Since Max (Kat Dennings) let Caroline (Beth Behrs) move in with her in the series premiere of 2 Broke Girls, the two have developed boundary issues. Specifically, Caroline doesn’t understand boundaries. At work she pushes Max to put her name out there in relation to the cupcake business they’ve begun, much to Max’s discomfort.
Caroline is also being pushy about Max’s break up with Robbie (Noah Mills). Because she believes that Max is sadder about Robbie than she is letting on, Caroline pushes Max to open up about her feelings, yet another thing that Max is not comfortable with, thus her constant quipping defense mechanism.
At home, Caroline is now sharing Max’s bed because the couch is too uncomfortable. This awkwardly leads to another encounter with Robbie who doesn’t understand the concept of ‘breaking up’ but is fully aware of the concept of the threesome, a running gag of sorts in this episode and not a very good one.
Caroline finally crosses the line with Max when she steals her break up scene. Thinking that she was doing Max a favor, Caroline gives Robbie his stuff back and gives him a stern talking too. This robs Max of the one pleasure of the break up, telling the ex how much better off you are without them.
Caroline in turn attempts to break up her friendship with Max over her boundary issues, and a well-placed insult of Caroline’s father, the Ponzi-schemer. The break up lasts only a few hours as a drunken Caroline returns to the shared apartment with a drunken apology which Max accepts while admitting to having overreacted to the cupcake sign.
Happy ending in place, we get one more joke involving Caroline’s horse which is living in their apartment courtyard. Finally, the episode closes out, demonstrating many of the things that are wrong with this freshman sitcom that last week looked so very promising.
2 Broke Girls sailed by in its premiere week on the charm of star Kat Dennings and the promise of newcomer Beth Behrs. Sadly, the show’s writing failed to improve on the issues people like myself so willingly over-looked in hope that the series would improve in its second time out.
Instead, 2 Broke Girls went backwards. Rather than get sharper and funnier, episode two of 2 Broke Girls had even less of a plot than the pilot and even more of the awkward put-downs and one liners that Kat Dennings is forced to shovel like so much old school sitcom crap.
Dennings, it seems, can feel the ennui of this endeavor setting in and she’s stopped caring. Where she swatted away the ironic invisible quotation marks around all her jokes in the pilot, in episode two they were back with a vengeance.
Check out a list of this week’s more awkward dialogue delivered by Ms. Dennings this week.
“Do you have anything really special?” “Not according to my High School Guidance Counselor”
“Well, you can’t be late, I’m worried about me being late. Every month.”
“Is there any way to do a yelp review of Wharton Business School?”
“Robbie, if I were going to go lesbian, she’s the last les I’d be in.”
The shout out to Yelp.com in particular felt like a writer’s attempt to sound cool but it’s the Lesbian line, delivered by Kat Dennings with all the conviction of a forced confession, which really clanged off the rim. Dennings is far too interesting an actress for these jokes and she’s barely concealing that fact as she delivers them.
One final note: lose the horse. Caroline’s horse is not funny, it will never be funny and it affects the premise. The idea is that Max and Caroline are desperate for money. Sell the stupid horse and use the money. Ugh!