The Crazy Ones 1x03: Bad Dad

The latest campaign is for Allstate and it revolves around showing people the milestone's in a family's lives.

The first Milestone is learning to drive and it's a commercial about how Simon taught Sydney by switching seats with her in the middle of the freeway.

The focus group thinks the commercials were about how Simon was a bad dad, so he goes in to bully them.

But he realizes they were right and tries to teach Sydney to drive again. It doesn't go well.

Meanwhile, the others have to brainstorm some new ideas.

Sydney gets in a minor accident.

Father and daughter reconcile because his insanity made her strong.

Then they go camping.

Elsewhere, Zach dumps a girl.

And Andrew moves right in to pick her up.

Lauren realizes that Andrew is Zach's remora and feeds off his leftovers.

Andrew can't handle that, so he retires as shoulder to cry on guy.

Until Lauren sees that Zach is Simon's remora, and Andrew realizes that gettin' some is better than not gettin' some.

What I Liked
-Sydney compares Andrew talking to a girl Zach just dumped to a pimp swooping in on a runaway. That's highly accurate, but a little bit sad.
-Andrew took his Spanish teacher to prom and they slow-danced to the theme from Friends. That's the kind of thing you just can't get away with anymore. Not that any of my teachers were really the kind you'd want to slow-dance with. I know some pretty teachers now, though.
-The focus group leader is forced to admit that his word is no longer his bond. I've been in several focus groups and you can never trust the leader. He'll sell you out the moment your back is turned.
-Since Simon's not actually the world's best dad, he wonders if all his mugs are lies and if he really likes Mondays. Maybe he's just like Garfield and has no reason to hate them.
-Simon trashes Sydney's perfect sandwich.

No one likes a braggart.

-A pigeon refuses to move out of the way and Sydney runs over it. I may take some flack for this, but I think if a bird won't fly away from your oncoming tire, it deserves to die. It's probably committing suicide, in fact. You're doing it a favour.
-While they're trying to come up with new ideas for the campaign, Zach keeps drawing boobs. Men love boobs.
-Andrew is the boob. The sad, sad boob. Hee-hee.
-Claire unzips her top a bit when she goes over to talk to Andrew.

Men like boobs.

What I Hated
-Lauren does a weird thing where she just blurts out what she really thinks of people and then has to cover it up. It's good that they gave her something to do, but it seemed really odd and out of place.
-"The good ad about a bad dad made Simon sad?" Booooo.
-They reverse the angle when Sydney gets in the accident. First they're on the left, then they're on the right. That's one of the first things they teach you not to do in film school... at least, I assume it is.

Final Thoughts
Lauren was slightly less like window dressing this week, but they're going to have to find a lot more for her character to do if they don't want her to wind up like almost all the female characters on Boston Legal. The only people who made it through every episode of that show were Shatner and Spader, and I don't think Amanda Setton's going to be winning any Emmys for her work.

They managed to rein in Robin Williams a little bit more this week, but he was still funny. He doesn't always need to riff; sometimes he can just act.

This was the funniest episode so far of this series, but I didn't enjoy the plot quite as much.