Okay, so episode 2 of White Van Man is a huge step up from the pilot. First of all, there’s a lot more Joel Fry/Darren, which is terrific, but it’s not just that. The humor is less broad and more offbeat, and the different subplots come together in entertaining ways. It definitely has me excited to see more of the show!
Ollie is aggravated when he realizes he doesn’t have any business cards and the business’s number isn’t painted on the back of the van, causing him to lose a potential (attractive female) clients. Despite Tony’s insistence that they get their customers through word of mouth, Ollie sets out to change that. He prints flyers and wants to get a website set up. For the website, Liz at the hardware store suggests Darren’s “girlfriend,” a woman he’s been gaming with online.
Right from the start, this episode feels more self-assured and distinct than the pilot. We open on a couple having a shouting match, with the punchline that Ollie’s been fixing the sink throughout the argument—now he’s stuck trying to figure out how to get paid for the job amid all the drama. We’ve also got Ollie decorating his flyers with a hammer and sickle (“I thought they were workman’s tools!”), a roving band of kids Darren ropes into passing them out, and the local mafia of “handyman families.”
Darren unapologetically remains my favorite character, but I’m enjoying the rest of the cast more as well. Ollie is fun as an exasperated straight man, someone who thinks he’s a bit above the world of handymen but is continually reminded that he doesn’t know as much as he thinks. I really like Liz, who’s down-to-earth and gives back to Darren as good as she gets. She’s crushing on Ollie, who in turn is crushing on Emma—so far, I’m hoping the love triangle shakes out in Liz’s favor, but I’m open to being convinced about Emma. While she feels like the least well-defined character at this point, fingers crossed that we’ll get more for her, because I do like Georgia Moffett. Tony strikes a nice balance between thinking Ollie’s hopeless and understatedly reassuring him when he screws things up.
I really liked Darren in the pilot, but I kind of love him here! He cements his role as both an inattentive slacker and someone who’s sharper/more capable than you might assume from a first impression. While Ollie is dealing with the screaming couple in the opening scene, Darren gives him a call, completely indifferent to the mayhem in the background as he asks what to get Ollie for lunch. “I can’t talk now, Darren!” Ollie cries in a panic, and Darren deadpans in response, “Well, you shouldn’t have answered the phone, then.” When Ollie gives him a stack of flyers to hand out, Darren unloads them on a trio of kids—clapping at them like sled dogs as he pumps them up—then promptly heads to the hardware store to take a nap in the storeroom. At the same time, Darren immediately notices Ollie’s hammer-and-sickle mistake on the flyers, and as someone starts messing with the van, Darren is the one who realizes what’s happening and why. Joel Fry is great in the role. He’s really funny, and he does a good job with those shifts between lazy/oblivious and competent/smart, keeping you guessing while still feeling like the character has an internal consistency.
Side note: I wonder what Darren was like working under Tony. I definitely can’t see Mr. “A Real Handyman Wakes Up at 6 a.m.” putting up with Darren’s shirking, so did Darren toe the line for him? Is it just that he doesn’t respect Ollie? But then, maybe Tony didn’t ask anything of Darren besides actual handyman work, which he can do well. It’s a lot of the extraneous stuff that Darren balks at—reading the schedule, picking up supplies, handing out flyers—and I could see Tony as the sort of man who preferred handling all the extra details himself. So in that sense, maybe they worked well together.
Another aspect of Darren that was introduced in the pilot and continues here is his role as the horny sidekick. Not my favorite part of the character, unsurprisingly, but it has its moments. In this episode, there’s a scene where Darren is on the phone with Ollie and makes a remark about tits. As he’s talking, he gives a sort of “hiya” nod and grin to two women nearby. I like it because he’s not actually hitting on or being pervy to them—rather he’s just acknowledging them in a friendly way, not realizing that he probably shouldn’t be talking about tits while he’s waiting in line at a cafe. However, this episode also lets us see Darren interact with a woman he likes romantically. Everybody gives Darren crap about Kat, the woman he’s been gaming with. At first, it’s cracks like, “I say ‘her,’ it’s probably a bloke,” and later, it’s laughing at his and Kat’s mutual love of nerd stuff. Darren gets kind of sulky and defensive about the teasing, but when he’s with Kat, it’s obvious that he’s gaga about her, which is sweet to see. I love this moment where he’s holding their drinks as she plays an arcade game, and he’s so hyped about how well she’s doing that he stands there in amazement, clutching both glasses to his temples. Definitely my pick for Fry’s best bit of physicality this episode.
Lastly, Darren does two teeny-tiny impressions in this episode that crack me up: a quick David Bowie impression while talking to Liz about Labyrinth and a quick Spock impression while talking to Kat about Star Trek. Neither of these are more than a second long—for Bowie, it’s literally just while he’s saying the words “David Bowie”—but both are really fun!
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