Episodes Season 2 Episode 6 Recap – ‘Episode 6′

Episode 6

Matt’s stalker becomes part of the story in the sixth episode of Episodes, and it’s one of the funniest pre-title sequences in the show yet. Things are getting more complicated as we’re moving forward, in tiny funny steps. Somehow, it works wonderfully. My episode review follows…

What just happened (episode summary): Matt istrying to get one of his Friends‘ co-stars to guest starring on Pucks!; Beverly and Sean are trying a comeback – and fail;

How it happened (the chatty TV critic): Merc asks Matt to get him one of the other co-stars in Friends as a guest star for Pucks!, and after Matt gets a promise from Merc that all the future promotions for the shows are going to be on him “and not that hair”, Matt agrees.

I didn’t like this plot line at all. First, it wasn’t funny to hear the same reactions from the different friends throughout the episode. Second, and I know Episodes is about the post-Friends Matt, but still, I don’t need so many Friends references. I think this is a major weakness of Episodes, that it even feels the need to mention Friends. It was half-funny, they way it ended with Gunther as the guest star, but didn’t quite pay off to the long boring prologue of endless phone calls.

Funny that none of Pucks! young actors recognized Matt as being one of Friends cast – or they just weren’t too excited about him.

Following the incident from Episode 5, the Morning chick-situation solved with a blue screen tape. Morning and Sean are not the issue anymore – Morning asks Bev if she wants to date her cute brother (played by James Purefoy), but Bev is still waiting for Sean (and it was weird seeing her telling that to Morning). Later Carol and Bev discussing this while hiking (the new trend isa success, and Bev is breathing a little easier even). Carol offers to ‘move on’, especially after she hears, for the first time, that Sean and Morning had ‘a moment’.

In fact Carol loves that idea as a TV show pitch – a divorced couple that are dating a brother and a sister, only Bev can’t really see it through her eyes. And she doesn’t want to date the brother either – she wants Sean back.

And so Sean and Bev are writing together again, for Matt’s speech for the Man Of The Year prize for Merc Lapidus, and while they try hard to think of something good to say about the man who’s ruining their show, they have time to talk about ‘their relationship’ for a short while, try a come back, which fails, and learn that they must let it go for now.

It was a strong and beautiful scene, which again gave us a background story on Sean and Bev’s relationships (Sean’s mother, and the way Sean has moved on after his first wife. You would have to know the whole story to understand, but the fact that Beverly was the other woman when she and Sean started dating (it was mentioned on season 1, when she was jealous in him hanging around Morning), and that he moved on – this adds another angle to their current situation, especially after we see he can’t forget what Bev and Matt did at the end of the first season.

What are we left with: I’ve just realized how Matt’s ringtone is important for the series. It gives it a funny easy feel. It should ring more often. Besides that, it was in one way a slow episode – with Matt on the phone on a never ending subplot. On the other hand, the Bev and Sean story has moved a few steps forward, with the ‘move on’ advice Carol gave Bev now the best thing she can do, and with the potential candidate for that, Morning’s brother, right around the corner.