Love: Party in the Hills

February 27, 2016 9:26 PM - Season 1, Episode 4

Mickey invites Gus to a housewarming party.

On a whim Mickey invites Gus to a party, because Gus would be "fun at the party," and I have no idea how Mickey drew that conclusion but let's roll with it. Gus arrives unfashionably early and has to wait around for the party to actually start. Once the party does start Gus feels isolated.

Mickey sees her former boyfriend, Dustin, and thinks things will go well with a re-connection but Dustin is not willing to forgive past transgressions yet, leading Mickey to an argument and the vodka. As she goes further into alcohol Eric reappears and gets in a fight with Dustin. And then she goes further into alcohol and makes an ill-conceived body slam into the pool.

Bertie and Gus comfort a reeling Mickey and she has the idea that the two should get together.

Thoughts:

* Besides being a bit of an awkward mess at the beginning Gus is actually pretty put together this episode. He panics at the beginning, but by the end he's pretty well integrated into the party and is making friends and everything. Being good at the guitar probably helps.

* I like that Bertie has clearly thought ahead and has an ideal orgy size in her head.

* In the beginning it seemed like Mickey was edging toward not toward a Manic Pixie Dream Girl but toward the related trope where the woman has to break the man out of his shell. It's nice to know that Gus can do that on his own though and also that Mickey has her own problems.

posted by john-a-dreams (5 comments total)

This was an episode that didn't congeal for me, more so than most of the others. It felt like a bunch of scenes or skits outlined on a whiteboard rather than a tight and coherent narrative arc. Some of those skits worked well (and I liked Gus's line about people at the party looking like the cast of Kids twenty years on), but overall this was not my favorite.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:56 AM on February 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

Bertie remains my favourite character on this show.

I rolled my eyes super hard at the scene where the attractive young woman talks to Gus about his disastrous experience tattooing that idiot. PLEASE. Talk about wish fulfillment.

But I will admit Gus was less awful this episode. Even when he made his tattoo faux pas, I had to agree with him that although it wasn't a particularly funny joke, the guy couldn't really expect every one of his random crowd-sourced tattoos to be a winner.

I was much more more annoyed at Mickey for inviting him to the party and then casually ditching him. Not cool. Gus made the best of it, surprisingly.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 3:39 PM on February 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

I didn't realize until the end credits the guy who wouldn't hose off the patio furniture was E from Eels.
(Also, I used to hang out with Paul in college, and seeing him writing The Perfect Storm song with, among other people, fellow U of I alum Neil Campbell and Mike Cassady made me miss those days. Good god, that was soooo long ago!)
posted by cottoncandybeard at 8:24 AM on February 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

This show is starting to remind me of "Rescue Me" in that to enjoy the good parts you are also required to sit through all of the annoying parts where the show's creator fits in all of his "Of course no hot woman on the planet could ever find it possible to resist my charms" fantasy wish-fulfillment bits.
posted by The Gooch at 10:48 PM on March 1, 2016 [2 favorites]

I think it was officially this episode that cemented Mickey as someone I know who, though she might earnestly mean well, is still kind of a trainwreck and hard to take anywhere.

Gus is a menace with a tattoo machine, but redeemed himself by having a sincere jam with people he ostensibly just met hours before. I go back and forth on whether Gus' awkwardness is Paul Rust being accidentally genuine or just forcing it, because when Gus is charming, he's charming.
posted by a halcyon day at 6:25 PM on March 8, 2016 [1 favorite]