Review: The Inbetweeners - 1.11 - "Spa Time"

After tanking a relationship with Lauren last week, Simon makes a grand entrance in his mud-drenched car with this week's episode.

"It looks like you drove it through a colon," Neil astutely points out, but there is a method to Simon's madness: the muddier it is, the longer it takes the bikini-clad girls at the school car wash to clean it up. However, the gang is less than enthusiastic to take Simon's geek-mobile ("The Celibacy" as Jay has dubbed it) to somewhere people might see them, and in attempting to take Will's mother's car somehow wind up with spa gift certificates.

Much gushing hose innuendo follows. A highlight is Jay and Neil staying in the car to "enjoy the show" but because the girls are doing quite a decent job they're unable to see much of anything.

Will is on a mission. Sex. Not just any sex, but virginity sex in order to have future sex with his beloved Samantha. His cheerleader crush is supposedly DTF, but refuses to take Will's flower for fear that he may become awkward and clingy. "Become?" I thought, as Will acted awkward and clingy right there at that very moment. Sure, okay.

Jay sees the gang's eventual trip to the spa as a potential cherry popper for young Will, and sets out on a mission to find the "spa whore." Alas, this is a legitimate spa, not an Asian massage parlor in the rough part of town, and this mission proves to be difficult.

You would think an episode that featured girls in bikinis and plush terrycloth spa robes would be a winner. Instead, the series continues to coast into a realm of mediocrity, forcing me to draw comparisons between this and the UK series to think about what made that work while this version simply doesn't. While some of the humor stemmed from the gang's humiliating social awkwardness, the majority of the humor came from their oftentimes vicious but hilarious ribbing on one another. With the MTV series, this is simply a weird group of four friends who really try to help each other out -- UK Jay would give Will endless shit regarding his situation with Samantha, while US Jay will try to help him out and fail miserably. It's not awful, it's just not funny.

Final Grade: C-