Episode 2
Season 1
Episode 2
Editor’s Rating
3 stars
***
Greg’s baggage as a parent and husband causes him to meddle in Katie’s life.
Photo: HBO
The second installment of Rooster is more scattered than the first one, as the run time is spent rapidly checking in with multiple supporting characters, resulting in a fractured focus. Honestly, no shade at all to the rest of the cast here, because they’re all truly great, but whenever Steve Carell isn’t on screen, my brain is just incessantly asking when he’s coming back. I’m sure the ensemble characters will eventually be captivating in their own right, but as for now, I just want him on my screen at all times. There’s a reason that the coveted Ludlow weathervane has a rooster on it, am I right?
A lot is going on this week. Greg works to get Katie to stay at Ludlow because he doesn’t want her to be a quitter like him. Archie has a no-good, very-bad day, and Dylan goes to bat for her students. We also meet the Dean of Ludlow, played by Alan Ruck, who clearly relishes taking on the role of entitled asshole. When we first meet him, he does a quick walk-and-talk with Dylan and mainsplains why poetry isn’t important to the overall health of the college. The way he sarcastically compares it to rooting for a sports team, jabbing at the back of an imaginary jersey, and shouting “E.E. Cummings!” is pretty funny. (FWIW, my poetry jersey would read “Alfred Loyd Tennyson!”) I seriously cannot wait for Ruck to chew some scenery with Carell.
Let’s start with Katie and Greg, the ostensible heart of the show. As the episode opens, Greg rallies his depressed daughter to come to the police station so she can make her statement about the fire. She insists that she doesn’t have to practice her statement as long as she’s telling the truth, and she does tell the truth, but she’s also kind of a petulant brat about everything. When Archie tells her that he’s already forgiven her for setting fire to both his most prized possession (intentional) and his house (accidental), she becomes irate, punching him in the face. Girl, I get that you’re mad about the affair and the baby, but you burned everything the man owned to the ground! And he’s choosing to forgive you! A little self-reflection here is warranted.
As Katie and Greg walk home from the disastrous meeting with the police, they wander past a year-round Christmas shop that serves amazing hot chocolate with whimsical peppermint straws. (I want it now. Gimmie it.) They also chat about a time-honored tradition of a professor stealing a weathervane, hiding it on campus, and giving all the students the day off when it’s found. It’s only a matter of time before Greg gets himself a hot chocolate and steals the weathervane in the name of getting Katie to stay and fight for her job and her marriage.
You see, Greg regrets a lot of things in his life. Chiefly, he regrets how his marriage ended. According to Katie, he ran away to Florida to “hide” five years ago when his ex-wife cheated on him, and he hasn’t been the same since. Now that the pattern is repeating in his daughter’s life, he sees an opportunity to right the wrong and teach her to stand and fight instead of giving up as he did. However, there’s a problem with this logic. Elsewhere in this episode, Greg also tells Dylan that he’s been a “swooper” — code for “helicopter parent” — throughout Katie’s life, making the hard things go away before she faced any sort of adversity. And he’s doing the same exact thing now, holding her hand and fighting her battles every step of the way. He’s become a Super Swooper.
We see Greg go to the police station with Katie, but he also goes to talk to Walt, not once but twice, on her behalf. We’ve never once seen Katie speak to this man — she even resigns via email (which we see in comically large font on Walt’s computer screen) — but Greg has been all up in his business since he stepped on campus. Both times, Greg is begging for his daughter’s job back even though she has told him, in no uncertain terms, that she’s done. Granted, the show doesn’t exist if both Greg and Katie don’t stick around on campus, but the man is running a marathon to manifest his own needs through his daughter’s life. Men will literally take a writer-in-residence gig instead of going to therapy.
