Casual season 3, episode 4 recap: ‘The Sprout’ and the midlife crisis

This week’s episode of Casual season 3 involves Valerie’s midlife crisis and Alex’s lack of life, so who ultimately wins and loses in “The Sprout?”

The fourth episode of the new season of Hulu‘s Casual proves how desperately all of the show’s characters want to be normal and how much they never will be.

“The Sprout” is essentially one long midlife crisis for Valerie (Michaela Watkins). Remember how at the end of episode 3 she told Laura how much she wanted her life to be different? In episode 4 it’s one long desperate struggle to make different happen.

After realizing she dresses like a kindergarten teacher, Val goes shopping with her assistant Leia and buys clothes that she will probably never wear again. The best part of this is the increased screen time for Julie Berman, whose Leia gets to come out from behind her desk one more time and act as a sort of wing-woman.

The quest continues as Valerie takes her first screenwriting course at the UCLA Extension, and that storyline introduces two great actors as her classmates: Austin Basis (Beauty and the Beast) and Chace Crawford (Gossip Girl).

It’s no real surprise that Val is nudged into a few drinks, and that after those few drinks, she ends up adding Crawford’s character to her growing list of random flings. Hopefully that doesn’t mean we’ve seen the last of him or of Basis, whose comedic sensibilities already fit right into the world of Casual.

Meanwhile, Laura’s (Tara Lynne Barr) first day on the job goes awry and her attempt at making a new friend even worse, but the real core of “The Sprout” and what gives the episode its title is what she passes on to her brother.

Thanks to Laura’s Instagram feed, Alex (Tommy Dewey) discovers that Emmy (Eliza Coupe), his girlfriend from the first season whom Valerie slept with, is pregnant. Since the last time he saw her was seven months ago, he worries that the baby is his and won’t let go until he finds out.

Alex’s obsessive tendencies are some of his most prominent qualities, and the funniest scene in the entire episode is him texting Emmy to just casually suggest slash guilt her into coming over while his latest Airbnb roommates have a huge fight in the background that he inadvertently caused.

But when Emmy shows up, there’s an almost somber tone to the scenes between Eliza Coupe and Tommy Dewey, as Alex realizes that his formerly free-spirited girlfriend has now grown up, settled down and has a future. The baby isn’t his, but then again, neither is anything else.

Meeting Emmy is a wake-up call for Alex as he logs back on to his online dating profile, while his sister doesn’t seem to have learned; she’s last seen putting on her “cool” new boots, even though she has to slap on a Band-Aid for the injury they’ve caused her.

But “The Sprout” is an example of the seriousness under the humor of Casual, as well as its once again exceptional casting. While these characters can always make us laugh, those laughs and the bravado hide real issues that they don’t know how to deal with. Even grocery shopping confounds Alex.

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And by being so unable to be normal, the show snappily pokes fun at how difficult it is to maintain normal, or does normal even exist? According to the fourth episode of Casual, it’s hard enough to make sure you don’t eat someone else’s bagel.

Casual streams Tuesdays on Hulu.