I’ve already written about another brilliant comedy that was mistreated by ABC and never got the audience or run it really deserved as a result. The two would have made a great pairing for a comedy hour, even– as I intimated when I covered this show in the series on the TV of the 2010s.

Don’t Trust the B—- in Apt. 23 got it even worse than Happy Endings, though. Happy Endings not only got a great second season before being inexplicably moved to the Friday night death slot, but also didn’t have its episodes all aired out of order (and mixed between seasons!) so that the recurring plotlines didn’t make any sense. For example, one recurring plotline in season 1 involves James Van Der Beek preparing for Dancing with the Stars, so it’s pretty jarring to see him talk about how the appearance went one episode then talk about him preparing for it the next.

Dreama Walker’s blog had a list of the episodes in production order. I wouldn’t say it’s quite viewing order, because for the second through fourth episodes of season 2, you’d want to watch the Halloween episode first (“Love and Monsters…”); then “Sexy People…”, as People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive issue comes out annually in November; then the Thanksgiving episode (“It’s a Miracle…”). But other than that, it should be the correct way to view the show. Also, all the episode titles end in ellipses because the implied completion to the title is “…in Apartment 23.”

Back to the actual show and why I’m writing about it in the first place: Don’t Trust the B—- is an astoundingly audacious and daring sitcom full of extreme behavior, hyper-reality, and anarchy. Fundamentally, it’s the Odd Couple premise– one’s uptight and responsible! one’s irresponsible and loves to have fun! see how they change each other!– but it’s a great and unique show because of aforementioned traits and their specificities. Most of that is thanks to the titular B in Apartment 23, Krysten Ritter’s Chloe. Chloe is a former-it-girl type who lives in New York City and mostly gets by through a series of schemes, scams, and occasionally the largesse of her BFF James Van Der Beek (more on that later). One of those schemes is to advertise for a new roommate, and then try to drive her away with insane behavior after she’s already paid upfront for the rent.

Into this situation walks June (Walker– no pun intended there), the wide-eyed gal from the heartland who starts working in finance (Indiana, to be specific– interestingly, or perhaps just trivially, the same background as Andrew Rannells’ Blair Pfaff in Black Monday). On her first day of work, though, her company is shut down as the CEO is arrested for embezzlement; this means June also loses the corporate apartment, and has to find a new job and a new place to get her life together. Chloe figures June will be easy to break, but June turns out to be made of tougher stuff than that and fights back.

Then, June’s fiancé Steven visits from Indiana for June’s birthday, and Chloe immediately clocks that he’s cheating on her. June doesn’t believe her– which of course makes sense; Chloe is a clearly insane woman June has just met. So Chloe decides to prove it to June by… having sex with Steven on top of June’s birthday cake. June’s pissed, naturally, but at the same time, she does see that Chloe was helping her see the truth about Steven, and ultimately, this leads to the two forming a very weird friendship.

In the next episode, Chloe says she’s got the perfect guy for June, and throws a party for June to meet Scott. June and Scott hit it off, talking all night and making out a little, until Chloe heads off to bed with a “Night June, night Dad.” To make matters worse, Chloe tells June her parents are separated, but this also turns out to be a lie, as Chloe’s wheelchair-bound mother Karen (Marin Hinkle, maybe best known around these parts from The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) shows up, suspecting Scott is cheating on her. Chloe was right that June and Scott would hit it off; she lied about his marital status because she hates her mom. That pretty well sums up the Chloe experience, although perhaps this quote I found from an interview with Krysten Ritter sums it up better:

My favorite thing about that pilot, it was the best half-hour pilot I’ve read in my entire career. In one episode alone I had a switchblade, I was having sex in a birthday cake, I was dancing in a hip-hop music video, I was getting a kid drunk, and I was selling drugs.

That also highlights a major element of making the show work, which is that Ritter is having so damn much fun in her performance, and that’s both obvious and infectious. Chloe is a wild and unpredictable force of nature in a way not often seen on TV– and rarely if ever as a woman character.

Nahnatchka Khan wrote for American Dad! before creating The B, and that makes a lot of sense, because this is about as close as you’ll get to a live-action sitcom starring Roger Smith. Chloe isn’t quite as destructive or self-absorbed as Roger, but that thing can sort of be a matter of degree; Chloe cares about June and James, like Roger does about the Smiths, but will still manipulate them, especially June, to get what she wants (albeit she never quite goes to the extremes of terrorizing June that Roger can with the Smiths). The logline that the show’s marketing liked to use in describing Chloe was “the morals of a pirate,” and while I always found that a little annoying, it’s apt enough: Loyal to a handful of people, with the rest of the world there for the taking.

