Review: Duncanville “Moneyballs”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Duncan gets a job and starts contributing to the household budget, believing he’s now entitled to be the head of the family. Meanwhile, Jack wants to impress his dad and prove he has control over his household.

Our Take:

This weekend brings another short season of Fox’s recent animated sitcom to a close. It feels like yesterday that Duncanville has started its third season with Duncan and his friends being hunted for sport by a famous game streamer. Now we have a finale that has Duncan and Jack being the men of the household. It still boggles my mind that as good as this show is, it provided a small number of episodes in an entire season compared to The Simpsons and Bob’s Burgers. But I can’t complain since some of its episodes were endearing enough to compensate for the show’s short length.

The season finale centers on Duncan and Jack attempting to be heads of the family for different reasons. In Duncan’s case, he gets cut off from Jack’s budget when he uses his credit card to watch an adult-rated alien movie with his friends. So Duncan starts working at the hardware store to get his income. However, his payment leads him to believe that he has the power to rule the household. He has enough money to buy another alien movie and even pay Kimberly and Jing to be housemaids.

As for Jack, he still attempts to make his abusive father Dick (Gerald McRaney) proud of him…by acting like him. Unfortunately, this led to Duncan being humiliated, forcing him to take complete control of the house, even if it meant being another abusive parent like Jack and Dick. These segments intersect to form a comical representation of the term “man of the house”.

“Moneyballs” is a slight improvement over last week’s episode for several reasons. One of them is that the humor happens to be funnier than Jack running a rock and roll store. The scenes with Kimberly and Jing being maids were enjoyably cute. However, my favorite parts have to be Duncan and Jack switching roles, with Duncan being the abusive father and Jack acting like a child. It’s a role reversal that has been done before, but it compensates with its chuckle-worthy dialogue. I also enjoyed the callbacks to The Mandalorian and Guy Fieri’s television presenter persona, with him hosting a show involving him eating garbage out of a dumpster. 

Another reason is how it depicts generational abuse. Dick has always been abusive towards Jack throughout his life, and he hasn’t been impressed with how Jack punishes Duncan. So Jack is left to believe that he’ll finally impress his old man by being harsh to his son, leading Duncan to do the same after Jack embarrasses him at his job. Even though it is displayed in a comical manner, the episode also shows how the abuse can almost damage the household and the family. You know, since Duncan and Jack tried to take the roof off of their house.

Overall, “Moneyballs” may not be a perfect way to cap off the latest season of Duncanville, but it does mark an enjoyable improvement over last week’s episode. The humor works well with its plot involving generational abuse, and the Mandalorian callback makes me even more anxious for that show’s upcoming third season. This is a decent way to close off season three of Fox’s most entertaining sitcom of the decade, whose future still looks cloudy as of this writing.