AV Club: Ep 5 of OBFW has too much ground to cover and not enough time.

We're this close to declaring Charles and his crew, CANCELLED!

So we’ve passed the four episode test and here’s the tally so far: two great first episodes, a tone deaf third episode and a forgettable fourth one. This is better far than we normally get from Nigerian webshows (side-eyeing you Rumour Has It) which starts off abysmal and then slowly improves until it becomes bearable.

With the entire premise of Our Best Friend’s Wedding already set up, it would seem that scoring a homerun each episode would be the simplest thing in the world. But not.

SPOILER ALERT

If you haven’t seen the new episode, do so here and if you have, let’s continue with the review.

At the end of Episode 4 Jade and Charles Effiong have made up, and the Bolanle Olukanni’s very married doctor Darlene foreshadows (yet again) that jade has a big old lesbian crush on Charles. But I guess if Charles used his common sense and got with her we won’t have a show, so I’ll allow it.

Episode 5 opens with Onome, the one night stand from episode one who sabotaged his presentation at his office. She’s apparently come to see his boss and personally  commend Charles on his ‘great’ pitch and discuss terms with him. His (stereotypical) lascivious boss is already salivating at the thought of Onome all splayed out on his office table instead of Solitaire for a change and gets all creepy. Charles leads her away to his office to discuss. This is going to be good.

We cut to Kemi in bed + a cut scene where a photograph of her husband is shown in case you forgot she is supposed to be happily married. Jade calls, chipper as fuck talking about being at the streetlight opposite her office and asks Kemi if she’d want to meet after. Like any self respecting person Kemi declines, claiming that she’s sick and ends the call on Jade while she’s still talking. She reaches into her duvet and pulls out the longest, shiniest vibrator dildo I’ve ever seen and goes to town. Hallelujah somebody.

That at least explains why Kemi’s the only chill person on the show, she be getting her orgasms steady.

Meanwhile Jade (who desperately needs an orgasm in her life) is at some ‘commission’, which one they don’t specify trying to pitch for approval/funding (they dont specify either) for her pet project ‘The Jaded Initiative’.

The government official she meets is Nollywood veteran and do I even need to tell you how a scene with a young attractive woman in need and a lewd older government official will end? I don’t abi. Moving on.

Turns out Onome has shown up in Charles’s office to sell him the contract they pitched for at her company, she just wants a little ‘finders fee’. Only 5% of the commission, which everything Charles is supposed to get from the business deal. Charles forms bad guy at first, but at the risk of losing his job, he capitulates and agrees to her demands. So much for Mr. Macho.

At the end of the day everyone ends up at Kemi’s house and the girls get Charles to recommit to the terms of their ‘The Bachelor’ pageant. He reluctantly agrees and they ask him to go on the next date with the next woman on the list, Shayo.

Now from the very first moment they introduced Shayo on OBFW I started rolling my eyes. They’re in a fancy place like the Film House iMax cinemas and after baby girl rightfully asks Charles to not take calls during the movie, she proceeds to try to put her hands down his pants in the very brightly lit cinema. Then after the movie, they go to buy suya and home girl fishes a roll of weed out of her bra and tries to light it in the full glare of Lekki street lights. Charles is understandably perplexed that his sweet innocent Shayo is outchea doing bad gang things and he’s all ‘This is not the you I know’ but home girl is not having any of it. Obvs Charles cannot marry a girl who smokes Igbo, so on to the next one.

Can I just say IllRhymz is a terrible actor? His laiskin and fine face had me fooled for the first few episode but watching him blunder through the dialogue on his date with Shayo was one continual cringefest. Not that the actress who plays Shayo is any better. She has so little charm, I can barely stand to watch her on screen.

And what is with Our Best Friend’s Wedding falling back on character archetypes when their self imposed time limit catches up with them. So Shayo is a ‘bad girl’ because Charles left her to go get his Master’s Degree abroad and that meant she got pregnant, got disowned, had an abortion and lost her womb AND is into S&M? Really? Like whose grand idea was it to have this girl do all this character exposition and then proceed to knack her.

At this point, can we please point out how Our Best Friend’s Wedding has become the place where OAP’s looking to expand their portfolios go to show off their ‘acting’ chops. First Ill Rhymz, Then Gbemi Olateru, then Oreka Godis and even Bolanle Olukanni, at this point the only people left are Toolz and Nedu Wazobia FM.

Why can’t we have good things in this life?

Watch EP 3 of Our Best Friend’s Wedding (OBFW)

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