This wasn’t the time to make some big political speech. Today was supposed to be about me. Not you.
Well, it was bound to happen. The show did go off the rails with this one, which really pains me to say. One cool thing about the show is some of the guest directors they get and Nichole Holofcener, who’s made some really great movies, does this one which makes it doubly painful to pan this one. But the show really just sledgehammers this one. Amy can’t get along with her own mother, but she’s also championing the plight of this immigrant mother and then she decides to make a big speech about it at a baby shower for her ex-assistant, Krista, thereby ruining things for a yet third mother and it’s . . . yeah, it’s not good. I will say the baby shower sequence is good. I don’t think I’ve mentioned Sarah Burns yet, who plays Krista, but she’s particularly good in this episode; she’s still TRYING to be Amy’s friend, but regrets it every time she lets her in, which is a great character dynamic. Also popping up at the baby shower is Riki Lindhome, another wonderful comedian I love from the world of podcasts (and movies like Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing and The Last House on the Left remake). Clearly somebody on this show is a comedy nerd and I love it. But still, this is a real let-down. 2 stars.
tl;dr – show goes off the rails with a preachy episode that sledgehammers its points home; it was bound to happen, unfortunately. 2 stars.