11/15/13
View Logs: Hello Ladies S1 Episode 6
Episode Title: Long BeachThis episode baffles me. It sincerely does. Honestly I consider this particular episode the worst so far and likely the worst out of the series (since there's only 8 for S1). So the premise is that Stuart is having some construction work done and he decides to try to befriend the workers... because he's scared of them. Well ok, maybe he's not sincerely scared but he would like to try to "belong" with them to not feel so alienated around them. This reminds me of the episode in The Ricky Gervais Show (sorry I don't remember exactly which one) in which Stephen Merchant talks about being frightened by blue collared workers because of their physical strength. The skit and subsequent talk about that was charming but this episode in Hello Ladies just felt like an overly drawn out version of that Ricky Gervais bit.
So in regards to the plot, I suppose there wasn't anything terrible about it. But it seemed like a filler episode. So the workers, "being blue collared and all", decides to invite Stuart to go to a club with them to meet easy women. Stuart... being the dick that he is, decides to tag along and try to "mingle with a different crowd." During his visit to the bar, he ends up getting asked to do a bunch of things he's uncomfortable with. Such as smoking crack. There are some moments here and there that are legitimately funny but the story here is more boring than the previous episode. Stuart even gets roped into an altercation with another bunch of low lives and accidentally starts a fight.
Ok... I know this is set in Long Beach. But it's a little weird to see all the blue collar characters be essentially stereotyped as like borderline criminals. At the end of the day, this episode is what I feared most from the show when I started watching it. It's not really that consistently funny and it's also not really thoughtful about anything. I must compare this episode to Louie Season 1 Episode 9 "Bully". This is probably one of my personal favorite episodes of all time from a comedy show. In the episode, Louie gets a date ruined by a bunch of frat boys humiliating him. He eventually goes up to confront the parents of the frat boy and things end up resolving in a way that was thoughtful and different from what you'd typically expect. This episode of Hello Ladies had the potential to reach the same heights of that episode but it just didn't do anything with it's premise. It essentially boiled down to Stuart getting roped into things he doesn't want to do because of peer pressure (on both the male and female side). Stuart being incredibly awkward and out of place, then weaseling out of it. That is literally the entire episode. What does Stuart learn from the story of the episode? That blue collared people are dicks? Sorry Stephen Merchant. This episode was boring. I hope this is the worst the show gets.
