'Kidding' Season 2 Episode 2 sees Jeff address his resentments while in Pickle Barrel Falls during anesthesia
One of the many things about Dave Holstein’s ‘Kidding’ that makes one feel a gush of emotions is how the show mixes the dark realities of life with the entirely mesmeric charm of a pure and innocent kids’ program. The lines between them blur so often, it almost feels like magical realism.
‘Up, Down and Everything in Between’, the second episode of ‘Kidding’ Season 2, sees more of this magical realism. When Jeff (Jim Carrey) is anesthetized, he sees a forest grow in the hospital room, complete to the tee with exotic birds and a waterfall -- perhaps what “Pickle Barrel Falls” would really look like. Inside this forest, Jeff finds many of the characters from his internationally popular children’s TV show.
But something wasn’t right.
All of these ‘Sesame Street’-like characters -- Astronotter, Oops, Uke-Larry, Hopscotch the Sasquatch, Ennui Le Triste, Sy the Wide-Eyed Fly, and more -- seemed to be afraid of Jeff. Afraid he would “murder” them the same way he had “murdered” Peter (Justin Kirk). At the end of season 1, an angry Jeff, after he was offered a joint, ran over his wife Jill’s (Judy Greer) new beau, Peter, in a fit of rage. He, however, confessed to the crime and decided to offer half his liver to a critically-injured Peter to make amends.
Even in this absurd scene, the puppets seem to remain in character; one of them announces the word of the day, as they would on the show, as “vehicular manslaughter”. It’s just one of those little details in this tragicomedy series that makes one appreciate the writing a lot. Despite the potential “f****d-up”-ness of the realities, the show’s dark humor never fails to make one chuckle. Like when all the puppets start to run away from Jeff, Ennui Le Triste, the sad French puppet (perhaps a nod to Rachel Bloom’s song ‘Sexy French Depression’), gives him the finger and shouts, “Au revoir, c***sucker. Pardon my French, c***sucker!”
The episode also examines Jeff’s relationship with his father, Sebastian (Frank Langella). In the office (he’s Jeff’s executive producer) and outside, Sebastian features a typically stoic form of masculinity that stands in sharp contrast against that of Jeff’s kind, compassionate (and occasionally fragile) self. This episode explores in a flashback how a young Jeff attempted to walk to Niagara Falls to find his mother (who had left), only to be stopped by Sebastian. Ever a gatekeeper of Jeff’s feelings and emotions, even then Sebastian was cold and rational to the point of being distant as he battled an angry Jeff and took him back home.
Young Jeff’s escape to Niagara Falls expositions old Jeff’s run to escape Pickle Barrell Falls. Even as doctors examine Jeff’s liver on the operating table -- “It’s the most beautiful liver I’ve ever seen” -- the TV host in his hallucination runs into Peter. The latter punches Jeff in the face the moment they see each other while pondering if this was what the afterlife looked like, making one question if this was a shared experience? If it was, it only goes to show how seriously Holstein takes his magical realism.
As Peter’s body starts accepting Jeff’s liver -- seriously, what an excellent metaphor for the former punching the latter till he suddenly could not -- Peter starts to sing even though he clearly doesn’t want to. The musical number is also particularly genius in a way where Peter explains to Jeff how pretending to be happy and cheery all the time while swallowing his feelings led to him exploding and hitting him with a car.
The singing leads Jeff to vocalize a lot of the resentments he’s been holding on to, including one very painful one: He blames Jill for the death of their son Phil.
The episode on another occasion examines Sebastian’s character. In all possible interpretations of the phrase “bad father”, Sebastian checked most of the boxes. This was voiced both by Jill and Jeff’s sister Deirdre (Catherine Keener). But he is not all that bad, at least not in all of Jeff’s memories. When Jeff wakes up post his surgery, Sebastian gives him a bar of chocolate, just like the ones he used to eat as a kid. In a rare moment of compassion, he asks Jeff what he needs. Jeff, visible hazy from the anesthesia, says, “You’re fired.”
‘Kidding’ Season 2 airs Sundays at 10 pm ET only on Showtime.