Bless This Mess Review: The Estonian Method (Season 1 Episode 6)

With a second season order already on the books at ABC, the pressure for “The Estonian Method” to deliver something memorable — or at least, dramatic and enticing — was surprisingly low, especially for a freshman comedy with such a small initial episode order.

And yet Bless This Mess Season 1 Episode 6, “The Estonian Method,” is the finest episode of the young series yet, a strong, emotional half hour that works surprisingly well as an impromptu season finale.

Set against the backdrop of Bucksnort’s annual county fair, “The Estonian Method” is really a showcase for Bless This Mess‘s secondary characters – particularly Lennon Parham’s Kay, who finally gets room to grow out of her Bosephus impression (shout out to all the Playing House fans) and into a more nuanced, emotional portrayal of the Bowman matriarch. 

Bless This Mess Season 1 Episode 5’s breakthrough was an important one for Bless This Mess, and “The Estonian Method” is the immediate benefactor: early on, her abrasive personality proved to be a roadblock for the young comedy, and one that’s thankfully forgotten by the time we get a peek inside one of her “scrapbooking” sessions with Rio (which take place in Connie’s storage room, for some strange reason).

Kay and Beau’s marital strife may not be a thrilling long-term story arc for Bless This Mess when it returns in season two; and to be quite honest, the show still has a long way to go in defining Kay outside her presence as wife and mother of the Bowman family.

But “The Estonian Method” is a step in the right direction, using their marital conflict (along with the sad story of Rudy’s divorce) as a parallel to Mike and Rio, who are beginning to find their place in the strange lands they now call home.

“The Estonian Method” goes surprisingly light on internal conflict between Mike and Rio; it’s a smart move because it allows the episode to focus on characters like Kay and Rudy, who bring texture to the show’s world – and give the show a much more empathetic arc at its core.

Rio always talking about the health of the soil on Aunt Maggie’s land serves an important role on the series, beyond the superficial drama of bringing a farm back to life; Bless This Mess is a story about healing, using farming as a proxy for marriage.

Like farming, marriage is all about managing the unpredictable; there’s always going to be a hole in the fence somewhere, or a plot of land that isn’t delivering the crops it should – what matters is the care and attention paid to its maintenance, to maintaining the foundation that allows crops to grow and blossom.

The land on Maggie’s farm is improving, a telling sign that the Mike and Rio have begun to found the rhythms of their new lifestyle – and in turn, rekindling their relationship, which was suggested had some underlying issues back on the show’s pilot episode.

They’ve adapted, grown comfortable, and are slowly, slowly (it is a farm after all) beginning to reap the benefits, in the form of better soil, the well-trained Priyanka, and a healthier marriage, which all get their moment in the sun in “The Estonian Method”.

However, the true core of Bless This Mess‘s season finale isn’t really about how far the Levine-Young household’s come in their first few months in Nebraska; it is about peeling back the layers of Kay – and more importantly, Rudy, whose ex-wife Theresa (played by the eternally wonderful Rita Moreno) appears out of the blue to throw a wrench into his date with Constance at the county fair.

To this point, Rudy’s been mostly a collection of punch lines, a homeless, divorced guy living in a barn, whose loneliness is slowly transforming him into a socially awkward hermit. “The Estonian Method” still struggles with those lazier character bits at times, but the episode is a great barometer for how much his character’s grown as his proximity to Constance gets closer and closer. 

Thankfully, with the awkward Twizzler saga behind him, Rudy’s able to show a bit more depth in this episode, which Ed Bagley Jr. rips into, giving perspective to a man who’s completely lost his way in the wake of his divorce.

Stripped of everything he once was, “The Estonian Method” offers brief glimpses of the man Rudy once was, giving the character a much-needed empathetic touch with some reasoning for his romantic awkwardness beyond “boy, isn’t he a weirdo!”, proving the early episode’s portrayals of him as the wholly reductive take on the character they were.

That being said, “The Estonian Method” isn’t exactly a stunning masterpiece of television: the arcs of its main stories are rather predictable, and the episode’s ending seems to add an unnecessary wrinkle for the show’s return (which is guaranteed; Bless This Mess was renewed for season two last week).

Beau moving into the Levine-Young household feels a bit redundant to Rudy’s story, another emotionally stunted middle-aged man annoyingly inserting himself into the daily routines of Mike and Rio.

But given how well Bless This Mess has developed his character, it’s easy to give them the benefit of the doubt; we’ve already seen the growth offered Kay, Constance, and Rudy in the last three episodes of this freshman season, a promising sign the comedy may still have tricks up its sleeve in rounding out the show’s brashest, most emotionally stunted main character.

Acting as an impromptu season finale, however, “The Estonian Method” is precisely what the young comedy needed, achieving a much better balance between superficial comedy about rural life, and a more layered, careful story about community and healing, a promising (and rather impressive, given the season’s length) development for Bless This Mess as it heads into summer hiatus. 

What did you think of this episode of Bless This Mess? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Bless This Mess airs Tuesdays at 9:30/8:30c on ABC.

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