Marry Me - Thank Me & Bruges Me - Double Review: "One step forward, two steps backwards"

I don’t like doing double shots when I’m up to review a show because I think every single episode of every single show deserves to be reviewed individually, giving us time to reflect on what has happened on said episode and grade it accordingly; the only time not to do that is when the episode itself is a two or three part episode and then it is better to treat them as a whole. Each episode is a story, and as such I don’t like when I have to make double episode reviews, and it is something I haven’t been able to avoid with any of the shows I review (OUAT, Community and HIMYM have all been victims of my double reviews). So I think it is necessary to give you a brief explanation on why this happened before I get to review the episode itself.

First of all I must say I’m really sorry because I could have brought this up sooner, but there were two things that kept me from doing: A) I finished my semester on the university last week, B) I had some back troubles that have kept me on a rotten mood and not really feeling like reviewing any show at all. It’s been almost 2 years since I suffered and injury on my back and I developed an hernia and for the most part I thought I finally got over with it, but the pain is coming back, and while nothing life threatening or impeding to get on with my daily life, it has been soul crushing for me, and I haven’t been feeling like writing anything at all.

Most of you surely come here just to see what are my thoughts on these episodes of Marry Me, but I thought you deserved an explanation as to why I took so long to bring it, and I am sorry if I dragged this out, but sometimes you just can’t help it.
Now without further ado, let’s get into Marry Me.

Honestly, after the amazing bottle episode Marry Me just hasn’t been as good. It is still fairly amusing and has some great punchliners, but as a whole I feel it has backslidden into a bit of a comfort zone of comedy clichés where originality only comes in the form of punchlines. One is about thanksgiving and the following is about Jake getting to know better Annie’s parents. There’s nothing really groundbreaking in either of those episodes and there’s also a concerning lack of identity, which Marry Me quickly crafted on its four first episodes.

Thank Me:

Starting off with the Thanksgiving episode, we have our main A plot with the “war” between Annie and Myrna in order to pull the best Thanksgiving, while Gil gets a B plot (or actually just a C plot since it has barely any screen time) about tasting cheese.

The whole Gil of it all was really unnecessary and it didn’t bring any laughs. Gil tasted some cheese, made a gay joke -clarifying he has nothing against gay people to avoid being offensive -he goes to a secret cheese tasting meeting with Jake and that’s it. There’s absolutely nothing going for this story, no echo to what Gil is going through (unlike the much better handled “Scary Me”) and it is just there to try to pull some laughs out of the wackiness of it all, but it really doesn’t land, at all. To me it seemed like a way to try to kill time while trying to be funny just by being ridiculous, but it doesn’t really work.

Meanwhile, the whole A plot is fun, but just not as great as the previous Marry Me episodes. For starters, as Annie says, the war between wife and mother in law is so old that it brings nothing new to the table for the episode. It is great to see Myrna again -we haven’t seen her since the pilot -, but she makes her return with a surprisingly bland episode.

After Annie decides she and Jake should host Thanksgiving, Myrna tells them she will buy them a table, cue to start Annie’s freakout of the week. So far Marry Me has been using Annie’s freakouts as a driver for storytelling, and while it hasn’t been the best narrative technique at least they always showcased something about the character and we learnt something new about Annie. Nothing was learnt on “Thank Me” about Annie, it just reinforces the idea that she is quirky and obsessive and Marry Me should just let Annie develop organically instead of reminding us her flaws.

Jake is no better; I already said that I had some trouble with his character since he didn’t had any defining trait, but now he has one: he tries to please everyone. That’s not the best trait for a character in a comedy series since it quickly feels like he is a pushover and he generates more stress than fun. In his attempt to be on good grace with both his wife to be and his mother Jake feels like a boring character and a bit of a wuss, which are not really good qualities to make us care for him.

Luckily, once Jake realizes Annie was right about Myrna trying to win on throwing the best Thanksgiving, he sides with Annie instead of trying to find middle ground which ensues craziness from both of them throwing some funny moments, but by then the episode is about to end.

It’s also really bad luck that just a few weeks ago The Middle pulled the same trick with the toy table; it would have been a funnier gag if The Middle didn’t use it before Marry Me -and also they executed it better-. But that’s not Marry Me’s fault, it was just bad luck and bad timing.

The whole family and friends are gathered for the worst and most uncomfortable Thanksgiving episode in a scene which is the saving grace for the episode: everything starts falling apart, with Gil bringing cheese made out of breast feading milk, the table breaks and Thanksgiving is ruined. This leads to a sweet moment of vulnerability for Annie to which Myrna responds with sympathy by letting her know that she herself ruined her first Thanksgiving.

Marry Me is very good at handling sweet moments as they feel earned and real, even though you could also say that they also feel a little bit watered down and cliché, but for the most part it is heartwarming enough to overlook the fact that it is the show’s way to return to the status quo.

I don’t mind that Marry Me is always trying to push the reset button at the end of the episode since it has been doing a great job showcasing different faces of its characters week to week, but this episode felt so formulaic that I just didn’t get that feeling, and while there were great punchlines and very good scenes overall, it just didn’t click like previous episodes, which makes one wonder for how much longer can Marry Me just return to its status quo before becoming stale.

