The third and fourth episodes of Yahoo’s first original series are an interesting contrast in the show’s development: where “Gone Catfishing” fails to engage with an incredibly simple premise, “Mrs. Wu’s Tang” is a sharp, ambitious effort that widens the show’s scope in a number of interesting ways. Instead of just being a goofy, listless show about a team playing in the city where “anything can happen” (as it is in “Catfishing”), “Mrs. Wu’s Tang” shows promise that Sin City Saints can be something more, a show that utilizes its damaged set of characters and ubiquitous location to an actual end, building characters out of what were previously just vehicles for punch lines for a much more entertaining brand of comedy.
From the get go, “Mrs. Wu’s Tang” feels like a more developed, layered version of the show: Melissa’s exchanges with Jake are far more interesting than anything “Gone Catfishing” had to offer with its constant bullying of recently-promoted Byron, be it at the hands of Arhtak, Jake, or Sam. Melissa is quickly built of her neuroses in previous episodes, revealing herself to be an attentive employee (and liaison to Jake for the faceless office regime) with an open mind, a recurring gag that is much more developed than Sapphire’s repetitive bit about her being an idiot in every single corner of Ace Arena that she randomly pops up in. Although it’s missing Sam, Billy and Coach Doug, “Mrs. Wu’s Tang” is much more effective at building out secondary characters, which add little bits of texture to in-between moments that are key in bringing Sin City Saints to life in its fourth episode.
“Tang” also benefits from a little bit of context. Beginning with Pope and continuing with Jake and Dusty (ugh, that name is still awful), “Tang” builds out its main characters a little bit, attaching onto traits and establishing consistent patterns with characters for the first time in the series. For example, learning that Jake bought a basketball team to impress his dead father (who never understood anything about “enterprise servers” or the like) gives his work-induced stress some much-needed background, revealing that Tullus isn’t just owning a team because he was “bored”, but because he was an insecure billionaire trying to fill a hole in his life – and to prove it, will do something as desperate as offer ayahuasca to a star Chinese player he’s trying to recruit (in turn revealing the player’s own parental issues, stemming from a mother aligning herself to control her son’s future to redeem herself of an unfulfilling marriage).
Those important tenants – combined with Dusty’s equally desperate attempts to succeed, framed by a hilarious female representation of male misogyny, in the form of a horny sports agent – make “Tang” a much more moving episode. And it’s really the closing moments of “Catfishing,” the thoroughly inferior episode, that allow this to happen: after Pope’s non-girlfriend turns out to be real, she dies of kidney failure without the medical treatment Pope was going to pay for (pulled by his mother when Sapphire reveals her last name to be an anagram for “Is Not Real”). That ironic ending sets the stage for the conversation to follow (where Kevin “consoles” him) and establishes a sense of It’s Always Sunny-like irony that was missing before, and “Tang” picks up that and runs with it, ending with Wu signing with the team and taking Pope’s number (worn for his brother, who died at age 8 at 8:08 p.m.), because Jake hides the fact Pope has lost his virginity to Wu’s mother.
“Tang” even has a few good NBA jokes, including a great – if easy – zinger aimed at James Dolan. In every sense of the word, “Mrs. Wu’s Tang” is superior to “Gone Catfishing” (the absence of the eternally-grinning Baron Davis is thankfully, only a small part of this), an important sign of growth as the show heads into the back half of its brief first season. There’s potential to this story of damaged people trying to be professionals (of an NBA team, no less) in the most tempting place in the world to drown in sorrows and bad impulses – and hopefully, “Tang” establishes a trend of the show embracing it.
[Photo via Yahoo Screen]
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