A Televisual Feast

The first episode to focus (mostly) on Rico and Amanda works fairly well, since Nadia Dajani and Greg Germann can handle anything. The odd thing about the episode is the handling of Stacey. She’s a practically a pariah, irritating everyone, sabotaging Ned’s big commercial. It’s a strange direction to take one of the show’s titular characters. Even Ned takes the backseat a little, though he plays off Stacey’s ludicrous behavior and does have some good moments with Rico.

The kickoff for the episode is Ned signing a supermodel to a commercial, she takes to Rico and then Stacey screws up her acting (with a fantastic line about Stacey having taken two acting classes in college… that approach is the other weird thing, Stacey being the butt of jokes). Paulina Porizkova plays the supermodel and she’s okay doing an imitation of herself, but the meat of her scenes usually comes from Thomas Haden Church.

When it deals with Amanda and Rico’s relationship, however, the show approaches a whole different level, a serious one. But it somehow manages not to be trite and is, instead, touching.

It’s a solid episode, better paced than most so far, especially since the opener with the quartet (Ned, Stacey, Amanda and Rico) is such a superior scene.

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