Chozen: “Da Director” (Episode 1.04)

The character of Chozen is one who straddles the line between incredibly hurtful and enjoyable is his childlike ignorance. He’s completely unaware of the norms and behavior that most people engage in, so screaming at a emo girl in the library, “your gloves aren’t fooling anyone, CUTTER!” doesn’t feel necessarily mean, but rather an example of his stupidity. It’s with that mentality you have to go into an episode of Chozen with—it’s not intentionally mean; it’s just dumb.

“Da Director” might be the Chozen episode that tries to be offensive the least, and that’s a very good thing. There’s still a few questionable jokes (see above cutter line), but it doesn’t go as overboard as the past few episodes. Chozen teams up with his sister, Tracy, to make a music video to win $10,000 on a hip-hop website. Chozen decides the theme of his movie will be … the movies. Chozen throws in references to Psycho, The Dark Knight Rises, 300 and various other films, yet in the making of, we never actually see any music in this music video. Tracy is actually making a documentary on her drama queen of a brother, who terrorizes the crew, instead of working on the music video.

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Instead of helping on the music video, Troy is trying to lose his virginity, as he is now the last member of The Cherry Boys—a group of virgins on campus—after his friend leaves him the sole member. Ricky and Crisco take Troy to a whorehouse, which houses Esmerelda, a woman who seems to work solely with deflowering virgins. In the unnecessary joke column, Esmerelda has a grown mentally challenged son who she still breastfeeds. (Why is this added in? I have no idea.)

Last week, Chozen was able to balance Ricky and Crisco in a B-story that paid off, but this week it just fumbles their story. At least Troy makes more of an appearance, as he is quickly becoming the heart of the story. His inability to lose his virginity and his attraction to Tracy is one of the only stories of which I truly have interest in seeing more, but Ricky and Crisco aren’t done any favors this episode.

By the end, Chozen realizes his sister has double-crossed him, but the two make up and Tracy makes a music video for her brother with already filmed material. I’m not exactly sure how that works, since Chozen was too busy recreating Predator and Friday the 13th to actually rap, but whatever, suspension of disbelief I guess. The video still loses though to a video for a song that must be called “Bitches Hittin’ Bitches,” which somehow is better than any other song we’ve heard on this show so far.

The most disappointing thing about Chozen is that occasionally it does show how funny it can be, without trying to also shock. Maybe I’m just a sucker for Splice jokes, but “Da Director” had more genuine laughs than I can remember being present in any previous episode. But then you throw in some jokes about cutters or the mentally disabled, and it all just evens out to mediocre again.