Not that The League will ever pass for G-rated, but tonight’s episode was pretty impressively filthy. While “The Au Pair” went for a slightly goofy, slapstick approach, “Ol’ Smoke Crotch,” as the title helpfully indicates, went literally right for the toilet. When the opener involves a toddler eating ice out of the urinal (“Baby Jeffrey, forever unclean!”) you know you’re in for a ride. Though Dirty Randy didn’t make his threatened appearance, this week’s installment matched the opener in terms of pure, unashamed dick jokes. I can’t say that all of them landed—the white pube jokes got to be a little tired, and the ending scene of Kevin falling down with his crotch actually on fire ventured into the eye-roll zone—but a lot of this episode paid off.
I confess: I love it when Raffi shows up. His appearance automatically ups the disgusting factor exponentially, often with great results. This time, Ruxin brings him in as a secret weapon in getting rid of Ashley, the au pair who caught Ruxin in a compromising position. Ashley and Pete are still going strong, and clever girl that she is, she uses the opportunity to blackmail Ruxin into paying her while she drinks beer, naps, and doesn’t clean up the crib war zone Ruxin caused by feeding his son turkey chili. So kind of like that old lady who swallowed a fly or shooting yourself in the foot to forget about your headache, Ruxin then invites Raffi to live with him to scare Ashley away. “You should court her,” Ruxin offers. “Yeah, I should court martial her… vagina. With my wiener.” Raffi is, of course, the worst imaginable houseguest—the scene in which he’s naked taking a dump on the toilet (“I don’t lock doors, it’s rude!”) and then invites Ruxin to drop a double-decker deuce sitting on his lap will haunt me for a long time.
The way in which this backfires is a sort of brilliant stroke. Ashley is interested in golden gating with Pete, who is unclear on what that act actually is (“It’s when you have sex in the morning, and in the middle, the girl jumps off a bridge,” Andre helpfully explains.) Oh my no, it involves, well, bringing Raffi into the mix. (“No! It’s too hairy a bridge!”), which results in Pete fleeing and Raffi and Ashley moving into the guest room to have aerobic and epically gross sex.
Kevin’s plotline, I thought, yielded less-than funny results. Taco’s brilliant pee-bib plan (really just Jenny and Kevin’s wedding napkins tucked strategically to avoid urine stains on his pants) leads to Kevin finding a white pubic hair and flipping out about it. Kevin’s character mostly exists to freak out about things this season, but I’m not sure I buy the extent of consternation he showed about the whole thing. I did love the rapid-fire taunts about his “graying nethers,” though. (“Hey Santa Cock, are you dreaming of a White Dickmas?” might have been my favorite, though “Caspar the friendly pube” was pretty good too.)
But as I mentioned, the idea of his dyed “grey gardens” actually catching alight is dubious, as is the idea that he would then run out of the bathroom instead of going to the nearest water faucet to extinguish himself. That whole sequence—particularly when Kevin got knocked out with his crotch still alight and Taco’s box of dick bibs fluttered down on his pants—ventured into “The Sukkah” territory, or some bizarre Three Stooges send-up. It’s also been an impressively football-less season still, all things considered. I have hopes that the rest of the season will have more Raffi and more team switch-ups, with fewer elaborate instances of Kevin’s haplessness.
Stray observations:
- “I dyed my pubes white like Brian, so my dick is terrifying.”
- “I’m not a disgusting pig; I peed myself.”
- “I’m glad you didn’t use a condom. That is pretty fucking classy.”