Close Enough Review: Logan's Run'd / Room Parents

"Heyy, my dude, my man, my bro. What's a guy gotta do to get a few shots around here?" "Uh, stop trying so hard?"

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If there's one great thing that can be said about Close Enough, it's that it knows how to strike the exact tone it wants. This is not a show that has to compete for your attention; if you want the goods, it'll provide them with no need for a substitute. But with the show revealing so early on what it's capable of, and what it strives to be able to accomplish and say about its subject matter, there's a certain expectation it's set that it, at times, is reluctant to properly flesh out, instead piling on its silly charms at the expense of insight. "Logan's Run'd" and "Room Parents" present both sides of the coin.

"Logan's Run'd" feels like one of Close Enough's better outings, in-line with "The Perfect House" in exploring the conflicting well of emotions with being on the fringe of turning older. It's an idea that the show is proving itself to be particularly adept at, especially with integrating its humor into. An episode centered around the gang going to an intimidating club and feeling like fish out of water is far from new, but the fact that it's so rooted in the specificity of our cast ensures that there's a true sense of perspective to what's happening, and more intent than simply being able to indulge in some insane shit.

It does, admittedly, help that "Logan's Run'd" manages to find a delightfully dark gimmick for its titular bar: any patrons discovered to be over the age of 30 are sacrificed via giant fan, dousing spectators in their blood. Suddenly, more than just feeling disoriented by their fatigue, Josh, Emily, and Alex are trapped in a high-stakes game of hipster camouflage that could dictate whether they live or die. It becomes a game just as much about proving something to themselves as proving something to the skeptical world that promises no mercy for their extra years.

More importantly, the premise creates a fantastic opportunity to finally showcase Alex and Bridgette prominently, which Close Enough has been strangely cagey about. Bridgette gets the most to do removed from the rest of the gang in her pursuit of an up-and-coming YouTube star who turns out to, in fact, be a skeevy 26 month-old baby, though her sub-plot ultimately feels like a digression in questionable taste. No, the real star of this episode is Alex, who ultimately decides to own up to the fact that he's past his prime and decides to willingly sacrifice himself out of his fear of aging.

We're yet to truly establish who Alex is outside of being a ball of eccentric weirdness  (a consequence of his limited screentime up to this point), but as with the best of the show, he presents a chance to explore Close Enough's themes of growing up and maturity with the reminder that there's nothing wrong with ascending to the next phase of life. It's best not to hide from what you're becoming and instead be receptive to whatever aging entails—a message nicely reaffirmed with the reveal that the antagonistic bartender of Logan's is, in fact, a balding poseur pushing 50.

Speaking of aging, I do feel the need to make a bit of a tangent: Close Enough is very intent on grappling with the zeitgeist, but I feel like its interest in skewering pop culture so explicitly is a bit of a slippery slope. Granted, there is something inherently timeless about the crunk trashiness of Lil Jon's "Turn Down for What" that makes "Logan's Run'd" start off with perhaps one of the most memorable sequences from the series yet, but Close Enough's reliance on making nods to pop culture at large runs the risk of dating itself from time to time, especially in the absence of creating its own weird, nostalgic timeline or using parody to the extent of its predecessor, Regular Show.

It's ultimately far from something that drastically affects the show, but I'm left to wonder how well the image of Josh flossing, or Bridgette's abbreviated text-talk ("I'mma go slide into his DMs IRL."), will withstand or succumb to the passage of time. As it stands in the present, though, "Logan's Run'd" is a solid outing for the show.

Whereas that episode manages to lift its premise through its smart character work, though, "Room Parents" feels somewhat limp. Even if Close Enough is able to bolster the comparatively uninspired idea it's working with by virtue of the show's inherent charms, it's an episode that doesn't feel like it has much to say, and is ultimately more intent to cease upon the embryonic state of the show for some easy dramatics. If it's not half-baked, it feels like the show coasting off of JG Quintel's inspired touches rather than searching for something entirely new.

I think a part of my frustrations with the episode stem from the tiredness of its set-up, which feel so overdone that no amount of subverting expectations can really get it over. For some reason, every show about young adults seems to have an affair episode, and we know that it won't actually threaten the status quo or ultimately the relationship of those involved, but "Room Parents" at least tries to push it to the extreme through an entertaining montage that repeatedly fakes out Emily. (Indeed, the one-two-three punch of "Sex Hotel," "Sussex Hotel," and "Sussex Hotel for Having Affairs In" is a stroke of profoundly stupid comedic genius.) It also fiddles with the idea that Josh isn't necessarily compliant in adultery—he's just bafflingly unable to clearly interpret the extent that his co-room parent, Nikki, is trying to get in his pants—but in the same stroke, I feel like casting him as too dumb to put two and two together dumbs down his intellect a little too much for the sake of milking the scenario.

Smartly, "Room Parents" pulls itself entirely out of being built off of hokey interpersonal character work in favor of blasting things out of proportion, with the reveal that Nikki is not, in fact, an actual parent but a seductive grifter intent on stealing all of Josh's fundraiser money. It certainly helps that Close Enough goes all out with a balls-to-the-wall action sequence packed full of explosions and groin-kicks, but that also deprives the episode from being able to pull off anything more mature or thematically pertinent. No matter how hard you try, it's a difficult premise to win at, and while "Room Parents" opts to play a different, more exciting game, it's only modestly rewarding.

Ultimately, it's fine for the series to simply explore an episode for its worth in comedy without displaying meaningful development, but in contrast to what Close Enough has proven that it's fully capable of doing, "Room Parents" feels like a step back, as if it's stalling on finding a pulse on its characters (note Alex and Bridgette, once again, being far removed from the episode) and the ultimate messages about young adulthood that it's trying to convey. It's fun and flashy, and it certainly fulfills an itch, but that's about all it has in store.

It's clear that Close Enough knows fully the sort of tone it wants to strike, and it's able to hit those beats satisfyingly and with an excellent sense of humor, but its episodes are still a mix of indulgence and potency. Indulgence of Close Enough's sort certainly isn't the worst thing you could possibly receive, but the show's revealed the cards it can play, and I'm anxious to see it put its plans more into fruition.

FINAL GRADES:
"Logans Run'd": B+.
"Room Parents": B-.

Next Friday: Josh introduces Candace to skateboarding, and struggles to secure some ham. 

For my review of the last two episodes, "Quilty Pleasures" and "The Perfect House," CLICK HERE.

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