Summary
DMV relies on another guest star in “The Fourth Wheel”, which gives Colette a nemesis and something different to do.
DMV always being better when a guest star is involved kind of proves my point that it’s at its best when it focuses on anything other than its “star of the show”. And I use that grandiose term, since it’s explicitly what Episode 12 refers to Colette as. It’s like I’m the only person who has noticed that Gregg is funnier than the rest of the cast combined. “The Fourth Wheel” is a step in the right direction, though, since it redirects some of that Colette energy to her evil opposite, a DMV nepo baby named Robin, played by a dead-eyed Anna Camp.
I’ll grant you that it’s funny how excited Barb is about the arrival of the niece of the Director of the California DMV. That’s super on-brand. No wonder she’s so keen on being the manager. Anyway, Robin is the new all-smiles, all-singing, all-dancing driving examiner, a new hire who is also “DMV royalty” and, of course, an evil mirror version of Colette who immediately tries to ostracise and gaslight her.
This feels more like the setup for a Black Mirror episode than a CBS sitcom, but it’s played for laughs. The main one is how obvious it is to Colette that she’s being mugged off and how desperate everyone else is to pretend otherwise just so they can keep getting ego-stroking nicknames and supposedly homemade cookies. Colette, meanwhile, doesn’t get invited to the baked goods bonding sessions and is gifted a team T-shirt several sizes too big.
This dynamic kind of works since it forces Colette to be much more low-key than usual, and it also immediately puts the audience on her side, which is novel since she’s usually the fun-sponge getting in the way of everyone else trying to be in a comedy. Camp is really good, too, pitching the performance just right, coming across halfway between someone moderately reasonable and a dangerous serial killer. Her downfall is fun to root for.
That downfall involves Colette trying to convince everyone else that she has dark ulterior motives, which nobody is inclined to do at first. But the cookies turn out to be from Subway. And, even more damningly, Robin doesn’t even understand the rules of the road. Despite her reticence to fire the DMV Director’s niece and risk derailing her entire career, Barb simply can’t tolerate a lapse in road safety standards. Not on her watch, and certainly not with the reputation of her DMV branch at stake. Again, this is so in keeping with Barb’s established personality that it ends up being really funny. The fact that it benefits Colette is kind of an afterthought.
Luckily, Robin’s uncle doesn’t like her either, so the “twist”, so to speak, is that Barb firing her may actually grease the wheels of her career rather than the opposite. All’s well that ends well.
Elsewhere in DMV Episode 12, Ceci is now dating Brent, the obnoxious recurring customer who returned in Episode 10 when the show came back from its mid-season finale and has stuck around ever since. The two are totally incompatible, and their relationship is facile and toxic, but Noa realises that they’re weirdly better off with each other than they would be with other people, even if it’s only for the sake of the other people. So, Noa endeavours to help them get over the speed bumps in their relationship, against his better judgment.
It’s fine, though I’m not sure to what extent it meshes with Ceci’s more ambitious depiction as a potential manager in the previous episode. Still, it’s nice that she has something to do, and Brent is always fun because he’s such an obnoxious moron. But it’s Anna Camp’s guest turn that steals the show, not for the first time in DMV. Maybe it’s learning some lessons.
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