"Time Hooch" is the first segment of the fourteenth episode (and the twenty-sixth story overall) of Close Enough.
Synopsis[]
Alex and Josh travel back in time to save Alex and Bridgette's marriage.
Plot[]
Alex is hoisting Bridgette up on top of a pile of their old belongings in the shed, as she wants to find an old photo where her bangs looked really good to post online for Throwback Thursday. She finds a coaster from Brewins, the bar from the night she and Alex met, which she fondly reminisces on, saying when she first looked at him she saw fireworks. She also finds Alex's divorce papers, which she had given to him over a year ago, and discovers he never signed them and they’re still married. She demands that he sign them.
Alex laments in his closet to Josh over the divorce papers, saying he waited cause he thought their relationship would fix itself. He also found a jug of moonshine that he and Josh made in college, along with a blues record called "Time Hooch", who’s lyrics helped them concoct it. As he pours them shots of it, Alex reminisces on when his and Bridgette's marriage finally crumbled - one day he was making himself an Italian sandwich, left the room, and then when he came back Bridgette had supposedly scarfed it down, leading to a huge argument where he blurted out he wished they never met, and the next day Bridgette asked for a divorce. He wishes he could go back and stop that argument from happening.
Just then, as Alex and Josh take a shot of moonshine, they are sent back in time to the day of the sandwich fight three years prior, courtesy of the moonshine - "Think of a memory, take a shot, that’s the era you’ll be brought". After past Alex makes his sandwich and leaves the room, Alex and Josh sneak into the kitchen to hide the sandwich to make sure Bridgette doesn’t eat it, but past Alex put so much olive oil on it it ends up slipping out of their hands and eventually flies out the window. When past Alex comes back in the two hide, and past Alex blames Bridgette for eating his sandwich. As she storms off he’s about to say he wish they never met when present Alex, in a panic, tackles him and pulls him behind the counter, warning him that this fight will ruin their marriage. Past Alex is doubtful and says they’ve been off the rails for a while, especially after the fight they had a few months prior at Candice's birthday party. Alex decided they need to go back to that day. When Josh asks why they didn’t just go to that day initially Alex defensively says they’ve had a lot of fights.
Josh and the two Alexs go back to Candice's second birthday party. They see Alex with Bridgette, where he says could never deal with kids. But when Bridget agrees and says parenting would not be a good look for them, Alex gets defensive and questions if she’s saying he would be a bad parent. As she storms off saying she can’t deal with him, he is about to make a comeback to her comment when both his future selves pull him down, and warn him that this argument will ruin their marriage. This Alex is doubtful and says this argument is really a continuation of the one from three weeks prior, when he was at Bridgette's aunt's funeral and said her dead aunt looked like Michael Shannon.
The Alex’s and Josh end up going back in time nine times to stop Alex and Bridgette's arguments - each time they do the Alex from that time says there was another argument they had, which leads them all to keep going back in time. Josh and the nine Alexs wind up at Brewin's Bar on the night Alex met Bridgette. He realizes their marriage can’t be saved, and he decides he needs to stop himself from meeting her - if he never meets her she won’t join his class at UCLA, he won’t get fired for dating a student, and he won’t end up a broke divorced loser living in a closet. His past selves agree with him.
Past Bridgette enters the bar, however, when Alex sees her he remembers the great times he had with her while they were dating, and when they got married in Vegas. The past Alexs notice this memory's Past Alex enter the bar. However, current Alex has decided he doesn’t wanna erase his relationship with her and he doesn’t regret meeting her, and his life turned out the way it did because of him. The Past Alexs want their lives fixed and try to stop his other past self from meeting her. Josh tries to help fight but is too drunk from all the moonshine. Current Alex ends up throwing the barrel of moonshine at one of the past Alexs, which causes the barrel to break open and create a time portal that sucks in all his past selves, and then him and Josh, just as he witnesses his past self sitting next to and meeting Bridget for the first time, and she literally sees fireworks as the portal is closing.
While in the time portal, all the past Alexs get sucked into a different wormhole, whereas Alex and Josh end up sometime in the distant future, where they are almost captured by robots, but they are saved by their buff future selves, and they take them back to the present with their futuristic truck.
Deciding it’s finally time to let go of the past, Alex signs his divorce papers. Bridgette steps outside and Alex presents the divorce papers to her. She thanks him for it, while Josh ends up puking.
65 million years ago, all the past Alexs, since they have nothing else to do, start to make out with each other, and they end up frozen in amber while doing so. In 1982, the amber with the Alexs in it is in a science lab being tested on. After the computer says it’s possible, the head scientist says they’re going to clone a Neanderthal and she maniacally laughs.
Characters[]
- Josh Singleton
- Alex Dorpenberger
- Alex's Past Selves
- Bridgette Hashima
- Emily Ramirez (past self only; no lines)
- Candice (past self only; no real lines)
- Future Josh and Alex
- Future Robots
- Blind Willy McBlinderson (voice and image only)
- Dorpenberger Industries Scientist
Trivia[]
- The robots encountered by Josh and Alex in the future are similar in appearance to the Ultrascalpel Robots from "So Long Boys".
- Additionally, both types of robots attempted to perform some form of castration on Josh.
- It was revealed that Alex was once into collecting 1960s memorabilia, that he was born in 1982, that he and Bridgette met at Brewin's Bar, got married in Las Vegas, and that he got fired from UCLA for dating Bridgette, who became his student after meeting him.
- His voice actor Jason Mantzoukas is nearly a decade older.
- Its also revealed at the end of the episode that he was cloned from his past selves that was sent back to the dinosaur era 65 million years ago. However, in the Season 3 episode Hellspital it is revealed that Alex has a father. It is likely that Alex might be his own grandfather, or some other attempt at cloning.
- Depending on when the series takes place, Alex’s birth year may also imply he’s the oldest of the group, or he’s older than he should be, as Josh and Emily are in the early thirties and Josh met Alex in high school, but Alex being born in 1982 could put him closer to forty.
- Josh was shown to have worn his bangs back in a bun three years prior to the start of the show. At Candice's second birthday party earlier that year, despite him and Emily being shown to have had the same hair/clothes during the period when they had Candice, he has shorter hair and a goatee, while Emily has her hair down, and they have different outfits, although it’s likely they wore different ones just for the occasion.
- Alex is fine with drinking hooch in this episode despite finding moonshine to be disgusting in the episode The Perfect House.
- The present time in this episode takes place after 2017, but an exact year is uncertain. When Alex and Josh had first traveled three years back in time past Josh is about to go see the latest movie starring Kevin Spacey at the time, to which past Alex says "that man can't do no wrong", prompting future Alex and Josh to cringe with embarrassment. The Kevin Spacey sexual misconduct allegations started in October of 2017, and Baby Driver, released commercially in June 28 of that same year was the last movie that the actor had starred in prior to the accusations. It is however possible that Alex and Josh might have found out about the scandals later or that the they first traveled in time before 2017 and past Josh could have been reffering to any other movie before Baby Driver.
Pop Culture References[]
- The manner in which Alex is cloned in a laboratory by the end of the episode is a nod to the dinosaurs's origins in the Jurassic Park movies
- During Alex and Josh's time travel montage, there is a scene where Alex and Bridgette appear to be at a Halloween party, at which a person dressed as Benson from Regular Show is also present.[1]
- The Alex seen during the Halloween/costume party is dressed as Jack Burton, the main character from the movie Big Trouble in Little China.