SPOILER WARNING: FLAKED, the First Half. (Analysis.)

Chip killed a man. He is an alcoholic. Ten years ago, he ran over a kid whilst intoxicated. Now he is the leader of the local Alcoholics Anonymous in Venice, California. He lives at the home of his best friend, Dennis. The home belongs to Dennis’ mother. It consists of two houses. Dennis allows Chip to stay in the Main House whilst Dennis lodges in the somewhat smaller and less romantic Guest House.

The debt of gratitude that Dennis feels towards Chip is understandable at first. Dennis at some point moved to Europe to escape the manipulative tendencies of his nymphomaniac mother. Ostensibly, he developed a drinking problem abroad, and upon return Chip met Dennis and helped Dennis to get clean.

Dennis at some point developed a crush on a woman named Cara. They met at the Support Group. Chip did not hesitate, however, to dash Dennis’ hopes of seeing this woman romantically. Chip began to have sex with Cara on a regular basis. They never formalized their relationship, partly because of Chip’s repetitive behavior of missing appointments made on her behalf, leaving her in a state of abandonment and humiliation. As a sensitive artist, Cara has a specific set of emotional needs that even the revered leader of the Local Support Group cannot seem to meet at his convenience.

Why did Dennis not initiate romantic contact earlier? Simply put: it was Against the Rules. You see: Cara was still in her first year of recovery when she met Dennis, so for her to start to see any one romantically, from within the Group, would be inadvisable, for fear of relapse. But there is a loophole, of course: she can sleep with the Group Leader, so long as they are not formally dating.

This relationship started entirely within her first year. Upon her first “Birthday” (a term that Anonymous Alcoholics use for the first year of sobriety in recovery from an addiction), Chip promised to atone for missing her band’s practice by baking her a cake. The local police chief, a close friend of Chip who often gives him rides to the A.A. meetings (because Chip is no longer licensed to drive, obviously) supplied the cake necessary to make the deal happen, knowing, surely, that Chip would be helpless otherwise. But upon the night of the Meeting, Chip is absent. He is sleeping with his ex-wife, who has just informed him that she is about to remarry. Of course: she is only his ex-wife de facto. De jure, Chip has either been unable to produce the necessary funds to file the Divorce, or he has found some excuse or alternative use for the money. But of course: we pity Chip. His wife is clearly some sort of millionaire, and he has only the Furniture Store that is formally owned by her crazy hippie entrepreneur of a Father.

This same furniture store, where Chip scrapes by a living by selling handmade three-legged stools, is all so home to a Studio Apartment upstairs. As the Season unfolds, events center on a new tenant that Chip invites to rent the room: a tall, slender blonde named London that is, as of her recent arrival in Venice, from San Diego, the most desirable woman in town. Of course, the complication is that Dennis, who is all so Chip’s coworker at the store, is madly in love with London, and has been for some time, to Chip’s knowledge (Dennis, of course, after what happened with Cara, has developed a sort of makeshift Bro Code that both of them are to follow with academic stringency bordering on neurosis.). But London has no visible romantic interest in Dennis. Her eyes are solely on Chip, as tends to be the case for women in Venice.

At this point the plot is as solid as the building itself. But it all falls apart at the very foundation, as any architect, psychotherapist or empath has all ready predicted.

London agrees to a date with Dennis, which Dennis proposes with Chip’s prodding encouragement. Yet Chip is skeptical of her agreement to this. The date is supposedly informal and Platonic, though Dennis has a clever and morally sound plan to transition from the not-date to the date. To this plan, Chip replies: “You have a lot of girl friends who never became girlfriends.” This is ironic, of course, considering that the woman that Chip is sleeping with is not his girlfriend, either, but chiefly not because of HER fear of commitment, but his. Cara breaks up with Chip, rightfully so, but this only complicates things between the Band of Brothers that is Chip and Dennis. On Dennis’ second outing with London, she only asks any substantial questions about Chip. Then Dennis decides to probe more deeply into her own backstory. London tells him that her brother died. This news is followed by an awkward silence between Dennis and London that sets off the alarm for Dennis that there is no actual chemistry between the two of them.