Grade: C+

Stray Observations:

-Annie: “A cornucopia is a traditional, I don’t know.”

-Annie and her parents used to have Thanksgiving eating turkey fajitas. I don’t know if that’s really bad since in Chile we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, but I’ll take Annie’s word for it.

-Jennah and Kay really nailed on getting the easiest things to get for Thanksgiving: napkins and ice respectively.

-I can’t even begin to imagine how freaked out I would have been if they fed me rabbit. It’s not my favorite animal like Annie, but I have 0 intention to try it.

-Jake: “That little dog always look so hungry.”
Annie: “I can see through the flesh on her legs.”

-Gil: “Napkins… you women should be ashamed of yourselves… thinking of those ideas before I came with them.”

-Annie: “The war between wife and mother in law is a tale as old as Everybody Loves Raymond!”

-Myrna: “You must tell me where you got this table, it is so… unique.”
-Jake: “Well, small is in right now, everybody knows about that.”
-Kevin One to Kevin Two: “I told you our table was too big.”

-Sidelined characters on “Thank Me”: Jennah and Kay; I really hoped they would bring more chaos into the whole storyline.

Bruges Me:

Now, while the Thanksgiving episode was really underwhelming, this week’s episode was a great lift, though it is still a couple of steps behind the better previous instalments of the show. “Bruges Me” is all about the Kevins, which the show has showcased just on occasion; both Kevins are really funny to watch and they have such a great dynamic with their daughter Annie and with each other. I immediately smile whenever I see them on screen.

This week’s B plot with Gil was immensely better than last week: Gil is preparing for a Flemish Pride Parade and he wants Annie to sing with him since he found out she has a good voice. We haven’t seen Annie and Gil being paired together until now and the show has a lot of fun with them. Once again, they go through more than known territory in comedy where they try to work together, fight and then put their issues aside at the end and perform a song together. Yet it’s really fun to watch them together and I like Gil the best when he is bossy and it works wonder with Annie’s obsessive nature to deliver some solid chuckles.

Meanwhile Jake finally gets something to do besides calming down Annie as their wedding officiant makes a point in which Jake doesn’t really know much of Annie’s parents even when they have been together for 6 years, so he decides its time to get to know them better.

At first it is an utter disaster; on the restaurant they have nothing to talk about and they find themselves so uncomfortable that at some point both Jake and Kevin One were begging their waitress to talk to them so it could be less awkward.
When Jake finally finds out an interest they share in common, motorcycles, he ignites a spark on Kevin One and it quickly turns into wildfire in his relationship with Kevin Two.

Kevin One buys a motorcycle (ok, a scooter) without asking Kevin Two and doing so brings up some buried down couple’s trouble they have been dragging for some time: since gay marriage became possible Kevin Two has been waiting for a proposal, he wants to get married, but Kevin One is just too scared to take that next step because things are already great as they are.

It’s actually really great that Marry Me got to relate Jake’s previous anxiety about proposing with Kevin One, which leads to some really organic bonding between the two. Jake knows exactly what Kevin is going through and he encourages him to take the next step by making him realize that things don’t have to change if they really love each other. It’s a really nice development and for a change Jake got through an episode without being just there to calm Annie.

The decision to keep Annie and Jake apart worked wonders for Marry Me and allowed them to have solid storylines that allowed us to have better insight on them; Annie showed us her stage fright (and overcame it), which is not much but it adds on her multiple characteristic making her more of a whole person, while Jake seems to be building an actual persona outside of Annie and Myrna through his interactions with the Kevins.

My complaints on the episode mostly come some pacing issues and punchliners that are not as strong as Marry Me usually delivers, but the episode as a whole is still pretty great. It has some difficulties coming together at some parts, but as a whole it is pretty good.

Grade: B

Stray Observations:

-It makes me happy beyond words that Dan Bucatinsky was promoted to regular. Though I don’t believe Marry Me will make it to a second season (though I’d love for it to happen) I want to flavour every episode as much as I can, and the more Kevins on the show the better.

-Jake: “Baby, I love you, but sometimes I’m also… ashamed of you?”

-Annie made tapes for her musicals on her backyard because she suffered from stage frigth. Now, that’s some wacky quirks!

-By the way, I love hearing Casey Wilson sing, I think she has a great voice!

-Wedding officiant: “Jake, you answered the question ‘what would be Annie’s family ideal ceremony would be’ with ‘good question’.”
Jake: “It was a good question.”

-Kevin Two got paranoid after watching Take, Take 2 and a very sad insurance commercial; I agree that those insurance commercials truly bum people out.

-Somehow Gil has keys to Annie and Jake’s apartment. That’s weird, but not surprising.

-Next week I’ll bring the Marry Me review on time, I assure you that.

About the Author - Pablo

I'm currently studying Psychology while also writing fantasy books (one already published in my home country, Chile, you can check it out on the facebook icon). I watch many different types of shows, including my favorites Revenge, Game of Thrones, Once Upon a Time and about 23 more. Currently writing reviews for Once Upon a Time, The 100, Community and Marry Me

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