Worst Week: 1.02 ‘The Bird’ Recap

Original Air Date: September 29, 2008

I’m sensing possible issues ahead for Worst Week because the second episode is nowhere near as funny as the series pilot. Hopefully, the difference is just a fluke.

Realizing he’ll probably never make any headway with her father, Sam decides to focus all of his energy and charm on Mel’s mother Angela instead. The idea is to get her to like him so that her approval will somehow rub off on her husband Dick. First things first, though, such as getting over the vomit in the vase incident (Mel’s morning sickness) and walking in on Mel’s sister Sarah while she’s using a breast pump.

After he clears those hurdles, Sam makes the fatal — at least for the pet — mistake of feeding Dick’s beloved pet birds the avocado he can’t admit to Angela he hates. So, instead of just coming clean when she serves him an omelet loaded with the stuff, he decides to pretend to like it and sneak the food to the birds later.

Mel gives him the bad news about effect of avocados on birds too late to save one of them. The death sends Sam right to the pet store, where he — surprise! — runs into Dick, who also stops by to run an errand.

Unable to pick up a replacement bird with Dick right there, Sam goes back to the Clayton home. Fortunately, Mel helps him get off the hook later when Dick realizes one of the two birds is missing by telling her father she mistakenly opened the cage and it flew out the window. This lie finally allows her to witness the look Sam has been saying Dick gives him all the time but that she’s never seen before. Dick throws one her way after the bird news.

Sam’s bad luck still isn’t over, however, because he later becomes determined to give the dead bird a proper burial. While he’s out on the lawn at night alone, he comes across a dark male figure trying to get into the house. Immediately remembering the string of local robberies Dick mentioned earlier, Sam jumps the guy and rushes to break the news to the Claytons that he’s caught the robber.

After everyone runs to the lawn to see the criminal, Sam gets yet more bad news. Although the man he subdues is black — something the Claytons obviously aren’t — he’s also Mel’s brother David. We’ll certainly be learning more about that during the third episode.

And with this middling episode, Gary Unmarried officially becomes the best new sitcom of the season, in my opinion.