Review: Bless the Harts “My Best Frenda”

OVERVIEW

Betty’s flirting with a truck driver on the road causes a huge accident, though the news reports her as a grandma, forcing her to consider surgery to maintain her looks. Meanwhile, Wayne crumples to peer pressure from Violet and Jenny takes a job as a food caterer to some rich ladies and starts to lose herself in their richness.

OUR TAKE

Okay, I’m starting to think they just make Violet the “weird kid” whenever they need someone to be weird, and all it’s doing is just making me notice that they have no idea what to do with her character. When it comes to the kid characters in each of Fox’s animated comedies, they all have a unique and distinct flavor to them. Bart’s a prankster, Lisa’s a nerd, Maggie’s a baby, Chris is a horny teenager, Meg is treated like shit, Stewie is an evil mastermind (or at least started that way), Gene is musical, Louise is a more malicious prankster, Tina is a horny teenage GIRL…actually, hang on, I’m starting to see a pattern here. Either way, I don’t think that Violet is really discernable as a personality. She doesn’t necessarily have to fit into an established mold, but simply avoiding the trends does not mean she has a personality of her own.

What else, what else, what else…oh yeah, Jenny falling into the rich void is actually somewhat interesting since it plays into the show’s overall themes of the Harts working with what they have and having potential wealth waved in front of them. Once again comparing her to her equivalent character in other shows, I recently saw the episodes of Bob’s Burgers where Bob almost gets a lot of money but then finds himself regretting it when the benefactor nearly changes his restaurant for the worse. Though in this case, what brings Jenny to her senses is potentially losing Brenda, who has been shown to help ground her on occasion. Also worth noting is a surprise reappearance by Holly Hunter’s guest character from early Season 1! Holly Hunter seemed like a really hard get for a guest spot and her role seemed to be used up in that episode so I didn’t expect her to come back, though now I honestly think like they’ve done all they can with her here. But then again, having a rich character does open up a lot more possibilities for plots, so we could be seeing her again before the season is out. Even only this much into its sophomore season, Bless the Harts is still putting together its world and establishing the dynamics of its ever expanding cast, so it could take awhile until the full potential of this story is realized. Let’s hope it doesn’t lead to it being cancelled before it can be all it can.