Monsters of Television

“Found something to worry about.”

Well. Everyone has an off day.

“Cleaning House” is a creaky, kind of lazy little episode that suffers from a lack of focus and, frankly, anything really interesting happening until the last minute. The episode isn’t busy, and since nothing really pops in the episode, it feels like it’s taking a leisurely pace to get to conclusions that we all know are coming, or simply don’t expect because of red herrings.

Like last week’s Community, I’m okay with great shows having so-so episodes. They happen, and you can only roll with the punches, and hope next week will be better.

So what do I mean by lazy? Well, let’s start with the deposition leak. As a plot device, this is an okay way to begin a new arc (the introduction of a third candidate for State’s Attorney) for the show. What isn’t okay, however, is just how pointlessly it’s handled. We know, LG&B knows, and even Cary knows that Alicia didn’t leak the tape. So why go through the motions? I get the idea of political payback from Childs, but it’s just so meaningless since we know nothing will come of it. There’s nothing really at stake with the inquiry, so why bother?

Well, narratively, the episode bothers because it needs to maintain the red herring. Eli “discovering” that the judge presiding over the original deposition plays into the role the deposition plays in the episode’s misdirection. But since Eli finds out about Adler early enough on, it just seems even more futile to keep the inquiry going from a plot standpoint. The machinations to get Diane involved (plus that Adler is the keynote speaker at the Gala is all too convenient) just feel strung out. Pile it on top of Will’s wordless threat against Childs, and it the whole misdirection feels more like a massive cheat instead, with no enjoyment to be drawn from the reveal.

And bamboozling seems to be the order of the episode. I don’t have the character relation down between Alicia and Nancy (I started the show the episode after Nancy’s first appearance), so their antagonism goes largely played in subtext for me. Which is fine, it was bound to happen (I’ve put the first 13 episodes in my Netflix queue for catching up). However, it did lessen the impact of whatever bit of revenge Alicia orchestrated by going to the original joint defender instead of Nancy to bring in the new witness. Which leads the next lazy point: going to see the doped up original joint-defender? Bah. Why not have a fuller conflict between Alicia and Nancy instead of doing that in a roundabout way? It deflates the tension between the two characters in pretty significant ways.

Which leaves the boringest of the boring: Blake and Kalinda. Already circling the drain of Dullsville with their little games, Kalinda’s escalation is, well, I don’t know why she did it. I can somewhat understand a potential motivation, lack of respect from the new guy, but due to Kalinda’s mysterious nature, I can’t even be sure that’s the reason she totals Blake’s rental car. Their pseudo-sexual tension is likewise not doing anything for me. It feels force in part because they’re both such ciphers but also because I just don’t believe either of them is really attracted to the other. This could be a failure of the writing or the actors or both. Regardless, it’s not working for me.

The reveal that super-smooth Wendy Scott Carr is the third candidate for State Attorney is interesting, I guess. That I haven’t seen the character interact with Childs or Peter (or, really more likely, Eli) leaves me to withhold judgment on how this will play out. But that the entire episode builds up to this surprise, and it does, still feels a little wonky to me. I get that we’re to be surprised as they are (“Who is Wendy Scott Car?!”), but I’d almost have been happier had it been someone we’d seen before, someone with a history with Childs and Peter, to give a real oophm to the reveal.

So, chalk one up to lackluster, and hope next week comes out swinging.