Review: Bless the Harts “Pig Trouble in Little Greenpoint”
OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)
Pressured by Betty’s mocking of Wayne’s plans, Jenny gets him to enter a cook off to prove he is good for something. But when Wayne rejects this, Jenny decides (at the unintentional advice of Jesus) to enter him anyway, both for herself but also so that Wayne can impress his idol and not-Guy Fieri, Chip Scoville. However, the pressure soon gets to him and he messes up his dish. After some encouragement, he gets to try the recipe again and finally impress his hero, while Jenny learns to just support her loved ones by not forcing them to be what they don’t want to be.
Meanwhile, Betty reunites with an old but still burning flame, Rick Ocean (voiced by King of the Hill alum Stephen Root), who is looking to spread that fire by asking Betty to tour with him. But after a soul searching walk (and a gross misunderstanding of her role in the family), she decides to stay behind.
Also, Violet gets bummed that her anti-meat eating art entry has been used for a pro-meat celebration, and so fights to reclaim her original artistic intentions.
OUR TAKE
Looks like we’ve finally got an episode that tackles all the Hart women separately. Before now, it seemed to usually be Jenny and Betty in the same plot or one time Betty and Violet (which makes me realize we haven’t had any episodes yet with Jenny and Violet together), but this gives each of them a story to work with that is squarely about them. Jenny, who is decidedly the lead of the show, gets the most focus and finally with some real spotlight on her and Wayne. She’s an eager to please girlfriend who wants to prove that he’s worth something, though that causes her to forget that he’s already worth plenty. Also it’s weird to see Guy Fieri start to become a regular fixture in animated sitcoms, but American Dad did it waaaaaaaaaay better. Give me ancient generational demon Guy Fieri any time.
Then we have the subplot with Betty, which is also interesting for only focusing on her, though it’s a little on the light side. It’s mainly made up of jokes about beach music, which…I don’t really have strong feelings about either way, so I can’t really give my take on whether those jokes landed. For better or worse, the stand out of this plot would have to be Stephen Root as Rick, which certainly helps remind me of King of the Hill a lot more, but only just slightly. That said, the romance between Rick and Betty does feel genuine and I wouldn’t mind him showing up again if they find a good reason. Or heck, bite the bullet and see if Mike Judge can come back for a bit role. Silicon Valley’s just about done and I don’t know if Tales from the Tour Bus is coming back, so he’s got to have some free time.
Violet’s is probably the weakest of the bunch, partially because it reminds me more of early American Dad. Violet is pretty clearly early days Haley, who was basically an angrier older Lisa Simpson, but without a Stan to bounce off, she ends up feeling kinda preachy and one-dimensional, which is pretty reductive for a character nowadays that is meant to be socially conscious. Also I’m really unclear how it really wrapped up. Nonetheless, I’m going to give credit for this show bothering to give all of its female leads their own room to grow in this episode. I hope they can be this daring a few more times this season, which we’ve just about reached the halfway point of.
