What I’m Watching: 2 Broke Girls

2 Broke Girls: Season 1, Episode 17 “And the Kosher Cupcakes” (C+)

This show is capable of being very funny, but this episode was way too tacky and over-the-top for my tastes. Its inception was entertaining, with Han continually sneezing in Caroline and Max’s faces and the two girls expressing opposite sentiments about getting sick. It makes sense that Caroline would have tangled with Orthodox Jews in her previous life, but this episode tried way too hard to play up her desperation to fit in and be accepted despite her obviously goyish qualities. I didn’t care for much of the Jewish humor, save for Max’s delight at fighting out that kugel is both a pasta and a dessert. Renee Taylor’s guest spot was a fun inside joke for those paying attention, and she stood out among the whole Jewish crew. The very inappropriate Bar Mitzvah boys were particularly irksome, and I think the show could have done better than to have them be such silly caricatures whose behavior was puzzling at best. This show is getting very close to a line that it doesn’t seem that it should cross on network television, both for decency’s sake and for the purposes of its own ability to be funny, that I don’t think has even been crossed by the show that follows it, “Two and a Half Men.” While that show is impossibly suggestive, this one now explicitly comes out and says its dirty double entendres (the crack about Caroline’s mouth being full was particularly shocking). In other news, Sophie’s still around, and her new boyfriend Sergei, played by Matt Winston, was only mildly entertaining.