“Of all the gin joints in all the world, this one is closest to my house.”

At the end of last week it seemed like Harry had been finally rumbled by the sheriff and his deputy and that everything would change. Silly me, as usual expectations are subverted and quite quickly things are back to whatever passes for normal in the town of Patience.

The core of the episode is the titular girls’ night out, with the female characters and a couple of new faces out on the lash, until discussions about the town’s notoriously unequal pay point to a culprit who’s very close to home for one of the women. The episode is written by Jenna Lamia who plays D’Arcy’s friend Judy and deservedly gives herself the episode’s best sight gag.

Meanwhile Kate’s visiting scientist cousin (Alex Borstein, Family Guy’s Lois) takes an instant shine to Harry, who sees her as a way to continue building his “phone home” device (there’s some lovely jokes at E.T.’s expense here) while young Max’s accelerated maturity causes embarrassment for Sahar. We also have a very fun use of another show’s theme tune (I won’t spoil obviously but it’s from my all-time favourite series so it put a big grin on my face).

I have to say that plot-wise not an awful lot happens, but it’s not the first time the show has allowed the overall story to just inch forward while we spend time with the supporting cast, with Harry taking something of a back seat. While looking something up on IMDB I made the terrible mistake of glancing at the user reviews – sadly but unsurprisingly it’s full of very angry people railing at it and talking about jumping sharks as if 2nd wave feminist principles are somehow still radical 60 years on. I actually thought that the gender politics were handled well, points were made and Harry got a much-needed learning moment but I don’t think it was heavy-handed in the slightest.

Slightly more valid concerns that season 2 is spending too much time with the non-alien characters rather fall by the wayside when we remember how much season 1 did that too (one early episode you may recall focused primarily on the local First Americans and added nuance and flavour to the show as a whole). Essentially like most good SF it’s all about us, not the alien threat itself.

Plus, it must be said that at one point Asta says something to Harry that made me sit up and say “oh”, a little moment of realization that I probably do get some things wrong and need to do better. So at least one person who needed to hear what this episode had to say did actually listen…

Verdict: An entertaining episode with plenty of laughs and a few things to think about. If this is pissing some people off then it’s almost certainly doing something right. 8/10

Andy Smith