Kidding Season 2 Premiere Recap: “The Cleanest Liver in Columbus”

Kidding season 2 recap: the premiere, beat by beat

In 2018, the documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor? presented the late Fred Rogers as a gentle television saint, and audiences responded with something close to reverence. The film also left a question hanging: what would a person like that look like if he could be angry, if he punched a wall or screamed into a pillow? Kidding, the Showtime series created by Dave Holstein, builds an entire show on that question. Jim Carrey plays Jeff Piccirillo, known to a generation of children as Mr. Pickles, and season two begins with the saint at his worst.

By the end of season one, Jeff’s perfect life has unraveled. His son Phil has died in a car accident, his other son Will is acting out, his wife Jill (Judy Greer) is estranged and now seeing Peter, his father Sebastian (Frank Langella) runs the business of Mr. Pickles, and his sister Deidre (Catherine Keener), who builds the show’s puppets, is under pressure of her own. Cole Allen plays both Phil and Will. Season one ended at Christmas with an attempted murder, and the premiere picks up from there. Peter, played by Justin Kirk, was a recurring character in the first season and becomes a main one in the second.

Season two premiered on Showtime on February 9, 2020, and the opening episode, “The Cleanest Liver in Columbus, Ohio,” was written by Holstein and directed by Jake Schreier. It runs on dark farce and genuine grief.

A wedding flashback and a car

The episode opens at Jeff and Jill’s wedding with the Dalai Lama presiding. The idea is that only a celebrity as large as Jeff could score such a guest. After the vows, the officiant offers them champagne, they drink, and the glass is smashed, a gesture meant to bring the broken pieces together again.

Cut to the sound of glass breaking in the present. Mr. Pickles has just run over Peter (Justin Kirk), Jill’s boyfriend, with his car. Peter flies. Jeff cannot believe what he has done, and then his phone rings: the Pickles Platoon fan club is caroling to him. Jeff has to decide whether to be Jeff or Mr. Pickles, and for the moment he chooses both. He knocks on Jill’s door and lies, saying Peter was on drugs and walked into the path of the car.

The race to the hospital

The family loads Peter onto a toboggan from the garage, with Will and his new girlfriend watching from the neighboring house they use as a hangout. The girl decides that the family is psychotic and suggests she and Will see other people, which is the last thing Will needs. A party outside witnesses the scene, and Mr. Pickles tells the drinkers not to do drugs before the mad dash to the hospital begins.

On the way, Jill barks short, direct instructions, and the sequence calls back to a red light that matters in season one. It also echoes the night Will was born, when Jeff, not Pickles, tried to calm Jill during labor with a breathing exercise, barking the commands as he said them. Peter is soon in code blue, and the family has to call his relatives.

At home, Deidre and her husband Scott (Bernard White), whom the show has confirmed is gay, are giving their daughter Maddy her Christmas presents and explaining their divorce. Maddy knows she will get double the gifts. Deidre’s only real concern is her immediate family.

Lies, confessions and a haunted Christmas

At the hospital, Deidre urges Jeff to keep quiet. His real worry is honesty with Jill, especially about the house he has bought next to hers, which Will does not know he uses for parties. In the car, Will has already worked out that his father bought the house. He is angry about dishonesty, though the show asks who could blame him.

In the waiting room, Jill panics that Peter might die and apologizes to Jeff for ruining his Christmas. When Will walks in on his parents embracing, he suddenly wants things to stay as they are. Peter is in critical but stable condition, and the three go home.

Jeff tries to tell Jill about the house, but she asks if he can stay the night. He sleeps on the couch. There is no kiss, only a wave good night, and each small win still counts for a lot. Then he rakes through the old Santa routine his family used to share, until a text from Deidre asks if Peter is dead yet. He goes to Will’s room and finds a toy of himself hung by the neck. They bake cookies together in the kitchen instead.

The donation

Jeff asks Will whether he told his mother about the house next door. Will swears he did not. Jeff stops himself from the scolding Mr. Pickles would deliver and instead allows his son to curse, on the condition that a swear word is used only when no better word exists. Will promises to keep quiet and confesses that he likes seeing his parents together more than apart.

On Christmas morning, Jill finds Jeff and Will working as a team. At the hospital, Peter needs a liver, or part of one. The donor list is too long, and Peter’s Mormon family offers theirs, but only Jeff truly knows who is responsible. Remembering Will’s birth, he storms back in, tells his family the entire story and volunteers.

The doctor asks the standard questions. Does he smoke? No. Drugs? Never. When was his last drink? He knows the exact date: the day his marriage took flight. Astonished, the doctor puts him in surgery. As Jeff bags his belongings, the Pickles Platoon calls again with the same carol, and Mr. Pickles asks a child if he has been a good boy this year. Mr. Pickles had. Had Jeff?

Kidding season 2 premiere at a glance

• Episode: “The Cleanest Liver in Columbus, Ohio,” season 2, episode 1; premiered February 9, 2020.
• Created by Dave Holstein; the episode was written by Holstein and directed by Jake Schreier.
• Cast: Jim Carrey, Judy Greer, Frank Langella, Catherine Keener, Cole Allen, Justin Kirk and Bernard White.
• Michel Gondry was an executive producer and directed the season 1 premiere, “Green Means Go.”
• Showtime cancelled the series on July 14, 2020, after two seasons.

Review: the show asks how much goodness a person can fake

The premiere raises the stakes without breaking the show’s tone. It keeps the dollhouse look and the gallows humor of season one and adds a more obvious moral engine: Jeff has done something terrible, and the only way he knows to fix it is the most selfless act available. The liver donation is both a redemption and a trap, because it feeds the idea that only perfect behavior counts.

The cast keeps it from collapsing into farce. Carrey plays Jeff with a rigid, brittle cheer, as though he is holding up a room by hand, and the quieter scenes, such as the wave goodnight from the couch or the cookie-baking truce with Will, show how little it takes to restore or destroy that balance. Greer gives Jill a practical strength, and Kirk’s Peter, seen mostly unconscious, still becomes the story’s engine. A moral comedy like this one depends on people who can sell both the joke and the wound.

Writing a good character means putting him through hell, particularly in a dramedy. This is a Fred Rogers figure being put through the wringer. Season one put him through plenty, and this episode suggests it is not his breaking point either. That does not mean he will go full American Psycho, but it is easy to see how a year like 2019 could wear down anyone’s optimism.

Viewers who want a harsher lens on public kindness will find it here. Mr. Pickles still has a message of reassurance for his young fans, that they are not alone, and it comes from a man who is in the middle of a crisis of his own.

There is also the matter of pace. For a season opener it is brisk, locking most of its scenes into a single night and morning, and it lets the family’s dysfunction play out in real time. A viewer who skipped season one could follow the plot, even if the emotional weight would be lighter.

Sources

• Kidding (TV series), Wikipedia — cast, season 2 episode list and air dates