One Big Happy continued its perfect streak of being an unbelievable pile of garbage with “Wedlocked.” The main conflict of this episode is the possibility that Luke won’t marry Prudence, when they’ve only known each other for a couple of weeks and seem to have some deep issues. They really overestimated how much I’m rooting for them. They also conveniently forgot that the root of Luke’s fears were Prudence openly saying the only reason she would marry someone she’d only known a few days would be to get out of a bad situation. Instead they shifted to make it seem like the entire problem was the fact that she’d kept her first husband a secret, so that they could be gross and compare this whole ridiculous conflict to what people who are in the closet go through.
Not only does this episode not acknowledge that when Luke ran out on Prudence, he also ran out on Lizzy, who is pregnant with his baby, but it also seems to condemn Lizzy for not always being 100% enthusiastic about a stranger being involved in her new family.
Since One Big Happy is compulsively afraid of any conflict coming organically from the characters, the final obstacle comes from a woman just showing up and handcuffing herself to Luke, preventing him from making it to his wedding to Prudence on time. Women be crazy, amiright? Since Luke doesn’t make it on time, Lizzy decides the logical thing to do is for her to marry Prudence. After all, we have to save this terrible relationship and Lizzy has to atone for her selfishness in not wanting the father of her child to suddenly also have a new marriage on his hands.
This episode put a lot of energy into trying to raise the stakes to a ridiculous degree and throw in a lot of twists. I wish they’d put some of that energy into writing jokes.
