Dave (Season 3), Episodes 1 & 2: One of the weirder autobiographical takes of a musician/rapper finally returns, and no, it isn’t Atlanta. The lowest common denominator of this joke aside, If Dave Season 1 was the rise of a neurotic youtube rapper in the big leagues, Dave Season 2 had been the immediate follow-up to that, what happens when you taste overnight success and you slowly start to alienate the people who have been with you in the first place.
But now, within these first two episodes of Season 3, we see a much more “mature” Dave. At the very least, he comes across as a celebrity accustomed to the rigors of the tour life who is also looking for an idealized view of love but is entirely constrained by his neuroses.
Dave (Season 3), Episodes 1 & 2 Recap:
Episode 1 – “Texas”
The first episode again shows creators Jac Schaeffer and Dave Burd’s propensity to push the audience’s buttons and push the envelope of humor. We seemingly open to a “Li’l Dicky” music video, where Li’l Dicky is slowly trying and seducing a groupie in his hotel room. The wrinkle (pun intended) in his well-to-do plan of seducing this groupie occurs much later when he realizes that he can’t find the condom, which had slid out of his erect member.
The result is hilarious, spiraling out of Dicky trying to find the sheath and even asking for help. When they finally locate it, it becomes an exercise in gross-out humor and also meta humor. Because we then realize that this wasn’t a music video, this was the real deal, commenting on the exaggeration and the reality of the art and the artist.
We soon realize that Dave is at the top of his world through a mixture of talent, sheer luck, and a healthy dose of white privilege. But we also see Dave in a much better position concerning his close friends. His relationship with Gata is on an even footing. His friendship with Lez and Emma has improved, and thus his newer focus is on finding true love. However, even as he tries to be the “humble,” secure celebrity, his narcissism, and neurotic tendencies always come to the forefront.
We see that in his reaction to him receiving a concrete bust of his face as a gift from a shy fan, and while Dave is very magnanimous in giving a piece of pretty sober advice about following their dreams, the immediate scene sees him try to lop the bust to the waste paper basket like a basketball and failing miserably at it.
But then we see Dave meet what is the “girl of his dreams” in Campbell, a pretty blonde nurse who wins over Dave simply by apparently not knowing who he is. What ensues is a pleasant banter where her charm strikes Dave with full force – a folksy anecdote about her owning four goats almost makes Dave croon in surprise that “she is out of a fable.” Contrary to her demeanor, Campbell’s friends are huge Li’l Dicky fans, and when Dave finally comes to join their party and try to enjoy a game of “hot seat” (which is again a game of ridiculous absurdity), we are still waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Because Dave as a show is always about Dave just barely missing what he aspires to, either by extenuating weird circumstances or through his shortcomings. We see Dave trying to wear a “scroguard,” an item of diaper-esque protective clothing meant to risk exposure to STIs because he believes he can finally have a good finish. But at the party, his disappointment is palpable when he realizes that Campbell had fallen asleep because she had been drunk.
The disappointment is compounded when he learns from her friends that her “mission” that night had been to sleep with him because, contrary to her admission to Dave, she is a huge Li’l Dicky fan. It again hammers home Dave’s angst, his wish to maintain his fame and popularity, but expect true love from an individual who wants Dave for “Dave” and not sleep with Li’L Dicky. The party, however, preys on his worst fears, as his attempts to convey what the tour life is actually like collide with his insecurities about his penis, leading to a moment when the group nearly rips Dave’s clothes off to “see his dick” and get a full view of the “scroguard” wearing Dave.
The show then turns into Schaeffer and Burd’s version of a horror story, where a Jewish guy is trying to navigate the “Texan red state.” His interactions throughout the episode have shades of a “fish-out-of-water” narrative, be it the guys at the bar jumping in joy on hearing Chet Hanks’ “White Boy Summer,” a truck stopping on seeing Dave running through the streets after escaping from the party, or even a rifle-pointing local calling Dave a “gayman” and later a “faggot” which leads to a hilarious interaction by Dave where he tries to extricate from the situation by confusing the man and later escaping while taking one of the man’s shirts. The jokes feel low-brow, but it feels like Schaeffer and Burd are trying to maim the “Red State” perspective critically.
The episode ends with Dave arriving at an open massage parlor, and while he contacts Mike and asks him for a lift back to the tour bus, he gets a proposition from the kind masseuse (who doesn’t speak English and doesn’t know who he is, go figure). This leads to Dave experiencing the ultimate pleasure he had been intently describing back at the party, that of straightening his “bent penis.” The episode ends at this moment, with the camera looking down at Dave’s face as he experiences pleasure through the most cavalier wanking possible. The irony is while Dave would have wanted this experience at “the hands” of his soulmate, this is the closest he would come to experiencing that ecstasy.
Episode 2 – “Harrison Ave”
I hope the propensity of this season of Dave to open with a music video of Li’l Dicky, which dovetails into the narrative, is maintained throughout. Episode 2 opens with a music video of “Li’l Dicky”, where he raps about his first true love and his heartbreak. Still, the music video of young Dave and young Brittany is interrupted by Dave breaking the “fourth wall,” raising the curtain and instructing the young kid playing his teenage version to be less excited and more “cool” because he is not resembling what Dave had been in his early years.
