In spite of swearing off Family Guy roughly three years ago due to feeling like the show’s creators had zero respect for their audience I watched an episode today for a single reason which Gordon brought to my attention. It branches off pretty naturally from last week’s Culture War Correspondence and post from early 2012 about cartoon death, though that was primarily concerning younger audiences. That reason is, of course [obviously a SPOILER after the jump]:

Brian Griffin, the family dog, is dead.

Before we even get into the why and how of all this I do want to make it clear that in spite of swearing off McFarlane cartoons in college I had watched roughly 8 full seasons of Family Guy. That being said, I want to firmly maintain that Brian completely deserves his place in the show’s opening sequence as a member of the main cast; if anything, he’s vastly more fleshed out than either Meg or Chris, if not both combined. Living in a household with Peter Griffin as its patriarch would drive the average person insane, and the family dog has long been the voice of reason, someone to break through the dysfunction, and even teach us a little about life. Not only that, but we’ve been witness to what lies beneath his sensible exterior in one of my all-time favourite seasons of the show:

Furry, flawed, and also one half of the wildly popular dog/baby adventure episodes, Brian was probably the least likely choice I would’ve given if asked which major character would be killed off this season, news I missed having little to no interest in the show. To be fair, he’s one of three characters the creator voices [with Peter and Stewie being the other two], so that was probably a strike against him. Still, I’m with the AV Club, I would’ve guessed Meg.

A Blow-By-Blow of The Incident [Pun Absolutely Intended]

Anyway, I’m going to recount the main events of “Life of Brian”, the 6th episode of Family Guy‘s 12th season in images. Pretty much exactly 1/3 through the episode Stewie has left Brian in the road setting up a street hockey net, and then:

And, while the family was understandably concerned after this brutal event, we were somewhat assured that everything would turn out fine due to a squirrel spitting on Brian, kicking him, and informing everyone that “That guy sucked.”

Then, at the vet-

“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Griffin, but Brian’s injuries are just too severe for us to save him. I don’t know how much longer he has but I suggest that you all go in and say your good-byes.”

Brian’s last words: “Y-you’ve given me a wonderful life. I love you all.”

And, if you absolutely weren’t convinced, Brian even had a funeral in a people cemetery.

Honestly, in retrospect the dropped clues are pretty obvious, with Stewie’s time machine as a stand-in for Brian himself. The two of them discuss it being demolished-

“Your time machine, it’s like your crowning achievement. I can’t believe you’d just destroy it.”

“Trust me Brian, it’s for the best. And hey, at least I’ve had some fun with it.”

And then soon after, once it’s just been crushed-

“Well, I guess that’s it, this is like the end of an era.”

“Oh sack up, you twink. It’s just a machine!”

No, Brian’s not a machine, but he is just a fictitious construct. Characters die all of the time [insert obligatory George R. R. Martin reference here], but what really matters is whether or not their death was effective, whatever that means in the scenario it takes place in.

So Did It Work?

Here’s the thing, everyone, Family Guy is a comedy. Comedies by definition must be funny, and that’s why even when Brian was bleeding and broken in the street we ended with a joke before cutting to commercial. Heck, the funeral had a handful of gags, one of which was really funny [Joe the cop being beaten around the head with a purse by a Black woman]. They kept it pretty sombre, but ultimately this is a show that’s meant to make us, at the bare minimum, smile.

Just two weeks ago, in “A Fistful of Meg”, that episode’s titular character died. Not only was that retconned, as you can see her mourning above, but incredible amount of violence has been used on the show for laughs a lot. Here’s one of the show’s most famous clips that revolves around a baby beating five shades of stuff out of the family dog:

That’s all to say that his death certainly wasn’t portrayed as being humorous. In all my years of watching this show I’ve never seen so many minutes tick by without a joke thrown in there. Since the death wasn’t set up to be amusing maybe it may have something to do with Seth McFarlane himself.

Apparently he’s said,

“I talk to the fans and in a way I’m kind of secretly hoping for them to say we’re done with it. There are plenty of people who say the show is kind of over the hill… but still the vast majority go pale in the face when I mention the possibility.”

Which feels a lot like he’s very ready for things to finish up already. Couple that with Eric Thurm’s observation over at the AV Club that Brian is “the character [he] (and probably a sizeable chunk of the show’s viewership) [identifies] with most, and the one who most often tethers the show before it veers off into total insanity” and it feels like McFarlane is pushing to see how far he can go. The Metro website believes this so strongly they outright ask if this was an act of sabotage.

As far as him potentially coming back one day [a possibility that the show sought to make inevitable with the time machine's destruction] the comments section of that very review provides the following observation, and one that plagues comic book storytelling with its many deaths and resurrections:

The only way this death is really going to justify itself is if, and I didn’t even mention that this occurred, the Griffins’ replacement dog Vinnie ends up [consistently] bringing something fresh to the show. Replacing a main cast member is serious business, but it’s also the opportunity for new material to crop up.

I’m not going to keep watching the show to see where this is all going as this was more of a one-time thing for the blog, but I think I’m going to applaud their decision. The moments of mourning really dragged down the episode as a whole, but the promise of a significant shake-up is something I am very interested in.

I can’t say I’m personally going to be missing Brian, since I stopped watching the show such a long time ago, but I’m hoping that Vinnie will grow to become a character others miss when the show inevitably comes to an end [it'll be the one instance where no one will be able to say "Simpsons did it first!"]

Mark from Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23! Mark from Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23! Mark from Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23! Mark from Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23! Mark from Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23! 

I could care less about anything else right now, but I suppose I have standards to maintain, so let me begin by stating that last week’s episode, “And the Pastry Porn”, could have easily been a mid-season finale. It ushered in a new era of 2 Broke Girls episodes that rounds out the cast, changes up the premise, and feels like an entirely different sitcom.

In fact, I have a few other suggestions they could make in order to become a show I would never stop watching ever:

• Replace Kat Dennings with Krysten Ritter, new nickname “Chloe”.
• Have Dreama Walker step in for Beth Behrs; she now goes by her middle name “June”.
• Keep Eric Andre, but maybe change his name from Deke to something simpler, like Mark.
• The show can stay set in New York, don’t fix what ain’t broken.
• I’m thinking that this could use some star power from the 90s . . . maybe one of those kids from Dawson’s Creek. How about Dawson himself, James Van Der Beek!

Oh, wait, that’s just Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23, isn’t it . . .

*sigh* Ah well. There’s no point crying over spilled milk, or sitcoms that ABC airs out of order before eventually ceasing airing episodes altogether halfway through the second season. What we should really focus on here is that right now 2 Broke Girls feels like something else entirely and that is not at all a bad thing.

For one thing, the surprise party that the diner gang throws Max for her first day of school is rife with really great character interaction. Sophie and Luis meet for the first time, and they snipe at each other like you would expect a Polish cleaning business owner and a gay Latino day waiter to. Everyone ignoring the fact that it’s Caroline’s first day working at the office is just the icing on the cake. ”Caroline, please, I can’t hear Han talking about Max, okay.”

Later, at the pastry school, we have the neurotic Bebe, who I hope will be around for a very long time. Mary Lynn Rajskub does a fantastic job playing unhinged in a really subtle manner, delivering lines like ”I have some workout clothes you can wear! Don’t worry, I haven’t worn them yet. But I will someday,” with just the right amount of unstable emotion. Also at the school is, of course, Mark. Sorry, I meant Deke, played by Eric Andre formerly of Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23.

I’ve always thought that Andre resembled a half-Black Andy Samberg, and he channels the other actor pretty hard in this episode, really cranking up the smarm and manboyishness. After the minor hiccup of Max getting her first day of school gift stolen [a new book bag and a pencil case full of weed] the second hurdle she must face is “Big Deke” and his tendency to keep her off track.

In a lot of ways everything about this is absolutely the right fit for Max. I’ve harped on her being needlessly immature in the past, but putting her in an actual class with other students distracting her makes her character really work. Not only that, but we have the hilariously unaware teacher in Chef Nicolas: “I always keep the edge clean so when I’m squeezing it, is not gonna have cream popping all over the place.”

Best shirt ever, or best shirt ever?

This episode was mostly setting up how things are going to work with Caroline pairing off with Bebe in the office and Max having to deal with Deke and his working hard to get them paired up in class. As far as status quos we have Caroline really working to keep from being ignored, which she makes hilarious because she’s Beth Behrs dangit. Oh, and her romance with Chef Nicolas is chugging along have you seen that guy’s body? The image on the right is more than a bonus for yours truly.

Overall this show is doing better [for me] than it has since the Season 1, and I’m excited to see what’s ahead. Once upon a time I had a whole post planned about how the reason I didn’t like 2 Broke Girls was because it wasn’t Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23, but I’m honestly okay with that now. It’s not the same show as Don’t Trust the B, and it’s not even the same show it was three episodes ago. It’s something different, and in this case change is definitely a good thing.

Current Total: $2.50.

New Total: $114.50 [Not sure how they're profiting at all considering all their earnings go towards Max's schooling, but whatever I guess].

The Title Refers To: Why would you even need to ask this. It’s Max’s first day at the pastry school. C’mon.

Stray Observations:

• Max and Caroline do not get subway etiquette. I had to keep myself from yelling “WAIT FOR PEOPLE TO GET OFF FIRST!” at the screen.

• “You are the devil; the devil! We have nothing. Pull, Max! Pull from the devil!”

• How does Deke feel about being diabetic? “Disappointing. I put in for syphilis.” 
• “Enough with the dirty jokes, we all here to become master bakers.”

• Caroline: “Aww, thank you guys. I’m touched. I was not expecting it.”

  Sophie: “Really? ‘Cause you kind of bullied us all into it.”

• The back of the Cocker Spaniel shirt Caroline was wearing said ”Don’t forget to spay and neuter me” on the butt.
• “Sad dog, your juices are ready.”
• Max’s joke that made me feel legitimately uncomfortable: “I like the entertainment. It’s better than the magician at my friend Stephanie’s 16th birthday that made her virginity disappear.” For real, if there was anything that would stop me from watching this show it’s the constant pedophilia jokes. Quit it, CBS; seriously.
• 2 Broke Girls Beefcake Menu: Chef Nicolas. That is all.
  

I had a lot of good will towards this show saved up from last week’s episode, but you would be surprised how quickly that started draining when I found out what this one was about. See, the most significant death in my life has been my grandmother’s, and while the deceased in this case was Caroline’s nanny just thinking about it made me pretty uncomfortable. 2 Broke Girls is not a show with a great deal of tact, and I was pretty apprehensive going into things-

But you know what? It was a pretty decent episode across the board, and one that actually felt short, which can be a mark of a show that’s moving along in an entertaining way. My fears about how they would tread death turned out to be unfounded, so touché, 2 Broke Girls writers’ room.

We start things out at the Manhattan School of Pastry instead of the diner and are immediately witness to proof that by the third season both Kat Dennings and Beth Behrs have their repartee down. Everything feels really light and natural, and it contrasts fantastically with when Caroline reads the obituary and begins mourning for the woman who was like a mother to her. Max standing next to her and letting the jokes fall off really worked, and provided the opportunity for Bebe to step in for some comic relief.

“Oh, are we allowed to cry at work now? ‘Cause I only do it in my car.”

I know I raved about Luis when he first appeared on the show, but man, Mary Lynn Rajskub is really great. She’s been playing her neurotic character in a really straightforward way, and the lines they’ve been feeding her have been top notch. Luis may not be around much due to him being a day waiter, but the newer secondary characters look like they have a lot of staying power.

As per the main portion of the episode, Max tags along with Caroline to the wedding on the premise of emotional support. That, and there’s a great Philly cheesesteak place right by the funeral home. As Bebe drives first at 20 mph and then at over 100 Ms. Channing gets to wax reminiscently about her time with Antonia; the old woman clearly meant a lot to her growing up, and she’s very much looking forward to being recognized as a large part of her life.

But this is a sitcom, so of course no one there knows who she is, or how Antonia made her a baby chick costume ["peep, peep"], and it is all very embarrassing. At one point she even yells at the funeral attendees about how she’s Caroline Channing, “[her] family was rich but then [her] father robbed everyone and [they] became the scourge of society overshadowed a little bit by Mel Gibson hating the Jews that same week.” Cue the sound of no one caring.

Max’s street smarts aren’t even for her to work her assumed identity of “Ricky’s girl” into a way of getting the family to pretend to remember her friend. It’s okay, though, because they bump into this older woman who does know who Caroline is, and turns out to have been Antonia’s lover. “THE MILITARY!” both Max and Caroline cry, implying that being a woman in the armed forces is  a sure sign of homosexuality. It’s not like the lady doesn’t back them up, either, saying: “I mean come on, that’s me with my arm around her on a tank!” Of course [and I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before though I probably have] this feels like evidence of co-creator Michael Patrick King touting the right to make fun of gay people because he is as well. To give credit where it’s due he did write last week’s episode, which I loved, so there’s that.

The old woman gives Caroline pictures of her nanny and her as a child together and it is adorable and heartwarming, etc.

