S01.E02: Pests

[AnimeMania]

Birdie grows more invested in her scholarship recipient, Ford; Alice investigates her dog's murder; Catherine wrestles with coming clean about her affair; Brett butts heads with his ex-wife; in flash-forwards, Birdie seeks help covering up the body.

Premiere Date: March 2, 2025

Matthew Davis as Joel Thomas

Alexander Hodge as Doug

Nancy Travis as Patty

Gavin Borders as Zach   Josh Ventura as Connor   Nora Zehetner as Melissa

Artemis Pebdani as Olga

[Irlandesa]

This episode had some nice twists.  I'm very much in for at least one season.  Second seasons on shows like this tend to get worse as they leave their tight first thirteen episodes behind. 

The only thing I wish they hadn't done is use a blue overlay for the "six months later" scenes.  It's annoying, especially since they spend so much time in the future.

[possibilities]

So many candidates for murder! 

[peachmangosteen]

Literally all these people just want to cheat on their significant others. It's a bit much lol.

[blackwing]

I enjoyed this episode, which generated more open questions.

Are we supposed to believe that Alice's husband killed her dog?

In the flashforward scenes, the cop who is investigating the murder hooks up with Birdie and he promises not to let anyone discover the evidence.  He and his wife adopted Birdie's son.  But is he the biological father as well?  She seems to have had a pre-existing relationship with him.

Edited Tuesday at 07:12 PM by blackwing

[peachmangosteen]

3 hours ago, blackwing said:

Are we supposed to believe that Alice's husband killed her dog?

Yea. But they wanted us to think it was the high school kid last episode so they're probably just gonna go through multiple suspects.

I didn't think about cop guy being Birdie's baby daddy but I agree that they seemed to maybe already know each other when he talked to her at the book store in the pilot so you could be onto something.

Edited Tuesday at 10:14 PM by peachmangosteen

[possibilities]

Hiding a gun is never a good sign, butI agree the show is deliberately feeding us misdirects, so I'm trying not to draw conclusions.

I didn't buy the attempted redemption of the high school plagiarist this week. He might not have killed the dog, but he's still a scumbag brat. The whiplash on his characterization struck me as bad writing, not a shocking reveal.

I still am enjoying the show, but I am side-eyeing the "everybody has a bad relationship and is cheating" as well.

I get the feeling we are supposed to find it funny-- but somehow they are not hitting the sweet spot that makes something campy and aburdly enjoyable... it's like they're too serious for that, but not serious enough to take seriously?

Another thing is, I guess we're supposed to think it's too much how upset she is about her dog. But to me, killing the dog is a terrible plot device and I don't blame her for being devastated. I get the feeling that killing a dog instead of a person is supposed to make it less upsetting, but I find it very upsetting!

Still... I like this show more than some others that launched this season, so I'm still watching and I still feel hooked.

[heatherchandler]

On 3/2/2025 at 11:22 PM, Irlandesa said:

This episode had some nice twists.  I'm very much in for at least one season.  Second seasons on shows like this tend to get worse as they leave their tight first thirteen episodes behind. 

The only thing I wish they hadn't done is use a blue overlay for the "six months later" scenes.  It's annoying, especially since they spend so much time in the future.

I haven’t noticed any twists.  Just the pregnant wife and I didn’t care, mostly because we don’t really know these people yet.  I don’t know if I like this show… it isn’t all that interesting.

 

I cannot see a thing when they cut to that blue overlay.  It is hard to follow what’s happening and when.. but this is a bad way to do it.

Edited Thursday at 04:09 AM by heatherchandler

[tennisgurl]

I am still enjoying the show, we sure do have a lot of possible bodies. So what happens when the season ends and we presumably find out who was killed? Does the gang just keep hiding more and more bodies as the towns body count rises? Until than though, I'll enjoy the ride. 

Wow, Birdie and her biological sons adopted father? Who's also a cop? Girl, you are messy. 

I don't buy that the ex wife cheated on her husband and left him because she thought he had a thing for Alice, who it seems are, for now, platonic friends. "I suspect my husband might cheat so I'll cheat first" doesn't make you sound like the good guy in this. I am getting whiplash from Alice's husband, in the first episode they seemed like a sweet couple who were on the same page about what they wanted but now all of the sudden he wants to be just like his rich parents and is being a dick about her dog, it came out of nowhere. I guess its so Alice and Brett can get together and so he can be a suspect in the dog killing, but I don't buy that he killed the dog.

[bunnyface]

Well, this episode did answer one question.  I kind of thought Alice and Dude (name?) had a brother/sister vibe until one particular scene in the pilot that made me think "what was that?"  So I was confused.  Now I know they aren't siblings.  So there's that.  I wish their relationship had been made clearer from the beginning.  

I kind of laughed at the kid pretending Birdie hit him with her car just to get what he wanted.  I mean, he's a little sociopath, but it was funny.  

[truthaboutluv]

On 3/7/2025 at 2:03 PM, bunnyface said:

I kind of laughed at the kid pretending Birdie hit him with her car just to get what he wanted.  I mean, he's a little sociopath, but it was funny.  

It made it more convincing that he's her biological son (although he doesn't know it) because it's the type of thing Birdie would do and I say that as someone who likes her. 

I'm not sure if Birdie and the cop go back to where he's her son's biological father. For one thing, when she talked about her pregnancy to the kid, she hinted that it was essentially a hookup situation. And I didn't get the sense that she and the cop knew each other when they first spoke in the bookstore.

That said, I do think his calling her the nickname that she says she hates, hints at a longer familiarity than you'd expect if they've only just met and started their affair in the last six months.