Tribeca is undercover as a high school glee club coach to stop a highly prolific distributor of malware and computer exploits. But first, her glee club must come in first place at their final competition.
In 2018, there were 495 scripted shows airing amongst the linear channels and streaming services. The way people are consuming content now is so different than it used to be. It happens according to one's own schedule. As such, there is less necessity to provide ample coverage of each specific episode in any given season from a show. Moreover, it is simply impossible to watch everything. As such, this site is making the move to shorter episodic reviews in order to cover as many shows as possible. Premieres and finales may feature longer reviews. With all of that being said, here are my thoughts on the next episode of TBS' Angie Tribeca.
"Glitch Perfect" was written by Marisa Pinson and directed by Amy York Rubin
This show has always been bold with the twists that it employs for its stories. However, it can sometimes run into the problem of trying to do too much in any given episode. It employs such a solid regular cast and has managed to land some really high-profile guest stars as well. There is the instinct to give them all hilarious material to perform. In trying to service everyone though, the various threads don't always come together. That's basically what happens here. The audience is still getting used to AJ and Charo as the new characters in this world. Jay and Tanner are gone. That has created a void within the ensemble that Bobby Cannavale and Kiersay Clemons are already amply trying to fill. However, those comedic voices still take a beat to get used to. Moreover, this story wants Angie to come to some big realization about her son and needing to put the work in to have an honest and genuine relationship with him. However, both Angie and AJ are distracted by other things and don't really get to have that moment together. There is the beat where Angie is the concerned mother trying to warn her son about his new friends who are bad influences. However, that's such a weird use of Isla Fisher as well. Sure, it's very amusing how the show casts some actors who are believable as high school students and others who aren't. It's a fun conceit that still plays truthful to the genre this episode is spoofing. But again, not enough time is actually spent on AJ's rebellion to really get some sense that he earns the final rally that he gives to his mother at the end with the epic performance. Angie is the one trying to maintain some sense of connective tissue of everything happening at the moment as well. She's the one who believes that it's wrong to just do whatever the Vice President orders them to do. She wishes to question authority. However, her colleagues call her out for her desire to be a lone wolf who doesn't know how to play by the rules. That's so condescending though which the show will have to navigate very carefully. Angie is more than likely right to believe that the government she's working for is up to no good. Everyone will eventually rally behind her. That just feels like the inevitable outcome to all of this. That would be very lame especially considering how frequently this show can surprise the audience with the shocking twists and laughs that it genuinely earns. Sure, it's a bunch of fun seeing the show playing up the Glee and Friday Night Lights comparisons in this episode. It does so expertly as well by suggesting there's no reason why this glee club should win a competition only for them to miraculously be one cohesive group by the end of things with people who weren't even at practice. Moreover, the payoff to Scholls being on the football team is good enough. It doesn't completely justify all of the cutaways into Friday Night Lights territory. It mostly is just convenient and gives Scholls and Atkins something to do here. It's still pretty amusing though even though the man they take down for this crime is just some random person and not some notable guest star who has value to the overall story of the episode.
