that sentence had been going on for almost three-hundred words! Someone had to stop you!”)

Recap Vomit: Trophy Wife (The Wedding Part Two)

Weddings on a sitcom are never easy. Then again, weddings in real life are never easy. You think it's your day but it's not really your day - it's everyone else's day. This is the refrain I continually hear from my married friends. And so even though Kate and Pete think their wedding day is their day, it's not really their day - it's everyone else's day. This is to say, it's Megan Mullally's day, because Megan Mullally plays Malin Akerman's unhinged, bad-kid-at-heart mom Cricket. From the moment she steps off the plane to the moment she ascends the roof of the Harrison pool house to have a cigarette, it becomes all about her.

But then that's the precise problem with these "event" sitcom episodes - it becomes all about the stunt casting. But then does anyone know half the people at their wedding? The Groom & Bride get top billing, sure, but they can easily become bit players in the biggest day of their lives. That's kinda what happens to Kate and Pete. Cricket dominates the proceedings with her bawdy ways, like hiring a couple male strippers for the intimate pre-wedding family dinner in a gag so exhausted it barely wheezes across the finish line.

Elsewhere, Pete's parents, played by Florence Henderson and Bob Gunton (sneakily great casting), show up too, revealing themselves as jaw-droppingly uncommunicative and trapped within the confines of mundane lovelessness. So, son and daughter try to appeal to their respective parents to change their ways, though Kate seems more determined to do this than Pete. Pete just seems exhausted. Best Line of the Episode, in fact, goes to Pete. "At least you try. I just sigh." *Nick nods furiously.*

Of course, the episode's title means that a wedding awaits even if the wedding as planned gets scrapped for partially dubious reasons. But the scrappage allows for a surprise which, let's be honest, cribs from "The Wedding Singer" (minus Billy Idol) and just seems a bit too sugary in the face of all that has come before. There's a niftier scene of Kate and Pete fleeing to the garage to be alone and I almost wish the episode had just ended right there - as in, they only need this, not all that other Surprise Wedding On A Sitcom nonsense.

In truth, not much changes here. The way things were more or less remain the way things are by episode's close. Which might actually be the most precise detail "The Wedding Part Two" reveals. A strong subplot involves Warren and precocious Bert announcing to their respective mothers - Dr. Diane Buckley and Jackie - that they no longer wish to be called "adorable." After all, they are now Best Men. Not Best Boys. And Best Men are not "adorable". Dr. Diane Buckley and Jackie pledge to honor their request. They do.....for about half-a-second. Then Warren and precocious Bert are right back to being adorable.

"The Wedding Part 2" might be meant as a kind of affirmation, but it just comes across like a placeholder.

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 (Foxed Lunch)

“That definitely wasn’t worth it.” – Pete Harrison 

Do you know what made “The Cosby Show” in which Theo gets the earring he wasn’t supposed to get so memorable? Well, it was the dueling Marxish attempts of Theo to evade detection and Cliff to detect, sure, but ultimately it swung on how Cliff received comeuppance from his own father for piercing his ear way back when upon reprimanding Theo. It wasn’t to put the parent in his place, mind you, but a gentle reminder that all parents were once kids and amusing evidence that even parents can still learn lessons. 

“Foxed Lunch” is a parent-centric episode, though the kids still factor in mightily, their presence nimbly demonstrating how moms and dads want to live up to their image in their kid’s eyes while also imparting wisdom and proving to themselves that they still got it (whatever “it” may be). When Jackie pitches her latest harebrained scheme (“I’m, like, six for ninety-three”), Kate, quizzically, is onboard. She doesn’t merely want to write Jackie a check (“In the reference line, write ‘taxes’”), she wants to help Jackie create healthy, pretty-to-look-at boxed lunches for kids – “foxed lunches”. Never mind that she can’t even scrounge up a decent lunch for Warren most days – she wants to prove she can fix fifty foxed lunches. She wants to prove that she cut in the real world. She wants to prove she can work an actual job. After all, she has a marketing degree once she finishes those last three credits.

But Kate also wants to prove her self-worth to the ever-dubious Dr. Diane Buckley. The one-time silver medal swimmer from Seoul, Diane has become track-training partner to Hillary, and the sight of mother and daughter in matching track suits and jogging with matching breathing patterns is guaranteed for convulsions of laughter. Diane, however, assumes her level of fitness still matches a teenager’s, and when she finds out it doesn’t, her Diane-ness (and Olympian-ness) kicks in. She can’t appear as a failure in the eyes of her daughter, and she can’t appear as a failure in her own eyes, and so she winds up proving that pushing it to the limit can sometimes result in debilitation and leg spasms.

