Review - Tricky Business - Episode 9

Tricky Business – Nine – 8:00pm Monday – AUS
Episode 9: Space & Time

As Tricky Business bounces from one timeslot to the next (now at the easy to ignore time of 8pm Monday!) it continues to bleed viewers. Without a big reality TV series around to prop up its lousy ratings Tricky Business is sinking fast. If there were more than four episodes to go Channel 9 would be breaking out the ‘special double episode’ dumping mechanism right about now, but as we’re nearing the end of the series they’re probably just going to wait this one out. Enjoy it while you can because after these episodes are gone you won’t have Tricky Business to kick around anymore.

What is most baffling about Tricky Business, besides the thought of more than one person saying ‘yeah, that’s a good title for a TV show’, is how mind-numbingly boring everything that happens on the show is. In all honesty I wouldn’t be surprised if the show ended with all of the characters gathering together for a mass suicide. Chad would return from the Gold Coast (side note: did Lincoln Lewis really leave the show that unceremoniously last episode or did he just need the week off?) to find everybody dead in the office, and Emma’s video recorder still running. He’d play back the last tape, he’d see Kate looking into the camera “we’re in the business of helping people, the only people who need help now are us, there will not be tears, there will not be screams of pain, there will just be us, together, forever. Goodbye tricky world.”

Just to give you an idea of how empty these character’s lives are at one point Emma received a package from Rick. She opens it up – it’s a new bookcase – “can we put it together now?!” she excitedly asks Kate. Kate tells her she has to do her homework first, “but mummm!” you can see Emma say with her mind “I want to put together the bookcase now!” because what teenage girl doesn’t love putting together bookcases? In other exciting developments Lily is snogging a professor from her Uni, which is the first time the show has used Lily for something other than ‘looking up stuff on the computer’. Kate is upset because she thinks the Professor is probably married to someone, so she gets Matt to stalk the professor, and find out that he is married, so Kate tells Lily this, and Matt threatens the Professor, and … wait, why did any of these things happen? Oh yeah, Kate is a soulless harpy who hates Lily’s happiness.

The three non-family related plots of the evening involved a crooked guy from Fair Trading, a bloke named Dave who said he had a dodgy arm but didn’t, and a family who locked themselves in a car. These stories were just as exciting as their descriptions read. It turned out Jim’s mate Dave was faking his arm injury as he hadn’t been mugged at all – he’d stolen the $10,000 to feed his gambling addiction, but it was alright because Jim talked to him. Sometimes writing out the plot to episodes of Tricky Business feels like I’m stuck on a train next to a guy whose stories go nowhere. “And then Jim said ‘I think he’s stealing money’ and he was stealing money, so Jim said ‘hey Griffo, he’s stealing money’ and then Jim said ‘hey Dave, I know you’re stealing money’ and that’s all.”

Let’s also spend a moment worrying about the family that Matt had to deal with. First, they have their car repossessed. Second, they followed their car to the tow yard (by foot? It is not explained) and jump in the car. Third, they wait in the car, refusing to leave. Fourth, they FOR SOME REASON THAT MAKES NO SENSE BECAUSE THEY ARE DRIVING WHAT IS OBVIOUSLY A NEW CAR do not have air conditioning. Fifth, this causes the dad to have a heart attack. Sixth, they go to the hospital. Seventh, the kid, who we’ve previously seen flip Matt the bird, draws Matt a nice picture of the family in the hospital. Eighth, this was the best story of the episode.

Rather than talking about the dodgy guy from Fair Trading let’s talk about Gigi Edgley’s face and how it seems to be glued in that weird half-smile thing she does where it looks like she’s stuck between asking a question and winking at a stranger. Kate is one of the worst lead characters I’ve seen in a television series. At some point somebody is going to give her a personality, aren’t they? In order of characters who are the most fun to watch it goes: 1) Matt, 2) Chad who moved to the Gold Coast, and then all the way down at number 15) it’s Emma’s new bookcase and then it’s Kate. In actual good casting decisions Hugo Johnstone-Burt who was really enjoyable on Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, has popped up as Emma’s new piano tutor – and also obvious love interest for Lily (boy, I hope there’s not an episode where Emma is crushed because she likes her high-fiving piano teacher only to find out he’s dating her aunt Lily).

If the ratings are any indication there are only 558,000 still watching Tricky Business, I’d call them ‘fans of the show’ but does anybody really think that such a person exists? Does anybody really think there’s somebody at work every Tuesday who’s all “did anybody watch Tricky Business last night?” “For the last time, Beryl, no, we didn’t!” “Oh, well, you missed a good one; Rick had to pretend to be a tradie for some reason even though it didn’t actually help with the case. The shirtless man wasn’t in this one which wasn’t good. Although Emma did get a new bookcase, so that was nice.”

Good, Alright, Bad Or Ugly?
Ugly

This review is part of Change The Channel’s episode by episode coverage of Tricky Business. The full list of episode reviews can be found under Series.

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