Another Period 1x8 'Dog dinner Party:' The Privilege of being able to act like Babies

For the second straight week, Another Period is brilliant in its impressively intelligent humour with 'Dog Dinner Party.'

Reviewed while listening to 'Lammicken' by Braids and 'Scarlett Groove' by Maribou State on loop.

Quote of the week: 'Halibut is one thing, but heroin is quite another.'

Starting an episode off with a pee joke is a bold move. Especially for a show that boasts transcendent humour. To graduate from that to running gags about murdering puppies in the creepiest ways conceivable truly tests the tensile strength of our tolerance. When a comedy show does such things, it better sell that humour really, REALLY, well.

But Another Period knows the product it's selling, and precisely how to sell it.

In case we forgot that the Bellacourts have the maturity level of bratty infants and the ethical standards of a cruel and unusual dictator, 'Dinner Party' makes quick work of reminding us. It psychologically reduces Beatrice to that of a baby upon learning that Frederick is engaged 'in a soon to be married agreement,' and morally reduces Lillian to... something unfathomable... when she decides to have her servants kill puppies in an attempt to please Frederick's fiancé, Celery. Or rather, to please Celery's puppies. Puppies killed to please other puppies.

WOW!

It's all part of a larger plan in Another Period to take potshots at all those absurdities in life. Love, especially incestuous love, is messy (PUN!). Killing animals for clothing is NOT okay. Spoiling pets with lavish gifts such as a giant dinner party is categorically insane (but I'm sure happens). And wasting gargantuan amounts of food when most of the world is hungry is a grave issue of the 21st Century (and also apparently very topical at the moment. See: this, this, and ESPECIALLY THIS). Also, don't do drugs.

'Dinner Party' veils these social critiques in wonderfully delivered humour. All sparked by a pee joke, when a high-out-of-her-brains Dodo literally pees on Celery. I was skeptical of this at first, even though I've been a devoted fan of the show and should learn to trust it. But boy does it pay off. It forces Dodo into a self-rehab exercise that turns into rockstar withdrawal, and Lillian into one of her crackbrained ideas by honoring Celery's puppy with a 17-course dinner party to impress Celery (perfectly cast with Missi Pyle in a recurring role), who's at the top of the social food-chain (PUN!). Most of the food gets wasted because dogs can't tell the difference between halibut fish from Maine and any other food. Garfield is charged with dispensing the wasted food with the accepted fact that if the rich don't want to eat it, it goes in the trash. See how it all ties in?

Missi Pyle joins the veritable asylum.

Meanwhile, Jason Ritter and Riki Lindholme parody the old-fashion romcom trope of two lovers being torn apart in a scene that's just intentionally overacted enough to work. Frederick tells Beatrice their affair cannot last with him running for Senate, not until corporations care about allowing siblings to marry, because they're the ones running the government. Cue the nicely self-aware line 'Oh I HATE Corporations!' Frederick professes his love for Beatrice, that he loved her because she's 'a baby... but we had to grow up sometime. We can't stay babies forever.' Beatrice, being Beatrice, takes this to mean that the only way to win Frederick back is to regress into a baby. Covered in beet juice. Forever. The off-key lullaby music chosen for the moment Blanche discovers her Lady's mental state is perfectly creepy. A fine line between harmless hyperbolic humor and pure terror. Riki Lindholme delivers it all exactly as it should be delivered, with just the tinge of instability. She could surely play a crazed clown one day.

Dodo's own regression is much more adult, as she makes Peepers restrain her while she endures morphine withdrawal. Another Period brings out another surprisingly touching moment when in her daze she admits that she loves her children, something she's never told them. And Peepers, who seems to be the core of any authentic emotion in the show, does Dodo one better when he fails to refuse any request from her for more morphine, with a line that's both hilarious in its romcom sappiness and tragically poetic: 'Don't you see? Saying yes to you is my morphine.' (My reaction). Leading to a mock of stereotypical drug-fueled frenzies with psychedelic music played over Dodo trashing her priceless furnishings as she searches for morphine. Paige Brewster pulls out all the stops, and it keeps us cracking up on the back of Lillian's maniacal dinner plottings to befriend Celery.

And then there's Chair. The supreme plotter. And the smartest person in the manor. I felt bad for laughing at Garfield as Chair cruelly manipulates him with her viperish seductions (something we all know Christina Hendricks has mastered). Chair is not amused by Dodo going cold turkey. The motive's not wholly clear yet, but it all must tie into her impending coup with the Commodore. She's got plans, and it's deviously designed as 'Dinner Party' teases just what it can to pique our interest for the final two episodes. Garfield is her only access to the drug cabinet, but when he disappoints, she throws him under the bus (the towel actually), and gets him fired. Cue the second strangely poignant (and flawlessly delivered) moment from Peepers as he breaks down from the pain of having to force his favored child from the premises. Chair is not anyone's friend. And with Lillian being a dumb vegetable fangirling over Frederick's new gal, Beatrice being psychological catatonic, and Garfield gone, that leaves only Peepers and Dodo in her path to seizing the Bellacourts for all they own. The plot thickens.

When Another Period, a perpetually over-the-top period comedy that prides on making fun of whatever it wants, has a more intriguing and devious conspiracy story than the second season of True Detective, does that say more about its brilliance, or Nic Pizzolatto's failings? These have been my two consistent shows over the past few weeks, and with each of those weeks passing Another Period has shown much more confidence in its own material of back-stabbings and malicious plans, all presented with acutely erudite comedy. It's still just downright hilarious, and so absurd we don't need to fret that much over who'll get screwed over, because we can't take any of the characters seriously (even Peepers). 'Dinner Party' is the second consecutive week that Another Period has hit all its targets perfectly. It knows exactly what it's doing. It can make a pee joke.

Grade: A+

When I got sidetracked

-The whole thread of preparing ridiculous food for puppies reminded me of my favorite moment from a great Archer episode: 'Food is what a DOG eats! Or a tourist!!' 'Wait, a dog ate a tourist?- WHAT? THAT WAS AMBIGUOUSLY WORDED!!'

-Reigning champ as the show's best quote: 'HAHA! Majestic NO MORE!' Can anything beat it?

-'I need to waltz with the white widow!' This week we learned that Dodo-in-withdrawal invented Keith Richards, and every drug-obsessed celebrity.

-Watching Chair's machinations brought back fine memories of Firefly in all its majesty.

-After Beatrice's scene with Blanche, I was compelled to look up if 'beautification beets' were a real thing... I'm very gullible.

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