The third subplot, strangely, is both the most hackneyed and the most awesome. It is hackneyed because since the sitcom’s dawn, it has routinely turned to the setting of karate class when interested in exploring what constitutes manliness – just, you know, in a wacky fashion. And “Trophy Wife” jaunting off to karate class gets wacky. They go so far as to cast Rob Corddry in the role of Sensei. Corddry is an actor whose mean-spirited hysterics frustrate me but whose more recently glimpsed soft side (see: “In A World”…, “Butter”) pleases me. Here, however, he is all mean-spirited hysterics, preaching “fight, fight, fight!” over talking it out. This runs contradictory to Pete, irritated that Warren and precocious Bert are learning the wrong way to deal with their problems, and so he enrolls in karate class to show what’s-what.

This is Bradley Whitford’s best episode yet, over-basking in Dad Pride for preaching the virtues of being non-confrontational, and then letting a different version of Dad Pride get the best of him when he decides to accept the Sensei’s ultimate challenge. The punchline is Pete attempting to break a brick, which is a given, but what works is the follow-up punchline, Pete grasping his broken hand and claiming, “That was definitely not worth it” (see: above).

Kate and Jackies lunch service was definitely not worth it. Dr. Diane Buckley’s attempts to match her daughter’s need for speed definitely were not worth it. Pete’s desperation to stand up to a tyrannical Sensei was definitely not worth it. Parents are always right. Except when they're not.

Recap Vomit: Trophy Wife (The Tooth Fairy)

There are stages every child must go through, though, rest assured, I’m not discussing the traditional developmental stages discussed within child-rearing textbooks. No, I’m talking more about the stages of Parental Whimsy – as in, The Santa Claus Stage, when the child still has utter belief in the magical, and The Man/Not Yet A Man Stage, when the child is both ready and not ready at all for his/her ascent of Maturity Mountain, and the Leave Me Alone Stage, when the child finally reaches that dreaded point wherein he/she just wishes mom and dad would bugger off. Setting each one of its three children in separate storylines, “Trophy Wife”, in its second great episode in as many weeks, explores these stages with a bounty of rich one-liners and eventual oddball empathy.

Let’s examine these storylines in ascending order of awesomeness. (Reader’s Note: I recently saw someone on Twitter question the validity of the word “awesome”, wondering whether its content had become diluted because of overuse. Thus, I pledge to use the word awesome EVEN MORE going forward. Like, hey man, aren’t Malin Akerman’s pants awesome?)

While dining out, precocious Bert loses a tooth, and it seems that in Jackie’s world, tooth loss is an appreciable event on par with confirmation or graduation. Unfortunately, Pete loses the tooth before celebrating can be done which leads to bitterness on the part of Jackie for ruining the celebration which leads to Jackie and Pete squaring off in ex-wife and husband warfare – that is, taking activities the other one wanted specifically to introduce Bert to, and introducing them. I admit there is a little something too straight-outta-the-Sitcom-Hijinks-Manual for this story to work entirely, though as always the performances fight back, particularly in how Whitford genuinely seems so frazzled by the in-advance knowledge of Jackie’s anger. Bert, though, is still young enough to believe in the Tooth Fairy, and so a moment of reckoning inevitably arrives amidst all the nonsense that finds Jackie and Pete having to decide whether or not it’s time to reveal the Tooth Fairy’s true identity. They don’t. They let Bert hang onto the magical for at least another year. God bless their souls.

Meanwhile, Warren is taken with a female classmate, Allie, who texts Warren to say she wants to study. Warren being Warren, he assumes she actually wants to study, until Kate explains that girl code dictates that “studying” equates to “date”, which renders Warren as freaked out as excited. Guy On Girl Communication is not his forte. It’s the point every kinda/sorta-maturing boy faces, when he first falls for a girl and has literally no idea what he’s doing. (At least, this was a point boys reached in my day. Anymore I assume kids start drinking coffee at six and going to Daft Punk shows by themselves at ten.) Typically this means a boy is left to fend for himself, figure it out based on 80’s rom coms and Mr. Big lyrics, but Warren has a secret weapon – Kate.

His stepmom understands the female mind – what’s more, she understands the young female mind. So, she tells Warren what to text and, as it turns out, Kate-authored internet slang pierces fair Allie’s heart. In a way, she’s the Bizarro Cyrano de Bergerac. Of course, once Warren is made to interact face-to-face with Allie, he panics and crumbles and so Kate comes to the rescue……NOT!!! Instead she waltzes into Warren’s room to confide in Allie how hot Warren is, which understandably leaves Allie a little terrified and wanting to flee.

My rival re-capper at The AV Club disputes this turn, declaring that “Trophy Wife is supposed to have at least one foot on the ground. Kate trying to talk up her stepson’s cuteness is unbelievable.” Respectfully, I disagree. Consider “The Big 5-0”, merely two episodes ago, and Kate, amongst other ill-considered ideas, barging into Pete’s office, clothesless beneath her coat. That entire twenty-two minutes consisted of Kate continually suffering well-intentioned mental lapses and throwing poo-poo against the wall to see what might stick (nothing stuck). And this is precisely what happens when she rolls up on poor Allie to spout the virtues of Warren. It might be unbelievable for most characters, but not for Kate, because she's just throwing more poo-poo against the wall. This also wonderfully works to put Kate and Warren on the same level. He thinks a good excuse to momentarily get away from Allie is to explain he needs to use the bathroom – “Probably gonna be in there for awhile” – and Kate thinks it’s a good idea to momentarily act as if she and Allie are competitors. Away from the text, she is as useless as he.

