I’ve as a hardcore stan of the Fak bros. This season in particular, Neil and Ted have been adding much-needed belly laughs to even the most serious, somber episodes. (Hey, something has to justify getting submitted to the Emmys as a comedy!) But in this installment—and I really hate to say it—I officially hit the upper limit of my Fak tolerance.
Put in culinary terms, these rowdy boys are a strong flavor that works great as a garnish or a side sauce, but overwhelms everything else on the plate if it’s the main dish. That’s especially true when we’ve got not one, not two, but Faks in the room—particularly when one of them is, uh, John Cena. Written and directed by Christopher Storer, “Children” is a tonally dissonant episode that tries and fails to combine screwball comedy with meditations on whether it’s worse to have a parent who’s around too much or one who isn’t there at all.
We open in the latter mode, as Natalie prays alone in an empty church. For an ep called “Children,” there’s no aural choice more visceral than setting this sequence to the eerie strains of “Dream, Little One, Dream.” It’s the main title theme of Charles Laughton’s magnificently unsettling 1955 film in which Robert Mitchum stalks his own stepchildren down the Ohio River after murdering their mother.
Elsewhere in parental baggage, Sydney is at Marcus’ house to help him figure out what to do with his mother’s things. There’s nothing he wants to keep, which is a.
