In the second episode of Terriers, Hank and Britt make one bad decision after another. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Terriers.
This is an interesting show, but I can’t say that it’s grabbed just quite yet. Indeed, for the first half of “Dog and Pony†felt like the show was going through the motions. I couldn’t get a sense for a direction or a point. But I like to think that I’m a patient TV consumer; I’m perfectly willing to see why this show has been recommended to me for so long and why people love it.
As it stands, it took this episode getting to the point where Denham shot his own brother before I felt like it had settled into something thrilling. There, the writers take Britt and Hank into a much more surreal place than the fairly straightforward (and doomed) attempt to catch Montell. Still, this is a story made up of bad decisions. Really bad decisions. Right from the start, Hank thinks it’s a great idea to pursue buying his old house so that his wife won’t sell it. Life then throws approximately forty thousand roadblocks and obstacles in his way, and Hank, that tenacious fool that he is, fights his way past every single one of them.
Let’s discuss that, as I think it’s a good framework to analyze this story.
The Check: Gone is the $30,000 from Lindus because, in a beautiful stroke of luck, the OBPD must use it as evidence. Oh, and Lindus’s assets are all frozen, too. Why is this bad? Because now, Hank has no money to complete the transfer of the house to himself. So how can he get thousands of dollars by the end of the day?
Here’s the next obstacle:
Catch a fugitive and claim the reward. A quick solution, right? Oh my god, NO. A TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, NO GOOD, VERY BAD IDEA. Not only do Hank and Britt threaten an innocent fortune teller in order to goad Montell out of hiding, they technically commit another crime in the process. It doesn’t matter if they were pretending to threaten that woman; THEY STILL DID. To make matters worse, neither one is prepared for the tremendous beatdown they receive from Montell when their bait totally works. Oh my god, that guy was like a human brick, I swear.
So, even after their plan fails, and after they’re brought down to the police station, they’re left with no money and no plan to get more. You would think anyone else would stop. BUT NOT THESE TWO.
Denham
I now understand why the show is called Terriers! The kind of unrelenting determination that Britt and Hank show is hilariously obvious now. They don’t let up. Unfortunately, that’s not always to their benefit, and the first half of this episode demonstrates that to us. Britt and Hank get their asses handed to them by Montell, but what’s fun about how the story is designed is that it leads them down an unexpected path. Just like the massive corruption they found in Lindus, they discover from Montell that his half-brother was his co-conspirator for a huge robbery at the Del Mar racetracks. OH, DEL MAR. SO MUCH TO ANSWER FOR. If you haven’t seen the video for this episode, I spoke about the pain of getting caught on an LA to San Diego Amtrak and coincidentally ending up on it during a race day. IT’S THE WORST. So much spilled alcohol, so many rich people or people pretending to be rich. It’s a nightmare.
Anyway, the only reason I mentioned that is because I do love the little peeks into Southern California life that are a little too real for me. The main point, though, is that through sheer dogged determination (get it???), these men seem to find good fortune. Granted, that involves setting up a meeting betwen Denham and Montell where DENHAM SHOOTS HIS OWN BROTHER, but you know what? Even that ends up being a good thing. The absolute best part of “Dog and Pony†is the set of scenes where Montell is stitched u by Katie and then willingly tied to her bed. It’s one of the strangest hostage situations I’ve ever seen, but that’s precisely why I suddenly felt like the episode had gotten a lot better. When Terriers goes for the strange, it works really well!
In the end, Denham is set-up, another case is solved, Britt and Hank make $15,000, and Britt comes up with a solution to him and his wife’s dog problems. (WINSTON!) Yet as much contentment as Britt gets, Hank gets very little of it. He might own his home again, but at what cost? He doesn’t seem happy at all in that final scene, and despite the advice of everyone around him, he still thinks that being in that place is a good idea. Is it? Or is he desperate for something else? I don’t know the answer to that, but I know that in the title of this show, there’s a humor and a tragedy. Hank might be tenacious and stubborn, but sometimes, that’s not a good thing.
The video for “Dog and Pony†can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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