Finally, and I could have mentioned this at the beginning, the following happened within the first few minutes:

And the shippers on tumblr, who I’ve mentioned before, went bananas. I mean, I was pretty thrilled with that whole scene because it culminated with this-

-which was delivered flawlessly, but people got really excited for other reasons. I mean, here’s a screenshot of the new tumblr posts under the “2 broke girls” tag the night the episode aired [click to open up larger in a new tab]:

I wanted to highlight the relevant areas, but would have ended up highlighting basically all of it.

I think it’s pretty fair to say that the writers definitely know what they’re doing, and will probably do what they can to fan the flames while still keeping their characters’ orientations fairly static. That’s not to say that there’s absolutely no place for homosexuality on the network, merely that this show was never marketed as a “lesbian comedy” and likely won’t become one. Let’s not forget that Max had to open her beer can off-camera; censorship is still alive and well when it comes to television, and execs and other such higher-ups may not approve of such a change for fear of rocking the boat. Sorry, Max/Caroline shippers. Would the name for that ship be Maxoline? Tumblr confirms that yes, yes it would be.

Current Total: $114.50.

New Total: $77 [A man gives the two girls a cheque at the end of the episode assuming they're family of the deceased, and it's strongly hinted that they take the money. It is still strange why their total decreases so much, and I'm going to chalk it up to them paying Bebe back for gas].

The Title Refers To: The promise of life after death, I guess? There was strangely enough no naming of the episode title this week. Seriously, though, this would’ve been a great way to insert something cheesy about how Caroline can keep on living her life after her nanny’s passing.

Stray Observations [lots of them this week]:

• Max telling Caroline that thongs are always uncomfortable goes against everything John Tucker Must Die taught me.
• “I’m the wife, you’re the husband, who I caught wearing my clothes one day but I don’t say anything about it.” Cue the squees.
• “You still have a nanny? Lucky.” 
• “Show some sensitivity! I was crying because my nanny died and also because our grief brunch was at Chipotle!”
• “Your nanny was White? Child, you were rich!”
• “I just read the craziest article in this Popular Science about white dwarves, black holes, and Uranus!”
• “You know, back in Poland, when my nanny died, I was so heartbroken I could barely eat her.” Cue Polish cries of offence.
• “Well, a goat’s a goat. It doesn’t matter what you name it, it’s still good goat meat.” I see what you did there, writers. I see what you did.
• “It’s just some shoes. Stuffed with cocaine. Also the shoes are made of hashish.”
• Caroline is left-handed.
• “You know, my picture must be by the coffin with the other VIPs.”
• Max’s wallet is “a real Ziploc®, not one of those knock-offs.”
• “This funeral turned out to be really depressing.”
• Max’s joke that made me feel legitimately uncomfortable: Her talking to Earl about how some of the ladies at the funeral gave off a “jungle fever vibe.”
• Caroline wants to be thrown into a grave sans coffin “wearing Dior and a smoky eye.” Unless she’s fat, then burn her.
• Max wants Caroline to “shove [her] corpse into a cannon and blow [her] directly into the Trump Casino.”
• 2 Broke Girls Cheesecake Menu: Nothing to see here this week, folks.

EVAN: So, dear audience, here we are again. Back in September of last year we wrote an E&GT about the fourth season of Community, albeit an entire month early. Since the trailer for Season 5 hit the internet yesterday, we figured we’d try our hand at this again.

GORDON: Let the record show that I have long been of the opinion that after Community‘s inexplicable tanking shortly after its first season, I became an ardent advocate for the cancellation of the show. While the trailer is intriguing…

…I remain skeptical. Been starburned too many times before.

EVAN: The last time we checked you were at the very least okay with the second season, which I can only assume means that if and when we come to writing our post for Season 6 you will have sworn off the entirety of the show altogether.

That aside, neither of us were too thrilled with Season 3, and far less so with Season 4, which was created sans showrunner Dan Harmon.

GORDON: Dan Harmon has, however, returned from exile like Napoleon from Elba- though whether or not this final attempt at restoring Community is going to be his Waterloo remains to be seen.

Honestly, I’m not convinced much either way by his return- we had terrible Community under Harmon’s administration, and terrible Community without.

EVAN: Your mounting pessimism aside, how about we discuss the trailer?

We all knew that Jeff would have to move on with his life eventually, but right at the beginning we’re shown his new law-supported way of life falling down around him. So of course the school draws him back, which sounds more like a horror movie than anything else.

GORDON: It really does.

And I don’t want to come overly pessimistic here- at least, not more than normal.

I actually think a lot of what they’re showing is really interesting. Jeff is (if we’re gonna believe the trailer) going to be a teacher. It feels a lot more real- like Season 1, only we’re missing a good chunk of the cast.

EVAN: The cast is something that merits a hefty amount of discussion. The teaser image below shows that we have the Greendale 7 sans Pierce for the first time ever, as well as regulars Chang and the Dean. In addition, however, are Professor Duncan and Breaking Bad‘s Jonathan Banks, aka. Mike Ehrmantraut.

And, while the season show revolve mainly around them, we’ll also be getting some Mitch Hurwitz, David Cross, Chris Elliott, and even Nathan Fillion himself. Oh, and Tim and Eric, though they’re not people I particularly care about.

GORDON: I guess my mad hope is that if they’re going to resurrect the reason Jeff went to Greendale in the first place, we’re going to actually see the original motives of the rest of the cast brought back as well.

Annie’s need to be perfect, Abed’s dreams of being a movie maker- so on and so forth.

EVAN: Looking at the Wikipedia page for the upcoming season, it appears that Brie Larson will be making a reappearance as Rachel, the coat check girl who Abed got along with during his two dates to the dance.

At the very least, I think that’s a pretty clear indication of where his arc will be going, and should over more character development than he’s gotten in a while.

GORDON: I think “character development” is a generous term what what Community did to its main players. I could probably go off on a rant about how coat check girl existed only as a prop for the writers to play up Abed’s social-awkwardness to new levels, but I’ll try to exercise some restraint here…

Actually, no.

Let me ask you this: Community was pretty abysmal at the bitter of it all, right?

EVAN: Nothing particularly memorable stands out to me from the last episode, if that helps at all.

GORDON: Do you think the show, after one of the fastest burnouts in TV history, can recover? The trailer DOES specifically mention a “do-over”…

EVAN: I mean, when you take into account that the first episode of the season is titled “Repilot” I think that’s one hundred percent their intention going into all of this.

GORDON: Fair enough.

EVAN: How do you feel about the fact that Donald Glover will only be appearing in five of the season’s 13 episodes?

GORDON: Hm. That’s a tough one.

Troy was never my favorite character to begin with, but as the show went crazier, he, alongside Annie, almost became the straight man.

I guess it’d really depend on what the tone of the reboot (we can call it that, right?) winds up being.

EVAN: I think that’s a pretty good way of putting it. I mean, sure, Harmon’s coming back as showrunner and all that, but here we are without Pierce and with Troy in less than half of the season. That’s a pretty significant shakeup.

What I mean to say is that things are different, so this can’t so much be a return to the old days as it has to be an attempt to reach the same quality of older episodes with slightly different components.

GORDON: That’s probably a good way of putting it. Trying to restore former glory, even if successful, is still going to leave you with the knowledge that something’s missing. Better to be the best new show they can be, eh?

EVAN: Exactly.

As a final question before you push us in the direction these usually end in, do you think 13 episodes is a good cap to what is, in all likelihood, the end of this show? That’s the same length as Season 4.

GORDON: I guess that’d depend, once again, on what they’re trying to accomplish here. I mean, is this a full-on reboot? Is this just a way to try to save some face for the show? Is this all part of some unknown contractual obligation between Dan Harmon and Mephistopheles?

My money is always on the diabolical contract…

We just don’t know.

EVAN: I only ask that question because a shorter season likewise results in shorter arcs. If Abed really is going to get together with Rachel is this going to be a change in character that begins in the first episode and culminates in the thirteenth? I like to be in it for the long haul, because then events culminate, instead of simply happening.

Which is the pro to having a longer season. In general you’re right, though. A poor season drawn out is more terrible television that we have to watch. I say “have to” because we’re in this whether we like it or not.

GORDON: On that note, we’re obviously both going to be giving the show yet another chance- so list off for me what you’d need to see to keep watching, and what’d be a deal breaker for you.

EVAN: That’s a seriously tough question.

I suppose what I want is for the characters to act in ways logical to their character, as opposed to simply being crude caricatures of themselves [see: Winston Rowntree's comic from Cracked below].

Click the image above for the full “Evolution of Fictional Characters by Medium” on Cracked.com

I don’t want to slam gimmicky or themed episodes either. That episode where Abed acted like a robot was great not because he acted like a robot, really, but because it provided some great insight into what it’s like to be someone with his thought processes.

Anyway, tell me what you want to see and then we can move on to what will cause us to slam our laptop screens in frustration.

GORDON: Honestly, I’m not that far off- though I think I’d like to see them really play up the college aspect. One of my longest running criticisms is that the show became less and less about what we could all relate to (heck, even the most off the wall episode of Season 1 was STILL about being able to register for classes early).

EVAN: While I didn’t disagree with you for a second last time we talked about that particular aspect of the show, I think the fact that this is Season 5 is stretching that premise a little. Five years at a community college is more of a depressing thought than anything else, y’know?

GORDON: Ain’t that the truth.

NO ONE LIKES YOU, DEANGELO VICKERS.

EVAN: As far as what I don’t want to see, my fear is the star-studded lineup that’s promised us. This season could be the Valentine’s Day or New Year’s Eve of the television world. One of the worst parts about The Office sans Steve Carell was how long Will Ferrell overstayed his welcome.

As long as the new people who walk in and out of Greendale don’t take too much attention away from the people we should care about I think I’ll be alright.

GORDON: My bitterness being a matter of public record at this point, it’s really not going to take much of anything for me to drop the show (yet again) at this point. More than anything, though, is if they try to somehow hype nostalgia at me. If their selling point is “hey, remember how awesome we used to be?” I’m gonna…

Well, probably not much of anything. Maybe I’ll post some angry gifs…

EVAN: Well, this has certainly been a very trying blog post for you.

GORDON: It really has. I mean, I’m not getting the exact show that I want when I want it? There has never been such injustice.

EVAN: It practically borders on hate crime.

GORDON: It truly does.

You know what also constitutes a hate crime? Readers not leaving suggestions for next week’s topic.

EVAN: True that, man. And, like most hate crimes, it hurts our feelings.

Thanks, as always, for reading, and leave us any topics you’d like us to discuss in future Culture War Correspondences. And tune in next week for a special Christmas Writers’ Round Table!

GORDON: Seriously, leave us suggestions or I’ll post angry gifs about YOU.

EVAN: Oh, and Community Season 5 premiers on Thursday, January 2nd on NBC.

First of all, I’d like to personally thank CBS for not uploading any teaser pictures, which made creating the image above equal parts difficult and frustrating. This is the first time it’s ever happened, and for their mid-season finale, too. Which, pleas hold the applause for my effortless segue, are a fairly recent invention.

I more or less blame AMC’s The Walking Dead for hyping the last episode of the year as the “midseason finale”, a solid block of programming which would leave its audience with mouths agape, begging for more [I'm so sorry, I'm not sure where that came from] hyped for the show’s return. It makes perfect sense from a business standpoint, because every network wants viewers to remember to tune back in to the show after the three weeks of holiday specials. Mid-season finales have become big, which is probably why this week’s episode felt, well, small.

As I mentioned in my review [and in the review after that], “And the Pastry Porn” had all making of a mid-season finale. It was a huge shakeup of the status quo, and one that promised subsequent episodes that were going to be something completely new. In essence it did what every major comic book event advertises: “Nothing will ever be the same after this!”

I suppose that could also be said about what happened in “And the French Kiss”, in which Caroline snogs with Chef Nicolas and then finds out he’s married and breaks it off [in this case "it" refers to their romantic relationship]. There’s definitely the possibility that drama will continue seeing as they work in the same general area and a healthy amount of sexual tension remains, but I think we’re pretty confident it won’t turn into anything particularly exciting.

To zoom in a little and stop critiquing the show on a macro level, things were . . . interesting. Which  is to say not particularly good or bad, just . . . interesting. I guess that here “interesting” means that we get good and bad and they more or less cancel each other out.

Eric Andre’s Deke shows up in the diner, which is good, because it’s a daring move from what has been a pretty formulaic show. It’s also sort of bad, which Han sums up by saying, “Oh no, now there’s two of them.” Andre has some pretty decent lines like, ”Dame Judes texts me all the time; she’s thirstayyyyyy,” but also feels like a smarmy quip machine. In a way, Andre appears to be playing himself-

- it’s just that it doesn’t always work so well when there’s already a Max Black [who, let's be real, appears to be Kat Dennings playing herself]. I want to make a good–bad-good sandwich here, so let me also just point out Dennings fake-laughing/being amused never really works, and Oleg, Han, and Earl are all being criminally underutilized in spite of Sophie being shoehorned into every storyline just because.

