Roadies: Season 1, Episode 3 – “The Bryce Newman Letter”

Bryce Newman (Rainn Wilson) is only a long-haired cat short of being the ultimate villain — a critic — in the third episode of Roadies, in which the humor has been traded in in favor of exorcising some personal demons. Newman is the pretentious, self-important, music-writing auteur that has the audacity to insult the Staton-House Band to his 330,000 readers. The crew, united in their furious loyalty, decide to exact some revenge. So mad they could spit, they curse the Dave Grohl-loving hack (a sure sign of someone who doesn’t actually like music) and, like rational human beings, decide to drug rather than kill him.

Of course, financial suity man Reg (Rafe Spall) wants to come at it from another angle. Lead with sugar! While bugs may flock to the sweet, we all know that shit attracts them quicker and so tour nanny Wes (Colson Baker) finds the dankest drugs to get Newman off his head, and mixes them flawlessly in the liquid brown that is his famous espresso. Meanwhile, the eternal question of the opening band is solved when Lindsey Buckingham, playing himself, decides to help out his old buddy tour manager Bill (Luke Wilson) and steps up to the plate.

Kelly Ann’s (Imogen Poots) crisis of the week is that she thinks she’s too serious, to the point where she is watching online videos of how not to be so serious (“Tell a joke in the workplace!”) This is such an asinine, “quirky girl” subplot that only a man with unrealistic dream girl expectations would actually think a woman would act like this. Surprise, surprise: this episode was written by Cameron Crowe. You’d think he’d be more sympathetic to the plight of the reviewer but whatever, man. Also, Shelli (Carla Gugino) is having trouble keeping her marriage on track because she keeps missing her thrice a week phone sex dates with her husband.

As the crew keep not laughing at Kelly Ann’s jokes (“What do you call a drummer at the door? Domino’s”), Newman does everything but evilly twirl a moustache to establish that he’s unlikeable. He even smiles evilly when typing up his original bad review and wow, it’s like looking in a mirror. That’s exactly how we work. Because it’s highly unlikely a music critic would criticise an aging band that seems inspired. I mean, the world’s waiting with bated breath for Steven Tyler’s country album as we speak, right? Nailed it. Needless to say, he throws a fit when the useless millennial can’t find him on the guest list, he preens like a peacock when Reg is nauseatingly accommodating, and proudly owns up to being the inspiration behind Katy Perry’s song, “Negative Jerk”. Newman has a flight back to Los Angeles that night, and he deigns to stay for three songs. What a douche; ugh, I bet he doesn’t even listen to the music he reviews.

The drugs kick in and what do you know! Newman is a fraud. After getting his clothes stolen by the band stalker who was allowed in just so she could have her part in defending her boys, Newman wanders around naked to Lindsey Buckingham’s, “Big Love”, having big epiphanies. And then he takes the stage. The crew tries to stop him in the way in which they don’t try at all and the confessions come flowing out. He’s 52 and wears the clothes of a teenager! He listens to dad rock in the car and switches to hip-hop if someone cool pulls up next to him! LORD ALMIGHTY, HE DOESN’T LISTEN TO THE MUSIC HE REVIEWS! Despite these clichés, he is a self-serving dickhead who truly embodies the worst pretensions of music writing, and it’s actually a really pleasing comeuppance to see him humiliate himself. Not that he’s destroyed by it or anything.

After he falls off the stage and is rushed to the hospital, Newman writes a glowing review of how the Staton-House Band’s sonic power made him transcend space and time or something to that effect. No matter that he didn’t actually see the show, the tears in his eyes prove to us that he has learned his lesson. Music is redemption. Music means something. Music is — okay shut up.

Shelli does finally manage to virtually boff her husband, we assume the stalker has been neutralized, and Kelly Ann gets a laugh. Everything’s tied up neatly, yes, but while the focus is on the hilarity of the guest star, the actual characters get just a bit ignored. Why should we really care about the obviously bad guy when the nice guys are so cute and fluffy? It feels like this episode really was a release of some kind, whether it’s guilt over once being a Newman before the drugs, or a Newman after (oh. The name’s kind of on the nose, huh?); maybe Crowe does have some thing to work out about the reviewers and being on the receiving end of it. Every episode (two so far) that he’s written seems to have more than a little bit of his own experiences thematically holding it together. And here we are, reviewing a former reviewer’s work creating a reviewer. It’s enough to drive one to drugs, for certain.

Speaking of stylized, fictional selves, Bill, after not handling this situation but at all, had another crisis distracting him this episode with his ongoing lady issues. This time with a local girl who tells him she hearts him (she texts him emojis because that is what counts as quirky in 2016 I guess) but she can’t just be the one night stand he has in Atlanta every year. He pulls up with the whole tour bus to give her a chance to come with him, but she picks her man-bun roommate instead. Bill bids good-bye to his once-a-year lover but it’s okay because he has his road family and, “Community is that feeling you get from the perfect song when you realize you’re not alone” (because we can’t end without a lesson). Until next time, Boogie Howser.