Summary
Poppa’s House indulges all of its worst impulses in Episode 16, descending into a pointless slapstick mess that also undermines one of its key relationships.
Taking a page out of Black Mirror‘s playbook, Poppa’s House tries to tackle a relevant subject in Episode 16. And like recent Black Mirror, it’s misguided rubbish. Now that I think about it, “Game of Phones” might be the worst this show has ever been — even worse than the previous episode — both because it indulges in all its most self-indulgent and insufferable worst impulses, but also because it undermines one of the key relationships for good measure.
The idea is fair enough — Poppa is sick of his family’s phones occupying all of their attention, so during dinner, he confiscates them. That’s tough to argue with. But Poppa’s solution is a strange one. He demands that everyone, including Nina and Junior’s very young children, play truth or dare.
It feels like Poppa’s House has no idea what to do with Trey and Maya beyond using them as a vessel to make their parents look disinterested and useless. They don’t know how often they wash or what they’re eating? Are they really that obsessed with their phones? Episode 16 nonetheless has the good sense to get the kids out of the way pretty quickly, but it isn’t like the adults fare much better.
Here’s where “Game of Phones” indulges itself. There’s a whole bit about Ivy being forced to eat Surströmming, Swedish fermented herring, that goes on for ages and is just preposterous. Then Junior has to shave one of his eyebrows off. The overreliance on visual slapstick is just tedious and childish.
And this gets especially weird when the truths start coming out, because then the banter immediately shifts to sexual connotations, which the target audience for the slapstick won’t even get. Also, Junior’s crush being 22-year-old WNBA star Angel Reese is a little weird — Damon Wayans Jr is 42, twenty years her senior.
Naturally, Nina is upset by this because Angel Reese is the anti-Nina — younger, taller, more successful — and she sulks for almost the remainder of the episode, concocting her own get-back “truth” to turn the tables. This, of course, is all part of Poppa’s plan to bring the family closer together by forcing them to work through their issues in person rather than hiding behind their phones while pretending everything’s okay. And this would be a valuable lesson, except… everything was okay. Junior and Nina are arguing over issues that were only raised by the truth or dare game.
It’s supposed to be a nice moment at the end when everyone sits down for takeout and willingly hands their phones over, but I was still smarting from what is perhaps the worst decision of Poppa’s House Episode 16. In another round of truths, Poppa refers to Ivy as his new best friend, almost as if all the romantic development up to this point didn’t even happen!
It seems like a minor thing, but the relationship between Poppa and Ivy has been the only compelling arc for weeks, and it’s so strange for the show to put the brakes on it in this way. Maybe I’m overthinking it, which is possible, but by now it’s not unreasonable to think that Poppa’s House has no real idea what it’s doing or what kind of sitcom it wants to be. And that’s a shame.