But hey, there are good things, of course, even for an episode that I’d mark as a solid stop down from the ones that came before it. It basically all comes from the new additions, namely Bebe. Sorry, MVP-regular Caroline, but Mary Lynn Rajskub has really been bringing it lately ["Y'know salad, tastes just like lettuce."]. Back that up with Chef Nicolas’ totally nonchalant responses to Caroline accusing him of being married ["I know her name."] and you’ve got some legitimately laugh-out-loud moments.

To end things off, and with respect to my mid-season finale expectations, Deke does appear to be making the moves on Ms. Black, what with them constantly talking and him licking her face. That may also pay off further down the line, so I guess we’ll see what happens in “And the Big But” which debuts on January 13th, 2014.

Current Total: $77.

New Total: $220 [the girls' made money, even after Caroline buying two salads in New York for her girl-talk lunch].

The Title Refers To: French kissing, which involves tongue, which is what Caroline was doing with the French Chef Nicolas. There may have been a little more than just tongue involved.

Stray Observations:

• A guy on a unicycle tries to pay for a cupcake with a poem. Your first thought would be that this would never work in real life, and it doesn’t.

• “And if I have time to give you a punch, we have time to have lunch.” That joke made me physically frown.

• Deke is basically, among other things, just like “Denzel Washington trapped in Channing Tatum’s body.”
• Caroline describes a croquembouche [or croque-en-bouche] as being “a traditional French wedding cake with vanilla cream-filled profiteroles dipped in handmade caramel” while Wikipedia tells me it’s a “a French dessert consisting of choux pastry balls piled into a cone and bound with threads of toffee.” Close enough, I guess?
• A line from the Deke-Max fake makeout I barely mentioned: ”Let my mouth be your tongue’s panic room.”
• “Girrrrrrrrrllllllllllllll.”
• I loved Max and Deke going back and forth about how Chef Nicolas does things because he’s French. The latter’s final response of “Fraunch” made me think of this, though:

•  Bebe’s not good with languages because she once got hit by three cars.
• “Oh, he’s the best. He has the heart and eyes of a dog.”
• I appreciated the vous/tu French lesson that happened.
• “Do you take this woman, and maybe some others?” I want to apologize to the Polish on behalf of CBS, but they should probably do it themselves.
• “Lesbians are strong!” Thanks, Han.
• Max’s joke that made me feel legitimately uncomfortable is not all that bad this week. I just thought the term “slam-piece” was really gross.
• 2 Broke Girls Beefcake Menu: The heavy petting between Caroline and Chef Nicolas that I described as snogging up above. Could also be described as “clothed sex.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised. Any episode following the fantastically executed 50th Anniversary Special was bound to be sub-par. If I was to sum up the Christmas Special in a few words it would be this: “too much plot in too little time.”

The episode starts with promise. First, we are introduced to “the message” a signal that has been sent out across the universe, gathering everyone, especially the Eleventh Doctor’s most well known enemies, to one specific planet. Then, because the Christmas special always has to involve Christmas, the Doctor gets a call from Clara asking him to pretend to be her boyfriend for turkey dinner with her family.

During these first few scenes it seemed like they were using gimmicks, rather than just allowing Matt Smith to be the quirky Doctor we have come to know him as. For example, when exploring the ships surrounding the unknown planet the Doctor somehow manages to carry a piece of Dalek onto a Dalek ship, so he is immediately fired upon.

Then, soon after, he transports onto another ship while holding “Handles”, his Cyberman head. The ship turns out to be a ship full of Cybermen (surprise, surprise), who also fire on him. He also turns up at Clara’s family dinner wearing only hologram clothes, so to everyone but Clara he appears naked.

After they make some naked jokes and bald jokes (the Doctor now wears a Toupee), they finally decide to get going with the plot, only it never really picks up. After the message is revealed to be a call from the Time Lords lots of minor battles break out as various enemies try to prevent the Doctor from releasing them from the crack in the universe where they have been trapped.

Among the many enemies that flock towards the message, there also happens to be a friend, Tasha Lem of the Church of the Papal Mainframe. She seems to be a sort of love interest for the doctor, which was just too soon for a River Song fan like myself. Some critics have suggested that her role may have been written for River and adapted when Alex Kingston wasn’t available, but I’m assuming that’s speculation. So I want to know why they had to introduce Tasha Lem as a love interest when she was already awesome as a bad-ass mother superior? And why did they have to have Clara confess she has a wee bit of a crush on the Doctor? I mean come on, Clara! Not you too!

I don’t want to see the Doctor downgraded to a James Bond playboy. Come on, Moffat! Keep some class!

The crack in the universe (where the message from Gallifrey is coming from) just happens to be situated on Trenzalore. This same planet was established as the Doctor’s final resting place in “The Name of the Doctor“. Oh, and in case the episode wasn’t Christmas-y enough, the primary village on Trenzalore is called Christmas.

The Doctor quickly learns that releasing the Time Lords from the crack would mean recreating the Time War on Trenzalore, so he decides to stay and team up with the Silence to guard the villagers (and the Time Lords in their crack) from Daleks, Cybermen, Weeping Angels, and presumably a lot of other nasty people.

He tries to send Clara back to her world so she doesn’t get caught up in the battles, but she stubbornly decides to hitch a ride back to him by clinging to the outside of the TARDIS. Having a stowaway slows down the TARDIS, so by the time it gets back the Doctor has aged considerably. Before long he tries this trick on Clara again (lying to her face in order to send her home), but eventually Tasha Lem comes to get Clara so she can be with the Doctor while he dies of old age. At this point, Clara asks the Doctor why he doesn’t just regenerate.

Apparently, Moffat decided that dealing with Trenzalore in one episode just wasn’t enough, so he thought he’d throw in the “how many regenerations can the Doctor have” debate too. Lo and behold, we find out that the Doctor actually has no more regenerations. Hmm, what a conundrum, and we only have a few minutes left to the episode. Don’t worry! Clara will just whisper a few words into the crack in the universe and the Time Lord council will decide to stop being jerks who are determined to take over the world and send out an extra regeneration for the Doctor instead. Did that ending feel like a cop-out to anyone other than me?

Ultimately, the thing that bothers me about this episode is that it was Matt Smith’s final farewell, but by trying to cram so much into one episode they took away from what could have potentially been an awesome plot. It was halfway through the episode before they stopped introducing new plot elements and tried to build on the pieces they already had. By then it was too late and it ended up leaving the audience with more questions than answers. For example, does the Doctor’s defense of Christmas mean that Trenzalore is no longer going to be the Doctor’s graveyard in the future? Will the extra regeneration that the Time Lords gave to the Doctor going be his last? And last, but not least, are they ever going to bring back River Song?

Things that made the episode still worth watching:

•  I was almost worried that they were going to deny Smith the gut-wrenching kind of exit we saw with Tennant. Luckily, they didn’t, and he got in some fantastic last lines.

•  It was also really powerful to have him remove his tie, since that was so key to Matt Smith’s identity as the Doctor.

• Handles is actually pretty endearing by the end

Things that make me excited to watch the new season:

• Mostly I’m just excited to see Peter Capaldi take on the role of the Doctor.

I mean, look at that face. That is an intense face.

For those of you who don’t already know, I grew up in a very Christian community. And I had an amazing experience. For any of those people who may be reading this, thank you for helping create such a safe and loving environment for me to grow up it. I still look up to so many people in that community because they are kind and loving people who live their lives striving to serve God and love others.

That being said, it’s really frustrating to see a lot of really amazing people re-posting memes like this.

Because I’m pretty sure when any homosexual person reads this meme, what they are going to immediately understand is that you care more about the reality show of a multimillionaire than you care about actual abuse happening to members of the LGBT community around the world.

The quote on this photo is from the head of the Russian Orthodox Church as he discusses gay marriage. You can read more here.

I grew up on a pretty steady diet of “love the sinner, hate the sin”. Whenever “inappropriate” behavior was encountered around our community there tended to be a quiet sadness rather than any form of public judgement. In fact, I didn’t feel the need to evaluate my feelings towards homosexuality until I was an adult because I had never encountered anyone who was homosexual in my day to day life. It was only later, as an adult, after a close friend “came out” that I was compelled to reevaluate my conclusions. I really appreciate how Tony Compolo challenges the “love the sinner, hate the sin” phrase in the video below. He also touches on how it feels when a loved one comes out and challenges your assumptions:

For the sake of this post I don’t really care to get into how my views have changed or how I reconcile those changes to my faith. Though if you are interested in hearing a different perspective on it I suggest this video as an interesting starting point.

What I really want to talk about is the violence happening to homosexuals around the world. When it comes to that issue I really don’t care if you DO believe homosexuality is wrong, because the issue of violence towards “the least of these brothers and sisters” should concern any person, regardless of their stance towards homosexuality, that claims to be a follower of Christ.

Phil Robertson alone is worth $15 million, the Robertson family also makes approximately $200,000 per episode of Duck Dynasty that is aired. And yet, since the controversy of his GQ interview he has had an overwhelming outpouring of support, especially from Christians. Walmart actually sold out of Duck Dynasty supplies when fans quickly bought up merchandise to express their support. And now, according to HuffPost, Robertson is now back on the show after only a short suspension. 

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t really care if people do or do not want to support the show. What bothers me is that people are making this into a social and moral issue by expressing that Robertson’s freedom of speech is being impinged upon, when in reality he just crossed the boundaries of a contract he signed to be on the show.

Now compare Robertson’s experience to what these peaceful protesters in the video below are experiencing.

This video shows the reality of being openly gay in Russia. And it isn’t just Russia where being openly gay means fearing for your life. There are also a lot of other videos I didn’t feel comfortable sharing on here, or even watching all the way through. Videos shared by “anti-gay vigilantes”, for example, are particularly disturbing.

It doesn’t matter how many times we say “a true Christian wouldn’t commit that kind of violence” or “those committing violence and hate in the name of God are misunderstanding Christ’s true message.” As long as we talk about homosexuals as “them” we allow all individuals who are part of the LGBT community to be treated as though they are something “other” than human. And if there is one thing my WWII history buff of a mother taught me it is this: the first thing Hitler did to move towards the Holocaust was to dehumanize Jews (and others persecuted groups) in the eyes of the general public.

I really want to drive home that I am not pointing any fingers here. No Christian I have ever known would encourage the violence happening to LGBT persons around the world today. But by ignoring homosexuality or only focusing on it as “sin” it appears to most non-Christians that the Christian community condones, and even encourages, violence towards the LGBT community.

Like I said above, as far as this issue goes, I don’t care what your personal conviction is about homosexuality. Regardless of how you feel about homosexuality in general, I think the reality of the persecution of the LGBT community is something we as a Christian community can no longer just ignore. Why don’t we protest violence towards LGBT persons the way many Christian communities protested the suspension of Phil Robertson?

Because honestly, I just can’t help but think that if Jesus were here he would care more about protecting gays than saving a TV show.

P.S. To limit the length of this post I didn’t delve into the ridiculously naive and disrespectful comment Roberton made about the black community in the South before civil rights. If you want to read a great response by Jemar Tisby as he shares about his grandmother’s experience, you can check it out by here.

Welcome back to the CWR 2 Broke Girls Reviews, everyone! Did you miss the show? Did you miss me [writing about the show]? I’m going to say upfront that I appreciated the break like nothing else, and coming back was . . . difficult. Approaching a show from that angle is far from helpful, and I ended up analyzing every little thing, as I am wont to do regardless. But then the tone of the episode, and perhaps the rest of this season, became crystal clear.

2 Broke Girls is channeling the rom-com vibe like a successful séance. 

Fans of the show are well-aware that things are tense between Caroline and Chef Nicolas, what with him having an épouse back in France and all. On the snarkier, darker haired side of the coin, however, Max has not gotten a lot of action in the drama or bedroom departments. A little bit back with Johnny in Season 1, but since then it has been smooth sailing because her boat has not been rocking. The writers’ room has finally decided to amend that issue, but in a way that makes it feel like a Katherine Heigl movie.

Don’t Trust the B—- refugee Eric Andre has been more or less just playing a goofy dude as Deke, more friendly than flirty. This week he and Max bro a good amount, but also get their dough wet together [not a euphemism] as shown in the image up top. Not one to buck rom-com convention she must of course struggle with whether a potential relationship is worth ruining what they have going on right now. She’s not entirely against the idea, though ["I'm not bromophobic!"].

We’re sticking with the formula, so it stands to reason that Deke has another romantic strictly sexual prospect on the side, and that in her indecision Max tells him to go to her. Go to the titular Judy with the Booty [played by the, uh, endowed Estrella Nouri]. Well, Max doesn’t know her nearly that well, she meant “Judith with the Bootith”. She’s sad, as is typical of someone in her position.

Then finally, in the third act, he admits that him and Judy with the Booty never got to bumping uglies, and he kisses Max. In response to a line that really does feel cribbed from a movie called Misunderstandings Create Conflict Between Potential Lovers But Are Ultimately Resolved.

