Waitress Alice is a nightmare dressed like a daydream. In between doing impressions of Cartman and getting Dev to take intense Vines of her, she steals another girl’s coat at the Father John Misty show ‘cuz she’s bananas like that, and she is right that a lot of coats get stolen at concerts.
Dev blew off several other girls to score this night with Alice, including one with a headband and another — I’m partial to — who’s a journalist. A lot is going well for Dev these days. He’s made it into The Sickening due to a casting snafu. There, he meets Benjamin, played by H. Jon Benjamin, who also voices Archer. Who wouldn’t want to be friends with a guy who sounds like Archer but looks like hip Santa? Benjamin is the token white in this black virus movie; as Vulture editor E. Alex Jung astutely points out, he subverts Hollywood’s old “magical Negro” trope by spouting airy wisdoms, while the great Colin Salmon (just heard of him from this show, but he’s clearly always been great) gets to indulge a Dude-level eccentricity we will soon experience.
Back to Alice. She’s standing next to Dev! He didn’t even send a mysterious text to get her to text back, like Arnold suggested. I really do like Arnold’s “turtle in a briefcase” idea. I feel like, just maybe, it’s how Barack got Michelle.
Alice plays some thought experiments, like what if she blew that guy over there? Stole that chick’s coat? She does try the last idea. It doesn’t go so well. She gets kicked out of the event — bye, Nina Arianda, you are so cool — and Dev is free to run into his old bed-pal Rachel. From episode one!
While they have a great night together, by the end she admits she’s trying to patch things up with an ex. But Rachel is clearly the girl Dev belongs with. Her Cartman impression is bomb, and she’s not insane. Their banter is sparkling, too. Some viewers have focused on the fact that Rachel is white, which seems like a missed opportunity on a show so concerned with race and representation. POC on TV all too commonly date white people, in a “two steps forward, one step back, there can’t be two” sort of dance. Intriguingly, Noël Wells, who plays Rachel, is actually half Tunisian and a quarter Latina. Aziz’s DNA is more homogenous than hers. But no matter. Race is confusing, and this is yet one more arena — dating while Indian — I have a feeling Aziz will confront some season to come. When you’re on top of the world at the pinnacle of Mount Netflix, everything’s material.
