Review: ‘Wilfred’ – ‘Letting Go’

A quick review of tonight’s “Wilfred” coming up just as soon as I give you 150 bucks and a long hug…

While the decision to air the season’s first episode early and label it a “sneak preview” seemed silly, “Letting Go” felt much more like a season premiere than “Progress” – which was interesting but 80 percent dream sequence – did. We see what’s actually going on between Jenna and Drew (still engaged but miserable and constantly bickering), see how Wilfred recovered from the car accident (training in Wisconsin with Drew, whom he’s disturbingly supplicant towards), get a bit more of Ryan’s new job, and see how Ryan and Wilfred become friends again.

That’s a lot to deal with in 20 or so minutes, but “Letting Go” pulled it all off while mixing in a lot of good gags about Wilfred and Drew’s new relationship, Wilfred’s resentment of Jellybean, Don Swayze as the creepy drug dealer (“I want it to be tender, like we’re sisters at a funeral”), Wilfred’s confusing tendency to refer to both men and dogs as “guys,” and, of course, Wilfred going berserk on the obstacle course after Ryan lets him off the leash. There was no way he was going to improbably triumph in the race, so it was just a matter of seeing how he would fail, and this was a funny way to do that.

So if you want to consider this the “real” start to the season, then it was a good one. And if you want to call it what it is, it still effectively moved along stories while telling jokes about an Aussie guy in a dog suit.

Couple of housekeeping notes before we go to the comments: 1)I’m again moderating the “Wilfred” panel at Comic-Con, which will be on Thursday at 4 p.m. in the Indigo Room at the Hilton Bayfront, with a screening and then a Q&A with the usual suspects: Elijah Wood, Jason Gann, Fiona Gubelmann, Dorian Brown and producers David Zuckerman and Randall Einhorn. 2)Because of my travels for Comic-Con and then press tour, my reviewing of the show is going to be erratic for much of the season. I’m going to write up next week’s episode, and after that my plan is to check in whenever I either have copious free time or if an episode feels particularly noteworthy, whether it’s funnier than the norm, features a key bit of mythology, or what have you. If you want to get discussion going of an episode I haven’t reviewed, it’s very easy to start a topic on our message boards.

What did everybody else think?

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