Review: “Falsely Accused/Sleep with Your Teacher/Little Person” (2.03)

It’s hard to find comparison points for a show as unique as Review, but if you were pressed to find one, the best would probably be Seinfeld. That’s not just because this season Forrest has had a new girlfriend in every episode. Forrest, like the main characters from Seinfeld, has a myopic worldview and a completely self-serving ethos, which causes everything to crumble around him. He combines the flighty, bizarre sense of the world of Kramer with the complete lack of morality of George. There is no hugging on Review, and, despite Forrest’s best efforts, there is no learning. What there is, particularly in this week’s episode, is a lot of hilarity.
The first experience, being falsely accused, is the weakest. Frankly, the best joke comes from the question itself, wherein the man presenting it says he knows he will be blamed for eating his mom’s birthday cake on account of the fact he is constantly eating people’s birthday cakes. Forrest wants to get himself accused by Josh and his girlfriend of being an avocado thief. They decide to frame him for arson.
Forrest gets dangerously close to being taken to trial, until Josh’s girlfriend’s friend confesses to being the one who burnt down the sorority. What makes this not work is the strange malevolence of Josh. We don’t know his girlfriend enough for it to ring false for her, but it rings false for him. Also, as odd as it sounds, it feels strange to have people be so malicious to Forrest apropos of nothing. Forrest is almost always awful, but it’s through apathy and obsessiveness. It’s decent enough, segment wise, but it’s merely an appetizer for the next two great reviews.
The next question comes from a boy wondering what it is like to sleep with your teacher, because he has a crush on his teacher Mrs. Greenfield. Forrest mistakes it for a prompt to review sleeping with Mrs. Greenfield, so off he goes to Iowa to seduce a married woman. That’s a funny opening salvo, and then we find out Lennon Parham is playing Mrs. Greenfield. Forrest does succeed, somehow, to win her over for a royal sexing, and then she actually moves with him back to Los Angeles. Not before the two run into the kid who asked the question for the show, giving us the first time Forrest has been recognized for his work within the universe of Review. It’s a cool thing to see, and humorous in its execution.