My heart sank when I saw that Will Ferrel’s disastrous Ashley Schaffer character would be returning to Eastbound & Down for the penultimate episode of the entire series. How!? How could they let a character who was single handedly responsible for easily the worst episode of the series, and who represents all the worst aspects of Danny McBride, Jody Hill, and David Gordon Green’s impulses muck up what should be a knockout stretch of episodes to close out a wonderful TV Show? Well I’m happy to say that even though I still think Ashley Schaffer sucks, not even he could fuck up a pretty darn great outing by – of course – Jody Hill in the director’s chair. Please god let them stop their trading off schedule and keep Gordon Green the hell away from next week’s finale.

The episode started out in a way that literally made me exclaim out loud “Oh shit, 2 Chainz!”, as the strains of “Gasolean” thumped over footage of a purple-clad, skull themed black biker gang parading downtown Myrtle, ending in a hysterical line delivery – from who will be revealed to by Craig Robinson’s returning one-eyed Powers rival Reg Mackworthy – to the fearful honky at the urinal stall next to him: “tight dick playa.” And we’re off to the races! Loving being a Dad after his time with Lily Tomlin last week (it seems, unfortunately, that her and Don Johnson will probably not be returning, though who knows), Kenny proudly brings Toby in to meet his “faggot teammates.”

Despite his newfound confidence, Kenny is still PNG on the Mermen (“no one gave you permission to take a hiatus”) but he can only worry about this for so long before he’s confronted by the aforementioned bikers, who are revealed to be under the control of Ashely Schaffer. Ugh. Schaffer’s sycophantic assistant, however, remains pretty funny My spirits were lifted though when Reg showed up to take the spotlight from Ashley. Craig Robinson, who’s career has kind of slowed down recently, remains hysterical but also brings a weary, sad, pathos to the character that reflects the world of Eastbound in a way that Ferrel’s 100% cartoonish Schaffer most surely does not.

While Kenny parts safely from the bikers here, there’s still quite a while left in Black Biker Week (“it’s not a work week. It’s a full seven days”) and he’s now stuck at home, paranoid that Reg will try to exact revenge. After outfitting Stevie with some truly terrifying new hair and eyebrows (god bless Steve Little for having the least amount of shame of anyone ever), Kenny waits fearfully inside while Stevie takes Toby on his quest to reclaim Maria. While that goes poorly – ending with Stevie’s wig getting yanked off, revealing a nauseating sea of toupee glue smeared across his lumpen skull – the situation goes from bad to worse when Toby is kidnapped by the gang.

Kenny and Stevie suit up for a old fashioned street showdown (Kenny in a black headband, ‘natch, and Stevie in Freddy Krueger gloves because sure) and the situation almost ends with Kenny’s pitching arm shattered, until the gang turns on Schaffer when it becomes clear he considers them his slaves. A pretty easy, somewhat lame plot fix, but to be honest any scene that ends with Ashley Schaffer engulfed in flames is alright with me. This leads to another of Eastbound’s bravura music cues as Kenny relieves Dochenko and pitches the Mermen to a resounding win.

All is not well for Powers however, as his celebratory boogie board is brought to a quietly devastating end by the return of one April Buchanan (now with hair beads!). Kenny knows this is ostensibly what he’s been asking for – someone to come and take Toby off his back – but it’s clear that having him around is now more rewarding than his precious baseball. After all, how can you part with a child after you’ve built him his own Dildosaurus Rex (“look. It moves”). So Kenny is left alone again, and we’re left waiting for one (can you believe it’s only one!?) last episode of Eastbound & Down. You wanna bet it’ll be really, really sad?

Apparently feeling boxed in by its standard Summer schedule, Mad Men auteur Matthew Weiner turned last night’s episode “Mystery Date” into a Halloween special. Sure, it took place in July and no mention was made of that ghoulish holiday, but this was a descent into true horror the likes of which had not been seen – nor, I should point out, ever expected – on this fastidiously mannered period drama. I loved it. I’ve been slightly apprehensive about Mad Men‘s fifth season thus far. Its thematic thrust has been more obvious and aggressively pursued than in seasons past, but the SCDP crew’s sudden confrontations with the passage of time, aging, shifting social climates, and the rise of the youth have felt clumsy, half baked, uncomfortably melodramatic. Especially with last week’s “Tea Leaves”, an episode crammed full of manipulative music cues, fortune telling, and a painful pseudo-appearance by the Rolling Stones, my ability to engage felt at an all time low.

