*A few relationship spoilers.*
I enjoy this season finale. It brings some of the ongoing plots to a resolution while introducing some new wrinkles for season 6, and it takes a weird, ambitious turn that I think pays off.
Dissatisfied with all of his puberty creatures, Nick returns to the office of Human Resources to demand restitution. Meanwhile, back on Earth, Missy needs help to get out from under her Hate Worm, and Matthew wavers when he starts to think about what a relationship with Jay might actually look like. Everything comes together at Devin and DeVon’s New Year’s Eve party.
To an extent, the increasing focus on different puberty creatures over the seasons, including scenes this season of creatures hanging out at Human Resources without any humans present, is a ramp up to the new Human Resources spin-off premiering later this month. Entertainment-industry synergy, backdoor pilots, they’re a thing. But I still like how the culmination of Nick’s story takes him there. It’s not afraid to get weird and meta, and the episode even admits that the gambit may or may not work, but it works for me.
Admittedly, though, I’m more interested in what’s happening on Earth. First of all, we naturally have the humor. There are some delightfully great one-liners at the New Year’s Eve party, my favorites being Connie’s “What does this little Bilbo Baggins bitch want?” and Lola’s “You’re a day late and a dick short!” I also greatly enjoy Andrew’s bursts of overconfidence about his awkward pubescent body, so I get a kick out of, “I’m gonna hit the dance floor and jiggle this creamy bowl of chowder!”
As Missy’s been dealing with her Hate Worm, she’s had fewer people trying to reach out and help her than Nick has, so I enjoy seeing some help finally come to her from a slightly unexpected source. In season 4, Missy spent a lot of time figuring herself out, and now in season 5, she’s struggled to deal with people’s reactions to her. She finds a bit of peace and strength in the finale, and I hope it helps her moving forward.
The Matthew/Jay story here is basically what I’ve been waiting for ever since Matthew realized he was into Jay, and it didn’t disappoint. It’s one thing for polished, put-together Matthew to daydream about Jay from afar, but as Jessi and Lola have learned, actually being with him is an entirely different animal, and their personalities clash in predictably spectacular fashion.
I’ve talked plenty of times about Andrew Rannells’s talent for dry humor, delivering absurd lines utterly straight, but he’s also great at reacting to completely brain-breaking scenarios with relish. This, naturally, plays beautifully off of Jason Mantzoukas’s wild, erratic Jay. How much do I love it when Matthew, at the end of his rope, exclaims, “You’re like a feral beast that needs to be put down before it bites a toddler”? I think I’m coming around on the idea of Matthew and Jay together, regardless of how little sense it might make, because it’d just be so much fun.
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