Take Three: Life in Pieces

Life in Pieces: Season 1, Episode 3 “Sleepy Email Brunch Tree” (B-)

I’m starting to like this show, not necessarily because it’s good but because it’s relatively fun and enjoyable. The gimmick of having separate stories is becoming less and less bothersome since they’ve tended to start merging, with more and more of the ensemble appearing in each vignette. The first segment here was the exception, which showed the latest parenting woes of Greg and John, whose baby-schedule exhaustion caused them to, among other things, buy hot dogs crawling with flies and, in Greg’s case, get arrested shortly before falling asleep in the back of a police cruiser. Colleen fared incredibly well at brunch with the family, impressing everyone with her multilingual nature and making Matt look good, and it’s not really his fault that they made the faux pas of bringing up his previous wife, a fact that he regrettably hadn’t shared with her. Every male member of the family trying to cut down the tree was silly but entertaining, and I also laughed at the odd enthusiasm with which each of the middle generation daintily sipped their coffee before venturing out to help their determined patriarch. Tim having enormous stomach problems and requiring both new pants and the use of his hosts’ shower was a bit excessive, but that’s the general nature of his character, who is the definitive inappropriate troublemaker next to Heather’s put-together do-gooder, who is competent in most cases but not so much in the art of getting reliable internet in a time of great and vital need.