“Mystery Date” solved those problems with balls and bravura, burying those same themes beneath a thick sheen of blood and guts and fear. Believe it or not, this episode at times reminded me of the best things about American Horror Story, but here made much better by stronger performances and more assured direction from Matt Shakman. The plots of this episode are all haunted by the brutal rape and murder of 8 nurses in Chicago, later to be attributed to psycho Richard Speck. But for now the killer is still on the loose, albeit states away, and so are the frightened imaginations of our characters. Let’s start with Don, who sweats his way through “Mystery Date” fighting a brutal cough (a hint at darker maladies perhaps, though are we really ready for another cancer scare this season?) and – we’re told – an aggressive former fling-cum-stalker (Madchen Amick from Twin Peaks!). While the active, antagonizing Megan – who I like more and more every episode – calls Don on his history of adultery, all he wants to do is get home and sleep, but not before he dresses down a overreaching Ginsberg (the new copywriter, who’s character still isn’t working for me).

Back in his dreamy looking apartment, Don is confronted by his former mistress, who he eventually beds before – wait for it – strangling her to death and stuffing her under the mattress. Sure it was all just a nightmare brought on by fever, but kudos to Weiner and crew for going for it and just being pretty much as open as possible with their symbolism, allowing Don to quite literally act our his insecurities. I certainly wouldn’t want these fantastical diversions every week (quick sidenote; these bits were really reminiscent of The Sopranos, the show Weiner cut his teeth on) but they worked here, especially in conjunction with the rest of the plotlines. My favorite was probably the one centered around young Sally Draper (the increasingly good Kiernan Shipka), that perfectly captures the way a long, languorous Summer day can let your imagination get the best of you.

Stuck with humorously bitchy grandma Pauline Francis, Sally tries to prove her maturity by taking in news about the murders with aplomb, but as the day wears on this unfamiliar home begins to look more haunted, the shadows extending and each creaky step becoming the footfalls of an intruder. In a cute but somehow not too cute moment, it turns out Pauline is also having these fears – shoving bugles in her face on the couch with a Myers-esque kitchen knife at her side – and after delivering a not very helpful speech about evil, helps young Sally sleep with half a Seconal (they sure plant those chemical seeds early in the 60s…). The image of Betty and Henry returning in the morning to find Pauline on the couch with Sally secreted away beneath it was just great.

Meanwhile a sauced Peggy Olsen is having night terrors of her own, stuck late in the office after accepting a bribe from Roger (what a great scene, by the way) to do some extra work on the newly acquired Mohawk account. But a bump in the night turns out to be Don’s new black secretary Dawn (hired after the misinterpreted ad from the premiere), who can’t go home for fear of violence: from murderers and race riots alike. An eager to please Peggy invited her back to her place and they share a amiable if not slightly stilted conversation where Pegs unloads some of her insecurities on the polite Dawn, but all rapport is lost when Peggy leaves for bed, lingering for a second over her purse and suddenly telegraphing her unease with leaving money in front of Dawn.

It’s a painful moment. Finally, in a good plotline that nevertheless seems slight divorced (ba-zing!) from the rest, Joans dickhole husband returns from his first tour of duty, meeting his son for the first time and reuniting with his eager wife. The actors all handled these scenes well, but I’ve never quite bought that Joan would still be so into her husband, and so when she dumps him at the end – after learning he’s volunteered to go back to Vietnam for another year – it seemed like a foregone conclusion. Overall this was definitely my favorite episode of Season 5 so far: bizarre, brave, brazenly intelligent, and purdy to look at too. It was full of tricks, but it sure was a treat. Wah-wah.

