Meanwhile, Zack invites Reed to come play basketball with “the boys.” Reed agrees, but it turns out that “the boys” are just kids. Reed doesn’t want to play anymore, but Zack convinces him to help out, as they’re down a player. Initially, Reed doesn’t play his best game. But when the kids start to tease him, he steps it up. In his excitement, however, he accidentally slams a basketball into the youngest kid’s face and breaks his nose. A girl gets the incident on video and says she’s going to leak the news that Reed is antisemitic (all the kids are Jewish) on social media. Reed tries to steal her phone, but that gets caught on video by another girl. When Zack approaches, the girls shift their attention and reveal that they’re big fans. So, Zack strikes an agreement with them: He will take them to prom, and they can’t leak the videos. Hannah, meanwhile, struggles to keep Clay from messing up his lines. And Gordon can’t keep the writers’ room from devolving into chaos. Bree keeps interrupting others with ideas of how to make her character look good. Eventually, Hannah and Gordon decide to switch jobs. But Hannah doesn’t have an easy time with Bree either. When she makes it clear that Bree isn’t helping, the actress leaves. Selma goes after her to encourage her, but also to give her some tough advice. She tells Bree that if she wants to make it in a writers’ room, she has to lose the vanity, be extremely funny, and make others notice her talent. Bree decides to go back in. Instead of making a vain suggestion, she pitches an actual joke. Hannah and the other writers love it, and Bree gets a taste of what it’s like being a writer. Gordon tries using a “tough love’ approach with Clay to help him get through his line. But nothing works. Eventually, he asks Clay how he’s gotten worse at this than he used to be. Clay says drinking used to help him through it, but now he’s trying to stay sober. Gordon has an idea. He goes up to Clay, hugs him tight, and asks him to read his line. Clay reads it without a hitch. He’s finally done–but he takes a while longer to let go of Gordon. After a long day’s work, Hannah and Gordon congratulate themselves for jobs well done.
The Episode Review
Keegan Michael-Key delivers a comical, slapstick performance in a rather odd basketball game. Other than that, there’s not much to invest one in this episode of Reboot. It’s a strange decision to frame this episode to be about Hannah and Gordon when it could have gone deeper into Bree’s and Clay’s characters and their goals. Instead, Hannah and Gordon get to pat themselves on the back for barely doing anything. There’s even a false equivalence drawn between their actions. Whereas Hannah does nothing to encourage Bree (why didn’t writers have her go out to talk to the actress instead of Selma?), Gordon at least provides some sense of comfort for Clay.
