Loveday Writing

We then go to the office, where it’s revealed that George is overworked due to having to be the clerk for the firm, being Roz’s personal assistant, as well as having to do work for Helen, so much so that he accidentally invites Roz to Helen’s Zoom meeting, and snaps at Helen but quickly apologises.

Helen starts her day with a Zoom meeting with Chad Sittler, a lawyer for the American Cat League, as she is trying to find the Australian branch of the League, as a client left a multimillion-dollar bequest to them upon her death. Once Chad stops making fun of her accent, he tries to dismiss her as the Australian branch was forced to change their name, but when she brings up the bequest amount, he tries to claim it, only for Helen to end the meeting.

Later, Helen meets with Edith Babcock from the Australian Cat Welfare Alliance as Helen put an ad in the local newspaper hoping to find the Australian branch of the League. Edith tells her that back in 1972, when the will was written, the Welfare Alliance was known as the Australian Cat Welfare League. However, Helen doesn’t get any real confirmation from Edith on whether the Alliance is the right beneficiary, as Edith is too busy making herself a cup of tea, calling Roz as a cassowary due to her bouffant, and chastising her for locking up the firm’s toilet. When Helen shows the will to George afterwards, he tells her the will is too vague and to apply for a cy-pres order, which will have the court determine where the money goes.

Meanwhile, George reaches a breaking point, resorting to outsourcing some of his duties to a freelancer, Brody, and snapping at Ray after Uber Eating his lunch to the office, although the latter was to bring the issue to Ray’s attention, which leads to Ray promising to talk to Roz about it.

Helen meets with a barrister, Mr. Lovelock, to evaluate her cy-pres application. The meeting quickly becomes awkward after it’s revealed that brief contains Ray’s negative comments about him and Helen’s comments about her lunch, as Brody transcribed her entire dictation of the brief without editing it. Afterwards, Helen goes home to find Tony in the granny flat again, she brings Tony to see Viktor and tells him to get a job.

Later, Edith comes to see Helen after Mr. Lovelock determines that the bequest will go to the Alliance, only for Helen to login to the firm’s trust account and find the account empty, Helen stalls Edith by telling her that they should give her the money via a novelty cheque. However, George tells her that he moved the bequest into an interest-bearing account.

Meanwhile, Roz is seen interviewing potential assistants to no avail as the first candidate, Theo, didn’t seem to want to work as he was caught up in his free-range parenting, and another candidate, Madeline, mistakenly thought that Roz’s business was in meditation. Later, Helen suggests Viktor to Roz. Viktor goes to see Roz, and it’s clearly a match made in heaven.

Towards the end of the episode, Ray watches Brody pick up his dumplings, only to walk away with them to take on another freelance job. Helen is also caught by Roz coming out of the toilet, having had her own key cut on Elaine’s advice, and gives her new key to Roz.

The episode ends with Viktor and Tony doing crosswords in bed, and Helen giving Elaine a novelty cheque, with Elaine pointing out that the bank won’t redeem it.

Overall, I felt that this was an okay episode. I appreciated the Viktor subplot as it gave more of an insight into his character and him working for Roz, a match made in heaven, provides many comedic opportunities for the future (although from what I can tell, there is only one episode left in the season), and I appreciated the George subplot as it actually shows his dedication to his work. However, I felt that the Australian accent jokes during Helen’s Zoom meeting, the jokes revolving around Brody, and the overall character of Elaine became very tired very quickly.

On a smaller note, I was surprised to see Tony and Viktor sleeping in separate beds. For a show made in 2022 and with a same-sex couple that have been together for as long as they have, I felt it was an oddly conservative writing choice.

Stray Observations:

Episode title – Mr. Lovelock describing the unpredictability of judges to Helen.

-Roz doesn’t like cats.

-George’s grandmother is away on a cruise and he misses her.

-Brody refers to Roz as a scary lady.

-Ray tells George you can’t Uber Eat dumplings as the smells from other fast foods linger, later you see Mr. Lovelock smelling the sushi George ordered for him and the office, asking why it smells like pizza, and is even able to identify what kind of pizza was near it.

Best one liners and interactions:

• “Righto, Tony Soprano, are you gonna whack anyone who crosses you as well?” “Maybe, I’m on a hair trigger, Helen.” (Helen-George on George outsourcing photocopying)
• “You don’t want to schedule him into an early grave.” “Oh, that reminds me, we’re choosing a mausoleum tomorrow, he hasn’t even looked at the brochures.” (Helen-Viktor on Viktor’s schedule for Tony)
• “You really are short.” “It’s never held me back.” (Roz-Helen)