The very first Saturday Night Live episode I saw was hosted by Hugh Hefner, and his opening monologue was followed by Jane Curtin and Bill Murray in a mock commercial about a soap or skin cleanser that basically was supposed to lobotomize the wife. The sketch ended with Murray accidentally stepping on the end of a rake and clocking himself in the face.
Flashforward almost 40 years and host Jim Carrey parodying Matthew McConaughey's Cadillac ads. While the bit was funny, it struck me that the sketches were making fun of the ads, not the product (which, unlike the lobotomizing soap, was real) and could serve just as much as a commercial as the actual ads. Much of Detroiters' first-season finale, "Quick Rick Mahorn in Dearborn," felt like an ad for the various sponsors.
Tim and Sam's encounter with Carter Page (the Chrysler executive they ran over and left for dead in the pilot) at an awards ceremony distracts them from their work. Meanwhile, former Detroit Pistons star Rick Mahorn seeks to improve his acting after appearing in one of Tim and Sam's ads. As in the pilot, there were several references to Chrysler, as well as to Quicken Loans, Little Caesars Pizza, Doner Advertising, and the Planet Ant Theatre (where Tim Robinson and Sam Richardson performed over a decade ago). For all I know, there might actually be a Downriver Ale; I know Little Caesers and Chrysler exist if for no other reason than they ran actual ads during the episode on top of the fake ads during the awards ceremony. I'd be tempted to compliment the show on keeping the establishing shots to a minimum this week if I didn't suspect that might in part have been due to needing the time to plug the local businesses.
In some ways, the episode seemed to be trying to sum up the season with plenty of callbacks to gags in previous episodes. On the minus side, the episode didn't address any of the (potential) long-term plot threads raised in the course of season 1, such as: Sam's dream board, Tim and Leah's antagonism toward each other, why Tim and Sam put up with Sheila, their receptionist who lets people walk in on them unannounced and the previous week told Tim he wasn't excrement, and whether Tim is married to Sam's sister because he's in love with Sam.
The biggest problem with "Quick Rick Mahorn in Dearborn" is the way the episode tried to split between Sam and Tim and Rick Mahorn. We've seen episodes where the action was split between Sam and Tim, but not between them and some character we've never met before. Presumably, the meat of the episode was Sam and Tim's reaction to what had happened to Carter Page since the pilot, and the attempt to tie Mahorn's quest to become a better actor--outside of promoting Planet Ant's improv classes--even for this show seemed a stretch.
The apex of season 1 for me was "Happy Birthday, Mr. Duvet," "3rd Floor," and "Smilin' Jack." While "Quick Rick Mahorn in Dearborn" wasn't the weakest episode, the flurry of callbacks to previous episodes and the heavy product placement felt like a step backward for the series overall and not a particularly strong climax to the season.
Flashforward almost 40 years and host Jim Carrey parodying Matthew McConaughey's Cadillac ads. While the bit was funny, it struck me that the sketches were making fun of the ads, not the product (which, unlike the lobotomizing soap, was real) and could serve just as much as a commercial as the actual ads. Much of Detroiters' first-season finale, "Quick Rick Mahorn in Dearborn," felt like an ad for the various sponsors.
Tim and Sam's encounter with Carter Page (the Chrysler executive they ran over and left for dead in the pilot) at an awards ceremony distracts them from their work. Meanwhile, former Detroit Pistons star Rick Mahorn seeks to improve his acting after appearing in one of Tim and Sam's ads. As in the pilot, there were several references to Chrysler, as well as to Quicken Loans, Little Caesars Pizza, Doner Advertising, and the Planet Ant Theatre (where Tim Robinson and Sam Richardson performed over a decade ago). For all I know, there might actually be a Downriver Ale; I know Little Caesers and Chrysler exist if for no other reason than they ran actual ads during the episode on top of the fake ads during the awards ceremony. I'd be tempted to compliment the show on keeping the establishing shots to a minimum this week if I didn't suspect that might in part have been due to needing the time to plug the local businesses.
In some ways, the episode seemed to be trying to sum up the season with plenty of callbacks to gags in previous episodes. On the minus side, the episode didn't address any of the (potential) long-term plot threads raised in the course of season 1, such as: Sam's dream board, Tim and Leah's antagonism toward each other, why Tim and Sam put up with Sheila, their receptionist who lets people walk in on them unannounced and the previous week told Tim he wasn't excrement, and whether Tim is married to Sam's sister because he's in love with Sam.
The biggest problem with "Quick Rick Mahorn in Dearborn" is the way the episode tried to split between Sam and Tim and Rick Mahorn. We've seen episodes where the action was split between Sam and Tim, but not between them and some character we've never met before. Presumably, the meat of the episode was Sam and Tim's reaction to what had happened to Carter Page since the pilot, and the attempt to tie Mahorn's quest to become a better actor--outside of promoting Planet Ant's improv classes--even for this show seemed a stretch.
The apex of season 1 for me was "Happy Birthday, Mr. Duvet," "3rd Floor," and "Smilin' Jack." While "Quick Rick Mahorn in Dearborn" wasn't the weakest episode, the flurry of callbacks to previous episodes and the heavy product placement felt like a step backward for the series overall and not a particularly strong climax to the season.
