‘American Auto’ Recap: ‘Most Hated CEO’

Written by John Edward Betancourt

AMERICAN AUTO -- "Most Hated CEO" Episode 202 -- Pictured: (l-r) Harriet Dyer as Sadie, Ana Gasteyer as Katherine, Eric Stonestreet as Ian (Photo by: Greg Gayne/NBC)

Caution: This article contains spoilers for Episode 202 of ‘American Auto’. To revisit the season two premiere, click here.
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For the most part, sitcoms, and comedies in general, tend to not follow up all that often on big events that happen in their respective stories, and it makes sense as to why. For these are shows designed to leave us in stitches and serialized storytelling and detailed dives into big moments, are best reserved for dramas or other genres, so those big events quickly become nothing more than a one off and the audience tends to think little of them as well… outside of the laughs they provided. But every once in a while, you see a comedy or a sitcom attempt to follow up on something important, with outright disastrous results. For some comedy shows struggle mightily with follow-up, partly due to the structure of this type of show.
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But thus far only a handful of comedies out there have mastered serialized concepts in an organic and compelling manner and one of them is American Auto on NBC. Simply because choices made in this show and the changes that come from them, don’t magically go away. Which may be a product of the fact that the show is set in a C-Suite at a car company. But regardless of the reason, this show doesn’t shy away from follow-up and consequences, and it even knows how to make such matters compelling and engaging and of course… downright hilarious, as evidenced by this week’s episode. For ‘Most Hated CEO’ picked up shortly after the events of ‘Crisis’, and while the fires were out, there was still a lot of fallout from those dark days. The kind that more or less recognized Katherine as the most hated CEO in all of the land. A reality that was reinforced by the grossest special delivery… ever. 

Which then put Katherine and her team in spin mode. Wherein she worked to look more appealing to the public and that led… to some fascinating and funny moments involving the team. For instance, Cyrus and Dori, were tasked with making Katherine look great on Twitter. Well, Dori was, she just pulled Cyrus into it and that led to some supremely hilarious moments between the two. Since they created a bevy of detailed fake accounts to show that Katherine was engaged and loving of people that visited her account, and it was just incredible to see how much care went into these fake characters and their backstories. Not to mention… the grave mistake that Dori made when it came to not paying attention which account, she was tweeting from… also led to some awkward shenanigans that surprisingly, didn’t seem to hurt Katherine’s standing. It somehow seemed to help.

As did… Sadie’s plan to rehab Katherine’s image. Which… took some doing. Mainly because Ian was trying to steal Sadie’s ideas and get her fired, to take her job of course. Which led to utter chaos in the rehab process. For an attempt to do an apology video, ended in hollow disaster because of Ian’s interference, and that prompted Sadie to pull quite the end around on Ian. So that Katherine would go bold and spend time on television with her biggest critic, Seth Meyers. Which at first, went well, then became awkward. Since Seth made a point to offer up how much he didn’t want her on his show, but the network overrode him. But that was enough… for Katherine to realize that no number of tweets or videos would rehab her image. She had to do that herself, in a bold manner no less. And she did so on Seth’s show, by offering up an earnest and honest apology, with big ‘F. U.’ to Seth when the opportunity arose, which rehabbed her image at last and led to quite the surprise for Ian.

In that, he was canned, nice and quick. For he had served his purpose and besides, Sadie saved the day and that meant… life was going to get back to normal at Payne Motors and well… all of this made for a brilliant episode. For not only did the show do what is rarely done in this genre, by offering up a true sequel/follow-up to a very important moment at Payne Motors, but it also provided us with wonderful and thorough closure. Since Katherine and Sadie learned a lot of lessons and grew during this process and were able to bring an end to the last of the bad PR surrounding the incident in question, and that’s just incredible. Plus, it goes to show, that with a little care and some quality writing, a comedy can accomplish wonders storytelling wise and now that the whole crisis is truly behind the team at Payne Motors, we can see what new challenges await them, as season two rolls along. Until next time. 

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