As the end of Eastbound & Down rapidly approaches, I find myself searching for some sort of closure, peeking around the edges for Jody Hill and Danny McBride’s endgame for this strange, wonderful beast. Though the introduction of a new major character with only two episodes left in the entire series should have felt like deus ex machina, Tammy Powers, played to absolute perfection by Lily Tomlin, not only made for a great episode (despite being directed by the recently poisonous David Gordon Green) but one which sets the scene for the final dance of Kenny Powers.

And, after all the wondering, it seems that the end may involve just what everyone thought it never could (and, if you as some, never should): Kenny becoming a responsible adult. The end result of he, Stevie, Eduardo (Don Johnson, by the way, was also really fantastic here) and Casper’s journey to see Tammy is that Kenny ends up taking responsibility for Toby. Now lets take bets on whether April returns and something really, really sad happens.

Before all that, however, we get a wonderfully debauched reunion between Kenny and his surprisingly loving Mother, as they gleefully swap prescriptions in a scene that called to mind the season one highlight of Kenny and Clegg (where’s he been at?) doing coke in the back of Shabooms. Tammy keeps he pills in a secret compartment of Kenny’s trophies? Of course she does! The truly horrifying looking Stevie (“this man made of skin”) is still nauseously upset about losing Maria and… well, Stevie didn’t have much to do here.

This was a Powers family affair, and it played out better than I would have thought. Sure, Tammy is upset at Eddie, but that doesn’t stop her from letting him into the house, playing Pictionary as a family (yes!), and maybe fellating him. Because this is Eastbound & Down after all. But he’s also sure to remind Kenny of their visit’s purpose: dumping Toby off on a Mother who’s biggest pride comes from seeing her son as a Father. Yikes.

After Eddie makes off with some precious silver heirlooms in the night (loved how he had a pistol’s laser sight trained on his forehead throughout that scene) Kenny is forced to drop the bomb, and Tomlin earns her Emmy nomination (please?!) selling the heady mix of acceptance, shame, love, and disgust for Kenny and herself as she accepts the burden. But luckily, through a combination of love for his son and fear of having to spend the rest of his life being an asshole with Stevie, Kenny has a change of heart.

This leads to a bizarre but kind of great family hug-it-out session that involves Kenny and Eddie emerging from the backs of two bowling lanes, delivering some signature Powers speeches (complete with synchronized “we love you’s”) and then giving a middle-aged woman with a broken nose the middle finger. Then the episode ends with Kenny, embiggened by fatherhood, preparing to throw a brand new pitch (which is, actually, a pretty big deal for a baseball player). Will Kenny’s knuckler mean his redemption or ultimate downfall? We’ll know for sure soon. Very soon.

What serialized TV shows provide is comfort. Your television set becomes a Lewis-ian wardrobe for one hour a week, a portal to a familiar world where your friends have been patiently waiting to playact in front of you. In anticipation of Mad Men‘s return to the airwaves last night, after over a year of hiatus, many people’s concerns were far from the possible particulars of the episode, instead amounting basically to “isn’t it so nice to have Mad Men back?” Series creator Matthew Weiner is both a very smart man and a notoriously petulant, fastidious one who bristles at command and expectation.

As such, I suppose we should have predicted that, after hearing 18 months of clamoring for the show – for audience comfort food – he delivered two hours that seemed airlifted in from another universe: Mad Men is not as we left it. Though only 7 months have passed in the world of the show, that time has been accompanied by a sea change not only for the circumstances of its world, but also the characters contained within it.

We begin with perhaps the show’s most overtly political confrontation of racist thus far, as executives from a rival agency drop ad-hoc water bombs on black protestors from their windows. This odd non-starter of a scene ends with one of the soaked remarking “and they say we’re the savages” as I squirmed in my couch. What’s happening? This isn’t Don Draper. This isn’t Sterling-Cooper-Draper-Pryce. This feels like a PSA. Where are my friends?

Moving in to Don’s new apartment, the viewer still feels a stranger in a strange land. New wife Megan’s influence weighs heavy on Don’s palatial new digs, which look plasticine and perhaps left over from the Austin Powers sets. Despite the series’ deserved reputation (notorious or otherwise) for its immaculately manicured set and costume design, no space has felt as prohibitively artificial as this one. Here, in this retro-futurist wonderland we finally find our stubbled protagonist.

