Last December it was announced over at The A.V. Club’s TV Club that “And The High Holidays” would be the last episode of 2 Broke Girls that they reviewed. As someone who has paid more attention to the show than it probably deserves, I felt that it was my time to take upon the mantle.

The mantle may or may not include a brand new “Evan Yeong Madness Watch” as such features have been put together [and probably for good reason] by the comments section over at The A.V. Club.

As a last point before I start, I write this with the assumption that you have a reasonable working knowledge of the show. If not, you can always read the other reviews here.

2 Broke Girls‘ return to television since its mid-season finale last night opens up where the centre of the show has shifted: the girls’ cupcake shop. Where the cold opens used to consist largely of Max snarking at customers in the diner, the status quo apparently consists of Max snarking  at [this time in asides] a customer at their shop.

The aforementioned woman tastes the girls’ wares with an enthusiasm that borders on the sexual, and it’s revealed that she has an upcoming wedding. Caroline is, as history dictates, optimistic that large sales are coming their way. Max is jaded and skeptical because she lived in a car growing up.

Back at the diner Han is holding some kind of raffle. Max makes a joke about Han being a “big promo,” because, as I’ve discussed before, apparently it is okay to have the long-running theme of calling a character gay when the producer and creator of the show is himself a homosexual.  The prize is a 2-room suite in the country, complete with a fireplace, because “daddy don’t skimp.”

Sophie enters to the usual undeserved round of applause, throws her business card into the goldfish bowl, and proceeds to choose the winning card. Her schemes[?] to win the prize herself ultimately fails when the card she pulls out is for Max’s Homemade Cupcakes.

The complications begin to arise when Caroline tells her boyfriend Andy that “we won a weekend getaway” which he understandably perceives as being for the two of them. This results in Caroline telling both Max and Andy that the other is the third wheel of the trip, and then they’re off to the country.

Lame car games aside [though Caroline gleefully answering herself to Max's "I spy something annoying"  because she loves to win made me smile] this scene largely serves to introduce the idea that Max believes in alien abductions. That is all.

Original MADtv cast member Craig Anton is wonderful as the pony-tailed man who shows them their room. But my amusement at his presence was quickly stomped by the following exchange that draws laughs out of a possible past of sexual abuse:

Caroline: Come over here closer you big Eagle Scout.

Andy: Well now you sound like my scout master.

I, for whatever reason, did not realize how exhausting it could be doing a blow-by-blow of an entire episode of 2 Broke Girls, so we are moving ahead quickly. I can’t say I was actually proud of guessing what [or in this case, who] the bears in the episode title were referring to, since it’s just so on the nose. The large gay men in this case being named Deke and Derk, who were so pleasant and friendly it was hard not to like them.

There’s a little bit of tension introduced when dinner for two is served to Max, Caroline, and Andy, but the writing wasn’t quite tight enough to pull it off. Max’s eagerness to eat the food on every plate competes with Andy’s desire to share a romantic evening with his girlfriend, and Caroline’s decision to take a relaxing bath and remove herself from the equation was fairly believable but just not very funny. The other two talk over their food to reveal that a) it’s Andy’s birthday, and b) him and Caroline have not had sex in many a fortnight. Max is talked into visiting “Yogi and Boo-boo next door” and then, just as she’s about to leave, they dial up the drama.

Caroline completely forgot Andy’s birthday. Max frantically knocks at the adjacent cabin’s door for the bears to let her in. Max reveals she knew about their dry spell. Max pleads for the aliens to take her away for the love of God please now before it’s too late. In her absence Caroline and Andy are left to discuss the future of their relationship, and the latter is forced to see that the girls’ business clearly takes priority over the two of them. Andy makes his own way home and Caroline goes to join Max who is cuddling with the bears.

Back at the shop, Andy and Carline talk again, and Andy tells her that maybe they should take a break. It’s all pretty well-trod material sitcom wise, but Andy responds to Caroline saying it’ll be hard not seeing him with the line “Yeah, it will be. I work ten feet away” that’s delivered with a surprising amount of heartbreaking sincerity. Max yells for E.T. et al. to take her away when the shop is stormed by the bride’s equally large [and hungry] bridesmaids.

It makes perfect sense that Caroline’s relationship was doomed to fail in light of her work-centric lifestyle, and the fact that Andy remains so close to their shop hints that this isn’t the last we’ll see of them. While not the funniest episode [and yes, they do exist] “And the Bear Truth” does a reasonably good job highlighting a failure to communicate while also featuring two lovable fat gay guys.

The money counter at the end jumps up from $100 to $900, and I suppose it’s just assumed that their wedding deal went through. I’m not sure what they’re counting up to anymore, but it’s good to see their profits go up for once. This is my first time really covering a show [my review of Underemployed was scanter due to its being a pilot] and I hope to pare these down by a lot.

Stray Observations:

• I first heard about swinging beds just this past weekend, and was thrilled to see one hanging in the middle of their cabin.
• Max opens up a pair of slippers and, as she walks out, almost sings Granddad’s new shoes song in its entirety before Caroline interrupts her. 
• Considering how many supporting characters remain in the diner, it’ll be interesting to see how the show deals with Max and Caroline spending less and less time there.
• A trend I’ve noticed has forced me to start a 2 Broke Girls Cheesecake Menu to highlight when and how the girls show off a little somethin’ somethin’: In this episode, Max and Caroline wrapped in towels in the sauna [Beth Behrs glistening with sweat to increase authenticity].

This episode begins with Caroline reminding Max [and the rest of us] that “this isn’t the diner where everything comes with attitude and E. coli.” The fact that the cold open takes place in the cupcake shop doesn’t stop her from snarking at a drumming customer in overalls, though. Insert comment from me about how the show’s centre seems to be moving further away from the diner.

Soon enough Andy shows up, forcing Caroline into hiding [they broke up, remember?]. It also kicks off a fairly decent running joke about how Max doesn’t recall having slept with the guy at the record store. Kat Denning’s delivery of the following line actually made me chuckle out loud:

Andy:  Oh, by the way, the guy at the record store says hi.

Max: Well, you tell him I said . . Who are you?

This conversation also reveals one of the big concepts in the episode: your friends keeping in contact with your ex. Max and Andy have bonded over texting each other pictures of unlikely animal couples, and you can rest assured that it’s going to cause some sort of trouble later on in the episode.

Ah, sorry, I forgot to mention that in this episode Max and Caroline are tired. Tired enough for Max to pull down her pants in the middle of the cupcake shop and for Caroline to doze off while taking orders. This creates complications, of course, when her sleep deprivation causes Caroline to remember that they have an order for 1000 cupcakes due the next day at 10 a.m.

So the girls race out, leaving Han hanging, only for Caroline to kick the shim out from under their oven, rendering it unusable. Fun fact: a shim is “a thin and often tapered or wedged piece of material,” and not a pronoun for transexuals like Caroline posits. Seconds later and the girls race back to the diner they abandoned to use the oven/kitchen there. Instead of being understandably upset, Han and the others are actually really cool about it, offering to stay up late and help finish their order. They’ve really tried to push the idea of them being a more-or-less happy, dysfunctional family, and this approach is more heavy-handed than most.

Also allow me to say that Matthew Moy, who plays Han, kills it this week with the material given to him. Max reaches around his body to show him how to properly ice cupcakes only to have him squirt the sugary glaze all over the place [haha, premature ejaculation joke, we get it]. Moy’s distressed cries of “Oh, oh, I’m humiliated!” really lands here. Check the “Stray Observations” below to check out the other one.

The girls are alone, and just about done with the order when it turns out that Max has lost an earring, presumably in the batter. This forces the two to start destroying the cupcakes to find them, and soon, with bits of baked goods underneath every fingernail, the two are throwing down over Max still talking to Andy and “girl code.”

The scene really stands out due to their argument, which holds a lot more emotional sincerity than most of the feel-good moments on the show. There’s screaming and cupcake throwing and on some level, in spite of the audience laughing and cheering, it feels strangely real, like the two actresses are actually upset at one another.

Anyway, Andy shows up to help and defuses the situation. Him and Caroline end up in the kitchen and talk about how they “glove” each other [why can't we all use kitchen safety to properly express our feelings?] and while they don’t get back together they ultimately end up in a pretty good place. Another breakup takes place when Max and Andy talk, realizing that they should probably stop texting for Caroline’s sake.

Back at the apartment the girls realize that they had switched aprons, and that Max’s earring was in her apron [on Caroline] the entire time. This is really weird, because this discovery is caused by Max finding Caroline’s phone, which doesn’t jive with her texting with her own phone earlier. Anyway, it’s not really worth picking apart, just generally kind of clumsy on the writers’ parts.

The show ends with the usual ka-ching of the money counter, which I suppose now tallies up the profits from the cupcake shop, shooting up from $900 to $4900 due to their huge order. I’m not sure what they’re aiming for, or what their overheads are, but right now it doesn’t seem all that important to the show as a whole.

As a parting note, did anyone else feel like this episode had a lot of dated references? Sure, hipsters were also a topic sort of addressed in CBS’s other Monday sitcom, How I Met Your Mother, but Max also references James Cameron’s Avatar and the 2010 TLC series Sister Wives.

Tune in next week to read my reviews of a show The A.V. Club gave up on a long time ago!

Stray Observations:

• Apparently Earl quit doing cocaine last year, at 75. Guy looks pretty good, all things considering.
• Han’s response to Max telling him he’s 90% head: “It’s not a laughing matter, Max, I broke my mother’s pelvis coming out!”
• The “whoos” at Sophie’s entrance were extremely subdued this week. (•‿•)
• Unlikely animal couples mentioned: monkey tickling a parrot, a black dog spooning a brown dog, deer nursing a turtle, labradoodle high-fiving a koi fish, cat and dolphin kissing, Max and Caroline [awwww].
• 2 Broke Girls Cheesecake Menu: Sophie’s boobs straining to break free from her dress. Oh, and Max pantsing herself in the cold open.

Turns out 2 Broke Girls [and the other, better CBS sitcom] took some time off for some reason or another, so last week was a nice break for me. And now we’re back.

SURPRISE: Max and Caroline are in the diner! The latter complains about only getting $2 for her last tip, because it means that they don’t have enough money to buy supplies for their store. Before we move on, I’d like to point out that tips  and surviving on them to bolster a waiter’s/waitress’ meagre salary is great material for an entire episode [see the Ryan Reynolds film Waiting...]; it’s bizarre that this hasn’t come up sooner. Anyway, the girls steal their ingredients from the diner.

There’s also an exchange that occurs between the two that prompts a particular response from me [see gif on the right]:

Caroline: And we have to sneak all this stuff out. Han’s staying late to do inventory.

Max: Dammit, why does he always have to be so Asian?

Cue laugh track. Cue me wishing everyone involved in this show’s writing would die a slow, painful death. Then everyone conspires to help the girls steal from their employer and that’s the cold open for you.

Back in the shop Caroline has found a site where the two can apply for a small business grant. Why they need the money, I don’t know; the last episode ended with them at $4900. Since they’re technically minorities ["according to the last presidential election"] all they need is a letter of recommendation from another start-up business.  Enter Candy Andy, Caroline’s dreaded ex.

Exit Candy Andy, Caroline’s dreaded ex. Apparently he just up and left, unbeknownst to either of the girls. Middle Eastern guy Amir [played by Amir Talai] braves Max’s onslaught of racism to tell them that he helped Andy move out in the middle of the night. He also dishes out just about as much as he takes, which is nice but still not ideal.

Seven minutes in and the premise of our episode shows up in the form of a pushy psychic who talks Caroline into spending $50 on a reading [that she will die alone] and crystal “you can’t snort.” One midnight talk between the girls later and they’ve come to get their money back. Max’s snark causes the psychic to point a fork at them and say “psst”; this means they are now cursed.

As sitcom law would dictate, Max doesn’t believe in the curse while Caroline insists they pay the woman another $50 to nix their bad juju. Then a man jumps out of a window and smacks the pavement near where they’re standing.

Earlier on in the episode Han refuses to sign Caroline’s pre-written note of recommendation due to having morals, a decision Earl negates by just forging his signature as part of a vast conspiracy by all to work for the man but not respect him in the least. Han writes his own letter since he is a decent guy, which reads as saying that Caroline will die alone because she loves business.

