Man Seeking Woman has returned strong with its first two episodes of the season, displaying great new situations to put a wrench in Josh’s love life. Lat night’s episode, “Scythe,” had a small feeling of repetitiveness to it, but expanded on old ideas to deliver a pretty strong episode. At this point, I never know what to expect from the show because there are a lot of different topics that could be covered, but I want progression more than anything. I want to see Josh’s character grow into a strong self-confident person, so it’s good to see him get into similar scenarios from his past only to show he’s grown stronger.
The opening bit with the reaper chasing Josh down for his hair was a clever way to kick things off. I really liked that the whole episode revolved around the time aspect and mental thought about how age isn’t helping anyone in the long-run when it comes to looks. Relationships aren’t build completely off of interest in someone’s personality, we are (most of the time) attracted to someone physically first, which is why we care about our appearance. Josh feels his clock ticking down when he discovers what the reaper is after. Although he’s not going to die, he essentially feels like that’s what he’s headed towards if he can’t lock down a girl quick enough while he still has looks.
As a result of this thought process, Josh begins to date a car, which at first feels similar enough to the first season’s premiere, “Lizard.” Not only does Josh just go on a date with a less than perfect girl, he ends up completely settling for her and going into a full blown relationship. Everyone protests this idea, but Josh feels like at this point he can’t do any better and thinks this is the best course of action. Josh creates a false sense of happiness with the Saturn and while he just when he’s ready to propose, he catches his car with three other guys. I was pretty worried that we were going to watch Josh spiral back downward into a less-confident version of himself; however, I really loved the episode when it spun into the buddy cop setting where Josh has no attitude and has moved past caring about rejection.
Josh has very low self-esteem this episode, which is pretty sad to watch, but I just love the whole transition and sequence into the final portion of the episode. Eric Andre continues to do a great job in this role and I loved his reactions to Josh’s new attitude. Man Seeking Woman is a show that will always have extremely clever moments and little things included to fill out scenes. Last night I thought the show did a great job of having Josh screw up his first date with the blonde girl after getting so used to hearing no. Not only does he immediately revert to his awkward babbling, but he later on explains how terrible the date actually went. It’s been so long since he had talked to a girl and it wasn’t like he was instantly good at it.
What really rounded out and saved this episode for me was the ending. There is a quick scene where the Saturn drunkenly busts through the wall like the Kool-Aid guy to try and have a one night stand with her ex. Josh definitely considers taking the sex and seeing what happens, but realizes that he doesn’t deserve this. The moment when he turns her down and tells her to leave is a great moment for Josh that shows his improved self-esteem and refusal to settle. Including those types of moments are what moves the show along, and while Josh still hasn’t found the one, he’s at least finding himself.
Other Thoughts:
- “Does it hurt? Well, I’m sticking my **** into a gas hole.”
- “You think I care?… I’m loco.”
- I would love to hear Josh’s fully analyzed review of Prometheus.
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