It’s his 40th birthday, or at least it is for the rest of the world, as he (and, surprisingly, Megan) are aware that the “real” Don Draper – Dick Whitman – hit that benchmark months ago. Don hates birthdays: especially a benchmark year such as 40. So we arrive at my applied paradigm for the episode: make-believe forcing people into unenjoyable situations.

It used to be that Dick became Don to escape: to feel powerful at Sterling Cooper, to be a cigarette smoking drink swilling badass who slept with beautiful women and lined his impressive closet with Clios and the heads of the competition. But, for reasons that will hopefully unveil themselves over the season, this fantasy has lost its obsessively buffed luster.

Despite the fact that it looks shinier, nicer, more idyllic than ever, the office is not the ever-nurturing womb it has been in seasons past. Don openly admits to Megan that he could give a shit about work, and based on his conduct there it seems like it could be true. For me, that was the quiet explosion of this whole episode. But for others, the palpable sense of “rightness” that accompanied the formation of SCDP at the end of Season 3 has also faded.

Roger is increasingly irrelevant, poaching the favor of Pete’s clients without and of the bother of business. Pete meanwhile is trapped in a terribly small office, trying his damndest to save a floundering company that cares less and less about him. Peggy too is unfulfilled in her position just under Don, mostly because Don no longer cares enough to work with her (or fight for her). Observe his disaffected obliviousness when she tries to commiserate about the “business” at Megan’s bizarre, wonderful, dreamlike surprise party for Don.

So, along with these characters, we were denied the return to the comfy, cigarette stained armchair that we expected. Don doesn’t smoke or drink anymore. Not a glimpse of Betty. Joan is painfully away from the office. I felt like Don at his party as he and Roger watched Megan converse with her much younger friends: “Don’t bother guessing what they’re laughing about: it’s not you.”

It was a brilliant maneuver that was simultaneously very frustrating. The swollen, two hour length did even more to make the show unfamiliar, the pacing refigured and confusing. I feel as though Matt Weiner accomplished what he set out for with expert efficiency, but the lack of even vague fan service here was either impressive or distressing. But it was accurate. Time will pass, and things will change, irreversibly. After it was over I found myself returning to Don, laying in bed after the party. Why was he so focused on sleep? Perhaps the world he saw around him suddenly felt a dream, and to close his eyes would return him to the place he feels home.

I remarked last week that this season more than the others, the Jody Hill directed episodes were far, far outshining those helmed by the apparently spiraling David Gordon Green. I think perhaps it has something to do with the fact that this season is somehow walking an even thinner tightrope of tone than the first two, trying to balance the gravitas of the final season with some truly abhorrent behavior, unrelenting bleakness, and the fact that it’s still supposed to be an enjoyable comedy show. Whereas Green has accomplished this by basically taking each aspect to its extreme without trying to string them together in any sort of believable way (emotionally or, y’know, just logistically), Jody Hill is impressively strolling through the minefield, resulting in last night’s episode, the season’s finest thus far.

First we get the return of Don Johnson as Kenny’s dad, as well as his brother Casper, who makes me feel very uncomfortable. In a good way. I think. Kenny meanwhile is trying to make amends with Andrea, in a storyline I like more an more. I thought Andrea was just going to be a throwaway character in the premiere, but her continued presence (and the sad unpacking of Kenny’s legitimate need for her, if only as empty emotional support) is weird and fun and depressing. Just look at her reaction to awkwardly holding Toby: “Uh, hey there baby dude.” At that point you once again realize just how sad Kenny is.

But he wants (needs!) someone to take care of Toby. I’m glad that they didn’t hit the nail on the head too hard as far as a “Kenny, look at how terrible your dad is, you can be better type situation.” Indeed Kenny is still not a fan of Toby, and demonstrates so in a truly visceral metaphor for his life involving the double-dildo scene from Requiem For A Dream that casts his infant son as a giant rubber phallus. Eastbound everyone! While Kennys Dad is begging Kenny to give him his mom’s address (apparently leaving her was the turning point in his life. Yeah right), Kenny is grappling for power with Dovchenko, in the form of warring July 4th Parties.

