Main cast: Julie Brown (Wendy), David Spade (Teddy), Peggy Rea (Babs), and Kevin Nealon (Louis)
Director: Roger Nygard
Oh look, David Spade is in this episode! Yet, he is the least obnoxious thing about Small Blessings, which is saying a lot.
Louis and Wendy are trying to raise Eric, their boy of about three months without going insane. Rather, Wendy is, and it’s not easy because Eric is a monstrous kid with fangs and a tendency to devour raw meat instead of conventional baby food.
The baby has a tendency to vanish from his crib and even the house, returning later carrying the corpse of a neighbor’s dog and what not… and meanwhile, people are saying that there is a serial killer on the loose. Hmm, coincidence?
Wendy is going crazy because of this as well as Eric not sleeping and instead fussing all day. This is where the episode becomes infuriating, because Louis, who shows up only to coo and play with the kid, will patronizingly tell Wendy to chin up, think happy thoughts, and she’d be a better mom if she would hug Eric more.
I’m surprised that a woman co-wrote the script, because this episode encapsulates perfectly the horribly judgmental and condescending ways people can treat and even belittle a mother that is having a hard time with motherhood. Oh, Wendy isn’t a perfect mother? It’s because she doesn’t love the baby enough, or maybe she has postpartum depression, which in this episode can be overcome if Wendy would try harder to be a better mother.
What the hell?
Oh, and this is a “comedy”, which sees Peggy Rea playing an obnoxiously intrusive neighbor, Louis being an asshole passed off as a “cute and adorable father”, and everyone treating Wendy like a joke.
A part of me is hoping that this episode would redeem itself by revealing that Louis is the serial killer—that will also explain Eric, I suppose, given that this episode fails to explain how that kid came to be the way he is—but no, it’s sadly not that clever.
So yeah, Monsters rarely does comedy well, and this one is another lame duck with the added insult of, well, an insulting perception as well as treatment of motherhood. Imagine: an episode with Peggy Rea and David Spade, and their characters are still the least annoying ones here.
