{"id":539539,"date":"2026-03-16T06:04:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T06:04:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/539539\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T06:04:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T06:04:11","slug":"season-1-episode-2-trousers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/539539\/","title":{"rendered":"season 1, episode 2, “Trousers”"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a surprise that Rooster\u2018s second outing didn\u2019t release right after last week\u2019s exposition-reliant premiere. \u201cTrousers\u201d marginally improves on \u201cRelease The Brown Fat<\/a>\u201d by delving into this world with more depth and humor. But at its core, it carries a similar goal of setting up the central conceit: Getting Greg (Steve Carell) to accept the writer-in-residence position at Ludlow so he can have his fresh start already and stick around to help his daughter deal with her heartbreak. It takes until the end of the episode for Rooster\u2018s premise to click (which isn\u2019t a problem, to be clear), but it means the show still seems to be figuring itself out.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As far as the ensemble goes, Bill Lawrence has once again assembled a stellar group of actors. They make it worthwhile to dig into this world of a liberal-arts college, from Danielle Deadwyler trying to teach a class on Emily Dickinson while dealing with an obnoxious student or Alan Ruck strutting around the hallways as a dean who thinks ADHD is just an excuse for kids to get away with being \u201cdumb and lazy.\u201d Of course, Steve Carell is the enigmatic anchor of this ship. He straddles the line between playing Greg as a doting father and as a fed-up author well and shares adorable chemistry with Charly Clive. Even John C. McGinley\u2019s character starts to feel more purposeful in \u201cTrousers\u201d than in episode one. It\u2019s too bad Rooster falters in giving this cast meaty material.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The show also hasn\u2019t grasped how to navigate its college setting just yet, at least based on how everything goes down with Katie\u2019s (Clive) potential job crisis. After she accidentally burned down the faculty house where her estranged husband was staying, Katie mopes around while being investigated by the cops as the Ludlow board decides on the next steps. Greg, an ever-supportive dad, sticks by her side when she goes down to the station to be interviewed by Rory Scovel\u2019s local cop. Archie (Phil Dunster) lets her off the hook, though, claiming to forgive Katie if she can do the same\u2014that is, find a way to move on from the fact that he slept with a grad student and got her pregnant. Katie\u2019s response is to punch him clean in the mouth. Good!\u00a0<\/p>\n

Her personal and professional lives are a mess, so, understandably, she tenders her resignation. All this does is push Greg into trying to convince her to stay, and Ludlow\u2019s president, Walter (McGinley), to give him time to sway his daughter\u2019s decision. I guess we shouldn\u2019t try to poke holes in the story, huh? If a teacher torched campus housing, would the decision to keep her on or fire her truly hinge on Walter getting her dad, an acclaimed author, to take up a coveted position for one semester? Or on Walter trying to appease the cop by inviting him into the sauna in his home? But that\u2019s exactly what happens when Walter essentially blackmails Greg into being the writer-in-residence so that Katie can keep her job (after she sends the board an apology note blaming her actions on mental distress and gets a brief suspension). Greg takes the gig, although he doesn\u2019t even tell his daughter they\u2019re about to be co-workers, simply screaming, \u201cSee you Monday,\u201d before he takes off at the end.<\/p>\n

Still, Carell and Clive are a treat to watch together as they establish Greg and Katie\u2019s personalities and rapport. The show keeps reminding us that the father-daughter duo is a little too similar, considering Greg also took off to Florida after his wife cheated and dumped him five years ago. So he gets her inherent desire to run away, but would rather she learn from his mistakes instead of repeating them. (\u201cI\u2019m not resilient,\u201d he tells her. \u201cI don\u2019t want to pass that down.\u201d But he also tells her, \u201cLack of game recognizes lack of game,\u201d which got me to chuckle.) Their relationship adds much-needed depth to Rooster, as does the budding one between Greg and Dylan (Deadwyler), who bond over their flirting disaster from the previous night and reestablish their chemistry over breakfast.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also oddly lovely to get insight into the friendship between Dylan and Walter, as the two tend to go on coffee walks together to discuss any problems. It\u2019s during one such stroll that she requests an expanded budget so she can publish the college magazine (the apparent \u201ccornerstone of the arts program\u201d) more often. She even boasts to her students about how much they\u2019re going to love seeing their bylines in print. Oh, Dylan, I understand the sentiment, but as soon as she said it, I knew where the plot was going. Instead of championing her, Walter tells Dylan that he has to cease publication altogether and that The Ludlow Review is going digital because he wasn\u2019t able to secure the budget from the dean.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, Rooster is already trying to give Archie (a certified douche) redemption. His apology to Katie gets him nowhere, but he makes progress with Sunny (Lauren Tsai) after she tells him she\u2019s keeping the baby. Sunny even lectures him on his narcissism, which raises the question of why she chooses to be with him. He asks her, too, but her response is unsatisfactory. (She claims it\u2019s because of his face, mind, and accent such that \u201cit\u2019s like having sex with Paddington.\u201d) Archie seems to have taken her words to heart. Or at least he\u2019s forced to after Greg finds out Archie\u2019s fathering a child, runs to his room, and beats him up on live TV because he was talking to BBC News at the time. It\u2019s a ridiculous bit of physical comedy, but you can tell Carell and Dunster had a blast filming the scene where Greg all but spanks Archie on the bed for the world to see. Ultimately, Archie leaves his hotel and moves in with Sunny and her roommate, which brings Robby Hoffman into the world of Rooster. Let\u2019s hope the show cranks up the funny soon.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Stray observations<\/p>\n

\u2022 The episode title comes courtesy of Archie\u2019s clothes getting soiled by coffee and everyone being slightly amused by the British man calling his pants trousers.\u00a0
\n\u2022 Another subplot tacked on here is that Greg steals the weathercock (weather-rooster?) from atop a building and gives it to Katie. He hopes she can fulfill her wish of participating in the campus tradition of a teacher hiding the statue, and if any student finds it, everyone gets the day off.\u00a0
\n\u2022 One big indication that Rooster doesn\u2019t know how to write for its college setting is when Dylan talks to her class and a student responds with the following: \u201cI pull\u2014as in threesomes\u201d before asking a peer if he \u201cwants to get pegged.\u201d\u00a0
\n\u2022 Alan Ruck debuts as the indifferent Dean Riggs. I\u2019m obsessed with Deadwyler\u2019s exasperated delivery of \u201cthis prehistoric fuck\u201d after Riggs walks away from her.\u00a0
\n\u2022 \u201cI know there are a million reasons I shouldn\u2019t have this baby. I was supposed to go to Burning Man.\u201d\u00a0
\n\u2022 Archie: \u201cDoes your dad know that Sunny\u2019s been impregnated?\u201d
Katie: \u201cAbsolutely insane way to distance yourself from it.\u201d\u00a0
\n\u2022 Please give Annie Mumolo more to do.\u00a0
\n\u2022 I\u2019m a fan of the show\u2019s opening credits and music<\/a>!\u00a0<\/p>\n

Saloni Gajjar is The A.V. Club\u2018s TV critic.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s a surprise that Rooster\u2018s second outing didn\u2019t release right after last week\u2019s exposition-reliant premiere. \u201cTrousers\u201d marginally improves…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":539540,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,75,348],"class_list":["post-539539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/539540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}