*A couple season arc spoilers, though they’re pretty obvious ones.*
This was a great episode. I liked it a lot—the plots were really firing on all cylinders. Also, wow, after spending so long on the first season of DuckTales, it feels a little wild that I’m already halfway through the season.
Over the course of running their sex therapy business, Otis and Maeve have grown closer. They’re genuine friends now, although Otis is avoiding dealing with some additional, less platonic feelings toward her. This comes to a head when Jackson, Maeve’s secret hookup buddy, comes to Otis for advice on how to pursue a real relationship with her. Elsewhere, Jean gets her motor running care of the rugged, artless man remodeling her bathroom.
I haven’t mentioned Jackson yet, although he’s been around since the first episode. The dynamic between him and Maeve has been classic “popular boy/outsider girl are secretly a thing,” but it’s definitely Jackson who’s been gradually hinting that he wants to do more than just have sex. This unsettles Maeve, who very much does not want a boyfriend, and Otis is stuck in the middle when Jackson comes to him for advice. Otis is anxious and indecisive at the best of times, so this conundrum throws him into a tizzy.
Jackson’s attempts to prove himself boyfriend material are fantastic. He manages to charm a few tips out of Otis, even if the old “pay attention to what she’s interested in” chestnut shouldn’t take an amateur sex therapist to suggest. At either rate, it results in Jackson doing one-handed pushups while he reads Virginia Woolf, which is just top notch. This plot also gives us this great line from Maeve to Otis: “You’re compellingly odd, Milburn.”
The Jean plot is fun. Jakob, her handsome builder, has her wrong-footed from the jump, and as I’ve said, I enjoy seeing the supremely put-together Gillian Anderson become ruffled. After the array of short-lived sexual flings we’ve seen around the house, Jakob is framed as much more of an actual contender.
Eric is a sounding board for Otis in this episode, and he also has a mini side adventure with a disastrous part-time job. I’ve been liking Eric’s escapades these last two episodes; it’s nice that he has things going on that don’t involve Otis. And they aren’t in a complete vacuum, either. Lily, a character from his swing band adventure last week, factors into the main plot in this episode, and Eric’s lamentable attempt here at become a dogwalker leads to a new level of interaction between him and his bully Adam.
It’s in the main plot, though, that Ncuti Gatwa has his best moments. He’s around for the whole Otis/Jackson/Maeve dilemma, and he’s great throughout. Eric is overawed by Jackson’s good looks and popularity, and I really enjoy him introducing himself to Jackson, immediately adding, “Some people know me as tromboner,” for context. He gets the idea for Otis to use his sex therapy powers for personal gain and sabotage Jackson with bad advice, and when Otis objects on ethical grounds, He snaps off a wonderfully-delivered, “After you then, Captain Morality!” And line of the episode goes to Gatwa, as Eric and Otis watch Jackson try out his new Virginia-Woolf-reading routine on Maeve: “So now he’s a feminist! You made the hottest guy in school even hotter. He’s basically Ryan Gosling—well done.”
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