After Jennifer Coolidge [Sophie] hams it up like crazy after hearing they’re cursed and Max breaks the glass shelf with all the booze, the girls are back at the psychic’s place. Two “pssts” and the curse is lifted. She does decide to give Max a free reading, though, and it is as follows: a happy life, over $10,000 in her near future [the grant!], and great love and children. Caroline will still die alone, but “with nothing but her great success.”

She’s pretty thrilled about this until they see a mailbox being unbolted from the sidewalk. The mailbox in which Caroline put their grant application. Oh well. It snows like the psychic predicted, though, so Caroline isn’t sure what’s up. The two agree that their readings are two parts of a whole [success + love] and that maybe things aren’t so bad after all. The end.

Since this is supposed to be a review and not just a play-by-play of the episode, let share a few thoughts. Thought #1: this episode was horrible. I do believe that much of the blame for this lies on the writing credit given to co-creator Michael Patrick King. This is probably also the reason for the excessive amount of racist and rape-related jokes this episode. Please remember that this is a man who is sort of a horrible person. For him edginess equates comedy, and it explains a lot of the terrible dialogue that was present.

Lastly, I mentioned in my last review that I’m not sure what the final tally is supposed to indicate anymore. Wikipedia dubs it “Final tally for cupcake business venture,” but shouldn’t it now read “Final tally from cupcake business venture”? The episode ends with them having been shysted out of $100 by the psychic, leaving them at $4800.

Stray Observations:

• I would actually like to see a lot more of Amir in the future. He had great chemistry with both of the girls, and it takes a talented actor to rise above the material given [and targeted at] him.
• The audience members cheering at Sophie’s entrance were barely audible, it’s like their hearts just aren’t into it anymore.
• Max’s essentials: food and the penguin statue at the dollar store that says “Chill Out!”
• 2 Broke Girls Cheesecake Menu: Pretty weak this time around. Caroline stuffs eggs into the front of her shirt. Sophie is dressed pretty provocatively as usual, but I feel that shouldn’t count anymore.

Now I normally don’t grade my reviews, but after watching this episode I wish I had started back with Episode 13. Without ratings there’s no way of indicating how huge the drop of quality is which occurred between last week and this week. What I am saying is that this was not a good 21 minutes of television. With that being said, this review will take place in the form of a bullet pointed list.

• Caroline and Max are in the diner and Max snarks at Han.
• Depressed by the fact that they’re spending their Friday night replacing ketchup bottles, they decide to go to a Ravonettes’ show.
• [They don't have tickets, but they feel like breasts should suffice]
• They get in because Max jokes with a British guy about how a trash can is her boyfriend.
• After sleeping with him she manages to snag a fancy high-class plane trip to the Grammys for both Caroline and herself.
• On that plane is Grammy-nominated rapper 2 Chainz [as seen in the picture above].
• Something about the plane they’re on being the Channings’ [Caroline's family] old private jet. Also: Max has never been on a plane before.
• Max somehow breaks the plane when visiting the cockpit and after a quick cut from the two strapping in their seatbelts we see them in a cheap motel.
• They watch the Grammys while wearing pretty dresses though, so it’s okay. Also they’re taking an economy class flight back to NYC the next day.

And that’s it. That’s what happens. I mean, sure I could mention the fact that the captain of the plane [an old friend of Caroline's] asks her out on a date which she accepts [at 2 Chainz's insistence] to ensure their safety in the air. I could also mention that Caroline loves 2 Chainz’s track “Birthday Song” so much that she raps the chorus at least twice in this episode. That ultimately wouldn’t help, though.

I can’t tell, for the life of me, what this episode was supposed to be doing. Caroline mentions that she recently broke up with Andy [see previous reviews] and that Max is easy, so why not spend a night out on the town, and that makes perfect sense. At the end of the episode, however, we’re led to believe that Max’s boyfriend is the British guy [are we really supposed to believe she's tying herself down?] and that Caroline’s is “Captain Facelift” [he got plastic surgery, ha ha ha]. Are we expected to take that seriously, or not?

Celebrity cameos aren’t a big deal [as it turns out, this week's HIMYM also featured one by another famous African-American {hello, Black History Month}]; they can be pivotal to the plot of an episode or simply just there for audiences to get a kick out of. In this instance, I feel like CBS asked 2 Chainz if he wanted to be on their show and didn’t know what to do with him when he accepted. Apparently [and "Birthday Song" attest to this] he likes “big booty hos” and sleeping while flying, and that’s about all he really contributes.

Probably the biggest problem I had with this episode [and I echo the sentiments of past 2 Broke Girls reviewer Todd Van Der Werff] is that there was so much potential. Growing up as a poor girl Max never had the opportunity to even sit in a plane, and it’s an understandably foreign experience. Instead of feeling the discomfort of squeezing past your seatmate to visit the bathroom [which has a line outside] or choking down gross airplane food like the rest of us mere mortals she’s instead given hot towels by a French stewardess and eats prosciutto off of a reasonably sized refreshment table. This isn’t something that the show’s audience as a whole can relate with.

What I want now, more than ever, is for Max and Caroline to return to their wacky hijinks of finding ways to make/save money. I miss their adventures of signing up for drug trials and “extreme couponing” and donating their eggs. Most people don’t have great jobs or that much money, and while not [ever] being a great show it was at least relatable on some level. Now we have the two girls travelling on a private jet to the Grammys. 

Maybe this is just an indicator that an EVAN YEONG MADNESS WATCH would have been a good thing to institute after all. I’ve been willing to acknowledge this show’s failing from the start, but this week managed to find even my low expectations disappointed. From what I can tell next week Max and Caroline will break a street performer’s hip. I’m not sure what to expect, but I think doing worse would be a challenge; this was like the Aliens: Colonial Marines of 2 Broke Girls  episodes.

Stray Observations:

• Outside the Ravonettes’ concert a scalper in a cow costume offers them free tickets if “the blonde one milks [him].” He was waiting all night to say that to someone.
• On a positive note, Han keeps up the recent trend of having other characters snark back at Max. He nails the delivery, too.

Max: “But be careful, Han female-to-male [sex changes] can be tricky.”
Han: “Welllllllll. You would know.”

• This was 2 Chainz acting debut, poor guy.
• Caroline’s French accent is atrocious.
• Much to my disdain, the whoops at Sophie’s entrance are back in full force. Guess CBS noticed how lacklustre they’ve been lately.
• 2 Broke Girls Cheesecake Menu: While posing next to a sleeping 2 Chainz for a picture Max cups her breasts and pulls out a duckface. Later Caroline poses with her booty next to his head, but the two instances really aren’t comparable.

I finished writing my last review with sort of a bad taste in my mouth, so I decided to try approaching this episode with the same curious naivete with which I viewed Season 1.  

It’s a tried and true television trope to have the characters of your sitcom blackmailed, and in this case that takes the form of an actual lawsuit. Caroline and Max have recently started making big bucks with their cupcake shop [more on that later] when street performer/puppeteer J. Petto [played by Andy Dick] starts scaring off their customers by setting up out front. After they’ve told him to get out he storms into the storm, only to have him slip on a doughnut and fall and break a hip.

The hip, of course, belongs to his puppet, Charming Pierre. The two girls are sued, but agree to pay him $1000 to avoid going to court [they obviously have no insurance on their cupcake shop]. After they’ve paid the man he demands more, which leads to Max kidnapping Pierre. When Petto shows up he’s forced to watch his beloved marionette forced into compromising situations involving two naked Barbie dolls [one male, one female], and promises to call off the lawsuit. That just about sums up the entire episode.

At this point in time, the primary cast of 2 Broke Girls can arguably be boiled down to just Max and Caroline. Sure, the gang back at the diner are close second-stringers [Han, Oleg, Earl, and Sophie], but there’s no way they’re ever going to dominate an episode. The camera will never pan back and forth between Max and Caroline running the shop while Oleg and Earl figure play pranks on Han; this is a one-plot show. And that singular plot had better be amusing, because we’re not allowed the distraction of another to take us away from it. With a title like 2 Broke Girls it’s unlikely that the format will change, but it’s sincerely got me wondering how much depth breaking away from that would give the show, and how much more characterization we’d be able to get out of the rest of the cast.

This episode is also a reminder of how dated the references on the show can be. Once again hipsters are a topic, since they are the ones flocking to the shop due to its new 90s celebrity menu [cupcakes refer to Beavis and Butthead, Dennis Rodman, and David Hasselhoff]. While this is nothing new, it got me thinking about what demographic the show is trying to target. I was born in 1990, and there’s some pretty explicit reference to pro figure skater Nancy Kerrigan and her being attacked in 1994. With that in mind, most people in their early to mid twenties are not going to get these jokes, so is it the thirty-somethings they’re going for?

At the end of the day, this episode was just another 2 Broke Girls Episode. It relied too heavily on put-down humour [this guy is too into puppets let's mock him mercilessly] and too-easy jokes [". . . I'm pretty sure you'd go from J. Petto to J. Pedophile], and was ultimately only sort of funny. That seems to be what audiences are eating up, though, so you almost can’t blame them for sticking with what works.

As a final note, their “Current Total” of $4800 drops down to the “New Total” of $3800, due to them crumbling to J. Petto’s demands. It’s still not really explained what the point of the total is, but I suppose through this episode it can be viewed as emergency bail-out money. Expect someone [Caroline, in all likelihood] to get thrown in jail at some point this season.

Stray Observations:

• It’s nice to note that this show has some form of continuity- Candy Andy’s storefront is currently for lease.
• Not really any quotes or exchanges that stood out to me this episode. Just a pretty meh episode, though definitely not as offensive as last week’s.
• I will admit that Max straight-facedly ramming a naked Barbie onto a puppet was very funny. I expect to see gifs of it on tumblr by the end of the week.
• 2 Broke Girls Cheesecake Menu: Even Sophie’s cleavage was generally kept tightly under wraps this week. Not much to report here.

I feel like I have more to write about than usual this week [unfortunate, since I'm a little late to this review due to my having a job now], so let’s get right into it. To summarize this episode in a sentence, Max and Caroline have not been paying their rent and are being forced to sell their property to a real estate corporation; not wanting to do so the two go to Caroline’s makeup mogul Aunt Charity to ask for some . . . financial help.

The first topic I wanted to delve into a little bit was the show’s humour, not in how it chooses the easy route on almost every joke but how it seeks to push the bar in its content. For example: a semen joke eight seconds into the episode. Co-creator and executive producer Michael Patrick King said that he “[considers] our jokes really classy dirty [ . . . ] they’re high lowbrow.” While the show has largely steered away from the rampant rape jokes which cropped up multiple times per episode int he first season, they certainly haven’t stopped walking, and often crossing, the line between “classy dirty” and dirty.

Take Max’s joke about how bubblegum flavoured lip gloss [which was wearing when she had her first kiss] helped to get her an A in class. It’s no secret that her character has slept around a lot, for little to no reason, but hinting at a minor [I'm sure her first kiss was before the age of 18] locking lips with a teacher is uncomfortable at best. A few minutes later she likes a tube of lipstick to a dog penis.

“How much is too much?” is a question that Gordon and I discussed once in regards to stand-up comedy, and we came to the conclusion that edgy humour is only as good as what its meant to accomplish. In the case of 2 Broke Girls that’s apparently to elicit cheap laughter. As far as I can tell, I mean. This has never been a laugh-out-loud show, but it’s Max’s snarkiness [as overbearing as it is at times] and not her disregard in screening her sexual partners that drew me to her to begin with. 2 Broke Girls may be trying to brand itself as an edgy comedy à la Family Guy, but needs to ask itself if they can continue to counterbalance that with the heartfelt moments they’ve been trying to inject into the show.

As a final note on the show’s humour, Aunt Charity had the upper two layers of her skin removed to look two years younger, which actually made me queasy just looking at her. Physical gross-out humour may be something 2 Broke Girls is thinking about adding more regularly in stretching the limits, which is a decision I’m currently unsure about. After all, one of my favourite episodes was the eighth one of this season, where Caroline yanks a needle out of her arm and proceeds to spurt blood all over the walls of an egg donation clinic.

Finally on to what was the biggest moment for me. So I’ve been writing about what the point of the  ”Current Total” and it’s accompanying ka-ching at the end of each episode for a while, so imagine my surprise when I saw it change so drastically in this episode.

