[For The Jim Gaffigan Show‘s “Red Velvet If You Please” or any other recaps on Fetchland, assume the presence of possible spoilers.]
TVLand Summary:
Red Velvet If You Please. Jim tries to stop eating junk food; Dave is hung over and shows up at a kid’s birthday party.
Jim returns from a Las Vegas work trip to Jeannie’s psychic abilities spinning in high gear. He walks in the door and she dispatches the kid cadre to the bedroom. Apparently he reeks of guilty wrongdoing, though Gaffigan appears to be regular sweet Jim to our unknowing audience eye.
Gaffigan sits with her on the couch and unwinds his tawdry tale of Las Vegas debauchery. Was he drinking? Jim says of course not but we see the flashback and Miller Lite was downed in abundance. Perhaps he’s just ashamed of drinking a beer that tastes like watered down backwash… but either way – he lies. We gotta forgive him right away, though, because it couldn’t have been that pleasant anyway.
Jim then explains to Jeannie how he turned to the Bible – Book of Job, specifically, to relieve his insomnia. Though his bible study actually turned out to be video gaming on the hotel TV, I think we can all understand how they’re essentially the same thing.
It’s at this moment when temptation literally knocks on the door. We hear a sexy lilt of music and there’s an entire red velvet cake set before him in the hallway without a person in sight. Jim tells Jeannie there was a waiter who explained that the cake was a gift from a group of nuns who saw his show and thought he seemed Christ-like. His initial rejection of the cake is true. At first he shuts the door to place a whistful cheek against it in Red Velvet longing. But we all know this is only to make the cake taste better later. You gotta play hard to get first.
Jim tells Jeannie how he ate half of it… slept off the hard work with the rest of the cake back out in the hall, then ate the rest in the morning. “Red Velvet is my Kryptonite,” he defends.
“Yeah, but you’re not Superman!” Jeannie points out in a telltale moment of family sanity. This leads to a hilarious tirade of rationalization jokes with a shout out to Big Gay Ice Cream, making any New Yorker’s heart melt for Jim. But then Jeannie brings it all down to earth when she reminds him he has a baby daughter and doesn’t he want to be at her wedding?
“Sure but will there be cake there?”
Then Daniel (Michael Ian Black), their real estate broker comes over and it becomes evident he’s actually more Jeannie’s BFF than their broker. When he leaves Jeannie gives Jim the delightful Saturday morning choice between taking four kids to swimming lessons at 8:30 AM or his daughter to a Central Park birthday party at eight AM. She suggests that maybe he should do the lessons since there will likely be cake at the party. Challenge accepted, Jeannie!
Leaving for the party his hungover friend, Dave pleads to tag along desiring to see the “yummy mummies” that might be there and because this is a TV show, he’s not disappointed – they’re all hotties, even the hugely pregnant one. This leads to that awkward mistaken-for-homeless problem for Dave, a dire predicament faced by many a NYC hipster after a bender. On the plus side, he does score some extra cash.
But Jim doesn’t notice Dave’s predicament because there’s a much more enticing party attendee, a red velvet cake – Jim’s Jezebel. He avoids her by crashing another party where for some reason they have a full spread of delicious dinners laid out at eight in the morning. But Jim’s distracted when he spies some kids messing with his velvet lady love, trailing grubby fingers in her perfect icing. He saves the day and smooths her out, like lovers do. But his lick of the knife registers Jim’s fatal flaw. There’s gonna be a showdown in cake town. Later the birthday girl notices her cake’s vandalization and Jim gets fingered as the Spartacus of icing, he’s got it in his beard, and the day is done.
When Gaffigan gets home Jeannie confronts him again. She got a call about his morning park antics. The confession couch makes Jim admit he’s got a real problem. He admits all. He ate the whole Las Vegas cake in one sitting for one. But it gets worse… Jim’s airport tale of overeating woe is so horrifying you may laugh until you wet your pants. I nearly did.
So, we have two things to thank Jim Gaffigan for tonight; introducing us to a channel with a serious identity crisis TVLand/Nick at Night… or is it just Nick? Hey guys, picking a name is the easiest part of having a TV channel! And more importantly, he made us laugh and – given the torrential tirade of fast food ads running with this show… we could all use that ab workout.
–Katherine Recap
