{"id":412640,"date":"2026-04-27T04:03:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T04:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/412640\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T04:03:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T04:03:08","slug":"season-1-episode-8-nobody-spook-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/412640\/","title":{"rendered":"season 1, episode 8, “Nobody Spook It”"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a good chance that these Rooster recaps<\/a> are getting repetitive. But that\u2019s because the season seems to be spinning in circles as it approaches its end. Eight episodes in, the HBO comedy is in kind of a limbo. In its early outings, Rooster\u2018s biggest challenge was setting up Greg Russo\u2019s pivot from, as he puts it, a \u201cbanter-driven mystery-action author\u201d to a writer-in-residence at a liberal-arts college. As it turns out, he\u2019s a natural at it, which gave the show a pleasant middle patch to establish the rest of its protagonists. Now that Greg\u2019s semester-long commitment is about to wrap up, though, the show feels stuck.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yes, it\u2019s fun to hang out with this cast (even if their chemistry ebbs and flows), but not all the characters. Rooster needlessly reminding us that Walt loves his hot sauna\/cold plunge combo has gone from a funny sight gag to a groan-worthy re-occurrence in every freaking installment. (The same can be said of the two female students who keep fawning over Archie.) In this week\u2019s half-hour, too, Walt\u2019s decked in a sauna-specific vest Sunny gifted him, and she adds that it \u201cmakes his guns look good.\u201d What we need a reminder of is that Walt is college president and Sunny is his pregnant mentee and a grad student. I\u2019m not saying we can\u2019t abandon logic to buy into unexpected friendships. Shrinking and Ted Lasso constantly demand this of us, too, but it comes with believable, heartfelt character development that Rooster hasn\u2019t afforded either of them yet. They\u2019re both too one-note. Tommy has gotten a more fleshed-out arc than Archie\u2019s baby mama.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Speaking of Sunny, she is perhaps the show\u2019s biggest question mark. It\u2019s understandable that a smart, young woman like her is torn between accepting a prestigious job in the Big Apple or staying in New England to raise a baby. Can she have it all? Her arc would make for an interesting show in and of itself, but buried under many subplots, Sunny\u2019s story ends up as a punchline that\u2019s not really funny at all. Lauren Tsai does the best she can with the material, but Rooster had better give Sunny the complexity that she deserves. It\u2019s particularly jarring because in \u201cNobody Spook It,\u201d she confesses to Archie that Biotecha offered her a position, but she\u2019s refusing it because he won\u2019t be in New York City with her. There\u2019s zero conversation about doing long distance, and he doesn\u2019t bother to say that he\u2019d move for her. (Yes, I know he\u2019s tenured.) Sunny gives up on her dream job, swayed after seeing him read a parenting book\u2014and that\u2019s after listening to him drone on earlier in the day about how he thinks parenting is actually instinctual and that Sunny\u2019s hormones are taking over her.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to take Rooster seriously because why in the world would Sunny choose to be with him? Shouldn\u2019t she know that even though he recently spent Thanksgiving with her family, he doesn\u2019t seem to be that into her? Also, he slept with Katie. Katie herself spends \u201cNobody Spook It\u201d in a funk. She\u2019s been mourning her torpedoed marriage, realizing that Archie has chosen to be with Sunny (likely because of the baby). She\u2019s been in a sadness spiral to the extent that when she confronts Archie outside their favorite coffee shop, she can\u2019t stop crying. I\u2019ll say it again: It\u2019s hard to take Rooster seriously because why in the world would Katie want to be with this guy anyway? Please let this be the final time we see her cry over a doomed relationship.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Katie does take a big step at the end of episode eight when she confesses to Greg that she\u2019s been hooking up with her estranged husband, who has once again left her to cope all alone. We don\u2019t hear the conversation, but Katie is inspired by Tommy telling her that she\u2019s lucky to have a dad who cares so much about her. She\u2019s the reason he\u2019s at Ludlow in the first place. So after avoiding the truth and lying to her father about who she\u2019s been sleeping with, Katie musters up the courage to be honest, despite fearing his reaction. And Rooster strangely doesn\u2019t let us listen in. Knowing Greg, he\u2019ll be as supportive as possible. After all, the whole purpose of \u201cNobody Spook It\u201d is to reemphasize what a Nice Guy he is.\u00a0<\/p>\n

First, he reunites with Cristle, who\u2019s back after Thanksgiving and her emotional breakdown. She lays down the law now that they\u2019ve broken up. Greg can\u2019t wear crotch-defining pants, smile or show tongue, and perform acts of chivalry that will make Cristle swoon, lest she fall for him once more. As funny as Annie Mumolo is, this subplot suffers because, again, Rooster hasn\u2019t developed their dynamic after the two banged in Walt\u2019s office. Cristle ultimately reaches out to Greg on her own, hoping he\u2019ll help convince Tommy to not drop out of college. So Greg spends this half-hour chasing after Tommy, who decides to put his studies on the back burner to become a cop, inspired by, of all people, a klutz like Officer Donnie. (His whole \u201cI left my gun in a donut shop\u201d bit is too dated.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

This part of the episode feels like the writers suddenly remembered they have Rory Scovel at their disposal. Donnie takes Tommy under his wing ever so briefly, talking about the pros of becoming a cop (hmm). Thankfully, Greg intervenes and joins them for the rest of the day. He not only convinces Donnie to turn Tommy against becoming a policeman, but also tells Tommy to stay at Ludlow because he sees potential in him. They even discuss the paper he submitted, and it\u2019s all very sweet. It\u2019s a sign of Rooster\u2018s abilities, but the show doesn\u2019t go as deep as it needs to in order to make it work. Instead, the focus is on lingering narrative threads that don\u2019t allow this enviable cast to really dig into their characters. It\u2019s an arena that Ted Lasso and Shrinking thrive in, so hopefully Rooster figures its way out soon. Hey, at least the slow burn between Greg and Dylan is still going strong. They go on walks, grab hot chocolates, and banter about poetry versus whodunits. Steve Carell and Danielle Deadwyler\u2019s dynamic is as good a reason as any to tune in.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Stray observations<\/p>\n

\u2022 I can\u2019t say I\u2019m too thrilled about a couple of the one-liners in this episode, like Katie\u2019s \u201cSanta is a fat fuck\u201d or Greg telling Cristle he wouldn\u2019t have imagined that she gave birth to a baby who weighed 14 pounds.\u00a0
\n\u2022 Dylan finds a mentee of her own in \u201cNobody Spook It,\u201d encouraging sex-positive Gen-Zer Eva (Madison Hu) to be more vulnerable in her poem so that it can be published in The Ludlow Review.\u00a0
\n\u2022 Dylan: \u201cIt really bothered me when you said you weren\u2019t going to be an artist.\u201d
Eva: \u201cOh. My bad, diva.\u201d\u00a0
\n\u2022 Did bartender Hunter not find it utterly weird that Katie, who is barely an acquaintance, sat next to him during the hockey game and was acting a little too friendly?
\n\u2022 Tommy chases down the guy who stole the mascot costume, only to discover it\u2019s one of his friends. The only lesson here is that Ludlow\u2019s mascot being a mustachioed man is very creepy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Saloni Gajjar is The A.V. Club\u2018s TV critic.\u00a0 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s a good chance that these Rooster recaps are getting repetitive. But that\u2019s because the season seems to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":412641,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[146,85,46,411],"class_list":["post-412640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412640\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/412641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}