12x06 Beach, Please

[5.4/10] Pretty meh all around. There’s potential in the A-story. Louise and the kids go to a “mandatory volunteer day” at school and clean up the beach near Wonderwarf, while Louise negotiates compensation from Mr. Fischoeder. You could do a lot with the beachside shenanigans and Louise going against a grown-up schemer. But the episode doesn’t really do much with it, with a minor escalation in their mutual ploys, and little in the way of clever turns in the story.

The emotional throughline is supposed to be Lousie semi-accidentally doing something for the general good, but it's very thin. Meanwhile, the laughs just aren’t there. Tammy and Jocelyn’s beach selfies get old fast. Gene’s friendship with a hungry seagull is tepid. And Tina being scrupulous about the task is nice, but doesn’t lead to a lot of yuks. Not much in either story or humor here.

The same goes for Bob’s reactions to Teddy growing a mustache. I’m all in favor of Teddy subplots, but Bob being annoyed at Teddy’s new facial hair obsession doesn’t lead to as many amusingly low-stakes bits as it might. Teddy having grown the mustache because he thought Bob was mad about something Bob didn’t even care about is a mild punchline, and the stache-based humor is mild as well.

Overall, nothing actively bad here, just a lot of mild dullness to go around.

(Oh yeah, and the new voice for Mickey was super-distracting!)