Caroline coerces her aunt into signing over $25,000 to cover what the real estate corporation says they’ll need to keep the property, but finds out later that the cheque doesn’t clear because taking advantage of drug-addled relatives [Charity was on morphine lollipops to dull the pain of not having a face] isn’t exactly an ethical business practice. Then her and Max sign over the store.

All of the first season was leading up to “Max’s Homemade Cupcakes,” and suddenly we realize that the girls are starting over from scratch, especially since Max declares that they have just enough money to pay back everyone they’ve borrowed from. Soon after a little bit of curious greenscreen work in the windows behind Caroline’s head is explained when a car crashes through one of their walls. It looked pretty realistic, too.

The “New Total” leaves the girls with a single dollar to their names and us as an audienec wondering what exactly is next for them. This is a hard reboot of the status quo, though there are hints by both Charity and the real estate woman [who was deaf, by the way] that maybe starting out smaller is the way to go.

Whatever happens with the rest of this season, I have to give 2 Broke Girls my grudging respect for reigniting my interest and curiosity in the show.

Stray Observations:

• The audience was going bonkers over Sophie today, and she wasn’t even really doing anything. Maybe an exec decided to re-send the memo that she’s supposed to be this generation’s Kramer.
• Han has been very into memes lately. “Ermahgerd!”
• “It’s obvious! She’s obsessed with her brother and she saw your being born as his love being taken away from her.” Morphine lollipops make Max smarter. 
• The greenscreening was particularly suspicious in that is showed an actual street outside their window, and was actually filmed against a wall I don’t think they ever showed prior to this episode. Which leads me to wonder if they’d planned a car crashing into it from the beginning, which I hesitate to believe if only because I don’t think they have that much foresight.
• 2 Broke Girls Cheesecake Menu: I feel like CBS is forcing me to eat my words when I assumed that they were having the two girls show more skin to draw in viewers. Not much to report here, once again.

I’m not going to lie, I’ve been infinitely grateful for the two week break CBS decided to give the show; working had made it hard to write these on Monday nights. It couldn’t have come at a better time, either, since last episode worked great as a sort of midseason finale, the opportunity for the show to head in vastly different and mysterious directions.

Open up on the diner, Max cracking wise about Han’s sexuality. Enter the character who is making the diner’s manager feel strange things in the downstairs department, the androgynous-looking lesbian Max has dubbed “Tina the Turner” due to her penchant for converting straight girls. Caroline scoffs at her co-waitress’ warnings and teenage boys the world over hold their breath.

Then they let out a sigh of disappointment, because all Caroline does is unconsciously give up her number before we cut to opening credits.

The next morning both girls wake up and Max lets her roommate know that her old temp agency calls. This elicits Caroline lamenting their fall from being small business owners,  but we all know where this is headed. Some inconsequential Sophie-and-Oleg-burst-into-their-apartment shenanigans later and the two are in an office talking to a delightfully deadpan office drudge. The way she answers questions with “Lemme give you a f’instance” is pretty darn funny.

They watch a sexual harassment video which will be a key plot point later.

As you may have guessed, the conflict of the episode presents itself when Caroline turns out to be a person who actually does her work instead of watching funny cat videos, and is legitimately interested in advancing at the company, filling out an application for a Junior Executive Position. This worries Max, who has been baking cupcakes to make a little extra cash at the diner, and clearly hasn’t completely given up on their dream.

Caroline nabs the position in a really quick back and forth of “YES’s” and “NO’s” between Max, Caroline, Office Manager Eli Green, and some dude named Ryan [I mean Leon]. For some reason her promotion is reason for champagne, which leads me to believe that this is a company with money to spare. Caroline talks to the boss and gets Max the position of Junior Executive’s Executive Assistant.

Max ultimately declines, pretty upset that Caroline quite the cupcake biz. After hearing her excuse that their dream blew up in their face, she asserts that “Lots of things blow up in your face, that’s part of being a woman.” I felt like this was somehow weirdly sexist, until Max continued on and I realized it was an ejaculation joke. Then I knew it was weirdly sexist. End on emotional note with them talking about whether or not cupcakes were the actual temp job, and that maybe it’s good not to have a dream.

Then Max gets Caroline fired by claiming that she sexually harassed her, which puts her on my list of horrible television characters. The scene leads to some laughs, such as Caroline’s explanation that “[they] were drinking and [she] was pretending to be a man,” but ultimately left me wondering why Max was being awful. Her excuse ends up being that Caroline forgot her dream, and that even if she’s not down with starting up the business again she should at least wait before jumping at the first opportunity that comes along.

We end with Caroline declaring [to cupcake-withdrawal sufferer Sophie] that they are back in business. Max declares that they’re doing things differently this time, but doesn’t explain how.

I guess it’s time for a plot hole paragraph. To begin with, how has Caroline not gotten a job in an office prior to this? Yes, her father was convicted of embezzling, but she still went to Wharton, “the most comprehensive source of business knowledge in the world.” She’s got the qualifications to land far better than a temp job, and we have to wonder why, before chasing the dream of Max’s Homemade Cupcakes became a thing, she wasn’t scouring offices all over NYC for a business position. It’s something that she clearly has a passion for, and it made me really think about how what Max did was a pretty big dick-move.

To end with, the final tally lies at $5.00, which I suppose we’re supposed to assume is from the cupcakes they’re selling at the diner. It’s also a 500% increase in funds, the largest financial jump the show has ever had, considering the last episode left them with a single dollar. The fact that the show has decided to have the two girls continue pursuing their cupcake shop dream was a pretty big letdown for me; the last episode set them up to do anything and this episode informed us we’re be back to more of the same. I understand that they don’t want to be waiting tables forever, but how about trying something new?

I was genuinely excited for 2 Broke Girls to come back, even if I wasn’t relishing writing these reviews [my Monday nights have been so free!]. Max and Caroline have returned to pursuing a dream I though they’d shelved when a car crashed into their storefront, and I guess the last five episodes of the season will reveal whether or not this new-old direction was the right one.

Stray Observations:

• Max keeps her Temping Blazer in a big red bucket.
• Caroline’s really embracing the “Broke Girl” lifestyle, talking about turning her underwear inside out instead of washing it and drinking way-too-old iced coffee.
• Audience continues to mistake Sophie for Kramer.
• Han is rapidly becoming one of my favourite characters on the show, with a fairly long speech addressing Caroline’s comment about wanting a workplace where her skills are valued and supported:

“Oh, are you not feeling supported here? I’m sorry, I’m a boss, not a bra. Should I praise you more? ‘Really killing it with the leaning on the counter doing nothing.’ Kudos, Caroline! Huzzah!”

• Office Manager Eli Green displays some fairly obvious gay mannerisms, but is apparently straight judging by his admission to being accused of sexual harassment coupled with his desire to obtain one of Max’s butt photocopies.
• 2 Broke Girls Cheesecake Menu: Got some skimpy morning wear on the nubile Ms. Channing; Caroline rubs at Max’s breasts after she spills some champagne on her good bucket blazer.

The “big hole” in this episode is courtesy of Oleg, whose leg punches through the girls’ ceiling due to him and Sophie’s vigorous lovemaking. That’s probably too delicate a word to describe what was going on, I mean, they were using a bowling ball. Anyway, that’s the cold open for ya.

Since Sophie and Oleg’s excessively cacophonous copulation leads to Caroline losing sleep [she didn't strap sponges to both ears and get smashed on booze like Max did] she is 20 minutes late to her shift at the diner, which starts the first real conflict I can remember between the girls and their boss, Han Lee.

Now, I am not a person who enjoys the jabs every single character on the show makes at Han. They constantly attack a) his height, or b) his sexuality, and both types of joke been done to death. I don’t know who thinks they’re funny, but the show’s writers seem to think we live and breathe the stuff. What I do love, and you know this if you’ve been reading these reviews, is when Han dishes it back as good as he gets it. It’s great to see him as more than just the show’s whipping boy, and Matthew Moy almost always nails the delivery.

So when Caroline finally shows up, makes excuses about having to take a nap before badmouthing the diner she works at, Han gets a little upset. He makes a remark at their shop closing, which is sort of in poor taste, but Caroline calls his establishment a “dumb diner,” and he pulls out the big guns. By firing her.

“Well at least my diner is still open and successful, whereas your cupcake shop was so dumb it failed.”

“Oh really, you quit? You must be dumber than my diner because I already fired you.”

Which leaves Caroline unemployed, a change I would have enjoyed more if Max hadn’t gotten her fired in the last episode. She waits in front of the apartment door [like a puppy] for Max to get home so she can start complaining about how unemployed she is. Then the girls head upstairs to return Sophie and Oleg’s sex bowling ball because we’ve gotta keep this episode moving.

Sophie answers the door roleplaying as Beyoncé, which was an image I did not need to see or want to write about. Upon hearing that Oleg was inside dressed as Jay-Z I fully admit that I expected him to be in blackface; this is not a show that has had a very good track record when it comes to race. Thankfully, he was not. The girls suggest that the two get their freak on at Oleg’s, and he worries, for some reason, that she’ll be disgusted by his place, an understandable sentiment if they weren’t already sleeping together. So Caroline offers to give his apartment a woman’s touch, for cash .

I spent actual time making this gif specifically for this blog, and you will appreciate it.

Subjectively, Oleg’s apartment is awesome. Sure, it has skeevy stuff like a sex swing and a sex chair and an anatomically correct “previously loved” sex doll, but it also has a sweet waterbed and some really awesome lighting courtesy of 1,500 tracer bulbs, most of which he tore out of the new Cineplex 14 on Queens. It’s got some good stuff going for it, is what I’m saying, and any logical person would assume that Sophie would be down with the whole deal. But Oleg thought it needed a bit of a change so of course Caroline wrecks it by covering it in beige.

Max realizes that she needs to get her friend her job back [the irony] and tells Han they should go get high and watch movies. In the most obvious plot twist since “they were planning a surprise party the entire time,” she gets both Han and Caroline into Oleg’s newly female-ready apartment to kiss and make up. Minutes later and they are hiding in a closet [cue joke about Han's sexuality!] from Sophie and Oleg. Their hijinks crouched in a small space with a sex doll aside, we’re also able to witness another turn of events you all knew was coming, that Sophie was actually into the weird kinky sex stuff and “[likes Oleg] a little bit” for who he is! 

Then Han admits that he overreacted and hires Caroline again.

Also the Current Total ends at $205, because apparently Oleg paid Caroline the money to make his apartment look like it was inhabited by a 70-year-old woman.

I guess I should probably talk a little bit about the episode as a whole. Yes, everything turned out exactly the way you thought it would, but what I’m more concerned about is what happened between the characters. Han is the butt of every joke in every episode, and it is fantastic to see him sticking up for himself for once. That being said, it is disappointing to have things resolved on the basis that Caroline “makes everything prettier,” and that he misses her. Caroline apologizes too, of course, but I doubt this will put an end to their sassing the man who signs their paycheques . As I mentioned earlier, it is kind of really stupid for Max to be trying to get Caroline re-hired when she cost her a pretty decent office gig just last week; it’s illogical and thinking about it still makes me angry.

Two episodes away from the car crashing in through their cupcake store wall and we’re still left without any real direction, though Caroline insists that cupcakes are still the dream. We’ll continue to stick around and see  what happens, I guess.

Stray Observations:

• Max makes a joke about asking Oleg to at least keep it in his apartment, and this one woman goes crazy. There’s this really loud high-pitched “WHOOOOOO!” and she is loving it. 
• Han has dubbed his employee handbook “The Han-book,” which is, as he says, super adorable.
•  So Max actually makes fun of CBS, their very own network, which was very . . . uh . . . I guess I’m gonna go with the age-old “Simpsons did it first.”
• According to Oleg he has banged 1,684 women in that apartment. By the end of the 4th season of How I Met Your Mother Barney Stinson had only reached 200. I highly contest Oleg’s claim. I contest it so much.
• Out Of Date Reference of the Episode: Sophie quotes the infamous Antoine Dodson “hide yo kids hide yo wives,” which went viral in 2010.
• 2 Broke Girls Cheesecake Menu: Caroline is once again in her skimpy all-grey sleeping ensemble, while Sophie re-enters this section by dressing up as Sasha Fierce. Though I guess this is technically pre- that album since she kept singing bits of “Crazy In Love.”

