Close Enough Review: Prank War / Cool Moms

"What are you doing?! I've got a job! And a kid!"
 "And a husband!" "THAT'S DEBATABLE!"

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With "Prank War" and "Cool Moms" marking the midpoint of the series, it's interesting to look back on how the past season's been and the extent that Close Enough has found its footing. It's not like this is a show that's really had an uphill battle to fight: there's few shows that can get away with being as self-assured with their place in market. The greatest concern, then, is just Close Enough resting on its laurels, even if that can be really hard to define; Close Enough, in being Close Enough, is wildly unpredictable no matter what, after all. Continuing off of that, these two episodes are basically the show at its most true to itself, with all of the good and bad that entails.

"Prank War" is another chance for Close Enough to go balls-to-the-wall without any deeper ambition than allowing events to transpire as they may, but it certainly manages to reach an interesting place. The idea of an episode being centered around pulling pranks risks a certain predictable outcome—the half-dozen episodes of Regular Show centered around pranks, too, had me fearing what new could even be brought to the table here—but to the episode's credit, it detours far from the usual line. By the midpoint, I assumed that the extent to which Josh's final prank goes wrong, with Emily and Bridgette giving a bush prankster the Big C (a coma) and having them put in a holding cell on charges of manslaughter, was an extension of prank episodes' rote "subversion": Emily and Bridgette are actually gonna be fine, I thought, and are pranking Josh back by pushing things to their limit rather than indulging in his immature shenanigans. (Snakes! Buckets of water! Hockey masks!)

So the moment that Bridgette gets stabbed through the hand with a fork after, under the same supposition as I just laid out, poking fun at a butch prisoner that she thinks is merely an actor, "Prank War" is able to make a truly unexpected and horrifying shift. While I can give Close Enough credit for actively operating against and even winking at expectations, it doesn't really help how weirdly contrived a lot of the set-up feels at the same time. I can buy Bridgette and Emily violently beating up Bush Guy believing him to be some creep after an earlier incident, for instance, but the police immediately stepping in to take the two away at the hospital feels like a forced advancement of the plot, however necessary it is for the episode's end goal.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, though, "Prank War" feels like the first episode that's actually found an organic means of using Close Enough's main cast in equal part, and all playing compelling roles in the narrative. It's a struggle that's saddened me about the show, and probably my greatest complaint—episode runtimes being halved is the best theory I have, and it's a shame that we're getting a truncated vision of how the show was originally written—but everything gels exceptionally well here; it feels like the show in a state of equilibrium.

Josh, obviously, is the instigator, insecure when his young co-workers single out how old he is, and once shit hits the fan, he's left to scramble and fix the results of his poor decision-making. Emily ultimately gets lost in the shuffle a bit, but that's a consequence of being the voice of reason; she keeps things grounded by responding to the world as any sane person should and allowing Close Enough to acknowledge the degree of its insanity. Alex also gets to demonstrate his skills as whatever strange brand of straight man he is in "Prank War's" sub-plot, struggling to maintain Candice during a ferocious sugar high and wringing laughs from his frequent, fatigued outbursts at being shafted by the circumstances. ("For the record, I feel really weird holding your daughter while my ass is in this guy's face!") It's Bridgette who runs away with the episode, though, as the unlikely solution to its problems: Bush Guy only stirs from his coma at every mention of Bridgette, and after Josh and Alex haul him into the prison on his hospital bed, she manages to bring him back to life with the power of nipple twists.

"Prank War," ultimately, is an average episode that nonetheless manages to elevate all of its characters and conjure up some of their best moments yet... though I'm not quite sure if it was worth the music rights for Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now." I'll consider it a win in how completely its premise is lived out and how there's no potential that goes to waste, but my general ambivalence for its conception can only carry it so far.

Unfortunately, "Cool Moms" is a bit more complicated, and it almost exists to challenge my "two episode types" theory. It's hard to pin down what camp "Cool Moms" falls in for a lot of reasons, and because of it, I can't figure out how exactly to feel about everything that transpires. If it's not misguided, it's a generally confused effort which pretty much amounts to everything I worried Close Enough would be before it came out (but which has mercifully not fallen into place very strongly): eclectic for eclecticism's sake, unstable with its emotional beats, and haphazardly-plotted.

