This
third episode is a fun one. Plenty of
wheeling and dealing, which looks to be par for the course for this show, and
lots of good stuff for Blair/Andrew Rannells.
The group
has some shares they need to hide away for a while, so Dawn organizes a
divide-and-conquer approach to keep them off the records of the firm’s official
holdings before quarterly reports are due.
Meanwhile, Mo has a particular need to establish a “father/son”
relationship with Blair and takes the young trader out for a lavish night on
the town.
The
scheming is definitely becoming a regular occurrence, but it’s consistently
entertaining. The “hide the shares”
shell game here is interesting, as it requires the traders to be underhanded in
a fairly personal way, and it’s neat to see how they react to having to do that. We learn quite a bit more about Dawn and
where she comes from (the dynamic between her and her parents is really good,)
as well as seeing more of the home life of another trader, Keith.
Mo wining
and dining Blair is so much fun (after getting advice from the other guys on
how to be a “father” to Blair, Mo decides that it’s just like dating, but
without the sex.) Obviously, there’s
lots of showing off his decadent lifestyle, impressing upon Blair the fact that
he’s rolling with the big boys now, but Blair isn’t entirely one to be “wooed”
in the typical way – or at least what passes for typical in Mo’s mind, since
some of his ideas are comically outrageous.
But Mo finds he also needs to relate to Blair on a personal level. As self-involved as Mo is, he’s a shrewd
judge of character too and usually has a pretty good eye for giving people what
they want.
Rannells
plays wonderfully well off of Don Cheadle, the naïve greenhorn to Mo’s master
manipulator. Rannells has awesome
reaction shots throughout, and it’s fun to watch Blair basically clinging on
for dear life over the course of the wild night that Mo takes him on. His line reading on, “Maybe this is the
cocaine talking, but can we get some more cocaine?” is hilarious.
There are
also some great scenes between Blair and his fiancée Tiff (played by Casey
Wilson.) The two have such
entertainingly-dysfunctional energy together, with a sex life that seems
largely fueled by screaming insults at each other. Here, as they argue over whether or not Tiff
should buy them things with her dad’s money (Blair is against it, wanting to
prove he can support them himself,) they argue hilariously/wrongly about
whether Tiff’s parents would, ahem, “satisfy” her better than Blair can, and I
love Blair’s dismayed reaction to Tiff asking if her dad can just buy them one trash compactor – “How many were you
wanting?!” These two bounce perfectly off each other and
are so crazy together.
Side
note: the episode additionally features
Melissa Rauch in a small role. It took
me a while to realize it was really her – I’m so used to seeing her on The Big Bang Theory that I didn’t
recognize her at first without her “Bernadette” voice.
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