Thursday, February 13, 2014

Trophy Wife 1.14: "Foxed Lunch"

“I'm not doing this for the money. I am doing it because I'd rather have one person who really, really loves our product than a thousand totally satisfied customers.”
-Jackie

“Foxed Lunch” was a fairly middle-of-the-road episode of “Trophy Wife.” There were three plots going on, only two of which really had much of a connection, and that was because one plot was the cause of the other. The major focus of the episode was Kate’s struggle with being a homemaker. She has worked all her life, and not working is taking a toll. It’s taking such a toll that Kate wants to start a business with Jackie. Who in their right mind would want to interact with Jackie more than absolutely necessary? Other plots involve Diane coaching Hillary in running (which provides a bit of the motivation for Kate to become an entrepreneur) and Pete trying to teach Warren and Bert lessons through karate. At least the latter plot involved a guest spot by Rob Corrdry. I always like to see Daily Show alums getting work.

Hillary has track try out coming up, and Diane, because she’s great at everything (including running, apparently), is helping her train. Kate, who seems to be in a wanting to parent mood in this episode, offers to help with the training as well, considering she knows how to run. Diane, believing that nobody could possibly train Hillary as well as she could, laughs off Kate’s enthusiasm, reminding Kate to hang dry Hillary’s sports bras. Kate takes this as an insult, and it makes her want to start doing some work of some sort. The answer seems to come when Pete gets a panicked phone call from Jackie. The emergency just turns out to be that Jackie wants Pete and Kate to listen to a pitch for her new fancy school lunch business, “Foxed Lunch.”

Thinking about it later, Kate decides she wants in on Foxed Lunch. She sees it as a way to use her marketing training again. Pete and Diane both think it’s a dubious idea (although Pete is supportive, as he should be), because, you know, it’s Jackie, but Kate is determined. Kate makes her offer to Jackie, and Jackie is kind of hesitant. I guess she doesn’t want her half baked, happy go lucky lunch making party to be turned into actual work. Jackie does a quick little interview of Kate, where we learn that Kate is three credits away from a marketing degree and did the marketing for the bar where Meg still works. Jackie suddenly changes her mind and decides Kate might be a good partner after all. There’s no real explanation for the change of heart, but with Jackie, there rarely is an explanation for any of her particular brand of crazy.

Meanwhile, Pete offers to take Warren and Bert to karate since Kate and Jackie are busy Foxed Lunch-ing it up. The karate instructor, “Sense Rick” is the character played by Rob Corrdry. To say Sense Rick is a little intense would be an understatement. Everything you usually hear in a pitch about martial arts usually emphasizes how it teaches kids self-control and how to handle rough situations in a positive way. Sense Rick is just all about the ass kicking, though, and Pete isn’t thrilled with that. Pete takes the kids to see an action movie at a hoity toity assigned seat movie theater. I’ve been to some cool movie theaters in my life (the Arlington Cinema and Drafthouse is pretty awesome, as is the Charles Theater), but never one with actual assigned seats. Is that a thing? Anyway, somebody’s sitting in the guys’ seats, and Pete solves the problem not by kicking ass, but by calling over an usher. Pete thinks he’s taught a good lesson to his kids. At the next karate class (which Pete sits in on), though, Sense Rick uses their story as an example, and says that if you call an usher, you’ll be laughed at. He then pretends two boards are the people sitting in the seats, and he destroys them. So, lesson averted.

At first, the Foxed Lunch partnership seeps to go okay. Jackie is occupying herself with making a cute animal-shaped, organic lunch, and Kate is coming up with the business strategy. She has a mom picked out for a free sample. Unfortunately, it takes Jackie four hours to make the lunch for that one mom. And the mom immediately tells her PTA “biotches” how great the lunch was, so now they all want them. Jackie isn’t a mass production kind of woman. Only getting eight hours of sleep and limiting herself to a one hour bath has her nerves on edge. Kate offers to pick up “organic cucumbers for the tabouli.” They only have four dollars left, so Kate takes advantage of an ex-boyfriend of Kate’s who seems to work at the produce section of a grocery store. The cucumbers he procures aren’t organic though, so Kate decides to make do with putting organic stickers on regular cucumbers.

Meanwhile, Diane training Hillary leads to predictably competitive silliness. They run at a local track and decide to race each other. It’s close, but Diane seems to win the race. Diane realizes that Hillary may have let her win, though, when she tears off to join up with some friends. Diane also makes this really disgusting scrod smoothie for the two of them to drink. It apparently makes their kidneys “hum.” Maybe Clara should get the recipe to serve to the Twelfth Doctor? Anyway, Diane calls out Hillary for letting her win the race, and Hillary says she was just trying to avoid competitive unpleasantness between them. Their solution to the problem is to just go on a fun run, but that quickly becomes competitive too, with each trying to outrun the other.

Back at the ranch, Jackie figures out Kate’s trick with the organic stickers just as their orders for lunches are about complete. Predictably, Jackie freaks out and throws out all the tabouli. Then she quits Foxed Lunch. The next morning, Pete finds Kate exhausted after trying (and kind of failing) to finish the lunches herself. Pete points out that the reason Kate liked the idea of Foxed Lunch was because she hates making lunch for the kids, and now she’s stuck making even more lunches. This inspires Kate to finally let it go. She wants to work, and Pete supports that, but Foxed Lunch isn’t the right fit. Kate gives the business back to Jackie and manages to avoid Jackie’s hard sell on her next moneymaking scheme. She’s going to try something else now and see what sticks.

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