Then they kiss and it’s beautiful, I guess:

And so that’s what happened to Max, and I feel the need to reiterate it if only because the tone is just so darn strong. The other threads [I'll get to Caroline's in a sec] don’t exude it that strongly, but overall it really feels like a twenty-something minute rom-com. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course, but it’s not what 2 Broke Girls has been, even when the aforementioned Johnny was around. Kat Dennings is no Katherine Heigl, is what I’m saying. It remains to be seen how this season wraps up, but with so much emphasis placed on relationships that both female leads have with their respective love interests [I really am excited to get to Caroline] I’d be surprised if this didn’t keep up for at least a few more episodes.

As for Caroline she tries to be angry at Chef Nicolas about his cheating, and later breaks into his office with Max to steal exam info so that the latter can pass. This leads to a few lines that Beth Behrs delivers like, well . . . like it’s her job and she’s very, very good at it. I said it before and I said it again, her comedy game is on point in a big way:

“Max please hurry find the test and let’s get out of here because we shouldn’t be in here and it smells like him and I like it”

“Oh no, it’s Nicolas. I can smell him in the hall. And I like it”

“I’ve missed you. I’m in your office. That’s the only logical explanation I have for being in here”

“Now, kiss me again! But this time lay on top of me so your legs are out of the way. Now go!”

And lastly, before I get to the Stray Observations, I want to take this time to specially highlight that Earl refers to Han’s entrance from the winter-cursed outdoors by quipping “Still don’t know where Han is, but the new Bond villain just arrived.” I need to tell you all that Zao, from Die Another Day is one of my all-time favourite henchmen ever, Korean or otherwise. I mean, dude straight-up has diamonds in his face.

Current Total: $220.

New Total: $252.75 [still unsure of how they're making any money].

The Title Refers To: Judy with the Booty. I want to talk about how there is a big “but” regarding Deke and Max’s relationship, but that particular aspect of it is never really stressed at all. Sorry.

Stray Observations:

• Not only are they selling cupcakes and cocoa during a blizzard in the cold [haha] open, they’re selling them at night.
• Snow actually looked slightly more real than fake, too.
• Oleg has a chinchida hat. Made from the fur of the last one.
• Luis is around, and I really dig his “Who Would You Do” gameplay style.
• “I’m gonna go roll me a fatty; her name is Denise.”
• “Do you mind, Harry Pothead and I are trying to study-”
• Max’s impression of Chef Nicolas: “Hello, Caroline, I’m a man but I am pretty like a lady!”
• “You think she got that thing at a Kim Kardashian backyard sale?”

• “Move your big ass, we’re gonna burn!
• Max’s joke that made me feel legitimately uncomfortable: ”Like I said to my uncle in the middle of the night, ‘This better be good.’” Yeesh.
• 2 Broke Girls Cheesecake Menu:

The Hopefully One-Time Section in Which I Tell Professional Comedy Writers How I Would Better Do Their Jobs:

• Max tells Caroline about how Deke made her “bread wet, if you know what [she's] saying.” Caroline’s response is “Okay, thank you I’m finally off bread.” I personally think that joke would’ve been a lot stronger if she had made more explicit references to dieting, like “And I thought Atkins was going to be hard,” etc.
• Sophie talks about how Max and Caroline hooking up would ruin their friendship and “[her] opinion of Max.” When Caroline asks about Sophie’s opinion of her the Polish woman says “Oh, it’s already pretty low.” I would have had her admit that her respect for the blonde was raised, that her being able to land Max was an upgrade.
• Anyway, just my two cents.

This episode of 2 Broke Girls . . . I think probably the best way to sum up my feelings about this episode, humour-wise.

“So you thought that in your head and your brain was like: ‘That’s okay to say?’”

“That’d be funny if you got jokes.”

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, I’m not this show’s target audience when it comes to comedy. It’s not like I’ve forgotten that, either, it’s just that in the 21 minutes and 45 seconds of this episode I heard five iterations of the joke “brown chicken, brown cow” and that’s four and a half times too many.

And now I’m going to drop that thread completely, because no one tunes into these reviews to hear me whinge about how it wasn’t funny. I mean, this still manages to be a far cry from that one episode with 2 Chainz, so I count my blessings no matter how small they may be. 

Last week I touched on how tonally the show appears to be headed in more of a rom-com direction, what with Max and Deke and the “will they/won’t they seriously, when will they” thing they’ve got going on. Considering that the last time we left those two crazy kids they’d just shared a heavily-applauded kiss the next step was a logical one: Deke asks Max out.

And, as we might expect from someone left jaded after what sounds like a thoroughly horrific upbringing, she agrees. Following some kind of main date event they end up in Deke’s neighbourhood where he lives in, you probably guessed it from the episode title, a dumpster.

Which was actually kind of cool. I mean, cool until he makes the joke that when he said it was green he meant just the colour, because “it’s horrible for the environment.” It’s just one of those situations where the setup clearly takes precedence the logic of the joke. Anyway, I said I wasn’t going to dwell on the humour.

Seriously everything goes well until, in classic rom-com form, Max bails after their very successful lovemaking. She confides to Caroline [who has her own problems going on, what with a murder car's owner out to off her] that she’s bad at this whole being in relationships thing and, again, it feels like fluffy Hollywood fare. In spite of her assertion that guys “never want to know” he really does, and even proves his devotion to her by having moved his dumpster-home outside the diner. Twue wuv. It’s no holding a boombox over your head [full disclosure, I've never seen that movie] but it’s definitely the sort of big meaningful romantic gesture we’ve been conditioned to expect. Looks like things’ll work out for Meke . . . Dax . . . for these two lovable scamps, and at the very least their “relationship” is safe for the time being.

I did mention the murder car above, and Caroline’s B-plot [that's exactly what it is; she's really been taking the backseat lately] revolves around her having a car with tinted windows towed and then fearing the owner’s retaliation. It’s generally okay overall, because it is Beth Behrs who, and I can’t stress this enough, is great. Her desire for the company of others for safety reasons almost leads to a girls’ night with Sophie, but it’s cut pretty short. Still pretty funny, though, because wow that Polish woman hates that formerly-rich girl.

In an ideal world I’d be able to write more about the direction of this show as a whole, but it’s really just the natural progression from the last episode. Max and Deke continue to grow closer together romantically, overcoming the personal and external obstacles that crop up. At this point nothing too drastic has occurred, and it turns out their chemistry in bed is just, well, it’s a disaster. I mean, the third time he “only lasted 47 minutes and [Max] screamed.”

It remains to be seen if, when, and how their relationship falls apart, but I certainly don’t foresee it happening anytime soon. As for the other Broke Girl, something’s gotta happen. It can’t all just be flirtations [and occasional makeouts] with the married pastry school prof.

Current Total: $252.75.

New Total: $410.

The Title Refers To: Like I said, Max and Deke have sex in a dumpster. It’s by no means a first time for at least one of them.

Stray Observations:

• “The one with the tinted windows, AKA The Murder Car, AKA The Murder Car.“
• Caroline thought Rule #1 was “Wipe front to back.”
• “Well, if you don’t wanna be alone, then why do you act the way you do?”
• Not having anything even approaching nudity struck me as strange, and really made me wonder about the censorship surrounding the show [Max gets dressed after leaving Deke's bed by putting her boots on]. I was at least expecting something PG/PG-13, a strategically placed sheet crossing from armpit to armpit, etc.
• It was actually kind of nice to see Chestnut the horse and Nancy the cat as Caroline’s stand-in company/protection with Max away.
• Max’s outgoing message is a fart.
• “My legs! My beautiful legs!”
• “I’m sorry my brother threw that cupcake at you. He’s gluten-free and upset about it.”
• “Are we ever gonna do it naked?”
• 2 Broke Girls Cheesecake Menu: The Return of the Jammies.

I don’t know if I made it clear last week, but I really like Deke’s dumpster house. It evokes the whole Tiny House Movement that’s going on which actually helps make it appear less cartoonish, and it also proves just how much I loved The Boxcar Children when I was younger. All that being said, the prospect of there being a wine and cheese party in such a small space just oozes with promise, sort of like how the garbage outside of Deke’s place oozes with . . . other things.

In the hands of a more capable director and more creative writers, I’m ideally thinking the crowd from fellow CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother, the majority of this episode could’ve taken place in the green dumpster no problem. There were so many interactions to work with, what with the whole diner crew plus Deke and Chef Nicolas and Bebe. Unfortunately the focus was pulled to the two title and the Pastry Schoolers don’t really mix in with the Dirty Diners [those are their gang names now and I stand by them].

Anyway, these reviews aren’t about me harping on how the show could be better [at least I'm trying to stay away from that] but really about how this has turned into one big rom-com. I suppose it could be argued that that’s all most sitcoms are in general, with the aforementioned HIMYM being a primary example, but most don’t fall on these tropes as heavily as 2 Broke Girls has. I mean, this week Deke has a secret and oh no, it’s a huge obstacle that Max will have to overcome [if she does, I mean, I don't know if she will].

See, it turns out that “that cute mochachino homeless guy with the jew fro” is rich.

Specifically, he’s a Bromberg [spelling?], as in the Bromberg Elevators, the ones that are in every building in the city, as in the Bromberg Colo-Rectal Centre at the New York Hospital.

You may have left your medication, but you took this reviewer’s heart with you-

Current Total: $410.

New Total: $560.

The Title Refers To: Well, they ice cakes at one point, and then Deke being rich could sort of ironically be referred to as “the icing on the cake” as far as Max is concerned. Conversely it would still work from Caroline’s POV. You could also really read into it and say that sugar is slang for money, and icing is made of sugar, then . . . yeah, you know what I’m getting at I can stop.

Stray Observations:

• “I know I couldn’t keep my hands off my first love. I’m talking of course about my penis.”

• How does Deke move his house every Tuesday between 10 and 2?

• Han, putting his foot down. ”That’s it! No more free jello!”
• Speaking of Han, his accent at the wine and cheese party was super wacky. It sounded really affected and more awkward than usual.
• I’m also kind of upset that no one appreciated his ”homemade kimchi bindaeduk”.

• “Bebe, how much time is left?”

  “For all of us? Oh gosh, I’d say two months, tops.”

• We won’t be getting any more of that on this show and that’s a tragedy is what it is.
• “Hurry, move faster Lindsay Slow-Hands!”
• Max is the guy who has been talking to Caroline on OkCupid.
• Deke’s cool with having his thing chopped off; he could stand to lose five pounds.
• “My mom invented dogs!”
• 2 Broke Girls Beefcake Menu:

This is new, and I saw another 2BG review do this, but here is a poll:

EVAN: The idiot box, the boob tube, the . . . television receiver . . . TV’s a pretty important part of our culture, and even as I write this the flatscreen is on, showing the Rockets pretty soundly beating the Spurs-

There are also certain ways that things are done, which is apparent as anything else given the upcoming Super Bowl and the so-called “Ad Blitz”. What we’re here to do is explain how we’d do things, were we the ones running the show.

GORDON: Since you brought up commercials, that’s probably a good place to start.

How about declaring a law that the same commercial cannot be shown twice in the same hour?

EVAN: I like it, but I think we need to stipulate. Does this mean that we could still get five or six different GEICO commercials within the same hour?

GORDON: Hm- since we’re fantasizing, I wanna say no- it’s one commercial per company per hour, and if Geico tries to violate it, their entire marketing team will be forced to walk through the streets wearing dunce caps of shame, and every child shall be allowed to throw rotten fruit at them (no face shots)

EVAN: You know that face shots are the slam dunks of the rotten-fruit-throwing game, man. Yeah, basketball is still on.

And with that being specified, I’m one hundred percent behind it, if only because it would give other smaller companies access to ad time. The big businesses would still get prime time hours, but we’re getting some variation.

GORDON: Okay, so lets talk time slots and ratings here.

EVAN: Ah, I thought you were talking Nielsen ratings and that sort of thing, which I’ve heard are not great, frankly. Kind of an outdated system.

So when can we run the harder stuff? You’re right about there being some toplessness on late night Canadian TV, even without cable, and I think that’s probably alright. I mean, these are time slots when there are [presumably, of course] no children watching.

GORDON: Hm. I want to say that you ought to be able to show on TV more or less whatever you want, provided it doesn’t infringe upon anyone’s rights. I guess my only desire would be for their to be fair warning. We have that on TV now, for the most part- the whole “D for ‘Drama”, “L for Language”, etc.

I wouldn’t mind it being a bit more elaborate, but for the most part, I think the argument that “you gotta protect the kids” is both outdated and just plain wrong on every level.

EVAN: I feel like the same logic dictates that we should have Playboys and other such publications in public libraries. I mean, we may not just see eye to eye on this, and we may have to add a poll under here so that people can agree with me and show you how wrong you are.

GORDON: Uh-huh. We can mark this one down for a future debate.

EVAN: Anyway, now that we’ve put a pin in that topic let’s talk about how we handle shows here in North America. The average sitcom season around here is in the 24 episode range, whereas over in the UK we’re looking at more like four to six per series.

Full disclosure, I just watched a guy castrate a pony.

GORDON: This is because the English are sad alcoholics and…

…you just watched what?

EVAN: A guy castrate a pony. He’s about to castrate a donkey now.

GORDON: This is… some kind of Torontonian pastime?

