2 Broke Girls gobbles up its latest effort “And the Very Christmas Thanksgiving” from its freshman season, which sees Max (Kat Dennings) and Caroline (Beth Behrs) taking second jobs as hired holiday help in a department store to make some extra cash for supplies. There’s a few cute moments to be sure, but if someone leaves this episode in your stocking you might be left wondering where you went wrong this year.
If it feels like the holidays come earlier and earlier each year, it’s because they do, and 2 Broke Girls treats us to what is ostensibly a Christmas episode before Thanksgiving has even occurred with very appropriately titled* ‘And The Very Christmas Thanksgiving.’Granted the episode focuses more on Black Friday and the rush of holiday spending/jobs created in its wake, but having never participated in a Black Friday sale I’m personally hard-pressed to associate it with either holiday.
Of course hundreds of TV shows have performed hundreds of holiday episodes a dozen times over, and staging one in a CBS sitcom’s first season isn’t likely to blow us away with its warm fuzzies, regardless of how little we know the characters. A moment toward the end had Caroline simply belting out unrelated holiday fixtures like Tiny Tim’s ever famous line from A Christmas Carol or It’s a Wonderful Life itself, which made me feel as though ‘And the Very Christmas Thanksgiving’didn’t really have a point to make, but rather threw sentiments at the wall to see what sticks.
On the one hand, I liked what 2 Broke Girls brought to the holiday table with ‘Very Christmas Thanksgiving,’as Caroline’s issues with her family and financial situation had been mostly steamrolled over lately. There was one point during ‘And Hoarder Culture‘that toyed around with the idea, but never committed to bringing out the negative emotions of someone utterly ruined financially and socially. Here we finally get to explore what the holidays mean to Caroline without money or even an opportunity to see her father, and the transition feels mostly earned over the course of the episode, Max mostly relegated to cracking wise about the meltdown when she’s not trying to bring Caroline to her ‘dark side’of cynicism on the holidays.
On the other hand, I couldn’t forgive ‘And the Very Christmas Thanksgiving’for the same reason I never liked 500 Days of Summer, when hardship ruins character rather than strengthens them. I wanted to slap Joseph Gordon-Levitt for moping so angstily that his precious girlfriend left him, much as ‘Mary Christmas’shoving Caroline into a display felt justified. There comes a certain point where comically exaggerating someone’s despair crosses over from funny to ridiculous, and at no point should we be expected to swallow that the otherwise chipper Caroline would break down screaming at a bunch of children about the horrible truth behind Christmas. We can’t always ask Santa for realism in our CBS three-camera sitcoms, but I’m definitely putting this one on the TVTrope naughty list for good.
Beyond Caroline’s horrifically inappropriate meltdown (which they address, thankfully) I did have a few chuckles over how deftly show manages to work dirty humor and visuals into its writing, the image of Kat Dennings covered in batter and making a ‘Christmas comes all over me’taking the figurative cake. Though for the record, I’ve also never been more painfully aware of the show’s formulaic ‘character says X, Kat Dennings BLANK (insert turned phrase, or topical reference here) with Y’approach to dialogue. if you don’t get why topical references have no place in comedy like this, I’ll refer you to the endless Dreamworks Vs. Pixar debate.
After last week’s ‘And The Really Petty Cash‘forced the Johnny story back into the spotlight, it was nice to have a break to explore issues not really dealt with since the pilot, I just wish we hadn’t needed such a packaged, unrealistic story to get there. But after all, isn’t that what Christmas is really about?
If you’ll excuse me, I’m off to schlep down to the convenience store in a bathrobe for a bottle of Jack Daniels and some Twinkies. God help you if you flaunt your happiness in front of me.
And Another Thing
- *I confess that I started writing about the episode being more Christmas than Thanksgiving, and stopped midway through to find the episode’s actual title, which more or less addressed the situation.
- That had to be about the worst-looking prop $20 I’ve ever seen.
- I’ve done a few energy shots in my day, and they are EXACTLY like being tired and wired at the same time.
- Elf-hole, Bi-polar Express, Children of the Corn, how many puns can 2 Broke Girls fit in an episode?
What did YOU think?
Thk Abc warehouse black friday