Rooster is designed to be The Steve Carell Show. It hinges on the actor’s charm, which he delivers plenty of, but Greg’s not the only compelling Russo in this New England town. Katie’s portrayer, Charly Clive, has slowly emerged as the secret weapon. So it’s nice that season one’s penultimate episode gives the actor more room to dig into different aspects of Katie as she deals with an existential crisis. Her storyline here helps Rooster tighten its pacing, which has been all over the place when you think about how it’s already been an entire semester since Greg became Ludlow’s writer-in-residence. The HBO series suffers from the streaming curse. That is, it’s not a 22-episode sitcom that delivers delightful filler episodes that provide necessary context for who these characters are.
With only 10 half-hour installments, Rooster tries to be both a cozy comfort comedy and an infrequently emotional drama about the challenges of starting over. Throw in the wacky situational humor, like Archie’s horny students or everything to do with Cristle, and the show comes across as scattered. Episode nine continues to mix these ingredients into an uneven smoothie, but Katie ends up as the saving grace. That’s because Rooster allows her to finally, briefly, reflect on her life beyond Archie. Who is she as a person, and what does she want out of her career? Her romantic life might be stalled now that Archie has chosen to stay with Sunny, but her professional ambitions don’t have to be. It sends Katie, who finds out she’s ranked as “Ludlow’s Fourth Hottest Professor,” down a complicated path with her parents.
Everything looks fine when the episode picks up. She’s trying to get past her heartbreak with support from Greg and Elizabeth (returning guest star Connie Britton), who is in Boston for a work meeting. She also decides to apply for a fast track toward tenure, with support from Dylan, who tells Katie to pursue this even if it could take up to five years for her to get it. Lunch with her mom goes well, too, because Elizabeth encourages Katie’s dreams. It isn’t until later, when Walt approves of her tenure and claims it’ll be done in a year, that alarm bells go off for Katie. Why would Ludlow make an exception for her, considering she burned down faculty housing not too long ago and was almost fired?
That’s when it hits her that an influential Elizabeth, who donated a ton of money to the college and has a student center named after her, likely strong-armed Walt into it. And to her credit, her mom doesn’t deny it at all. In fact, she refuses to apologize for helping her daughter out. Things get worse when Elizabeth accidentally reveals that she is also the reason Katie was hired in the first place. How else would an inexperienced 29-year-old get a full professorship at a liberal arts institute? Elizabeth is right in assuming that, but she doesn’t exactly say it in a comforting way. She also can’t grasp why Katie, who has just found out that she didn’t get this coveted job on her own merit, is hurt. Elizabeth also ends up revealing that it was Greg’s idea for his wife to get Katie the gig in the first place, which further shatters Katie’s self-confidence.
I like that this challenges Katie’s relationship with the two people closest to her, and makes her question her purpose. As she tells Greg when she confronts him, if he hadn’t made her stay at Ludlow at the start of the semester, she would’ve gotten away from this tiny place and away from Archie’s shenanigans. She could’ve gotten a fresh start outside her comfort zone, just like Greg did when he settled into his role on campus. This pivotal conversation lets Clive tap into Katie’s emotional side, giving the character a lot more depth. As happy as I was to see Katie stand up for herself, she did have me rolling my eyes by the end.
While drowning her sorrows by eating pies at the diner, she runs into Archie, who is facing a career dilemma of his own. The book draft he sent (while suffering from writer’s block, under a looming deadline, and, seemingly, while high on cocaine) has unsurprisingly turned out to be a flop. His publisher has informed him that they won’t be moving forward with it. And while Sunny wasn’t necessarily able to comfort him, Katie does exactly that, reminding him that he’s a persuasive guy who makes things happen for him. I know I’ve complained a lot about Archie’s characterization here, and I’ll stand by it, but I can’t deny that Phil Dunster does have the ability to make his jerk characters be appealing when he wants them to be. Plus, Dunster and Clive do have chemistry. Still, I was yelling at Katie because she’s swayed by the speech he wrote to woo her back. She wants to make her own mistakes now, so she gives in, kisses him, and says the ball is in his court on whether or not they should get back together. Ugh.
The timing is awful because Archie knows Sunny has offered to turn down her dream job in New York City to stay with him, so they can raise their baby together instead of trying out long distance. Plus, when Sunny admits this to Walt, he gives her solid advice: to make sure that Archie is as committed to her as she is to him, which we all know he isn’t. This dragged-out arc of Sunny in denial about her man better get resolved by next week’s finale, because in season two, I really want to see her storyline explored outside of his bubble. It’s also why I think Katie’s arc in this episode works, even if it turns out all roads lead to Archie anyway.
As for Greg, he spends this episode coaching Ludlow’s dejected hockey team, who have a match coming up with the more talented athletes of Pruitt. He even reaches out to the college’s volatile former coach, Jake (Scott MacArthur), to come and give the team a push. But Jake, who is still in a recovery program, only gets the players all riled up by making them angry. It leads to the game turning weirdly violent, but it’s fine because Ludlow wins the match anyway. It’s good news because, if not, the board was planning to cut the hockey team entirely. Greg is put on a pedestal once more. His writer-in-residence gig might be wrapping up in a week, but with Jake not ready to return to work, maybe Greg will have a whole new job when Rooster returns for season two.
Stray observations
- • I’m bummed that the show doesn’t know what to do with Robby Hoffman. She repeatedly pops into every episode as Mo and makes a passing remark about how much Archie sucks. Come on, give Hoffman more to do!
- • Ditto for Scott MacArthur. At least Netflix’s Running Point knows what to do with the actor.
- • So, Jake and Cristle are about to be the show’s next new couple, huh?
- • Katie: “I can be fun when I want to. I just often don’t want to.”
- • Who else thought it was totally against character for Elizabeth to bemoan the fact that Greg has started to properly move on? It contradicts everything her character has been built up to be.
- • My one wish for the finale next week is for someone, anyone, to burn down Walt’s sauna. Wouldn’t that be a full circle moment for a season that began with Katie setting fire to Archie’s house?
Saloni Gajjar is The A.V. Club‘s TV critic.
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