What I’m Watching: Outmatched

Outmatched: Season 1, Episode 6 “Bullying” (C+)

It’s entirely clear now that this show isn’t aiming for anything approaching believability, creating adult characters who couldn’t possibly be real to go with the precocious geniuses that Kay and Mike are somehow raising. Dr. Walker, played by Neil Casey, who has been making appearances on “Avenue 5” and “Silicon Valley,” was so over-the-top that it would be hard to imagine anyone not making fun of him for the way he talked and assumed that others wouldn’t find his behavior more than a bit strange. He didn’t make Kay stooping to apologize to him easy, and Leila ended up being the one to express just how horrible he was to him and voiding the sentiment she was trying so hard to convey. I knew that I recognized the teacher who Marc was bullying from somewhere but couldn’t place him, and that’s because he played another teacher, Mr. Castellotti, who interacted with Andrea on “I’m Sorry.” I enjoyed the fact that this episode delved into Kay’s past as someone who enjoyed pulling pranks on weaker classmates in high school, including her own husband, who now finds her earlier behavior considerably more charming than many of her other victims. As usual, the strongest moments on this show are the subtler ones that reveal how excited Mike is for his kids to respond to human interaction and how disappointed he is when they utterly fail to do so, like when Brian just pushed his fist bump attempt down. Brian and Nicole fighting over who got to give the other a bath was definitely weird, and not in a good or funny way.