Taco as therapist, Andre as impotent masturbator, and Ruxin singing a little ditty to his macaroni: “Anchor Baby” was one of the funniest episodes in a very funny season of The League to date. It had an endless number of great lines. We learned that Taco gets his hair cut at the dog groomer’s, and that Andre’s inner voice is a vaguely Cajun man. We learned that Pete attracts horrible douchebags at parties like spilled soda lures ants. The plot was a little nonsensical at times—what happened to Ruxin’s titular anchor baby plan, anyway? Where did Pete and Ruxin go once they got in the back of that truck?—but I was enjoying myself too much to mind. Had this week’s installment been “Anchor Baby” alone, the grade would have been an unqualified “A.”
Alas, the second part of the double header, “Bro-lo El Cordero,” dragged things down. It was a solid episode, but it didn’t have the zip of “Baby.” Kevin’s colonoscopy verged a bit on the squirmy, and Pete’s fears about his grandfather’s selective memory problems meandered a bit. When The League does double episodes, that’s a problem the show usually has: one episode outshines the other by a substantial amount.
But gripes aside, this was one of my favorite back-to-back blocks The League has done. “Anchor Baby” had so many good lines that it was hard to catch them all. The cold opening even was done nicely: Ruxin is combing his hair with a fork when Sofia shows up with a new pubic configuration. Ruxin’s alarmed that this means she’s getting ready to leave him—she is, after all, several grades more attractive—and plots to get her pregnant so he can “crush her spirits.” It’s a nice plot arc, because Sofia has always been bewilderingly hot for Ruxin, and it allows him to put his legal machinations to devious ends.
My favorite parts of “Anchor Baby” were the cameo by Zach Woods as an abhorrent hipster and Taco’s turn as a therapist. Woods nails the kind of guy who you wish you hadn’t started talking to at the party. “I went to Haiti to DJ for the villagers,” he tells Pete. “Always know how you’re being ironic,” he advises Andre, who texts this advice to himself. When Pete and Rucin do a double friend trade-off at the orchid show, he tells Sofia that he’s the “Girl Talk of the floral world.” What’s so great about this performance is that it’s far-fetched enough to be funny, but also painfully realistic. We all know that guy. We have all heard him complain about not finding clean water for his netipot.
Taco, meanwhile, has moved into a dead therapist’s apartment and swiftly taken over his practice. His advice is unbelievably terrible, as you might expect. He tells a kid to bring a gun to school and offers to band a woman once for every pound she loses. It all culminates in a public therapy session for Andre who, in addition to suffering his usual indignities, apparently has masturbation impotence and pubic alopecia. This is some of The League at its best: Quickfire, loose enough to let the characters shine, but still containing some reasonable narrative propulsion. And dick jokes. Can’t forget those.
Stray observations:
- Taco can make a bong out of anything. Also hilarious: when he queried the jacket photo “Hey dead guy. Where are you hiding your weed?”
- Pete’s grandfather is a secret genius.
- Also, it would be incredibly uncomfortable to get a colonoscopy from Pete.