The episode really soars, however, when Dr. Diane Buckley hosts a sleepover for Hillary and her school government friends – “They rule the school. Democratically, of course.” So, Diane crafts appetizers I can’t pronounce and rents both Cate Blanchett “Elizabeth” movies, “and, if you feel like getting crazy, ‘The Aviator.’” The government girls, however, have chosen “Spawn of Satan 2.” Before long, Diane Being Diane, she has managed to embarrass Hillary by treating "Spawn of Satan 2" as if it were a Cate Blanchett movie and pointing all the plot inaccuracies, leading to all the girls texting behind Diane’s back, and then Hillary texting Diane to, more or less, tell her to go away. Marcia Gay Harden in that moment underscores why she won an Oscar, staring daggers at her daughter and offering: “I have to go. One of my patients DIED.” As in, Diane just died a little inside.

Yet, she also understands. That’s a painful reality, a difficult one to pull off in a network sitcom, and yet Gay Harden exquisitely captures that dividing line between joy that her little girl is growing up and sadness that her little girl is leaving her behind. And the show is smart enough to know that even though Hillary blows her mom off, she still loves her mom, and goes to check on her. That moment they share – hyperbole be damned – is artistry, and all alone makes it worthwhile to have kept in touch with this show.

Did the episode really to finish up with a "Scrubs-ian" montage? No. It did not, and it did not because it generated genuine feeling all on its lonesome, and no bit of musical monkey business was required to elicit or embellish it. You got the good stuff, "Trophy Wife." Keep believing in yourself.

Recap Vomit: Trophy Wife (The Punisher)

When I was home for Christmas, my sister asked me if I was actually enjoying “Trophy Wife” or if I just recapping it out of Malin Akerman-prompted obligation. I replied that, yes, I was actually enjoying it, though I could tell she remained skeptical, and so I launched into a diatribe. Basically it’s like this, so many American family-centric sitcoms employ the kids as mere props, a means-to-an-end, plot devices, and the real rough-and-tumble nature of parenting – the I-don’t-know-what-I’m-doing panic, the grit-your-teeth-and-get-through-it obligations – remain on the sideline for antics and one-liners. But “Trophy Wife” never forsakes its whole family, and this has never been proven better thus far in it short run than in “The Punisher”, its best episode yet. In a very real way, it echoes the sentiments of an article by Jennifer Senior for New York Magazine (unwittingly, I assume, as the episode aired two days after the article was published), albeit comically. To borrow the phrase of the esteemed Pat Benatar and tweak it – Child-Rearing Is A Battlefield.

At episode’s open, Warren is about to jump off the roof and into the pool as Hillary films it with her smartphone. Kate, however, catching this stunt in the nick of time, orders Warren off the roof. Warren obliges. By jumping into the pool. Kids. So Kate sits them down with the intent of doling out punishment, only to realize she has utterly no idea how to dole out punishment. Thus, she phones Warren’s and Hillary’s real mother, Dr. Diane Buckley, the Dolph Lundgren Punisher to Kate’s Thomas Jane (pop POP!!!), for punishment-doling advice, eliciting the episode’s first masterstroke – that is, Dr. Diane Buckley as Kate’s Qui Gon Jinn.

It’s killer to watch how the teensiest of commands like “Kids, go to your room”, purposely delivered by Marcia Gay Harden with little-to-no effect, wield such authority, but the episode refreshingly refrains from overplaying Dr. Diane Buckley’s role. She’s there for Kate, despite her dislike of Kate, and will offer brief council (in person and then by phone and then in person again), but she will not make Kate’s bed and clean Kate’s room. Kate has to make her own stand, which she does by confiscating all “screens” (phones, laptops), but “screens” are Warren’s and Hillary’s lifeblood and they will fight back, making life hell for Kate if she makes it hell for them.

Remember, Hillary and Warren are Dr. Diane Buckley’s kids, so they think just like her, and one delightful moment finds Hillary copying her mom’s mannerisms down to the tee. I mean, you can see Hillary as a teenage Dr. Diane Buckley (or vice-versa) and that is as awesome as it is terrifying. Back and forth they go, and it is all heightened, yes, but what makes it so exhilarating is to see the very real struggle Kate is going through in attempting to figure out how the hell to parent. The stress, the agony, the moments when she thinks she has it figured out and then realizes she doesn’t, and this is all builds to an instant when “Trophy Wife” recycles a standby sitcom trope – Something Falls Into The Garbage Disposal And The Garbage Disposal Gets Turned On. Usually it’s a wedding ring, but smartphones are really the new wedding ring, and so it’s Kate’s smartphone that goes into the Garbage Disposal on account of Warren and Hillary, and so Kate turns on the disposal and her phone gets chewed up and even though she was trying to impart stepmotherly wisdom by taking away their phones, when her phone gets taken away…..

