Bent TV Episode Recap

Photo: Courtesy of NBC; Photo: Darren Michales/Warner Bros; Photo: Via Sonja Flemming/CBS

For our weekly TV recap (fellow couch potatoes, this one's for you), we had our resident boob-tube addict Lauren Le Vine break down the week's TV happenings in a format you're all familiar with: Hump, Marry, or Kill. Ahead, she talks about the moments that led to her subsequent lust, love, and hatred for three of the characters from your favorite shows.

Hump: On Wednesday night at 9 p.m., if you weren't watching a Modern Family re-run or Criminal Minds (hi, Matthew Gray Gubler!) like the rest of the world, you were watching NBC's newest sitcom, Bent. Bent stars Amanda Peet as a ~~woman named Jack, and Ivan Sergei as a man named “Jill”~~ as an uptight lawyer whose [extremely recent] ex-husband is in prison for insider trading. In an effort to get a fresh start (no, this show is not GCB, although it sounds just like it), Peet moved to Venice, California. She hires a contractor named Pete Riggins (David Walton) — despite his surfer-stoner dude demeanor — to redo her house. Apparently, this is the entire premise of the show: Will they or won’t they?

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First of all, how dare NBC allow another character named Riggins so soon after the end of Friday Night Lights? Secondly, not only is Walton’s character named Riggins, Landry from Friday Night Lights is ON Bent. You can’t make me subconsciously like a show by envoking FNL, NBC. That’s cheating.

That diatribe aside, David Walton is super-cute, and who doesn’t love an actor tasked with pulling
off "sexy contractor?" Plus, his dad is played by Jeffrey "George Bluth" Tambor. We could talk about the
Arrested Development movie over breakfast the next morning!

Marry: Laurie (Busy Philipps) on Cougar Town. Well, not really marry so much as somehow gain access to her never-ending collection of brightly colored lipsticks and glosses, and her never-ending parade of neon clothing.

Kill: 2 Broke Girls is a big, sad stereotype — Max (Kat Dennings) uses every opportunity to get in a rape or battered-woman joke; Han is basically Long Duck Dong from 16 Candles all grown up and running a diner; And sometimes, they try to pass off Nick Zano as a hipster-bartender-slash-guerilla-street-artist. (Remember when he was named JPEG in the first episode? People, don’t forget.)

If I had to name just the most egregious offender of the bunch, however, I’d definitely pick Oleg. The
smarmy, stereotypical Russian cook’s body hair alone is enough to garner the diner an F from the Health
Department. He also goes head-to-head with Max in each episode when it comes to his “insert disgusting
sexual comment here” “jokes.” In fact, if he could read that last sentence, he’d have a few things to say
about going head-to-head with Max. Do svidaniya, Oleg.

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