Friday, March 06, 2015

Cucumber/Banana/Tofu - Episode 7 Recap/Review

After the brutal death of Lance last week and the quirky introduction of Amy also last week, it seems that both the parent show and spin-off have changed it up a little bit for their penultimate episodes.


Cucumber: Well, Lance died in the previous episode as we all know and his funeral and fallout from his death was tackled head on in this episode. We had the horrible realisation of Daniel not actually wanting to take responsibility for murdering Lance as well as both Henry and Marie clashing over money and the house, although in that case, I actually do think both of them raised valid enough points to support their own stances. I still mostly sided with Henry though.

More importantly there was also Henry trying to cope with Lance's death. He seemed determined not to cry but broke down a few times in this episode and despite Freddie's protestations of not actually caring, several times in this episode he actually reached out to Henry, even offering to have sex with him at one point. The fact that Henry actually turned him down was fantastic though. If this had been somewhere in the first three episodes, he would've jumped at the chance to have had sex with Freddie but here he realised it wasn't a bright idea.

Speaking of Henry and Freddie - I really loved that along with Dean, a genuine friendship has actually been forged with the three of them and having the three of them first pursue the elusive Welsh hottie Aiden (more on him in a bit), only for the three of them to have a series of honest conversations in the car about their hangs up and foibles was superb in terms of writing and acting.

The last quarter with the trio losing their home and having to move back to Henry and Lance's place with most of the apartment block (see if you can spot the various guest characters over both series here) was like something out of Shameless - when the show was good that is. A great way of ending this episode but weirdly, it sort of felt like a way of ending the series but we still have one more episode to go.


Banana: Now, this was a bit of brutal episode. I think at some point or another we've all been in the unfortunate position of Frank - falling for a guy like Aiden, being a little bit silly in our pursuit and ultimately getting crushed by the guy and Frank certainly got that when Aiden made it clear in no uncertain terms that a relationship between the two of them was never, ever going to happen.

I'm not going to criticise Aiden (Dino Fetscher) for the fact that he didn't want to take things further with Frank (Alex Frost) than the threesome that both of them took part in the night before and maybe sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind but at the same time, I think the fact that Aiden acted like Frank was beneath him was something that particularly stung though. Not unrealistic but thoroughly unpleasant to watch as Frank's fantasy of a relationship with the hunky carer went up in flames pretty fast.

Both Fetscher and Frost were great in their respective roles and with the nice little tie into the parent show, I get the feeling that we'll probably be seeing at least one of these two guys again next week. Other than that, this episode was a little painful to watch. A brilliant episode but certainly a tough one though.


Tofu: The funniest episode of this webseries to date. The idea of getting some OAPS and that fit cocky bloke from the second episode to act out scenarios from both Tinder and Grindr (with Blendr getting a brief mention as well) was nothing short of hilarious. It's times like this, I'm actually glad I tend to watch this show on my own. I also loved hearing the various contributors talking about their own online experiences and ones their friends have had too. Again, I love the approach of discussion - no demonizing but an honest appraisal of the pros and cons of relying on these apps to either hook up or for more than that.

Next week, it's the finales for all three shows.

No comments: