Love is in the air on a bumpy and uneven episode of LA to Vegas.

“The Affair” is the first episode of LA to Vegas not written by the show’s Creator Lon ZImmet.  YOU’RE THE WORST alum Alison Bennett steps up to write this week’s script, the first of three new episodes ordered by Fox since the show’s strong debut.  Like many episodes of YOU”RE THE WORST, “The Affair” has elements of classic sitcoms, including characters seeking dating advice from each other with disastrous consequences and an A story built around a misunderstanding.  However, unlike the best THREE’S COMPANY or YTW episodes, the misunderstanding “The Affair” is built around is unearned and a sharp departure from the tone established in previous episodes.  The result is an episode which is plenty funny, but reveals a larger problem facing the series. 

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The first thing I noticed watching “The Affair” was the introduction of cut-away flashbacks as a device for humor.  I generally think the use of such cut-aways is lazy writing which sacrifices narrative for a cheap joke. As expected, these cut-aways added little to the story but I appreciated the quick pacing they brought to the episode and they were plenty funny. 

Ronnie gets upset when she sees one of her usual passengers is with a woman who is not his wife, and this is the shocking reveal which ends the cold open and thrusts us into "The Affair."  Unfortunately, this early moment is also where the episode lost me.  We don’t know this guy or his wife. We’ve literally never seen them before this episode. The emotional investment I need to have in this story is not earned, it’s just assumed. I’m neither intellectually nor emotionally bonded with this person; still, I’m expected to care about the fact a stranger isn’t with his wife simply because it bothers Ronnie.  That’s not enough for me. Furthermore, it seems like a really strange tonal choice for a show which last week had a three year-old's birthday party at a strip club and the week prior dealt with a dead passenger on a plane in WEEKEND AT BERNIE'S fashion to suddenly expect its audience to have scruples about infidelity. 

The rest of the episode plays out with a well-executed, albeit paint-by-number plot and honestly there are a few moments when I felt like I was watching an episode aimed at people who need instructions about how to put on a seatbelt.  Ronnie considers telling the passenger’s new girl about his wife and debates this choice with Colin and Bernard, both of whom think it’s none of her business.  In a B story also concerned with a new relationship, an Air Traffic Controller might have a crush on Captain Dave.  We learn the passenger bothers Ronnie so much because she moved to Los Angeles for a man she didn’t know was married. 

Act two sets up a series of try-and-fails in which Captain Dave gets advice from Ronnie, Nichole and Artem about how to woo a woman from 30 thousand feet. Ronnie lets it slip to the woman that she’s with a married man and loses the trust of all the passengers in the process.  The guy tells Ronnie off in front of Colin, who rushes into the airport to confront him for being such a jerk. The two bicker, and for the second time in two weeks two men engage in physical violence when Colin pushes the man, who reveals himself to be an Air Marshal and arrests Colin. The woman he normally flies with, who again we have never, ever met before and never see but have been expected to care about this whole time, turns out to have been his trainee. This new woman he’s with his is girlfriend.  At the airport bar, Captain Dave is expecting Dawn the Air Traffic Controller, but her boss shows up instead.  He’s written Dave up for asking Dawn out on an open channel.  He does give Captain Dave Dawn’s number though, so there’s hope for next week.  Colin gets off with a stern warning and the Ronnie/ Colin romance nobody cares about or particularly wants gets some obligatory servicing. 

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Though the humor remained solid, the treatment of Ronnie this week reveals a show struggling to find its own identity. At times in its first episodes, LA to Vegas has felt like THE OFFICE, with Captain Dave as a pathetic asshole at the center of the show; at other times, it has felt like 30 ROCK, with Ronnie as an overworked, impetuous woman with too much on her plate. This tonal balance seems like one the show should be able to strike, but things remainl uneven.  Captain Dave is clear and his storylines have been effective, but LA to Vegas still has no idea what to do with its leading lady.  The problem is one of desire; specifically, Ronnie has none.  We know facts about her, but we don’t know what she wants.  She seems to have no bigger dreams, no goal.  Consequently, Ronnie feels aimless, like she’s stuck in a holding pattern, flying back and forth on some dead-end route. It’s entirely possible this lack of direction is the point, that she’s supposed to feel trapped, or maybe even content in her stasis.  But, four episodes in, we don’t know enough about her to make that call. The ambiguous characterization we’ve been given only serves to make her feel distant, like she’s soaring five miles over our heads. We know Ronnie’s from Bakersfield but aside from that, her character remains as bland and barren as her hometown. Until Ronnie has clearer intentions, LA to Vegas will struggle to really take off.