Past Purges
The Bridge "Eye of the Deep"
Marco doesn't kill Tate. That's an interesting decision. I didn't assume he would. It is strange that he would come that close to doing it, only to prove that he can. That was a very elaborate plan to get him in the prison. There's a lot of ways for that to go wrong, so I would hope that Marco has more of a plan than "you suck, but I'd rather see you live and suffer". Who knows what the full plan is with all this. For now, it's more of a throwback to last season than anything that matters to this season.
Marco chooses not to end the suffering of a person who has wronged him while Sonya mourns that she couldn't be there for Dobbs' end. She's grown a strange attachment to him over the years. It's bizarre that she would be hooking up with his brother but it seems to be doing both her and Jack some good. He seems to be learning more about his brother from that artifacts Sonya has kept over the years and Sonya keeps a connection to Dobbs by having the brother around.
In both cases, those are side quests. We get some forward movement in the cartel story though Daniel and Adriana as the DEA agent reveals that he is the informant, looking for the reporters to do some dirty work that he isn't allowed to. This is the second week in the row that Adriana and Daniel get brought in from the fringes, and it's starting to look like they are the ones who will tie the season together.
Also, Eleanor's a crazy cat lady. That's the smallest surprise of the week.
Married "Uncool"
The further we get from the pilot, the more that Lina and Russ make sense as a couple. They are complete fuck-ups and barely functioning adults. After a couple weeks of situations where they appear to be nearly broke or getting money from friends, we get a bit more of an idea why. Lina hasn't worked for a while and Russ is an artist. They had the surf shop dream which was mentioned last week. It's no surprise that it failed given that neither of them has any business savvy that we've seen, and is there really such a thing as a successful local surf shop?
Lina makes a half-hearted attempt to get her old job back. Scratch that, she made no effort. Beyond her old boss' bad breath, they don't get into what was so bad about the job and it's a childish protest.
Russ tries his best to be responsible by getting his money from the frat boys. He comes off as the bigger adult in that marriage for the first time. I love his complete inability to get past how little respect the
This is turning out to be a much more somber show than I expected with a cast of Judy Greer, Nat Faxon, Jenny Slate, and others. When Lina tells Russ "I don't hate you. I just hate my life, and my life is you." that hits hard. It's kind of sweet but mostly depressing. I'm curious to see if this season is leading somewhere in particular or if it's aiming to be listless.
You're the Worst "What Normal People Do?"
Again, this is a show about a couple made up of two horrible people, not about a horrible couple. Jimmy and Gretchen are still trying to figure out how things are going to work in their relationship. For the second week in a row, the discussion is about living situations. This week was very favorable toward Jimmy's argument as Gretchen's apartment was awful. I find myself siding with Jimmy on many things and this weekend wasn't an exception. Her apartment gave me chills. Your laptop isn't TV. Don't call it that.
I like seeing Edgar and Lindsay bonding. Lindsay has been used up to now as a sounding board for Gretchen to complain about Jimmy and little else. Edgar simply needs to be around someone sympathetic for a change.
Some other assorted quirks I enjoyed:
-Jimmy wearing Edgar's "war costume" to get a discount .
-The happiest pizza man in the world.
-The movie at the end, starring that guy from NCIS: LA.
Girl Meets World "Girl Meets Popular"
Oh boy, was there ever fan service. This is the first time I remember there being gasps and cheers since the pilot. there was plenty there for the younger audiences with Riley's Harajuku girl transformation and on the nose Sword of Damocles references. Corey's delight at the party falling apart was infectious.
This was the first time in a while that was explicitly written for Boy Meets World fans. For god's sake, they used a clip from season one. We get some vintage season one Topanga (kind of like that one episode of Boy Meets World in which Topanga remembers that she used to be weird). I was amazed how much crowd cheering they had for those callbacks. Then, the plot about being invited to 7th grade parties is a direct call-back to a Boy Meets World episode (complete with a joke by Corey about that). The exact handling isn't the same, which is smart.
I didn't expect the cheering over Cloris Leachman. How many Disney Channel viewers actually know who she is? Granted, I recall the episode of Boy Meets World that featured Olivia Hussey for a well placed Romeo and Juliet joke eliciting massive cheers and no one understanding why.
This is always going to be a series that lives in the shadow of what came before it, and so far they are doing a good job serving both the past and the present.
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