As the regularly scheduled episode of THE MICK resumes, Mickey is looking forward to her morning cigarette and coffee but her niece is smoking her way through a package and has gone through all the coffee. It bears a distinct resemblance to the pilot episode as aunt and niece bond over sarcasm and cigarettes. The scene wasn’t that impressive then and it’s not especially clever now. Other than to indicate the strong supporting role of cigarettes throughout the rest of the episode. Luckily, the irate neighbor from the pilot episode shows up to interrupt the back and forth and get things going.
The lady that ended up tasered is at the door in a robe with a very disheveled young Ben in tow and complaints that he was filming her in the shower. Mickey gets rid of her with a smart remark and a door slam but she does wonder what Ben was doing. Ben explains that he was filming on behalf of his friend Omicron—Mickey and niece Sabrina assume Omicron is an invisible friend and the result of the recent tumult in Ben’s life—similar to eating car keys perhaps?—but they are more concerned about the cigarettes they find in Ben’s possession and decide that they are responsible for setting a bad example. It’s somehow a leap to make that assumption but it sets up the foundation for the rest of the episode, even if it is a shaky start.
The middle child decides that Mickey and Sabrina are indeed terrible role models and vows to have Ben start looking up to him. Alba chimes in and reveals that she has been smoking since she was four because in Guatemala they pass out cigarettes to kids like candy. She now relies on patches and encourages Mickey and Sabrina to follow suit.
So Mickey and Sabrina head to young Ben’s room to give him a highly half-hearted speech about why smoking is bad. It’s unlikely because the ladies both seem too selfish to remember to give Ben any kind of advice—other than the reminder to shower. After they’ve left the room, they decide that they really should stop smoking. But of course, that is easier said than done and so they meet up for a late night smoke on the balcony, where they end up become smoking buddies just in time to stop. And also just in time to carelessly toss their butts over the fence into what looks to be a pile of leaves. Because big fires never result from small cigarettes, right?
The next morning the dynamic duo are going for a run because running after a night of chain smoking is fine and they do mention puking from their diminished lung capacity but they are both so freakishly thin and fit that it seems likely they are regular runners, smoking or not. So the result of their night of debauchery turns out to be that they burned down the cranky neighbor lady’s guesthouse. The neighbor naturally blames Ben because she’s caught the little guy behaving badly and running around with smokes before. The fire marshal questions Ben after he’s gotten scraped up from falling off his bike after Chip tries to teach him. He’s also unknowingly patched him up with nicotine patches from Alba’s stash, so Ben is behaving even more oddly than usual when he is questioned. Luckily, Omicron is around to set everything straight.
After going to elaborate lengths to hide their smoke session, Alba stumbles in on Sabrina and Mickey in the bathroom and takes several drags of her own, mumbling in nicotine bliss about needing a random guy to pin everything on when Chip bursts in to say that Ben is acting extra weird and heading to the woods—but not before wishing that everyone in the room gets cancer.
Once the family heads into the woods, they find that Omicron is a real live person living in a treehouse in the wood. Omicron is his last name, not his robot name and he was recently diagnosed with lung cancer and is in the woods to smoke himself to death. He says all this while hacking and whispering through his trachea hole, occasionally holding a device up to his voicebox. He shames them all for not taking care of Ben before agreeing to turn himself in to save Ben from being blamed for the fire. And so the episode ends with a public service announcement that smoking is bad as the vagrant takes one last drag through the hole in his neck—just like the anti-smoking commercial.
Noticeably absent from the chaos is Jimmy, who has turned out to be the best part of any episode. It’s hard to tell if the episodes are airing out of order or there is no order but it does seem odd that the cast constantly rehashes the basic plot episode after episode, when there haven’t been that many. Perhaps it’s to catch up an audience that doesn’t have a DVR or On-demand in order to watch previous events themselves? Whatever the reason for the constant explanations and back and forth with Jimmy, it’s annoying and I hope that eventually we can move on from Ben’s abandonment issues and watch Mickey and her crew get into shenanigans that don’t involve an explanation about the missing parents and their tax evasion. Because at this point, I’m much more interested in where Jimmy has been while the neighborhood was going up in flames.
Season 1, Episode 5 (S01E05)
The Mick airs Tuesdays at 830PM on Fox
Read all of our reviews of The Mick here.
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Carly is a freelance writer that watches too much TV while she writes blogs and articles about lifestyle including travel, food, fashion, beauty, home decor, entertainment, health, fitness and wellness and green living.
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Carly Zinderman | Contributor
