Review: Bless the Harts “When You Lose, You Win”

 

 

Overview:

It is a rainy day, and with Violet on school break, it is the perfect time to have a board game night. 

While Jenny gets excited, the rest of the family gets nervous, knowing how competitive she can be. They do their best to change the rules to allow the mother of the house to win, but the truth comes out. Unfortunately, it only makes her more competitive than ever.

Meanwhile, Betty is avoiding her daughter’s board game mishaps by taking a drive. But when she comes into car problems, she calls the police for assistance. Making quick friends with the handsome officer, Betty settles in for a ride-along.

 

Our Take:

The final days of Bless the Harts are upon us. But with just a few episodes left, the series departs from recycling cliché plots that we have seen a hundred times. Though the basis of a competitive family member is nothing new, the way Bless the Harts approached it was a fresh take.

Playing the uptight sore loser was Jenny, making the situation complicated for her mother, boyfriend, and daughter. Though with years of these games, they are well prepared for letting Jenny have her way. 

Unfortunately, they did not spend enough time breaking it down for the wild card, David. And, never seeing the mother’s wrath before, David is not so into letting her win. Thus, making this the board game night where it all comes crashing down for the Harts.

Betty handles game night the best by getting the heck out of dodge and hitting the road. This leads to her having her own side adventure when she swoons over a handsome cop. Unfortunately, the plot is not much more than a distraction until it all plays back into the main story in the final moments. Betty gets her own truth bomb when she too needs to face her daughter’s over-competitiveness.

There was a surprising extra player for the board game antics in Wayne’s best friend, Travis. Introduced in the episode previous, Travis is voiced by SNL star Kenan Thompson. What felt like a potential one-off character quickly makes a reappearance, making it seem that Bless the Harts was building him a more prominent role. Potentially because the series was seriously lacking diversity. But Travis does feel shoehorned in and does not add much more to the series in terms of comedy.

On top of Travis’s new supporting role, this episode concludes with Betty landing herself a date. The officer she shared her ride-along with connected with the grandmother character and was also likely intended as a new supporting POC character. Luckily, we won’t have to deal with these attempts at diversifying long, as the show is rightfully concluding by the end of the month.

Despite having some fun with character dynamics – and even playing around with animation styles – this episode was not much of an improvement for the series. A little too much sappiness and drama really takes away from the comedic light-heartedness of the animation. Seeing the majority of the series now, it is becoming easier to tell people not to bother getting into this show. You can find most of this writing style and relationship drama on any prime-time sitcom.