Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Inside Job’ Part 2 On Netflix, Where Reagan Ridley Contends With Her Crazy Father Being In Charge Of Cognito, Inc.

We are big fans of comedies, especially ones with big ensembles, who know who their characters are from the jump. Yes, we do appreciate that shows can often take time to find their rhythm. But with a solid set of characters, that journey is a who lot easier to make. Inside Job debuted last year and impressed us with a group of crazy but well-drawn characters, including Lizzy Caplan as the angry, withdrawn engineer Reagan Ridley. The show is back for “Part 2”, and it seems like it’s picking up where it left off.

INSIDE JOB PART 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A group of children are being given a tour outside the White House, when a drunk in a robe throws up.

The Gist: The drunk is Reagan Ridley (Lizzy Caplan), who is still reacting to the fact that her father Rand (Christian Slater) has been installed as the leader of Cognitio, Inc., the shadow government corporation she works for. When J.R. Scheimpough (Andy Daly) got sent off to “Shadow Prison X” for embezzling funds, she thought she would get the job, but it fell to her crazy father, who founded the company and is its biggest shareholder. Not long ago, he was the bitter drunk scaring kids in front of the White House. Oh, and he also erased her memories before taking over the company.

She’s snagged off the street by blank-faced agent Brett Hand (Clark Duke) and brought into work. And while it seems like Rand being put back in charge would throw things into chaos, none of Reagan’s co-workers want to join her in a coup. Magic Myc (Brett Gelman), the psychic mushroom, is happy there’s vodka flowing from the water fountains. Gigi (Tisha Campbell) says, “Having one evil white guy in charge versus another evil white guy? Uhhh, not that different.”

To help Reagan get back to her previous angry and bitter self, she’s sent to “Anonymous Anonymous”, a support group for people burnt out on working for the deep state. There, she meets Ron Staedtler (Adam Scott), who is a mind eraser for the Illuminati, who is burdened by the memories he has to erase.

When Rand prepares the group for a festival that brings together the six secret societies that rule the world, Reagan plans to humiliate Rand with her nanobots, which Rand wants to ingest and control in order to compete with the Illuminati leader Dietrich Kluge, who is his mortal enemy. When they get there, she runs into Ron again, who is using nanobots to embarrass Kludge. They bond over their disgust at just how dumb their particular shadow government organizations are, and get in some nookie amongst the chaos.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Inside Job Part 1, of course, which we thought had the same vibes as American Dad and Futurama.

Our Take: Since Shion Takeuchi and her staff were able to do such a good job establishing the ensemble in Part 1 of Inside Job, the show pretty smoothly picks up where it left off. In fact, having Reagan be the drunk at the White House neatly reminds us of how the series started, when it was Rand ranting and raving to tour groups about how the country really works.

With the addition of Scott as Ron — a clever way of giving us a Party Down reunion with Caplan that’s not going to happen on the actual Party Down revival series — we get some perspective on what the other secret societies think of Cognito and vice versa. We loved that the representatives of the Illuminati at the festival were Oprah, Jay-Z, Beyoncé and Lin-Manuel Miranda, because that’s who we imagine the Illuminati are these days. “That guy sucks. No wonder why people pay $2,000 on StubHub to watch him get shot,” says Andre (Bobby Lee) to Gigi, who once applied to work for the Illuminati, about LMM. You can’t even insult him without complimenting him.

But Ron also serves to be someone Reagan can turn to when things at Cognito go sideways, which is pretty much all the time. He’ll likely serve as a better balance to her anger and skills than Hand did, but having the yes-man agent melt into the ensemble is fine, because his blankness is a good contrast to the rest of the crew. Because Takeuchi is so confident in her ensemble, she can bring Hand back into the crowd and bring another pro in to take up the character slack.

The b-story of the episode, where Myc and Glenn Dolphman (John DiMaggio) feel unappreciated by Cognito and blot for the Juggalos, was funny just to illustrate how people end up being so loyal to the guys from Insane Clown Posse to begin with.

Sex and Skin: Some inter-shadow-government-agency lovin’ between Reagan and Ron (Ron Reagan! Get it?) but it’s all relatively tame.

Parting Shot: Because of the bacchanal at the festival, J.R. is inadvertently freed. He then insults Sasquatch (James Adomian) by calling him Chewbacca (which we learned at AA happens a lot).

Sleeper Star: We’re not sure who played Alex Jones in the episode, but he had some of the funniest lines of the night, including, “I’m secretly in love with Hillary Clinton!”

Most Pilot-y Line: Jesse Ventura (Adomian) is at the AA meeting, too, and he asks questions like “Will I ever love myself?” That feels like a joke that would have been fun on Futurama somewhere in 2005. What is the former wrestler/Minnesota governor even doing these days? Maybe that’s the point of the joke. The cartoon version is even wearing a fun tin foil hat.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Inside Job continues to take its well-written characters to some pretty crazy places, which is just what we’d expect from a shadow government corporation run by a bunch of nutjobs.

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, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.