Summary
DMV turns the heat up literally in Episode 2, leading to some impressively dramatic crash-outs, but Tim Meadows remains the understated saviour of the comedy thus far.
DMV turns up the heat in Episode 2, both literally and otherwise. “Stay in Your Lane” is a significantly more chaotic episode than the premiere was, like things have escalated to the extent there could have been several episodes in between, and it isn’t always a mode the CBS sitcom excels in. Luckily, Tim Meadows is on hand to keep things grounded with a more understated and laidback delivery. It’s probably telling that in a half-hour containing two full-on breakdowns, the funniest moment is Gregg passive-aggressively cleaning out the office fridge.
The hook here is that the office is hot. Like, really hot. And until the state approves a visit from a specific guy with authority to tamper with the air conditioning, it’s going to stay hot, sending both the staff and the customers into a sweaty frenzy. Molly Kearney’s Barb, still hungover from the night before, has a few funny moments of trying to cool herself down, but the heat ends up being less of a specific problem and more a catalyst for several other things.
Case in point: The sweltering temperature radically increases the likelihood of a staff crashout, with a new hire’s third Wednesday generally being the deadline for them either suffering some kind of exaggerated mental breakdown or settling in, and thus probably remaining at the DMV for the rest of their lives. Carl is the case study in what happens when the responsibility of working for the DMV and dealing with the general public — framed, once again, like animals banging on the windows of a zoo enclosure, or zombies encircling a mall — gets too much to deal with. But the bigger concern, at least for Colette, is that Noa is on his third Wednesday, and she can’t risk the possibility of him quitting.
DMV Episode 2 is titled “Stay in Your Lane” in specific reference to Colette, who apparently can’t. There’s a bit of telling rather than showing going on here, but apparently Colette is just pathologically incapable of getting out of her own — and everyone else’s — way. This causes her to go to increasingly ridiculous lengths to make Noa comfortable, including messing with the A/C and causing a blackout, turning up the fan behind him, which blows his documents all over the office, and inviting him to ride along with her on a driving exam, which inadvertently reintroduces him to a beautiful surfer woman named Mary that he had some kind of recent, possibly romantic encounter with.
Mary is played by Jessica Camacho in the first recurring guest role of the season. It’s unclear, for now, whether there was anything romantic going on with her and Noa at all, but Colette certainly thinks so, and a sitcom like this can easily wring a couple of episodes out of that assumption alone.
It all works well enough, and there are some very funny lines and deliveries here, most of them from Tim Meadows and pertaining to his character’s marriage. But it’s hard not to notice that DMV works much better with his delivery and demeanour. Colette’s frantic, overblown outbursts can be entertaining, but they’re the wrong choice for a baseline, and I do worry the show might lean on them too much as it goes.
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