Review: Dicktown “The Mystery of the Golden Lungs” & “The Mystery of Dr. Marjorie Frost”

Overview

“The Mystery of the Golden Lungs”

John conducts a flashback to figure out why the biker chick named Giovanna hates him. Giovanna claims John framed her for the case of the stolen lungs and now she’s out for revenge. David and John pursue Giovanna’s hide-out with Heather and Taggy which gets everyone gets caught in Gio’s traps. We come to find out that some of the more violent crimes committed against John e.g. his house boat being burned down, may not be Gio’s fault.

“The Mystery of Dr. Marjorie Frost”

John somehow gets out of his trap and gets a new partner that isn’t David of whom he has a rift with due to the events of the prior bit. David opts to move out of his mom’s house into an apartment with a new roommate and a new job to boot. The job is no joke, David’s pulling the overnight shift at a snack-packing warehouse but it doesn’t matter, he takes part in his dream of meeting his long-time celeb crush, Marjorie Frost. Turns out, the seminar hosting the aforementioned writer is really just a scam for money, so David opts to investigate what the hell she’s up to. The search results aren’t reassuring and David appears to have a breakdown.

Our Take

I sometimes wonder if this show would do a whole much better not being split up into two parts. There almost isn’t a reason especially given the show is embracing it’s rather strong serial elements. The star power is also getting much more impressive with the likes of Jamie Lee Curtis and recurring star Amy Sedaris making even better contributions than the cast that was promised to us in the original credits. I mean, we got a rare Heather cameo at the start of the episode, but not much since. Odd considering the show’s first season featured the character prominently.

Even with that said, Dicktown is one of the stronger new series employing the week-to-week serial format that’s doing rather well. The writing is both strong and compelling, giving me a very Nancy Drew vibe in it’s execution but with the sardonic humor found in series like Archer. No high octane action sequences like in prior episodes, but the almost anime-like structure of taking an episode to allow the arc to reset before it moves forward, further showcases the sophistication in the plot that has me very excited.