EVAN: It’s Nat Geo Wild. I dunno, man. It’s on TV, my comments are relevant.

GORDON: Anyways- the British. 6 episode seasons. I can only imagine it’s petty vengeance for having lost their empire.

Seriously, there’s no reason why we can’t have quantity and quality

EVAN: So what would be an ideal season/series length for you, then? Honestly, with the way North American shows handle things I feel like we end up getting quite a bit of filler.

The less episode there are the more pressure there is to make sure it’s all good, and not just most of it.

GORDON: Let’s see- we’ve got 52 weeks to a year- we’ll call it 48 though, for holidays and whatnot. That comes down to 12 episodes per quarter, which would give us effectively two sets of 24 episode seasons.

Which I think is both right and natural (why on earth can’t we get TV in the summer? Angry recluses like myself don’t just go away in the warm months…).

And even if we did, I still wouldn’t mind some quality programming.

EVAN: I think the thing you’re absolutely not taking into account is filming. Not only that, but 48 episodes a year is going to be incredibly rough for the actors, writers rooms, directors, I could go on-

GORDON: I don’t mean 48 episodes per year- I mean 24 to a season, but there wouldn’t be some huge gap in between. The time slots would stay open as if there were 48, only they’d be split up between two shows per slot, depending on the season.

EVAN: So when would they be filming?

GORDON: Whenever the other show is on-

EVAN: That’s the clarification we needed. So you’re proposing a specific type of programming-

Maybe something like how I believe the Walking Dead spin-off was supposed to go- the spin-off airing during the original’s off season.

That was there’s always something on-

GORDON: Exactly.

EVAN: So how many shows could this possibly work for, though?

GORDON: Could you clarify what you mean? Are you asking “how many shows can handle that kind of system”? Cuz I don’t see why it wouldn’t work for any of ‘em.

EVAN: I think it works great for, say, The Walking Dead, I guess [I have opinions about that whole thing]. I’d say it works far less well for most sitcoms, seeing as I assume they’d have to be tied together somehow?

GORDON: They could, but it’s not necessary. All I mean is that a show like Martian Wars would run at the 10:00 pm time slot for 24 episodes for Fall and Winter, and rather than showing re-runs during the summer, Heavy Metal Documentaries would be shown in that same time slot for the spring and summer.

It just means that there’s not a dead period in the middle of the year when no new material is coming out.

EVAN: I think a period of at least one to three weeks would probably be good between, which is to say that I’d advocate a shorter summer for television.

Going from a season finale one week to a pilot next week may be a little much, and you could fill up the time with specials or something, reruns, I dunno. Some sort of palate cleanser.

GORDON: We’ll probably have to agree to disagree on the feasibility/desirability of all that- I want to jump back and talk about the Neilsen ratings, which you brought up earlier.

Would you mind explaining that for our readers who might not know?

EVAN: They basically record how many people are watching certain shows or whatever, and in the TV game programming lives or dies by it.

GORDON: The obvious criticism is that the families who are given these systems aren’t representative of the majority of the population- especially as more and more people turn to the internet for their TV shows.

A modern family watching TV together.

EVAN: I’d just find a way to fold in the number of viewers on Hulu, CBS.com, etc. You’ve mentioned before that we don’t all have time to watch live TV, and these are certainly great options.

Once you’ve accounted for your online viewership you’ll start to get a more complete picture of who’s watching shows, and maybe even who is watching episodes a second or third time.

GORDON: Definitely true.

And readers this, like your favorite TV series, must inevitably come to an end (unless your favorite shows are run by Fox, in which case they’ll be dragged out for all eternity). Be  sure to leave suggestions for next week’s topic are always welcome-

EVAN: I wanted to end this with some kind of PSA telling you that you should watch more TV but a) I wouldn’t feel right doing that and b) I’m pretty positive I’d be preaching to the choir. Thanks for tuning in, as always.

After so many weeks where the focus of this show has been decidedly anything but what the title implies we have an episode that is all about the Benjamins. Last time we were with Max and Caroline the snarky one had found out that her boyfriend [yeah, things were getting serious] Deke was a rich kid. Cue the feeling of betrayal, brace yourselves for the emotional fallout.

Her decision is to break up by breaking into his dumpster house and taking back her toothbrush and her second favourite gnome, Gnomosexual, both clear signs to Caroline that this relationship might actually have a pretty decent foundation. Even though Deke catches her in the act and speaks to the heart of her actions ["you're too big a babypants to tell me you're breaking up with me"] her reason is unassailable: the rich and poor don’t mix. 

A rom-com-esque scheme to have the two reconcile backfires on Caroline, and leads to Max more firmly stating her beliefs [a correction of her friend's assessment] : similar to people of two different religions [Smurfs and witches, in this case], a rich person and a poor person have so little in common that a relationship between them could never, ever work out.

So Deke, who is a smart guy, decides to show her what the other side is like and deposits a cool million bucks into her bank account. That’s when we get some money talk, and reactions that are actually very true to form.

To begin with, Max is so proud of her status pre-million that she decides to really splurge and buy gifts for her pastry classmates, spending all of $143 and intending to return the remainder to Deke. After he refuses it’s put out of her mind, that is until the lovely customer on the right sits in her booth and behaves, albeit a little rudely, like a normal sane person who is receiving terrible service.

Max shows the woman her ATM receipt showing her riches, and when the woman asks her what she’s doing working in a diner she has an epiphany. Why is she working in diner? Why is she working at all? As her and Caroline get more and more excited Max reveals that she doesn’t need dreams when she has money, because what more could you need when you already have it all?

The 2005 Showtime documentary Reversal of Fortune follows a homeless man who was given $100,000 to do with what he liked. He began from working in a recycling plant to having more cash than he knew what to do with, and then what? This man didn’t have a plan, but he had money and the idea that working would no longer have to be an option for someone in his position.

All of which brings on a second, status quo returning epiphany: Max being rich means Max no longer being Max. She writes another cheque to Deke and, seeing where she’s coming from, he accepts it. 

Seeing as how similar the two of them are [something Caroline will not stop going on about this entire episode] there was definitely some conflict needed, and it’s nice that it turns out to be exactly what the first two seasons were devoted to attaining. Whenever compatibility ramps up like this, with romantic obstacles overcome in one to two episodes, you have to wonder where all of this is leading. Will Eric Andre become a regular? I highly doubt it, so it remains to be seen where he and Max, “the Romeo and Juliet of ball banter,” will end up.

Current Total: $560.

New Total: $1,000,560. Heh, psyche! It’s really just $560 because Max returned the money, and apparently they didn’t profit at all this week [maybe it was the $143 spent on gifts?].

The Title Refers To: The diner’s new ATM, which is apparently deserving of a ribbon-cutting ceremony. Key because it’s how Max discovers her newfound riches.

Stray Observations:

• Seeing as how I’m constantly checking out tumblr for 2BG gifs and things, the “ATM: Asian Transgender Male” joke stood out for me as being poorly chosen for that crowd. Then again, the site does have a pretty diverse crowd.
• Max pees standing up. Yes, this is possible.
• “Do you look at life as a game of “Set new lows for Caroline?”
• Occupy Wall Street joke just to stay relevant.
• In this world of easy jokes Caroline mentions Bing and no one says anything.
• Yes, we get it, Earl is old. ”I forgot because I’m a hundred and twenty.”
• Caroline’s breathy distraught voice slayed me.
• Deke’s alter-egos: The Monopoly Man, Deke McRichyMcNeverHadToWorkForAnything, Deke RichyRichPretendedHeWasPoorenstein
• This and last week’s episodes were directed by Phill Lewis, who you may know better as Mr. Moseby from The Suite Life of Zack & Cody.
• Caroline’s joke that made me feel legitimately uncomfortable: “Max, who is Uncle Pennypags? Is he one of the ones who touched you?”
• 2 Broke Girls Cheesecake Menu:

GORDON: Welcome readers to another exciting installment of [redacted], where we’ll be discussing [censored] and the [undisclosed] surrounding it.
(The topic for today is censorship, for anyone baffled by my oh-so-subtle clues…)

While this topic did originate out of Evan’s and my discussion of TV (how we’d deal with rating systems, more specifically) we HAVE touched on this topic before, with our previous discussion of the UK’s automatic porn-block for British ISPs.

KAT: You guys actually included a poll in your discussion on television, too. And while there weren’t an awful lot of votes, it seems like more readers agreed with censoring daytime TV to some degree.

Censorship is such a big topic, but before we go much further, let me get an idea of how you feel about it. Is censorship ever okay? If so when? And by who?

GORDON: I grew up in a country where censorship inundated every part of life. There were rules everywhere dictating what you could or couldn’t say, write, or show- really and truly on an Orwellian level. Needless to say, this kinda affected my perspective on things.

I strongly, STRONGLY believe that certain things should not be said or be given a platform, but I don’t feel that this oughta be legislated. If there’s a racist show on the air, I want it taken off by the channel at the threat of a boycott by people on the ground, NOT by the FCC or some governing agency…

KAT: So for those of us (like myself) who don’t really know how the FCC operates in censoring media, can you elaborate a bit?

GORDON: These are basically the guys who- in this country- lay down the rules for what can and cannot be shown/said on TV. They’re the ones who limit you to a certain number of swear words before the episode gets a higher rating (or blocked, depending on how bad it gets), when nudity can be shown (and for how long), what kinds of violence can be displayed, and so on and so forth.

In reference to last year’s Federal Government shutdown…

KAT: I’m assuming it’s pretty similar to our CRTC.

So how would television function without any basic rules for what can be shown? Are there any countries who don’t have some kind of government intervention with regards to media? Also, isn’t it a little un-socialist to want laissez-faire television?

GORDON: I wouldn’t say that unlimited freedom of expression is “laissez-faire”.

KAT: Fair enough. but to give a Canadian example (and let me know if this is getting into a whole different area), we have Canadian content requirements in order to prevent all of our media sources from being completely flooded with American news/shows/etc. This isn’t censorship per se, but it is the government having an active role in the media we watch… and which I approve of. Especially as the majority of Canadian kids know more about you guys than they do about their own country.

GORDON: I wouldn’t disagree with this either- it strikes me as just a means of making sure everyone has a voice. Certainly something important as more and more power gets focused into fewer and fewer hands.

And another interesting trend, I want to point out, is the emergence of internet TV- Orange Is the New Black and House of Cards being the most famous examples (though certainly not the first). The FCC, which regulates television in the US, has absolutely no power over anything shown online, meaning that pretty much everything shown is at the discretion of the folks making these shows.

KAT: That is something really relevant to point out. How does censorship work at all in the “wild west” of the internet? When googling censorship I (ironically) came across a petition against Google for censoring YouTube comments. So that kind of censorship seems especially troublesome, because it puts the power in the hands of companies rather than government. Though to be honest I don’t know anything about this particular issue beyond what I read in the comments.

GORDON: I’d probably just echo Engels in calling the government the executive branch of capital, but that’s probably taking the conversation somewhere it doesn’t need to go. And this is a really and truly weird time for the whole government-market mash-up. On one hand, yeah, we’ve got companies which are pretty dang cavalier about abusing their customers- at the same time, we’re seeing some companies actually react against government groups like the NSA for using them as middlemen in their domestic espionage games. [censored] be crazy.

This is Hooch. Hooch is crazy.

But let’s talk about banned books for a minute. I’m guessing the very idea of books being yanked out of libraries gets your hackles up, eh?

KAT: Oh, for sure. Although there is something about banning a book that gives them all the more power. One of my professors told us that his dad went out and bought a black market copy of Ulysses back in the day thinking it would be dirty… then when he tried to read it he couldn’t figure out why anyone would want to read it, much less ban it. The main reason I don’t agree with banning books is because I think they actually create more exposure for the thing that people may want to prevent from gaining attention. A book like Mein Kampf, for example. It’s not like would want any neo-Nazis to get their hands on a copy, but by preventing them from reading it we could just be allowing them to think of themselves as that much more justified in their “struggle”.

I imagine your view on banning books is similar to your opinion on the FCC?

GORDON: I certainly don’t disagree with you, though the most immediate reasons that spring to mind when the question of censorship comes up (especially in regards to TV) is the junk that I think is offensive, vile, and dangerous typically isn’t what other people think is offensive, vile, and dangerous. TLC- I’m looking at you.

And on top of that, I think there’s gotta be said something for our general hypocrisy when it comes to us trying to draw lines, y’know?

There’s this one bit by comedian Bill Hicks when he’s talking about the definition of pornography as… well, check out the first couple minutes of this bit below (and be warned, it’s pretty edgy):

It’s tough for me to be able to support these kinds of “protective measures” when they (1) don’t really protect anyone and (2) give some kind of tacit approval to junk which is bad.

KAT: You mean the protective measures of the FCC?

GORDON: Or any kind of body trying to legislate this stuff.

KAT: Hmm, interesting. I’ve never actually considered if there is any legislation regarding censorship I would agree with. I think, to refer back to you advertising example, I would support certain kinds of legislated censorship. Like the example from your discussion with Evan, I would really rather not have my (non-existent) children exposed to certain things, at least not be constantly bombarded by them. So I might agree with legislated restrictions on when certain things can be shown (or where, on the internet). I also would love to see more legislation restricting advertising. Would you be against that kind of censorship (or advertising, in particular)?