This seems like a relatively low stakes exercise, and I think that actually let the drama of the episode shine without the distraction of deaths or cannonballs. I mean it wasn’t exactly docile (check the always welcome shot of Kenny, in full stars and stripes regalia, arriving to his party on the jetski) but the scenes were allowed to stretch out, and we weren’t dragged around to a whole bunch of characters. While everyone else (including Andrea) have gone to Ivan’s (“DJ Blu-Ray”) party, Kenny’s party is an empty, terrifying place under a tent on the beach.

The only attendants are some beat up hookers (literally, one of them has a big black eye), Casper, and a big tank of nitrous for the increasingly zombified Kenny to suck down with disaffected necessity. He gets fucked up enough to barge in on Ivan’s party, and deliver one of his patently embarrassing Kenny Powers delusion speeches. It’s here I have to mention, again, how ridiculously great Jody Hill is at choosing music. I can’t even remember all the songs used last night (especially in the club scene) but the wordless sequences were thrilling and funny and sorta scary and altogether wonderful.

So once again Kenny has nothing and no one (not even Stevie, who is despondent about his cheating and shaves all the hair from his head) and gives in to his Dad’s pleas to contact his mother. Then, to make the already awesome episode more awesome, it’s revealed that Kenny’s sailor mouthed mother is played by none other than Lily Tomlin. Seriously?! Yes!! Can’t wait for next week.

The decisions made by the Eastbound & Down team across this season have been so purposeful and aggressively executed that I can’t help but think that they know exactly what they’re doing, even if the results aren’t always necessarily “enjoyable” for the audience. More so than the already uncompromising first two seasons, this final outing has held nothing back in its portrayal of Kenny Powers as a deplorable sociopath who is increasingly impossible to connect with in any way. Continuing off the darkness of last week’s, “Chapter 17″ begins with Kenny cleaning up the crime scene of Shane’s death, snorting some more lines, getting rid of his fingerprints, and stealing Shane’s car in the process.

I would’ve appreciated maybe even a hint of Kenny being legitimately upset about the death of his supposed best friend, but once again the decision to leave that entirely out is obviously a very conscious one on the part of McBride, Ben Best, Jody Hill, and David Gordon Green, that I’m willing to let it play out over the next month. If they’re trying to get me to really hate Kenny, they’re doing a good job (though his plea to young Toby to “stop putting curses on him” was good, only to be topped by the funniest moment of the evening, the gift of Spurgeon, the pussy-gettin’ hermit crab). I was interested to see that much of this episode was devoted to the fallout from Shane’s death, though certainly not in the way most shows would deal with it.

We’re essentially put in the shoes of Shane’s grieving family while, over the course of some extended funereal set pieces, the evil twosome of Kenny and Stevie essentially make a mockery of their relative’s life and death. Whether it be taking HD videos of his corpse, trying to hijack the eulogy from his frail grandfather, openly gloating about his death over Pearl Jam anthems, or using Shane’s twin brother Cole (nice to have Sudeikis around for one more episode) to play a truly cruel prank on his ex-girlfriend. There was no real arc to Kenny’s machinations across the episode, though I suppose its utility was summed up in two scenes between him and Cole (unsurprisingly the two best of the episode).

The first is a quiet confrontation between the two in Shane’s suicide-doored truck, where Cole very justifiably calls out Shane for being a damaging, immature narcissist, while of course by implication decrying Kenny’s lifestyle. Though Kenny puffs out his chest back at him, we see how small he really is later when the ostensibly meek Cole easily gets Kenny to yield the stole car over, leaving Kenny pitiful, and alone (and without mobile telephone device) in the middle of a road. The other thread of the episode was essentially “disturbing shit with Stevie Janowski”, which included not-so-stealthily masturbating on the beach, taking advantage of Shane’s mourning sister (while also cheating on his wife), and then being fucked with a strap on by said wife. These were definitely some of the shows wildest moments. I didn’t love this episode, but I’m cautiously optimistic that taken as a whole this season will be a powerful closer. Let’s hope.