Although Dennis is initially depicted as pathetic and self-entitled, the following episodes establish him as sympathetic and even, eventually, heroic. A sudden visit to his Mother’s House, on the Mother’s Request (and under false auspices) produces, by a series of twists and turns, with Chip doing most of the twisting and turning, a road trip with London and Chip, and Dennis, at the wheel, acting as the Third Wheel. This is only worsened when a fourth wheel is added to the group: Dennis’ Mother joins the group of three, despite her reservations about BEING “the fourth wheel”, which implies by her own transparent admission that her own son is the third. And this is the LEAST transparent of her attempts to flatter Chip for his success where London is concerned, right in front of Dennis’ embarrassed and emasculated face. It is in this same episode that we learn that his Mother used to be very sexually promiscuous and would use Dennis to break up with her boyfriends on her behalf. Dennis was ten years old at the time this went on.

You might think, reader, that Chip has criminally good luck that he is somehow, by some black magick, stealing from his best friend. But things are not all well at home. Jerry, the aforementioned hippie entrepreneur, is selling the building that houses both the Furniture Store and London. Of course, we know this from the very first episode, because Dennis keeps bringing it up to Chip, but it is not until further into the series that Chip actually confronts the matter and the man, considering that it was only as the result of a favour to CHIP that Chip and Dennis are able to scrape by a living, now with the added benefit of Chip’s paramour (who is all so the apple of Dennis’ eye) living just upstairs.

Eventually, Chip finds an opportunity to save the store by employing the patronage of an upstart named Topher, a kid from the Support Group. But when Chip finds out that he has nearly prostituted London out to a young ambitious rascal, he backs out of the deal. Meanwhile, the building becomes headquarters for SaVenice (read: Save Venice, not “Save Nice”, as Dennis put it) when Chip allows a stoner named Cooler to host meetings there for the hopeless Liberal Campaign (Perhaps I should capitalize “Hopeless” as well). It’s not hard to understand, after some point, considering that Jerry has sold the building to Chip’s ex-wife’s new lover: Alicia Wiener. Yet the audience of the show knows the TRUE underlying reason: when Dennis finds out that Chip kissed London out in public, a fight ensues, and Chip is forced to crash, uninvited and unexpected, at Cooler’s pad. The result of this is that Cooler loses a date, which is so rare an event for Cooler that Chip barely pays heed to the loss. He saves face with Cooler, however, and manages to stay at Cooler’s pad for the remainder of the rivalry with Dennis, by agreeing to house SaVenice, an unusually kind act on Chip’s part considering that he stood up Cara in episode one, and the event Cara had invited Chip to in that instance was none other than Cooler’s lackluster open mic routine. But clearly their friendship has gone a long way.

Dennis is of course still angry with Chip, but a surprise visit by the aforementioned Buddy Cop knocks some sense into the feud. Although initially joking about running a license plate search on Chip’s stalker, the Police Chief discovers that London is actually Claire, the sister of the young man that Chip killed whilst driving drunk. Chip has at this point acquired a cellular phone, free from Topher, and there is only one person in possession of his number: Dennis. But when he pulls away from a horny London to take the call, it is not Dennis calling but the Chief of Police. Chip realizes at this moment that “London” came all this way just to stalk him, probably hoping to exact vengeance. So he dresses and leaves in a tempered but nonetheless cutting and self-righteous rage. He returns home to Dennis, who, as per usual, did the Right Thing, having been manipulated into acting as a middle man. Oh, well. He is used to it. It’s how he was raised.

This is where I begin to cut:

The Chief of Police is one of the most narcissistic characters in the show, not for a lack of trying to be decent, but for an excess of success. He so oversteps his own professional boundaries to bail Chip and friends out of trouble that he holds others who are relatively innocent to the same standards. Abusing his power in a way subtler than most cops in Los Angeles (partly owing to his African lineage) he demonstrates the dark side of the personality type known as the Champion (MBTI: ENFP). When he shows up at Dennis’ home, Dennis has not done any thing either legally nor morally wrong. Yet the Officer of the Law uses the leverage of the law in order to get in Dennis’ ear. When Dennis insists that he is not Chip’s keeper, the Chief pretends to leave, then turns about and reminds Dennis of all the times that Chip helped Dennis. At this point, I hear an echo of Cara from earlier in the episode, insisting that Dennis stop making excuses for Chip. But then with chilling suddenness, like a confrontation with a Wild Dog, (sue me, Black Lives Matter!) it dawns upon me that the Chief of Police is trying to hold Dennis in DEBT to Chip. And for what? Nothing more than I have stated previously: that Chip involved Dennis, at a time when Dennis was most vulnerable, in Chip’s little Therapy Cult.

