Close Enough Review: Quilty Pleasures / The Perfect House

"Nice family, loser."

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Alright, so this is a little bit awkward. About a month ago I wrote a review of the episode of Close Enough that aired at Annecy, "100% No Stress Day," under the impression that it was the series premiere and critiquing it as such. It turns out that was actually... the sixth episode of the season, but I'll reiterate some of my points from there.

As someone who absolutely adores JG Quintel's previous project, Regular Show, Close Enough is both an exercise in wish fulfillment and a fairly risky gambit. I'd like to think of it as "Regular Show after hours"; the show has nothing to hide and no age rating to hold it back from running as wild as it wants, and that's a double-edged sword that both of these episodes, "Quilty Pleasures" especially, still seem to be feeling out. With that, too, there's a sense of maturity under which the show operates, reaffirmed by the ideas driving the show: if Regular Show is an ode to young adulthood and doing whatever you want, Close Enough is about getting shit together and taking care of those around you.

That's a theme emphasized strongly in "Quilty Pleasures," and it makes for a fitting premiere even if it's far from the smoothest ride. It follows a fairly straightforward premise, revolving around Emily and Josh frantically trying to assemble a quilt patch for Candice's class project, but more than anything else, it's a simple case study in how the two characters interact and react off of each other and the world around them. In that regard, I think it's a success.

Whereas "100% No Stress Day" left me with a limited picture of who Emily is (it'll certainly be an interesting episode to revisit when the time comes), she's nicely fleshed out here as the voice of reason in an unreasonable situation, yet a voice still prone to getting diverted by her own self-interest. She's also a fantastic counterpart to Josh, who shares in her determination, even if it frequently succumbs to his shallow and fleeting manchild desires; more than just being a double act of Emily reining Josh in, they're two different kinds of crazy that balance each other out perfectly. When they set out to the Fashion District to find quilt materials, even though both fail horrifically—Emily spends the entire time gossiping and bartering with fabric shops, while Josh splurges on a zoot suit, churros, and a bird with an identical haircut before getting his wallet stolen—they both acknowledge it as a failed mission with neither person more at fault, and it feels shockingly mature in spite of the immature circumstances.

It makes me wish that our other half of the main cast, Alex and Bridgette, could have any light shone on them. Neither episode really gives them enough time for us to get a bead on how they operate; all we understand of Bridgette is that she's the epitome of millennial narcissism and excess, and Alex is her divorced husband who contests her but is far from any better. We get a little slither of what they can offer from the brief portions of "Quilty Pleasures" showing them trying (and failing) to search for Candice, but it's a fairly thankless role that doesn't give the characters much to react off of meaningfully. (I'm led to believe that perhaps the uneven balance contributed towards a different episode being debuted at Annecy more representative of the cast.)

Additionally, I'm not quite sure to feel about the episode's obligatory surreal elements. The revelation that the miscreant who stole Josh's wallet is, in fact, part of a posse of Oliver Twist-esque Victorian street urchins in need of proper parenting is the sort of beautifully anachronistic idea that Regular Show excelled at; as far as being a means of demonstrating the points where the two shows diverge, it's a welcome chance for Close Enough to shift into much darker and twisted territory than its spiritual predecessor ever could. The increasingly discomforting but unanimously jaunty guitar song performed by Emily, especially, is a nice compliment to the more fucked-up elements of what's at play, culminating nicely in her questioning if the assistance the children are providing in making them a quilt is actually just a sweatshop.

Unfortunately, the later reveal that, after a night of alleyway sex, the cute street urchins were in fact a bunch of gangly, homeless creeps, feels like a contrived way of one-upping that premise while taking away from the surreal nature of the original moment. It barely tracks that both Josh and Emily would misconstrue them as young children—waved off, potentially, as a result of toxic fumes—and it feels weirdly extraneous as a means of pushing a climax into proceedings. Ultimately, the fun of the action sequence helps get everything over, but it leaves the main plot of the episode feeling weirdly segmented and disconnected. I'm led to believe that it would've worked best left where it was, without the final twist, because the episode's efforts to write itself out of the hole simply end up making things feel more muddled.

I take "The Perfect House" as a better representation of how Close Enough is able to incorporate absurd elements into its plot, and I think its success lies in how deeply entrenched it is in Emily's character. The idea that she uses open houses as a means of fantasizing about her ideal universe is a great place for the episode to start, and combining it with the anxieties she has about her current living arrangement is a spark of ingenuity; of all of the main characters in the show, she's certainly the one most interested in rising up, even if that can deprive her of happiness in the moment.

Instead, she's forced to take solace from Josh's clumsiness, Bridgette's action painting, and Alex's general Alex-ness by fleeing to an open house, stumbling upon two others who share in her sentiment: Dave, who's evading his wife and triplets, and Caitlin, an emancipated teen idol who turns to open houses for a taste of the normal life she's been deprived from. Just for a moment, Emily can play pretend with a normal family in a fancy house... though, with this being Close Enough, things very quickly take a turn.

That everything slowly morphs into a cheesy sitcom isn't the most original idea on-paper, but by living through that premise under the context of Emily's need for escapism, it's executed surprisingly well. It helps, too, that even though she's the odd one out of her sitcom family as the only person aware of and willing to fight her terrifying circumstances, neither Mona nor Dave try to suppress her or feed into the underlying creepiness of the plot; they're simply two sad human beings turning to the scenario as a source of comfort to live a life that they can't otherwise live. That added dimension might not sound like much on paper, but it allows the potential thinness of "The Perfect House's" narrative to have appreciable depth.

It's also an incredibly fun episode for Josh, who spends a large portion of proceedings fantasizing about owning a family bike to live out his childhood dreams... only to bite him in the ass when he has to rescue Emily while struggling to man the device solo. (I seriously cannot stress how much his struggles on that family bike, with JG's hilariously-strained line deliveries, amused me.) He ultimately doesn't take much charge in the episode's climax, trapping himself in the sitcom house, but his presence feeds to great effect into the episode's resolution. After an attempt to fight the sitcom, Emily realizes that the only way to escape the sitcom house is to abide by the rules of the show, calling forth a family meeting and owning up to her mistakes to Josh and her fake family. While it risks being cliche, it manages to register as shockingly sincere for the character rather than merely playing into the cloying nature that the set-up suggests.

It's those flashes of deep, emotional maturity amid Close Enough's high-strung irreverence that make it work, on top of feeling like a strong progression from Regular Show's lovingly-sophomoric antics. While it certainly risks living under Regular Show's shadow, seeing those hints of evolution and growth from series to series gives me a lot of hope that Close Enough will be able to become its own beast, capable of thriving without its value in comparisons... but we'll just have to see where everything goes. It's certainly a good sign, though, these two episodes make for a defiant start.

FINAL GRADES:
"Quilty Pleasures": B.
"The Perfect House": A.

Next Friday: Emily and Josh go clubbing, and Josh becomes a room parent.

For my initial review of "100% No Stress Day," CLICK HERE.

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