Ben and Kate review: ‘Reunion’ and ‘Guitar Face’

Upon realising that Ben And Kate aired last week and I didn’t know (and therefore hadn’t reviewed), I just spent the last hour catching up. Two very, very strong episodes, and while last night’s was great – it didn’t seem as amazing as it could have been, when watched in marathon.

“Reunion,” last week’s Thanksgiving episode, was an half-hour where all the stories worked and had emotion to them. Kate trying to work out her ‘thing’ with Will, and confront her high-school bully, was a fantastic little story. Plus, it involved a musical number by Amber Stevens! (from Greek! Oh, how I miss Greek!) BJ held her own in the subplot too.

I’m really coming around to BJ. She’s a writers dream, really. At the end of the episode, where it’s revealed BJ married Ben to keep Kate happy, and the fact she’s from Texas, and just randomly has a weird British accent, it works. She’s insane, her whole life is insane. She’s Barney Stinson. But it works. She’s still grounded to the believable reality of the show.  (Which, I think, is constantly getting farther away from an actual reality, but it works because the show realises the characters are doing extreme things a lot of the time).

Last night’s episode, “Guitar Face,” wasn’t as strong. The plots meandering, if they were really plots, but the episode was reliably funny and little moments like Kate taking sexy apology photos for Will make the episode work just fine.

I’m concerned about how Ben treats Tommy though. We already had one blowout, but now Ben lost Tommy his job. Together they now plan to run a business. Which will likely fail. I just don’t know how much Tommy-abuse I can take!