I know nothing of the Emmys and I’m not saying Malin Akerman should be nominated for an Emmy. What I am saying is that if the Emmys have a Best Bleeped Cursing Award, it’s Malin Akerman’s to lose. Because at the sight of her chewed up phone, she loses it, and she loses it by unleashing a bleeped-out curse-ridden monologue that is cut short by a commercial break but actually continues going when the show returns from commercial. Now the show is not making light of swearing in front of your kids, but reminding how close parents are at every second of every hour of every day to blowing their f*&%ing gaskets.

Speaking of which, Pete and our old friend Jackie are summoned before precocious Bert’s teacher who explains he has been sending signals that he is unhappy with the distance between his parents. Thus, Pete, despite seemingly be around Jackie all time despite not being married to her, puts on his game face (sort of literally) and braves a game of mini-golf with ex-wife and son. It’s pirate-themed mini-golf and so, naturally, they have to speak in pirate voices, and while at first it’s amusing, it really doesn’t go anywhere. Yet, that’s okay, and it’s okay because, I suppose, as a parent that’s what you do. You mini-golf and you talk like a pirate for as long as you have to make your kid happy, and even if you feel as if this outing is going nowhere, well, look at the smile at your kid’s face. Isn’t that enough?

Tags over the closing credits are typically meant to be humorously inconsequential, but I think “The Punisher’s” tag is vital. It is Pete hard at work on a vaguely defined writing project ("Is it a short story? Is it a trilogy?") called "The Magistrate's Lover." It sounds awful, which is to say it sounds fabulous, but what’s really crucial is what this short story/trilogy represents – namely, Pete’s outlet, his escape from the mini-golf and ex-wives and the parental ordeal. “The Magistrate's Lover” is Pete’s coping mechanism. Just let him have it, man.

Best Line: “I have the peripheral vision of a hammerhead shark.” – Dr. Diane Buckley (stated by Gay Harden not as braggadocio, but as mere fact)
Episode MVP: Malin Akerman’s Pants (but that goes without saying)

Recap Vomit: Trophy Wife (The Big 5-0)

I have a deep, and what will no doubt prove to be an everlasting, relationship with the Wilco song “California Stars.” I first heard it in my earliest twenties in Iowa when I yearned to see California. I remember when it inexplicably came on a jukebox at some Iowa City watering hole on Halloween night when I was a week away from moving to Arizona and my friend Andrea and I, without even discussing it, simultaneously stood on our barstools, played air guitar and sang along. (She and I were young and we would Live 4-Ever.) I vividly remember thinking of it when I first saw a California license plate in Arizona and suddenly realized “Hey, I’m a six hour drive from L.A.” I remember listening to it the first time I was actually in California. I remember hearing some no-name cover band no one was listening to in some sparsely populated bar in Iowa after I had returned post-West Coast move suddenly play it and thanking them afterwards for playing it and then thinking to myself “My God, what am I doing back in Iowa?” In those days, so many years ago, the song presented to me a sort of romantic hopefulness. Now, a decade-plus having slid past, it presents to me a sort of romantic weariness. We change, and songs, even if they stay the same melodically, change with us.

Pete, see, is a day away from turning, as they say, the big 5-0. Yikes. But yikes because Pete believes his birthday is cursed. Because every birthday he has ever had everything has gone drastically wrong. So now he celebrates his birthday the day before his birthday, and he’s cool with it. Kate doesn’t seem quite so cool with it. She wants him to celebrate getting older, not run away from it, so against his will she decides to make his actual birthday a day to remember. You can probably guess how it goes.

Well, there’s hijinks, sure. If you center an episode around 1.) A Birthday (a fiftieth birthday!) and 2.) A Curse, hijinks are required in accordance with WGA Law. So, Kate winds up dressed in a coat……with nothing on underneath……which leads to her entering Pete’s office and talking pseudo-dirty……when other people are in the room she didn’t see! (Two things. 1. My favorite throwaway moment in the episode was Pete ripping up a document at the mention of the Department of Justice, suggesting “Trophy Wife” could really go to some darkly funny places if it wanted. 2. I won’t complain about clothesless-beneath-her-coat Malin Akerman, per se, but I really missed the previous episode’s pants.) And Pete is driving when Kate reveals her clotheslessness which causes him to hit a police car which causes him to go to the DMV and, well, you know how things at the DMV go. And so on.

But “Trophy Wife” is always just a bit more sly with its conventionalities, and Bradley Whitford does a notable job playing the episode in a way that makes clear he expects all this to happen, has resigned himself to it and is now just trying to wait out the rest of the day. That’s terribly tragic, really, and made more so because Kate is so insistent he ENJOY HIMSELF! In other words, she refuses to let him resign himself to what he already knows is his fate, which is merely her dealing with her own fate to which she is resigned.

