Review: “Curing Homosexuality/Mile High Club” (2.02)
What a fun, sexy time for Forrest MacNeil. The second episode of season two of Review is all sex, all the time. Of course, the first episode had a segment dedicated to glory holes, so it’s not anything new. It’s also not new in comedy. Now that nobody makes fun of airplane food, all that’s left to mine for laughs is the physical act of making love. Sometimes that involves two men. Sometimes it involves an airplane. This is what powers “Curing Homosexuality/Mile High Club.”
The segment about curing homosexuality finds Andy Daly at his best. Forrest has nothing against homosexuals. He wants to point that out. However, he’s also not willing to use one of his two vetoes. Watching him try and solicit men to have their homosexuality cured finds Forrest in such an awkward situation and it’s great to watch. Then he finds a guy, and tries to cure him through a method that involves a lot of hugging and a little bit of hitting a bed with a tennis racket.
Of course, in the end, the guy isn’t cured. He in fact finds love with a man named Pete, but Forrest is still oblivious enough to think he’s succeeded. It’s a really funny segment in and of itself, but they also work some overarching story beats into it, including a great conversation between Forrest and Grant that lets us in on some of the backstory of what got Forrest back onto the show. Also, and importantly, Forrest meets a stripper named Shampoo played by Mary Birdsong. It’s his second girlfriend in two episodes. It goes slightly better than his relationship with his nurse, on account of him blackmailing her.
Mile High Club is a low point in the life of Forrest McNeil, and that’s saying something. The episode even ends with him and A.J. lamenting it in the studio. They have seen so much, and yet they can’t shake this. It’s a more absurd storyline, involving a couple of sexually promiscuous women who are very particular about listening to the fasten seatbelt announcements. In short, Shampoo is against joining the Mile High Club, so they break up en route to pick up Forrest’s son in San Francisco. Another woman turns him down because of the seatbelt thing. Naturally, he picks up a prostitute, but he inexplicably ends up on a plane filled with recovering sex addicts. They failed to remain in recovery. The episode devolves into a parade of men having sex in the airplane bathroom, but not Forrest, who is relegated to having sex with her in their seats while Shampoo watches.
They only had two segments, but they really wrung the most out of both of them. We’re only two episodes into the season, and Forrest is already wallowing in misery. A.J. keeps badgering him to use a veto, but he just refuses. It makes you wonder when, if ever, he will use one. It would seem fitting for him to be so insistent on helping people that he refuses to ever use a veto. Review is about a man destroying himself when he could so easily stop. It’s about a man crying while he has sex with a prostitute under an airplane blanket. “Curing Homosexuality/Mile High Club” is not quite as funny as the season opener, but it’s a bit deeper and a bit more substantive. It’s a strong reminder of the fact this is not merely a sketch show.
Chris Morgan is an Internet gadabout who writes on a variety of topics and in a variety of mediums. If he had to select one thing to promote, however, it would be his ’90s blog/podcast, Existential Parachute Pants. (You can also follow him on Twitter.)