Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Other Two’ On Comedy Central, About The Less-Successful Siblings Of A Teen Pop Star

We’ve always wondered how the families and siblings of teen stars feel about that person’s sudden fame. Are they jealous? Do they want to protect the kid? Do they try to pursue their own dreams? This is the idea behind Comedy Central’s funny new comedy The Other Two. Read on for more info…

THE OTHER TWO: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: News reports from E! and other channels about the viral sensation Chase Dreams, a 13-year-old pop singer whose homemade video for “I Want To Marry You At Recess” has exploded into the pop culture scene.

The Gist: Chase Dubek (Case Walker) seems to be enjoying his whirlwind, as we see when Hoda and Kathie Lee interview him and his mother Pat (Molly Shannon), but it seems like Pat is enjoying it more. She’s made hats and other tchotchkes with the “ChaseDreams” moniker, and she really feels that her youngest child is her chance to have fame and fortune.

When she’s asked about her “other two,” though, she tap dances. Chase’s adult brother and sister are struggling, to say the least. Cary (Drew Tarver) is an actor who is auditioning for parts like “guy who smells a fart at a party,” who is being teased by his hunk of a roommate who has no problem making out with him but claims he’s not gay, and works as a waiter at a restaurant owned by a guy who thinks he’s woke because he watched Brokeback Mountain.

Chase’s sister Brooke (Heléne Yorke) used to be a professional dancer but now is a realtor who is crashing at the high-end apartments she’s showing because she just broke up with her Foot Locker-working boyfriend who always has ideas for shoes but never writes them down. She sees Chase’s success and is determined to put her life back together and make it fun again, but likely has little idea how. “I’m going to see fifty dicks,” she tells a colleague.

They go do dinner with Pat, who has brought along a guy named Streeter (Ken Marino), whom she hired to manage Chase; as Brooke and Cary try to burnish their failing lives in comparison to their little brother’s (Brooke’s ex even shows up because she never mentioned the break-up), Streeter talks about how much Chase’s music speaks to him, a grown man. Then he accidentally calls the kid “Chance” in a not-so-Freudian slip.

Our Take: There’s a lot of potential in The Other Two, created by Sarah Schneider and Chris Kelly (both from SNL; in fact, Lorne Michaels is one of the show’s executive producers). At first, the idea of seeing two flailing millennials (which they make sure they inform Streeter about: “We checked, it’s people born between 1982 and 1995”) feels like its been done again and again, but you add in their much-younger brother Chase into the mix, and the show takes on another dimension that piques our interest.

Never mind the fact that Cary and especially Brooke are far older than Chase and that they’re basing their success on their way-little brother’s, which feels vaguely inappropriate. But, in the last scene, where Chase gets into bed with his brother and sister, who are staying in his snazzy hotel room among gift baskets from the likes of Debra Messing, we see the real dynamic among the three. Brooke and Cary might be jealous of Chase’s success, but they love him and worry that their mom is going to turn this sweet kid into a 2020s version of Justin Bieber. But they’re damn sure going to ride on his coattails as much as possible.

So, among jokes about fifty dicks and other lines that are hit-and-miss, seeing these two perceived fuck-ups (really, they’re not; they’re just scrambling like every other young person in New York) perhaps protect their suddenly-famous teen brother will be the reason to tune in.

Sex and Skin: Brooke starts her fifty dicks mission by sleeping with a guy (Beck Bennett) she thinks is an airline pilot; you can see the disappointment on her face when he says he’s a flight attendant. Also she’s likely not happy to be sleeping with a guy at the JFK Motel between flights.

Parting Shot: We see a more full-length version of Chase’s video. Then we see Cary watching it on his laptop, saying, “I mean, I don’t not get it.”

Sleeper Star: Molly Shannon, always. She’s so great at playing the social climber, she’s perfectly cast as Chase’s annoying stage mother.

Most Pilot-y Line: Cary’s actual “acting” job, dancing for tour bus passengers in Central Park, is so pathetic that we felt very sad for him in that moment.

Our Call: STREAM IT, because of Shannon and because it feels like The Other Two will be a show that’s more about sudden fame than about yet another set of millennials trying to figure things out.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Stream The Other Two on Comedy Central