Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23 – Episode 2 – Review

The latest episode of Don’t Trust got off to a slow start, but overall it improved and built up from the first episode.

At the start of the episode, June (Dreama Walker) is moving on after breaking up with her long term fiancé in the first episode. In fact, she’s feeling so confident that she wonders why she even needs a relationship. The answer strolls confidently out of the elevator to the soulful lyrics of Lionel Richie’s “Hello” – it’s a baby in a pram, and June is instantly broody.

This sets up the episode’s plot. In order to get a cute baby, June is going to have to meet a new man and, in a classic sitcom setup, room-mate Chloe (Krysten Ritter), who is still trying to get June to trust her, decides to set her up with an acquaintance. Chloe apparently has plenty of experience with this, having set up their pervert peeping-tom neighbour Eli with his current partner… a blow-up sex doll.

She’s not very experienced at this whole “being normal” thing.

Anyway, Chloe decides to set June up with Scott, an eligible older gentleman who seems to be perfect for June, and they hit it off. However, this being Don’t Trust, we know that a twist is coming and that Scott is not all he’s cracked up to be. I found this plot lagged in the middle of the episode as we waited for the shoe to drop, but when it did, it was very funny and provided a great twist on the otherwise standard “set the roommate up” sitcom storyline.

In this episode, we also meet Chloe’s parents. Again, Don’t Trust showed its strength at turning over sitcom and television show clichés. For instance, the show leads us to believe that the reason for Chloe’s craziness lies with her parents, specifically her neglectful mother, who never took her ice-skating or horse-riding. However, when we finally meet Chloe’s mother, the reason why she never did these things becomes clear and we realize, nope, Chloe’s just really crazy. It was another great reveal and was hilarious.

Walker and Ritter are great once again as Chloe and June, building on the partnership they established in the first episode, developing a strong back-and-forth line delivery. Ritter is able to deliver Chloe’s bizarre dialogue with a straight face, while Walker uses her incredibly expressive face to create brilliant and amusing reaction shots.

However, it’s the guys who steal the episode. James Van Der Beek continues to be fantastic. In this episode, he decides to teach an acting class but still cannot escape the shadow of Dawson, and rants about James Franco while dressing like Indiana Jones. We begin to see why he and Chloe are meant to be such good friends: he’s as vain, insensitive and stupid as she is. The show once again brilliantly lampoons the celebrity lifestyle, this time poking fun at the tendency of actors to moan about being pigeon-holed in one role. James also shares a few scenes with the equally good Mark (Eric Reynolds) and their conversations are the highlights of the episode. Mark got a few great lines in this episode, although the revelation that his girlfriend is so tiny they can only have sex in water was more creepy than funny.

Overall, it was a good step forward after the pilot. Chloe’s bitchiness is becoming more plain ol’ craziness, and the bitchiness is being directed at the people around her, rather than at June. The show’s comedy continues to come from the farcical situation, the character interactions and Farrelly-brothers style “gross-out” humour (although never quite as extreme). The only problem I guess I have with the episode is all the jokes and references about Dawson’s Creek. The show passed me by, perhaps because I was a bit too young when it was popular, so I don’t get any of these references, and I’m not sure if the show is still as popular and well-known by the public as Don’t Trustwants us to believe. Does Dawson’s Creekstill have a big following? Either way, Don’t Trust is still very entertaining television.