CBS putting their sitcoms on hiatus is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because last week was my first full week of work, and I’m trying to get back into a schedule; it’s a curse because I am super rusty, and two weeks off feels like an eternity.

We start things off with Max and Caroline coming back from the “Under a Dollar,” where the former bought steak and a steak-eatin’-chair and the latter bought sheets. There’s some really great stuff here when Caroline tears her new purchase, and reads the bag it came in, “Thread count: Yes. Washing instructions: Do not wash.”

Keep in mind that I don’t ever see ads for this show, so seeing Andy lying next to Caroline in her Murphy bed was a surprise to me. We haven’t seen the dude since right before he bailed in “And Too Little Sleep,” and that was seven episodes ago. Him and Caroline did the dirty on her new sheets, and really broke ‘em in, but it was naught but a booty call.

Caroline is bad at booty calls, and salutes her beau before leaving to go get changed.

Further evidence of this lies in the fact that she would like her second booty call ever to maybe be accompanied by a “booty breakfast.” Max beats that joke like a particularly disobedient dead horse ["booty dinner," "booty engaged," "booty married," et cetera] but ultimately hints that Caroline is looking for more than just casual sex. Then we get the first hints that Caroline might have caught the herp.

Back in their apartment Caroline logs on to Web MD, which is a helpful onlnie resource if you want help pinpointing exactly what kind of cancer you have. She can’t see her nethers to get a good enough look, though, so she snaps a picture of her iPhone 3, leading to Max quoting the title of the episode. Her fear at having herpes brings her to a free clinic with a sassy black receptionist who tells her the test will cost $250, from which point Max starts to track her own sexual history and also get tested.

Let me say, before I summarize this plotline in the next paragraph, that Max tracking her sexual history is a comedy gold mine. It’s essentially when Joey on Friends found that he had slept with too many women in New York, and was approaching people he’d already had one night stands with. Max’s past is just as sordid and not more so, and watching as she scratched names or occupations down as her and Caroline walked around New York would’ve been great stuff.

Essentially Caroline talks to Andy a little bit and finds that the other women he’s slept with since their breakup have been a dental hygienist and a special ed teacher, and that he has tested clean. He’d had a little bit of unsafe sex, but only with himself, and only when he couldn’t sleep. And a lot of other times.

Later on in the diner the sassy black receptionist comps Caroline the price of the test for some free fries, and, surprise surprise, she’s clean. Even later on in their apartment the two girls have a heart to heart, as they are wont to do. Carolineadmits that she has been filling the cupcake-business-shaped hole in her heart with Andy, take that as you will, and that when the two of them try again they need to give it their all. A pretty interesting development, seeing as their business crashed [literally] and burned three episodes ago and they only have three left in the season.

The B-plot that I was infinitely more interested in was Han trying out online dating. He managed to get a blind date! She was ”pretty, blonde, and clearly not a man”! And she bailed! I am not a person who claims to be emotionally invested in this show, but that crushed me. It’s more or less okay, though, because Max sets him up with a woman who, according to her forum posts online, may or may not have herpes.

One thing this episode really did was open up potential conversation about STDs. They’re pretty prevalent among sexually active people [and there are a lot of them], and Caroline’s fear that she caught something is one that many can relate to. If she had actually tested positive it would’ve forced people on a broader scale to realize that it’s a consequence of casual sex, and that it can happen to anyone.

As I mentioned earlier, with only three episodes left it’s anyone’s guess exactly how Season 2 of 2 Broke Girls will end. Max and Caroline chasing their dream of a cupcake business is going to seem an awful lot like a retread of the past season, and I have strong doubts that the network will be able to keep that fresh. My hope is that the somehow decide to go a different direction, which is doubtful in light of Caroline’s passionate insistence that they do things better this time.

Oh, and their Current Total of $205 remains unchanged.

Stray Observations:

• “Have you heard about Doctors Without Borders? Well, we were nurses without credentials.” In my observations of how people react to Sophie’s presence and jokes, allow me to say that I heard a man laughing so hard that he sounded like he was going to die. 
• “Hah! That candy was just a decoy so you didn’t see my Push Pop when I got out of bed.” Oh, Andy, it really is just candy jokes with you, isn’t it?
• “Speaking of dragging on the ground, maybe you can drag an antelope back to your cave and have sex with it!” Han justifies his reason for putting “sense of humour” on his dating profile.
• “I once had a date with a blonde woman, turns out the curtains matched the penis on that one.” Some of Oleg’s dating experiences have been unpleasant ones.
• Apparently Max is also clean, which truly boggles the mind. Something like 1 in 4 people has an STD, and with the amount of sex she claims to have had, there’s a definite suspension of disbelief there.
• 2 Broke Girls Cheesecake Menu: Caroline gets out of bed wrapped in her less-than-a-dollar sheets like “the Greek Goddess of Booty Calls, Aphro-whitey.”

Fair warning, I attended a screening of Iron Man 3 tonight in order to write a review for a children’s magazine. I enjoyed it a lot. I am not sure how my enjoyment of that movie will affect my opinions of this episode.

We start things off with a cake literally out of carrots, so colour me interested from the outset. Then Max jokes about how she and Chestnut should one day get the same rights as gay couples, and Caroline admits to subway molestation as being an acceptable poor man’s version of an actual massage. Oof. Maybe I should have waited a day before writing this.

Anyway, it turns out working in a diner and owning a horse don’t exactly line up, and ol’ Chestnut has to replace a shoe and has some kinda gross hoof fungus. These two wacky gals tried to ditch the animal way back in Season 1, but then decided to take it back, which I suppose was not a decisions without its own share of consequences.

It’s cool, though, those extra expenses can be solved by acting as extras in an SVU show that wants to film in the diner, which can go ahead so long as Han Lee, the boss man, allows it.

Man, it was awkward seeing the Asian set manager [who speaks accent-less English] begin a conversation with Han. It became almost unbearably uncomfortable when the diminutive Korean responds to the other man’s question about compensation with:

“Whoa, whoa, my Asian brother. Slow down, let’s enjoy the dance.”

He then proceeds to speak in Korean, which prompts the sort of answer I am seriously beginning to hate: “Dude, I’m from Pasadena.” It’s essentially the same response that Jim Morita gives Dum Dum Dugan in Captain America: The First Avenger, “I’m from Fresno, Ace.” It’s this whole bit where others judge immigrants based on their outer appearances only to be chagrined when they are revealed to be very much, in both cases mentioned, American. There’s something to be said about racial and cultural assimilation that I do not like, but we can follow that up some other time.

Then they’re filming and the director is super skeevy and macking on Caroline like . . . well . . . a guy who is less ruggedly handsome than he is. He hires her to be the waitress who gets shot [it pays $1,000 more!], which Max sees as him wanting to get in her pants. This appears to be pretty accurate, since he invites her up to his hotel for dinner. Max tags along, of course.

Rest assured, dear viewer, that nothing sketchy will go down in said hotel room. Date rape drugs are talked about as a means to put guys out of commission. Caroline’s date rape drug: talking about herself incessantly until guys get bored and pass out. Max’s date rape drug: an actual date rape drug.

The guy is straight-up looking to get into a threesome. Caroline isn’t exactly down with it, so the next morning Max replaces her. Knowing that her friend is basically getting the job by using her body, Caroline does her best to talk Max out of it, ruining some perfectly good shots. It’s also very fair of her, since Max ruined her dream gig not three episodes ago.

Sophie ruins the shoot by trying to barge on set, causing Caroline to stumble and fall on a switch which sets off the gunshot rig Max is wearing. Asian set manager very reasonably tells them they won’t get paid for that day, but Han hardballs him because he is a good guy.

The episode ends with their Current Total at $1,205, a whole grand up from last week. This struck me as particularly peculiar, since I was under the assumption that any money made playing extras would go directly towards Chestnut’s foot needs causing them to break even.

After this week we only have two episodes left to go before the season ends, and I’m still wondering where we go from here. The girls have talked about really pursing their dream right this time, and you’d think that we’d be given some real direction so close to the end. I’m going to be going into these last two episodes looking for that pull that’ll actually get me looking forward to Season 3.

Stray Observations:

• Cops by day, prostitutes by night. “Copstitutes.”
• This set director was raised by two white women, and therefore does not know how important family is to Asian culture.
• The fat balding guy who sets up the rig in Caroline’s blouse looked like the member of Tenacious D who is not Jack Black.
• The contents of Sophie’s purse: a Shake Weight and a 2L bottle of Fresca.
• 2 Broke Girls Cheesecake Menu: May-or-may-not-be Kyle Gass really digs around in Max and Caroline’s blouses. That’s really about it this episode.

Let me begin by saying that this week’s cold open was a wonderful representation of the show as a well-run ensemble comedy. Max and Caroline are ragging on Has as usual, yes, but he retorts, and Oleg and Earl are not far behind with their own comments. It’s light, snappy, and most importantly funny. Considering that I’m more than likely going to be reviewing this into the next year, this is the show I want to be watching every Monday night.

After the theme song we see that the girls are back at the prison to visit Caroline’s father, who, if I remember correctly, hasn’t appeared since the first episode of this season. Martin Channing, played by Steven Weber, is always a great addition to an episode. His trying to look after his daughter through Max [an unlikely source of love/protection] has always added a lot to the girls’ interactions with one another.

Since Mr. Channing has been put away in white collar prison for swindling thousands it’s to be expected that one day someone would write a shocking exposé on his life. This takes the form of Sandra Rosenthal, an accountant formerly in the Channing’s employ who could not do math. After shooing Caroline away Mr. Channing tells Max that the “shocking” takes the form of her stating that he has a small penis. After Caroline finds out from Max, she decides to join Sandra on Piers Morgan Tonight to expose her book for being what it is: a lie.

Back at the diner everyone already know about the rumor concerning her father’s genitals; Oleg finds out because he has the word “penis” keyed in as a Google Alert. This is all understandably stressing Caroline out, and to ease her tension Han gives her one of the creepiest massages I’ve ever seen. Sophie saves the poor girl by offering to take both her and Max to her fancy spa, though it should be mentioned that Caroline puts up with Han’s creepy baby spider massage for an impressive amount of time. 

Now is the time for me to state that the scenes within the spa are really, really good. This show doesn’t often make me so much as smirk, but there was a moment where decent writing and good acting lined up, creating some legitimately funny moments.

First up, the girls are chatting it up a sort of lounge area post-massage. This one woman shushes them, prompting Caroline to tell Max that this is a quiet room. Soon after Sophie enters, loud and boisterous as always. When she is inevitably shushed her reaction is to hurl a lemon at the woman, and that was really well done. Sophie, and Jennifer Coolidge in general, is not a character I particularly enjoy, but this was a really great moment in that it characterizes her in a single action. Sophie is like honey badger in that Sophie doesn’t care; she does what she wants.

Then Sandra enters for her own massage, and Caroline and Max sneak in, the former to pose as her masseuse and the latter . . . to . . . be herself? There is a lot of funny in this scene, so let me try to encapsulate it all.

Caroline masks her voice by making it deeper, and I don’t know how to pin it down, but it is hilarious. She believes, for some reason, that pushing one side of a person’s body constitutes a massage. Max constantly hitting a bunch of wind chimes was a visual gag that began to get tired, but actually got better as it went on. The two girls throwing hot stones back and forth to each other was another great example of physical humor. This is 2 Broke Girls at its best. Goofy and silly without being dirty and crass, two friends getting into antics without rape or masturbation jokes thrown about willy nilly. It was really legitimately great stuff. Anyway, Sandra find out it’s them but Sophie very menacingly talks her out of accusing Caroline of harassment, and then Max and Caroline are back at square one.

Now, what’s actually pretty commendable about this show is that its episodes have always had fairly [and I say "fairly"] witty titles. Last week’s “And the Extra Work” of course concerned the duo taking up short-term jobs as extras on a show, and “And the Temporary Distraction” involved them finding a little extra money via a temp agency. The cold open fakes us out by having Caroline complain about being tipped with Monopoly money, but it’s hard to believe I didn’t see the reason for the title coming from a mile away. The “tip slip” is Martin Channing’s penis.