GORDON: As much as everything within me would love to see limits on how often that ****ing gecko can appear on TV, I still feel compelled to say no- though we’re just talking about a governmental level here, not about the actual broadcasting company. Take the whole Duck Dynasty controversy for example:

Do I agree with that one bearded dude about gays?

No.

Do I think he has a right to say whatever he wants?

Yes.

Do I think the government can legislate what he can say or when he can say it?

No.

Do I think that A&E should be pressured into giving that air time to someone with better views?

Eh, sure.

I mean, I didn’t think it was the end of the world that ONE dude said some ignorant stuff in ONE segment, but that’s neither here nor there I suppose.

KAT: Fair enough. That being said, I think money talks more than.. well, words. Do you really think Geico is ever going to stop playing that ad over and over and over and over because people like you and me tell them not to? As long as it is still making them money, probably not.

GORDON: You’re saying we need to abolish money. I agree completely.

You heard it here first, people- Kat is leading us in the glorious revolution against the bourgeois taskmasters!

ARISE YE WORKERS FROM YOUR SLUMBER!

KAT: Haha. And Gordon is able to read whatever he wants to out of what you say.

GORDON: and with the sound of distant thunder and red flags being raised on every hill and in every favella, and with the resplendent sound of a thousand voices crying out as one “Viva Kat! Leader of the glorious people’s struggle!”, we’re just about out of time for the day.

Be sure to leave your comments below and weigh in on the discussion.

KAT: And in case I don’t survive the revolution, I appoint Gordon as our new communist overlord. We’ll see how he feels about censorship then.

Thanks again for joining us.

EVAN: Gordon’s always been better at the fancy introductions, so I’m going to start by saying that this all began with this image-

See the rest of the image here.

- in which trans women [as well as a few others, I'm sure] tear Joss Whedon apart for answering a question about writing strong female leads with a joke. The problem being, of course, that the joke was trans-exclusionary.

This of course could be expanded into all jokes being trans-inclusionary, at which point Gordon had something to say about the number of trans men and women out there-

GORDON: Current estimates, for the US anyways, are holding at roughly 700,000, give or take, making up just about %0.3 of the population.

As Evan and I discussed in our first reaction to the outcry surrounding Whedon, this places people identifying as transgendered at somewhere above the number of folks hit by lightning and lower than the number of people born with more than five fingers on a hand.

Point being- it’s a very, very small group.

Istvan, “The Accursed Albino”, a member of a traveling freak show.

EVAN: This of course led to me thinking about superheroes and comic books, my medium of choice when it comes to discussing representation. One of us made a crack about the number of albino crime fighters out there, which brings us to our topic for today, which is on minority representation in general.

GORDON: To summarize, we agreed that the trans population, while unquestionably subject- both in the past and present- to abuse, prejudice, and attacks, seem to be confusing true transphobia (I’m pretty sure that’s a word) with just a general lack of awareness due to how small they are in number.

For example, my not showing any trans characters on my sitcom probably isn’t a result of me being transphobic, but rather trans people not being such a major part of the population as to merit their inclusion. Though of course, that begs the question of “how large does a group have to be to merit attention/representation in popular media?”

Evan, the American-Asian population currently stands at approximately 4.5%, and it’s a subject you’ve touched on repeatedly. Any thoughts or gut reactions?

(It’s because this was an insanely fast reaction…)

EVAN: Oof, gut reactions. That’s actually really tough, because while I constantly tout the fact that there aren’t enough Asian characters in almost anything, I believe I’ve thrown that exact statistic around on this blog before.

I’d like to posit the fact that American media is far-reaching in scope more than that from any other country, but of course the problem there is that what matters first and foremost is that Americans watch it.

Gonna be honest, man, I sort of don’t know where to go with this in a way that I’m comfortable with.

GORDON: Alright then, that kinda leaves us in a rough patch. Is there any rule of thumb you can think of that’d apply here? Must be at least X in 100 Americans to qualify reasonably?

I know it sounds harsh, but I could start raising my own banner and demand to know where are the socialist characters are on TV.

These words mean nothing to like, 90% of the world’s population…

EVAN: Before I can answer that I think I need to ask what the course of action to take would be after finding this magic number. Let’s say that, and I know this is far from true, 3% of people are handicapped, the wheelchair-kind. Does this warrant a single wheelchair-bound character?

One thing I’ve read on a number of forums, and that I agree with, is that having a single minority character causes them to represent that minority, for both members and non-members alike. Take for example socialists, which you mentioned. There’s only one and he or she is a villain, or a hero with some sort of contemptible flaw, then what?

GORDON: That doesn’t really answer any questions though, does it? Especially not in regards to transgendered people, who will probably still make up an especially small minority in any nation.

EVAN: There’s been a lot of talk about comic books needing more transgendered heroes, which I more or less balked at because I asked myself “How many do we need, really?”

The issue with having only one or two is what I’ve already presented above.

So I guess what I’m continuing to ask is does the number of characters have to be proportional to the minority they are a part of?

GORDON: An idea that also crossed my mind.

We generally want media to be representative of reality, but that doesn’t mean just having 5 Asians for every 100 characters shown on a TV show. A show set in an upper-class Midwestern city is probably going to be predominately white. A show in a middle or working class area of some town in the Southwest, on the other hand, is going to have a much higher mix.

So the question would be, what demographic do transgendered people typically fall into?

Something we mentioned in our discussion of the portrayal of homosexuals on TV is that, according to statistics, homosexual couples tend to be more upper class.

EVAN: At the very least, I think most larger urban centres [ie. cities, I guess I could have just said that] would be more likely to be accepting of their lifestyle.

You are right, though, in that to a point our media has to reflect real life. With that in mind, a show with more than one transgender character might be- would be- super jarring. The flip side of course is having a program devoted exclusively to that particular minority. See: HBO’s Looking, a sitcom featuring three gay male protagonists, or Mighty Avengers, a title which is predominantly Black and Latino heroes.

In other words, one way to ensure representation of minorities is to always lump them together in their own thing.

GORDON: I wouldn’t say that- after all, shows are most realistic, I feel, when they follow life in being just off-the-walls crazy. I’ve traveled enough of the world to realize that it certainly isn’t impossible that you’ll run into a transgendered zealously Catholic beet farmer.

Still, all things in moderation, I guess. I know I’d feel offended if my own subset (whatever that may be) was being included in something only as a token character.

EVAN: So would you say there’s a line before we get to the point where shows approach some sort of Glee-esque rainbow of flavours [the show features a pretty broad range of minorities]?

GORDON: I’d say it exists, but I couldn’t say that I’d be really able to recognize it until it was crossed.

EVAN: Regarding comic books again, I think it’s interesting when a piece of art appears to step past that boundary, like in the critically-acclaimed Young Avengers:

It feels unrealistic, but at the same time it could still happen, right?

GORDON: It could.

EVAN: We’re winding down on time, so how about we go back and forth when it comes to where we think representation could use some improvement in today’s popular media-

GORDON: To return a sticking-point of my own, I think it’d be nice to see Arabs portrayed as actual Arabs, not generic brown people or explicitly Indian rip-offs. On that note, with Indonesia actually serving as the most heavily populated Muslim community, it’d be nice to see Muslims portrayed as ethnicities other than Arab or North African.

EVAN: You actually hit on that in your post on Christians and how they’re portrayed, and I’d like to back that up by saying how great it would be to have a deeply religious South Korean churchgoer [there are many].

Don’t Trust the B—- kind of had one in Pastor Jin, but that show skirted the edges of reality so often I’m not sure it came off like it was supposed to be believable on any level.

Here she is post-plastic surgery.

GORDON: “Geek” culture springs to mind. Something more realistic- regular people whose hobbies/interests include science-fiction, comics, and fantasy- not that viciously repellent blackface routine The Big Bang Theory churns out.

When it comes right down to it, though, I think it’d be cool to see people doing jobs other than forensic specialist and ambiguous office work.

EVAN: Our talk about how calling TBBT “nerdface” is not only wrong but offensive is going to have to wait until another time, but moving forward-

Seeing young people struggle financially and occupationally would be great. 2 Broke Girls started out cataloguing a lot of the different, desperate ways to earn some cash, but it’s so far from that presently it deserves a different name. That’s what the 21-27 demographic is going to really connect with, I think, and the lack of focus on that struggle makes them a minority I think.

GORDON: And with that, we’re out of time for today. As always, comments, thoughts, and links to pictures of dinosaurs are always welcome.

Ladies, gentlemen, people who would not choose to define themselves, or would choose to identify with alternative identities, good night.

EVAN: Or good morning, y’know, we have no idea when you’re reading this.

Definitely do let us know any other thoughts you might have about representation of minorities in general [not just trans people, though we definitely turned to them as an example a lot]. And thanks as always for reading!

I’m gonna be upfront with this review, the basic plot of this episode is a complete mess. There are too many threads that are technically connected to the main storyline but ultimately feel disjointed or are completely lost. All that being said, I’m going to sum up what happens in the next paragraph and then focus on two particular issues that were dealt with Monday night on CBS, from 8:30 to 9:00.

Essentially Caroline doesn’t want to have anything to do with Chef Nicolas, but he tells her that he and his wife have an open relationship. She and Max get their hair done, and then a Skype call with the wife confirms that she’s good to bang the Frenchman if she’d like. Caroline decides to go to dinner to turn him down, doesn’t, sleeps over, doesn’t sleep with him. The end.

Now that that’s all over, I want to concentrate on homosexuality and birth control, which I think you’ll agree are pretty uncontroversial topics.

To start with, I’d like to remind you all that Michael Patrick King, creator, executive producer, and part-time writer for the show is gay.

This is a fact that he’s leveraged to defend a lot of the humour on 2 Broke Girls, in particular stating that he “doesn’t get offended by the show’s gay jokes.” I could get into the wrongness of one person more or less claiming to speak for an entire demographic, but I think we should instead take a look at how the show treats homosexuals.

To start with the good, there’s Grace, who was the lifelong lesbian partner of Caroline’s nanny ["And the Life After Death"]; she had some pretty good things to say about love and keeping it a secret and really, that’s about as good as it gets.

I mean, apart from that there are the titular bears from Season 2 Episode 13, “Big Mary” at the pastry school and, of course, Federico Dordei’s Luis. They’re not offensive characters by any means, but they’re all so horribly one-note. Every one of them is flamboyant, and what little more we know about Luis, who has appeared in 9 episodes so far, is that he has a huge crush on Oleg. I admittedly raved over the character since his first appearance, but come on, nine episodes. Granted, we don’t know much more about Earl and he’s been in pretty much all of them.

This week we can add at least one more appearance of an LGBT person when the girls hit up the the Tristan Evans Salon for some $6 haircuts. Max’s student stylist is named Jamus, and Caroline’s, well, he goes by Dan. She asks to trade for Max’s “gay” and her friend replies with:

Caroline makes a joke about straight guys and how they they treat girls who go down on them, but the general idea is clear: gay men are better at cutting hair, which is just another stereotype being perpetuated. Not only that, but they love Max. Jamus digs Max’s sass in almost exactly the same way Luis did when he first showed up, and just like the bears Deke [another Deke!] and Derk were way back in the second season. What exactly is Michael Patrick King trying to tell us about gay people?

As a gay man who works in the entertainment biz, and as a storyteller no less, King has every opportunity to depict realistic homosexuals on a weekly basis. That’s not to say that the gay men he has used don’t exist in real life, but all of the ones on the show have used the same affected accent, and all err on the side of flamboyant. We’re not going to find any Max Blums around these parts, that’s for sure-

Happy Endings, I miss you.

Again, it’s rare for almost any characters to receive a good amount of depth or dimension [see the review where I discuss 2BG's outlandish one-time characters], but that doesn’t mean that we can’t more of a straight-laced [no pun intended] gay man à la Captain Ray Holt of Brooklyn Nine-Nine. I mean, at the very least throw a few more lesbian characters our way, maybe just don’t have them all be softball-playing short-haired tough girls.

On the other hand, this show also touched on birth control which I actually thought they handled really well. Max asks Caroline in the first few minutes for condoms because she’s “about to have sex and [wants] it to feel bad.” Joke aside, that’s some responsible lovemaking right there, and the show treats it as a given that of course she would have safe sex.

She decides to try the pill to do away with the complications of condoms, only to have it be revealed that they’re just as much a hassle. There’s even commentary about how it’s always women who are the ones that are responsible for ensuring they’re not getting pregnant, even if it is undercut by a rape joke. That’s all just the greatest, and I’m being serious.

In fact, the episode ends on Deke admitting that maybe she “needed a little help” and giving her a NuvaRing. Caroline isn’t super impressed, but I really kind of was. Having this discussed, even a little, in a popular sitcom continues the discussion and that is important. Sex pops up in basically every show on television but the minutiae of the act not so much. Winston can spend most of twenty minutes scouring the city for condoms on New Girl but talking about the unneeded intricacies surrounding the pill? Friggin’ NuvaRing? Well done, 2 Broke Girls. This episode completely flopped on storytelling level but you definitely did a good thing.

