Last year, I told anybody who would listen that FXX’s Dave didn’t exactly start off rough, but the early episodes were plagued, intentionally or otherwise, by a distancing immaturity — and that the fifth episode, “Hype Man,” was a pivot episode.
I pondered the Rosetta Stone idea a lot watching the first five episodes of the new Dave season, with the awareness that I wasn’t individually blown away by any one single episode like I was with “Hype Man.” Instead, I was collectively impressed with how well the new season maintains its creative momentum.
If I had to ding Dave for any one particular element, it’s that the show still doesn’t have a clue what to do with this character, even though Ko is a completely admirable piece of the ensemble whenever she’s allowed to participate.
Appropriation and the matter of where Lil Dicky does and doesn’t see his place in the musical and racial landscape were key components in the first season, and I think it’s something Lee Sung Jin illustrates clearly and smartly in the premiere, playing off Western misunderstandings of the global K-Pop phenomenon more than joking about the global phenomenon.
The third episode, featuring the return of Dave’s friend and real-life super-producer Benny Blanco takes this to an extreme, as Dave and Benny’s work-avoiding, puerile gags escalate into weirdly graphic homosocial hijinks I’m pretty sure you’ve never seen before on basic cable.
In the same way, Dave as a show can wallow in the low-brow because Burd has a YouTube/online fanbase that really wants or needs nothing more than variations on jokes about his genitals, and if the series wants to reach for shockingly sad or serious beats here and there, that’s the bonus.
I guess what I’m saying is that Dave is a show you can watch for the jokes about misshapen penises, cystic acne and a bar mitzvah party where Dave gives some impressionable kids some very questionable advice, and maybe you’ll accidentally notice the musings on masculine insecurity and the hollow neediness of celebrity.