I had a feeling it was going to be difficult to keep the momentum going after last’s week’s phenomenal ‘Of Mice and Men‘ musical episodes with Lou Ferrigno, but ‘Con Man’ did admirably regardless, even with these two episodes feeling like they were working hard to set-up the plot for next week’s big showdown with Girth Hemsworth.
Jumping right in, we find ourselves at long last at the Shaka-Con, where two reporters are realizing they have been tasked with reporting at the event for 24 hours straight, right before they meet the woman (played by Laura Vandervoort) who will be starring in ‘Doctor-Cop-Lawyer,’ Finley Farrow, and they are all shocked to learn the convention obstacle course is actually quite deadly as they see paramedics rush inside to pull out an injured cosplayer.
Wray and Bobbi meanwhile arrive in his room where he is met by all of his old ‘Spectrum’ castmates (minus Jack Moore) who reveal their odd quirks. One is struggling to stay sober after years of drug use, and the man watching over her, Stutter, seems to be a paranoid type who we meet disguised as a ficus spying on Wray in the room, with a gun shaped like a boulder, which Wray belatedly realizes is loaded after he accidentally shoots it. Another cast member climbs into the room as she is on the run from the diet companies she pissed off, with her rapid weight gain and loss not fitting the contract she signed (or something like that), and her bizarre neck holding the last 70 pounds of her fat does not help matters. Lastly, Wray is visited by his long-time fling from the cast, Dawn Jones, who insists she is not longer going to be sleeping with him now that she is a mom with twins, though at first Wray is clearly still game. During all this, we learn Bobbi has been using Wray’s room for about a week (eating all his free food and somehow leaving the bed damp), and informs Wray that the lead in ‘Dr.-Cop-Lawyer’ is now going to be the missing Hemsworth brother Girth, who is at the Shaka-Con and who they now need to try to convince to not take the part.
On the convention floor, Wray finds Jack in the VIP room (Jack has to let Wray in as he is two “V’s” too short) and Jack informs Wray that he lost a lot of his film roles to the Hemsworth brothers, so he understands his plight. Jack also reveals that he is still working on funding the ‘Spectrum’ movie so they need this convention to go well, a fact which is very surprising to Wray. After a brief cameo from Stan Lee who heads off his with cardboard cut-out to shoot some more cameos, Wray is left in a massage chair pouring out his soul to Jack, only to look over and realize Jack has abandoned him and left his own cardboard cut-out behind to keep Wray company.
In the second episode of the night, Wray and the cast of ‘Spectrum’ (minus Jack, who sends his cardboard cut-out instead) are signing autographs for the fans, when Girth Hemsworth himself arrives, asking for an autograph from Wray, clearly out to sabotage the man. Girth rallies the crowd with talk about how great Wray is in ‘Spectrum’ and how odd it would be to see him in anything that is not science-fiction, especially anything where he would dressed as a doctor, cop or in a suit like a lawyer.
After tricking Wray into calling him the “C” word which causes the audience to gasp, Girth leaves, taking the crowd with him and leaving no one left to want autographs from the ‘Spectrum’ crew. Bobbi arrives and comes up with a plan, she will have to take out Girth while Wray will have to flirt with Finley Farrow as she will have some say in who finally gets the lead role. Before they do that, however, the cast has to take cast photos with fans, and everyone is required to be there, except for Jack, who again just sends his cardboard cut-out which no one but Wray seems to notice. One by one the rest of the cast all find reasons to abandon Wray to take pictures with the fans alone with the cut-out and Dawn, who suddenly seems much more interested in Wray now that he has been tasked with flirting with Finley Farrow. On camera they start making out, and going into ridiculously graphic poses which does not seem to bother anyone as the fans are not noticing as they are looking toward the camera and not behind them. Eventually, Wray escapes to go hunt down Finely Farrow and Bobbi is left alone with the camera-woman asking if she can take a few extra photos of Bobbi as a favor, which she reluctantly agrees to as Bobbi pulls out a vanity plate for her shots.
CON-VERSATION PIECES:
WRAY: How many Hemsworth’s are there?
BOBBI: No one knows! They’re like zebras! They herd together so they can hide their numbers.
WRAY: There is no trigger! Doesn’t it have a safety?
STUTTER: It’s a gun Wray, it is safety.
Not the strongest episodes of the season, but again, it could just be hard to follow up those musical from last week and build up to the season finale which is coming up. Still, it had its moments, and it was fun seeing Wray interact with the ‘Spectrum’ cast and to see Jack (albeit briefly), though I loved the gag of carrying around the cardboard cut-out of Jack and no one minding or realizing Jack was not really there.
See you back here soon for the final two episodes!
Nick is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles, who belongs to the privileged few who enjoyed the ending to ‘Lost.’ For more of Nick’s thoughts and articles, follow him on Twitter.
