Zingers! Tonight's episode of Reno 911! was replete with them, the laugh-out-loud killer lines that prove just how funny this show can be: Wiegel saying, "So the next time you're playing nok hockey, just think of me jerking off some crackhead." Big Mike, on his child companion, "He couldn't be a priest if you've seen all the shit he does on a daily basis. He is one randy child!" Guest star Seth Green telling Garcia and Jones, "I don't need you guys playing any kind of grab-ass behind the counter. When customers come in here, I don't need them thinking 'I'm gonna get raped with my burger.'" The Amazon dominatrix saying, "What does kettle corn have to do with a butt plug?" Dangle describing the power wielded by Reno's kettle-corn makers. Pure gold, people.
This season, Reno 911! has inconsistently employed a plot arc; the eight episodes thus far have had varying degrees of an overarching plot line, though there isn't necessarily a correlation between plot and laughs. Tonight's episode proved that; the main story concerned Garcia and Jones going undercover at Burger Cousin to catch a thief who keeps robbing the place. Really, though, it felt like a B-plot, or at least it would have been one on another show. But Seth Green, playing Burger Cousin "manager" Rick (in actuality, he's the recidivist thief), scored some big laughs with his bizarre management style, a combination of ultra-professional drill sergeant and deviant. "I need to guys to work and give the appearance of professionality," he barks at the hapless Jones and Garcia. "Now I'm gonna go masturbate in the back. You guys get to business!"
Tonight started pretty strongly with Junior attempting to rig mailboxes with explosive dye packs, the kind they use in banks.
While the entire cast of Reno 911! seems pretty fearless when it comes to getting covered in various substances, Robert Ben Garant (who plays Travis Junior) is especially bold. In tonight's episode alone, he was practically immersed in paint when the dye packs exploded, and he was covered in cat blood after an unlucky feline blew up in front of him–not to mention the recurring traffic-stop gag, a Reno perennial, where Junior gets knocked out after pulling someone over. (This season, it's a school bus–the driver didn't get him with the bus-mounted stop signs tonight–it was a side door.) You could see the dye-pack gag coming from a mile away; Reno compensates for the obvious punch line by taking it as far as possible. That's another principle of the show: If the joke is obvious, take it over the top. In this case, that meant not just a couple dye packs exploding in Junior's face, but a whole box of them completely coating him in paint. The joke isn't subtle, but the decision-making behind it is more thought out than it may seem. There's some comedy theory to these hi-jinks.
The episode really kicked into gear in the following scene at the briefing room, where Dangle tries to talk the deputies into volunteering for Phantom Limbs (!!), a camp for limbless children who come from Eastern Bloc countries with a land-mine problem. "If they were American kids, I would consider it," Johnson says dismissively. "I'm sorry we're importing our limbless children," Dangle responds. Here's where Garcia and Jones get their Burger Cousin assignment, which they think means getting double pay: their regular cop pay + what Burger Cousin would pay employees. Not true, according to Dangle: When Wiegel went undercover as a prostitute, she gave two handjobs but didn't get to keep the money. Apparently the funds went to a nok-hockey table for the rumpus room, leading to Wiegel's zinger about jerking off a crackhead. (Incidentally, what the hell is nok hockey? Perhaps I'm betraying my Texan upbringing when I say I had to rewind a couple of times to make sure I heard correctly. Google set me straight after I tried to search for "knock hockey," and when I found a nok-hockey game, it made Wiegel's handjobs even more pathetic.)