Josh and Alex have a special thing where they go to the restaurant Medieval Times to celebrate The Cable Guy, and Emily and Bridgette play guitars and sing music together at Solid Grounds, but each pair starts a falling out after one of them has other interests to pursue. Alex is publishing a book Future Viking from 3030, and Emily is too obsessed with photos of Candice to write a new song with Bridgette. After going to Medieval Times alone, Josh finds a lost dog in an alley, The Canine Guy who escaped an evil scientist that created him as an animal-human hybrid experiment! Meredith Breedmore, the evil scientist, comes by to ask Josh if he saw her dog, which he denies, and Pearle recognizes Dog-Boy's van from a cold case. Dog-Boy likes playing with Josh, but he also helps Alex with his Future Viking novel after seeing something in it that other publishers do not see. I really liked the joke when Bridgette said "I'll show you a post!" and Emily's phone bounced off 7 different meaning of posts. The phone hits Al Yankovic, America's only respected comedy songwriter, who settles Emily and Bridgette's argument about family getting in the way of music by telling them they just need to be true to themselves. A bear mauls Weird Al, and more of Meredith's freaky animal-human hybrids run after Bridgette and Emily. Alex and Josh find Dog-Boy at Meredith's lab, but argue over which one of them is more his friend. Meredith Breedmore is making animals who act like humans to make animal movies that improve on CG talking animals. Emily and Bridgette apologize for not getting along before the animals get called over to Meredith's lab by the clap-activated alarm, and Josh and Alex save Dog-Boy by making the most annoying sound from Dumb and Dumber to drive away the other Breedmore animals attacking them. I was pretty disappointed with the punch line that Pearle was only looking for Meredith Breedmore for 5 unpaid parking tickets. While it was a funny sense of misdirection that Pearle was coming after her for a different reason than we thought, I was a bit worried that she may or may not be charged for her animals. Now I am not as worried as I originally was, because in the chance that the courts do find out about her questionable animal services, she might have a point about doing the world a service with real animal actors - especially in regards to the live-action The Lion King and Helen Mirren's When Nature Calls. Rescuing Dog-Boy helps Alex and Josh reconcile their friendship, and gives Bridgette and Emily a new song to compose. While The Canine Guy does not really feel to me like the kind of story that would warrant a full half-hour in Close Enough, it was cool to dive a little deeper into the interpersonal friendships of our four main characters when they have a falling out, and have the Dog-Boy rescue mission bring them back together in an organic way. A lot of the Jim Carrey movie references were funny too, and this episode really made me want to check out Dumb and Dumber, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (which sounds like the kind of detective fit for this plot), and The Cable Guy.
Review of The Canine Guy
