Round Two: Crisis in Six Scenes

Crisis in Six Scenes: Season 1, Episode 2 (C+)

This may be where this show starts to go downhill. After an intriguing if imperfect first episode, this second installment managed to cover very little material and to have all three of its main characters utter the same lines over and over again, which felt unnecessary to say the least. I also really have to question the casting of Miley Cyrus, who hasn’t done much solid acting in a while and whose reputation for being a wild party girl is well known. Woody Allen has identified great talent in the likes of Jesse Eisenberg and Ellen Page is his modern-day projects, and I can’t quite comprehend what he saw in Cyrus that made her seem like the right fit here. She didn’t add much at all, and in fact stuck out quite a lot, especially with her incessant mentions of Sidney’s senility. Her catatonic sleepwalking was an unfortunate moment also, and I think she’s a very poor addition to the show. The more humorous parts of the episode that did work decently were Sidney’s obsession with the fact that she ate his chicken, which he was planning to have as part of his lunch the next day, and his very predictable congratulations to his wife after she decided to invite the police officers in just so that they might have a chance to catch them in the act. The suspension of disbelief that this show demands for it to be taken seriously is a bit much, and though it’s far from insufferable, it’s also not winning me over at all.