What a pleasant scene to end another Valentine’s Day with: minors possibly having a threesome. Forget the flowers. Forget the chocolates. Forget all that sentimental notion of finding that special person who can love and cherish you. No, the Fox comedy The Mick’s implication of two underage boys in a bathtub waiting for an older girl is something that will stick with me, whether I like it or not.
In Tuesday's episode “The Mess,” Mickey (Kaitlin Olson) tries to put her foot down with the kids, but it only leads to them going to what the eldest Sabrina refers to as a “white trash high school party.” If you can get past colorful description, we move to the actual party which…admittedly is not much better than the description itself.
That distastefulness then takes a further dive when 13-year-old Chip (Thomas Barbusca) and his friend Andrew are asked to go somewhere more private with an older girl. The boys turn to each other to establish ground rules to "make sure things don't get weird." "Like, you and I shouldn't kiss for more than five seconds," Andrew suggests. Yikes! Chip nixes the idea and Andrew says, "All right, fine, geez, we won't kiss. Didn't know you were gonna be so weird about it."
The scenario ends with the young boys naked in a bathtub together as they wait for the girl to get them all drinks. Don’t believe me? See for yourself.
Andrew: I'm starting to prune up.
Chip: Where the hell is she? It doesn't take this long to get beers.
Andrew: Do you think we need more bubbles?
Chip: No, we're good on bubbles. Just stop talking about bubbles. I-it's not what it looks like.
Mickey: Get out.
Chip: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Girl: Hey. Um... Where did Chip go?
Andrew: Uh... He had to step out, but... I'm here. We got plenty of bubbles.
Yeah, there was absolutely nothing in that scenario that could be confused as appropriate. When Mickey is the decent one in this situation, everyone watching should hopefully see this as a bad idea. Or at least be reminded that The Mick can’t do what we average folk like to call decency.
My biggest problem is that when the show writers can’t even wrap their heads around two underage boys being naked in a bathtub as questionable idea, I have no idea how deep this rabbit hole goes.