Written by Erin Cardillo, Richard Keith, and Katie Schwartz
Directed by Jonathan Silverman
Okay, here’s a late review. This is for last Monday’s episode, which I didn’t get to see that night because I had to work late that day and was going in early the next day, so I took some sleeping pills and was in bed by 9pm. The whole rest of the week was busy, so it was another few days before I had a chance to catch the episode by watching it online on the CW website (link below), and by then I figured I’d just wait until this Monday to post a review along with episode 7.
Jonathan Silverman doesn’t appear in this episode, although his character still plays a significant part in the storyline (in that Nate is driving Harrison’s new $150k electric Tesla), but he steps in as director, and does a very fine job. The premise is that Lydia and Jimmy’s relationship is going better than ever. As the episode begins they’ve just returned from a weekend getaway and are telling Nate about all the fun they had. They point out how they’re both making each better and more willing to try new things, and this leads to both of them deciding that Nate needs to find himself a woman who can help open him up.
Against Nate’s wishes, Lydia and Jimmy set up a profile for him on a Tinder-like dating app called Get Forked, and Nate soon finds himself going on a series of short dates with different women, but none of them end well. Through a quick montage we see Nate out with a woman who has a tattoo covering half of her face, a muscular female bodybuilder, a senior citizen, a transvestite, and a thief, among others. Just as Nate’s about to give up on this idea altogether, Lydia recommends one more woman that she found for him, and convinces him to give this last one a try.
The woman is Annie, played very well by Mircea Monroe, and at first she seems perfect for Nate. She’s attractive and they get along well, and she also has a complicated relationship with her parents, revealing to Nate that her father is in jail and her mother divorced him and then married her father’s father. This all leads into first date sex that night in the backseat of the Tesla. The next day, Nate is over the moon, he can’t stop telling everyone about the great sex that he had (the best he’s ever had) and he set up a double date so that Lydia and Jimmy can meet Annie. Unbeknownst to Nate, Jimmy reveals to Lydia that he’s found out that Annie is an amateur onlineporn star, using the name Annie Hole. Lydia wants to tell Nate immediately, but Jimmy isn’t so sure. What do they do?!?
No spoilers. Watch it and find out.
Another great episode, showcasing the excellent chemistry of Krista Allen and Nathaniel Buzolic, and Lydia and Jimmy are both sincere in their efforts to help Nate, and they both kind of view their success in this endeavor as way to judge their own success as a couple (they have a little sign they do involving a hashtag, to show what a great “team” they are). Krista shows her vulnerable side in the scene where Lydia confronts Annie, but gets a surprising answer from her. And Josh Zuckerman (Nate) plays Nate as a sort of slightly less-nearotic version of Woody Allen, making him all the more charming.
A subplot in this episode concerns Sam and Atticus’s relationship, as after Sam sings another of her signature wacky songs about Nate (this one about his love for “Tessie” aka the Tesla car), Atticus makes a comment to her that he’s noticed how all of her songs lately are about Nate. She quickly tries to cover by claiming that she’s working on a song about Atticus, and then spends the rest of the episode struggling to do so. The fact that she can easily write songs about Nate, but not so about Atticus is another obvious foreshadowing of the growing attractions she has for Nate, which she doesn’t want to admit as of yet. I’ve said from the beginning that I don’t particularly care for this particular subplot of the series, as it’s a little too obvious (of course Nate and Sam are going to end up together eventually, we all know it), although that is no fault of the actors playing Sam and Atticus, as Emma Fitzpatrick and Jay Ali are more than capable in their roles.
A good episode all around.
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