“I bet if you checked her her out, she’d have a big old retrograde uterus in there.” – Andre
Three weeks into its third season, The League just may have hit its stride. The first two episodes were funny, if somewhat uneven. But the third episode, “The Au Pair,” seems to have found the sweet spot between wacky, borderline absurdity and a coherent story line.
The main story in “The Au Pair” deals with – you guessed it! – an au pair. Ruxin hires said au pair named Ashley (Brie Larson), to help out with house duties and taking care of baby Jeffrey. But everyone knows that he really just hired her for some extra “t and a” to drool over. Ashley has the “t” and “a” part down, but it’s the cooking and cleaning part of the job that she struggles with. Thankfully, for baby Jeffery’s safety and Ruxin’s marriage, the au pair’s time in the Ruxin household is short lived. Pete (Mark Duplass), having already vultured all of Andre’s (Paul Scheer) fantasy touchdowns with Mike Tolbert on Sunday, proceeds to vulture Ruxin’s au pair.
It’s a big week all around for Pete. Not only does Tolbert steal all of Andre’s running back’s goal line carries, Pete vultures a woman Andre planned on taking out on a date. While the au pair bits are funny in their own right, the best part of the episode is Andre’s foray into the world of online dating. Taco helps him put together an absurd video, highlighting all of Andre’s sexiest qualities. The video, titled “Ideal Compatibles”, features, amongst other strange things, images of animals having sex and Taco eating Sun Chips in an operating room.
Andre plans to take his online mystery woman on the “perfect first date”, which, in Andre’s twisted mind, means rock climbing. “Show me a girl who isn’t a fan of Mission Impossible 2!” he says emphatically. His dreams of romance are shattered when he and Taco (who are at a fancy restaurant doing a dry run of Andre’s date) discover Pete on a date with the woman Andre was courting online. “You vultured my date! You’re the Mike Tolbert of my life!”
The part of the episode that worked least for me was Kevin’s run-in with the fantasy football guru Matthew Berry. The scenes with Ruxin training Kevin (Stephen Rannazzisi) to be a professional liar are great, however I didn’t quite get why Kevin feels like he needs to lie. Why would Jenny (Katie Aselton) be so upset that he was going to Berry for fantasy advice? It isn’t like he’s ignoring her advice in favor of some schmuck; Matthew Berry is a professional. But if the weakest part of an episode is still pretty damn funny, you’re doing something right
Some stats and info about The League, “The Au Pair”
TV SHOW – The League
SEASON/EPISODE – Season 3, Episode 3
AIRED ON – October 21, 2011
NETWORK/STREAMING SERVICE – FX /FXX/Hulu
GENRE – Comedy, Relationship Shows, Sports Shows
CREATED BY – Jackie Marcus Schaffer, Jeff Schaffer
CAST – Mark Duplass, Nick Kroll, Jonathan Lajoie, Stephen Rannazzisi, Paul Scheer, Katie Aselton, Jason Mantzoukas
This review originally appeared on TV Geek Army.