Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Other Two’ Season 3 on HBO Max, Where Brooke Is Questioning Her Life Choices and Cary Is Trying To Enjoy Success

The latest season of HBO Max‘s The Other Two picks up a couple of years after the previous season. The pandemic is mostly over, but it’s taken a toll on Brooke, Cary, Pat, and Chase Dubek, in good and bad ways. As Season 3 begins, each of the Dubek children — Chase included — is struggling to figure out where they belong in showbiz, while mom Pat has become a wildly successful brand herself, now worth billions. Though Cary’s star is on the rise, Brooke questions her life choices, and the new season will see then trying to figure out what dreams they’re meant to pursue.

THE OTHER TWO (SEASON 3): STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: “You’re watching The Gay Minute on HuffPo Live,” Curtis Paltrow (Brandon Scott Jones) says, introducing his niche Hollywood news show. Curtis, once a colleague of Cary Dubek (Drew Tarver), but now Curtis is announcing the release of Cary’s first movie, Night Nurse, direct to VOD.

The Gist: It’s been a couple years since season two of The Other Two has aired, and we’ve endured a pandemic and an insurrection on the nation’s capital in that time. And both of those things factor into the series which picks up with Cary celebrating the release of his first film, his big acting break, Night Nurse, which co-stars Edie Falco, Beanie Feldstein, and June Squibb. The film’s claim to fame is that it had the most COVID delays of any movie, and in numerous flashbacks to Cary’s experience on set, we see him being screamed at by a COVID coordinator who keeps shutting down production if actors test positive or sit too close to one another. It’s a joke about our COVID paranoia that hits because it’s so extreme, and yet it’s so true. Cary’s big, celebratory premiere night, filled with red carpet interviews and the rest of the Hollywood trappings, is cut short though, when it’s announced that the theater was bought by Starbucks and everyone has to evacuate before the movie can even be shown. The rapid-fire jokes that take aim at Hollywood and capitalism and the Idiocracy we live in come fast and loose throughout the episode. (And even if you’re not in the industry, there are a million jokes that hit closer to home. After Cary’s failed movie premiere, he invites his friends over to watch his movie on Hulu, and spends 90 minutes trying to login. Turns out, his Hulu password was just the regular password he always uses, but with an exclamation mark at the end. I felt very seen.)

In Brooke’s world, she’s now engaged to former ex-boyfriend Lance (Josh Segarra), who is now a nurse, because the pandemic turned everyone Brooke knows into an essential worker and she really hates it. She tries to find people from her past who are still as shallow and awful as she still is, and she keeps coming up short, until she calls her old friend Jo who was part of the insurrection on the Capitol. Brooke is thrilled to use Jo as an example of someone who was actually made worse by the pandemic, but Lance sens Jo home when he tells Brooke that she’s just being too mean to Jo. The insurrectionist.

After many failed attempts to have his friends screen Night Nurse, Cary, Brooke, Lance and Curtis go to Pat’s (Molly Shannon) new mansion so they can screen the movie in her home theater. Finally, Cary gets the audience response he’s looking for (he positions his chair next to the movie screen so he can watch them watching him), and they give him and the film a standing ovation when it’s done. When Cary gets home though, instead of feeling celebratory, he gets ready for bed and scrolls through Twitter looking for more feedback about #nightnurse.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The characters of The Other Two have he selfishness of the cast of Seinfeld combined with the industry jokes and satire of shows like 30 Rock and Party Down.

Our Take: Sometimes when a lot of time passes between seasons of a show, that show can lose momentum. Both the second and third seasons of The Other Two were been affected and/or delayed by the pandemic, but the show wisely used that extra time and built it into the fabric of its story to mine it all for jokes. The show doesn’t just acknowledge that Covid happened, it uses things like safety protocols, production delays, and the effects the virus had on so many people and it runs with all of those things to a hilarious degree. Nothing is sacred on this show, and most of those risky jokes pay off. (And it feels like as the seasons go on, the cast, especially Brooke, get more Larry David-like, as they’re all a little too unfiltered and cynical about everything.)

Even though the show feels incredibly of-the-moment, the timely jokes hit the hardest and are the strongest. In 20 years, people may not understand the gags about essential workers, or jokes about remembering our passwords, but they’re spot on for right now and provide big laughs. And it’s always a real testament to a show when characters can be selfish, and yet you still root for them. As Brooke and Cary figure out their jobs, their relationships, and who they are as people, they can be terrible, but dammit if I don’t want them to achieve the same kind of success as ChaseDreams or Pat.

Sex and Skin: None, except for the deep V-neck blazer that both Cary and Brooke decide to wear to his movie premiere.

Parting Shot: Cary lies in bed alone in the dark, lit only by the glow of his Twitter feed as he scrolls looking for feedback about his film.

Sleeper Star: There are too many great supporting cast members to single out: Molly Shannon and Josh Segarra are both great in their roles as Pat and Lance, but in the first episode, we have to shout out Kate Berlant for reprising her performance as notorious Pitzi Pyle, who is now a sign language interpreter moving to Bolivia to start a school for the deaf.

Most Pilot-y Line: “I don’t know if I have a whole movie in me tonight. We could just watch 30 episodes of Friends.” Truer words have never been spoken.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Other Two is so dense with jokes, even if not every single one hits, it’s consistently, reliably funny. Between the industry humor, the gifted physical comedy, and the characters who are ever-evolving, the show is still reliably sharp, dark, and full of surprises.

Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.