Coming to grips, that’s what “The Big 5-0” is all about. Precocious Bert, home alone with Hilary and Warren and Pete’s mail-order lobster birthday gift, is forced to come to grips with the fact that the majority of the food he eats doubles as animals on his pajamas. Harsh, man. Dr. Diane Buckley is forced to come to grips with the fact that she can be rude, brusque and unaccepting when she and our old friend Jackie “pal” around all episode on the prowl for a birthday gift for Pete in the form of wind chimes he doesn’t want like a Californicated, Obama-era Kate & Allie. Kate is forced to come to grips with the fact that although the media mumbo jumbo is all about how 50 is the new 40 and 40 is the new 30 that, in her case, 30 may be closer to 40 (even though she’s closer to 30). And this might make eyes roll and sighs emanate and prompt exclamations of: “Malin Akerman has it bad? Suuuuuuuuuure.” But that’s simplistic nonsense and I will not stand for it.

Malin Akerman or not, we all age, we all change, we all must come to grips. Like when I was recently not IDd for buying a beer when I’m always IDd for buying beer despite being my mid-thirties, and getting home and analyzing myself in the mirror and realizing “Oh crap, the bartender saw those grays in my hair, didn’t she?” and collapsing into a theoretical pool of tears. It made me feel like Kate feels, but then I realized that, dammit, it was okay. So what if I’m getting old? Getting older has so many perks. It does! Because I like going to bed early and I like getting up early and I like drinking at home and I love wearing pajama pants. And (not) coincidentally, these are things Kate says she likes in “The Big 5-0”.

And so Kate realizes she doesn’t need to force celebratory action on her spouse, and instead they retire to a quiet bar for a cozy drink and Pete sidles over to the jukebox and I was so feeling in the episode in that moment that I literally said aloud to the TV “Don’t let me down, Pete.” And, lo and behold, son of a gun, miracle of miracles, the dude played “California Stars.” And I smiled and I laughed out of bewilderment and I cheered and I nearly fainted, and all within the space of a half-second.

Look, I don’t watch much TV, but I felt so close to “Trophy Wife” in that moment because in that moment it knew the secret. You can be young and feel old and you can be old and feel young and you can feel both simultaneously, and that songs, like us, live and breathe and grow and expand and that birthdays are awful and fantastic (they give us really good excuses to watch “Top Gun” without ridicule) and that coming to grips is as refreshing as it is depressing. And that then you awake the next morning and have to deal with the sound of the damned wind chimes you didn’t want from your two ex-wives.

Epiphany or not, life goes on.

Recap Vomit: Trophy Wife ('Twas The Night Before Christmas...Or 'Twas It?)

Christmas is a time for the familiar (songs, decorations and asking for DVDs as presents) and in that spirit, “Trophy Wife’s” requisite holiday episode, “’Twas The Night Before Christmas…..Or ‘Twas It?”, borrows a familiar refrain. It shows us the (metaphorically) bloody aftermath and then has the characters re-trace their steps to determine precisely what happened. It opens with a vintage seasonal tune contrasted against Pete and His Three Wives spread throughout the house, passed out in varying places of ludicrousness. Pete is wearing a Santa suit (how did he get into it?) and Jackie’s eyebrows are nearly shaved down to nothing (who did it?) and the Christmas tree is 1.) In the pool and 2.) On fire and all the presents have vanished and, of course, a dog. A random dog is in the house. Unless it’s a coyote. Or possibly a wolf. (“It’s a wolf.”)

Malin Akerman's Pants. Dear God, Malin Akerman's Pants!

So the confused quartet wakes, gathers ‘round the coffeemaker and attempts to determine and/or assign blame to the person responsible for this overall mishap. The blame, as is often the case, is aimed square at Kate. (Reader’s Note: Malin Akerman impossibly ups her pants from last week with a pair of searing red leather pants this week that are burned into my retinas. I mean, Malin Akerman in those pants halts any talk of potentially switching the Official Cinematic Crush back to Sienna Miller, as was Cinema Romantico scuttlebutt earlier in the year. I mean we’re nearing the point of All Malin Akerman Pants Recaps. I mean, Malin Akerman wears those effing pants.) To instill her own family traditions, she has crafted a batch of Glögg (“Glurg?” – “Glögg.”), a sort of Swedish mulled wine, and invited Jackie and Dr. Diane Buckley over for Christmas Eve despite Pete’s protests because, after all, it’s Christmas. And that’s what you do at Christmas……you do things you wouldn’t ordinarily do (shouldn’t under any circumstances do) and then dismiss their inherent bad-ideaness with a proferring of “It’s Christmas.” Kate, they assume, must have spiked the Glögg (“Glurg?” – “Glögg”), or made it too strong, and caused a wide-reaching blackout. This is both very near and very far from the actual truth.

