Did Nick Kroll predict the end of Radio Shack? There he and Ron Funches were in this week’s episode wondering out loud how in the hell they are staying in business. And, well, now they’re not anymore. Kroll is more powerful than we ever imagined.
They didn’t take down any other corporations in the rest of this episode (as far as I know) but instead stuck to the tried and true: an extended Bobby Bottleservice riff wrapped up in a spy thriller parody, more hyperbolic dramatics from the cast of Wheels, Ontario, and…well…Toilet Dad.
As with every episode that it has appeared in, the funniest stuff was Kroll and co.’s take on the Canadian teen melodrama. I mean, there’s not much to it beyond a further recitation of how awesome our neighbors to the north are (free government services, lax drug laws, beautiful scenery) and an excuse to use an outlandish Canuck accent. But as a dude who grew up on the various strains of Degrassi, I still get a kick out of how perfectly they parody that show, even with the over-the-top sight of a lot of people in wheelchairs.
The rest of this week’s installment had its scattered moments, but those mostly came through throwaway lines from Kroll and his castmates. On a date with a pretty co-worker, C-Czar expresses his feelings towards the young lady thusly: “You like a princess, but, like, a princess that don’t mind going into the favela and fucking, like, a street rat.” Earlier in the same Toilet Dad scenes, the judge overseeing his paternity case runs into C-Czar at work and says, “Oh, I didn’t recognize you without my robe on.” Those little bits keep me watching even when the rest of the show doesn’t make me laugh.
If there’s one thing that I’m not going to miss when Kroll Show wraps up this final season is Bobby Bottleservice. Like a good number of Kroll’s characters, he’s rather driven this one into the ground and feels like he’s struggling to find new scenarios to inject it into the show. I love seeing rich douchebags and Jersey Shore dipshits get their comedic comeuppance as much as anyone, but an already one-note premise is never going to be saved by throwing the trappings of a shitty movie around it. The best it could offer was a chance for the highly underrated Paget Brewster to be in a comedy show once again. It wasn’t nearly enough to rescue those scenes from the swirl of mediocrity.
Robert Ham is a Portland-based freelance writer and regular contributor to Paste. You can follow him on Twitter.