"Puke and Cigars" – Wrecked S03E02 Review

And so the idiocy continues. To recap "Puke and Cigar", millionaire Declan Stanwick (Jonno Roberts) introduces himself after shooting the gorilla dead. He claims the landmines were left over from when the island was a military stronghold, and apologizes for not clearing them all up. The survivors accept his story and go to his compound.

Once they get to the villa, Declan serves cocktails and crab rangoons, and says he radioed a rescue ship to pick them up. Steve goes off to hump with Karen, because that's a thing. Danny and Owen relax in the hot tub, and Todd and Pack try to one-up each other to become Declan's buddy.

Florence and Jess are suspicious of Declan and decides to look around. They find a hidden monitor room with trophy heads on the wall, including Emma. The maid, Martha (Rachel House), is in on it and locks them in. They crawl through an air duct and come crashing down in front of the others. Todd and Pack have stumbled across the monitor room, and everyone believes them when they don't believe the women.

Declan and Martha come in and take them all captive, then lock them up in an outside compound. The millionaire says he's going to make them hunt each other to the death. Danny finally realizes that Declan didn't call a rescue ship, and everyone realizes Chet (George Basil) is missing. Martha goes off to find him, and that's it for this week's 30 minutes.

I did get a few snickers out of the episode. Watching Florence and Jess get shot down at every turn just because they're women--and their increasing frustration over it--was kind of funny. Pack and Todd trying to one-up each other to get into Declan's good graces, not so much. Although it did lead to a good sight gag when Martha tells Florence and Jess that Declan doesn't wash his hands after urinating, and the camera cuts to Declan coming out of the bathroom and shaking Pack's hand.

Oh, FYI, the actress who plays Jess, Ally Maki, also played Mina on Cloak & Dagger. Talk about going from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Overall, the best part of the episode was Chet wasn't in it. The plot moved things along and even without the ominous smiles to the camera Declan did once or twice, we could figure the survivors weren't going to get a break. And to the show's credit, they didn't spend more than an episode trying to conceal the fact. In a 10-episode series, dedicating one episode to dangling rescue in front of the survivors before yanking it away is as much as we want and as little as we can expect.

But there are just weird things that fall flat. Like a sequence where Martha finds Florence and Jess in the monitor room, and yells at them and claps her hands like they're dogs and she expects them to obey. It just goes on and on and on.

The show also can't seem to settle on who the idiot is. For instance, at the end Danny tells Declan he hasn't allowed for the rescue ship coming. The one Declan told them he radioed. Everyone looks at Danny until finally the other shoe drops. So now Todd is smarter than Danny? That's a scary thought. It's almost like they're making Danny the idiot just to pull off a gag. Granted, they're all idiots, but in this case only one of them is an idiot. I could see maybe a few of them getting it: Owen, Florence, and Jess are relatively smart. But Todd, Pack, and Karen are pretty much clueless. Except when the plot requires them not to be.

So it's another week of idiot humor. Nobody is particularly bad in their part: I'm willing to give Rachel House the benefit of the doubt for now, even though the hand-clapping gag mentioned above wasn't a good start. And at 30 minutes, Wrecked at least moves by pretty quickly. It's a quick, disposable half hour that will get you a few giggles. But it's pretty sad when the show's funnier gags (anyone remember the ghost of Danny's dead father showing up?) are in the rearview mirror.

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?d