The Inbetweeners USA 1.2 - Sunshine Mountain

I savaged the first episode of the remake of The Inbetweeners. Is episode two any better?

No. This almost shot-for-shot remake sees Simon get a car and the guys go to a theme park so that he can try and get together with Carli. The only notable thing about this episode is that the series' track record of ruining minor characters continues: first Mr. Gilbert was castrated, now Simon's father is turned from a brilliantly embarrassing sex-obsessed dad into a completely forgettable character. The best moment of the original episode, when Will went on a furious rant about queue jumpers before realising he was to be sat next to some disabled kids, is again ruined by poor execution. That and the rest of the episode is a rolling cavalcade of failed jokes and cringe-worthy dialogue.

Once again, there's nothing to recommend here. To call it a poor cousin would be overly generous. If it was an original series, it's failure would not be so insulting but the fact that it's a remake of a wildly successful, superbly funny series is unforgiveable. Twenty-one minutes of my life that I'll never get back. I'd rather have spent them sat on the toilet.

0 out of 10.

Weeds 8.9 - Saplings

The Botwins have a guest: Crick Montgomery (Patch Darragh). He's from a tobacco company (hilariously pitching his side as the "good guys") and he wants Silas to come and grow weed for him. Nancy all but tells him to fuck off but Silas clearly wants to do it. He leaves them with two tickets to North Carolina, a trip Nancy refuses to take.

On the plane to North Carolina, Nancy tells Silas that he's the talent and to talk himself up in front of them, reassuring him that she supports him and won't even talk when they get there. Yeah, right. At the Jewish school, Andy hears from the kids that Rabbi Dave boned a non-Jewish woman. Doug, meanwhile, has a visitor to his shelter: Jordan (Catherine Reitman), from another shelter. She's not there looking for a place to stay but to drop off about two dozen homeless people. Andy tells the kids that Jill has gone back to Oakland and tells David (David Julian Hirsh) the kids are spreading rumours about him. David admits they are true and that it was Nancy he slept with, which throws Andy off a little.

Nancy, Silas and Crick have lunch in a restaurant in North Carolina and she spends her time badmouthing tobacco companies until Crick tells them that he wants to modernise by preparing for the day when marijuana is legalised. Back at Crick's house it turns out that all he has so far is an empty cigarette box designed in the 70s and a sack full of money. No weed plants, no labs, no recent branding efforts, nothing. Everything has to be underground, which means if they're busted, Silas is on his own.

Andy, David and a kid from the school go for pancakes and Andy catches the eye of the waitress, Joanna (Aubrey Dollar). Nancy, left to her own devices, runs into Crick's father, The Baron (Mitchell Edmonds). He tells her he hasn't spoken to his son in two years and dismisses his plans as "crackpot".

Andy complains that he feels like he's always waiting for his life to begin, stuck in perpetual purgatory. David tells him to forget about Jill and find someone new. Andy tells him what Nancy's looking for: someone smart, kind, romantic, generous... looking at Joanna as he does.

Shane picks up Angela (Daniele Watts) in one of the cars from the impound and they go for a drive.

Nancy apologises and tells Silas that she just wants to protect him, saying that at least the pharmaceutical company is helping people. Silas replies that weed is an illegal drug, not a medicine and he wants to do it properly. She's worried about his future, not about tobacco's future.

At Doug's shelter, the homeless are annoyed at the lack of facilities and getting rowdy. They threaten to report him to the police so he offers to buy them whatever they want. Silas lists his demands to Crick, who accepts them all. Nancy is surprised that the only thing keeping them from running with the money is a handshake but Crick tells them his company was founded on a gentlemen's agreement. Shane and Angela are kissing in the car when two men recognise it as belonging to their friend who is in prison. They promptly steal Angela's gun and then the car. The restaurant has closed but Joanna and Andy are still talking. She tells him about her re-attached Franken-fingers and he looks at her lovingly.

Back at the house, David has set up a paddling pool for Nancy in her back garden, so that she doesn't have to always go to his pool. Meanwhile, Andy and Joanna are... about to get married.

Am I expecting too much? Are my standards too high? I don't know but this series seems really up and down so far. And this episode was another down. Silas wants to work for a tobacco company, Nancy objects. It wasn't a very interesting storyline and we all know he won't end up doing it anyway. Furthermore, we all know Andy's marriage to Joanna won't last either. Are they so lacking in ideas that they've resorted to crap like this? Shane was barely in the episode and his relationship with Angela is boring me now. I honestly don't care about her. Doug was, as usual, the one bright spot in an otherwise mediocre episode.

Blah.

4 out of 10.

The Inbetweeners USA 1.1 - First Day

What is it with America producing shit remakes of brilliant British comedies? So many fantastically successful shows have been remade as turgid pieces of shit by dopey American producers desperate for a quick buck. There have been remakes of, among others, Dad's Army, The IT Crowd, Coupling, Red Dwarf, Teachers and Fawlty Towers. Some managed a few episodes before being cancelled, others were so bad they only managed an unaired pilot. Fawlty Towers was remade not once, not twice but THREE times and in all instances, it was unbelievably awful. Why is this? Why the terrible track record with remaking excellent shows? I know what you're going to say, that The Office has been very successful. Yes, it has inexplicably rambled on for an unbelievable NINE series despite it being fucking terrible. I watched the first two and a half series and whereas the Gervais/Merchant original was spectacular, the remake is spectacularly unfunny. But why? Why do none of these shows translate across the pond? John Cleese once offered some clues as to why US remakes so often fail. The problem, he said, was that they changed what worked best about the series. With the American remakes of Fawlty Towers, Basil, the beating heart of the series, was so completely changed that nothing else worked. Replace him with some bumbling fool or a domineering bastard with no weaknesses and the series falls apart. Another problem is that some things simply don't translate well from Britain to the US. You might think that it would be easy to make a sitcom about a hotel and it's eccentric staff and guests. But, three attempts later, apparently not.

As for The Inbetweeners, the premise is the same: nerdy teenager moves to a new school because his newly-divorced mother can't afford to pay for him to go to private school any more. Once there, he finds himself shunned by everyone except for the other kids who don't fit in with anyone else - the inbetweeners. As for the characters, they are almost the same. Three of the four are only slightly different and the fourth is substantially different. Whereas you might hope that these differences serve only to distinguish them from their transatlantic twins, they in fact weaken them. Will is substantially less geeky. It's not just his personality which is changed but his appearance. Gone are his glasses, gone is his tie and gone is his briefcase. Even the actor looks wrong. Simon Bird has a very comfortable everyman quality about him. He looks like the typical geeky sixth form student. The actor who plays the American Will, Joey Pollari, is simply too... well, handsome. He looks like he's stepped out of an advert for Gap and he's completely the wrong fit for the character. Simon is more or less the same, slightly eager and obsessed with Carly, but still the most normal of the group. Jay is like a condensed version of the character played so brilliantly by James Buckley, distilled from the cocky but loveable pervert into an arrogant, aloof, self-obsessed twat. He's just completely unlikeable - all of Jay's worst qualities and none of his best, played by a podgy ginger actor called Zack Pearlman. He's just begging to be hated. Finally, Neil. Replacing the dozy, non-sequitur idiot is a stoner who has so few lines that you wonder why they didn't just cut out his character entirely. He's utterly pointless, sitting there as the scene unfolds, mouth hanging open and gazing into space until he speaks his single line, the delivery poor and completely flat. Special mention must go to the interpretation of Mr. Gilbert. Gone is the giant, terrifying bully who hates everyone and who practically pursues a hilarious vendetta against Will. In his place is a bored and uninterested teacher who's a boring and uninteresting character.

So what actually happens? Well, it's an almost shot-for-shot remake of the first two episodes. Because this is MTV, the episode is only 22 minutes long, so jokes are cut out and they try to hurry things along. Within two minutes of meeting Will, the others become friends with him. Jokes that were brilliant in the British version fall flat through terrible delivery. When Will hits a disabled kid on the head with an American football, the scene ends. Gone is his brilliant fawning apology and his being chased across the park by incensed schoolmates. When Simon throws up on Carli's little brother, it's so over-the-top and obviously fake that it's just not funny. The small amount of vomit is replaced by a squirting hose of the stuff and it just. Doesn't. Work! Finally, one of the most notable features of the British version is the almost unrelenting swearing. Wall-to-wall, episode-to-episode of shit, fuck, clunge, twat, wanker and every other swear word you can think of. The American version doesn't just tone it down, it completely removes it. There's no swearing. At all. Well, there is. Once an episode. And it's bleeped. Fuck that.

The characters are cheap knock-offs, the jokes are lame and the series as a whole is completely and utterly worthless. There is absolutely nothing to recommend here. Nothing at all. It's soulless, infuriatingly unfunny and, to fans of the original series, offensively bad.