After the uncomfortably fantastical misstep that was last weeks outing, Eastbound was thankfully back in fine form this week, delivering laughs and pathos in equal measure, not to mention a palpable sense of horror, made all the better by the deft directing hand of Jody Hill. I really like David Gordon Green, but if last week’s episode is the type of fare he’s looking to offer on this series, I fear he’s lost the plot. Hill, on the other hand, appears to be firing on all cylinders. With all the major players settled in Myrtle Beach, and the season really ready to get under way, I find myself optimistic that Kenny Powers can go out with a bang.

This episode was frontloaded with just pure humor, starting with a great meet cute between Stevie and Jason Sudeikis’ Shane on the beach, which began with Stevie finding Kenny’s baby under a blanket in a hole (“Hello, sir!”) and ended with Shane faux-cornholing Stevie with the vigor and facial expression of an amphetamine dosed puppy dog. It was followed by the punchiest and most well written Kenny voice-over we’ve seen this season. In fact, the Kenny-isms (and Danny McBride’s delivery) were generally at their best. I was particularly fond of his backhanded compliment (fronthanded insult?) of his son: “Look how cute he is. I fucking hate him.”

Steve Little also got some fun monologues this week, including his horribly ineffective list of demands, an idea forced upon him by wife Maria (Elizabeth de Razzo, who’s sort of really perfect in the role). We also get some more cringe-worthy moments between Kenny and his wildly naive college aged girlfriend, who even more depressingly seems like she couldn’t really give a shit about Kenny but doesn’t have the heart (or, more likely, doesn’t care enough) to tell him.

The real event, at least of the bulk of the episode, is the arrival of the new pitcher, a giant mulletted Russian played to prickish perfection by Ike Barinholtz. I expected his character to be a gimmicky Ivan Drago type but they’ve written him as smart and relatively self aware (especially when placed next to Kenny) and it’s a twist that I think really works. The scene between the two of them at Kenny’s concrete training ground (“go in there and murder a rat”) stays strong throughout despite the fact that it’s basically just the two of them trading verbal blows.

Around that point is when the drama of the episode picks up, and boy does it ever. First we get a really uncomfortable moment where Kenny tries to go recruit his girlfriend in the middle of class to come to his game to support him emotionally, a request she flat out denies, leaving Kenny under a roomful of judgmental eyes not for the last time this episode. Then the long-simmering respect discrepancy between him and Stevie comes to a head in a conversation where they both seem to realize how much they need each other, and Stevie delivers a really pretty great motivational speech.

The real stunner of the episode however, and one of the series’ finest scenes to date, is the final one, which comes after Kenny is brutally overshadowed by the Russian at the game, being embarrassed in front of the Texas scouts (McConaughey!). Over terrifying strains of “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” (and really, how great is the music on this show. So great), Kenny and Shane do destructive amounts of cocaine, Hill frighteningly chopping up the editing as tight as their lines. After some manic chants of “never say die”, Kenny decides to change the music, and while he does, to the now forever changed in my mind “Walk Like An Egyptian”, Shane has a heart attack and dies in the background. The scene is shot perfectly, makes perfect sense in the world, and Sudeikis really brings it, not making it seem over the top at all, instead frighteningly real. It’s a legitimately scary scene that left me super excited for next week. Good job all around.

After a premiere episode that was all about watching Kenny and April continuously be yanked back down to earth, this week’s installment seemed more than happy to rocket off into flights off fancy (and fantasy) that were unprecedented on Eastbound & Down. Considering this is a show that’s involved Mexican prison, swordfights, and Kenny fucking Powers as a high school teacher, I’d say that’s an impressive feat. One that I mostly wish had not happened. I didn’t hate this episode. I actually laughed pretty consistently at it. But it definitely felt like it was from a different show.

