Round Two: The Detour

The Detour: Season 1, Episodes 2 and 3 “The Hotel” and “The Tank” (B+)

So the second episode actually aired right after the pilot, but either way this is still the second round for this show. I’m just as into it as I was at the first: it hardly seems vital, but it is actually pretty funny. As I said last week, the best part is undeniably Natalie Zea, who eagerly got to chew some weed gummies by herself and then own up to a drunk driving charge after trying to sex her husband up with her kids in the next room. She’s great, but she’s not the only terrific part. The kids, Ashley Gerasinovich and Liam Carroll, are talented in their own right, and they do a superb job of making Delilah and Jared a believable pair of troublemakers. Their fake sob stories to the police to get their parents released went head-to-head with Jared’s unfortunate misunderstanding of how babies are made for their most memorable interactions of the episode. The people that they meet along the way, like the drunken repairman who definitely set fire to his predecessor’s shop and the hapless employees of the motel who kept referring to Nate as Mr. Parkjr, are great additions to a dependable ensemble of four. I’m not quite as into the background story of Nate getting fired and then stealing drugs from his company which he then lost because the drunken repairman thought he was an addict, but I suppose that exists to frame the show and its neverending series of detours that give its characters their wild adventures.