Dad, I'm 21 Now review

The setup

Her parents are home, her stepbrother is back for her twenty-first birthday weekend, and the house rules arrive at once: the two of them share a bathroom and the doors stay closed. She turns every sentence into a double meaning, mangling a parental cliche about independence into something anatomical, then asking for help with her birthday candles so pointedly that someone has to explain she meant the cake, which she denies. With her parents a room away, she gets physical. At bedtime she produces a birthday wish list, and he is item one.

Episode 2

Alma, the stepsister, resumes the list at item one while Dad is still awake. He points out the family tree; she splits the word stepsister in half and treats the pieces as a loophole. Her apology to Dad about her legs, she admits, was aimed at him and meant nothing. The parents being nearby is the attraction, not the risk. One zipper later he realizes he is going along with it, and her birthday wish gets stated plainly.

Who's who

• The stepsister: freshly twenty-one, fluent in double meanings, and treating her birthday as a license
• The stepbrother: home for the weekend, sharing her bathroom and running out of excuses fast
• Mom and Dad: oblivious hosts who keep repeating the rule about doors

Verdict: 6.0 out of 10

Subtle it is not. The first episode is one innuendo after another, delivered at a pace that makes the jokes feel like a drumroll, and a few of them genuinely land, mostly because her parents keep walking straight into them. The danger of discovery drives everything, with Mom and Dad always one room away. Episode 2 drops most of the puns for a blunter pitch, keeping one good gag about how many words make a stepsister, and the final birthday wish leaves no doubt about the direction.

Episode guide