“Southbound and Down” manages to distinguish itself from the previous episodes this season by moving slightly away from the main storyline. At the end of “House Call,” Krieger’s chip transforms Cheryl into Cherlene, soon-to-be-number-one country music star in America, and we finally get a look as to how transformed she truly is.
The episode begins with Krieger finally resetting the CPU in Ray’s legs, while also proving that he is now basically in control of Ray. It’s nice to see our favourite often-crippled agent is finally getting his life back together, which could mean a bigger role in the remaining eight episodes of this season.
This is immediately followed by Malory receiving the news that Cherlene will be performing on Travis County Limits (it’s “comparable” to Austin City Limits, Malory angrily explains), except Cherlene refuses to fly to Texas.
Cue an epic 24-hour road trip to Texas, which Sterling uses an excuse to do a Smokey and the Bandit homage, complete with a very expensive “blocker” car and an intense chase by bikers and police.
Sterling suggests Lana ride in the blocker with him, which she rightfully refuses to do considering her pregnancy (though she could have also elected to stay home). “Who’s going to do snappy dialogue with me underscored by sexual tension?” Sterling bemoans. Lana joins Cherlene’s tour bus, while Pam joins Sterling in the blocker.
It doesn’t take long for Pam, who is now apparently eating cocaine as a cupcake topping, to cause a lot of trouble, when Sterling lets it slip that he brought 100 pounds of cocaine to try and sell in Texas. After some off-screen action, Sterling wakes up to find Pam driving, and that she had alerted basically every trucker to the fact that the car is loaded with cocaine.
Cue the high-speed chase, which eventually leads to a very sweet moment between Pam and Sterling (or Snowball and Lickbag, according to their CB handles). Pam’s quick addiction to cocaine, while leading to hilarious lines and behaviour, was in danger of being an addiction for comedy’s sake, so it’s a relief when Pam explains that she continues to do it to appear more beautiful, as Pam is now notably thinner. Sterling responds by saying he and everyone else prefer Pam as she was, and it’s nice to finally see warnings about Pam’s very real potential of dying finally getting into her head.
In yet another great moment for Sterling, he has the opportunity to figuratively throw Pam under the bus for attracting the chain gang to them, but instead decides to take the blame.
There’s still plenty of room in this season for more mishaps, which will undoubtedly come, but this season has been particularly good at achieving much-need breakthroughs in character relationships. Even if the group isn’t able to sell any of their cocaine (a situation looking more and more likely with each episode), they will always be the same group of delightfully dysfunctional people.
Lines that made the episode
“This stopped being funny two hours ago!” “It’s not supposed to be funny….”
“…then I won’t be responsible for my actions!” “Are you ever?”
“In addition to booze, sushi and soft cheeses, I am also supposed to abstain from bus crashes!”
