Avenue 5 recap: Captain Courageous

Avenue 5
Photo: Alex Bailey/HBO

All aboard the Avenue 5 luxury spaceship to hell — and buckle up, because we’ve officially reached the cruising altitude for anarchy.

Basing an episode of comedy around a comedian who can’t find a way to be comical in the face of constant doom (and also under the burden of promoting JuddLight during his set) is… a bold move. But the general vibe of Jordan the comedian’s budding stage fright serves as a nice highlight to Avenue 5’s reality: forever floating in a prison of one’s own making is much, much worse than a quick crash-and-burn…

It’s especially worse when there is a literal ring of s— orbiting that prison. But, hey, at least the s— covers up the coffins! (Oh wait, no — there’s one.)

As you’ll recall, Captain Clark — a fake captain with a fake accent and a real drinking problem — has been tasked with going out into actual space to stop the ship from spewing out all the human feces that’s there to protect the passengers from radiation poisoning. But even with Billie instructing him on what to do from the bridge — and even with a video of himself instructing him on what to do from the exit door — Captain Clark doesn’t stand a chance of getting out there and solving this problem. So as the whole world watches a live feed of him spinning around like a dummy, Billie suits up herself and meets him on the outside of the ship. Under Billie’s instruction, they turn the wheel that shuts off the poop flow together, and when they return to a cheering crowd, Captain Clark is once again deemed a hero, while Billie is deemed his assistant.

But at least that’s better than how Frank is being treated by his fellow passengers, though it does make for a nice opportunity to mention how perfectly pitiful and wonderfully dim Andy Buckley plays poor Frank, whose seashell necklace has done him absolutely no favors. Everyone is blaming the turd shield rupture on Frank hitting “the big brown button” that nearly killed them all, except for Karen, who is trying to gaslight him into staying in their cabin so she can go … flirt with Captain Clark?

It’s unclear if Karen is actually interested in Captain Clark or if she just enjoys psychologically-cuckolding Frank, but when she heads over to his cabin, she finds Captain Clark having a full existential meltdown, wondering if there’s anyone in the world who knows how hands, or doors, or orifices work, let alone this space ship they’re all trapped on. And that’s when they see it: the angelically lit ring of human waste that’s been caught in the ship’s orbit, destined to surround them for the three and a half years they have left on the Avenue 5.

Unfortunately, that three and a half year projection hasn’t quite caught up with the Avenue 5’s marketing efforts, including the amazing videos of Matt that play all over the ship. While everyone is gathered to watch Captain Clark save the day, an outdated video of Matt announces the “halfway home party” to celebrate that their voyage has reached its halfway point which is, of course, not at all true. Or as Matt puts it: “Well, it was true when I said it — like a marriage vow!”

If you can believe it, the party Mr. Judd still decides to put on to celebrate what should have been the Avenue 5’s halfway point but is now its one-forty-sixth point … does not go well.

First of all, Iris has vetted Jordan the comedian’s material so much, he’s basically incapable of making a joke (for the record, Iris is most tickled by low-level tragedy, like “erectile dysfunction, non-fatal hunting accidents, or waving at someone you think you know, but it turns out to be a stranger). Matt’s insistence on making it very clear to the attendees just how nervous Jordan is somehow does not help his performance, nor does Mr. Judd’s inspirational speech written by Iris, which he skips most of, but the last line about sums it up: “We can do this, we’re nearly there — we’re not, but we are.”

And finally, that mob mentality we knew was coming is finally starting to form, and what better place for its birth than a party based on a lie that’s also serving to celebrate a man who’s stealing credit from a woman. Billie is slowly losing it over everyone congratulating Captain Clark over and over when she’s the one who “wrestled with space and won.” Mia is trying to hook up with Colin from the fake bridge crew, Doug is trying to stop them, and Spike is trying to turn it into a four-way. And speaking of multiples, following his little trip outside the gravity, Captain Clark’s husband and wife have informed him that majority rules, and they will be getting “trivorced.”

Perhaps that’s what inspires him to throw on a striking turtleneck for the party, which causes Karen to talk incessantly about how handsome he looks in said turtleneck. This, coupled with Sarah/Sarah’s continued improv experiment wherein she tells a gathered crowd that Captain Clark once “put a baby up [her],” could be the reason that moments after Captain Clark saves Frank from being sent into space by the frenzied crowd, Frank returns from near-ejection only to attack Captain Clark. “You stay away from my wife, or you will have me and my wife to deal with!” he yells.

And at that moment, the $200,000 worth of streamers explode out of the ceiling, bottles start flying, and the ship finally descends into the madness we’ve been promised since the first coffin hit its orbit.

A FEW SPACE NUGGETS

Frank attacked Captain Clark without even knowing Clark referred to him as “only there to stop his skeleton from falling over.”

“Orifices — they’re all over us! That can’t be safe, can it?!”

THE FUTURE IS NOW: Buffalo sure has changed since they moved the White House there! Doug’s intentions for the halfway home party include getting “some sweet, sweet informed consent from a strong, autonomous woman.”

“Right now, I’m probably more famous than that guy who s— his pants at the Super Bowl.” “Daniel Radcliffe?” “Yeah.”

Jordan the comedian’s zapped ability to make a joke seems to have rendered him the most reasonable person on the ship. “No, stop murdering someone!” he shouts as Frank is carried away to chants of “S—! HIM! OUT!”

“You’re not a happy drunk.” “I’m not a happy anything.”

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