My love for Kimmy Gibbler knows no bounds, but I have to admit that she has a fatal flaw: She’s pretty bad at her job.
In this episode, Gibbler Style Party Planning throws Ramona’s 13th birthday party and Kimmy Gibbler doesn’t do any of the things a good party planner would do. She doesn’t have anyone check the ice cream cake and mistakenly gets some creepy-looking priest’s retirement cake instead. Yes, she does a great job transforming the back yard into an Instagram-worthy venue complete with DJ rig for Stephanie, but she doesn’t make sure that the sound equipment will work without setting the power off. To top it off, she doesn’t refrigerate the priest cake and it melts before anyone can eat it.
While all of this is going on, she’s inside choking on balls. Okay, that sounds bad. She was choking on Matt’s meatballs and tiny wiener. Ouch. Even worse. She was choking on some food and Matt, the hunky vet whom D.J. works with, has to save her life. If the power is out, the cake is awful, and all the kids are sitting around complaining about it on Snapchat, wouldn’t it be a good party planner’s job to fix all of those things? That shouldn’t even be a question because the answer is yes. Instead Stephanie, a woman who is so incompetent she can’t even dress herself to look her age, is dealing with everything. Get it together, Gibbler.
Kimmy Gibbler had bigger things to worry about in this episode, things exactly as big as the glorious, firm globes of her ex-husband Fernando’s posterior. Kimmy Gibbler and Fernando promised Ramona that they would get along for her birthday party, but they can’t manage the whole day without getting into a fight. It’s only because Fernando is very possessive of Kimmy Gibbler and doesn’t want Hunky Vet Matt getting his paws on her. Ramona sees them squabbling and it upsets her because she just wants them to get back together. Good thing she didn’t see Kimmy Gibbler making out with Fernando in the backyard or else she would really get her hopes up.
Now, I think Fernando is hotter than a baked potato in Tuscon, but I don’t think that Kimmy Gibbler should get back together with him. Why? Well, Fernando just seems kinda gay. Yes, that is judgmental, and it’s probably just a confluence of the myriad stereotypes colliding in my brain. Maybe it’s just that the closest thing I’ve ever seen to him on screen is Agador Spartacus, Hank Azaria’s super fey Latino maid in The Birdcage. You remember. This one. Whenever I see him, I just want to scream out, “Oh hey, gurrrrllll.â€
Look at Fernando’s traits: The love of dancing, the tight shirts, the floral prints, the lispy voice, the choice of female hairstyling as a career. I mean, this is San Francisco after all. That place is gayer than Cristiano Ronaldo’s underwear drawer. The only thing about Fernando that doesn’t read as gay is his love of Kimmy Gibbler. Considering that I am an adult homosexual male and I love Kimmy Gibbler, too, I don’t know what that says.
Speaking of gays, I was impressed by the rather sensitive and inclusive gay joke that Steve makes at the vet’s office. He asks Hunky Vet Matt if he had a wife and when he says no, he asks if he has a husband. This is what inclusion looks like, people. Sure, he was hoping the dude was gay so he wouldn’t hit on his high-school sweetheart, but still. The sensitivity was heartwarming.
So, Steve has it bad for D.J., which I think is a really stupid. D.J. is not just a wet blanket — she is a wet blanket that was frozen in the freezer, covered in fire ants, and then rubbed with poison ivy. She does not want anyone to have any fun ever. Notice how she busted out into the backyard just to keep a bunch of 13-year-olds from making out. Who wants her as a girlfriend? She probably thinks that Cosmo sex tips are tantamount to hardcore porn. Steve is never going to get it on if he keeps barking up that tree. It is a tree with a fence, a gate, barbed wire, and a sensor for one of those invisible dog collars.
Because D.J. is a bigger prude than a nun in Las Vegas, I was surprised she took it so well when Hunky Vet Matt actually came right and told her how cute he thinks she is. How is it that D.J., a woman who is as interested in sex as Donald Trump is in rational thought, has all of these really cute eligible guys after her? Meanwhile Stephanie, who probably gives hand jobs in the bathrooms of Europe’s seedier night spots, doesn’t have anyone to keep her company. That seems cruel to me.
Stephanie knows what women want, so she helps teach Jackson Spencer, D.J.’s oldest son, about how to attract girls. The answer, shockingly, is to be yourself. I don’t know. I’ve known a lot of 13-year-old boys — heck, I’ve even been one — and they are smelly and awful and kind of stupid around girls. Maybe the kid could use some Axe body spray and a few lessons on his “swagger,†as Stephanie calls it, looking like she’s from the Victorian era.
While Spencer Jackson at least has a coherent story line, I feel like everything Max does is just tagged onto the episode. Look at what happens to him: First, he’s trying to get the dog to stop pooping inside, which is, of course, a very essential task. However, as soon as the lights go out, he’s suddenly irrationally worried that it’s the zombie apocalypse and freaks out. Then the lights come back on and he’s sitting in the dog house, staring at Kimmy Gibbler as she makes out with her ex. What is going on with this kid? Does he just need some A.D.D. medication? Does he need an actual story line of his own? Does someone need to give him a job so that he has something to do? If that’s the case, let’s hope he’s a lot better at it than Kimmy Gibbler is at hers.