The Crazy Ones 1x06: Hugging the Now

This week, they're using a choir to market boner pills.

Simon gets nominated for Creative of the Year and he wants to win to prove that he's still relevant.

Lauren pitches an idea for an ad campaign to help him win over the judges.

One of the other nominees is a guy named Josh who Sydney went to high school with and had a crush on. So the firm throws a party for the nominees and she gets all dolled up.

It turns out he had a crush on her, too, and they wind up going out a couple times and then binge-watching Bones.

Unfortunately, Sydney spills the beans during some pillow talk, and Josh steals the idea for her dad's campaign.

She heads over to his firm to confront him. He actually thought she might be impressed, since as ad people, they're all basically thieves. But she's an honest woman, and she doesn't play those games.

Josh wins the award, but Simon decides it's okay because his has his daughter and his team, and that's all he really needs. Which is loser talk.

What I Liked
-The boner pill executive is hard as a rock after the team's presentation.

Good for her.

-Just because Zach and Andrew high-five at the end, it doesn't make a pitch any good. That's an important lesson to learn.
-Simon needs to prove to the guys that he doesn't need a pill to get an erection, and they think he's going to pull out his dick. If it were still the 1970s, a coked-up Robin Williams probably would've done at least one take where he actually did whip it out.
-In his fake acceptance speech, Simon thanks his ex-wives, without whom he would've been able to retire years ago. Hee-hee.
-It's totally all right with Simon if Sydney accidentally gets pregnant because his grandfather clock is ticking. That's very true to life. Once you hit about 27, your parents start wondering where the hell their grandchildren are.
-Sydney can't dodge around the receptionist at Josh's firm because he used to be a ballroom dancer. Ha!

What I Hated
-Simon walks in on Sydney while she's just hammering on her keyboard... but nothing's happening on the screen. I really hate when they do that (hence its inclusion in this section). It's not like the screen was even in focus, they could've at least had her banging something out in Word.
-Robin busts out his Jack Nicholson impression. It's not bad, but it's a bit dated at this point.

Final Thoughts
Directed by Fred Savage. So many actors from shows I used to watch are directing these days.

Apparently, they've decided that Lauren is a literal crazy one since two weeks ago she was reciting poetry about murdering her ex-girlfriend, and this week she's reminiscing about how she poisoned a girl in order to win a beauty pageant and talking about her plan to murder Simon and take over the company. I like that. It's good to have someone mentally unbalanced on a David E. Kelley show. That's what made Shatner such a delight on Boston Legal. Although it's a bit weird that on a Robin Williams show, the mentally unbalanced one isn't Robin Williams. Not that he isn't crazy, but they've really toned his character down since the first couple episodes.

Zach still seems to be a bit underdeveloped, but after six episodes, the rest of the characters seem to be relatively well fleshed out.

I wonder if Josh is going to wind up being a recurring guest star. Every story need a villain, and he'd probably make a good one. He's someone Sydney can have a love-hate relationship with, and his firm would be a good rival for the LewisRoberts+Roberts team.

The show's been running a bit short for my tastes. They try to pad it out by adding some bloopers over the end credits, but even with that, there's still less than 20 minutes of actual show per half hour. That may be why they managed to keep things to a single plot this week, though. It's a conundrum: Is it better to have multiple plots and a longer show or one plot and a shorter show? The world may never know.

In any case, even though the episodes are short, they're still pretty entertaining. Unfortunately, the audience continues to slowly erode, so it may not be long for the world. Which is a shame, since Williams is still relatively funny, and the show's given Sarah Michelle Gellar an opportunity to flex her comedic muscle, which she hasn't gotten to do very often since she left All My Children.