Off-kilter Apple TV+ comedy Excessive Desert, which stars Patricia Arquette as con artist-turned-private-investigator Peggy Newman, takes a detour into Guru Bob’s previous this week.

Within the episode, entitled “Soul Retrieval,” Peggy and her ex-husband get reacquainted with the great occasions and the unhealthy occasions that so characterised their marriage. Plus, Peggy lands her first case — if she will be able to keep in mind to get round to it.

The wildly entertaining comedy procedural takes a beat from the primary motion this week and nonetheless proves quick on its toes.

Excessive Desert recap: ‘Soul Retrieval’

Season 1, episode 5: Peggy Newman (performed by Patricia Arquette) and her husband Denny (Matt Dillon) have snuck into their outdated home, which not belongs to them, and dug up a bunch of outdated silver cash he stashed there earlier than he was arrested for promoting massive portions of medication. As they acquire the final of them, the actual homeowners of the home present up, in order that they flee in a rush.

The cash, it seems, aren’t price a lot, which Peggy kicks herself for not having predicted. She tries to present all of it to her boss, Bruce Harvey (Brad Garrett), on the P.I. agency, however he can’t settle for it. He’s too moved by the gesture that she’d attempt to save his enterprise from going underneath and being evicted. He rewards her with an actual case: Peggy should decide if a girl is dishonest on her husband.

First issues first, although: Guru Bob (Rupert Good friend) and his stolen artwork. Peggy will get Denny to impersonate an artwork purchaser to really feel out Guru Bob. Peggy’s been making an attempt to determine if the artwork in his home is actual or not, or if it’s lacking, as she suspects, which implies a giant payday for her if she will be able to show it.

Peggy has a plan

Peggy places on a pair of glasses with a hidden microphone within them. However Denny, largely out of an impulse to regulate the scenario, says it’s a nasty thought and suggests another. He snaps the glasses open, retrieves the microphone from inside them, and places it as a substitute within the collar of the canine he simply adopted after getting out of jail, Judy. Nobody ever thinks to pat down the canine, he causes. She should admit it’s line of logic.

Peggy and Denny attempt to get Bob to surrender his supply of the stolen or cast artwork. However the perfect they will get out of him is an evidence for his flip away from being an area information anchor. He was impolite to a manufacturing assistant (James Vincent), and some minutes later that man killed himself. The entire thing made Guru Bob notice how brief life is — and what an asshole he’d been up till then.

Then he began going to remedy, doing hallucinogenic medicine, and telling the reality extra typically. That bought him fired from his job on the information desk. After which his spouse, Dona Gatchi (Tonya Glanz), bought sick of Bob’s religious journey and walked out on him.

Peggy thought Bob killed Dona, however now she’s not so certain. She’s even much less certain when she and Denny get again from the failed sting, and Judy throws up one thing up she swallowed whereas wandering across the grounds of Bob’s home: a finger with a giant pretend acrylic nail on the top of it. Perhaps that’s a clue as to what occurred to Dona …

Is that this a tragedy?

I really like that they bought Matt Dillon to play Peggy’s dipshit husband on Excessive Desert. Dillon — who’s been taking part in counterculture icons since he was about 14, and nonetheless carries the ruggedness of a misplaced dreamer, a would-be beat poet — does a powerful dumb man. And Denny’s only a nice straightforward examine for the outdated professional.

Simply as Arquette’s Peggy strikes from egocentric to selfless on the drop of a dime to swimsuit a scenario, and maintain herself shifting earlier than she sits too lengthy and thinks about what she’s accomplished (if certainly she’s nonetheless bought that capacity after so a few years of mendacity to everybody to remain afloat), Denny strikes from lovesick pet canine (thus his instantly adopting a canine himself) to self-interested maniac on the drop of a hat.

He’s solely too completely happy to assist Peggy along with her scheme as a result of he thinks it’ll get him again in her good graces. However all it takes is a couple of minutes with Peggy and Bob to suspect they’re having some form of a fling, and Denny stops performing like an expert and begins performing like a jilted little child.

By the way, the scene of Bob and Peggy frisking one another is stupendously foolish. Bob says he has to pat down Denny and Peggy. And Peggy, mocking upset but in addition feeling a little drawn to Bob, begins feeling him in all places she will be able to, so Bob then retains making an attempt to do the identical to her. It seems like they’re performing some form of ridiculous dance, and it’s an ideal encapsulation of Excessive Desert’s sleepless power. One other nice episode.

★★★★☆

Watch Excessive Desert on Apple TV+

New episodes of Excessive Desert arrive Wednesdays on Apple TV+.

Rated: TV-MA

Watch on: Apple TV+

Scout Tafoya is a movie and TV critic, director and creator of the long-running video essay sequence The Unloved for RogerEbert.com. He has written for The Village Voice, Movie Remark, The Los Angeles Evaluation of Books and Nylon Journal. He’s the creator of Cinemaphagy: On the Psychedelic Classical Type of Tobe Hooper and However God Made Him A Poet: Watching John Ford within the twenty first Century, the director of 25 characteristic movies, and the director and editor of greater than 300 video essays, which might be discovered at Patreon.com/honorszombie.