Lindsey Shockley’s script is a breakfast buffet of setups and the payoffs that are unpacked lickety-split and with escalating humor. Clearly its roots are in “The Hangover” but whereas that film was strictly Hollywood, a big budget allowing for multiple locales and grand-scale absurdity, “Trophy Wife” is gratefully restricted to the confines of the Harrison house (and the next-door front yard, allowing for a solo Jackie Nativity caper). It is not simply the smaller scale that strengthens it, but the fact that Pete and His Three Wives descent into Christmas Eve madness is both revealing – Pete really hates his job – and a glorious way of bringing them all together. They are sort of like the Coca-Cola (™) Polar Bears (“Give. Find. Love.” [™]) if the Coca-Cola (™) Polar Bears had been shot with a tranquilizer dart a la Frank The Tank in “Old School.”

That the kids are made to see their parental figures in such a state of distress on the most whimsical of days is no doubt disconcerting, yet there is something whimsical in the way we are made to eventually see that Pete’s Glögg (“Glurg?” – “Glögg.”) stained reasoning for climbing into the Santa suit is to somehow keep the spirit of Santa alive for precocious Bert. And, of course, the ultimate reveal is that it was precocious Bert, only trying to help, who emptied an entire bottle of Absinthe into the Glögg (“Glurg?” – “Glögg.") who brought about this whole debacle.

I was reminded of the bartendress with the fetching neck tattoo who served me brunch one Saturday morning this past summer and recounted the time in New Orleans she met a vampire while drinking Absinthe. (No, seriously. That’s what she told me. I loved her. I wish she’d been wearing Malin Akerman’s pants.) Oh, you can chuckle and shake your head at such a statement, but it made me think of how every once in a while life can seem so magical, and we are willing to let ourselves believe a man in a red suit climbs down our chimney or that we are talking to a friggin’ vampire. Stress and menial tasks and day jobs take so much out of us as we get older that it becomes difficult to re-discover a true sense of joy even at Christmas, and that’s just not right.

And you become so desperate to re-capture that joy that you get drunk and sing Ace of Base together, and it is in that moment, the Ace of Base sing along that tags the episode over the closing credits, that Pete and His Three Wives set aside their differences and look within their hearts and find what Christmas means to each of them even if that meaning will come back up the following morning in Absinthe-scented porcelain spew and be forgotten forever.

Recap Vomit: Trophy Wife (Russ Bradley Morrison)

The latest episode of “Trophy Wife” may be named after one person, but it is all about collaborations, two people working together (or two people together and not working). It divides neatly into three separate storylines by pairing off its characters, and by doing so it ably demonstrates which of the untraditional family’s children is most influenced by which of the untraditional family’s parent.

Storyline #1 involves a parent-chaperoned children’s outing to a local museum. Pete is supposed to chaperone with Dr. Diane Buckley, but he falls ill. Thus, Kate, played by Malin Akerman in a pair of form-fitting red and black pants so scorching I almost want to center my entire recap around them (“Malin Akerman’s pants, a fetch rosewood with rip-roaring, oddly-angled swabs of black, transcend HD, igniting the TV in a fireball of fashion, roasting hapless male eyes like chestnuts), goes in his stead. This leads to Kate and Warren (“I’ve been saving my allowance to buy something at the gift shop”) to decide the best way to get Dr. Diane Buckley off their backs is to ensure she “get some”. Thus, their museum expedition revolves less around museum-y things, and more around finding the hardline Diane a date.

Enter: Russ Bradley Morrison. Played by Dennis Haysbert, he is a fellow chaperone, intensely formal and on point. His job, he explains, is mergers and acquisitions and you can practically see him happily attending business junkets, getting a kick out of continental breakfast and staying up late to re-read the C.E.O’s mission statement for fun. It could have been far too obvious, his and Diane’s similarities, but Haysbert crafts a perfectly-pressed character with just the right amount of starch.

Meanwhile, our old friend Jackie is tasked with aiding Pete in his hour of need, playing a whimsically demented Kathy Bates to his hapless James Caan. Lord, it pains me to say it, as much I tout Michaela Watkins’ genius, but this is far and away the weakest of the three tales. It’s like a bad horror movie seen through the eyes of a man overdosed on codeine, shopworn gags and punchlines aplenty. You don’t pigeonhole Jackie in a horror movie that’s already been written, you imagine a horror movie as written by Jackie. It shouldn’t be a bad horror movie in a suburban haunted house. It should be a bad horror movie in a suburban house turned hippie commune.

Meanwhile, precocious Bert has been banned from recess at school for being too excited – dancing in class and performing Bertwheels – and he enlists the aid of Hillary seeing as how she was once the teacher’s pet of his current teacher. They bake cupcakes. Practice fawning compliments. And Hillary turns up in class to put in a good word. It generally backfires, but not completely, and ends with Hillary achieving the upper hand simply by demanding and taking it.

And so the lines are drawn….from Hillary back to Dr. Diane Buckley, from Bert back to Jackie, and, strangely but wonderfully, from Warren to Kate. Kate seems capable of getting through to Warren because they are simultaneously working on the same level of maturity without realizing it. On the surface Dr. Diane Buckley is all about rigid discipline and smart planmaking, but what she’s really about is full-on control and sitting at the top off the food chain. (She's also got a wild streak that only appears when she wants it to, suggesting so much by showing so little.) No doubt she would have publicly dismissed her daughter’s actions, while privately commending them. And Jackie……well, you can’t tell me Bert didn’t learn to do his Bertwheels from watching Jackie do her Jackiesaults.

