Baskets Season 3 Episode 6
With all the silliness going on, it’s easy to forget how well Baskets functions as a slice-of-life show. But many episodes have a sleepy tone that suits the suburban setting of Bakersfield. Despite all the madcap clown nonsense, there’s a sense that this series is ultimately all about average Americans just trying to get by. The previous Baskets, in which the whole family fought and Dale decided he was going to sue his mom, was pretty devastating, so a little levity was warranted. This one starts out seeming like it’s going to be impossibly sad with Christine alone at home on Thanksgiving. But then the French clowns (or “cloons”) that Chip tried to fly over for the opera two episodes ago show up at Christine’s home. In one of the best moments, Christine at first thinks they’re there to rob her (“The silverware you can have because it’s a bitch to clean”), but eventually realizes who they are and they then spend an unconventional Thanksgiving together. Again, this is a slice-of-life episode; it’s almost structureless and feels like a weird little indie film. All that happens is Chip leaves to have Thanksgiving with Martha, but it’s awful, so he goes back home and finds Christine with his French clown friends. Christine tries some weed the clowns are smoking (Chip is hilariously against it: “You’re weird enough, mom, don’t do that”) and then they all go to Arby’s. It’s a great episode otherwise. With the help of the French clowns, Christine and Chip get over their rodeo rift. The scenes with all of them sitting around chatting are naturalistic (again, that indie film vibe Baskets does oddly well). It feels as though they were partially adlibbed with characters occasionally stepping on each other’s lines in a realistically conversational way. Chip also gets an unexpected clown rebirth as the French clowns tell him his Renoir clown act comes off like a parody of a French stereotype, so, together, they burn his Renoir outfit. With Christine accepting she’s lost the rodeo and Chip back to square one in clowning, this is something of a quiet reset for Baskets, which is interesting because of how casually and suddenly it happened.
