EASTBOUND & DOWN 1.4 - "Chapter Four"

[SPOILERS] While not as horrid as the pilot, episode 4 was a bit of a let-down after the comparative high of episode 3, and its laughs felt smothered. What it did have was welcome development for a few characters: Stevie (Steve Little) has become a pale copy of Kenny (Danny McBride), swearing and wearing black like his idol; Principal Cutler (Andrew Daly) dropped his milquetoast persona to harangue Kenny at school; and Kenny's childhood sweetheart April (Katy Mixon) proved she still has feelings for him...

The episode revolved around a lackluster barbeque that the principal invited Kenny to. The kind of middle-class party where the promise of a game of Pictionary is sold as a highlight. To impress everyone and hopefully make Cutler's fiancé April jealous, Kenny turns up with slutty Tracy (Sylvia Jefferies) in a hideous orange outfit, and Stevie brought his homemade baseball promo of Kenny as entertainment.

One interesting element was learning that Cutler suffers from impotence and can't perform sexually (even when he gets a rare erection after watching soft porn), whereas Kenny has the opposite problem and suffers from premature ejaculation. It amused me to see starchy Cutler take a shine to trampy Tracy after getting drunk, too, while it's revealed that the boorish Kenny really does stand a chance with tweet-voiced April. She assumedly settled for Cutler when Kenny left town to be a superstar baseball player, as a high school principal is probably the town's next big deal. There exists the possibility April's only after the sex her fiancé can't provide, but now she knows Kenny's own sexual problem it'll be interesting to see her next move.

The script again let us see Kenny as a broken man to take the edge off his soaring egomania, here confiding in brother Dustin (John Hawkes) about the tailspin his life's in, and I dug the symbolism of Kenny's mighty jet ski sputtering to a stop and forcing the clothed Kenny to swim for shore. Ultimately, I liked seeing a few of the supporting characters develop (Stevie, Cutler) and the Kenny/April relationship move forward a touch, but this didn't really make me laugh or surprise me in any way.


22 October 2009
FX/FX HD, 10pm

written by: Shawn D. Harwell, Jody Hill & Danny McBride directed by: David Gordon Green starring: Danny McBride (Kenny Powers), Katy Mixon (April Buchanon), John Hawkes (Dustin Powers), Andrew Daly (Terrence Cutler), Ben Best (Clegg), Jennifer Irwin (Cassie Powers), Steve Little (Stevie Janowski), Sylvia Jefferies (Tracy), Ethan Alexander McGee (Dustin Jr.) & Bo Mitchell (Wayne)