It started off well and good, picking up right where we left off with Kenny stuck with his 1 year old, Toby. If there’s one thing I really liked about this episode was its handling of the baby. I felt it was the perfect balance between using him for jokes (“I think his body is rejecting the Pepsi”) and having him effect the plot, but without his presence feeling like a burden on the audience, as if he’s changing the show for the worse, something that babies tend to do. It usually has to do with whichever character that gets the baby no longer being able to have fun, but that doesn’t seem to be a problem for Kenny.

We also got a welcome return from Principal Cutler, who seems to be living quite happily with Kenny and April out of his life. In fact, his completely undisguised happiness at Kenny’s misfortune was a highlight of the episode, and reminded me what a great supporting funnyman Andrew Daly can be. Stevie’s wife Maria was also funnier than ever before, in her amazing purple outfit (“you look like some weird Mexican Grimace”) and ability to stand up to Kenny.

There was, however, another character this week who very wholly leached the goodness out of all his scenes, and that was Will Ferrel’s Ashley Schaeffer. This white coiffed car salesman/lunatic was not my favorite in the first season and I liked him even less here. Kenny ends up running into him after everyone else turns down his pleas to take Toby, and he goes to find Stevie, who now works at Schaeffer’s Kia dealership. The scene in the dealership was fine, especially the part where Ferrel strokes the revolver in the back pocket of his sycophantic right hand man, but even then I felt like his over-the-top cartoonish-ness was from a version of this show long abandoned.

After Stevie turns Kenny’s offer to reclaim his position as assistant (he’s still mad at Kenny for making him self publish Kenny’s terribly selling book about their time in Mexico. Some unwarranted meta-humor perhaps?) Kenny has to go to Schaffer’s house to “liberate” him. Here’s where shit got really weird. It’s not really worth explaining all the ins and outs (mainly because they’re inexplicable) but this extended sequence just didn’t work for me. The first reason is that the character just isn’t funny, nor does it feel like anything more than Will Ferrell over-acting a weird, one-note sketch character. That could be excusable, if not for the other issue.

The whole key to this show being great is that it’s always grounded in some sort of sad reality, no matter how weird it gets. Stevie in Geisha makeup, a maid named Mammie, genital-rubbing Korean businessmen, a telepathic child, and a middle aged intern getting murdered in cold blood with a cannon were not in the least bit grounded. Somehow, Kenny and Stevie escape from this bizarre situation, and almost salvage the whole thing with a very endearing, quiet moment they have speeding away in the back of the truck. The two of them just giggling, happy to be back in each other’s company was great – really great, actually – but not enough to make up fully for what had just happened. Oh well. Onto next week.

The wonderful trick of HBO’s Eastbound & Down is that it’s actually a brutally sad story of a quintessential ugly American who has little, deserves even less, and can’t help but sabotage himself at every turn whilst trying to be nothing more than an actual, emotional human being. It just happens to be dressed up and presented as a half hour raunch fest. The show is at its best when it’s at its most dangerous, inhabiting both of those spheres with wild abandon, making what could be whiplash tonal shifts into strikingly accurate representations of the way life can sometimes turn around and punch you in your fucking face when you least expect it.

Kenny Powers abandoning April at the gas station at the close of Season 1 remains one of the most affecting TV moments I’ve ever witnessed. Which is why I felt initially discouraged that the premiere of Season 3 (the last season) seemed to be perfectly happy to just be a goofy comedy about a cuss-happy dickhole who’s fully accepted his role and is happy to play it. Kenny, at first, didn’t seem deluded anymore. Just comfortable in his awfulness. I ended up not being totally correct, but before we get to that there was a lot to like in this episode, especially in the straight up humor department.

Kenny, who’s now in Myrtle Beach playing for the Rangers farm team, is still riding jet skis, and he’s even doing it with a knife strapped to his thigh now (a big and hearty bow to the costuming department on that). He and new sidekick and teammate Shane (a funny, cajun Jason Sudeikis) drive their ridiculous vehicles around, take pills, make vaguely (well not so vague) racist jokes at their teammate Darnell, and get handies from high school girls in the dunes. Fair enough, and funny enough.

