Men of a Certain Age-"The Pickup"

Joe, Owen, and Melissa celebrate Terry's Birthday
Credit: TNT

My review of tonight's episode of Men of a Certain Age is after the jump.

While watching tonight's episode, it seemed like every character on the show is falling deeper and deeper into the abyss of their problems. Joe is falling deeper into gambling, Owen is having major trouble with the dealership, and Terry is trying to move on after losing Erin. This episode was an episode that shows do when they are building up their ongoing stories, essentially a chess board episode. It was setting up all of the pieces just so that they could blow at any second. 

Terry hit rock bottom in this episode. He's not showing up to work, when he does he looks like a slob, he smokes weed, and he turns 50. Everything that happened to him was exemplified because he turned 50. This causes some kind of dramatic reaction was probably made bigger because he turned 50 in the episode. Like I said in last week's review, Terry was never the most adult of the three leads and when his life fell apart, he was bound to act rashly. And that's exactly what he did. Scott Bakula sold the hell out of the plotline, but it didn't need his help. The plot portrayed a realistic meltdown.

Joe is continuing to drop into the depths of gambling. I think this is a very good plot for the show but not for the character. Joe getting sucked into gambling again while trying to help Manfro is great television. The show does it in a way that is not too subtle, but not blatantly obvious at the same time. It lets us make the connection ourselves rather then telling us that Joe is gambling again. But this is going to be a disaster for Joe as a person. He's going to ruin his chance at the senior tour. I don't want Joe to make the wrong decisions and ruin his life like this. It's horrible for his character, yet I want to see more. 

Owen continues to have troubles with the dealership. They didn't do too much to move along this plotline this week. Owen is mostly dealing with Terry's meltdown both at his party and at work. But they did do some small advancements. They had the owner of the other dealership come in to cause some trouble and hint that the show isn't done with the idea that the other dealership will purchase Thoreau Chevrolet. The advancement at the end has the potential to do some major damage. Marcus quits the dealership, presumably going to work for the other guy. I'm interested to see how that plays out over the next few episodes. 

Some other thoughts:

• Again, the Sonia plotline didn't do very much for me. It was fun to watch Joe and Sonia watch Albert's band perform, but it didn't do anything more for me.
• The 50th birthday party scene was a very good scene. It was a good example of how well this cast works together.

Overall, this was a very good episode of the show. It was entertaining to see the chess pieces be moved around while we wait for everything to come to a head in four episodes.

What did everyone else think?