Caroline is being melancholy and showing Max pictures of her dad doing good, decent stuff, like being at charity events and water-skiing on rich people lakes. Max zooms in on the latter and hello, Mr. Channing has apparently been blessed in the underpants department.

Jump ahead to Piers Morgan Tonight, where the good people at CBS have indeed brought on Piers Morgan. As far as I can tell the man has no connection to the network or Pier 1 Imports, an assertion Max repeats a handful of times. I’m also somewhat disappointed he is not as funny as Taran Killam’s SNL impression of him. However he did have the excellent line, “Ladies, this is not Maury Povich,” which I really appreciated.

So Sandra talks smack about Mr. Channing while Caroline tries to take the high road and bust her for knowing jack squat about math. All the while Max is sneaking around under the table trying to get Caroline to take her phone with the picture of the member in question. As you may have guessed, the phone makes its way to Morgan, and poor Sandra’s entire story falls apart. The host of show tells her that ”Your book and you lack any credibility,” and that is the end of that.

Oh, and the Current Total goes down! From $1,205 to $940! I had assumed that Sophie was treating them to their massages, but I guess I was wrong.

As you may have guessed, I enjoyed this episode immensely. As I mentioned 7 episodes ago, I do not grade these reviews, but this is another instance where I wish I did. This episode is as good as “And Just Plane Magic” was bad, and has me legitimately excited for the season finale next week. We may not necessarily have any good forward motion right now, but funny is good. I can take humour over narrative for now.

Stray Observations:

• “Maybe you too can kiss my sweet ass because this outfit’s a home run.”
• “Well, Han, I would play, but you know, I got this hip thing. Meaning I’m too hip.”
• Max brings up Caroline’s sleep-farts every day.
• Vuvuzelas are described as “very 2010,” and this is not inaccurate.
• Belated whoos for Sophie’s entrance this time around, like they missed their cue or something.
• “MORE STONES!”
• 2 Broke Girls Cheesecake Menu: Sandra Rosenthal’s half naked for the entirety of her first scene. As I’ve mentioned, I’m no longer mentioning Sophie in this section.

I don’t think I can put into words how excited I was for this episode. Not only does my opinion about starting this all again this fall hinge on how this turns out, it also means a months-long hiatus from doing weekly TV reviews. On many nights, like tonight, I’ve had to double up on 2BG reviews and Shame Days, and it has not been fun.

Forewarning, a ridiculous amount happens in this episode, so much that my order of events probably gets really, really messed up. Please bear with me.

Anyway, we start out with Han wanting to get an A from the health inspector, which is reasonable because he owns a business which serves food, all of which Oleg cooks, from my understanding. Seriously though, he is a fry cook and really the only one in the kitchen, I don’t understand how they feed the customers I constantly see quietly chatting with one another around the diner.

To get back to the action, the cold open ends on a really great note with the aforementioned Ukrainian decked out in starchy white chef’s garb, complete with three hairnets [two of which are visible on his head and beard]. His delivery of “I don’t wanna talk about it” is flawlessly done.

There are a whole bunch of shenanigans, but generally what you need to know is that Han plans to use Caroline ["my show pony"] to get the health inspector on his side but is surprised when she is a woman. He ends up flirting with her and it is really gross and uncomfortable. Han also pays Max an exorbitant amount of money [$85!] to not be around; it is not added to their Current Total.

All of his scheming aside, he still gets a B, though. Caroline quips that “Asians don’t do well with B’s,” and that once at Wharton a Japanese student sitting next to her committed harakiri when she got one. I honestly can’t tell whether or not that’s supposed to be a joke, since Beth Behrs delivers her line like it actually happened. Ultimately not impressed by it, however the case.

I feel like I need to speed this up, so let me quickly introduce the fact that there’s some kind of “window of opportunity” seminar that Caroline thinks is just what her and Caroline need to get their cupcake business back on the right track. It’s $600, though, so they hold a yard sale.

Some guy named Dennis Endicott III shows up, the self-proclaimed Thrift Shop Scout and Brooklyn’s Crazy Kitsch Genius. His wife, Miss Trudy, and bird, Scott, are also there. Most of Caroline’s old belongings, in spite of costing her thousands are worth nothing to the guy. Luckily he comes across a set of Max’s Nugget Buddies, which are apparently some sort of McDonald’s Happy Meal toy I’ve never heard of. He wants to buy them for [you guessed it!] $600.

Then Max refuses, oh well.

And see, now I feel like I need to mention the B plot, which I was going to save until the end but which intersects with this one. Basically Caroline tells Oleg that Sophie told her that she needs space [in spite of Max's repeated warnings not to]. This causes Oleg to strip down to his skivvies in frustration, stating ”I’m done changing. I’m back, baby. Spread the word.” This was done in such a way that I actually felt like cheering along with the crowd.

Back in the apartment Sophie enters and begins screaming like a dang banshee [because of Oleg, etc.]; it’s really shrill and irritating and made me want to punch my laptop screen. This is offset by the fact that she is at their place because she doesn’t want to break her own stuff, and starts picking up fragile, shatter-able things and throwing them on the floor. I found this particularly entertaining. It all somehow leads to her proclaiming ”Sophie’s back, spread the word” again leading to much cheering. Oh, and she smashed Max’s Happy Meal toys in the process.

 Oh, okay, so the B apparently resulted from some back room being dirty, but this back room is obscured by a big ol’ shelf that poor Han can’t get out of the way ["P90X don't fail me now!"]. It doesn’t really make sense that they got marked down because of it. Max volunteers that they clean it to make the money for the seminar because her toys are smashed.

Fastforward to the actual cleaning, because it is where important stuff happens. The two girls are wearing plastic coveralls and hosing down the walls, and eventually they get to sniping at one another because Max is kind of tired and pissy. She actually makes some comment about water and electricity not being “the best combo” when they start spraying each other, so consider it a bad omen.

This scene was particularly strange, because the jabs they make at one another are not particularly funny. Max blames Caroline for the collapse of their business, which prompts a response about how she was a terrible worker and didn’t aid their cupcake shop in the least. All the while the audience is going crazy. It’s sort of like if a couple began arguing in a food court and everyone around them started laughing and cheering.

Then Max begins to leave in a huff, slips on the wet floor, and grabs a live wire.

Caroline is understandably worried that Max is dead, since she is sprawled out on the floor unconscious. As she is about to attempt mouth-to-mouth boys and men all across North America hold their collective breaths. Honestly, though, it was pretty decidedly unsexy, at least in my opinion. Max wakes up, not dead, and all is well.

Bringing her to get fresh air, Caroline drags Max forward and, by pushing out a pair of shutters, reveals a window onto the street. A guy walking by asks them “Is that like a store or something?” and the play on words in this episode’s title is revealed. “Holler.”

And so Season 2 ends with the two girls starting out of what will obviously be their new storefront next season, conveniently diner-adjacent so that their work is closer to their work. It’ll also be helpful in giving the secondary cast members more screentime. Since they don’t end up using the money Han pays them to clean the back room, we end up going from $940 to our brand new current total of $1,540.

 So let me recap, even though it’s almost 1 AM and I have work tomorrow and yet another blog post to write up. I mean, it is the season finale.

Max and Caroline will be moving forward, yet again, with their cupcake business. They will not have crazy overheads like before, and will be right next to the diner as well. On the other side of things, both Oleg and Sophie are “back,” which means something, I suppose. They were the only really significant couple [no offense, Candy Andy and Caroline] and it’s a little surprising that they’ve broken up. It seems pretty permanent, as well [Sophie smashes in his windshield with a hammer].

All in all, the status quo has not shifted much. The girls are back where they started, even after a pretty vicious verbal throwdown. Really the only change that occurred are the two heavily accented Europeans and their highly sexual relationship.

Yes, I will be covering this show when it starts up again in the fall, but until then I’ll hopefully get some other reviews in [maybe even of books!]. It hasn’t always been fun, but I really did thoroughly enjoy last week’s episode, and this one didn’t do too badly for a finale. It’s at the very least showed us what to look forward to in the next season [with just a hint of the usual racist humour], and that’s as much as I thought to expect out of a show like 2 Broke Girls.

To the people who tuned in specifically for these reviews, come back around in a couple of months and these should be back up when the show starts. Feel free to take a look around the sites, there’re some pretty decent articles around. Feel free to skip back a week, though, things’ve been a little rough recently.

Stray Observations:

• Earl on cleaning the diner: “It’s like puttin’ a pretty church hat on a whore.”
• He also believes that napkins were the old Twitter.
• “C’mon! Harder! Faster! Do it faster and harder!”
•  ”When we get home you’d better put on the punishment pillow.”
• When asked where her junk is Sophie answers: “Where it always is. In my trunk.” Max’s vaguely amused closed-lipped smile is downright murderous. As is her next look. Maybe Kat Dennings wasn’t too amused on set that day?
• “Why did they cancel Suite Life of Zac and Cody?” I know that Max likes to point out how Han is a child, but this is a really dated reference. I mean, everyone knows that the show transitioned to Suite Life on Deck, and that that show ended back in 2011.
• 2 Broke Girls Cheesecake Menu: Before Max and Caroline lock lips the latter tears open the former’s plastic coverall. 
• 2 Broke Girls Beefcake Menu: Oleg stripping down to his tiger print [?] undies. A little something for you ladies [and men interested in hairy Eastern Europeans].

I’m not going to bore you all with the same  old “this show has lost its premise” talk again; we’re past that, it is now the topic that shall not be named. What I do want to focus on, however, is how much this show appears to struggle with conflict. There’s a simple formula in sitcoms [and every other form of media] that goes as follows: (a) a problem arises, (b) that problem is solved. I cannot boil it down any simpler than that. I obviously don’t speak for everyone, but for most viewers what’s really important is what happens between those two points.

Let’s take this episode and view it through the formula above:

(a) The words “Cupcakes are so over” spell out doom for the girls’ business, and they must find a way to make their product appealing once again.

(b) Max’s tendency to dip french fries in frosting leads to “Cake Fries” which are a huge hit both flavourfully and monetarily.

That on its own is really not a problem. I’m always going to be down for an episode of television that revolves around chimeric foodstuffs [though adding too many parts lead to disaster], but as mentioned it’s not so much the end result as it is the journey that takes us there.

In between points (a) and (b) Max and Caroline go out of their way to buy black market cronuts to lure sheeple into forming a long line to their shop, hoping to seamlessly switch to their cupcakes as soon as their illegal goods run out. That’s also fine. I liked the fact that their dealer was a male prostitute on the side, and that the 2 Broke Girls wiki refers to him as “Cronut Craig.” So far so good, everyone.

Where things really fell flat for me is that once their scheme fails Caroline laments aloud:

“Max, cupcakes are over! And you know why? Cupcakes are one thing, if we get two things then we’d be something.”

And not ten seconds later Max starts taking fries, dipping them in frosting, and sticking them in her mouth.

“You’re really going to compare 2 Broke Girls with Breaking Bad?”

Now I am going to make a Breaking Bad comparison which hopefully most of you will get. This is like if Walter White lamented aloud:

“Skyler, my life is over! And you know why? I have lung cancer, but if I could find a way to make a lot of money fast maybe my life could mean something.”

And then the camera followed Walt’s gaze over to where Jesse Pinkman was exchanging a hefty bag of methamphetamine with another man for a large wad of bills. After which Walt approaches him excitedly saying “That’s it! That’s what we’re going to do!” and on and on, I’m not that devoted to this parallel.

This week’s episode has jokes about a bulimic girl, Oleg’s one-testicled Croatian cousin’s suicide [his nickname was Cronut, get it?], a torso man on a skateboard, and Max having been assaulted at one point. I took all of that in, but what really got me was how easy this show has begun making things for its protagonists. Season 1 of 2 Broke Girls had Max and Caroline stalking Martha Stewart to promote their business; “And the Cronuts” has them wait a few seconds before arriving at their solution.

I do give the writers of the show [very] mild praise for focusing on trends throughout the episode. They began with Han’s juice cleanse, moved on to cronuts, spotlighted zany trendchasers Jerry and Gary, and finally followed it up with Sophie hopping on the bandwagon to try bisexuality with her girltoy Veronica. As far as how “trendy” the latter is . . . well, the way the shoe deals with orientation is the focus of a different review. Anyway, credit where it’s due. 

