Trying, the Apple TV+ series that is the Full House to Ted Lasso’s Coach, returns this week for a richly unwarranted third season.
The show, a smug and naggingly pleasant look at two well-to-do narcissists who want to raise children for some reason, finally fulfills Jason and Nikki’s dream of parenthood after watching them not earn it for two long seasons.
Indeed there’s nothing unique or likable or notable at all about these two characters. Let’s see what happens to them now that they’ve brought a pair of children into their London home.
Trying season 3 recap
Season 3, episodes 1 and 2: Nikki (played by Esther Smith) and Jason (Rafe Spall) finally have their adopted kids — but they have no idea what to do with them.
The first joke of the season is Nikki not having food in the house and calling her parents to beg them to make her food, and they ring the doorbell three seconds after they hang up. Then Nikki sets about baby-proofing their home by putting tennis balls on every single sharp surface in the apartment.
When it comes to the kids, Princess (Eden Togwell) is theirs to keep but Tyler (Mickey McAnulty) is not. The council is going to come collect him soonish, despite Jason and Nikki’s protestations.
They want to enjoy their only day with both kids, so the new family goes to the zoo. While they’re out, everyone the couple knows (which is admittedly only like eight people) goes shopping to buy things for the kids. Then, the troop comes over to help Jason and Nikki put on a show of love and force for the adoption agency guy, Noah (Karl Collins). He folds, eventually, though they’ve only got 12 weeks to prove they’re up to the task of raising two kids instead of just one.
If it’s not one thing, it’s another
The second day gets off to a rough start. Their apartment is being sold by the building company that owns it. Plus, Jason — who quits his job to be a stay-at-home dad — and Nikki worry that the kids will be bullied in school.
Nikki’s first task back at work is to fire people. She thus must spend the day getting to know all the employees. A funny joke about one of them being antisocial (Ntiarna Xavier Knight) is blown almost instantly, but that’s this show all over. On Trying, nothing is so funny that it can’t be jettisoned for a note of sweetness.
Jason, meanwhile, asks his dad (Phil Davis) to come over and look at the house they’re renting. He’s hoping to find asbestos or structural flaws within the house so they can ask the company to lower the price of the house so he can buy it. When that fails, Jason reaches out to his friend Scott (Darren Boyd), a character that refuses to be funny, for advice.
Be more fish, less meerkat
Photo: Apple TV+
I don’t really know whether to call it an improvement that the Trying writers at least started putting recognizable joke structures into the episodes here in the third season. When Phil Davis shows up as Jason’s dad, he’s made a bed for the orphan kids in about 15 minutes. He’s also faking a limp but can’t remember which leg, and Jason has to correct him.
Jokes. Real jokes. They’re just missing that spark. Part of the problem is that Rafe Spall plays Jason as the most sleepless, miserable man in London. He can’t sell punchlines, really, because his instincts as an actor are telling him to go dark. But you can’t make the English equivalent of Modern Family and go really dark.
Jason saying that the kids remind him of the twins from The Shining doesn’t really fit into a show where a determined dad puts on a disguise to feed penguins to please his adopted kids when they can’t make the regular feeding time.
Trying is aggressively good-natured, which just can’t be that fun for actors, especially someone like Spall, who has played romantic comedy leads before, but also been in shriekingly funny movies like Hot Fuzz and memorable in unbelievably bleak movies like Prometheus.
This can’t be that satisfying, but then what do I know? I’m just going by the level of commitment he seems content to bring to the part.
Out of touch with kids
Jason also still seems comically (but not like “ha ha” comically) unaware of how kids are and need to be. When Tyler says he wants to bring a rock to class for show and tell, Jason immediately says he can’t do it because the boy will fall victim to bullies. As if all kids don’t talk to inanimate objects. That’s just life.
Jason says he’s unnaturally sensitive to these things because he was bullied. To which I can only say: not harshly enough.
Everything about this show kinda begs to have its books knocked out of its arms and its head shoved in the toilet.
The first show of season 3 ends, like every episode of Trying seems to, with an unforgivably treacly song that summarizes what we just saw. “It takes a village to raise a kid” is actually the chorus of the song by a group called Bear’s Den that appears to be trying to corner the market on bands that are somehow even less exciting than Snow Patrol. That kind of thing should frankly be illegal.
There’s only so much preciousness any given half-hour of television should be allowed to contain. Trying hits the limit every episode.
★☆☆☆☆
Watch Trying on Apple TV+
Season 3 of Trying premieres July 22 on Apple TV+. New episodes follow each Friday.
Rated: TV-14
Watch on: Apple TV+
Scout Tafoya is a film and TV critic, director and creator of the long-running video essay series The Unloved for RogerEbert.com. He has written for The Village Voice, Film Comment, The Los Angeles Review of Books and Nylon Magazine. He is the author of Cinemaphagy: On the Psychedelic Classical Form of Tobe Hooper, the director of 25 feature films, and the director and editor of more than 300 video essays, which can be found at Patreon.com/honorszombie.
