Samantha Who? review. Episode 2.3—“"The Pill"

photo courtesy of ABC

While my fingers were still crossed for a good episode, who should appear on my screen in the first five minutes of this week's Samantha Who? Why, Tony Hale, of course! Who better to help this fledgling comedy than the star of one of the greatest laugh-fests of all time?

Hale stepped in this week as Samantha’s “brain doctor,” who called her into his office to ask her to be a part of a clinical trial helping people with forms of memory loss. Sam is naturally happy to take part in the study, especially after the good doc (who has a big ol' crush on her) says that she is one of the most well adjusted of their patients with amnesia.

Saddled with a free notebook, Sam is given pills to help jog her memory and is asked to take down notes whenever she has any memory flashes. Normally, this might be a nice effect for an amnesia patient, but since Sam hates her formally evil self, all of the cruel flashes of her popping children’s balloons with cigarettes and beating in strangers cars with baseball bats are, shall we say, less than comforting.

Meanwhile, in boring subplot land, Todd is still looking for an apartment so he doesn’t have to awkwardly live with his now nice ex-girlfriend anymore and Andrea is busy being a fake lesbian. Those two, what a riot!

Tortured by the past she still mostly can’t remember, Sam ends up back at her parents when the flashes prove to be more than she can handle. But while it’s hard not to love Jean Smart (and the cruel Samantha, eerily looking like Kelly Bundy in Applegate’s career-making role on Married with Children) the sudden Season 2 attachment to her folks has become really grating.

Luckily she is only there for the night, as her doctor calls her to say the trial is over and to immediately stop taking the pills. Sam’s perfectly happy to oblige, with the only bad news being that she has just had her first good memory flash, realizing that Todd proposed to her and, though she said no, she has a chance to do something about it now. Her goofy doctor rings to tell her the study has failed because the pills can’t keep the memories around and all of the current flashes she is having will soon dissipate.

Writing a reminder note on her arm in orange lipstick, Sam hurries to find Todd in order to fix her past mistake. Alas, she smudges the lipstick helping someone in her lobby and she arrives at the apartment too late, having already forgotten why she was hurrying home. Silver lining: Todd loses the apartment he was about to rent and Sam asks him to stay with her as friends, leaving the show on it’s first thoughtful end quote of the season and bringing it a little bit closer to the Samantha Who? we know and love:

“Navigating memories can be quite a trip and maybe it’s true. Maybe the mind, like any smart traveler, does know where its safe to go and where it’s not...at least, until the time is right.”