Current Total: $1,512.

New Total: $2,012 [I'm going to assume that Cake Fries are what accounted for the extra rise in weekly profits of roughly $200].

The Title Refers To: Cronuts, which Wikipedia tells me were invented by one chef Dominique Anselin New York City. He trademarked the name back in May, so they’re very much old news. Oh, and they’re basically half-croissant half-doughnut, duh.

Stray Observations:

• Max being ashamed of her mistake in the cold open and letting the customers have their meal on her seemed really out of character, and is the basis for a theory I’m going to be sharing with all of you in next week’s review.
• I was devastated that Luis wasn’t in this episode after how into him I was last week. Ah well, we’ll always have the memories.
• Jerry and Gary have followed all the trends: Pinkberry, Dippin’ Dots, kale, quinoa, kombucha. 
• Things you don’t want to yell on the streets of New York “We hate back people!” and “All that work for some stupid fad?”
• You could have an entire running gag about how bad Caroline is with codewords.
• Han telling the girls to look away as they’ve “released the kraken” with their new snack food was delightful.
• Veronica: cute, Black, has short blonde-hair, exciting, and never to be seen again.
• 2 Broke Girls Beefcake Menu: Switching things up this time around, Han shows off some belly for ladies [and some gents]. It’s at least a two-pack, you guys.

I had written this whole intro about how 2 Broke Girls is so slow to address trends while they’re still hot [see the Kickstarter and cronuts episodes] because I saw the above promo pic with Oleg twerking, but I’ve just finished the episode and didn’t see a single twerk. That’s all mildly disappointing, somehow.

Last week in the Stray Observations I promised that I’d share a “theory” with you about Max, and in thinking on how to write about it I realized that it’s not so much a theory as it is a strange realization about the character. To put it simply, we’re constantly regaled by the show about what a terrible childhood Max had and how promiscuous she is now, but none of that is ever backed up. In this episode she jokes about losing NuvaRing birth control in the lettuce, but when’s the last time she actually had sex on the show? Certainly not so far this season. As far as I can remember not at all last season . . .

One reason for this could be that being too real when it comes to Max’s life could make the show turn really dark, really fast, but the more I mull it over the more I beg to differ. For one thing, terrible parents are no stranger to sitcoms [see: The Simpsons, Family Guy, Arrested Development, the list goes on], and more than that their status as terrible parents can be milked for a fair number of laughs.

You know what would have been a great running joke in this episode? If Max really didn’t know who Santa Claus was because she had a terrible mother, and they continued that on with the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny.

Very, very early this year I wrote about Don’t Trust The B—- In Apartment 23 [a sitcom that left us altogether to soon] and how important it was that a) the show didn’t shy away from Chloe’s sexual promiscuity and b) how it didn’t deride her for it. Max’s sexual escapades are a list longer than this blog post looks to be, but they don’t feel real because the show feels content to hide them away. I’m not asking to see a revolving door of guys walking in and out of her bedroom, but I’m going to need something for it not to seem like they’re just dirty jokes and quips for the sake of laughs with no lasting intentional effects on her as an actual character.

Anyway. On to the episode.

The theme this week was material possessions, which is a great when the stars are two “broke girls” but probably less effective when they have jobs, a very spacious apartment, a privately-owned cupcake business, and a pony. A little extra money leads Caroline to buy Max new sheets and throw out her old ones, but it turns out that the pillowcase has sentimental value. Max is forced to give up her attachment to her pillowcase as Caroline is forced to give up what is literally attached to her head, i.e. hair extensions [just a few, for volume]. I guess they learn that they’re allowed to be attached to things in the end; to each their own, et cetera.

In spite of that rather humdrum-sounding premise I’m going to declare that this episode was really rather good. I’m not just saying that because of a distinct lack of twerking or Miley Cyrus references, either. Caroline’s performance was a virtual tour de force of comedy this Monday, folks. Girl was killin’ it.

Never change, Beth Behrs.

There was her hilariously bad flirting at the onset of the episode; that was great. There was the way she said “the story of how we found a blonde hair extension out of nowhere that night” that trailed off into hysterical fake laughter. There was her horsey sleepy voice that always started with “Wh-h-h-h-hyyy” that got funnier each time they brought it back. Most of this review’s Stray Observations are dedicated to her.

Not only that but Max, who I generally find to be pretty thoroughly grating delivered the line ”Are you trying to hurt me or turn me on?” flawlessly. It was free of snark and had just a hint of irritation; it was a beautiful thing. Also Luis was back for a bit and you should’ve seen my face light up when he came onscreen. There wasn’t a lot for the ensemble as a whole [Han has three or so lines] but overall it was a fairly enjoyable twenty-something minutes.

That is all to say that the show is doing surprisingly well so far this season. I’m never one for complacency in media, though, and there’s certainly more they could be doing, with Max at least. Her past is a potential goldmine for more comedy, and they need to be okay with digging it up. Caroline is . . . . well, Caroline is doing just fine.

Current Total: $2,012.

New Total: $2,162 [I don't know where all of this "extra money" is coming from, but they're a few hundred dollars short of their usual $200-$300 weekly profit, so maybe they must miscalculated this time around].

The Title Refers To: Either the new sheets that Caroline buys Max or the pillowcase she loses, which is not technically a sheet by my standards. Also a play on the words “piece of sh-t,” obviously.

Stray Observations:

• Max’s extra money dance involves ping pong balls.
• Earl’s favourite: a half-Black half-Chinese belly dancer.
•  Caroline is well-aware that Max will kill her one day. She chooses to accept it as a fact of life.
•  ”Why? Wh-h-hyyy are you calling me a bitch at ni-i-ight? I was sleeping in my new ja-a-ammies.”
• “Max, I feel like we’re not even acknowledging our low points anymore.”
• The wig that Max makes Caroline wear makes her look like Joe Dirt. Anyone know what David Spade is up to nowadays?
• In case you didn’t know there are official CBS-approved 2 Broke Girls Comics and they are awful.
• 2 Broke Girls Cheesecake Menu: Caroline’s new Eiffel Tower jammies deal a great blow to this feature. A great blow indeed. 

First thing’s first, I had every expectation that this episode was going to be super duper racist. It was not, but I’ll get to that in a bit because of how much of a big deal my second point is: Dang, this one lady could not get a enough of the jokes this week. She had one of those high-pitched shrieky laughs, too; it was nearly impossible to block her out and concentrate on the actual episode itself.

Now, if you type “2 broke girls racist” into Google you get 4,310,000 results. That speaks for itself, really. My review of the third episode of this season even received a few comments from an honest-to-goodness Polish person who wanted to assert that they do not believe that cats are the reincarnated souls of people who die outside. To be perfectly fair things were far worse in the first season concerning Han in particular. That being said, racist jokes on this show used to be a problem. They still are, but they used to be, too.

Similar to Saturday Night Live, the 2 Broke Girls writers took note of the flak they were receiving and took action. Unlike the former, which took to promising change without one anywhere in sight, the latter chose to veer away from making fun of Han’s race and instead focusing almost solely on his size. It’s not ideal for the character, especially since he hasn’t been able to dish it back in quite a few episodes, but it’s a step in the right direction. Which is great, because it’s the Max, Caroline, and Han Show this week.

Basically what happens in the episode itself is that Mr. Lee hires a prostitute to fake being his girlfriend to impress his mom in a trope so classic that Hollywood has a self-imposed rule that they must create a film based on that premise every four years. As an abrupt segue what I  really want to focus on right now is Max and Caroline’s foray into a strip club to hire Korean Beauty June Kim AKA Sapphire for their boss, which led to this:

Soon after this Caroline says: “”Can we turn the music off? Cause, I’m getting disoriented, and, in all honesty, a little turned on.”

Cue a few choice posts from tumblr as I searched in vain for relevant 2 Broke Girls gifs to add to this review:

“Caroline we knew you got turned in by girls come on” - amsayy.tumblr.com

“Part of me hope caroline’s freak out about “latent bisexuality” is because of a recent revelation of her feelings for max.” - graphikdesign07.tumblr.com

“isn’t even 15 minutes in and so far caroline and max have gone to a strip club where caroline admitted she was “turned on” and max cheered the stripper on

try to be more gay, i dare you” - shawsonduh.tumblr.com

There’s clearly a fraction of the show’s viewers who ship a romantic relationship between Max and Caroline, and it got me wondering if that plays into the writing of the show at all. A sexual pairing of the two is unlikely if we’re being realistic, but that doesn’t mean that the creators involved won’t seed potential hints at such a pairing just to appeal to a part of their audience. This is of course me putting far too much value in one of tumblr’s much, much smaller fandoms, but it’s best to never underestimate the internet.

I wish I had more to say about the plot itself, but it really is a pretty standard execution of the aforementioned trope which led to an overall unexceptional twenty-something minutes of television. There are minor additions to how things normally play out, such as Max giving Han marijuana to calm his nerves, but that’s about it. In the end Han’s mom finds out and she’ll always love him no matter what. We get a slight subversion of expectations in Korean Beauty June Kim AKA Sapphire actually knowing how to play the piano [you can see everyone's reactions in the image up top].

There was very little of either Oleg or Sophie this week, but Earl had a bit of fun dialogue with Han. Really, Ally Maki and Karen Maruyama did just fine as Korean Beauty June Kim AKA Sapphire and Mrs. Su-Min “Han’s Mom” Lee, respectively. No real complaints, but not a great deal of praise, either.

Creativity points to Korean Beauty June Kim AKA Sapphire’s orgasm prayer that was primarily just “Oh God” said progressively louder and louder. If that didn’t make the following scene come to mind, however, know that you are dead to me:

Current Total: $2,162.

New Total: $2,280.

The Title Refers To: Han hiring a prostitute to be his girlfriend. Alternatively, a reference to a Steven Soderbergh film by the same name starring porn star Sasha Grey in the titular role.

Stray Observations:

• Instant laugh out of Max asking Han if he had a mother. That is laughter post set-up/pre-punchline, folks.
• “Catfishing, right. That’s when you pick up a woman in a bar and when you get her in the light you realize she has whiskers.”
• Caroline is afraid of catching “syphi-gono-titis” at the strip club.
• That black light visual gag was delightful.
• “Earl, we’re talking about our Lord Jesus Christ!”
• Some of the audience laughed at Mrs. Lee speaking Korean. I can’t explain that.
• Mrs. Lee’s disapproving frown/headshake combo was so, so great.
• Chamomile tea: the drink of choice for divorced women on their balconies in the fall.
• Han described his fake girlfriend as “a Harvard educated  Christian doctor and also a renowned classical pianist.”
  
• Mrs. Lee’s body strength is all core.
• Max’s joke that made me feel legitimately uncomfortable: “What!? I was unconscious when I lost [my virginity] and want to see what it’s like!” This is in addition to what we already know the guy, which is that his name was “Coach Something.” Eesh. 
• 2 Broke Girls Cheesecake Menu: This entire section goes to Korean Beauty June Kim AKA Sapphire, for obvious reasons which involve her sexy dance. Honourable mention goes to Max’s cleavage. 

If there is anything that 2 Broke Girls excels in doing it’s creating outlandish characters. Whether it’s Dennis Endicott III, the self-proclaimed Thrift Shop Scout and Brooklyn’s Crazy Kitsch Genius [“And the Window of Opportunity”], Cronut Craig the black market baked goods dealer ["And the Cronuts"], or the simply-named Catherine, who had altogether too many cats ["And the Kitty Kitty Spank Spank"], these are individuals who stick with you in how truly zany they are.

This episode the girls’ travels to the latest restaurant, Harlow and Daughters, whose likely Mumford-and-Sons-inspired title aside is the setting for two brand new eccentrics. There’s Brian-Brian, the gay waiter in fashionably[?] old-timey garb and, one of my all-time favourites thus far, York the drinks waiter. It’s just York. “York as in York.”

It wasn’t even her general appearance or anything [you can see her above on the left], it was entirely the way she spoke. You’re going to have to check out at least that part of the episode to see for yourself, but the way she delivered the following line just really got me:

“Our special libation this evening is the Smallpox. It’s absinthe, cloves, orange bi-tters, hand-muddled in a mason jar.”

