“Look, I live & breathe Sheboygan Lagger.”
Wilfred seems to be more about the meditation of relationships and them being explored through Ryan & Wilfred’s antics. While Conscience doesn’t take further comedic risks like the previous two episodes it attempts on moving the central plot forward. The thing is, it was all really just in vein. We really don’t get a deeper understanding of Wilfred & Ryan’s relationship. In many ways this is the most bottled storyline of a seemingly unbolted episode.
In Conscience we see that the ever insane Chris Klein is back as Drew, Jenna’s douche boyfriend, and it looks like he is gonna be moving in with Jenna. What first starts out as another visit by the Wisconsin lagger salesman turns out to be much worse for both Ryan & Wilfred. Ryan tries his best to just completely ignore the situation. Wilfred on the other hand keeps showing his protest at Drew being over and trying to bother Ryan with Drew & Jenna’s sex life. What really gets to him is when they ask Ryan to watch Wilfred late one day because they are celebrating the fact that Drew is going to move to L.A. This finally causes Ryan & Wilfred to go over the edge making them hatch a scheme to break Drew & Jenna up. Ryan remembers during an earlier conversation with Jenna that she hates Drew’s competitiveness and so a plot is hatched.
Soon after we see Ryan slyly calling Drew out for a ping pong match, which Ryan was well versed in as a child champion. The game turns out to be pretty even as Drew was the reigning break room champion at Sheboygan Lagger and in the end Drew wins but still goes into a fit tossing a chair just in his joy of being the winner. This causes Jenna to storm off and later in the day we see that she has broken it off with Drew and that he is heading back to Wisconsin. Ryan’s conscience won’t let him have this win though, unlike Wilfred who is beyond excited for the way events unfolded. Wilfred, however, can see that Ryan may become a problem and tries to stop him from doing anything which causes Ryan to assert himself to Wilfred the same way Drew does. This goes down a road with Wilfred tricking Ryan into eating a brownie supposedly from Jenna. Wilfred makes Ryan think that he put poison in the brownie causing them to have a tussle in Ryan's basement and almost killing each other from chemically released gas. Ryan then runs off to the hospital only to find out that he was just poisoned with Theobromide, aka chocolate, which is deadly to dogs. The episode ends with Jenna & Drew getting back together through forces outside of Wilfred & Ryan and the both of them getting back to their routine of smoking pot in the basement.
Although its great to see Chris Klein back on the show and to learn more about him and his relationship with Jenna, we really don’t see anything move forward. We get some great antics and more palling around and fun out of Ryan & Wilfred but nothing more. Its hard to even really say much about the episode. The characters are all there and we get a great theme to work with on the story. We just don’t see anything really develop from any action. We end right where we began. Wilfred & Ryan getting high.
Grade: C+