Next week let’s aim for coherent plots and rarely addressed contemporary issues.

Current Total: $560 again.

New Total: $840.

The Title Refers To: The three of them [Caroline, Max, and Deke] sleeping over at Chef Nicolas’ apartment. He is a married man.

Stray Observations:

• Oleg’s response to hearing Max may get a breast reduction: “NOOOOOO! [ . . . ] Why would you spit in the face of God?”
• “The pill’s $50/month that’s more than it costs to raise a damny baby.”
• “That’s because it’s not beef it’s not made today and it’s not special.”
• “We have all this relationship drama and we’re not even in a relationship.” Well maybe you should have told her you were in an open relationship sooner, Nicolas.
• Remember when Earl was kind of into Sophie? What ever happened to that?
• “I can’t risk some discount hetero cutting my hair.”
• Max’s new hairdo for the episode-

• -and her greeting are both references [which she outright admits] to Dame Edna Everage, who was a character played by Australian comedian Barry Humphries. The kind of joke young people will not get.
• “They’re like PEZ for sluts.” Admittedly not always the best commentary, but still. 
• Max and Deke’s joke that made me feel legitimately uncomfortable:

“…put it in and not move it around.”

“That’s what I do to you when you’re passed out.”

• “I realized I guess Nicolas is just going to be one of those people in my life that I’m always almost going to have sex with but never will.”
• “Like you and me.”
• Tumblr had a little too much fun with that one.
• 2 Broke Girls Beefcake Menu:

This week opens up with the strangely comforting scene of a table of eccentric [see: easily mockable] diners and the two girls’ reactions to them. Instead of hipsters or, I don’t know, bronies, we have half a dozen cumberbitches fresh from Sherlock Con. I had planned to live the rest of my life without ever typing out that term, but that’s behind us so let’s move on-

What you all have to understand is that I take everything I watch on TV very, very seriously. This means being extremely perplexed upon hearing Max insinuate that she never went to high school, particularly because it makes the story of how she lost her virginity [see the Stray Observations here and here] that much more disturbing. The thing is, I don’t think you have to be a stickler for continuity to see the gargantuan staring-you-in-the-face error in this episode.

The A-plot [and I'll be getting to the B-plot later, such as it is] concerns Caroline getting fed up with Chef Nicolas’ excessive flirting and sending him a text that reads ”I’ll have dinner with you when you leave your wife.” Oleg convinces her and Max it’s a bluff to get into her pants, but when Nicolas issues an exact time they have to rush over to keep his open marriage from falling apart. After all, Caroline is “the almost girl”, she only almost breaks up open marriages.

So they head over to his apartment and, after Caroline spurns his advances, he realizes he can’t end his open marriage. The girls think is great so he should just not Skype his wife. Except that she’s actually in the building and is coming up the stairs and goodness gracious, their open marriage is in real jeopardy he can’t be alone, so Max and Caroline need to go hide in the bathroom because who knows what his wife will think.

I now present exhibits A and B:

EXHIBIT A: An excerpt from last week’s review of the show.

EXHIBIT B: The first result on Google when searching for “open marriage”.

Let me make it even more painfully clear: Caroline was given permission by Chef Nicolas’ wife to have sex with him; that is what open marriages imply. His wife “catching him” with two girls in his apartment should cause him zero problems.

Which is unfortunate, because I actually think the girls hiding in the bathroom and then making their way unto the ledge outside the window is really fun. It starts out raining, because of course, and then proceeds to hail after they quip that “at least it couldn’t get any worse.” It’s hitting classic comedic bits, but pulls them off very well.

It’s not only pretty funny, but it looks great, too. I was just thinking to myself how cheap the bathroom set looked, but everything outside of it turned out really well. Multi-camera sitcoms often struggle with outside shots, but colour me impressed by how great the ledge made the entire scene.

After everything that happens after they crash in through the window you see on the left [Caroline slips, but when muted it looks like Max saves her from leaping to her death] I think it’s fair to say that this particular chapter of the show is closed. Chef Nicolas has realized that he will always almost have sex with Caroline, and we should see an end to his attempts at wooing her.

In other news, they appear to be giving Garrett Morris lines again. I remember back when Earl played more of a father figure to Max, helping to instill the idea that she valued others and had created a pseudo-family to make up for her own childhood,and that’s revived in a very short reference to how he cares about her being around.

Let’s be real with ourselves, Han should’ve fired both Max and Caroline a long time ago. Not only do they not respect him a whit, they don’t listen to anything he says and he is their boss. All that being said, I’m giving him the B-plot because of his adventures with the spider communities in the walk-in and dishroom. Things began escalating quickly, and a discarded piece of ham proved to be a matter of contention between the two kingdoms claiming ownership. It’s all so wonderfully absurd, and I enjoyed every second of it.

Current Total: $840.

New Total: $824. Please don’t ask me where or how they spent the $16.

The Title Refers To: Max and Caroline’s near-death experience out on the ledge.

Stray Observations:

• “Do you have eggs Benedict . . . Cumberbatch?”
• Tumblr is alternately giddy and scornful over the Sherlock fandom making an appearance,
• “Didn’t I tell you to keep my name outta your mouth?”
• Nicolas’ appearance at the diner elicited Sophie-esque whoos, which was interesting.
• Sophie’s movie biz fling “drives the Miramax party bus and [. . .] wears a big wig.”
• Earlis apparently an easy Morgan Freeman stand-in: “And if you need god, a judge, or an old guy sitting on a porch, I’m your man.”
• Deke’s absence explained away by him having the flu.
• There is a sweatshop in the same building as the pastry school, where “10 Vietnamese women are making next year’s ‘Prada.’”
• Lots of John/”Big Mary” in this episode.
• Max’s favourite Seuss book: The Whore He’s Leaving Her For
• Look, I struggled through two semesters of college friend and I know for a fact that “toilette” is feminine and therefore would use “la” and not “le”.
• 2 Broke Girls Cheesecake Menu: Nothing this week, folks.

Right at the end of 2011 Todd VanDerWerff, who I unofficially inherited these reviews from after Pilot Viruet passed the torch, wrote an article on the AV Club discussing how some shows on TV existed as “Nice places to visit”.

While the initial focus was on dramas he turns to sitcoms and describes how he divides them into two categories: “shows that aim for greatness and try to push the boundaries of the form, and shows that just want to create a bunch of characters that are fun to hang out with.” Happy Endings is my personal benchmark for the latter, with Parks and Recreation coming a close second. It’s not to say that neither show exhibits good writing [both do, in their own ways], more that they’re half hours of television in which viewers can relax, content to spend time with characters who are familiar and comfortable to them.

2 Broke Girls appears to want to be one of these shows.

The funny thing about this is that a mere thirty minutes before we join Max and Caroline for more of their latest financially-challenged escapades CBS’s most popular sitcom, an impressive hang-out show in its own right, takes centre stage. When compared to How I Met Your Mother it really isn’t much of a contest.

Where 2 Broke Girls feels necessary from time to time to remind us that Max and Caroline’s co-workers do in fact support them Max ["And the First Day of School"] How I Met Your Mother keeps all five of its main cast constantly interacting with each other [in pretty much every episode]. In the former the actual hanging out feels like a reminder, not only that the other characters care but that they exist; the latter has them interact organically to the point where it feels awkward to pull it apart describe it in this many words].

It’s not impossible for a show surrounding a primary cast of two [I've said it once and I've said it again, the girls are really the only ones driving the action] to be a hang-out sitcom, only that it makes it more difficult for us as an audience to react to them on that level. It’s easy to enjoy watching a group of friends enjoying each others’ company, but viewing two people can make you feel like a third wheel of sorts. So much one-on-one screentime and interaction inevitably creates some form of mild intimacy that I don’t personally want a show to be solely comprised of- like if The Office had been primarily Jim and Pam, or if Community revolved around Troy and Abed. This particular sentiment definitely isn’t true for everyone, so let me on and discuss how Han specifically holds the cast, and entire show, back.

This week’s episode is a celebration of St. Patrick’s Day, a holiday that apparently guarantees Han Lee a 100% chance of getting laid. While it’s a well-known fact that Asian men are not positively portrayed in the media when it comes to their sexuality the fact is that he gets the short end of the stick [not a pun, I swear] more often than not. “Is Han even a man?/Han is not a man” is the vast majority of dialogue concerning the character summed up in a few words. All that being said I was interested to see how this would work out for him.

About as well as I expected, it turns out.

Dressing up as holiday-appropriate mythical creature Lepre-Han is swarmed by women at the pub the gang heads to; for some reason that I can’t fathom Caroline can’t find it within herself to refer to them as female ["with all of those . . . I wanna say girls"]. Most of them are quite young and pretty, so of course Han initially opts for a “buxom paralegal” who “brought outside chicken”. That may sound appealing, but she’s not the most traditionally beautiful, if you get my drift.  He ultimately ends up going back to a woman’s “sister’s condo in Jersey City” where the two of them will have to be quiet.

It’s not enough that the woman’s entrance [seen on the right] is punctuated by the live audience’s laughter], Max makes a prophecy about their night together saying that it ”Looks like they’re going to be unlucky tonight.”

Han finally sleeping with a woman is not heralded with even a fraction of the woos that Sophie’s appearances garner, but is instead met with laughter. Han is a joke because he’s short, bossy, and ineffectual [we'll leave the uncomfortable racist humour back in Season 1] and, as a cherry on top, he ostensibly cannot gauge whether a not a woman is physically attractive.  

It’s not so much that we can’t have a character like Han, it’s that when a show takes said character and treats them a certain way it cannot attain that title of “hang-out sitcom”. Who was the butt of every joke in Friends? Was it Phoebe? Ross? Chandler? Monica? Joey? Rachel? Each one had easily mockable traits [except for Ross, because being a paleontologist is awesome] but were never reduced to them. They didn’t constantly lose in every aspect of life.

That’s all to say that if 2 Broke Girls wants to get there, to create a space where we can truly enjoy being around this group of people as a whole, at the very least Han needs to be handled differently.

Almost a thousand words in and I haven’t even really touched on what happens throughout the episode, which makes me feel like I’ve adopted more than just the burden of reviewing this show from Todd VanDerWerff. Allow me to do so in one long-ish paragraph and also apologize for overanalyzing a show that I’ve admitted to catering to the lowest common denominator and expecting more out of it. Tune in next week where I will be judging it on its own merits, as usual!

What takes place is yet another episode where Caroline comes to understand that her new life is better than her old one. After a rather unpleasant time at the pub the blonde opts to take the extra money they made selling Guinness and Irish cream cupcakes and take Max to The Plaza where they can drink Bellinis in peace. There she realizes how boring it is and they return to where all the fun is. To keep it from taking up too much of the Stray Observations Caroline is kissed several times on the mouth by an overly friendly drunk nicknamed Blarney Bill which is, suffice to say, probably an all-too-real occurrence for women on this holiday and as such doesn’t work as a joke for me personally.

Current Total: $824.

New Total: $1,150. Caroline gives Han $50 for the cab to Jersey City, so I’m not even sure if this total makes sense.

The Title Refers To: Kilts, St. Patrick’s Day, y’know. Earl wears one as well. I don’t think the play on “guilt trip” plays out in the episode at all.

Stray Observations:

• In the cold open we are reminded that Irish Catholics do not engage in birth control.
• “No one gonna pinch me today because I got all this green.”
• Eric Andre still AWOL “snowboarding somewhere called “Vale” with something called “a family.”
• The Ukrainian Oleg argues with a Russian taxi driver. This levels of political commentary are off the chain.
• His St. Paddy’s Day merch includes “Kiss Me I’m Irish” crotch t-shirts and “disposable funnel for upwardly mobile elegant young ladies who want to stand and pee in the street like a man.”
• Earl learned to play the bagpipes and drive stick after an acid trip.
• “Just so you know, if you’re an orphan, I’m interested.”
• “Are you over here making money off of me you wolves of Wall Street?”
• Lindsey Kraft, who played the drunk girl Monica, is a treasure.

“You guys, I just threw up.”

“I think I’m gonna need some water. I need to drive a school bus in four hours.”

“You’re a great American.” “I know what I am.”

• “That was before I discovered the sensation of a cool breeze circling my bag and my pipe.”
• “Told you girls, a hundred percent.”
• 2 Broke Girls Cheesecake Menu: Nothing really worth mentioning. Sophie wears some kind of sexy shamrock outfit, I guess.

As I was walking around doing errands yesterday I began to muse on one of my favourite topics: diversity in media. While this could’ve been a very pleasant stroll on an afternoon that felt much more like spring than winter, my mind felt the need to challenge itself with a question I’m sure often leaves the lips of those who are sick of “having diversity crammed down their throats”: Why is the US held responsible for all of this?

