Day One. Shelli (Carla Gugino) is so horny she can’t help but identify with the heroine of popular show Dead Sex. A show so engrossing that the opening band, Lucius, nearly miss their spot later on because they’re watching it too. Add a husband that’s near but still so far away on tour with Tay Tay Swift, a super moon on the horizon, and a cute stagehand that’s there to do all her bidding, well, shake it off Shelli, shake it off.
The Staton-House Band, inspired by Kelly Ann (Imogen Poots) way back in the first episode, have been getting creative with the set list, but the song of songs, “Janine”, has been a pain in the ass all the way through. Dedicated to the old flame that dumped his ass, “Janine” is a song about a muse and young love and all those Dear Diary moments from Christopher House’s idyllic early years as a rock star.
It’s up to Bill (Luke Wilson) to do the dirty work and suggest not singing it because she’s coming to the show. After a conversation that clearly tells us he’s still not at all over her, Christopher accedes to complimentary tickets but no backstage pass. He might still be singing his song, but he needs his special Gram Parsons jacket to perform — his security blanket against the frenemy that’s their hometown — an ongoing theme that neatly passes on to Bill, who puts himself in charge of fetching the jacket.
Bill has to get the jacket from his old storage unit, which is really his former garage that now belongs solely to his ex. He takes off with a quick word to Shelli, who naturally thinks he’s going to fall off the wagon because family means never having to face anything sober. She’s too randy to dwell on it, however, because she has a million things to do, as illustrated by the way she dumps everything on Reg (Rafe Spall). Reg is in charge of minding the real Janine (Joy Williams). He, of course, falls in love with her, because apparently no man can resist the allure of the basic bitch, which is what honestly most muses are. They’re fascinating to the ones in thrall to them, but to the outside, non-infatuated world, they’re just people. Janine is exactly that, although Reg is super mooning out.
On the topic of Reg and Regging hormones, everyone’s convinced he and Kelly Ann are hooking up and she is Just. So. Furious. How dare people make assumptions about obvious things? Reg is too busy to entertain rumors, though, because he’s also minding Mike Finger (Ely Henry), the non-restraining order needed fan that’s been chronicling the band since their inception. Unlike the stalker who’s still boffing the bassist — both of whom are such nonentities that I can’t remember their names — Mike’s the sensible sort of fan who knows the insignificant details but also feel you should never meet your heroes.
While Reg wants to use Mike’s collection and dedication to squeeze a box set that’ll earn them all more money, we finally get to see the pleasantly insane side of fandom, rather than the upsetting one While the band’s families stuff their faces and exploit their connections to the limit — as do the VIP meet-and-greeters — Mike just take it all in. Kelly Ann is whiningly in charge of the VIPs because heaven help the crew person who has to do something that’s not in their job description. Mike, however, grounds her by turning the negative, exploitative grubbiness into something akin to a miracle. All these people and their connections and the way they interacted and influenced each other led to the creation of the band and music they love. Everything had to align to be just so. The way the crew and band see it, family can be a burden, but where would they be without them?
Speaking of alignment, Shelli keeps obsessively calling who we assume is her husband because she needs it, so help her loins she does. He’s not even in space anymore, so anywhere in relation is close enough to meet up, let alone their hometown. Beyond that, she’s worried something may have happened to him. Her hometown issues come from her big sister, who always made her feel like the lesser sibling.
Obsessing over whether she’ll show up would’ve been a nice subplot to the whole family theme, but Shelli’s damn hormones overshadow it. We do get some sibling rivalry when Kelly Ann’s twin brother (Colson Barker) calls her out on being an immature high schooler (I’m paraphrasing). Kelly Ann still thinks she’s mad because everyone believes she’s with Reg, but honestly, the only person who cares if they do is Kelli Ann; she doesn’t want those connections and attachments, as they just bring trouble. Kelli Ann’s personal battle is with herself, not with a lover or a friend or a family member, and you can’t keep being distant when you literally live in other peoples’ filth. (Cue Rick the bassist pissing on her in his OD-induced coma.)
While Mike and Janine embody the loosest interpretations of friends and family in the literal sense, they epitomize the roles the rest of the world plays in the realm of a famous band. This episode isn’t so much about the band and the crew’s relationships with the normies, but our personal connection to them. Instead of more passionate preaching about the nuances of loving music and a particular band that so often make the characters seem like monologuing comic villains, we get the two ends of the adoration spectrum (the muse and the fanboy) presented in their simplest, realest forms. This is the closest the show has ever come both to reality and to portraying it in a way that’s still a fantasy: Reg mooning over girl-next-farm Janine (she raises horses now), and Mike, with his reluctance to humanize the people he’s spent his life documenting. This is family, the real extended family of a band. From the groupie to the guitar tech, they have each other’s backs, even if they’re nude sometimes.
Speaking of nudity, Bill’s still on his youth quest, reliving his glory days on the floor of his garage, but still realizing he was a supreme piece of shit back in the day. His ex heads him off when she thinks he’s there to make amends and he promises he isn’t. After fetching the famous jacket and seeing the debris from his life with the Staton-House Band, though, he faces her to make his apologies in a sincere, non-12 step way that hints at a possible acceptance. He’s not the young, drunk stallion anymore. but he hasn’t been gelded.
In a twist that actually fooled me, although probably not viewers that were watching more attentively, it turns out Shelli hasn’t been calling her husband all episode long: it was Bill. She was worried because friends and family and drinking and oops, their clothes fell off. Yes, they finally have sex. Blame it on the moon, or the fact that nobody particularly cared about their sexual tension, so might as well go for it before it really dragged on. Keep your friends close, and your family even closer.
Not sure if there’s going to be a Day Two in Denver.