What I’m Watching: Better With You

Better With You: Season 1, Episode 15 “Better with a Shamrock” (B)

I’m usually rather positive and forgiving when it comes to some of the liberties taken by this show, but there’s one thing that just really doesn’t do it for me, and that’s the secret language that Mia and Maddie use to communicate. The notion of a way of communicating clandestinely isn’t a problem, rather it’s the actual grunting and subtitling that gets on my nerves. That said, the plotline here is decently effective, as Vicky just wants to be including as one of the girls with her two very close daughters. This was yet another opportunity to divide things down gender lines, a device that works decently effectively, and provides an entertaining opportunity to see the two most unlikeliest of friends, Joel and Casey, interact. I was caught off guard by the reference to a storyline from a previous episode since this show hasn’t yet done that, and seeing Ben retell the story of his dropping a blanket on a Yankee player presented a novel attempt to tie threads from multiple episodes together to give this show more of a sense of continuity. Part of the current disconnect comes in the title scheme – better with something – which indicates that there’s a theme of sorts to each episode rather than just a progression of the sitcom plot. The show ultimately proves itself with the opening and closing montages that display the discrepancies in the behavior of relationships of different ages. The pizza ordering montage was especially fun, and I also enjoyed the last bite closing segments.