Review: Bless the Harts “Jenny Unfiltered”

 

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

New controversy arises over a statue of Morris Culpepper, a now deceased eccentric tobacco entrepreneur who Betty briefly dated…until it became time to consummate. Instead, a Marjune Gamble quickly took her place and married Culpepper, inheriting his fortune and becoming a legendary recluse. This leads Betty, Violet, and Violet’s friend David to go on a hunt for the reclusive and possibly sad and destitute Marjune, eventually finding out that she’s actually totally fine! And voiced by Elasti-Girl herself, Holly Hunter! Plus, Betty has another shot at living the good life with Marjune…if she can do with her what she couldn’t with Culpepper. But turns out that’s a hard no too.

As for the statue, Jenny starts noticing divided opinions amongst patrons of The Last Supper and so decides to play to whichever side she ends up serving in order to rake in tips. Personally she hates that statue and it tears her up to lie to people for money, but that moral dilemma is pushed aside as those tips pile up. But then Jesus has to come out of his painting to remind her of how she’s compromising her values and lying to people and yadda yadda yadda. She attempts to clear things up at a town hall but can’t come to a solid point on either side, leading to a massive riot that trashes the restaurant. Finally spurred to action, she makes an impassioned speech to resolve the situation!…which solves nothing. Eventually, an anonymous vandal brings down the statue themselves, turning out to be Marjune.

OUR TAKE

Okay so like…is that actually Jesus who keeps talking to Jenny? Because he sometimes says stuff that she has no way of knowing, but he only shows up to her, so is he a hallucination? Possibly caused by a radiation leak? Perhaps we’ll get into that in the season finale.

But this episode seems to be showing a trend of having a Jenny story be the A-Plot, sometimes involving another main character, while the rest get to do their own thing in the B-plot. In this case, it’s another Betty story that gets a little into her background which also plays on the Confederate statue controversy that was more prevalent in the news years ago. Ah, Fox Animation, always on the cutting edge of humor that is at least a year too late. Though it does seem to be sanded down a bit, as selling tobacco is A BIT less of an atrocity than being on the wrong side of the Civil War, which makes me think we’re probably not going to touch on the issues surrounding the Confederate Flag. However, it does explore Betty’s odd sort of integrity in not sleeping with rich people for money. That’s not to pass judgment on people who WOULD make that choice, but at least we have more to inform her character than “drunk single grandmother”.

That same sort of integrity also seems to have passed to her daughter, though not as obviously. Jenny’s main conflict this episode is seeing if lying for the sake of better tips is right and showing that escalate into two stirred up factions that wreck the town because of her indecision. Even before that, she’s losing sleep over her lies, showing that her honest nature overpowers her looking for short-sighted perks (though apparently not enough to stop her from letting things get really bad. I think these points to the Harts being people with relatable values, but still flawed enough that they can make foibles like this that betray those values. It’s important to have characters that have identifiable moral codes but are capable of breaking them enough that it tells us more about them, as opposed to simply being inconsistent.

I wonder if the next ten episodes will continue this trend, or maybe we’ll get a non-Jenny A Plot for the first time to show that they’re willing to break out of the presumed box they’ve put themselves in. Regardless, it’s good to see that Bless the Harts is on a pretty solid streak of episodes which will hopefully extend to the season finale. And Greenpoint continues to grow as a location, which is probably important to keeping interest in growing animated sitcoms.