Oh. Right. Pete. Well, Pete is probably lucky he doesn’t fall ill more often.

Recap Vomit: Trophy Wife (Lice and Beary White)

With its size, mishmash of personalities and jumble of ages, the Harrison clan at the center of “Trophy Wife” has been ripe for an episode in which they are placed and pitted together and thrown to the proverbial wolves. Call it a Bottle Episode, if you must, but particularly when familial dynamics are at play, that sort of proximity can wield all manner of lunatic drama and comedic truth bombs. Thus, when it became apparent that the latest episode of “Trophy Wife” would center specifically around a lice outbreak within the Harrison household, I was excited about the possibilities.

Alas, rather than airing grievances amidst so much head scratching, what we get are run of the mill hijinks. No new revelations. No interesting confrontations. It feels like a placeholder. I remember in my Lutheran confirmation class how one of our weekly tasks was to memorize a Bible verse. One of my classmates on a particular night offered that the ol’ short and sweet “Jesus wept” was his “backup verse.” (And when our Pastor overheard this announcement, man, did that kid get chewed out.) “Lice and Beary White” feels like a backup episode. “What are we going to do this week?!” “Crap, I don’t know! Just run that one about the lice and the teddy bear!”

Kate is summoned to see the school nurse and advised precocious Bert has lice. So she drags him home where Dr. Diane Buckley immediately assumes command of a household that is not technically hers. Kate is less than pleased, but powerless to stop her simply because Dr. Diane Buckley overpowers everyone. Jackie’s dazzling "Brazilian Blowout" hair, meanwhile, becomes a casualty of lice shampoo despite her best efforts to thwart the cleaning. Before long, Kate is trying to woo Jackie to her side to put an end to Dr. Diane Buckley’s generalship. This is by far the episode’s strong point – the three wives not going so much toe-to-toe as Diane reigning supreme, Kate helplessly fighting back and Jackie playing both sides (very, very poorly) with one eye always on the escape hatch. I could have gone for more psychological warfare between the trio as opposed to delving into Kate replacing Diane’s lice shampoo with something that isn’t lice shampoo and Diane using the something that isn’t lice shampoo on Hillary who……oh, you can figure out the rest. Perhaps I demand too much, but I believe in this show and would prefer they solve story traps with a little more panache. (All this said, I did great enjoy the payoff for Hillary’s tale. It's the getting there that left me shrugging my shoulders.)

You might be wondering where Pete is during this showdown. He’s there, in the house, but having gone to the strip the sheets off all the beds, he happens upon Beary White – that is, an aptly named stuffed bear that apparently vanished without a trace some months ago. He is a special family bear who is passed down from child to child, and was passed from Warren to precocious Bert. (This passage, it seems, took place in a changeover ceremony featuring a "walkabout" and a "re-birthing", and, frankly, I would preferred an entire episode centered around that.) All evidence suggests Warren kept Beary White for himself but, for reasons I really don’t understand (you’re the Dad, Pete, just give the bear to the kid to whom it belongs), Pete decides to implement the second Harrison house kangaroo court in three weeks.

Perhaps if this becomes a recurring schtick, if in the face of every little family dispute Pete decides to play judge and jury rather than man up and wear the Dad Pants, I will revisit and rethink this episode. As of right now, however, it feels frustratingly and uselessly recycled, further evidence that “Lice and Beary White” is merely a casserole of sitcom leftovers.

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 (The Breakup)

Wait, is it the Christmas episode already?! I don’t ask this because the latest episode of “Trophy Wife” is rife with carolers and wassail, but because it seems to very prominently feature your requisite Ghost of Past, Ghost of Future and Ghost of Present. I’ll explain.

Kate’s Ghost of Past appears in the form of Meg (Natalie Morales), last seen trying to pilfer alcohol from a kids’ party that didn’t actually have any alcohol, showing up at Kate and Pete’s place despondent because she’s just broken up with her boyfriend of two weeks. Thus, it’s multi-vodka-brands-in-a-blender time! Which leads to drunken hijinks. Which leads to drunken hangovers. Which leads to Meg eating Hillary’s carefully constructed edible solar system. (Parenthetical Tangent: If as a hypothetical parent my hypothetical son or hypothetical daughter is commissioned to construct an edible solar system, will I ensure an edible Pluto is included? You’re damn right, I will.) Pete grows understandably impatient with Meg and lets Kate know, which finds Kate caught between her Past and her Present.

Warren’s Ghost of Future appears in the form of his mother, Dr. Diane Buckley (and Marcia Gay Harden brings the heat this week), actively forcing him to study for the PPSAT (Preparation for the Preparation of the SAT’s). Poor Warren. The kid’s only 15 and has no idea what he wants to be, which Kate reassures him is okay because she didn’t what she wanted to be at 15, which just makes Dr. Diane Buckley that much more staunch in her demand that Warren like his whole future is at stake (BECAUSE IT IS, DAMMIT!!!) before he’s even legal to drive. So Warren needs a respite. Which he finds when our ol’ best friend Jackie needs a little help in helping precocious Bert put together his Lego Millenium Falcon.