What follows through this episode is a comedy of errors, as events upon events cascade together in this cacophony of shooting a music video. Dave here is also at his most abrasive and also backsliding towards the unlikeable cad he had been in Season 2. It is compounded by the tight scheduling he has to shoot this entire music video at Macaroni Grill, which he is repeatedly informed and reminded of. The episode uses extensive long takes as we follow Dave, Emma, and Mike advising, brainstorming different ideas to make this music video work while simultaneously matching Dave’s vision of his childhood.
His childhood, which is being “artistically expressed” through this music video, is about the love story between him and Brittany Parker, who he had a crush on in 8th Grade. As the song progresses, we learn that Dave wants to remain best friends with him. He truly believes it is a far better option to hang out with the cooler members of the high school clique. The comedy of errors expounds when we learn that Brittany, the actual woman who is the muse of this song, had come to meet him.
Dave meets with Brittany. They hug, and Brittany innocently asks for a cameo in the music video, considering the song is about her. Dave takes that idea and runs with it, planning to play himself throughout the events of the music video and Brittany playing herself. The meta aspect of the music video works, according to Emma, because Dave and Brittany playing themselves manage to translate to something genuine. It is ironic because Dave is not interested in being completely genuine about the events of his past. He is interested in painstakingly recreating the events from his perspective, which is why he is recording this music video at his parents’ house.
It leads to hilarity in his reactions to his parents, even though most of those objections raised by his mother are genuine; be it the blue tapes around the walls of the room or her swallowing her ear aids and trying to vomit in a moment of peak absurdity. But Dave is not interested in highlighting the perspective of Brittany, even though he is shooting this music video to target and court a “brand new female audience.”
Although Emma suggests adding the new female perspective, Dave shoots her down. However, while shooting the final scene and trying to navigate a lot of impending disasters (including a lacquer-snorting video-assist operator who quits his job partway for fear of relapsing into his addiction), Brittany storms out of the music video. Dave follows her, ignoring the pleas of his crew to finish the video as they are slowly running out of time in their crazy tight schedule.
The conversation that follows between Dave and Brittany is incredibly eye-opening. Brittany (played by the brilliant Jane Levy) reveals to Dave that her sole reason for hanging out with Dave on her day off is because she wants to spend time with her old friend. But as the episode shows us, even though the moments Dave is trying to record had a profound impact on his life, he is more interested in projecting an image of nonchalance, of having moved on from feeling rejected by Brittany, which had shaped Dave into what he is today.
Nevertheless, as Brittany points out, all Dave is doing is painting her as the villain of his story, when in reality, after the event at the prom, where Dave had to be the “33rd wheel” and had to dance at the event, pretending it’s his birthday and be generally humiliated, Brittany did admit to being in love with him and dated him. Unfortunately, since Dave is still in the mode of his life where success means pretending that he has moved on, he retorts that she had only “given him a month of dating.”
Dave (Season 3), Episode 2 Ending Explained:
It doesn’t occur to Dave until Brittany informs him that she was 16 as well, and it hadn’t been a picnic for her. She had her family issues and mental health issues to deal with. Through this take, “Dave,” the show is again commenting on “Dave” the character, especially the “nice guy” analog that Dave is projecting upon himself as an attitude where the guy believes that he is owed validation from the women in his life on account of his niceties.
It does successfully comment on the different ugly facets of masculinities while simultaneously showing how even after so much character progression, it is very easy to backslide into the default state of neuroses and insecurities which we see Dave undergo throughout the episode. It’s also hilarious that the Doja Cat anecdote is raised here, albeit embellished to show Dave as the rockstar rapper than the neurotic one, which had led him to sabotage his meeting with Doja Cat in Season 2.
The episode winds down with Dave having to finish the music video. He finally relinquishes control to Emma when she pitches an idea to finish the video in “a single take.” He walks back on his statement and confirms that he does trust her, which is a hopeful marker of character progression of Dave, albeit with baby steps.
And it then ends with the baby versions of Dave and Brittany progressing through their date as the song winds down with the ending Brittany wanted to be shown – the truth, or at least a version of it. It also feels like a sly commentary on the “artistic method of expressing,” which disguises the numerous backstage issues and is resolved via gumption and creativity.
Dave (Season 3), Episodes 1 & 2 Review:
There is an inherent stasis in the character of Dave, with his neuroses and his narcissism still intact, albeit tempered with a surprising amount of maturity, which shows his eagerness to learn from his mistakes. While the premise of the show in this season feels like a very idealistic one, we know that Dave would have to go four steps forward and six steps backward to resemble a moment of legitimate growth.
But there is an inherent likeability in Burd, which he brings to this exaggerated version of himself. As the final conversation with Brittany suggests, he is a person capable of falling in love and having an individual fall for him. I hope we see Dave reach there. At the same time, knowing Schaeffer and Burd, we would have to see his character being pushed through the wringer and absurdist humor before we reach that final leg. But it feels like the final leg of this journey.