Dennis tries with futility to back out one last time when the Chief pulls out the Big Gun (figuratively, of course, at least until the Next Episode, when he barges in on Chip and Dennis at Breakfast in a practical joke that is such an uproariously funny parody of himself from the Climax of the Previous Episode that he is redeemed within the Heart as more of a Joke than a Threat). When the Chief tells Dennis that London is the sister of Chip’s Victim, Dennis does not hesitate to help, except to gather his wits from the shock of hearing the news. Yet at this point, as our disbelief is suspended most highly, (again: sue me if you think that was an ethnic slur.) we still do not know for CERTAIN of this factor: does London or does she NOT know who Chip is? I do not mean this sentimentally; I mean: does LONDON know that Chip is the man who killed her brother? The answer becomes clear by the end of the episode, of course, starting with Chip’s first words after the fateful phone call: “When were you gonna tell me?” But before that we are in suspense; will Dennis tell Chip? Or will he tell LONDON? And if London all ready knows, we still wonder: whose side will Dennis take?

Of course, let’s not idealize Dennis TOO much. He is sort of an idiot, trauma notwithstanding. Both Chip and Dennis only think that London is some sort of psychotic bitch AFTER they find out that she has an Agenda (or at least Justifiable Reason to have an Agenda). Over breakfast they hash out her motives with the Chief, who clearly so egregiously self-identifies with the Law that he has no respect for her own Plot of Justice, even though disrespect for him does not come at the expense of amusement and insight. The three outgoing men agree that she is out of line, but that she is not looking for money from a man who is obviously broke; she is looking to HAUNT him. And this seems a bit too much for even Dennis to accept.

Personally, I thought London was a psychotic bitch from the very start. Seeing her treat Dennis with such disdain and Chip with such unwarranted affection made my blood boil, and behold! I was right: she had her own intentions. She was a femme fatale. But so what? The moment I knew her backstory, she gained not only Humanity but Approval. The very moment that the knuckleheads flashed on her dark behavior, I found an undying love for her that justified that same behavior. She was no longer a self-serving cunt; she was an Agent of Justice.

What is most ironical remains the Policeman’s pitch to save Chip. He knows by now that she is this complex and troubled person, but he still rages at Dennis by calling her “a piece of ass that YOU wanted”. He plays on Dennis’ good nature by trivializing Dennis’ emotions as infantile narcissism and self-entitled jealousy, pretending, with earnest conviction, that Dennis is allowing his Best Friend to Die all over the fact that Dennis envies Chip’s good luck. But the Chief KNOWS that Dennis, London, and Chip are More Than That, and that this situation is a LOT more high-context than a simple fight over flesh. How does Chief live with himself, then? Simple: knowing himself to be in possession of the Truth, he precludes the possibility that Dennis knew this all ready. When he finally breaks the Truth to Dennis, he expects Dennis to FORGET the injustice towards himself and to respond to the Imminent Danger in the way that the Officer has all ready prefigured. True to ENFP form, the ends justify the means, and the Subjective Factor (the Province of Introversion) is omitted; he forgets that Dennis has every reason to SUSPECT that there is more to London than a simple “piece of ass”, just as this writer suspected her of harbouring Ill Will. For Dennis, the news comes as a shocker and a really blow to his entire romantic conception of London. For me, it comes as her total vindication; her Ill Will is at least Unselfish, so she becomes a Breath of Relief in what by this point I had established as a World of Narcissists (a.k.a. Southern California).

What the Chief himself forgets, or otherwise omits, is that he has just ADDED to Dennis’ reasons to hate Chip. Not only did Chip hurt Dennis, multiple times. He irreparably damaged the woman that Dennis loves. And now he is about to get away with that, too.

So much for only a piece of ass.

The Seventh Episode is the one that really prompted this essay, in a fit of rage on the writer’s part. The episode begins with three close-up shots: of Chip, of London, and of Dennis. At first, we do not know what has happened; did Chip go to bed with London, after all? And what’s DENNIS doing in the room? But then we realize that Chip spent the night at Dennis’ place, and London is still chilling in the Studio Apartment.

