Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23 – Episode 3 – Review

Behold…another American sitcom!

Parent Trap attempted to flesh out the character of Chloe (Krysten Ritter), the titular bitch of the apartment. We found out how she affords her extravagant lifestyle: she appears to be an event organiser (or simply an escort) for ambassadors gathering at the United Nations. This allowed for a few delightful sight gags, as Chloe memorised flags and decided on an outfit that was both classy and slutty. The episode also addressed Chloe’s troubling lack of responsibility: within the first minute she attempts to avoid blame for allowing her plant to wither, her fish to die and for possibly killing a neighbour’s family member…

She’s not very good at this whole “not letting things die” thing.

In an attempt to deal with her responsibilities, Chloe decides to hire a personal assistant. Well, technically she fosters one. She fosters a pre-teen girl to be her personal assistant.

Wow, that’s kind of messed up and fairly ridiculous, even for a show that relies on ridiculous situations.

I’ve got to call a time-out here and discuss a problem I’ve been noticing so far with the show and this episode was the most egregious example of it: Chloe is not a bitch. Her behaviour is not bitchy, it is psychopathic. She has an almost complete disregard or lack of understanding of how her actions affect society and the feelings of others, which is the sign of a psychopath. Maybe this is deliberate (perhaps for the season finale, Chloe goes on a killing spree like a sexy Jason Voorhees) and it doesn’t prevent the show from being funny, but it does make the show’s title irritatingly inaccurate.

Anyway, Chloe’s fostered pre-teen complicates life for roommate June (Dreama Walker) who has started an internship for a crazy boss and has taken on more responsibility at the coffee shop.

It’s just occurred to me, is there some unwritten rule that every sitcom in New York has to have several scenes set in a coffee shop?

“Luther steals every scene”

June eventually breaks under the pressure of so many responsibilities, leading to the best moment of the episode when June snaps in the coffee shop, screaming “YOUR BREATH SMELLS WHEN YOU YELL” over and over again. Yet, while this was a good pay-off, this plot-line was far too ridiculous, silly and contrived, even for this show, and sadly left me cold.

However, as usual, Dawson… sorry, James Van Der Beek was there to make the episode awesome again. In addition to having a few great lines, James’ character brings along the hilarious Luther (Ray Ford), his camp personal assistant. Luther steals every scene. This week, the show lampooned Freaky-Friday style body shop movies, with James cast as the father in a fictional movie with Kiernan Shipka (Sally in Mad Men). The scene where James mimics Shipka is great, and the end-of-episode stinger was very clever, showing why we’ve never seen a father-daughter swap (because it would be really, REALLY gross).

Hopefully the next episode will pick things up. This series is in danger of becoming formulaic and predictable, and I really don’t want that to happen.