Free Agents - 1x03 - Dr. Hu

Unprofessional-ism abounds this week as Helen dates her almost psychiatrist, Stephen plays mind games with his staff, and Alex is a complete tool to his assistant Emma. Admittedly, Emma IS trying to steal his job, which is probably kind of frowned upon in most workplaces. What does all this contemptible dysfunction add up to? A pretty amusing episode for the most part, though one that's still failing to deliver big belly laughs.

We come in on an absolutely dreadful, pouring day, as Alex and Helen stand under an umbrella arguing about whether or not "real men" use umbrellas. It seems this is going to be a theme or "known fact" that we're going to keep going back to throughout the episode, even though, to my knowledge, I've never heard anything of the sort. I mean, I find umbrella's personally bothersome to carry, and hate them for that reason, but it's never been an issue of machismo. Now granted, genetically speaking, I'm probably closer to something akin to Alf than what's traditionally called a "real man", so I may have just not been cc'ed on the memo outlining this policy, but it's still something I find truly hard to swallow. Now that that's off my chest, I CAN say, that their banter here is really cute without being cloying or too annoying. I've definately seen better (Mad About You, Sports Night, the rare HIMYM), but it's also rare in this day and age that a show can manage to not cross that line in the first place, that I have to give the show props, as the filthy beatniks say, for managing to consistently stay on the right side of it. The inherent charm of the leads is a big factor in that as well.

The reason for this whole ill-thought-out umbrella-manliness discussion is that Alex has gotten the "account" for an umbrella company. Wait, so they're PR guys? I'm going to find out what it is these so-called agents do some day. I probably could just wiki it, but I think I'm going to enjoy this challenge of putting the pieces together.

Did the same folks design both Up All Nights and Free Agents openings?

While not a biker, technically speaking, rough bears, are
presumably sought after for a kind of manliness...

Alex is pulling out his first pitch to the Landen Umbrella corporation: sponsoring a "manliest jobs in America" competition in order to cement the idea of umbrella's and manliness in the publics minds. It looks like he spent a total of 10 seconds on the Google Image Search for each of the representative vocations, because he essentially ends up with The Village People as his pitch pictures. Emma doesn't miss an opportunity to vocally call him out on that in front of the client. Not cool, Emma. The client however, seems to like her spunk and that's enough for Stephen to decide that Emma should be included on Alex's team as they come up with a whole new pitch.

Alex, though humiliated, and thus not thrilled with the idea, seems to think this is an opportunity to teach Emma the ropes, not unlike a new eager intern. Emma agrees with that sentiment, though instead of "learning" the ropes, she wants to use them to hang Alex out to dry and steal his job (or whoever's job might be expendable, like Skeevy and Nerdy). She's more or less pretty blatant about it, and yet somehow doesn't seem like she's outright evil. She's more...sociopathy. It doesn't seem personal to her at all. And yet, a-hunting she goes.

Alex for his part, is also kind of a dick to her. Instead of treating her like a member of the team to include in project planning, like Stephen and the client obviously seem to want, he keeps her at arms length, as if she was a silent med student on a hospital show. He claims that Stephen only put her on the team to screw with everyone and put the fear of unemployment in them, and he would really rather not have to deal with this crap on a week that he has his kids.

Alex's decision to put spending time with his kids first only gives Emma more opportunity to upstage him and start running the project on her own, with Skeevy and Nerdy's help, throwing out ideas both legimately interesting (such as meeting with P. Diddy's umbrella carrier) and fundamentally stupid, (staging viral videos showing the umbrellas as dangerous weapons).

Unfortunately for her, she goes with the stupid idea, and her big presentation to the client bombs fairly spectacularly before Alex steps in to rescue her with a truly reprehensible idea to plant fake scientific studies in magazines alleging a link between rain and hair loss to trick vain men into carrying umbrellas. I always wondered what it'd be like when Hank Azaria stepped out of his usual "nice guy" roles. I can't say I expected them to make him the Karl Rove of advertising.

In Helen world, Stephen's scathing review of her latest project outline ("It's good.") has set her on a flower-tearing frenzy. Somewhat concerned by her violent paranoia and inablity to figure out why throwing herself completely into her work so soon after her fiancee died (wait, what? I really have to watch that pilot episode) might not be so good in the long run, Alex passes along a recommendation to see his shrink Dr. Hu. To her credit, Helen does ask if he's a "humanoid time-traveller", so yay, another fan!

"Wait, wait...there's a great regeneration pun in here
somewhere..."

At the dear Doctor's, Helen has gone all insane-overachieving-honor student, and come in with a ginormous tabbed and highlighted textbook detailing all her mental states as defined by a multitude of internationally recognized pscyhological metrics. Despite this, Hu declares her to be fine and not in need of therapy. That's our first big hint that his dreamy features and bedroom eyes and...wait what? sorry. Anyway, our first big hint that he's perhaps not the great analyst Alex made him out to be. Our second clue comes when he starts dating Alex. It's supposedly not weird because she doesn't need therapy. According to him. Who she went to to get therapy. I'm pretty sure there HAS to be a rule about that somewhere. Maybe he threw the ethics manual into the heart of a supernova because he didn't agree with it.

Naturally, Helen's dinner date with him turns into one giant "I don't really need therapy despite all the crazy ass shit I'm confiding in you right now" sitcom trope. "Luckily" she's saved from further humiliating herself (in that particular way, anyway) by Alex, who came to the restaurant to celebrate the successful umbrella pitch. They get into a big argument as to the relative appropriateness of Hu and Helen dating (ship name: Hulen? HeHu?). They're really getting into it, making a huge scene, until Hu finally has enough, slams his napkin, gets up, points at them and declares himself the Oncoming Storm and dares them to take the Pandorica from him them both "co-dependent wackjobs" and storms out.

Their wrath now aimed at the "shockingly" unprofessional Dr. Hu, Alex slips into Hu's vacated seat, starts nibbling on his just arrived food, and the two continue their banter and dinner without skipping a beat.

--

Another pretty sweet episode, in both senses of the term. Again, lacking in belly laughs, but charming and feel good, and not at all insulting to the intelligence. The leads continue to the driving force of the show. It's weird to see Hank Azaria acting like a jackass, and you kind of hate him more for it, because damn it that's not how he's supposed to be, but it's effective. And again, it really speaks to Hahn's charm and delivery that the "not really therapy, but i'm pouring my heart out anyway" date doesn't come off as utterly cliche as it is. Same thing for the cliche of the overly prepared Type A personality we got with Helen and the binder. Admittedly I've missed an episode, and we're only three in, but I never got the Lisa Miller vibe of ridiculous nerdiness from her before. It was all Hahn that didn't make me facepalm during that sequence.

I'm not sure how I feel about Alex having to come in for the rescue/takedown at the end of Emma's presentation. They were both acting pretty shitty, and while it does make sense that the person with the most expirience would be the most qualified, I never felt that Alex got his just desserts for being a jackass in the first place. That said, Alex/Azaria trying to be bad ass by repeating "Imma take ya out" was entertaining as all hell.

Also, metatextually speaking, Emma was seriously hampered by that ridiculous viral video idea. Why not stick with the legimtaely intruging concept of paying a famous rapper's entourage to use the product. Isn't that how Courvoisier got big?

In the end though, another charming, enjoyable episode, and I look forward to more.