Following a friendly breakfast with a Surprise Visit from the Police Chief, Chip gets to work in trying to save Venice, starting with the Furniture Store. He enlists Cooler to drive him to the office of A. Weiner, upon a tip-off that this is the man that his ex-wife married. Cooler does so under the auspices that they are going to Take Down the Man with petitions. As Chip dictates Cooler’s every strategic move, he finally gets an eventual meeting with Alicia Weiner, who he is surprised to discover is a woman. After Alicia tells him off, calling him a parasite and making it clear that SaVenice is a joke, more or less, even hinting that his ex stands up for him against Alicia’s loving suggestions not to, Chip leaves in a bold fury. Not long thereafter he arranges a meeting with his ex-wife’s other agent, in the “privacy” of a Parking Garage, so as to negotiate a New Deal. The negotiation is obviously a threat, and he makes no attempts to deny this fact.

At this point, the only person save for Alicia who is on to Chip is Cara. Dennis has to talk her out of jail in Chip’s absence, using his relatively weak connection with the Chief in order to negotiate a Deal with a disgruntled modern artist whose abstract piece was damaged by Cara’s reckless driving. Cara reminds Dennis that Dennis is a much better man than Chip, but Dennis continues to stand up for him. He tells her that Chip is simply troubled and he cites one of Chip’s many stolen self-help (and self-centred) platitudes: We cannot blame others for our own unhappiness. Of course, this is a lie. We know, as does Dennis, that London, for INSTANCE, CAN blame Chip for the Death of her Brother. A reasonable woman would not blame her own brother for a stranger’s destructive behaviours, nor herself for her own tragic loss. She will not put on a happy face and “take responsibility” for her own happiness, modeling herself after the killer whom she allows to go about his merry way. She would not risk this fate befalling an other, nor would she tell any such victim in the cycle that that person SHOULD be happy. After all: if one’s own suffering is one’s own fault, without exception, what about Chip Himself? He is ostensibly in PAIN, so he gets an excuse. Where is hers? She is not looking for one. She is looking for Justice. She knows that he is in pain, but how can she know that it’s enough?

Of course, Cara knows none of this. She is simply an Introvert that has enough experience with Chip, or perhaps sufficient Intuition, to see through him. But apparently she takes Dennis’ words to heart. And then she repeats them to London.

At this point we expect London to be more than cardinally pissed. But a plot twist made my head spin upon conclusion of the Episode. The last scene is in the Furniture Store, at night. Chip enters the store to wash his hands, as though of the situation at hand, when he finds London waiting for him in the dark, long legs and quaint, pointed face on display like some exotic bird, seated on a sort of Love Seat. He describes her as resembling a Ghost, and one belaboured metaphor later they have established that if she had truly intended to kill him then she would have done so by now. And then the miraculous happens: after some elaboration on both her motives and his own pain and guilt and anguish, she kisses him. They fall into the Love Seat and she climbs on top of him, removing a shoulder of her shirt, when in rushes Cooler, spearheading a mob of celebrating SaVenice protesters. It turns out that Chip’s plan worked; “Weiner pulled out”. This at least is what Cooler tells us shortly after he says, with such stark clarity that only a stoner can muster: “Oh, sorry. You were just about to get it on.”

Believing themselves to be victorious, not one of them aware of Chip’s Secret Meeting in the Parking Structure, the protesters crowd the Store. His new babe in one hand, and Cooler the Stoner in the other, Chip looks out at the Crowd as though he were a Hero. Dennis, from without the store, and in the midst of the crowd, looks in, his expression ambiguous, as Stephen Malkmus, the composer for the Series’ Original Soundtrack, plays a happy tune swimming in guitar chords, as cheerful in their major key as they are distorted.

Dennis has the same questions to answer as you do:

Does Chip deserve any of this?

Or does he deserve Vengeance against him?

Will she exact Vengeance still? Or will she let him keep getting away with this?

Has London all ready made up her mind?

Is she asking herself the same questions?

Are we responsible for our own happiness?

Even if that comes at the expense of an other?

And if that expense we ourselves cannot handle?

At least not without laying the blame on someone else?

Or hurting people again?

Or both?

I know MY answer. But keep this in mind, reader and prospective viewer:

In an earlier episode Dennis did Chip a kindness by buying him a bottle of Kombucha. He says he knows Chip loves to drink that stuff. This is because Chip keeps a bottle of it in his fridge. At least, the bottle is labeled “Kombucha”. It is one of those that you refill.

The bottle does not contain Kombucha. We find that out at the end of Episode One.

The bottle contains red wine.

Chip is still an alcoholic.

Dm.A.A.