Summary
Rooster feels a bit too slapstick in Episode 3, but there’s a compelling germ of sadness and dysfunction beginning to emerge that is much more interesting than the — admittedly effective — comedy.
Thus far, Rooster has been much more of a comedy than a drama. The elusive balance that really characterises great Bill Lawrence shows like Ted Lasso and Shrinking is conspicuously absent here, perhaps more so in Episode 3 than in the first two. But let’s not be too hasty, since there’s also a germ of sadness and dysfunction bubbling away in the margins, and as that becomes more prominent, I believe there’s going to be a lot more meat on the bone here than first appearances necessarily suggest.
It doesn’t happen this week, though, and even the comedy takes a bit of a downturn with frequent descents into outright slapstick that are mildly amusing but feel too easy to be taken seriously. The excuse is that this is Greg’s first day on campus after taking the writer-in-residence position, and he’s so ill-suited to the role that he keeps making an idiot of himself. But this sometimes manifests as literal comedy pratfalls, one where he tumbles down a hill on account of his too-shiny shoes, and another when he topples onto a student — again, thanks to the shoes — and uses her breasts to brace his fall. His argument that it was a gentle cupping as opposed to a full-throated squeeze doesn’t do him too many favours in front of an agog disciplinary committee.
What’s compelling about this storyline is that Greg has taken the position to protect Katie’s job, but Katie doesn’t know that, so she thinks that her overbearing father is lurking around to try to interfere in her life, while he feels utterly stuck in a position he isn’t equipped for. Katie’s constant rejections of Greg’s offers of spending time together — she refuses to move in, stay over, or, at the end of the episode even join him at a hockey game — are legitimately bothering him, and when Carell isn’t forced to babble his way out of problems of his own making, he cuts a very compelling figure of loneliness. We need more of this.
Greg also feels bad because he has unknowingly stolen the position from Dylan’s friend, Ruby, an award-winning poet who was supposed to move into the faculty house that Greg is now living in. Again, though, he’s stuck. He wants to bond with Dylan, but he’s struggling to do that because she can’t stop seeing him as someone who is benefiting from her friend’s loss. He wants his class to like him, but none of them are familiar with his “beach read” Rooster books, and they don’t understand even the most commonplace literary references (Greg is given a verbal warning for referring to a student at his “white whale”, quoting a book that he, ironically, hasn’t even read). And he wants to spend time with Katie, but he can’t because she thinks his very presence is inherently selfish, even though it’s his selflessness that is keeping him trapped in a position that is making him actively miserable.
These arcs are all here, but they’re getting a bit lost amongst all the gags. I’m hoping that over time they really start to cohere, since I’m legitimately invested in each angle and character. And this is a testament to Rooster‘s quality, even here in Episode 3, since despite limited screen-time for supporting figures and rushing through plot points that probably deserve a bit more focus, there’s still a kernel of intriguing drama in each strand. Archie, now living with Sunny and her hilarious roommate, Mo, is trying to juggle Sunny getting an advisor for an internship while keeping their relationship appropriately private. He eventually helps to introduce her to Walt, even though he knows that’s a terrible idea, since he knows it’s what Sunny wants. But he’s also still pining for Katie in private. He, like Greg, is completely trapped in a situation where he can’t do right for doing wrong.
Dylan is in a similar predicament. She continues to beef with the truly awful Dean Riggs, and when he moves the free speech zone right outside her office as petty revenge for complaining about him to Walt, she confronts him in his office. Dylan petulantly refuses to pass him a glass of water when he seems to start choking, and Riggs has a heart attack in his office. He survives, but he’ll be out of action for a while, meaning that Ludlow needs a new Dean of Faculty. And Dylan is thrust into the role against her will, leaving her in a position she has no idea how to navigate. Still, at least she might get Katie’s suspension lifted.
