A weak outing by Rules of Engagement so soon into season four? The truth is that I’ve been disappointed by Russell and Adam this entire season, and I’ve never been much of a Jennifer fan … but Audrey and Jeff can normally carry this show by themselves with ease. So when they fail to impress, you know we’re in trouble.
First to Russell. My fear that he was meant to become nothing but a caricature of himself, or worse that he was destined to be pushed aside by Timmy, was forestalled when he fell inappropriately in love with Timmy’s finance, Suneetha (Nazneen Contractor). But Timmy and Suneetha’s tired, Royal Pains-like “we don’t want to be forced into an arranged marriage” twist has gone as quickly as it came … or has it? If I had to venture a guess, I’d say there’s a good chance that this episode is meant to be the tipping point in Russell’s life. And to close the circle, maybe his character was slimy to the extreme for the first few episodes to maximize the degrees in the 180 he’s about to do. Or so we can hope.
Adam’s just really stupid now, and it’s boring. Never having been impressed with Jennifer, I always relied on Adam to make their scenes worth watching, not to mention how much fun Adam was with Jeff and Russell. But now he’s just dumb, and the guys sit around making fun of him. But differently than before. Which means that Russell and Jeff aren’t sharing the same comedy that they used to, leaving Jeff to seek out Audrey in order to make us laugh.
Which has always worked in the past. The chemistry between the pair is fantastic, and Megyn Price can dish it just as well as Patrick Warburton can. But their thing last night with “Dance, America, Dance” and Jeff’s ex Lacey? Really? The Baldman thing at the end with the press conference was okay, but the rest?
And my disappointment with the episode was exacerbated when I followed it up by watching last week’s, which I unfortunately wasn’t able to review in a timely fashion. That episode, “Third Wheel,” was awesome! Adam and Jennifer were questionable with their food plot, Timmy and Russell got a handful of laughs from me with their charity work, but Jeff and Audrey were pure gold.
Audrey’s friend Liz (Wendi McLendon-Covey), and her pathetic love life, played brilliantly opposite Jeff and his very Jeff-ness. Audrey telling Liz that Jeff had her on his “list,” and then Liz discussing it with Jeff was genius. I actually thought she’d come on to him, but her quizzing him on why he chose her was oh so much better. Loved how he ate the strawberry to get out of that one.
Which makes last night’s poor episode all the more quizzical. Maybe the end of the Suneetha story will be good for Russell, but I really think that Jeff and Audrey need a plot. Their trying to conceive is a good one, and while you can’t ride it to death on a sitcom such as this one, I think Friends had a healthy balance for Monica and Chandler when they went through this very thing. Even with their strengths in some of these goofy one-off stories (as with the side of the bed catastrophe), it would make sense for the couple to spend time on something as seemingly significant to them as having kids.
And as Chandler Bing would say, with all the “malfunctioning wee-wees and hoo-hoos,” there’s got to be something to laugh at.
Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Apr 13, 2010 @ 12:30 EST5EDT
You’ve GOT to be kidding me.
I laughed the whole time. I think the silly double entendres were da bomb from start to finish. Maybe it’s because I’m secretly in love with Patrick Warburton but still… I have to channel my hate for your wrongful scolding of RoE on either this cheesecake here in front of me or via a scathing comment.
*chomp*
Huh? What?
Nevermind. Keep writing reviews anyway :-)
*POST AUTHOR*
Hey, that’s cool. But tell me that last week’s episode with “the list” wasn’t 100 times funnier….
First of: Thanks for commenting on my comment :-)
I thought about this a little bit the last couple of days (as I do about all the posts I commented about, as well as about what I wrote and how people might react so again: thanks, I love the interaction. Some day I will learn not to sound like a wiseass ;-)
Anyway, I think I understand your point. Adam annoyed you. I saw that but let it go during the episode because I never really saw that much in him anyway. I was thinking about it for a second when he had his first “so mean” line, which basically made him look like a giant… well I’d call him fag-gy but that would be offensive but “douche” wouldn’t fit either. Basically he’s like the guy on “‘Til Death” who, with his wife, is now no longer on that show. No spine. Unimportant. Plot device. Line giver. I see why you’re disappointed in that but I think I chose to let it go because I thought about your disappointment in Russell the last couple of episodes and how you expected him not to turn into some kind of shell of his former self. Back then I expected the outcome we got with Timmy’s fiancee and I think you liked what the writers did with Russell there.
I expect Adam and Jennifer to get an episode that focuses more on them in the next couple of weeks or better: at the moment I’m willing to let it go.
But (!): last week the character of Liz annoyed me to no end. The amount of idiotic things she said was so over the top – I mean how oblivious can you write a person who doesn’t understand why nobody likes her? I mean how can she think that uneven breasts would be something a man would be interested in when everybody on this planet pancis when one half of their body isn’t exactly formed as the other half? Details like that drive me crazy.
But (again!): I let that go too and enjoyed that episode almost as much as this weeks episode. I think they were pretty equal in quality. And like Roger Ebert wrote about “Death at a funeral” and how the US version might be better than the UK one because it “takes up steam and everything is funnier when a comedy takes up steam” I think you were annoyed by the things Jeff and Audrey did later on because you didn’t find other things funny in the first place, you were annoyed, crickets in your living room yadda yadda yadda you get my drift.
I simply had a blast because I was already past 63mp/h and seeing the fun in the future ;-)
Ha. Two references in two senteces. Beat that :-)
*POST AUTHOR*
I’d be able to write Adam off if he’d been like this since the beginning. Then he and Jennifer could just be the couple I didn’t like. But it’s only recently that he’s become a shell … not sure what happened.
As for Liz, I see what you’re saying. I think had she not been delivering her lines opposite Jeff, I’d be right there with you. But when he finally dove in for those strawberries, it just all fit so perfectly!
Either way, I would like them to get back to some central stories for the characters. Not because the show doesn’t deliver otherwise, but rather because eventually, without anything cohesive stringing it together, they’re going to hit a wall. For its own survival it needs to focus on Audrey and Jeff and kids, or Jen and Adam and the wedding. Or whatever … just something.