This is all a pretty good segue into talking about the show’s characters as a whole. Max and Caroline are constantly bumping into weirdos in their day-to-days, but the truth is that the diner already has so many that they couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting one. Speaking of which, Nancy is back! We will make no mention as to what Polish people do or don’t believe about felines.

Seriously, though, we got some pretty decent Earl material out of this episode, with the gif on the left being the joke that most audience members will be taking with them. Luis, [Luis is back again!] is back around calling the girls “broke-ass divas” and generally livening up every scene he appears in. Even Sophie has a lot of material this week, particularly in doing a bit of back and forth with Caroline about the latter’s prep work for her date.

Now this is all well and good, and offsets my concern which is that the writers do not have that much faith in their existing characters. Han, Earl, Oleg, and Sophie are all just as wacky and full of personality as the next, yet we’re constantly presented with exotic flavour-of-the-week men and women who will undoubtedly never appear again. If they could just have Oleg regale us with tales about another cousin every week [this one was disabled, and the last had but a single testicle and committed suicide] that would make me happy.

If 2 Broke Girls wants to be an ensemble comedy, and to be fair maybe it doesn’t, we’re going to have to stop devoting so much time to one and dones and concentrate on the people we already know and, presumably, are meant to love. We can still have characters like York, because they are extremely entertaining, but we should still keep some focus on the cast outside of Max and Caroline.

Anyway, as mentioned this week gives a number of characters more material than they’ve seen in weeks, even in an episode that could’ve been entirely devoted to the titular ladies. Caroline being stood up for a date was preceded by a good amount of time in the diner and apartment with others, and culminated with Oleg and Sophie having roughed up a guy [not the guy, but a guy; it's the thought that counts].

I also want to end this review by touching on the supportive words Max gives Caroline, which were not necessarily meant to create an emotional beat due to the response she got from the latter. To cheer up her friend who was stood up she says:

“Look, I don’t give myself letters in life, to me it is clearly a pass/fail situation. and you’re sitting up, not drooling on yourself, so pass.”

That is by no means a cynical sentiment. That’s something everyone needs to remember, and it was actually kind of jarring for me to hear such optimistic words exiting her mouth. Keep that in mind, ladies, gents, and others, it’s legitimately good advice.

Current Total: $2,280.

New Total: $2,420.

The Title Refers To: The following exchange between Han and Max:

“How come this isn’t the ‘it’ place?”

“This isn’t an ‘it’ place, it’s more of an ‘it’ hole.”

Also a clear reference to the term “sh-thole.”

Stray Observations:

• “The only waves you get in Brooklyn are heatwaves and crime waves.”
• While I enjoyed Nancy’s return, what I really want to see more of is Ferguson on New Girl. 
• Caroline used an English muffin to exfoliate. Then she ate it.
• Max’s idea of a joint credit card: “Whenever you make a dumb purchase you owe me a joint.”
• The complete lack of applause for Sophie’s entrance threw me for a loop. I was actually stunned.
• Brian-Brian is the second character, by my count, to straight-up tell Max she’s funny. The first is, of course, Luis.
• Max went to a father-daughter dance with her mom’s weed dealer.
• Guy complimenting Caroline: “You’re pretty. You have a good body.”
• “pull out the possum” does not sound like a euphemism for masturbation. Maybe for defecating, but not masturbation.
• Seriously, though, that possum was adorable.
• 2 Broke Girls Cheesecake Menu: Okay, first of all Caroline’s skirt with those heels made it look like her legs went all the way up. To her hips, I suppose, but honestly who knows? Then there was her date get-up which provided the following risque action and hilarious line: 

“It’s just a push-up bra, chicken cutlets, a little tissue and some tape, you know, natural.”

You know how I’m always whining about how this show has no momentum as far as its story and how all I really want is for the characters to head in basically any direction? It’s like this entire episode was written to make me shut up already.

We start things out with this week’s zaaaaany character of the week, a one-armed maid named Paulina. I expressed some pretty heavy disdain with the fact that Max and Caroline would ever hire a cleaning lady, but the idea that Sophie cut them a good deal by assigning them an amputee was actually pretty funny.

Okay, okay, I feel like I need to fast forward ahead because I am actually excited about what goes down in this episode. Basically while cleaning they find Max’s porn stash [which features plenty of 'stache] and Caroline discovers, hidden among the 80s centrefold models, a pastry school brochure which promises to be only $3,000/year. Okay, for real, though, that is like a tenth of what I paid.

Standing in the school’s admissions office Max, unlike her friend, appears to be entirely immune to Chef Nicolas’ sexy French accent [and face]. What really gets her, however, is Nicolas calling her “chef” before he departs. I’m telling you all right now, Kat Dennings really acts in this episode.

She’s glum and moody after her pastry chef dream has been unearthed, feigning anger over invasion of privacy when what she’s really upset about is Caroline finding out what she really wants. She’s ecstatic after realizing through a simple word from Nicolas that she might one day be more than what she ever thought she could be, and then she’s angry, frustrated, and on the brink of giving up when she’s trying her best and failing to create the tart that will be her entrance exam to the school. It seems out of character, later, when she tells her diner friends to crowd around her as she reads what she thinks is her acceptance letter, but it’s really just indicative of how important the moment is for her, that her confidence is strong enough to trump her cynicism for once. Then, of course, there’s the crushing realization on her face when she doesn’t get in.

Now that’s a lot to take in, I know, but it’s indicative of how much great stuff happens. It’s all fantastic character-driven stuff, but it’s the last few scenes that strike the most sincere, effective emotional beats. When Max returns to confront Nicolas she’s pissed, because she knows she deserves to get in. When he claims it’s her attitude, not her ability, that factored into his decision-making we get this shockingly heartfelt response-

-which is enough to convince him to admit her to the school. It’s a scene that contrasts really well with her trying to close herself off to Caroline, taking a page from Ke$ha’s book by hiding in their cupcake shop closet with the bare necessities: a bottle of whiskey and a toothbrush.

Then the show does something it hasn’t done in a very long time, which is make things more, not less, difficult for the girls. It turns out that it’s not, in fact, $3,000/year, but $3,000/course. There are eight a year, meaning that a year’s tuition is really $24,000; still less than mine, but far from an amount the two of them can afford. This is the second time that Max has felt she’s won, and it’s devastating that she’s once again come so close only to have her dream snatched away from her.

Which brings us to the next scene, which is going to be my new go-to when it comes to proving just how strong the girls’ friendship is. Knowing what Max has gone through Caroline does everything short of getting down on her knees and begging Nicholas to let her friend attend the school. She goes so far as saying that she’ll wash the floors, though she “would really prefer to do anything but that.” In retrospect it’s pretty apparent that from the very beginning of this show all Caroline has ever wanted was to fulfill Max’s dreams. She’s an optimistic person by nature, and a big motivation for her character has been trying to show that life really can be good, that sometimes things work out. As a Wharton grad Caroline’s no fool, either, and she’s well aware that sometimes things working out requires sacrifice.

When she returns to their apartment she sees Max crumpling up her porn and tossing it into a hobo fire she set up in their kitchen. As she watches her friend’s extremely symbolic gesture she reveals that she set up a “work-study arrangement” for the two of them. She’ll be working in the school’s office, and Max will be studying.

Not only is it really sweet, because it is very much so, but this heralds a brand new story arc for Max and Caroline and one I am legitimately looking forward to. It also reaffirms the show’s conceit, as the totals below fully explain, and that’s not something I can ever be against.

Current Total: $2,420.

New Total: $2.50 [It turns out that Chef Nicolas decided that $2,417.50 was an acceptable first payment, which is more than fair all things considering].

The Title Refers To: This line that Max delivers:

“Pastry school is the same as porn, it’s just a dumb fantasy”

Stray Observations:

• Either Oleg has sex with his maid, or his prostitute also cleans his house for him. It could go either way.
• Earl’s grandmother was a slave.

• Porn: “It’s the body in its natural form: spread-eagled on a motorcycle”

• Knowing what Max’s homepage is compels me to share one of my favourite tumblrs with all of you: Pornhub Comments on Stock Photos.
• “Your face is the Manhattan School of Pastry.” “You know it isn’t!”
• “I’m not sure we’re in the right place.” “Are any of us, really?”
• Special mention of Bebe, played my Mary Lynn Rajskub, who works in the office and appears to suffer from anxiety or some other form of mental illness. I’m mildly concerned with how we’ll be dealing with her moving forward, as thus far her problems appear to be present only to be made fun of.
• I also thought that Nicolas’ French accent sounded super fake, but it turns out that Gilles Marini is actually from France. Shows you how much I know.
• Max’s joke that made me feel legitimately uncomfortable: “I perform best when there’s a gun to my head ask any of my ex-boyfriends.”
• Her definition of a tart sounds amazing: “just a cookie with some pudding on it.”
• Obligatory Han-dishin’-it-back quote: “I didn’t know she could take b-tch to the next level!”
• “We’re roommates, both single. Quelle surprise.” Caroline you’re the best.
• Max’s chef name: Cuchita Bonfire.

Mark from Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23! Mark from Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23! Mark from Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23! Mark from Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23! Mark from Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23! 

I could care less about anything else right now, but I suppose I have standards to maintain, so let me begin by stating that last week’s episode, “And the Pastry Porn”, could have easily been a mid-season finale. It ushered in a new era of 2 Broke Girls episodes that rounds out the cast, changes up the premise, and feels like an entirely different sitcom.

In fact, I have a few other suggestions they could make in order to become a show I would never stop watching ever:

• Replace Kat Dennings with Krysten Ritter, new nickname “Chloe”.
• Have Dreama Walker step in for Beth Behrs; she now goes by her middle name “June”.
• Keep Eric Andre, but maybe change his name from Deke to something simpler, like Mark.
• The show can stay set in New York; don’t fix what ain’t broken.
• I’m thinking that this could use some star power from the 90s . . . maybe one of those kids from Dawson’s Creek. How about Dawson himself, James Van Der Beek!

Oh, wait, that’s just Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23, isn’t it . . .

*sigh* Ah well. There’s no point crying over spilled milk, or sitcoms that ABC airs out of order before eventually ceasing airing episodes altogether halfway through the second season. What we should really focus on here is that right now 2 Broke Girls feels like something else entirely and that is not at all a bad thing.

For one thing, the surprise party that the diner gang throws Max for her first day of school is rife with really great character interaction. Sophie and Luis meet for the first time, and they snipe at each other like you would expect a Polish cleaning business owner and a gay Latino day waiter to. Everyone ignoring the fact that it’s Caroline’s first day working at the office is just the icing on the cake. ”Caroline, please, I can’t hear Han talking about Max, okay.”

Later, at the pastry school, we have the neurotic Bebe, who I hope will be around for a very long time. Mary Lynn Rajskub does a fantastic job playing unhinged in a really subtle manner, delivering lines like ”I have some workout clothes you can wear! Don’t worry, I haven’t worn them yet. But I will someday,” with just the right amount of unstable emotion. Also at the school is, of course, Mark. Sorry, I meant Deke, played by Eric Andre formerly of Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23.

I’ve always thought that Andre resembled a half-Black Andy Samberg, and he channels the other actor pretty hard in this episode, really cranking up the smarm and manboyishness. After the minor hiccup of Max getting her first day of school gift stolen [a new book bag and a pencil case full of weed] the second hurdle she must face is “Big Deke” and his tendency to keep her off track.

In a lot of ways everything about this is absolutely the right fit for Max. I’ve harped on her being needlessly immature in the past, but putting her in an actual class with other students distracting her makes her character really work. Not only that, but we have the hilariously unaware teacher in Chef Nicolas: “I always keep the edge clean so when I’m squeezing it, is not gonna have cream popping all over the place.”

Best shirt ever, or best shirt ever?

This episode was mostly setting up how things are going to work with Caroline pairing off with Bebe in the office and Max having to deal with Deke and his working hard to get them paired up in class. As far as status quos we have Caroline really working to keep from being ignored, which she makes hilarious because she’s Beth Behrs dangit. Oh, and her romance with Chef Nicolas is chugging along have you seen that guy’s body? The image on the right is more than a bonus for yours truly.

Overall this show is doing better [for me] than it has since the Season 1, and I’m excited to see what’s ahead. Once upon a time I had a whole post planned about how the reason I didn’t like 2 Broke Girls was because it wasn’t Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23, but I’m honestly okay with that now. It’s not the same show as Don’t Trust the B, and it’s not even the same show it was three episodes ago. It’s something different, and in this case change is definitely a good thing.

