Review: Bless the Harts “Trash Twins”

 

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

On a barefoot trip to Mega Lo Mart, Jenny and Betty are drive-by splashed by Betty’s archenemy, Crystalynn, leading to a massive prank war between the two sides. Things escalate to the point that Violet has to step in and tells them to call a truce, but this turns out to be only part of Betty’s plan to REALLY get Crystalynn at her daughter’s baby shower.

Meanwhile, Wayne must get his younger uncle Tommy in line by taking him to a Christian bodybuilder, only to realize his destructive tendencies might best be directed towards construction.

OUR TAKE

Bless the Harts returns from having its first week off with another…just okay episode. The show has managed to have a pretty consistent range of absolutely…tolerable. Yep. Five episodes into the season and I can definitely say that, given the option, I would absolutely prefer to watch this show over eating a bowl of broken glass. But let’s see if we can bump that enjoyment level up at least a little before the finale, eh?

First thing of note I’m noticing this time would be this show pulling in King of the Hill’s Mega Lo Mart, which is its strongest connection to that universe. I have to say, I’m just a bit confused as to why this was used, since I don’t see them bringing in any of the Arlen-ites in on this (mostly because it would seem pretty damn desperate to even try that). Could just be a cute reference for all I know.

The A-plot of Betty and Jenny versus Crystalynn is kinda wonky in tone and pacing, being at first about how the two of them are judgy of trashy people whilst being really trashy themselves. Jenny tries to become more civilized, but is pulled back into Betty’s revenge trip, then snapped out of it by Violet being embarrassed and trying forgiveness, only for THAT to be something Betty planned all along and winning Violet over. So the values and lessons seem to have their wires really crossed, making me more confused about what I’m supposed to get out of this. And that’s not helped by what has to be some of the show’s ROUGHEST bits of animation in the season so far, which is where the rather drab character designs only bring things down.

Then we have the B-Plot with Wayne, which actually tackles a pretty complicated family situation. Having an uncle younger than yourself is certainly uncommon, but it’s actually not as surprising to me since I’m a Jojo fan and just sort of imagined Wayne was Jotaro and Tommy was Josuke. Plus, despite the kind of ridiculous resolution to this plotline AND rather weird pacing in itself, I think I probably had considerably more fun with it than the stuff happening with Betty and Jenny. But even then, I find myself really needing to stretch my standards to find positives in this show. I’m okay with doing that for the first handful of episodes, but eventually I’m not going to be able to cut that slack.