A bad case of lice, a punch thrown at a star quarterback, and an ice sculpture at the morgue: The League keeps rollicking along this season, delivering another solid episode with “Judge MacArthur.” In the mythology of this particular gang, Ruxin believes himself to be the brains. He’s sharp and mean and quick-witted, and apparently really good at trivia. Taco, on the other hand, believes the world’s biggest desert to be a banana split. “The SATS are culturally biased,” he says. “That’s why I got high and rode a snowmobile through a mall instead of taking them.” Touché.
Pete decides to settle the matter of smarts once and for all by administering the Wonderlic test at the bar, the standardized quiz administered during NFL Scouting Combines. Ruxin scoffs that he gets an “intelli-rection” thinking of it. “I’m highly intelligent. I wear glasses,” he protests. Alas, he ends up placing third, only besting the confused Kevin and Taco, who spent the test doing shots. And thus Ruxin descends into a spiral of self-doubt until he begins to quote things from a made-up movie amalgamation called The Scarfather. Andre passes just fine, but he’s gotten into an ongoing argument about whether or not his smattering of follicles counts as baldness. “I have very thin, clear hair,” he insists. Not so. Ellie gives him one of her little hats at a tea party to cover up his head, and thus gives him both a complex and a raging case of head lice.
Kevin, meanwhile, has decided that his years as league commissioner give him the perfect background for more serious work as a judge. He’s throwing a charity dinner to impress the members of the bench who would support him, featuring speaker Ryan Fitzgerald of the Buffalo Bills, another great cameo by an NFLer. Taco decides that the best contribution he can make is an ice sculpture, which inexplicably only has the bottom half of Kevin’s likeness. As part of Ruxin’s weird Flowers For Algernon fall from intelligence, he orders the sculpture a day early, and Taco stores it—where else?—in the morgue.
It all culminates in a fancy charity event where a pair of ice pants that smells like death arrives, accompanied by a lice-ridden Andre. Ruxin steals a judge’s robe to make a declaration on Pete’s accidental drop, and somehow puts it on backward. Fitzgerald makes fun of his grammar, and Ruxin takes a swing at him. Andre gives the judge lice. Ta-da! Another successful McArthur event.
Stray observations:
- Only Andre would ask for a gluten-free option at a backyard tea party thrown by a child.
- I loved when the judge tried to explain who Ryan Fitzgerald was to Jenny. Nice try.
- Nice callback to Dr. Andre NoDick.