Summary: Jamie is a depressed comedian who plays a fictional animated character named Waldo. TO promote an upcoming TV show, Jamie is ordered to enter politics and make fun of candidate Liam Monroe. Waldo completely blows up and becomes an official candidate who gets votes, while Jamie isn't happy with it. Jamie eventually leaves the Waldo boat but it's continued by his boss and Waldo eventually takes over the world.
The Good: There were some funny moments here. Tobias Menzies was great as the stoic politician and his responses to the idiocy of Waldo were usually quite fun. The panel scene was really well done. It was the only scene in the episode which felt like it had legit power and meaning to it, as the idea of politicians being fake and Waldo being more real was explored nicely. I also liked Jamie's attack on Gwendolyn, as it felt like the perfect way for him to end up garnering more support than her. The Bad: This was terribly disappointing and not good at all. This episode hurts so much more because the last 4 episodes have been amazing, so expectations were pretty high. This not only failed to meet expectations, but also managed to be an overall poor episode. The biggest flaw for me was Jamie's character. He was just so boring and had nothing interesting about him. He didn't go through anything, and he didn't learn anything. He started the episode hating his Waldo character, not being interested in politics and depressed. He ended up in the exact same place, so I must question what the whole point was. Besides, what were his motives here? Why does he keep playing Waldo when it's clearly getting out of control? This is a critical question which we need an answer to, but we get nothing. I don't understand why he makes his decision and that's really sloppy. Jamie's depression was the worst handling of depression I've seen in a long time. Why is he depressed? I couldn't tell you. All we get is Jamie making sad faces sometimes and saying he isn't happy. We need to know why he isn't happy so that maybe we can at least sympathize with him a little bit and understand why he makes some of his decisions. Instead we get nothing, and the whole depression just seems like it was shoehorned into the episode. Jamie allowing Waldo to shine at the conference was really stupid. If Jamie is supposed to be bad with politics, it's hard to buy that he would just come up with an amazing speech on the spot and completely destroy his opposition. That moment felt severely out of character and dumb. Not only that, but it also enforced the stupidity of the whole Waldo campaign. The reason he is loved is because he is real, but apparently anybody can be more real than a politician if Jamie can make a powerful speech like that. We could just have some random guy show up and make that exact speech, so how is Waldo special? Why do people rally behind him and not anyone else? No idea. But seriously, how did Waldo gain such a huge following? Literally everybody acknowledges that Waldo isn't even funny, and I would agree! He has no charm and is immature, so how the hell do people actually like him and support him? I understand that it's supposed to be the point that people are supporting this creature, but it's just so incredibly hard to find even a single reason that people would support Waldo. At least when Trump was elected, we could understand why people may have voted for him. With Waldo it just makes no sense why anyone would support him. Jamie and Gwendolyn's relationship was the other main part of this episode, and it's just as hard to buy into. They are nowhere near as good as other couples have been in this show (Bing and Abi, and Martha and Ash were far more compelling), and there relationship feels really dumb. If Gwendolyn was going to just call Jamie after the campaign, why not tell him? Instead she made it seem like she didn't care about him at all, which in turn caused him to completely destroy her. It's impossible to sympathize with Gwendolyn because she brought everything on herself in an illogical way. There were small plot points which were bad as well. It's ridiculous to me that Jamie's identity was kept secret. With the internet working the way it does, I would give the world like 1 day to figure out who the voice behind Waldo is. Surely there will be some guy who records Jamie walking out of the van, and reveals his identity online. This also makes Monroe revealing Jamie's identity all the more stupid, since it didn't feel at all surprising. Furthermore, the plot point of Jamie coming back to Waldo and not quitting was dumb too. I have no idea why he didn't leave Waldo; he never liked the character and he doesn't like politics. So what reason could he possibly have had for continuing? The biggest offense of the episode though was the ending. Apparently Waldo has taken over the world. No. That makes so little sense and is completely at odds with the rest of the episode. Every indicator suggested that Waldo was just a temporary fad, but now he's somehow gone from joke candidate to leader of the world? That is so stupid, and is a ridiculous idea to end the episode. The Unknown: How did Waldo take over the world? What is the new world like with Waldo being treated as a sort of god? Best Moment: The panel was entertaining and Waldo's rant was really good. Character of the Episode: Monroe. Conclusion: This was very bad. The episode made no sense in terms of story and characters and had fewer impactful moments than most other episodes of the show. A total dud of an episode. Score: 46
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Aaron DhillonJust a university student who loves to watch TV. And analyze it way too much. Archives
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