This week’s batch of Angry Boys episodes piles on the shallow man boy antics, but offers a glimpse at some genuine emotional depth--or at least as much emotional depth as a show that features a bottle of piss as a central plot device is capable of.
Look, I don’t expect sophisticated drama from a series that tries to successfully pull off black face (except for maybe that one episode of Mad Men), but “Episode Five” of Angry Boys just felt like a bunch of loosely strung together juvenile gags. Within the opening minutes we have Nathan peeing on Daniel’s head as a prank, S.mouse tweeting about the worrisome dilemma of taking two dumps before 10 AM, and Jen Okazaki pushing her son’s brand of GayStyle perfume, which naturally comes inside a squeeze bottle shaped like a wang. When the episode’s midpoint revolves around Jen’s radical weight loss exercise, the “Fart Method,” I can’t help but feel like I’m hearing the bottom of a barrel being scraped.
The disjointed feel of “Episode Five” has a lot to do with the lack of an actual story. Daniel plots revenge on Nathan – trying to get him to drink the aforementioned bottle of piss – only to have his Machiavellian efforts culminate in his getting peed on for a second time. S.mouse attempts to soldier on with his career after getting dropped from his record label, operating out of an ad hoc recording studio in his dad’s living room, but it’s mostly an excuse to toss out jokes about the rapper’s Soulja Boy-level songwriting abilities. Lyrical topics include big black balls, breast cancer from a male’s perspective –“I still love you, baby, even if you only have one titty,” – and an unhealthy obsession with three-legged dogs.
The episode’s only interesting thread further documents Jen Okazaki’s mercenary child rearing abilities. Her harsh management of her “gay” son Tim continues to alternate between hilarious and heartbreaking. Hilarious: Jen attempting to prevent her son from committing suicide by encouraging him to jerk off to gay porn. Heartbreaking: Jen tossing Tim’s cell phone down the garbage disposal after she catches him talking to girls. “Tim, you gay. You don’t go getting confused, okay?” she demands, in what has to be the least supportive support of a gay teenager ever. Jen and Tim’s scenes are just as devoid of plot as the rest of the episode, but they’re evidence of what Chris Lilley did best in Summer Heights High. Namely, put teenagers into uncomfortable, emotionally abusive situations. You know, comedy!
“Episode Six” fares a lot better, featuring the welcome return of Gran and getting a lot of thematic mileage out of testicles and the lack thereof. Daniel attempts to play head of the household with his parents on vacation, Blake tries to make money by opening a self-confidence boosting surf camp for fat kids, and Gran tries to get silent new inmate Talib to open up to her and the other juvies. Each story revolves around what it means to step up and be a man, or as Gran eloquently puts it when describing the shy Talib, “You can’t afford to be a pussy and keep to yourself. You got to grow some balls to some extent.”
Daniel naturally fails to live up to his mantle of responsibility, throwing a house party that Nathan ruins by first getting himself stuck inside a bean bag (“He likes the way the balls feel,” Tyson explains) and then in a drain pipe. Blake’s fat kid camp is equally unsuccessful. His well meaning attempts to inspire self-esteem in his overweight wards ends in a spinal injury for one of them after an ill-advised celebratory pile on of a dozen adolescent butterballs. “Do you want me to get the artificial balls operation?” he later asks Kareena, not wanting his “dried apricot” of a ballsac to add to the disappointment he’s already caused her. Only Gran has any real success, managing to get Talib to speak to her, but only after she blows up at him for ruining the carefully crafted misery of her “Scared Straight” program by blithely riding around on a scooter. “Stop being a f*cking idiot and grow some balls,” she scolds him, driving the episode’s theme home with as much subtlety as, well, a punch to the balls.
By episode’s end we have the twins’ mom announcing her engagement to Steve, drudging up some of Daniel’s daddy issues, and Gran getting choked up over hearing Talib speak for the first time after she apologizes to him. The developments indicate there’s a genuine heart beneath all the dick jokes, if for no reason other than the swelling emotional music that accompanies each scene. But when Blake’s plot ends with a bed breaking beneath a fat kid’s weight, it’s a reminder that the show is still letting easy jokes get in the way of its more uniquely offbeat and resonant moments.
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