Form Fetish

From the start, Night Court already had one comic in the cast, the annoying & often-incomprehensible Lacretta (Donna Gurganous), who spews out her lines too fast. But it seems like when the writer's strike ended, every show was sent a memo that they needed to shoehorn *more* b1ack people into their cast. So they let the excellent Kapil Talwalkar (Neil) go, and replaced him with another comic, Nyambi Nyambi (Wyatt), who also is annoying & often-incomprehensible. Then for good measure, they added a third comic, Gary Anthony Williams (Flobert). He at least can speak properly but I don't find him particularly funny. Or necessary. As one reviewer said about his only Season 1 appearance, He "is meant to be quirky and funny. We found his lines to be stupid and his one performance banal." Finally, as another reviewer noted in a first season review: "Did you know that most laugh tracks recycle laughter from audiences from decades ago, even from TV's Golden Age, so chances are we're listening the laughter of dead people." That's the funniest line I've heard connected to the new Night Court!

This is a review for the third episode of the 2nd season of the Night Court revival. This episode is called Form Fetish.

After a horrendous start to this season with two 1/10 episodes, episode 3 raises the bar for the second season. Not very high, mind you. Heck, not even to the halfway Mark but at least this time the episode has left the gates and not floundered at the starting line.

Just like with Season one, it is extremely obvious what works and what does not work in each individual episode. In this installment, the main positives here are the performances of John Laroquette and the two actors portraying Linda and Bryant. These three do very good in their roles.

Lesser points of worthy note are the passable script and the reliable performance of Lacretta as Gurgs.

The main negatives here are three very usual culprits. The performances of Melissa Rauch and Olivia de Beaufort are quite weak here. Also, the aforementioned passable script should have been vastly better written than it is.

Don't get me wrong. Some of these jokes landed. This episode was a pleasant sight after those last two disasters. Still, I can only grant this episode a 4/10. Like every episode of the revival, it's messy and this episode was messier than many.

Next time, I will be reviewing the fourth episode of season 2. It is called Just the Fax, Dan. It airs January 16th on NBC. Stay tuned!