0 out of 10.

Weeds 8.8 - Five Miles From Yetzer Hara

As a reward for her fantastic sales figures, Nancy is offered a promotion that covers western New England. She would have to work there for two week shifts but she wants the position and asks for more lines to sell.

Silas is enjoying his job too and has a smile on his face as he shaves. Shane does not and looks daggers at his brother as he brushes his teeth. At the impound, he's reduced to guarding cars and even Angela's (Daniele Watts) drop-ins don't cheer him up that much.

Jill, meanwhile, is sat in the bathtub drinking wine and eating foie gras. Surprise surprise, she's not really pregnant. Nancy wants her to tell Andy but she's resistant, afraid that she'll lose him. Nancy is confident that he will stand by her, saying that for the first time in his life, he's looking forward, not back.

Nancy is waiting in a deserted doctor's waiting room when the receptionist, Joan (Mary Kathleen Gordon) makes her an offer - she'll buy pills from her and her grandson will sell them at his university. Nancy asks if she radiates "criminal vibes" and Joan tells her it was the prison tattoo on her shoulder. That and nobody has ever said no. Back at the house, Andy is tending to some tomato plants with the twins and Jill asks them to step outside so she can talk to him. At the lab, Silas and Zachary (Ben Tolpin) compete to see whose strain of marijuana is stronger. They smoke it and blow it at racoons and see whose racoon eats more Wotsits. Silas wins easily and Terry (Kevin Sussman) asks to see his strain.

Nancy is planning her trip across New England and it turns out that Stevie doesn't know his state capitals, thinking that the capital of New York is "bagels" and the capital of Connecticut is "prison" because Nancy used to live there. Meanwhile, Doug is trying to recruit a homeless woman to come to his shelter. She settles for stabbing him. Back at the house, Andy is unsurprisingly pissed that Jill hid her non-pregnancy from him for three weeks.

Nancy goes to see Rabbi David (David Julian Hirsh) and tells him that she's seeing temptation everywhere. He thinks she's talking about the night by the pool when he almost kissed her but she's talking about a "questionable business decision". He gives her some boring advice and she climbs on top of him and they start kissing. Doug tries again to recruit the homeless woman but she stabs the woman he brought with him instead. Jill asks Andy if he wants "crying babies or screaming orgasms" and he suggests that they adopt. Nancy declines Joan's offer as they fuck and consider what nationality their adopted baby should be.

Back at the impound, Shane quits. Until his boss hands him a roll of cash that's his cut from the stolen cars they sold. Suddenly, Shane likes his job. Silas, meanwhile, watches as his plants are chopped, crushed and turned into pills. The process disgusts and offends him and that night as they stand in front of the bathroom mirror, the brothers are in each other's shoes.

Andy has left Jill and she's pissed off at Nancy. Mostly she's pissed because she lives a fun, interesting life with no consequences. Nancy shoots back that her new job means she'll have to leave her son for two weeks at a time and tells Jill that she's the better mother. They calm down and Nancy asks Jill what she's doing tomorrow.

Musical montage time! Doug puts the homeless woman to sleep with a drugged chicken sandwich and takes her to his shelter where he receives a visit from the inspector. The inspector's not convinced. When Andy mimes the homeless woman giving him a blowjob, the inspector shakes his head... and insists that Doug give him one instead. As Doug gets to his knees, Nancy and Jill have Nancy's car with the drugs in "stolen" and she gets some more from her boss. They take the pills to a university where they parts with the kids and sell them. The episode ends with Nancy sleeping with David and then teaching Stevie state capitals.

Some bits of this episode were really good, others quite feeble. Silas and Shane's reversal of fortunes at work was a good idea but it didn't really work. The bookends, them at the bathroom mirror in the morning and then again in the evening was nicely done but the filling wasn't convincing. All it took for Shane to love his crappy job was a few hundred bucks and all it took for Silas to hate his dream job was watching his weed get crushed and made into pills? Yeah, not convinced. Nancy had a decent if predictable story arc and Jill and Andy are finally over. I'm not really bothered to be honest. I never really felt that strongly about them as a couple one way or the other really although the "big reveal" that she wasn't really pregnant wasn't particularly surprising. Once again, Doug provided the biggest laugh of the episode as he prepared to suck off the inspector. Nancy and David's relationship took one step forward but I can't say I like him very much. He's bland and boring and Nancy will probably end up with him. Oh and the party that Nancy and Jill go to was kind of creepy... shirtless men, dancing and buying drugs from menopausal women old enough to be their mothers? Yeah... classy.

Some bits weren't convincing but overall, there was more good than bad here.

7 out of 10.

Weeds 8.7 - Unfreeze

Nancy is ready to start her first day of work but not everyone is convinced that she's dressed appropriately. When Jill starts taking all the soft cheeses and tuna out of the fridge, Nancy realises what's going on. Shane and Silas tell her and Andy congratulations but Nancy has no idea what to say.

At work, Nancy is shown an orientation video by Deb (Jackie Geary), who is clearly pissed that Nancy gets to sell Maritor on her first day and gives her the most difficult assignment. Silas is settling in better, meeting the enthusiastic Craig (Brady Novak) and the slightly crazy Zachary (Ben Tolpin). Andy, looking for a job, goes to Rabbi David (David Julian Hirsh), talking about his "informal counselling experience" and offers to become an assistant or even cook. David asks if he and Jill will be getting married and Andy says that they will. Satisfied, he tells Andy he has a job for him: he wants him to teach some annoying kids. The kids mock him and ask silly questions but Andy ignores them and pretends to hear something outside. He bars the doors and windows and brandishes a flag pole to defend the class.

Nancy, on her way to the appointment at the doctor's office, gets a coffee and muffins, which she gives to the receptionists. They gratefully accept the muffins but as soon as she asks to speak to the doctor, they close the window and tell her that they don't take visits from pharmaceutical representatives. Even the doctor, James Cornish (Tim Guinee) ignores her so she forces the window open and takes the muffins back. She does leave them with some complementary pens though. Back at the classroom, the kids want to know who they're hiding from. Andy tells them it's not "who" but "what". In the mean time, he has them open their Torahs and tells them the story of Elisha, who was mocked for his baldness by a couple of boys. Elisha promptly cursed the boys and his god sent two bears to kill the boys and forty other children. Andy's message: he was taking precautions in case the Torah was literal and bears were coming to kill the kids for being dicks. But it's not literal, he tells them. It's just a starting point for not being a dick.

Shane and Angela (Daniele Watts) are at their graduation. Her mother (Simbi Khali) is there but none of Shane's family are. She doesn't take to Shane or Mitch (Michael Harney) but boasts that Angela has been assigned to her father's old precinct. Shane hasn't met the age requirement yet so he's hoping to get some security work at a mall first. Angela invites Shane and Mitch to dinner but her mother says no. Doug, meanwhile, is spending charity money at a NASA auction. He passes up Neil Armstrong's comb (complete with hair) to buy a spacesuit worn by Jim Wetherbee. He tries it on after the auction is over but his joy is cut short when his card is declined and the suit is taken back.

Nancy, spurned at the office, decides to take a different tack and go and wait for the doctor by his car. Doug, furious, heads to the Department for Social Services to demand an explanation, claiming that people will be forced to sleep on the streets because of their "bureaucratic holocaust". The woman (Larissa Laskin) asks him the address of his business, which he stumbles over and tells him that there is no evidence of any charity work going on, so his finances were frozen, pending an investigation. He tries to bribe her with his watch but she is not impressed, telling him to set up a legitimate facility or he will be prosecuted for fraud.

Doctor Cornish finally turns up and Nancy offers him lunch in exchange for making her sales pitch. They eat in his car and claims that she was shot by duck hunters. She tries to get him to take some Maritor but she can't answer his questions and he tells her that she can't talk about any effects the drug might have other than what it has been approved for. He tells her that she should find another job before she loses her soul but she just seduces him into taking some samples and has sex with him in the car.

Silas, Zachary and Craig are out for lunch at a busy restaurant and they leave Silas to queue for a table while they go to the bar. While he's waiting, a hot girl (Catherine Lidstone) claims to recognise him and they chat about schools. Turns out she's Zachary's girlfriend. Shane, meanwhile, is taken by Mike to the city impound where he's told that he's reached the "inner circle". It turns out that Nancy was very successful on her assignment, much to Deb's chagrin. Back at the house that evening, everyone notices Shane in his graduation uniform. He wasn't kidding when he said he hadn't told them.

Unfreeze is better than the last episode. Why? Probably because there's more Doug. When there's less Doug, the show suffers. Oh, and the annoying R.J. didn't show up either. Hopefully he's gone for good now. Andy had a good episode, his scaring the children into listening to him was very well done. Shane and Silas had pretty quiet episodes as Nancy dominated. Mary-Louise Parker was excellent and her outburst in the doctor's office was a highlight. In all, a good episode.

