Episode 4 of HIM & HER is ‘The Football’, wherein Steve, Becky and friends try to watch a football match. Well, some of them try. Others are too busy dealing with crazy drama.
Steve had a dream that Becky had sex with her ex – watched by three men. Even though she laughs it off, he still tries to sneak in looks at her text messages to see if she’s been in contact with her ex. But he’s distracted when friends Mike and Barney, father and son, misjudge a throwaway comment (‘black people are fun’) and decide Steve is racist.
Laura doesn’t want to watch the football, so instead tries to tell everyone about a documentary she watched that claimed the 9/11 attacks were a hoax. No one is particularly interested, much to her frustration, but Paul soon turns up with bigger news: he’s just been told he was adopted at birth.
Paul doesn’t take this well. Which is unsurprising because Paul doesn’t take anything well. He even trashed his adoptive parents’ house. Becky and Steve decided that if they were adopted they would milk it for all it’s worth. “I’d at least get a meal out of it,” Steve declares.
Mike and Barney talk strippers and prostitutes while watching the footie and waiting for Barney’s girlfriend to arrive. Steve is more than a little amused; her name is Gaynor ‘Gay’ Allen. Gay seems lovely, if a little overly chirpy, until Mike brings up Steve’s earlier comment. ‘It’s not that black people are fun,’ Gay says. ‘It’s just that white people are so boring!’ Suddenly, Steve isn’t the most racist person in the room.
And then the bathroom door unexpectedly opens to reveal Dan, who’d been in there for the entire episode without anyone even bothering to mention it. A goal is finally scored, the football game ends, and Becky and Steve embrace and kiss.
The Football was, like the preceding three episodes, a slow starter for me. The first half always feel a bit clunky and too mundane and then it slides into a genuinely amusing second half.
There still isn’t much to say about this episode though. Paul’s neuroses were tamped down this week, with everyone trying to shut Laura up before she set him off, which was almost a letdown after his Postman Pat/sausage rolls meltdown last episode.
Mike and Barney were cringeworthy, especially during the stripper conversation. Mike having a bruised face from being punched by a stripper was a nice touch, though. I spent most of the episode trying to decide if they were Steve’s dad and brother or Becky’s. I assume they’re neither, but it would have been nice if that was clarified.
The only real laugh out loud moment of the episode for me was Dan casually wandering out of the bathroom. Considering we had been watching characters move around the flat for almost half an hour, two even mentioning Dan briefly (well, Dan’s wireless internet), that no one bothered to point out his presence was hilarious. The poor guy isn’t just disliked, he’s not even worth acknowledging. It’s a fine line to walk between humor and cruelty, but Him & Her manage to stay on the right side of it most of the time.
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