THE 2015 POPFILTER TV CHALLENGE:

MARCH MADNESS

 

Follow the tournament here!

Round 2

 

BATTLE CREEK

vs

THE LAST MAN ON EARTH

 

Most show ideas shit out a pilot, just to spend the first half of the season or so trying to shape that pile into something resembling the creator’s initial dream. The second episode of Battle Creek makes the whole enterprise seem different than that. After creating a pilot that worked far better than anyone would have expected, the second episode feels like everyone involved is sort of scrambling to remember/recreate whatever worked so well. And to be totally honest, they do a pretty good job of clouding that feeling, and proving how well the show works, or at least how well it could work in the future.

 

The episode finds the small town detective (Dean Winter) and the big time FBI agent (Josh Duhamel) attempting to take down the city’s kingpin. The gimmick here, is that the city’s kingpin is the kingpin of syrup. The gimmick layered on top of that gimmick is that the episode spends its entire run time attempting to solve the case with all of the same strategies and seriousness needed for hardcore drug dealers. It has every reason to be horrible, but Battle Creek succeeds because of its ability to know exactly when to push on the comedy pedal, or push on the action/drama/procedural pedal. The comedy is never that funny, and the drama is never that dramatic, but it almost doesn’t matter. The way it deftly blurs the lines is equally respectable and entertaining in it’s own right.
So, it’s with a heavy heart that we let Battle Creek know that it is up against The Last Man on Earth, which followed up its revolutionary pilot with a second episode that was only slightly less revolutionary. If the first episode left us baffled by both its literal and figurative balls, the second episode confirms that not only has Lord/Miller (soon that slash will be unnecessary, and we’ll all just bow down to Lord Miller) figured out how this show is going to be funny, but also how it’s going to make each and every one of us feel like we already know what it’s like to be the last man or woman on Earth. Much has already been said of Kristen Schaal’s screeching nag of a character, and what that means about women on TV. It’s obviously too early to accuse the show of being misogynistic, but the way that the show handles Schaal in the third episode could dictate whether this show makes it to Round 4, or gets the boot. As of now, it’s officially in the Final Four.

 

– Ryan Haley

 

NEXT: ANOTHER ROUND 2 BATTLE, AS AMERICAN CRIME TAKES ON THE UNBREAKABLE KIMMY SCHMIDT!!!