Review: Duncanville “Dead Stan Walking/She Snoops, She Scores!”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Dead Stan Walking

After coordinating another fake funeral for Uncle Stan, Annie works to transform his appearance and his life until he starts dating neighbor Helen Diggins. Meanwhile, Duncan and his friends fight over Duncan’s neck brace to get out of gym.

She Snoops, She Scores!

When Yangzi becomes addicted to his new phone, his friends stage an intervention to break him of his habit so he can experience the real world again. Meanwhile, Kimberly starts babysitting for Bradley but uncovers his mother’s therapy files with secrets.

Our Take:

This week brings us another doubleheader for Duncanville, and unsurprisingly, it’s filled with awkward shenanigans you would expect from Fox’s recent animated sitcom. Whether they’re teen-related or family-related, viewers can’t seem to get enough of more Duncan, which explains Fox’s desire to drop back-to-back new episodes for two weeks. Fortunately, I happen to be part of that audience. So it’s no surprise I have the opportunity to review the rest of the show’s supposedly short third season.

The first episode, “Dead Stan Walking”, sees the return of Annie’s brother Stan (Jason Schwartzman), whom Annie sees as a bad influence. The storyline sees Annie help her brother start over with a clean slate (and a new identity) after he fakes his death. However, things take a turn for the worse when Stan starts hitting on her neighbor Helen.

This episode has its share of weird romance and embarrassing adult scenarios, especially when it has Stan dating someone older than him. Thankfully, they’re still the main reasons why this show works well in my eyes. The humor in “Dead Stan Walking” offered solid visual gags and dialogue, such as Stan spitting gas on Ghost Rider and Jack mimicking Will Smith’s outburst after slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars. More importantly, it delivered some suitable development for Annie and Stan.  

With Stan hitting on Helen, Annie is worried he’ll revert to his old ways by robbing her blind. When Stan is serious about marrying Helen, Annie tries desperately to let him make his own choices and not be a control freak. Unfortunately, things got complicated when she and Jack saw Stan kissing another woman. What happened next was pretty predictable, but it didn’t make the experience even less outrageous.

The side-plot featuring Duncan and his friends was also pretty funny regarding them getting out of gym class or getting what they wanted. They take turns using the neck brace Duncan found in Stan’s prank box but eventually fight over it. Their death match resulted in them breaking their necks for real, which is nothing but pure irony for the unfortunate teens.

Its next episode, “She Snoops, She Scores!”, focuses more on Yangzi’s reliability on social media trends. His condition worsens when he gets a new phone called the Distractor XII, forcing Duncan and the others to get Yangzi’s head out of the iCloud. I already regret making that pun, and I apologize to those who find it unfunny.

This episode puts a comical twist on people’s obsession with cell phones and social media and how it disconnects them from the real world. However, it never lost sight of the scenario’s relatability, with Yangzi losing the connection between what’s on the phone and the world around him. It did a suitable job reflecting the dangers of fiction vs. reality regarding social media.

There’s also a side-plot involving Kimberly snooping into Patricia’s (Bebe Neuwirth) therapy files while babysitting her son Bradley. When Annie gets offended by what Patricia wrote in her file, she plots to sneak back into Patricia’s house to find some dirt on her. That segment happened to get the most laughs compared to Yangzi’s scenario, with Annie breaking the fourth wall about not smoking on television being the humor’s main highlight.

Overall, Duncanville’s third season delivers another strong doubleheader filled with surreal comedy and typical yet entertaining sitcom plots. “Dead Stan Walking” is a solid episode that sees Annie and Stan grow as siblings, thanks to Stan’s desire to find his true love. However, I would say that “She Snoops, She Scores!” is the best of the bunch regarding its representation of cell phone obsession and Annie talking crap about Fox’s refusal to let her smoke onscreen. Unfortunately, this is the last time we’ll get a double dose of Duncan, with the show returning to its one-episode-a-week schedule next week. Let’s see if it can finish its third season on a high note with its usual strategy for the next two weeks.