Comedy Central’s Review is, largely, a show about a man destroying himself for art. Its main character, Forrest MacNeil (played by noted genius Andy Daly), is so dedicated to his job of reviewing life experiences for television that he is willing to upend his entire life and put himself at risk of great physical harm to complete his tasks. He has committed felonies, been shot, been stabbed, and ruined dozens of personal relationships in the name of journalism (or whatever it is, exactly, that he’s doing).
But in the process of destroying himself, Forrest has also caused quite a bit of collateral damage. Some of the damage has been to physical property (like the two — TWO — homes belonging to his father that were destroyed by flames), but most of it has been to the people around him, especially the poor, poor women who have crossed his path. You almost forget how ruinous he has been to members of the opposite sex until you collect all of his transgressions in one place. So… let’s do that. Here are Forrest MacNeil’s love interests on Review, ranked by the amount of personal tragedy he has caused them.
UNRANKED: Sex doll (inanimate object), prom date (more of a cocaine-fueled means to an end than a “love interest”), Ashley Tisdale (oh, what could have been)
10. Margaret the prostitute
Margaret was the street prostitute that Forrest picked up in San Francisco for the sole purpose of joining the mile-high club on the flight home, and who proceeded to have sex with half the plane before she got to him. On paper, this does not sound like an ideal way to go through life. But Margaret herself said she loves her work, and she did manage to turn a weird situation into a very profitable one, so I think, all things considered, we can chalk this up as a win for her.
9. The Glory Hole
We’re calling this entry “Glory Hole” instead of “park services guy” because, well, as far as Forrest was concerned, the hole itself was the partner. And everyone kind of came out ahead here: the giving party, the receiving party, etc. As far as this show goes, that’s practically a Hallmark card.
8. Tammy Caswell, the real housewife of Beverly Hills
Note the lower-case letters in “real housewife.” In his quest to sleep with a celebrity, Forrest bedded one Tammy Caswell, who turned out not to be a Real Housewives reality star, but rather just an adulterous civilian from Beverly Hills. Their encounter didn’t bring destruction into her life like encounters with Forrest usually do, but she ranks below the glory hole because I don’t believe anyone got any enjoyment whatsoever out of this. Just sad, all around.
7. Various unknown orgy participants
Honestly I would have ranked orgy up by Margaret had it not been for that whole “drug-resistant form of gonorrhea” thing that Forrest mentioned at the end of his review. That aside, it seemed like everyone was having a ball. Pretty big “that aside,” though.
6. Eliza
Eliza, you may recall, was the flighty redhead Forrest met online and married on the first date, and who subsequently left him for the cop who was investigating them both, and who then left the cop for a guy named Roderick who lived on a submarine and had an intricately designed beard and old-timey car. Would she have ended up with Roderick had she never met Forrest? Maybe. It could have been fate. But in the reality of the show, there’s a direct line from meeting Forrest to running off with a bearded weirdo who lives in a submersible, and that CAN’T have ended well for her. Pray for Eliza, people.
5. Diane the grieving traffic reporter
After realizing that Tammy Caswell was not a celebrity for the purposes of his review, Forrest moved on to Diane, a deeply depressed traffic reporter who had written a book on loss after the tragic death of her husband. Their encounter ended with a naked Forrest standing next to the bed after sex while she clutched her husband’s ashes and bawled. That’s… not ideal.
It also proves yet again what a genius Andy Daly is, because that whole thing — which reads as heartbreaking and awful on the page — somehow ended up being way funnier than it had any right to be.
4. Mrs. Greenfield
Now, you’re probably saying “Waaaiiiit a second. Wasn’t Mrs. Greenfield a married schoolteacher who ran off with Forrest and turned into a violent gun-toting cult leader who was gunned down in a firefight with federal law-enforcement agents? How in the world can she be ranked FOURTH?” Well, two reasons: 1) I believe that there was always a violent gun-toting cult leader living inside Mrs. Greenfield begging to be released, and it was Forrest who set her free; and 2) Say what you will about her methods and personal philosophy toward the end there, but she lived life, dammit. That’s more than most of us can say.
R.I.P. Mrs. Greenfield.
3. Shampoo
Let’s briefly recount the ballad of Shampoo the stripper. Forrest met her while she was working and they sort of hit it off. He invited her to San Francisco to meet his son, which she thought was a date but was actually his first attempt to join the Mile-High Club. After she turned Forrest down on the plane and had her heart broken when she realized she was being used, she was left to look after Forrest’s teenage son as he picked up Margaret the Prostitute on a San Francisco street (in front of both Shampoo and his son) and proceeded to have sad, under-a-blanket sex with Margaret on the flight home (again, in front of Shampoo and his son).
Not particularly fun times for Shampoo.
2. Marissa the Nurse
Marissa, played by Fargo star Allison Tolman, was the nurse who slowly helped rehabilitate Forrest after one of his many injuries. They eventually fell in love and started dating, which all came to a screeching halt when he was asked to review blackmailing someone. What followed was, oh let’s say, “unfortunate”:
- He discovered she was keeping some of her patients’ unused pain pills
- He began blackmailing her
- After making a few payments, she decided to stop
- He reported her to her supervisor
- She was arrested
- She showed up at his house with a gun
- He punched her in the face, in self-defense
- She was arrested again
This one hurt, deep, because she was such a nice person and Forrest just ruined her. The man is a menace.
1. Suzanne MacNeil
But no one knows what a menace Forrest is quite like his ex-wife, Suzanne. Over the course of the show’s almost two seasons, he has (a) divorced her out of the clear blue, (b) been responsible for her father’s space-related death, (c) catfished her, and (d) blew up her wedding to professional baseball player Joe Dale, Jr. by revealing said catfishing in a drunken spectacle of an impromptu speech at a rehearsal dinner he had not been invited to. Among many other things. While some of his other love interests faced what appeared to be harsher consequences in the moment (death, imprisonment, drug-resistant gonorrhea), Suzanne takes the top prize because at least the other women get to be done with him after he devastated them. Suzanne is not so lucky. For her, Forrest is the gift that keeps on giving.
Or, like, whatever the opposite of a gift is.