A stinky new LA to Vegas doesn’t really go anywhere.

In “The Fellowship of the Bear," a smelly plane, a missing bear and some poker lessons result in a funny but flat episode that never takes off. 

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Captain Dave complains about the cleaning staff.  In retribution, they make the plane smell so terrible passengers are forced to disembark.  Bernard and Dave must then spend the rest of the episode trying to eliminate the smell.  Eventually, Dave realizes he needs to apologize to the cleaning crew.  He gives a moving speech to a group of people who it turns out are not the ones who cleaned his plane and they are forced to find a new plane. 

Meanwhile, Colin and Ronnie team up to retrieve Colin’s son Nate’s lost bear.  Their quest takes them back to TSA and then into a secure TSA area full of confiscated contraband passengers have tried to take on flights.  Using the hoverboards and drones to help them look for the bear, they stumble upon a poker game where Artem is teaching Nichole the stripper the intricacies of poker.  Eventually, the bear is discovered back at the airport but it’s been unattended so long it must be destroyed.  After the bear explodes, Ronnie gives her prized stuffed animal to Nate and all is well.  

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The high points of this episode all involve Captain Dave and Bernard.  The chemistry between McDermott and Nathan Lee Graham is some of the strongest on the show.  The two regularly do an excellent job with the jokes they are given and the show is doing a better job writing for Graham’s character.  The solid joke writing this week is no surprise given writer Matthew Harawitz’ background writing for late night. 

The Ronnie and Colin storyline was fun, but I’m still not feeling any of the romantic chemistry I think we’re supposed to be getting out of this story.  Ronnie’s character still feels largely inconsistent.  A new, and often funny, source of material for her character has been casual asides alluding to her turbulent, trailer park upbringing.  However, unlike someone like Joy, Jaime Pressly’s loudmouth southern character from MY NAME IS EARL, or Eleanor on THE GOOD PLACE, in Ronnie, there seems to be no residual redneck tendencies.  The girl’s been taken out of the trailer park and the trailer park has been taken out of the girl, the result is a character who feels distant.    

On the whole, the storytelling this week was derivative and stale, particularly compared to the elegance of the first three episodes. The smelly airplane plot wreaked of “The Smelly Car,” the Seinfeld episode from 25 years ago.  Couple that with a missing bear plot vaguely evocative of the 1993 “Bobo” episode of THE SIMPSONS (“Rosebud”) and a WHEN HARRY MET SALLY reference and this episode felt antiquated.  A bigger concern still looms for the series as this is the second week in a row in which the stories felt forced. I think the problem is that LA to Vegas is a workplace comedy in which no one is the boss. The lack of any clear-cut authority figure in the reality of this series makes it very hard to create compelling personal stories and stakes for our regular characters. 

The largest issue facing this series remains its lack of emotional connection to its characters. There is no central relationship in LA to Vegas, not one interpersonal or working partnership which is particularly compelling. Though the partnerships work for comedy, no one is helping anyone grow or change or see the world differently. There’s no Jack and Liz, no Leslie and Ann, no Sam and Diane. Without a central relationship to bond us to the show’s characters, there is nothing grounding this series, which is why it continues not flying with bigger audiences.