7 out of 10.

Weeds 8.6 - Allosaurus Crush Castle

Nancy, as part of her new plan to keep on the straight and narrow, is looking for a job. It turns out the interviewer, Brent Burks (David Norona) only took her appointment because he knows she was shot in the head and he thought she was interesting. She tells him that she's worked "with" CEOs and CFOs and led a sales team but the only advice he has for her is to keep looking. Jill, meanwhile, has news for Andy: she's pregnant. Well, she thinks she is. Andy assumes it's Doug's, but it's not. Well, she has no idea.

At the park, Stevie is playing football and Nancy spies one of the fathers, Terry (Kevin Sussman) selling some pills. When he comes over to her, they chat and she busts him. It turns out he's not a drug dealer or even a doctor but an executive of a pharmaceutical company. Anyone want to guess where this is going next? Silas, meanwhile, has finally found R.J. (Dominic Dierkes). He's in a mental hospital and he's a bit nuts. He does at least tell Silas what he did with his marijuana plants: they're at his parents' house. But he won't give them back or tell Silas where his parents live. As for Shane, he and Angela (Daniele Watts) passed their latest exam, but they were the only ones. Their teacher (Bill Fagerbakke) berates the class and sets them another essay as punishment. As people are leaving, Shane offers to write the essays of two of the dumber class members for $100 each. They accept. Back at the park, Nancy is still chatting with Terry. She bigs up her past experience in the "pharmaceutical industry" and he agrees to get her a job as a sales rep in return for having his hell-raising son over for a sleepover.

Andy tells Doug that Jill's probably pregnant and Doug suggests they play pool to decide who "takes on" the kid. Jill turns up and confirms that she is indeed pregnant and asks them if the winner or the loser gets her and the baby. Silas, determined to get his plants back, breaks into R.J.'s parents' house. One slight problem: there's a surprise party inside waiting for a stripper and they assume he's said stripper. Whoops.

Stevie (Ethan & Gavin Kent) is playing with Terry's son, Kyle (August Maturo) and it turns out that he is indeed a dick. Kyle smashes up Stevie's castle so Stevie hits him. Kyle cries and threatens to call his dad. Meanwhile, Doug and Andy are sharing a bottle of whiskey in Doug's fake charity's office and talking about what to do. Andy wonders whether this is good or bad karma and if he could be a father. Doug laments that he should have fucked Jill in the ass. Or cum on her tits. Nancy tells Kyle that he's smart and people will hate him if he carries on being an asshole. Then she fobs him off on Shane. She goes to check up on Silas, who is tidying up the garage. He's drunk and babbles about what happened to his plants and at the party. He complains that she's moving away from what he's good at and he tells her he'll start growing again.

The next day, Shane' teacher busts him for writing essays for his classmates and demands he hand the money over. Shane offers to cut him in on it and all future essay fees he receives. His teacher tells him he's going to do just fine in the NYPD. Nancy goes to Terry's office and he has a sales job for her. While there, he fills her in on the drugs they make, which include Maritor, a stuck-in-development synthetic marijuana that's waiting for the law to change. Jill is about to go to the doctor but Andy tells her he wants to be the baby's father, even if it's Doug's. Being brother Andy and uncle Andy comes easy to him but he's been nervous about becoming father Andy because it reminds him of his own father. But he's not his father and he's ready to be one. Jill tells him to get a job. Back at the office, Terry is taking Nancy on the tour. Oh, and Silas is with them. In return for them taking Kyle on more sleepovers, he'll hire Silas too. Silas sees the lab where they make Maritor, full of people in white coats tending to marijuana plants and he smiles.

Nothing really stood out from today's episode to be honest. Well, other than Doug's lamentations about how she should have fucked Jill in the ass. Shane is settling down to a life of corruption and Andy is preparing to settle into fatherhood. Nancy and Silas are going to settle into a life they should have chosen ten years ago and Jill is going to get back together with Andy. The whole show seems to be settling down. You can't blame it, really. After eight years on the air, it's coming to an end so they have to start winding it down. It wasn't a bad episode but it wasn't that good either. Weeds is still consistently entertaining but it's not the show it once was, when it was consistently brilliant. Now, it's just consistently good, or, in this episode's case, thereabouts.

6 out of 10.