Current Total: $2.50.

New Total: $114.50 [Not sure how they're profiting at all considering all their earnings go towards Max's schooling, but whatever I guess].

The Title Refers To: Why would you even need to ask this. It’s Max’s first day at the pastry school. C’mon.

Stray Observations:

• Max and Caroline do not get subway etiquette. I had to keep myself from yelling “WAIT FOR PEOPLE TO GET OFF FIRST!” at the screen.

• “You are the devil; the devil! We have nothing. Pull, Max! Pull from the devil!”

• How does Deke feel about being diabetic? “Disappointing. I put in for syphilis.” 
• “Enough with the dirty jokes, we all here to become master bakers.”

• Caroline: “Aww, thank you guys. I’m touched. I was not expecting it.”

  Sophie: “Really? ‘Cause you kind of bullied us all into it.”

• The back of the Cocker Spaniel shirt Caroline was wearing said ”Don’t forget to spay and neuter me” on the butt.
• “Sad dog, your juices are ready.”
• Max’s joke that made me feel legitimately uncomfortable: “I like the entertainment. It’s better than the magician at my friend Stephanie’s 16th birthday that made her virginity disappear.” For real, if there was anything that would stop me from watching this show it’s the constant pedophilia jokes. Quit it, CBS; seriously.
• 2 Broke Girls Beefcake Menu: Chef Nicolas. That is all.
  

I had a lot of good will towards this show saved up from last week’s episode, but you would be surprised how quickly that started draining when I found out what this one was about. See, the most significant death in my life has been my grandmother’s, and while the deceased in this case was Caroline’s nanny just thinking about it made me pretty uncomfortable. 2 Broke Girls is not a show with a great deal of tact, and I was pretty apprehensive going into things-

But you know what? It was a pretty decent episode across the board, and one that actually felt short, which can be a mark of a show that’s moving along in an entertaining way. My fears about how they would tread death turned out to be unfounded, so touché, 2 Broke Girls writers’ room.

We start things out at the Manhattan School of Pastry instead of the diner and are immediately witness to proof that by the third season both Kat Dennings and Beth Behrs have their repartee down. Everything feels really light and natural, and it contrasts fantastically with when Caroline reads the obituary and begins mourning for the woman who was like a mother to her. Max standing next to her and letting the jokes fall off really worked, and provided the opportunity for Bebe to step in for some comic relief.

“Oh, are we allowed to cry at work now? ‘Cause I only do it in my car.”

I know I raved about Luis when he first appeared on the show, but man, Mary Lynn Rajskub is really great. She’s been playing her neurotic character in a really straightforward way, and the lines they’ve been feeding her have been top notch. Luis may not be around much due to him being a day waiter, but the newer secondary characters look like they have a lot of staying power.

As per the main portion of the episode, Max tags along with Caroline to the wedding on the premise of emotional support. That, and there’s a great Philly cheesesteak place right by the funeral home. As Bebe drives first at 20 mph and then at over 100 Ms. Channing gets to wax reminiscently about her time with Antonia; the old woman clearly meant a lot to her growing up, and she’s very much looking forward to being recognized as a large part of her life.

But this is a sitcom, so of course no one there knows who she is, or how Antonia made her a baby chick costume ["peep, peep"], and it is all very embarrassing. At one point she even yells at the funeral attendees about how she’s Caroline Channing, “[her] family was rich but then [her] father robbed everyone and [they] became the scourge of society overshadowed a little bit by Mel Gibson hating the Jews that same week.” Cue the sound of no one caring.

Max’s street smarts aren’t even for her to work her assumed identity of “Ricky’s girl” into a way of getting the family to pretend to remember her friend. It’s okay, though, because they bump into this older woman who does know who Caroline is, and turns out to have been Antonia’s lover. “THE MILITARY!” both Max and Caroline cry, implying that being a woman in the armed forces is  a sure sign of homosexuality. It’s not like the lady doesn’t back them up, either, saying: “I mean come on, that’s me with my arm around her on a tank!” Of course [and I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before though I probably have] this feels like evidence of co-creator Michael Patrick King touting the right to make fun of gay people because he is as well. To give credit where it’s due he did write last week’s episode, which I loved, so there’s that.

The old woman gives Caroline pictures of her nanny and her as a child together and it is adorable and heartwarming, etc.

Finally, and I could have mentioned this at the beginning, the following happened within the first few minutes:

And the shippers on tumblr, who I’ve mentioned before, went bananas. I mean, I was pretty thrilled with that whole scene because it culminated with this-

-which was delivered flawlessly, but people got really excited for other reasons. I mean, here’s a screenshot of the new tumblr posts under the “2 broke girls” tag the night the episode aired [click to open up larger in a new tab]:

I wanted to highlight the relevant areas, but would have ended up highlighting basically all of it.

I think it’s pretty fair to say that the writers definitely know what they’re doing, and will probably do what they can to fan the flames while still keeping their characters’ orientations fairly static. That’s not to say that there’s absolutely no place for homosexuality on the network, merely that this show was never marketed as a “lesbian comedy” and likely won’t become one. Let’s not forget that Max had to open her beer can off-camera; censorship is still alive and well when it comes to television, and execs and other such higher-ups may not approve of such a change for fear of rocking the boat. Sorry, Max/Caroline shippers. Would the name for that ship be Maxoline? Tumblr confirms that yes, yes it would be.

Current Total: $114.50.

New Total: $77 [A man gives the two girls a cheque at the end of the episode assuming they're family of the deceased, and it's strongly hinted that they take the money. It is still strange why their total decreases so much, and I'm going to chalk it up to them paying Bebe back for gas].

The Title Refers To: The promise of life after death, I guess? There was strangely enough no naming of the episode title this week. Seriously, though, this would’ve been a great way to insert something cheesy about how Caroline can keep on living her life after her nanny’s passing.

Stray Observations [lots of them this week]:

• Max telling Caroline that thongs are always uncomfortable goes against everything John Tucker Must Die taught me.
• “I’m the wife, you’re the husband, who I caught wearing my clothes one day but I don’t say anything about it.” Cue the squees.
• “You still have a nanny? Lucky.” 
• “Show some sensitivity! I was crying because my nanny died and also because our grief brunch was at Chipotle!”
• “Your nanny was White? Child, you were rich!”
• “I just read the craziest article in this Popular Science about white dwarves, black holes, and Uranus!”
• “You know, back in Poland, when my nanny died, I was so heartbroken I could barely eat her.” Cue Polish cries of offence.
• “Well, a goat’s a goat. It doesn’t matter what you name it, it’s still good goat meat.” I see what you did there, writers. I see what you did.
• “It’s just some shoes. Stuffed with cocaine. Also the shoes are made of hashish.”
• Caroline is left-handed.
• “You know, my picture must be by the coffin with the other VIPs.”
• Max’s wallet is “a real Ziploc®, not one of those knock-offs.”
• “This funeral turned out to be really depressing.”
• Max’s joke that made me feel legitimately uncomfortable: Her talking to Earl about how some of the ladies at the funeral gave off a “jungle fever vibe.”
• Caroline wants to be thrown into a grave sans coffin “wearing Dior and a smoky eye.” Unless she’s fat, then burn her.
• Max wants Caroline to “shove [her] corpse into a cannon and blow [her] directly into the Trump Casino.”
• 2 Broke Girls Cheesecake Menu: Nothing to see here this week, folks.

First of all, I’d like to personally thank CBS for not uploading any teaser pictures, which made creating the image above equal parts difficult and frustrating. This is the first time it’s ever happened, and for their mid-season finale, too. Which, pleas hold the applause for my effortless segue, are a fairly recent invention.

I more or less blame AMC’s The Walking Dead for hyping the last episode of the year as the “midseason finale”, a solid block of programming which would leave its audience with mouths agape, begging for more [I'm so sorry, I'm not sure where that came from] hyped for the show’s return. It makes perfect sense from a business standpoint, because every network wants viewers to remember to tune back in to the show after the three weeks of holiday specials. Mid-season finales have become big, which is probably why this week’s episode felt, well, small.

As I mentioned in my review [and in the review after that], “And the Pastry Porn” had all making of a mid-season finale. It was a huge shakeup of the status quo, and one that promised subsequent episodes that were going to be something completely new. In essence it did what every major comic book event advertises: “Nothing will ever be the same after this!”

I suppose that could also be said about what happened in “And the French Kiss”, in which Caroline snogs with Chef Nicolas and then finds out he’s married and breaks it off [in this case "it" refers to their romantic relationship]. There’s definitely the possibility that drama will continue seeing as they work in the same general area and a healthy amount of sexual tension remains, but I think we’re pretty confident it won’t turn into anything particularly exciting.

To zoom in a little and stop critiquing the show on a macro level, things were . . . interesting. Which  is to say not particularly good or bad, just . . . interesting. I guess that here “interesting” means that we get good and bad and they more or less cancel each other out.

Eric Andre’s Deke shows up in the diner, which is good, because it’s a daring move from what has been a pretty formulaic show. It’s also sort of bad, which Han sums up by saying, “Oh no, now there’s two of them.” Andre has some pretty decent lines like, ”Dame Judes texts me all the time; she’s thirstayyyyyy,” but also feels like a smarmy quip machine. In a way, Andre appears to be playing himself-

- it’s just that it doesn’t always work so well when there’s already a Max Black [who, let's be real, appears to be Kat Dennings playing herself]. I want to make a good–bad-good sandwich here, so let me also just point out Dennings fake-laughing/being amused never really works, and Oleg, Han, and Earl are all being criminally underutilized in spite of Sophie being shoehorned into every storyline just because.

But hey, there are good things, of course, even for an episode that I’d mark as a solid stop down from the ones that came before it. It basically all comes from the new additions, namely Bebe. Sorry, MVP-regular Caroline, but Mary Lynn Rajskub has really been bringing it lately ["Y'know salad, tastes just like lettuce."]. Back that up with Chef Nicolas’ totally nonchalant responses to Caroline accusing him of being married ["I know her name."] and you’ve got some legitimately laugh-out-loud moments.

To end things off, and with respect to my mid-season finale expectations, Deke does appear to be making the moves on Ms. Black, what with them constantly talking and him licking her face. That may also pay off further down the line, so I guess we’ll see what happens in “And the Big But” which debuts on January 13th, 2014.

Current Total: $77.

New Total: $220 [the girls' made money, even after Caroline buying two salads in New York for her girl-talk lunch].

The Title Refers To: French kissing, which involves tongue, which is what Caroline was doing with the French Chef Nicolas. There may have been a little more than just tongue involved.

Stray Observations:

• A guy on a unicycle tries to pay for a cupcake with a poem. Your first thought would be that this would never work in real life, and it doesn’t.

• “And if I have time to give you a punch, we have time to have lunch.” That joke made me physically frown.

• Deke is basically, among other things, just like “Denzel Washington trapped in Channing Tatum’s body.”
• Caroline describes a croquembouche [or croque-en-bouche] as being “a traditional French wedding cake with vanilla cream-filled profiteroles dipped in handmade caramel” while Wikipedia tells me it’s a “a French dessert consisting of choux pastry balls piled into a cone and bound with threads of toffee.” Close enough, I guess?
• A line from the Deke-Max fake makeout I barely mentioned: ”Let my mouth be your tongue’s panic room.”
• “Girrrrrrrrrllllllllllllll.”
• I loved Max and Deke going back and forth about how Chef Nicolas does things because he’s French. The latter’s final response of “Fraunch” made me think of this, though:

•  Bebe’s not good with languages because she once got hit by three cars.
• “Oh, he’s the best. He has the heart and eyes of a dog.”
• I appreciated the vous/tu French lesson that happened.
• “Do you take this woman, and maybe some others?” I want to apologize to the Polish on behalf of CBS, but they should probably do it themselves.
• “Lesbians are strong!” Thanks, Han.
• Max’s joke that made me feel legitimately uncomfortable is not all that bad this week. I just thought the term “slam-piece” was really gross.
• 2 Broke Girls Beefcake Menu: The heavy petting between Caroline and Chef Nicolas that I described as snogging up above. Could also be described as “clothed sex.”