Season Review: The Harper House Part 2 (Episodes 6-10)

 

Overview:

The first half of The Harper House pushes the titular family out of their comfort zone when they’re forced to relocate to the poor side of town in River Creek, Arkansas. Debbie Harper (Rhea Seehorn) tries her best to help her family acclimate to these changes, but she’s just as much flailing for stability as she accepts their new lot in life. The first half of The Harper House’s season focuses on the individual members of the Harper family and the specific challenges that trip them up. The Harpers hardly have a hold on their altered existence, but the remainder of this season allows them to naturally integrate into River Creek’s melting pot and figure out how they fit in. The Harpers themselves are highly irregular, but they quickly realize they’re in good company as River Creek’s supporting community, infrastructure, and values become further demystified and increasingly Harper-ified. 

Our Take:

Any first season of a television series is an incredibly precarious balancing act when it comes to effectively establishing a compelling premise, interesting characters, and an entertaining world that feels like it thrives even when it’s not being watched. Brad Neely’s The Harper House on Paramount+ didn’t struggle through the first half of its freshman season, but there’s a certain complacency that can occupy the tail-end of premiere seasons. It’s not easy to determine when the audience has a strong enough grasp on a series’ characters that it can begin to stray to bigger subject matter and expand its scope. The second half of The Harper House naturally adds to what the first five episodes establish, but it’s shocking how much further these remaining installments go in terms of building the series’ voice and the higher minded thematic storytelling that The Harper House is interested in.

Each episode of The Harper House has something to say, but there’s a particularly brilliant episode, “Everyone In Town Must Eat a Piece of Barack Obama Before Midnight Or The World Ends,” that examines the lunacy that surrounds conspiracy theories and prophecies. It unpacks how people will easily feed their paranoid beliefs and enable conspiracies to become whatever they need them to be. The episode makes some enlightening statements on mob mentality and the mass-produced interests that fuel society. It might be The Harper House’s first truly excellent episode, and one that conjures a certain brilliance that feels reminiscent of golden year Simpsons. 

The episode bores the audience with its earnest fracking storyline and makes them genuinely eager for The Harper House to return to its asinine Obama eating doomsday prophecy. It turns the audience into the zealots and uses the episode’s presentation of these two extremes to elegantly mirror the themes that are present in the episode, as well as the larger problems with the world that the episode condemns. It’s all done in an increasingly ridiculous manner, but there’s an important sense of gravitas that’s present here as the community bands together and operates as a unit. It’s as much about the importance of faith and belief as it is an episode that pokes fun at subterfuge and outlandish scapegoats. 

The more that River Creek is given a distinct personality, the more that The Harper House gets to shine. The community’s many supporting players, as well as the oppressive forces that pull the strings, become much more in focus during the second half of the season. It’s the right approach where in the Harpers are given a little room to breathe after the first five episodes so effectively establish them as individuals and as a family, so that the remaining five episodes can get a little sillier and reap the rewards of this character work. It definitely feels like the second half of this season isn’t just more natural when it comes to its characters and comedy, but that it also has more to say and that the episode’s broach loftier storylines. 

These episodes also aren’t afraid to verge into surprisingly psychologically dense territory. Stories submit characters to insightful theories, like the “marshmallow test,” to determine how they handle feelings like delayed gratification. However, The Harper House will then utilize this simple premise as a microcosm for the contrasting extremes between the entire Harper family and how they exercise this ebb and flow of restraint every day, even when they’re not explicitly engaged in a snack-based social experiment.

The Harper House really does an exceptional job with how these episodes illustrate that each member of the family beautifully balances each other out so that their extremes somehow become moderates. They perfectly round off one another’s edges in a way that makes them all their best selves. It’s a really sweet look at how families should complement and improve each other rather than this being some source of stress that each member is always trying to get away from and avoid. That’s not to say that they’re a perfect family, and at times they can be terrible to one another, but it’s an honest, flawed group of people who are propping each other up far more than they’re sticking out their legs to trip one another. They’ve been perfectly synthesized into individuals who are at their very best when they’re all together and that’s felt in every scene where the entire Harper family is together. Thankfully, these moments are plentiful even though everyone still gets their own problems to independently solve.

The Harper House does an excellent job at restraining many of Brad Neely’s regular impulses, but his critical eye towards America, both its history and the ways in which it continues to change, are front and center in the second half of the show’s first season. There are some naturally integrated use of commercials and fake programming that poke fun at the country and the state of the modern entertainment industry. There’s an extended gag that revolves around Arkansas’ undying love for Billy Bob Thornton and Sling Blade that grows funnier with each exaggerated reference.

This self-aware mockery of America is at its strongest in a Fourth of July-centric episode that digs especially deep into this rich subject matter. It’s surely no coincidence that the series’ episode that functions as an ode to America also happens to be filled with gratuitous violence. It’s the only episode that really pushes boundaries when it comes to violence, but it’s also incredibly American that The Harper House sanitizes this brutality through American cultural touchstones like Home Alone and Wonder Woman.

These ideas culminate in the first season finale that engages in a brilliant discussion on racism and how both the country, and the Harper’s home, are literally built upon the concept. The instability of the series’ titular Harper House becomes a powerful metaphor on how a shameful past just can’t be hidden or destroyed. True change and progress can only be accomplished through genuine conversation rather than hollow gestures. These empty performative acts only make things worse. These final episodes of the season really elegantly navigate racism in a way that feels original and isn’t at all pandering.

The first season of The Harper House begins in a super confident manner, but it’s surprising just how quickly it finds its footing and steps up its game in the remainder of season one. It usually takes a show at least two seasons to establish its voice and learn how to go past it. These episodes are hilarious, heartwarming, and deeply layered in a way that once again brings vintage Simpsons and South Park to mind. It’s thought-provoking without being obnoxious and every episode turns the Harpers into a family that the audience will want to spend time with.

With the level of confidence in storytelling, characterization, world-building, and satire, Paramount+ would be smart to renew the lease on The Harper House for years to come.