What I’m Watching: Indebted

Indebted: Season 1, Episode 5 “Everybody's Talking About The Tooth Fairy” (C)

Buried somewhere under the unfunny casing of this episode is a humorous and effective send-up of something that most parents can probably relate to: teaching their children the value of things. How much to give children when they lose a tooth is a perfect example of that, and obviously Dave and Rebecca put more thought into their costumes for the operation than how much they wanted to give their kids. In addition to Deb and Stew undermining their parenting, someone – probably Dave or Rebecca – should be shouting from the rooftops that they’re currently broke and need to stop spending all their money, namely giving their grandson one hundred dollars for each tooth when a simple quarter or dollar would suffice. That’s not likely to happen, and neither of them is aware enough to realize that they should be thinking more intelligently. Dave and Rebecca thought things were fine when Asher got excited about his parents being the tooth fairy and him getting to inherit the job when he died, but then they opened up an entirely new can of worms when they accidentally revealed to one of his classmates that parents die. We already know that Joanna is bad at relationships, but you’d think she would know by now to avoid bringing her dates home to meet her family, even if it was just an attempt to rectify her earlier lie about having kids. I’d like to continue finding this show endearing, but it’s getting dumber and dumber every episode.