Review: The Other Two, "Cary Watches People Watch His Movie" & "Brooke Drives an Armpit Across America" | Season 3, Episodes 1 & 2

Television's most ridiculous and emotionally devastating comedy finally returns

Photo: HBO Max

Welcome to Episodic Medium’s weekly coverage of The Other Two, which debuted its third season on HBO Max with a two-episode premiere, with two episodes a week to follow. As always, the first review is available to all, but subsequent reviews will only be available to paid subscribers. You can find out more on our About Page.

“I just need to live my life.”

At the end of “Brooke Drives an Armpit Across America,” Cary stumbles into a fantasy that he dismissed earlier in the episode. At that time, he was racing across the city to do demeaning press for his role as the third lead in the long-delayed Night Nurse, unaware that it was actually a mental health facility specializing in celebrity derangement. And in between, he was taken in by a Kompromat scheme where he believed he was in Rolling Stone as “The Next James Dean” and in a Calvin Klein spread. And so when a handsome young romantic reappears and just wants to enjoy cotton candy, hold hands, and break into an unlocked pool, Cary is in a vulnerable place, and as he screams at the bottom of the pool he realizes that he’s too wrapped up in fame and just needs to focus on existing as a person.

And then Curtis reveals he actually had an encounter with a method actor from a Love, Victor spinoff, and suddenly Cary’s takeaway from the situation is that what he actually needs is another role to restart this vicious cycle all over again.

What has always struck me about The Other Two is that it has only grown increasingly absurd with each passing season, continually escalating its satirical scale, but in the process it has also been unflinchingly real about these characters and their dissatisfaction with their life. Initially, the show was at least moderately concerned with making ends meet, but Pat’s continued ascent into fame and fortune has removed any financial barriers. Cary isn’t having to balance his auditions with a restaurant job; Brooke isn’t sleeping in the apartments she’s selling. But because of who they are, the “success” they’ve achieved isn’t actually solving the existential problems they created for themselves, on any level.

All of this is to say that The Other Two wastes no time deploying its particular brand of whiplash, jumping between throwaway jokes revealing the depraved depths of its mirror media industry and scenes where you just feel enormously sad for these people. When “Cary Watches People Watch His Movie” begins, it seems like things are finally turning around: Night Nurse is coming out, finally, and Brooke and Lance are engaged, planning to honeymoon somewhere that isn’t anti-gay (if they can find somewhere good that isn’t). But the problem is that in both situations, there’s no “next step.” By the beginning of the second episode, Cary has driven his co-starring turn in Night Nurse into the ground so much that people are literally deleting Instagram to avoid his spam, while Brooke is sabotaging her relationship and driving a thumb drive across the country to prove her job is important because she’s insecure about Lance’s new hero status as a nurse…oh, and because she is deeply unhappy.

Photo: HBO Max

Nothing about Cary and Brooke’s situation should be relatable, given the privilege they hold and the bonkers world they live in, but the show has always grounded itself in the very simple struggle these characters face living in their own lives. Brooke is an inherently selfish person, yes, but her frustration with the hero worship for frontline workers is less about wanting the attention herself, and more about experiencing anyone’s admiration for others as a judgment on her lack of achievement. With Josh Segarra officially joining the cast, the show is going to need to unpack how their relationship was better for her when he was unsuccessful, because it meant her inferiority complex wasn’t on alert. She can’t invite COVID truthers who were at the insurrection to every party, and she can’t handle the fallout from the reveal that she fought off the advances of GQ’s fake truckers and fake cops for a decoy armpit photo (gosh, this really sounds insane when you write it out, huh?).

However, to Brooke’s credit, she actually does something about it. She quits her job, realizing that whatever she needs from life isn’t going to be found within the show’s version of the media industry. It won’t solve all of her problems—Lance is happy to see her return, but that relationship is still built on her insecurities, and his good-natured understanding will need to break eventually. There’s also the fact that Brooke latching onto Chase’s career was a solution to her own aimless existence, and returning to that now is only going to exacerbate her existential struggles. But leaving a job that wasn’t fulfilling was at least a first step, acknowledging a change is needed even if the path remains bleak ahead.

But Cary doesn’t learn this lesson at all. It would have been easy for the writers to turn Night Nurse into a flop, forcing Cary to watch his friends and family pretend to enjoy the private screening they’re forced into when the theater is sold and becomes a Starbucks. But by all accounts Night Nurse was a solid movie, and what we saw of the tweets he was obsessively scrolling during the first episode’s credits even seemed to suggest people liked his performance in it. Beyond the theater being sold out from under the premiere, there’s no actual satire in the production or release of Night Nurse: although exaggerated for effect, the flashbacks to COVID production are actually pretty bleakly realistic, and nothing we see of the movie itself seems unrealistic other than the idea of a film of its scale being released by a major studio like Sony. The problem is that Cary is incapable of gaining perspective on what he was a part of, spinning it into a career-making opportunity instead of what it is: a solid start to a career that won’t exist if he never stops posting about it.

Photo: HBO Max

His solution isn’t to reorder his priorities: it’s just to be try to appear in another movie, with the hopes that this one will solve his need for validation. Brandon Scott Jones has also been added to the main cast, and I’m excited to see how Curtis’ consistent presence in Cary’s life plays out. The most telling moment here for me is when the publicist for the movie tells Cary he’s above “Age Net Worth Feet,” a job that Curtis inherited from Cary. When Cary tells him this after Cary’s mock interview ahead of the Reese’s Pieces-sponsored premiere at Pat’s mansion, you can see the way it hurts Curtis, and it’s telling how Cary’s obsession with press pulls him away from Curtis trying to involve him in rituals of reality TV viewing with real, actual friends [he met on Grindr but didn’t connect with in that way]. Curtis seems content with his version of being in the industry, and Cary’s displeasure with even greater fame (and his mother’s safety net that can wipe away $100,000 in blackmail) is no doubt going to further complicate what is probably Cary’s only meaningful adult friendship.

