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Another view of Episode 9

Zap2it has a completely different view of episode 9. They thought it was a subpar episode. I think the review is quite good despite the obvious difference in opinion. Ryan is a much better writer than I pretend to be..

All wet on ‘Flight of the Conchords’…

By Ryan McGee
August 12, 10:20 PM
Road trips are historically a safe recipe for comedy. Movies such as National Lampoon’s Vacation, Little Miss Sunshine, and Thelma and Louise are all hysterical examples. OK, so maybe not Thelma and Louise. But still, one must be careful when executing a road trip comedy, lest it end up like Are We There Yet or this week’s episode of Flight of the Conchords, sadly the first bust of the nascent series.

The episode revolved around Murray’s attempts to take the boys out on their very first road trip. Murray funds the tour by cleaning out the bulk of her personals savings and investing it in the group, which is only slightly less stupid than banking one’s personal fortune on an independent film starring Carrot Top.

But that’s our Murray, whose character received an unfortunately sad shading this week. It’s one thing for him to be a clueless manager: we can laugh at him and his fascination with Tech Support Girl and the like. But when he’s both brow-beaten by his on-again, off-again wife, and continually losing money due to naiveté to, well, the laughs don’t come as easily. That would be fine if this were a dramedy, but for a comedy, it’s perhaps a bit too much.

The running gag throughout the episode was that Murray felt Jemaine was responsible for every “rock star”-esque activity that the band pulled off on tour. From eating a forbidden bag of mixed nuts from the hotel room, to “tossing” a television out the window, to going all the way back to 1989 and buying leather suits, everything and anything was Jemaine’s fault in Murray’s eyes. Bret was hardly a wild-child duping his manager, but did manage to inadvertently cost Murray the bulk of his savings.

The final straw came when the boys, replete with shrunken leather suits, were seduced/scammed by a women’s water polo team into paying for all of their drinks on their room tab. These ladies led to the titular (and only) song of the night, “Mermaids,” which was really only half a song with only a few chuckle-inducing lines. How far we’ve come from “Most Beautiful Girl in the Room” and “The Humans are Dead,” the standout songs from the pilot episode. I know it’s hard to write consistently good songs, so I’m willing to chalk this up as a one-off, but it was probably the worst song in the series so far.

Were there highlights? Absolutely. Meg continues to steal every scene she’s in, and given the fact that her role never seems to consist of more than sixty seconds of scream time, so props to Kristen Schaal for making those precious seconds count. I’m anxiously awaiting the upcoming song “Postal,” which the boys will sing once Mel’s husband snaps and comes at them with a chainsaw. (OK, I made that up, but there’s one percolating pot o’ rage underneath Doug’s male-pattern baldness.) And seeing Kate Pierson from the B-52s was a pleasant surprise, prompting me to listen to “Rock Lobster” in lieu of “Mermaids” on my iTunes while writing this recap.

But by the time the boys ended up in Newark (not Central Park, a gig that was too good to be true from the get-go and thus yielded no surprise twist at the end), I was as happy as the band that this road trip was over. A philosopher once said that every rose has its thorn, and by that logic, every great series has its subpar episode. But that philosopher also went on to say that he don’t need nothing but a good time, which is what Bret and Jemaine usually bring us. So by next week, let’s hope they’ve righted the ship and continue to bring us the show we’ve come to know and love.

Did you feel this week’s episode stood up to previous ones? Should there be more Mel, or is she best in tiny doses? And what type of machinery exists to extract Jemaine from his leather suit?

From: Zap2it blog