To unpack that a little bit, there’s a lot of outcry on [and off] the internet for the entertainment industry as a whole [film, television, et cetera] to showcase more minorities. While I can’t comment on what other countries are doing, I don’t think it’s too great a leap to assume that pretty much all of this discussion is in regards to American media. Does anyone think that people in India are clamouring for more Koreans in their Bollywood movies?

The answer to “why America?” is actually painfully simple, and it hurts me that it didn’t immediately come to mind on my walk [it was a beautiful day, alright]: all that’s being asked for is fair representation. In other words, all people are asking is for the media to paint a more accurate picture of the world we live in. The state of things at present is far from true to life as we know it, and I’m going to bombard you with graphs until you agree with me-

GENDER, RACE, AND TOP BILLING AT PARAMOUNT PICTURES

Graphic by Briana Higgins, using the same research from the link above

This Infographic Proves The Oscars’ Diversity Issues Are Worse Than You Thought [visit link to view the entire thing]

I’m going to let its creator, Comics Alliance writer Andrew Wheeler, explain what it is:

“One in three Americans is a straight white non-Hispanic cisgender male. That’s an estimate based on 2010 census data. The actual number is probably lower, and sliding. But if we take that number as a starting point, we can say that any team that’s more than 33% straight white non-Hispanic cisgender men is over-representative of that demographic category. A realistically representative team would be two-thirds made up of people of color, and/or women, and/or lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender people, and/or people who represent any combination of those identifiers.

In the index, for ease of reference, we call the straight white non-Hispanic cisgender men ‘Harveys,’ and we call everyone else ‘Renees.’ So the U.S. population has one Harvey for every two Renees.”

For the less comic book-inclined among you, Harveys are named after Harvey Bullock, an average joe [straight, White non-Hispanic, cisgender] cop with the Gotham City Police Department. Renees are after his partner Renee Montoya, a lesbian Latina woman.

Wheeler further explains that a group of characters will score a certain number, that being however many Harveys or Renees extra there are in addition to a demographically representative team. Really, the best way to explain this would be to demonstrate for myself. While the index was originally created to grade superhero teams it can apply to all media, so I’ll be using it on the cast of one of my favourite FOX shows [graphics taken from the CA article, and were created by Dylan Todd using artwork drawn by Michael Lark].

Here’s something regular review readers don’t get from me very often: I wish this episode had been longer. After what was basically a filler issue last week [and one that seriously had me picking apart Han's place on the show] this Monday night had us returning to the narrative that this half of the season has built itself around: the pastry school and Max’s relationship with Deke.

That’s right, Eric Andre is back after his character had the flu and went on a skiing trip. Every move this show has made so far, including the mild inconvenience that was Max finding out he was wealthy, has pointed towards him sticking around. She’s not one for relationships or even trusting others, and the way they’ve grown closer has made it seem like nothing short of death/something truly dramatic could break them apart. So this week the two girls meet Mr. and Mrs. Bromberg [as in the Bromberg Elevators, the ones that are in every building in the city, as in the Bromberg Colo-Rectal Centre at the New York Hospital].

To lead up to that, the pastry school arc is very abruptly cut off after “big queen” John explains that Chef Nicolas is in “France, with his wife.” Apparently there was something about Caroline and an affair and hold the phone this makes zero sense and-

Exhibit A from my review of Episode 17.

-and I need to calm down. I’m going to let that image speak for itself. And breathe slowly and deeply. If you really want to read more about my quibbles outrage over continuity you can check the link above.

Now normally I try not to recap entire episodes, because presumably you’ve already watched them otherwise why would you be reading this, so I’m going to do what I was going to do two paragraphs ago and get to Deke’s parents. Right before I do I’m going to mention and link to, for the last time ever I swear, an article stating that 2 Broke Girls is “The Closest Thing We Have To A 99 Percent Movement Comedy“. Everything about it makes it the perfect show to discuss ideas about poverty and wealth, the disparity between the grossly rich and the wretchedly impoverished.

The reason I bring that up is because Deke’s mother, played by Sheryl Lee Ralph, used to be poor. She confides to Max, and us, that “I am from Queens, New York. Yeah, that’s right, I’m just Genet from the block.” While that last line may have been a lazy joke referencing a JLo song, it really does sum up her character in a mere six words. Hers is the exact opposite experience of Caroline’s, going from having nothing to being loaded, and there’s a lot of potential there. The very fact that she reveals to Max that she used to be a stripper speaks to the kinship the two share over having [and having had] nothing, and it’s a shame that the internal conflict between her past and present lives is extremely minimal.

When the Brombergs’ family friends Adam and Amy visit and find out who Caroline is they are none too pleased ["Cannot believe you would invite a Channing into your home."]. Apparently her father’s Ponzi schemed cost them some dough, relegating them from the penthouse to the fourth floor.

Look, pause, I’m sorry but pause. Max gets pissed at them because they’re making too big a deal out of things, but money is money. That’s tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars lost. I’m not saying they shouldn’t be grateful for what they have left [which is a lot, mind you], but they do deserve to be angry.

Anyway, that’s when Genet very gently tells her son’s girlfriend to step off with a, “Max, these are our friends.” It’s maybe not as explicit as the episode’s creators might have liked, but it’s fairly apparent that the steps she takes to resolve the conflict are rooted not only in her sense of propriety but also her loyalty to Max as another girl who’s lived a hard knock life. That’s what I really wanted to see more of, because that struggle alone makes her more compelling than Oleg, Sophie, Han, and Earl combined. Then Max ruins everything by spilling the beans that Mrs. Bromberg was once a dancer of the exotic variety.

I’m going to address that in a bit, but first I want to get to the episode’s conclusion and dig up an idea I introduced seven episodes ago, which is that with Deke entering the picture 2 Broke Girls has taken an explicit turn tonally towards more of a rom-com approach. After their visit turns out to be a bust and their son sides with his girlfriend the Brombergs cut him off financially, and Max is left feeling that it’s all her fault. While this scene provides a return to the show stating how she and Caroline are BFFs, it’s also one of emotional maturity for her. She says that Deke can’t survive being a poor person, but that all really translates to is her believing that she’s holding him back. Kat Dennings’ acting is spot on, too, and she really lands the emotional beats. With her and Caroline literally pushing his dumpster house back to his parents at two in the morning it’s an unexpected turn of events, and one that legitimately has me looking forward to next Monday night.

Finally, let’s return to Genet Bromberg. As you may know I turn to tumblr after the episodes air, often to grab gifs but also to see what other viewers thought of what they just watched. While the comments are normally overwhelmingly positive, I came across these two:

Genet met her husband David back in her stripping days, and these are two tumblr users who don’t like the implications of that. While the first one makes a few too many assumptions, they both land on the fact that she was “rescued” from her former life by this White guy. They of course look past the fact that the two ostensibly love one another, but the truth is that made her way out of destitution by another person’s efforts with the races of both parties being severely scrutinized. I personally don’t think it’s something to dissect [and I am all about positive racial representation in media] but it’s certainly something to think about.

Current Total: $1,150.

New Total: $2,180. Explained within the episode! With the pastry school shut down the cheques for the spring semester’s tuition were returned to all of the students.

The Title Refers To: The Brombergs, who are rich. Probably the dullest title the show’s ever given us. Where are the double entendres?

Stray Observations:

• I fully realize that these reviews are reaching VanDerWerffian word count levels.
• Big gay John knows why Lady Gaga’s last album failed. I want to know this, because it had “Applause” on it and that song is great.
• Caroline and Nicolas ”made out once in six different places on eight different occasions.” I very much want to know if this matches up to past episodes.
• “Ain’t no party like a Caroline party ’cause a Caroline party don’t start.”
• Deke’s parents love pop art. Max eats soup.
• Jeff Garlin as Mr. Bromberg is inspired casting, and makes me realize how I can recognize him immediately without being able to name anything he’s in.
• “They were down. Way down. Like a crocodile. Or CeeLo.”
• Max had her feelings hurt in the 8th Grade by a boy named Tommy Dolan.
• Adam and Amy love naughty comedy, they watch Bill Maher.
• Tilapia is not, and I know this for a fact, a chickeny fish.
• “But we’ll get it as far as we can. And then at least when Deke wakes up he won’t be stuck here with me in the morning. And he can have a life.”
• 2 Broke Girls Cheesecake Menu: Caroline lends her pearls to Max, and it is the nakedest I have ever seen her.

I had written this entire intro prior to watching this episode about how we should probably start readying ourselves to bid Deke adieu. The show had been moving towards him and Max breaking it off with no hope of reconciliation for some time. That and the fact that Eric Andre’s joining FX’s upcoming comedy Man Seeking Woman as one of the main cast. Altogether it seemed to point towards us not having much longer to enjoy the presence of one of my favourite Blewish [that's half-Black half-Jewish] comedians.

This is literally the last time I’m going to bring up the rom-com narrative style that has permeated the show basically ever since Deke showed up [first mentioned back in Episode 13]. He and Max have had their ups and downs, but it all came to a head last week when his parents decided to cut him off completely. When last we saw our heroines they were on a mission to push Deke’s dumpster house clear across the city in order to reconcile him with his folks, trading his relationship with Max for financial stability and overall a better life.

When we return we find that they’ve broken up and that’s that. Caroline asks her early on if she’s alright and Max responds that she’s “the one who threw his ‘fro out the do.’” Much later on, in the clearest episode I’ve ever seen that the writers’ room is well in tune with the Maxoline shippers-

-the former heiress tells asks her friend again, “So are you really okay, I know you really loved him.” The response is the kind of snark we’ve come to expect from Max Black: “I did, which was the worst ’cause it made me feel almost like a person.”

As far as I can tell that is the end of Max Black and Deke Bromberg. IMDb only lists all eight of the episodes that Eric Andre has already been in, so at this point I think it’s safe for me to call it. This of course means no huge emotional climax for the two, no firm conclusion to their relationship that we as an audience are privy to. No, instead we’re moving on to an episode that revolves around celebrity guest appearance Lindsay Lohan.

Look, she does a passable job at playing indecisive bride-to-be Claire. The very, very brief role for Stephanie Courtney [ie. the ever-Progressive Flo] as Eleanor, a neurotic wedding planner was thoroughly enjoyable. Kat Dennings and Beth Behrs together take part in the most enjoyable bit of physical and set comedy I’ve seen on the show ever, involving them carrying a cake onto a subway car and having their seat taken by an old woman, being hemmed in by two blind men, and besieged by a breakdancer. At the end of the night, though, I wasn’t satisfied.

I fully realize that it’s no HIMYM finale, that much should be said. Even still, I can’t help but feeling robbed of the end to a relationship that I was, for better or for worse, invested in. It cheapens it as a whole, and in spite of the references to Max’s sadness that they were sure to seed throughout it felt almost like it had never happened.

Ultimately this was just some episode about how bridezillas are a thing that exist. Max and Caroline’s friendship isn’t stretched to any levels, and as a whole it was just a gimmick. An fairly entertaining gimmick, but a gimmick nonetheless.

With that in mind, I’m going to commemorate Eric Andre’s passing [onto better and brighter things] with a short diatribe how this episode sought to exacerbate my disappointment with reminders of Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23. For one, Claire’s fiance is Ben Lawson, who appeared on the show as Chloe’s love interest, and that’s a big one. The other is less so, because a bunch of kooky store names are thrown around ["Get the Frock Out", "Unbeweavable", "The Wandering Juice"] for huge laughs. Listen up, 2BG writers’ room, this was the coffee shop where June and Mark worked on the other [better] show:

You know how often that was brought up? Literally never.

Current Total: $2,850.

New Total: $2,650. This makes zero sense to me. As far as I can tell Caroline received money for the cake they made for Claire’s wedding, yet this New Total shows a deficit of $200. The only solution I can come up with is that Max used so much ingredients to match the bride’s shifting requests that they didn’t break even. See 1 broke guy’s explanation in the comments below.

The Title Refers To: Caroline see what Max has baked and tells her “That’s quite a cake cake cake!” I have no idea of this is a reference to anything, but the audience thought it was funny.

Stray Observations:

• Caroline cries to get bigger tips, which should be a surprise to absolutely no one.
• Lots of tax talk this episode, which is exactly the kind of reality I don’t like to be reminded of.
• Han’s moccasins are controversial.
• “Too bad, that homeless guy almost had a front Porsche.”
• Claire was on that plane that crashed in the Hudson, so now everything has just kinda been “meh.”
• I made a gif of this because I thought it was that funny [it took time, so be grateful]:

• “You think ’cause I’m fake-smiling I won’t throw you down a flight of stairs?”
• I legitimately didn’t understand the joke involving the shot mannequins, “draw a teardrop on your face and they’ll move it to Banana Republic.” Assumed it had something to do with gangs.
• Scrubs did the double-vasectomy [and double reversal] joke first.
• The song playing during the dance is Sam Hart’s “Mario Kart Love Song”, so huge props to whoever made that happen.

• You should all read this thoroughly enlightening account of someone who attended the live taping of this episode.
• Max’s joke that made me feel legitimately uncomfortable: “Man, why does every uncle I know try to screw me?” I literally grimaced.
• 2 Broke Girls Cheesecake Menu: Nothing of note, really. Refer to the gif above, I guess.