Some weeks it’s easy to forget how sad it was The other two Really. However, as the name suggests, Thursday’s “Cary Hands Her Ass To Her” deals an emotional blow.
Over the course of three seasons, we watched Chase Dubek rise to fame as “Chase Dreams”, until his “other two” big brothers Brooke and Cary’s first upset. The more they tried to use their brother’s reputation for their own career success, the more miserable they became. And Chase’s mom, Pat, became a superstar talk show host who couldn’t leave the house without her security team.
The title might be “Cary Hands Her Ass To Her,” but everyone here suffers in some way. especially, The other two Director Charlie Gruet told The Daily Beast’s Obsessed that this week’s episode hits the culmination of Cary and Pat’s “parallel unraveling”.
Pat is living his nightmare and also Cary’s dream. While she’s willing to do anything for a little fame (even playing a sensitive drop in a Disney movie), she’s too famous to walk the streets without a team around her body or prosthetics covering her face. She’s dating Marvel’s Simu Liu these days, but she doesn’t even know how to treat him properly – it’s a tragedy, to be honest.
What better place to post all this than the friendly neighborhood Applebee’s? When Pat is desperate for a “regular family dinner”, her committed boyfriend hires a team to make a fake meal from scratch on a soundstage. Apparently, that’s all it takes for a grown woman to eat some chicken wings in peace.
The other two‘s production team built Applebee’s funhouse as this season’s courtroom set. pleasantville respect. Gruet thanked production designer Rocio Gimenez and art director Rosa Callejas for getting the look just right. From the color palette to the wood grains on the tables, everything is in its place.
As Gruet recalls, the decoration became quite elaborate, and while the overall look captured that classic “Applebee’s” aesthetic, some details had to appear intentionally wrong. Instead of using a green screen to create a realistic vault screen, the team decided to use a sticker to make it look more lo-fi. “Let’s make sure we round the corner like the sticker has been used 100 times,” Gruet said. “You know, make sure you don’t look too good.”
Still, the set was believable enough for some. Looking back at the footage, Case Walker, who played Chase, told me that sometimes it can be difficult to break out of the illusion. “You do those scenes and then you go out and say, ‘Dude, this isn’t an Applebee’s and Molly isn’t actually my mom,'” she said with a laugh. Gruet remembered that one day the team did the inevitable and ordered a large meal from the real restaurant to capture that “spirit of Applebee.”
However, like the show itself, the joy of the venue hides the sadness of the moment. Here the whole family has gathered in a fake restaurant to arrange a casual dinner. Finally, when Pat realizes that everything is a bit wrong, he walks over one of the walls of the set, revealing the soundstage behind him.
There’s humor in Pat’s learning of this—especially when he realizes that all the strangers in this restaurant are just saying “peas and carrots”—a phrase the actors whisper to each other in the background to make it seem like they’re chatting. Instead of actually talking to each other. After directing the airplane episode in Season 1, when Chase learned how his father actually died and the downfall of Pat’s Season 2 fashion show, Gruet had some context for how the character tended to react. When he finally got it all together, he said, “It’s more of a sad realization as opposed to a complete collapse. “Wow, I can’t really have anything normal.”
This idea continues throughout the episode, starting at the beginning – when Chase breaks up with his dream girl, Pam Snot, only to learn that he must live in the woods to escape misogynistic fans. Ann Dowd plays a lovely role in an informative video for ex-girlfriends living in the woods. (“She had a great time with him,” Gruet said. “She walked in and grabbed those lines, fully understanding the frenzy of the situation and the character.”) When we get to Applebee’s, Chase tries something lousy. In an attempt to better portray his ex by comparison and thus save him from a life in the jungle, he’s persona on dreadful personality. Understandably, Pat is horrified.
Then there’s Cary, who couldn’t stop for more than two minutes without looking at Rotten Tomatoes to see how his project was progressing compared to his best friend’s. Cary’s one-sided rivalry with Curtis is one of the most despicable developments in the series to date – both hard to watch and extremely realistic. Last week, Cary was egged on (literally by GLAAD) for promoting a “gay-only moment” that never happened in a Disney movie and then lying about it. Even at the end of that episode, even when Cary dodges Curtis to “sleep” after a heated movie premiere, his friend soon realizes that he hasn’t learned anything when he sees Cary talking to the press.
“Cary is the only one who truly believes in this ascension,” Gruet said. “So we’re all watching it and we’re all waiting for it to fall.”
Brooke may be cruising photos of her brother’s armpits across the country and their mom may be breaking windows at a fake Applebee’s, but Cary may be the most lost right now. The other two character of all. Fixing this will take a lot more than chicken tenders.
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