While covering Review, I’ve written a lot about Andy Daly’s talent as a performer, but I’ve spent a lot less time acknowledging the show’s stellar supporting cast. The Onion News Network’s Julie Brister, for instance, never gets more than a minute on screen as McNeil’s childishly incompetent lawyer, but consistently kills it anyway, giving Barry Zuckerkorn a run for his money as television’s best worst lawyer. Last night, the excellence of Review’s incidental players particularly stood out to me. Unfortunately, they needed a little more to work with.
The first segment of “Revenge, Getting Rich, Aching” had what was probably my favorite bit in last night’s episode, with Daly playing MacNeil playing a strangely anachronistic Italian dry cleaner. It didn’t really make sense that MacNeil would be so good at the impersonation, but it was nice to see anyway, this being the closest Daly has come to portraying one of his insane Comedy Bang! Bang! characters elsewhere. Equally improbable was The Might Boosh’s Rich Fulcher as a college professor, but playing the profane, frankly dumb-voiced actor against type really paid off, lending added surrealism to Fulcher-isms like “I have five knives hidden on my body.”
“Aching” had another inspired bit of casting, with the loopy Emo Philips finally appearing onscreen as the mental patient he was born to play. His dutiful, drooling line read of “I’m going to kill Mrs. Penny now, like you ordered” was a highlight for me, and given the show’s nonchalance about bumping people off, I have no doubt Philips succeeded in mission. Also great was the descent into madness MacNeil’s narration took halfway through the segment, even though the central conceit about a technical mix-up leading to a nonsensical review request didn’t really do it for me.
In general, last night’s episode felt like something of a step back for Review. Ignition-activated shit-bombs not withstanding, “Revenge, Getting Rich, Aching” was pretty tame compared to the absolute mayhem we’ve seen on the show in recent weeks. The middle section in particular felt largely forgettable. Luckily, Review has plenty of comic ringers to sell the sometimes lukewarm material, and, like James Urbaniak’s serpent-like Grant, I just can’t look away.