“Scary Me” is a much better way to show us the key dynamics of the show than last week’s “Move Me”. Instead of pushing way too hard on the funny bits, the episode relaxes and lets the cute aspect of the show setup the funny bits avoiding some of the weird moments we had last week.
In my last review I mentioned that the fast paced nature of the show can actually backfire when the comedy becomes too awkward, so the show decides to shift its approach this week: instead of trying to build every single moment as a laugh out loud one with mixed results the two prime storylines are built during the first minutes of the show resulting in a few laughs and some slow pacing. Thankfully, that slow pacing gets gradually faster and it does it so naturally that the laughs keep increasing and by the end of the episode I ended up enjoying it quite a lot.
So what is “Scary Me” about? Well, it’s all about Halloween! Being more specific, Annie gets into a competition with one of her neighbours on the building, Julie, a kind of snobby soccer mom, and in order to prove her that she could be as good mom as her Annie decides to throw a haunted house for kids on her apartment. Meanwhile, Gil asks Kay to go trick or treating with him so he can check out how his ex-wife is doing.
Annie and Jake’s haunted house storyline goes quite smoothly; there is a lot of heart on this plot as Annie and Jake show how much they have matured as a couple, and it is kept funny with the constant use of funny dialogue and top notch acting from both Wilson and Marino. Also worth noting, they cast a perfect kid for the second act of the episode, one that brings out both Annie’s biggest insecurities about how she’ll do as a mom and her greatest strengths on the matter as well. It’s a simple yet effective and funny storytelling.
Marry Me decided to go simple this week, but it did effectively: the storylines aren’t groundbreaking neither should they be, they simply play out showing some of our main characters insecurities and portrayed them with a lot of heart while also sliding in some really great punchlines and funny moments. It’s not the greatest episode of a comedy series, but it’s really solid and quite entertaining half hour of television, one that shows that even while pulling simple stories, the show is still strong enough to deliver them with grace.
Grade: B+
Stray Observations:
-Once again, there is a shift on the music used for the opening credits. Still good, but I still think “Home” should have used through the entire show’s run.
-In order to get your hopes up, I’ll let you know that there is a slight Happy Endings cross-over during this episode. Enjoy!
-So far Jake is the character most in need of a defining comedy trait: he is so down to earth that he is going to need some kind of crazy kink to become a working part of the resemblance.
-There’s a lot of great Halloween costumes during the episodes: Annie and Jake have the best one. Dennah has a very surprising choice of costume, and even more surprising is that 2 other people chose said costume.
-There’s a very obvious Spiderman reference on the last minutes of the episode that somehow made me laugh a lot.
-Annie and Jake’s haunted house was pretty well made.
-Sadly no Kevins or Myrna on tonight’s episode, so I hope to see them soon.
