Every week, the opening scene to Episodes is more hilariously memorable than the previous week’s. This time around, Matt’s stalker, who should be around more often, kicks off the episode by breaking into Matt’s apartment to bake him cookies. While topless.
Labia, however, isn’t the focus of the episode. She’s left as a small bit to draw viewers into the romantic entanglement going on behind the scenes of Pucks. The show, while it’s a comedy, has done a good job of keeping viewers emotionally invested (unlike fellow behind-the-scenes comedy 30 Rock) and shies away from too many over-the-top jokes, allowing the story to provide the humor.
We’re still figuring out how to solve Morning’s collapsing cheek implant. It’s quickly solved by blue tape and $40,000 of special effects. In reality it serves as a jumping-off point for Beverly to meet Morning’s “kid brother.”
The other half of the episode focuses on Matt trying to secure of a guest appearance from a former Friends co-star, but that proves to be difficult. He calls Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer and Matthew Perry in rapid succession and we find out Matt was sort of a jerk to them. The show takes it a step further when he tries to call Jennifer Aniston, but her assistant won’t give Matt the actress’ new cell number. Then when Courtney Cox says she’s too busy they discuss an incident where Matt pulled it out and pretended to pee on Aniston’s Emmy.
While we never hear their side of the conversation, it’s easy to imagine exactly what they’re saying and how they’re saying it. Sure, it would have been great to see these guys, but leaving it to the imagination was a good move.
The real emotional core continues to be Sean and Beverly’s broken relationship. While she was the first to cheat on him last season, he has since slept with Morning during their separation. Beverly’s broken heart ties a lot of the seriousness together and in this episode we get to see the two begin to genuinely reconnect over a bottle of liquor.
Episodes continues to be character-driven, and this episode shelved a lot of storylines to focus on the connections the characters share with one another.
Bonus points for the Friend that they got.