The Thanksgiving episode from season 2 is probably where we see this picture of Chloe best in full– the anarchic methods but also the loyalty and care to those in her circle. June can’t afford to go home for Thanksgiving, so Chloe brings her to her own family’s Thanksgiving– and the events of the second episode of the series have not been forgotten. Chloe told her parents June is in a wheelchair, so she makes her get in one for the visit, ostensibly to generate some sympathy and smooth over any lingering hard feelings about the hookup. June wants to talk to Scott to make sure there are no hard feelings and they can still be friends, but he keeps pointedly avoiding her; this starts to get under June’s skin, which, combined with the guilt over how kindly Karen is treating her, leads her to drink more and more and make more and more snide comments over dinner.

And then Chloe blurts out that June doesn’t need the wheelchair and forcibly picks her up out of it.

This creates a huge scene and a blowup– and while June is trying to explain, she lets slip that she was the woman Scott hooked up with, which Scott and Karen hadn’t discussed. This gets June thrown out of the house, leading to Chloe pretending to have a screaming match with her outside… while revealing several thousand dollars in cash. Ultimately, Chloe reveals that she did all of this entirely to motivate her parents to give her money, ostensibly to move away from June. And then she gives June half the money, so she can go see her family at Christmas.

This episode is a good chance to segue into some of the show’s signature one-liners, a mix of the absurd (in the vein of 30 Rock or American Dad!) or the pointedly adult (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia; American Dad! again). When June expresses worry that their Thanksgiving plans will cause her to miss Black Friday, Chloe responds “June, you can have sex with Black men any day of the week.”

You ever have the random line from a show that makes no sense out of context but is beloved in your household and becomes a running bit there? Chloe’s method of using casual sex to clear her mind and remember or realize things leads to one of our favorites:

I’m just scratching the surface here, because the show is packed with great one-liners, ranging from Chloe’s dark absurdity to Luther’s highly specific character-based lines.

While I’ve talked about the main duo quite a bit so far, we really need to visit some of the supporting characters. The apartment-based supporting cast are fine, but relatively flat characters. Liza Lapira plays Robin, a neighbor down the hall who was once Chloe’s roommate and continues to be obsessed with her; the character was downgraded to recurring for season 2, which is for the best; Robin is unfortunately one-note, no fault of Lapira’s, and that note wears thin pretty quickly. Better is Michael Blaiklock as Eli, the neighbor with a window across the alley from June and Chloe; he frequently spies on their interactions (possibly, as the local pervert, while not wearing pants), but also offers some good one-liners and occasional insights of surprising wisdom.

Eric Andre plays Mark, a role quite unlike most of what I or anyone else has seen him play, very deadpan and lower-energy than one might expect from the frenetic mania of work like his self-titled show. Mark was supposed to be one of June’s coworkers, but after the company is shut down, he takes a job managing a coffee shop and later hires her. He’s got a never-seen girlfriend, Jennifer, who is clearly making him miserable, while he nurses a secret crush on June. Andre plays the role quite well and gets a few good storylines, but mostly I’m just writing words here to acknowledge the character and fill some space before I get to talking about James Van Der Beek.

Van Der Beek plays a heighted and more self-absorbed version of himself (I assume, at least; someone this self-absorbed probably wouldn’t play a role poking fun at himself like this). He and Chloe have been close friends for seven years, and with Dawson’s Creek nearly a decade in the rearview mirror, he’s trying to maintain/regain his relevance. The combination of his friendship with Chloe, the right touch of self-regard, the attempts to be taken seriously as an actor (whether that’s teaching a class at NYU where the students just want to talk about Dawson’s Creek (“You’re everywhere and nowhere, Dawson!”), or auditioning for the latest Scorsese or Woody Allen film), the celebrity preening and profile-boosting stunts (James spends the aforementioned Thanksgiving at a soup kitchen celebrities notably volunteer at on the holidays, hoping to get a quick photo-op and leave, before the actual workers there reveal they know how this game is played and can just as easily leak to the media that he skipped out early), and petty feuds with celebrities of similar status (his rivalry with Dean Cain on Dancing with the Stars), make James one of the most delightful characters on the show. It helps a lot that he’s not entirely aware of how self-absorbed he is, so he doesn’t really come across as malevolent so much as someone who has yet to realize the world does not in fact revolve around him.