Most of that, at the very least, falls into the camp of the show's second plot, with Alex and Josh accompanying Randy—the adoptive son of their landlord—to rescue his mom and said landlord, Pearle, who has fled to Palm Springs with "some rando." There's a lot of theoretically complex character work at-play here, with Randy's anxieties pertaining to Pearle's history as a retired cop and how he was always worried about her growing up, only at ease when he could hear the click of the door when she came home at night. The issue with all of that, though, is simply that Randy and Pearle have been so scarcely established prior, and leaping deep into Randy's psyche feels like a strange move given what little else we have to grapple with in terms of his character.

It doesn't help that "Cool Moms" unravels Randy's character as quickly as it does, either; he just suddenly devolves into tears and provides the teary-eyed exposition he needs to in order to motivate the plot forward and, miraculously, bring one of the Cabazon Dinosaurs to life. His story is, at the very least, bookended nicely with the reveal that Pearle was completely fine and that, per her tough-as-nails past, there's nothing Randy needs to worry about, but everything in between feels like an unfocused amalgamation of ideas that fly out at you without enough definition: the aforementioned dinosaur drops a fun line about his love of stoning adulterous women but does little else besides carry everyone across most of their journey off-screen, while the sequence in the nudist retreat feels more like an opportunity to undress everyone and engage in playful homoeroticism. (To Close Enough's credit, the hackiness of the jokes is left more to interpretation, but it never manages to overcome the cheapness of the conceit.)

Emily's plot fares better, but it doesn't really do a ton for her character. It's centered entirely on Emily being out of her depth in her pursuit of a cool mom, Jojo, and subsequently modifying how she conducts herself in an attempt to impress her to the detriment of being a good parent to Candice. I think there's something of a novel idea in the slippery slope of Jojo's parenting style, comparing her daughter Mia to her homebrewed beer and giving her space instead of watching her every move, even if that entails Mia lighting fireworks and breaking other people's property if it stifles her voice. I'm just not sure how satirically-pointed Close Enough is trying to be with her or if she's merely used as a means of scrambling up Emily's idea of parenting, but even if it's simply the latter, it doesn't help that the outcome of Emily becoming a tone-deaf parent unable to attend to Candice's concerns feels a bit off-putting.

It's nice to see Emily redeemed at the end, though, getting a chance to demonstrate her secret, unique brand of badassery in the climax. After she realizes that Mia and Jojo are no standards to aspire towards with the fear that Mia will brutalize Candice in an arm-wrestling match (something the other cool parents accept for their own survival in the clique), she decides she's had enough, disavowing Jojo's parenting and overall state of being and challenging her to an arm-wrestling contest herself.

The result is fairly predictable, aside from the specific detail of Emily managing to snap Jojo's arm out of place, but Close Enough is always able to make its feel-good endings feel well-earned regardless of how cliched they might be on paper. I think it's the lack of cynicism in those defying moments; even if the rest of the show is dedicated to an absurdity prone to giving way to darkness, that only enhances the meaningfulness of a nice character moment. It's a pleasant footnote here, but it's a footnote that resolves an episode which takes advantage of Emily's malleability in an unflattering way... and that compounds upon the difficult nature of "Cool Moms" in general. (Also, where was Bridgette at all here?)

Circling back to the central thesis statement, though: is Close Enough, halfway through its first season, on the right track? Well, in spite of how pedantic I can be over episodes and certain kinks that could be banged out a bit more, I'd say yes—this is a show that possesses that magical "it" quality, and it makes even the more uneven outings enjoyable in their own weird way and a joy to behold. I can only hope that Close Enough doesn't use that power, though, as an excuse to coast along.

FINAL GRADES:
"Prank War": B+.
"Cool Moms": C.

Next Friday: Candice gets a new tutor, and Alex attempts to pull off a stunt.

For my last review of the last two episodes, "Skate Dad" and "100% No Stress Day," CLICK HERE.

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