Yes, Greg takes a deal with Walt. The deal includes Katie writing a letter blaming her actions on her “woman troubles” (okay, sure, fine, let “women troubles” be a get-out-of-jail-free card for once), and Greg taking the position as writer-in-residence at Ludlow. Walt wants a shiny, known author to trot in front of prospective donors and students, and Greg wants Katie to keep her job. In exchange, Walt will also make the fire situation go away. Win-win-win, right? Greg begrudgingly accepts the position and goes to help Katie with her letter. But, in a moment of contrived secrecy, we find out that Katie has yet to inform her father that Archie’s lover is pregnant. As soon as he finds out, he scrambles to fight his daughter’s battles yet again by breaking into Archie’s hotel room and beating him with the ladle that the hotel’s skeleton key is attached to. Oh, and Archie is live on the BBC as this is all happening. The live-TV-fail of it all is good for some laughs, even though the idea of Greg physically attacking Archie is kind of icky.
Archie is having a terrible time in this episode, marking him as the resident punching bag of Rooster. He gets coffee spilled all over his only surviving pair of trousers, gets unfairly punched in the face, learns that Sunny is choosing to keep a baby that he definitely does not want, and has Greg burst into his hotel room and beat him senseless with a utensil while the entire world watches. Normally, I wouldn’t feel too bad for Archie — he’s a cheater with serious avoidant attachment issues — but the show is also making him a relatively decent guy (if overly forgiving and kind) who just seems to have lost his way. How much punishment can one man take?! On top of all that, it seems that he thinks fatherhood is [checks notes] driving to Costco to get rotisserie chicken? I mean, he’s not totally wrong, but there’s a little more to it than that! Also, Costco is delightful! Have you tried the mini chocolate-chip cookies, Archie?! They’ll heal your battered ego and your broken soul.
Speaking of impending parenthood, we finally get to know Sunny. We not only get to see what “makes her so special” — under that casual pony and baggy hoodie, she’s a secret hottie — but this episode actually gives her some dialogue. She wants to keep the baby (perplexing, but okay) but she also somehow believes that her still-married lover will be all-in on raising this child with her. The heart speaks louder than the brain sometimes, but Sunny is a literal neuroscientist! A fact that she reminds us of in this very conversation! Archie is giving Sunny very clear signals that he’s not fully on board with this decision, and I just don’t want her to get her pregnant heart broken; it’s not good for the baby.
When Sunny helps Archie apply a little foundation to cover his black eye — she also wants to give him a “bold lip,” but he sadly declines — she asks him to move in with her. He initially balks at the idea, but once Greg gains access to his room because they’re in the same boutique hotel with questionable ladle-based security, he moves in with her. And, what do we find when Sunny opens the door? Robby Hoffman! The reveal comes complete with her exasperated groan at having to share space with a self-involved man. We feel you, roomie.
• Greg gets me every time with his gentle but genuine reactions to all of Walt’s eccentricities. The character he’s reminding me of most in this series is his sweet and bumbling Andy Stitzer from The 40-Year-Old Virgin. His line reading of “Wow. That is large font!” got a big laugh out of me. It was some very large font, indeed.
• When Walt tells Dylan that Ludlow has to move the Ludlow Review online as a cost-cutting measure, I was a bit incredulous. How much can a few hundred copies of a poetry magazine cost, anyway? But print media is, indeed, dying, so I can’t blame Walt. But I can blame Dylan for giving up so easily. Sell ads to the parents! Hold a bake sale! Do something, lady! Don’t just set your dream down to die.
• There’s an unnamed student in Dylan’s poetry class who killed me with her relaxed attitude to sex. She calls a fellow student, Eli, out, asking him in front of the whole class if he wants to get pegged, and when he says he has asthma, she immediately volleys back, “Well, bring your nebulizer.” The payoff to this setup doesn’t come until later, when Eli is snoozing, naked, in bed next to her while she watches Archie’s BBC appearance explode. I guess Eli did want to get pegged, after all.
• Whenever Rory Scoville is on screen, I’m laughing. His character’s inability to keep track of his gun is certainly going to end in a Chekov-like situation later on, but I’m betting it will be hilarious.
• Where can I get a hot chocolate with a peppermint straw? I searched and didn’t find any shops that offer it near me, but I did find these pricey peppermint straws on Amazon. Will I buy them and make my own? Watch this space.
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