Because
Adam Schlesinger died yesterday, I’m staying home today for the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend cast and crew, along
with everyone else who’s lost someone to this crisis.
Splitting
up the two-part season premiere into two different Book of Rannells posts put
me a week behind Black Monday’s
airing schedule, but since Andrew Rannells’s Blair didn’t appear in last week’s
episode, we’re back on schedule. While episode 3 is excellent, I’m glad to see Blair back this week in a
delightfully-fun episode (relationship spoilers.)
Dawn
and Blair’s next big venture depends on a pivotal congressional vote to
deregulate banks – the season premiere saw Blair wooing the influential
Congressman Harris to make it happen, and they both took the word “wooing” a
little more literally than is usually intended in these cases. But as the vote
nears, Harris’s cooperation is imperiled when his wife (the daughter of a
renowned televangelist) comes to Dawn with her suspicions that Harris is having
an affair. Meanwhile, when Wayne and Yassir are both accused of having left a
photocopy of a penis in their now female-dominated office, Wayne is determined
to get to the bottom of it.
Shows
that take place in the past commenting on the present is nothing new, and Black Monday itself has included such
winking references before. This episode, though, leans especially hard into
that type of thing. There’s a sly reference to Congress’s inability to address
gun violence, Harris’s relationship with his wife Corky is blatantly modeled
after the Pences (Blair and Dawn’s reactions at hearing them refer to each
other as “Mother” and “Father” are priceless,) and Wayne and Yassir’s whole
subplot revolves around the issue of workplace harassment and includes a
recurring joke about the as-yet-uncoined term “dick pic.” Mostly, I think all
the individual nods work, although it does feel a little odd to have so many in
the same episode.
All
kinds of great comedy here. Some of the best moments include Dawn trying to
play it cool when she realizes that Corky thinks Harris and Blair are going off
together to both cheat on their wives with
other women, Yassir misunderstanding how to act as the “bad cop” in an
investigation, and a farcical situation at a country club resulting in all the
white patrons thinking Dawn must be a celebrity (because how else would a Black
woman be at a country club?)
It’s
a great episode for Blair. He gets some fantastically funny bits to do. The
whole “reassuring Corky” scenario involves throwing her off the scent by
pretending he and Harris were just getting together to play golf, and so we get
to hear the clueless-about-sports Blair utter a phrase to the effect of “pick
out my whacking pole from the ole quiver.” We also get a fun sequence involving
a drugged-up Blair, and both this show and Girls
have ably demonstrated how hilariously Rannells can play drunk/high. But there
are a few more dramatic scenes too, with Blair showing a little vulnerability
in his burgeoning affair/relationship with Harris.
I’m
really enjoying Tuc Watkins’s presence on the show as Harris. Obviously, the
residual love of remembering how well Rannells and Watkins played off of each
other in The Boys in the Band is a
factor (so excited for the upcoming Netflix adaptation of that production!),
but Black Monday gives me a chance to
see those two play two very different characters in a very different kind of
romantic relationship. It’s neat to do see, and both Rannells and Watkins are
great here. (Also, since watching this episode, I learned that Rannells and
Watkins are a real-life item, so I’m sure that helps!)
No comments:
Post a Comment