Last week I started watching Denis Leary‘s offbeat cop series The Job and found it to be unlike any other cop show. I’ve since watched the next five episodes and wow, they make the first six look pretty tame. There’s stuff in here that I’m sure made the ABC censors cringe. Yet I still couldn’t stop watching until I’d finished the entire disc. It’s true that The Job is offensive, but (at least to me) not moreso than the fact that Jersey Shore is still on the air.
Here’s more hijinks from the 21st Precinct.
“Sacrilege”
The title of the episode comes from the fact that a nun is hauled in for causing a public disturbance. Everyone is horrified at her lewd behavior in the precinct until it comes out that she’s actually a stripper off her meds. And with that this show will never be on the good side of the Catholic Church. As over the top as the plot is, it provides a great scene between Mike (Leary) and his cousin Sean (show co-creator Peter Tolan), who’s a priest. It’s sharp, witty and in that one scene you can see how well Leary and Tolan work together. They’re both a little bit nuts. I should know; I saw Tolan drop his pants in the middle of a TCA panel last August.
In other happenings, Mike and Pip (Bill Nunn) have a District Attorney’s 12-year-old daughter thrust upon them for a ride-along. Predictably, Mike shoots his mouth off in front of the kid and pays for it. Watching him panic when she goes missing is pretty great, because he’s getting what he deserves. The end of the episode is absolutely laugh-out-loud perfect.
“Soup”
Frank (Lenny Clarke) decides that he’s on a soup diet, which I can’t possibly fathom. He thinks that he’s discovered some great soup from a vendor in the park, only to find out later that said vendor is the prime suspect in the murder of his girlfriend. Said girlfriend’s head is found in a pot on the stove. Did Frank eat dead ballerina soup?! It’s pretty disgusting to think about and this episode plays with that for all it’s worth.
I mentioned last time how effective Adam Ferrara is as a “straight man” and this episode shows that. Over these episodes it’s proven that Tommy has his quirks too (see the very next episode) but he’s at least less crazy than his colleagues. Watching him literally have to hold Frank back is the funniest part of the episode; he’s clearly in over his head, and it’s not like we can’t understand why Frank is mental.
And the way that Mike finally solves the whole thing? It’s one of those moments where I said, “Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Telescope”
Tommy swipes a telescope from a crime scene, and the guys have the bright idea to use it to spy on a woman doing naked yoga in the apartment building across from the precinct. Mike, Frank and Tommy go so far as to pose as workers in order to get into her apartment and move a piece of furniture that’s obstructing their view of her cleavage. This badly executed idea backfires on them when they have to go back to the same building to bust an Ecstacy dealer.
“Telescope” is my favorite episode of The Job so far, and it’s because of the B-story. Frank and Tommy find a body that’s been dumped on their turf by a rival detective, and spend the entire episode trying to give it back. It’s like Weekend at Bernie’s. Every time they think they’re rid of the body, it keeps popping up. This also gives the boss (Keith David) the mistaken impression that there’s a wave of homicides in the precinct.
There are a pair of great performances by Clarke and Ferrara in this episode. The latter does the best put-upon look I’ve ever seen; I wanted to hug him. And don’t miss the last scene, where Frank and Tommy find out an unintended consequence of their actions. It’s something else I didn’t see coming. The Job does have its share of legitimate surprises.
“Gina”
Of these five episodes, I have to say that “Gina” might be my least favorite, if only because it reminds me a little much of “Elizabeth” from earlier in the run. The gist is that Ruben (John Ortiz) works private security for Gina Gershon, and Mike tries to bully his way into the gig, with disastrous results.
Where “Gina” does work is that it’s another episode that puts Mike in his place. He gets beaten up by the angry lesbian girlfriend of Jan’s (Diane Farr) domestic violence victim. I don’t just mean that he gets punched; he gets legitimately embarrassed, and then as if that wasn’t bad enough, is deservedly mocked for it by everyone else. As I mentioned last week, I love that Leary is willing to knock his own character down quite a few pegs, repeatedly. It helps that it’s so much fun to watch.
Aside from Gershon and Scott Wolf, there are a couple neat sightings in this episode: there’s Justified star Joelle Carter as Sharon, and Kelly Overton (Three Rivers, Cold Case) as a girl Pip chats up outside the hotel. Ten years younger, Carter looks way different from Ava Crowder. It’s pretty cool.
“Quitter”
After passing out drunk, Mike is challenged by his wife (Wendy Makkena) to quit drinking, and like any alcoholic, swears that this is no big deal. He might not be drinking, but he ends up doped up on cough syrup, and later popping male enhancement pills that Frank gives him. Unfortunately for him, he can’t get laid to save his life.
This is the second episode in a row where Mike truly makes an ass of himself. (For some reason, the cough syrup angle made me think of the episode of The Simpsons where Homer uses children’s cough syrup in a drink recipe.) While I could pretty much guess what was going to happen, it was still funny to see it occur. Considering that The Job was on the air before House and Nurse Jackie, I’m sure it must have tripped out someone at ABC for their main character to be an addict and an alcoholic, but this episode really shows how messy all Mike’s vices are.
What makes the episode even better, though, is that what’s happening with Mike also ends up being crucial to the rest of the episode. The team’s all excited to be busting a marijuana house, but when they roll up and realize that the people there are all using for medicinal purposes, Mike lets them continue doing so. No doubt that decision’s informed by his own problems. Again, the show isn’t looking for brownie points with that; it just is what it is. And it’s actually painful when one of Mike’s rivals shuts the place down later on.
The Job isn’t trying to make a statement on addiction. It’s not glorifying it, or using it for dramatic effect, or even making it a huge part of the show. In fact, this show isn’t trying to make a point about anything. It just is what it is, and there’s something very cool about that … at the same time that I’m still snickering and wondering how many headaches this show gave the network.
And now, a quote…
“I’ve got to climb into a dumpster and drag out a dead guy, and this is about self-respect?”
— Tommy in “Telescope”
I’m still getting some good laughs out of this show, but at the same time, I can see why ABC cancelled it. For one, this is the same network that axed Sports Night. But also, Leary’s and Tolan’s brand of humor obviously isn’t for everyone and almost certainly fit better on FX, the channel that’s allowed Archer to make cracks about marital aids inside the French Prime Minister. I’m thinking that The Job was a case of a show on the wrong network at the wrong time.
And as much as I love it, we also have its early demise to thank for Leary, Tolan and many of these same actors being able to go on to do Rescue Me, with all its critical acclaim and one of the earliest successes for FX, a network that’s now one of the best on television.
So perhaps it’s best to love The Job as it is, in all its short-lived, dysfunctional greatness. On to the next batch of episodes…
Check out previous entries in my The Job Virgin Diary.
Clacked by Brittany Frederick 
on Mar 19, 2012 @ 12:00 EST5EDT
