Review: Duncanville “Sister, Wife”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

It’s Annie and Jack’s anniversary, but it’s clear that some of the spark has faded from their marriage, as well as their ability to pay attention to Kimberly. To make up for the spark part, they decide to go to an 80’s themed club to recapture what they loved about each other in the first place. After a few forced brawls and counsel from a cynical Alf, they realize that what they love and prioritize has changed since their youth and that they’re actually just fine with who they are.

Meanwhile, Jing’s crush on Duncan gets too much for him so he decides to humor her with a fake marriage. What he doesn’t count on is her taking this seriously, which only ends up making them both miserable, eventually deciding to reconcile.

OUR TAKE

Duncanville continues its growing pains streak of being rather painfully mediocre, but like with Bless the Harts first season last Fall, I can’t help but remember how its peers on Fox’s animated line up fared in their inaugural seasons compared to now, when they have their respective visions for themselves more fleshed out. Part of what I see as an identity conflict for the show is how it balances its weird fantastical elements, which currently seems to be a bit of an in-between Family Guy and Bob’s Burgers. Family Guy (and similarly American Dad) goes balls to the wall with incorporating pop culture references to their logical end point, shown in this show by having the 80’s icon Alf be a real person who exists to make jokes about the fact that he is Alf. The other end of that is how Bob’s Burgers/Bless the Harts handles this, by having just about NOTHING that’s not dietetic and within its own universe, which is what Duncanville SEEMED to be doing for a few episodes there until now. For now, let’s see which option sticks.

Anyway, the episode itself. The thematic focus this time seems to be about examining how certain relationships in the family function or don’t, specifically the marriage between Annie and Jack and the odd dynamic between Duncan and Jing. Annie and Jack seem to be more or less similar in backstory to most of their animated married couple peers, being high school sweethearts who are still coming to terms with the fact that they have grown up. So, not the most original take on this, but certainly a tried and tested baseline. Then we also have ripping of the band aid off of Jing’s weird crush on Duncan, which finally gets its pay off from that odd set up in the pilot and ends up about as you would expect it to. In both of these cases, I see room for growth in these relationships now that we’ve gotten these parts out of the way, but with stale 80’s jokes and weird incesty vibes taken out from future installments please.

Also I think there was supposed to be a third child I should mention? Ah well, not ringing a bell. In the meantime, Duncanville is off for who knows how long before it returns with its back half, but with a second season renewal still up in the air. Hopefully we’ll have an answer to that soon.