Welcome to the Captain: 1.1 ‘Pilot’ Recap
Original Air Date: February 4, 2008
Shocker! Well, I watched CBS’ Welcome to the Captain last night, and lo and behold, I actually laughed … more than once. Here’s what happened on the pilot episode.
JOSH and MARTY are walking down the street on a sunny L.A. day discussing Josh’s decision to call it quits in Cali. Marty immediately tries to dissuade his buddy by telling him that a new spot has opened up in El Capitan, his apartment building, and he thinks he can get Josh to the top of the mile-long waiting list. When the two reach Marty’s car, they give each other a “brothers” goodbye, complete with a half-hug and complicated handslap-handshake maneuvers. Josh then asks Marty if he realizes they’re two white guys and do they really need to say goodbye like that. Slick Marty’s response: “Yeah, we do.”
Josh arrives at The Captain some time later to move into a dead actress’ old apartment, and daytime attendant and self-confessed blabbermouth JESUS (pronounced like Christ’s other name, by the way, not the customary Spanish-influenced hay-SOOS) gives nosy UNCLE SAUL, a writer on Three’s Company in the 1970s, the 411 on the newcomer: he won an Oscar for writing and directing a short film five years ago but has been down on his luck since, breaking up with his girlfriend and finding himself unable to complete the screenplay he’s been working on.
While Josh is getting situated in his new digs — which seem to still have all of the former dead tenant’s possessions, including her cabinet of multicolored wigs — he receives a call from Marty to come over and meet his live-in significant other. We quickly learn during the visit that in addition to being tragically hip, Marty is also a ladies man who’s never had a relationship that lasted two weeks. He’s on the verge of falling out of like with his current woman due to feelings he’s suddenly developed for his shampoo girl. Prim and proper Josh, who’s looking for a woman worthy of marrying, is appropriately put off by his buddy’s womanizing.
All gets a bit better during the “Welcome Home” party that Captain residents throw for all new tenants, according to Marty. He introduces Josh to some of his neighbors, most all of whom are in the odd department, including aspiring actress ASTRID, who puts an unnecessary “s” at the beginning of random words (she has an upcoming audition for the sequel to the remake of When a Stranger Calls, you know), and sultry 53-year-old actress CHARLENE VAN ARK, a former star of some nighttime soap like Falcon’s Crest who takes an immediate liking to “Joshua” (he told her his name was simply Josh).
After a few introductions, Marty informs Josh it’s time for him to give a speech, which Josh does, almost crying at one point, only to have Uncle Saul ask him why at the end. Marty lied through his teeth — the party isn’t for Josh but the building manager, mannish Zelma Kohl, who just returned from having her entire pelvis replaced in the hospital.
Following the embarrassing speech, Josh heads upstairs and meets pretty resident HOPE by the elevator, an acupuncturist and student of Chinese medicine who just finished her final exam. Josh explains that Marty, his old college roommate, set him up by telling him the party was in his honor, and he agrees to let Hope give him a needle job after he reveals he has sciatica.
Hope’s apartment has a wall of shrunken-looking heads that freak Josh out as she prepares to insert her needles, and she reveals she’s actually house sitting for her brother, a creature designer who’s always working in New Zealand. Hope seems very likable and down-to-earth, not weird like the other residents, and she keeps her cool through two of Josh’s “pup tents” and manages to get him to calm down. At the end of the session, Josh learns that Hope is returning to New York as soon as she gets certified, which causes him to lie that he is, too.
When Josh returns to his apartment, he finds a note from Charlene under his door saying that she needs to speak to him immediately. He goes down to her apartment, where she’s dressed in a negligee get-up and asks him to oversee her idea for a new erotic thriller. Josh explains he’s trying to finish the screenplay he’s been working on for five years, so Charlene, who claims she’s a ten years younger 42, attempts to persuade him by dropping her robe to give him a look at her “assets.”
Uncle Saul and Jesus catch Josh sneaking out of Charlene’s apartment the next morning, and although they promise to keep mum about the obvious situation, it’s clear they won’t. Josh returns to his apartment, where Marty is sleeping over — with the shampoo girl — now that his live-in has kicked him out after discovering his thing for another woman. Later that day, Josh gets even more bad news when every single person he encounters in the building mentions his night in the “House of Charlene.”
Angry, Josh tells Jesus to let Zelma Kohl, the building manager, know that he’s moving back to New York. Uncle Saul intercedes, however, and persuades Josh to play one round of golf with him before he heads back East. During the game, Uncle Saul expresses his feelings for The Captain, which is like an oasis in the middle of the desert to him, a place of calm. Josh begins to feel kind of the same way when they return to the building and he bumps into an upset Hope, who’s not going to New York so soon after all because she failed her exam as a result of leaving a needle in her instructor’s chang fu, otherwise known as his left butt cheek.
As Josh discovered while playing golf, Hope left a needle in him, too, in his ear. He doesn’t tell her, though, when he calls her later, and not even when she says she has to go because she’s talking to her boyfriend long distance. Josh is visibly disappointed, but he cheers up a bit when Uncle Saul and Jesus, who heard the entire conversation through the dumbwaiter, show up with a bottle of wine “Suzy Somers” gave to Uncle Saul back in his Three’s Company days.
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