Functionally, Lapira’s place in the cast was taken by Ray Ford, promoted from recurring in season 1, as Luther, and he’s delightful, as James’ very gay, very bitchy, very devoted assistant. His mannerisms and theatrical personality would be funny enough, but he gets some fantastic lines (and Ford’s performances of them is always on point), and his overprotectiveness of James leads to some very funny situations as well. A great example is when James asks Luther to act as his wingman (I guess he got tired of just having sex with Dawson’s Creek fans and decided to use his celebrity to pick up girls at the club), and Luther’s standards are so high that he ends up driving away every woman James is interested in. (Example: “Look. You’re Sean Astin pretty. Not Van Der Beek pretty.”)

While the main dynamic of the show is Chloe and June, the characters are all written specifically enough that you get a ton of fun pairings– Chloe-James, June-James (“Sexy People…” is a particular highlight here), James-Mark (see “Love and Monsters…”), Luther-anybody, etc. Even Chloe-Mark once in a while: One episode has June encouraging Chloe to start dating more appropriate men, and this leads her to set her sights on Mark, who she finds herself attracted to without understanding why, as she’s usually only attracted to damaged men. After spending time with him, it clicks for Chloe: He’s emotionally unavailable because he isn’t fully conscious of his feelings for June. (Chloe loses interest after figuring it out.)

Chloe causes a lot of chaos, and a number of her plots are insane, but they’re often driven by human motivations. Chloe drugs June in “Monday June…” to get her to stop stressing out about work, but it’s ultimately revealed Chloe does it because June hasn’t been able to spend any time with her. Similarly, when June and James start spending more time together in “The Wedding…”, Chloe’s jealously leads her to take Kevin Sorbo as her date to the titular wedding instead of James (while, naturally, lying to him that it’s an ALS benefit). When a years-past sex tape of James and Chloe ends up in the hands of a porn distributor and they can’t stop it from coming out, James decides he needs to reshoot some of the scenes– and Chloe discovers she can’t go through with it, because she can’t sleep with someone she cares about.

And while June tries to get Chloe to be more responsible and think about the long term (for example, taking her out to show her what her life will be in a decade or two if she doesn’t grow out of being a party girl), Chloe’s genuine advice to June is generally along the lines of “let loose, have more fun, and especially have more sex.” The latter comes up most prominently in “It’s Just Sex…”, where Chloe catches June, um… to use a phrase from Happy Endings, rotary-dialing herself in the bathtub while thinking about the hot guy who comes into the coffee shop every day. Chloe encourages her to have casual sex with him, but June is reluctant to do so; casual sex isn’t really in her vocabulary.

But June goes forward with it, and the guy is an idiot with a parrot and he also cries very loudly and annoyingly when said parrot runs (er, flies) away. June, of course, can’t bring herself to drop him as per the original plan after this, so she gets further entangled with a guy she’s not interested in beyond the superficial, and Chloe has to intervene and pull her back.

But, of course, most of the fun in the show comes from Chloe’s more insane schemes. After June calls her irresponsible, Chloe adopts a child (whom she puts to work as an assistant for her “busy season”). “Love and Monsters…” focuses on Chloe’s annual Halloween prank and the man it gets her entangled with. Chloe’s scheme to get James on the cover of the magazine as People‘s Sexiest Man Alive is an attempt to prove to Chloe how much her tastes are shaped by the media she consumes rather than reflected in them.

James has his own celebrity storylines– besides the ones I’ve mentioned, there are stories like feuding with Kiernan Shipka on the set of a new movie, launching a line of skinny blue jeans called Beek Jeans, or considering a Dawson’s Creek reunion and getting advice from Frankie Muniz and Mark-Paul Gosselaar– his friendship with Chloe allows him to indulge some of her zanier ideas and even participate in the madness. When Chloe and June are interested in the same guy, James set up an impromptu dating game show for them (which, of course, if it goes well, he can sell to a network as proof of concept), which leads to a lot of absurd challenges and violations of personal confidence. James Van Der Beek really does give one of my favorite “celebrity as themselves” performances in memory.

It’s a shame ABC botched their treatment of the show so badly, because Don’t Trust the B—- in Apt. 23 is still hilarious more than a decade later, a unique and daring show that was sharply, screamingly funny. ABC could’ve paired it with Happy Endings and had a dominating comedy hour. FX could’ve picked it up and it would’ve worked perfectly with It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia as a lead-in. In any case, if those shows are up your alley, and anything at all in this writeup appeals to you– because I really did leave out a lot of my favorite story turns and especially jokes– I highly recommend checking out the show. Alas, it’s no longer available on Hulu– which must be a really recent development– or anywhere for free, but you can buy episodes or use other cool not-advocated methods to see it. It’s worth it.