Review: Duncanville “Crimes and Misters Demean Her”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Jack is excited to be coaching Jing’s soccer team, but the kids aren’t so excited about losing every game. His mellow coaching style isn’t doing them any favors, so they enlist Duncan to try to get him angry enough to yell at them.

Meanwhile, Kimberly’s upset with her friends in her witch coven, so Annie invites her to shadow her at the parking enforcement department. She’s impressed with her mom at first, but quickly finds out that she’s playing lackey to the Pad Boys and helps her climb the ranks.

Our Take:

Following a brief hiatus, Duncanville is back with one of its better episodes so far this season. Crimes and Misters Demean Her is well-written, incorporates all of the family members nicely, and is also very funny to boot. Jack’s coaching gig and Annie’s crime stopping may be very different on the surface, but the way the two plots meet in the end makes the perfect wrap up to finish off a strong episode.

Jack’s story is probably going to be the most relatable for those of us who played childhood sports and had overbearing fathers. It makes sense that Jack doesn’t want to be the yelling kind of coach like his dad, but he’s so complimentary of his team even when they’re doing badly that they’ve lost all their motivation. (One of the more shaky parts of the episode, but hey, it’s TV and they’re kids.) There’s plenty of fun to go around amidst all the losing though. Jack’s thought bubbles of his dad are particularly amusing, especially when he reminds him he’s not actually dead.

Annie’s plot is a bit more scattershot, but manages to narrow down and connect more closely with the rest of the episode towards the end. Kimberly finally getting to see her mom at work is a good plot device to introduce her to the fact that grown-ups have their own social hierarchies at play, and it’s a perfect distraction from her own troubles in the witch coven (side note: is this the first time we’ve heard that Kimberly’s into witchy stuff?)

The Pad Boys may seem a bit out of the blue considering the fact that I don’t think they were even mentioned in previous parking-centric episodes, but they’re funny enough that it’s not a big deal. Annie has stepped in to save Shane’s marriage multiple times, and even Kimberly is shocked to hear she’s been covering for him at their anniversary dinners for eight years. So it’s no real surprise that the wife turns out to be the serial space jammer. It’s a neat twist to tie everything together, and the way Annie enjoys having a nemesis is sweet — I’d love it if she showed up again in the future.

From Annie dancing on a table to Jack getting kicked in the balls by Duncan, this episode really had it all. I appreciated the way the two plot lines were roughly equally interesting and different, but managed to come back around and integrate themselves together in the final act. Despite everyone having solid chunks of screen time, it didn’t feel overstuffed or rushed, either. With all this in mind, and the fact that it was genuinely funny, Crimes and Misters Demean Her might just be my favorite episode of the season at this point.