Darwin Jihen didn’t win the Patron Pick vote (it did come in second, though). That means of course an up or down decision is needed as far as covering it. There are no digest candidates to pair it with either (apart from Oshi no Ko airing a day later, but that seems like a weird fit for a digest post). It’s not a masterpiece or anything and doesn’t generate huge engagement. But I’m kind of leaning towards keeping it, because for all its flaws the series is genuinely interesting most of the time. I don’t think it has the chops to seamlessly pull off either its sociopolitical exploration or its Missouri setting, but it comes close enough on both to pique my interest.

There’s a new – well, old sheriff in town. And this being a Japanese take on small town America, of course he’s obese. He’s the one who intervenes with Deputy Phil pulls his revolver on Charlie, who’s just broken out of his cell, ending a tense standoff. Charlie is evidence, not a person – Lucy raises a good rebuttal to Phil’s “good people” argument. The sheriff isn’t doing any of this out of a sense of justice – a favor has been called in by Rep. Linares, who we met earlier. She’s none too thrilled about being in debt to law enforcement and lets Hannah know in no uncertain terms that in the big picture she has bigger fish to fry than Charlie, so everyone better get their act together.

One area that Darwin Jihen does get more or less right is the hellscape of shallowness that is the American high school (not that Japanese ones are that different, apart from the shootings). Especially in small towns. So Charlie’s rough treatment there plays as pretty realistic to me. He doesn’t really give a flip and could hardly make that more obvious, but Lucy is just not a leave well enough alone sort of person. The problem is that she’s a big-time outsider herself, which makes her campaign to make Charlie popular (and thus win humanzee rights) by proving he can fit in doomed from the start.

I do think Lucy’s eventual strategy to go after the girls is probably the wiser course. But Charlie is so socially inept (“those ears look great on you”) that she has trouble making inroads even with the likeliest subjects. Charlie also doesn’t seem to get how his alien performance art – like climbing the school building to rescue a fallen chick – plays in Peoria Shrews. Eventually Lucy embraces her inner outcast and decides a clique of two is good enough. It’s at this point that the two girls she approached earlier decide their might be some outlaw chic attached to hanging with Charlie (and Lucy). But before this new idyll can take hold there’s a disturbance on school grounds, and Charlie is connected whether he wants to be or n0t.

We briefly met Gale earlier, and he returns to annoy the locals with a vegan protest (approved, he says) on school grounds). The local armchair philosophers of cours take exception, and a confrontation seems inevitable. Charlie betrays not the slightest interest in getting involved, but on the subject of animal rights he’s not going to be able to avoid flying through this turbulence. Gale seems like a true believer, and if you’re Charlie that sounds like big trouble.