User Reviews

This show has absolutely struggled to find the right balance between comedy and drama. With Bob Odenkirk in the lead role his scenes are usually good, but the misfit cast of comic character actors in supporting roles is not getting the job done.

There was way too much jumping around from hot to cold issues here, and I guess they did succeed in capturing how truly awful dinner parties are, but the show still missed the mark overall. The stuff with young Hank contemplating and attempting suicide and that still manifesting in his present day self? Not the development that makes sense right now with Lucky Hank.

Have you watched a Woody Allen movie from the last 30 years? Sometimes the dialogue is clever, sometimes the performances are great, but other times it feels like a guess at how actual people would talk or act from someone who doesn't interact with them.

That's how I would describe this episode. Enos and Odenkirk were very good. Some of the other actors were not awful at times. But the show always feels like "here's how English professors would act, blah blah tenure, blah blah poetry" but has no "feel" for anything past cliches. Then there's "here's how peak TV should be, blah blah artsy title card, blah blah voiceover, blah blah old songs for the soundtrack". But there's no heart or thought past that. The suicide attempt at the end made NO sense and if it wasn't for the warning at the start of the episode, no one could have seen it coming. You have to earn the casual suicide references and this show's writers don't.

With that said, the acting was good enough to give this a middling grade. There is potential there but I don't think the writing is up to the task.