The show’s ability to bury these meaningful, human stories within such broad satire remains an enormous accomplishment. Pat’s story is a good example of this, as she’s surrounded by absolute chaos: the hilarious visual of the mirror popping out of the security detail, the delight at her newfound superpower to attract sponsors, the rapid fire lifestyle TV pitches (my favorite was Junk Drawer Rehab with David Archuleta), Streeter moving the TikTok family he bought(?) into the mansion, etc. But even in only a few scenes, we see how the woman who burnt out at the end of last season has been stranded in a life of total lockdown, unable to enjoy the simple experience of being in the world. Her stroll around the pool that ends the second episode is deeply sad, and showcases how well the show has turned even its most aloof and disconnected character into an insightful window into human sadness.

Again, to reiterate, she’s an extremely sad billionaire, and it’s striking that the show has maintained its resonance even as the situations involved have become so far removed from our lived reality (and not just because of the absurdity). There’s not as much here for Streeter or Chase, beyond the unhinged lust the former has for the latter as he approaches adulthood, but even there the anxieties Chase emphasizes about Streeter abandoning him are rooted in the loss of his father, and I’m excited to see where Chase—who is now somewhat removed from the engine of the show’s satire—fits into what the show has planned. The show’s chaos engine approach to satire means the show could go in any number of different directions as it plays out—I’ve only seen these first two episodes, and the uncertainty of what corners of culture they intend to explore exists alongside a clarity of vision with regard to the core characters and their respective journeys.

Beyond anything else, these episodes of The Other Two made me laugh a lot and also made me deeply sad, which is the spot the show landed in its second season, and which continues to be a triumph. I’m thrilled to have it back, and anxious to see what depths it takes both us and its characters to as it deconstructs our modern mediated lives better than nearly any other show out there.

Stray observations

• Back in season one, I—among others—took issue with Cary’s suggestion that Survivor was for straight people, which I took personally as a queer person who knows lots of other queer people who watch Survivor. At the time, co-creator Chris Kelly (who co-wrote and directed both episodes this week) said that as a queer person who watches Survivor, he knew Cary was wrong, but it was an example of him being flawed. I didn’t buy that as a justifiable reason for spreading misinformation, so I am please to see Kelly do penance by having Cary face his own ignorance in this episode, alongside a cameo from former Survivor contestant Andrea Boehlke as the Buzzfeed red carpet reporter. I accept his apology.

• “My shift today was brutal. A baby died”—I loved this text from Lance even more after he revealed the baby was miraculously revived.

• “Gripping. Unflinching. Less than 90 minutes”—okay, this was the one part of the Night Nurse release that was somewhat of a parody, but honestly the fastest way to get me to watch a movie is telling me it’s under 90 minutes, so I wish this was more realistic. 

• Look, I am who I am, so I was slightly bothered that they talked about the movie being on “VOD” but then pulled up Hulu and HBO Max, which are not really how a movie would be released on VOD (which is usually a purchase/rental period before a streaming release).

• There wasn’t anything profound in Streeter and Brooke both farting as soon as they walked in the door, but I liked it as a way to link their respective struggles to find purpose in life, and because farts are funny.

• I honestly hadn’t put together that Ali Ahn, who I’ve been watching in Netflix’s The Diplomat, was Brooke’s real estate friend Jo, so he return here as a “The Insurrection wasn’t racist, I was with them, let me talk to you about Fauci’s emails” person was more delightful than it sounds when you type it out like that.

• However, I don’t know that I fully bought the idea of Pitsy Pyle ending up a sign language interpreter, but I get that they were gagging at the chance to bring Kate Berlant back, and it did a decent job of really exaggerating Brooke’s sense of not having a purpose in a world where we’re actively celebrating people who “do good.”

• Okay, it was honestly only when taking notes that I realized that when Streeter insisted he didn’t bring 2000 bees to the premiere, he brought 2000 clients, he literally meant the bees were his clients. They just dropped that in there! I have so many questions.

• Look, I knew “The One With All The Nurses” wasn’t a real Friends episode, but I still Googled it just to make absolutely certain, okay? There were a lot of episodes!

• While Night Nurse may not play like a parody, I feel like when Wind Weaver makes its perfectly poorly timed appearance the same may not be true, at least based on Cary’s description. But regardless, there’s no way Chekhov’s Croatian Fantasy Series doesn’t return.

• I know there’s lots of unlocked swimming pool scenes to choose from, but in context my mind went immediately to Skam, so I wonder if Kelly and co-creator Sarah Schneider also went through a Skam phase.

• Welcome to Episodic Medium’s coverage of The Other Two’s third season! This was on the initial list of shows I said I would be covering when this launched as a solo effort early in 2022 when I thought this show might return last fall, so I’m thrilled to now be writing about it to a much wider audience than I anticipated. Reviews will post sometime on Thursday afternoons, and I’m excited to go on this journey of pop culture minutiae and devastating emotional fallout with you all as the month progresses. I hope you’ll consider subscribing to join the conversation, and supporting our reviews and this and other shows as the summer progresses.