Warren’s a master with Legos, not with verbiage, and so when Jackie (Michaela Watkins, continuing to Reagan) councils him on the un-necessity of test-taking he quickly comes to the rescue. This leads to the age-old scene of Warren fielding a call from Diane who knows where he is and him lying about where he is and trying desperately to impersonate his Dad, and despite its age-oldness, ye gods, did it make me laugh. If only because the utter pitiableness of his attempt was something to which I could relate.

So Kate has to find a way to deal with the pressures of her past in the present and Warren has to find a way to deal with the pressures of his future in the present, and Pete – poor Pete (who we learn in an aside hates his lawyering job) – just wants to watch a movie. That’s all. Just ONE movie. He hasn’t sat down and watched a movie since he broke his leg. But, of course, the past and the future infiltrate, and his movie-watching attempts are foiled.

And this, “Trophy Wife”, is not helping my desire to want kids.

Recap Vomit: Trophy Wife (The Social Network)

The seminal TV family of the 80’s were the Huxtables, the lovable brood under the wise care of Cliff and Clair. By the end of each half-hour in the era of Reagan, wise lessons had been dispensed, often to the kids on account of their good-hearted if misguided hijinks, but occasionally even to the adults. Slipping on my nostalgia-tinted glasses I recall the episode in which Theo gets his ear pierced which leads to Cliff scolding (chiding) Theo which leads to Cliff’s Dad telling Theo of the time Cliff got his ear pierced. ‘Round and ‘round they go, poor ideas encapsulate an eternal truth. Sigh.

Wait. Where was I? (Taking off nostalgia-tinted glasses.) This was the sort of family we saw on TV in the 80’s, the realities of pointed familial squabbling stuffed out of sight in the closet like so many anti-tank missiles. We have since entered a different age of television, of course. Familial squabbling is front and center (think: The Bluth Family). Placidness has given way to franticness, Cosby sweaters have given way to Malin Akerman’s slashed tee shirts (righteous) and rather than discuss differences between right and wrong in an honest, forthright manner, TV families have become much more hostile and brazen in their tactics to provide teachable moments. After all, truth bombs have supplanted valuable lessons in this world of Facebook.

Which, as it happens, is the social media tool from which the most recent episode of “Trophy Wife” culls its name – “The Social Network.” This is because the dry martini that is Dr. Diane Buckley suspects her daughter is sneaking off to sex parties and so she orders Pete to snoop around her daughter’s room to gather information which Kate is totally against. Pete snoops anyway which finds him snooping through her Facebook profile which finds him accidentally making status updates under her name about the mystery boy named Ace (no, really) with whom his daughter may or may not be having sex. I like it, and I like it because it exposes Pete right away as opposed to making it a secret that he spends the entire show trying to cover up. Cover-ups are not the driving force of “The Social Network” – instead it covers all manner of manipulations.

Dr. Diane Buckley manipulates Pete into snooping through Hillary’s room and then she manipulates Kate into taking Hillary to see a movie since Kate thinks “being a friend” is the best parenting method all in an effort to get Hillary out of the house so she – Diane – can go snooping through Hillary’s room. And even if she doesn’t find anything well, hey, it doesn’t matter, since Diane is in essence manipulating Hillary’s entire school by creating a fake Facebook profile for “Courtney Winters” and becoming “friends” with all of Hillary’s friends as a means to spy on her daughter. (“Light catfishing” she calls it, which I like to think of as a respectful nod to “light treason.”) Meanwhile Hillary manipulates Kate by using Kate’s desire to “be a friend” by skipping out on the movie to attend what may or may not be the aforementioned sex party.

Meanwhile, off in the never-never land of second wife Jackie’s home, she decides to manipulate a local businesswoman into aiding her burgeoning “wearable jewelry” enterprise by utilizing her and Pete’s adopted son, precocious Bert, in the scheme of manipulation. (It also goes well past the point of saying that Michaela Watkins as Jackie gets the episode’s best line and best line delivery with “Wait, why am I driving on the freeway?!”) Precocious Bert than manipulates Warren – Pete and Dr. Diane Buckley’s son – into helping create pieces of “wearable jewelry” to meet Jackie’s impending deadline.

This is family life in the twenty-tens. Everyone’s in the wrong even if their heart is mostly in the right place, and even if their suspicions are outed as being mistaken. Jackie learns her lesson, and so do Kate and Pete and Dr. Diane Buckley and Hillary. Well, Dr. Diane Buckley will apparently remain lightly catfishing for the foreseeable future, but the show’s capping scene involving Warren and his undying crush on "Courtney Winters" goes to show that even questionable ethics can lead to a spot of good. Stay strong, American families. It’s a murky moral ground out there.

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?