Episode 15 - Dave Returns
6 March 2012
I found this very frustrating.
When Dave (Louis CK) was on the show back in season two he was extremely honest and earnest. Here he comes back and initially hides his feelings for Leslie before inappropriately trying to share them when Ben is around. Meanwhile Ben, a generally sane character, is acting like a weirdo in front of cops for no explainable reason. The result of this was some horrible dialogue that sounded nothing like what real people say (I hated Ben whining about Dave having a gun. As if Ben Wyatt the sane character would actually believe Dave would use it on him. Ridiculous). Â
I see this so often in current sit coms and it's very irritating. You have three characters all trying to redirect the conversation to their benefit while superficially pretending to say normal things. If you've watched sit coms for any length of time you know that this gag can only work when the characters intentions are clear and the audience are the only ones who know the whole truth. We didn't need Ben to have his own issues playing out at the same time that Dave wanted to be alone with Leslie. It was needlessly complicated.
We also had to deal with Dave implausibly handcuffing Ben in the bathroom. It's hard to enjoy that kind of silliness when it's being done implausibly out of character. We didn't even get to enjoy the comedy of Ben being stuck there because Leslie frees him and forgives Dave. By wrapping it all up in a Leslie-is-the-best ending there was no sense that Dave's feelings for her were as strong as they needed to be to justify his actions.
The same problems infected Tom's behaviour. He was back to his season two worst (when he showed zero understanding of his "wife" Wendy) and seemed to have learnt nothing from his time with Lucy. Or indeed from Entertainment 720 or any of his little moments of personal growth. He latched on to Ann in a desperate and pathetic way and the writers just kept feeding that side of him. He had no redeeming moments so Ann looked equally pathetic for agreeing to spend more time with him and any sense that he was a lovable underdog was ground out of the story.
Andy's efforts on behalf of Leslie were very sweet and Ron's music expertise was a fine way to cap off the C plot. Despite that this episode was not good and showed a fundamental misunderstanding of romantic comedy storytelling.
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