S02.E10: Road to Nowhere

[AnimeMania]

Beth and John return home from a trip upstate and attend Jen’s surprise birthday party, which turns out to be more surprising than expected. Beth reaches out to Ann during what may be the most pivotal time in Beth’s life.

Premiere Date: February 16, 2024   Hulu  

[txhorns79]

Kind of a meh season.  I think the show has real problems with tone.  Sometimes I feel like I'm watching a comedic sketch from Inside Amy Schumer, then things suddenly took a turn to high drama.  Don't get me wrong, the show has genuinely funny/sad moments, like the friend thinking she was walking into an intervention, it really being a surprise birthday party and the friend taking that as a catalyst to admit she has a problem.   

I also would have liked more development with Beth's sister.  She seems like an interesting character, and I wanted to see more.   

 

[QQQQ]

Looks like individual episode threads were not needed for this season... 😅

[DoctorAtomic]

The doula was hilarious.  

I don't know if anyone watched Amy's HBO special about the pregnancy, but I think I might have got some more out of seeing that all unfold here than had I hadn't watched it. In the special though, John was way funnier. I'm also not a huge Cera fan to start with. 

I know the show isn't a comedy, but I'm not sure what the narrative direction was for the season. It was a lot. You do need some humor, and there was some, but it was sparse. And Amy is really good at mining comedy from uncomfortable situations too. The whole intervention/surprise party and the hospital scene are great examples. 

I actually enjoyed all the flashbacks. Both the young Beth and Ann were great start to finish. 

On 2/22/2024 at 7:22 AM, txhorns79 said:

I think the show has real problems with tone. 

That's kind of what I meant. I'm kind of reluctant to criticize because it's Amy's life, and her pregnancy was really, really hard. 

[SoMuchTV]

43 minutes ago, DoctorAtomic said:

I know the show isn't a comedy,

Okay, after you said that, I had to check. It’s in the “comedy” area here. IMDb has it tagged as comedy, dark comedy, and drama. I’ve stopped trying to decipher a lot of stuff!

[DoctorAtomic]

Well, they can call it what they want, but we all watched the show. It's not a comedy. Only Murders in the Building is way more of a comedy than this. 

There's funny scenes, and I'd say this episode had more humor since probably the New Orleans episode. 

 

[Soobs]

I almost didn't watch this season but I'm glad I did. I'm not really a fan of her comedy. I find it a little mean for my taste. I only watched the first season because I was sick and out of shows to watch and I found it a little mean for my taste. 

I really liked the flashbacks and how they served as explanations at moments when the characters were getting triggered. The young actresses were great.  I also liked the guest stars (Jennifer Coolidge, Amy Sedaris and Maria Bamford). Nice shout-outs to How To Do The Work and Caste, two wonderful books everyone should read. I had several laugh-out-loud moments. I'm not really a Michael Cera fan but I thought he does a good job portraying this character. The younger version did a great job too. Sad what all these kids went through but it was kind of the norm for that generation of parents to be totally emotionally unintelligent.

I hope to see the third season with her helping her sister or not helping and that actually helps her. Maybe she's softened or I've hardened, lol! I thought it was a great season and I was sad I went through it so fast.