But the episode doesn’t really kick off until we get back to Shelby, Kenny’s hometown, for the 1st birthday of his and April’s son, Toby. Katy Mixon has always been good as April, but was sometimes let down by her character’s emotions changing with the necessities of the plot. In this episode, however, she actually made a deeper impression than Kenny. It was her story, her state, which reminded me why I love this show so much. The troubles of her life as a single mother, with Kenny hindering her more than helping, are shown in stark relief when she asks Kenny’s sister-in-law Cassie whether she ever regrets having children.

The look on April’s face when Cassie reacts disgustedly was so sad and real it instantly locked me into the story. Ditto for her reaction as Kenny makes an ass of himself again trying to give Toby a gift. Then ditto again for pretty much the rest of the episode. From the moment she steps in Kenny’s condo’s door in Myrtle you can tell something has broken in her, and the debauched night she and Kenny have out is a deft tightrope walk between goofy humor and domestic horror.

A carnival becomes a kind of hell as we watch this lost mother follow around the infantile Kenny, popping pills and doing everything to forget about a son that she obviously loves. It’s a contradiction that feels very real and very earned. As the two fight with a family at Mini-Golf, I saw for the first time the young couple they were, how they fell in love, and how that love that neither of them can seem to let go of has irreparably damaged them as adults. It would be easy to say that they’ve never grown up but that’s not quite right. They just haven’t in any of the right ways.

Though I’m no fan of rote 3 Men & A Baby shenanigans, April leaving Toby with Kenny while she goes to deal with what seems like a pretty serious existential breakdown was the right move, especially for the final season of the show. Things can’t be easy for Kenny forever, and giving him a child he actually has to raise is not only world-accurate (considering his devil may care approach to, well, everything) but also perfect for his character: perhaps the most selfish one ever to exist on the small screen. So welcome back to Eastbound & Down, one of the funniest shows on TV that also happens to be the darkest. It’s nice to have you back.

Well then, that was entirely disappointing. I hadn’t actually realized that this season would be the last one, but this episode took the concept of a “series finale” to its most absurd literality more than any show since Dinosaurs. Which, I suppose, is something to commend it for. But why, then, did it feel so boring, disappointing, and most importantly, unfunny?

The first half of the episode is just an extended courtroom scene, with Wiltes as Todd’s attorney, and while it started funny, its interminable length and increasing unbelievability just made it a weak sketch drawn out too far. Plus, something about the fact that it was supposed to be the trial of the century didn’t jibe with the pretty cheap looking set. I know that’s a weird gripe, but it was indicative of how overall slapdash this finale seemed.

There has always been an undercurrent of mystery to Todd Margaret, whether it be the “how are we going to get to the courtroom/North Korea prologue segments?” or the duplicity of Dave, and even the circumstances of Todd’s birth. You could argue that those things weren’t necessarily “important”, that it’s just a comedy show, but it was the creators’ choice to include those things so I think they have a right to deliver on them.

Instead of some sort of meticulously (and humorously) plotted endings, instead everything just got tied up in the most obvious, fast, unfunny, and actually sort of depressing manner possible. Todd’s trial goes terribly, he is sentenced to death. Obviously. He was actually born in Leeds (and I guess may have been Keith Moon’s son? Maybe?) but that really didn’t have anything to do with anything.

Dave ends up being nothing more than just an entitled son of a powerful Lord, played, in easily my favorite moment of the night, by Mark Heap (aka Bryan from Spaced). Whitney and the neighbor track him down and get him to free Todd. Fine. Before that can happen though, Todd in an act of desperation tries to call one last lifeline. Alice? No, the Turkish girl, which sets off the truck bomb, killing Alice. Around here is where the finale really lost me.

It’s not that you can’t joke about death or anything, there just wasn’t really a joke at all. Alice got blown up. Then it’s hinted her corpse gets molested by the morgue workers. lol? Wiltes flees London, leaving behind his friend. Todd is deported to North Korea, the only place that will take him, and in a brief and incoherent montage rises to be a leader and ends up destroying the whole world with nuclear weapons. There was so much plot in this episode, and so little character work or comedy, it was sort of stunning. Easily the worst episode of the series. What a poor decision. Zing!