Extended Family – Season 1 Episode 3 “The Consequences of Gaming” Recap & Review

The Consequences of Gaming

Episode 3 of Extended Family begins with Julia finally returning to The Nest after spending a week away. She had some crisis to manage for Pitbull on his luxurious yacht. Trey went with her, for some reason, because it is totally normal for independent, third-party contractors to bring along their fiance to work. Jim is relieved. He has been looking after the kids for two weeks straight, which in his playbook is more exhausting than his sarcasm. The parents usually take weekly turns to be at The Nest for the kids.

However, all is not well. Grace has got a C- on her trigonometry test. She has also announced she has no interest in studying mathematics. Jimmy Jr, meanwhile, is enamoured with a new video game. His screen time has gone up drastically. But the bigger problem with “Stab the Neighbor” is that it is violent. And Julia is apprehensive her son will turn into a sociopath if he plays the game long enough.

Jim isn’t the least bit bothered by all this and only wants to focus on the Swedish detective drama that he has been holding off for the last week. He shoots straight out of the house, leaving Julia to deal with the problem alone. In order to prevent Jimmy Jr from playing, Julia unplugs the wifi. But Jr finds a way around it by renting a neighbour’s wifi connection for five bucks an hour. 

When no one can come up with an agreeable solution, Trey decides to intervene. He takes the kids to meet Professor Davenport at MIT. This is where Trey studied. He thinks Davenport will “inspire” the kids to change. However, things do not go expectedly. Davenport scares the kids by talking about how climate change will decimate future generations. He also says there is very little that can now be done to reverse the damage.

This does not inspire the kids but scares them, so much so that they become eco-warriors, banning meat and other petroleum-based products in the house. Oh, and also, by keeping the thermostat at 60 to ensure that it is sufficiently cold.  

The Episode Review

Episode 3 provides another interesting chapter from the show’s “Parenting for Dummies” handbook. The terrible display of parenting is simply appalling, which becomes even worse because it isn’t funny. Any neutral person won’t believe that Jim and Julia have been parents for almost a decade and a half. They are such tools who have no control over their kids. And, bizarrely, they don’t want to spend more than a week at a stretch with their kids, who aren’t that young at all.

The violent video game and falling grades tropes are primitive. It shows just how lazy the writers are to come up with ideas even remotely carrying contemporary relevance. This isn’t the early 2000s! “I want to quit school to become a professional stabber” is arguably the dumbest line I will hear in 2024. Julia and the other adults do not know how to hook up their wifi, which she simply unplugged from the socket. And one of them is a millionaire. 

I can see why the kids weren’t made the focal point in the previous two episodes. Both the child actors are terrible. The less screen time they have, the better. In fact, after three episodes, it has to be said; the less screen time we have watching the show, the better.