This review contains spoilers.
1.3 Club Code
Another week, another lacklustre misadventure peeled more or less wholesale from the UK series. Three episodes in, MTV’s The Inbetweeners is yet to shake off its limpet-like attachment to its source material, and until that happens, anyone who’s seen the original may as well steer clear.
At this point in the UK series, the boys went off to seek Jay’s promise of Gomorrean delights at the Caravan Club, an institution so unmatchably part of English culture it may well prove untranslatable for MTV. US trailer parks have altogether different connotations than the heavily regulated, wipe-clean picnic table and red fire bucket little Englander world of the Caravan Club.
A much easier UK-to-US corollary is to be found in a different kind of club, one of the electro music ‘n’ meat market variety. And so it’s from season two’s A Night Out In London that Club Code borrows its story and the vast majority of its script.
Looking to improve their social standing in the corridors of Grove High, the quartet follows Carly and friends to a club from where Neil is expelled for indecent exposure, Jay pulls a Chief Bromden from One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest in the toilets, and Simon wears bum-piss shoes (that compound adjective one of the few comedy debts we genuinely owe to the US translation - they’re called tramps back in the UK).
Prior to the club outing, an attempt to get served underage at a bowling alley afforded the episode a few laughs and served up a decent slice of Americana at the same time. Neil’s guileless acceptance of being groomed by potential child molesters (repeated from episode one) is the best joke the writers have come up with for the character, who’s still the group’s weakest link.
More repetition - are we really only 3 episodes in? - came with yet another slo-mo hair-flicking and walking shot of the gang, a trick that presumably began life as a gag about how uncool (and thus unsuited for camera-worship of this sort) the guys are, but one that’s already outstayed its welcome.
Something else that’s wearing a little thin is MTV’s keenness to wedge the Simon/Carly unrequited love story into every episode, a choice that seems to be aimed at getting its audience to invest emotionally in a Ross and Rachel-style dynamic. All three of the US episodes so far have used Carli as the bait Simon waddles after, bringing his hard-up friends along for the ride. As lovely as Alex Frnka is, and as decent a Simon as Bubba Lewis makes (doesn’t necessarily strike you as a Bubba, that actor, does he?), there’s barely a gram of character between them, so putting the romance front and centre just seems misjudged.
We’re only a quarter of the way through this twelve-episode series, so there’s still time for an upturn, though for the show’s sake, it needs to happen sooner rather than later.
Read Frances' review of last week's episode, Sunshine Mountain, here.
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