All of “Welcome to the Election” was about the titular election, which saw Dave running for public office against Isaiah Evans (a guest-starring Wayne Brady) and being tricked into a last-minute debate. Dave, as ever, plays the idealist who wants to run on policy, but while he’s doing okay, Isaiah is a well-known and well-liked showman who knows how to play up the celebrity side of politics.

Naturally, all of the Butler family rallies around Dave. Marty and Malcolm try and drum up online popularity — which, they claim, only comes from doing dumb stuff — by live-streaming themselves eating ghost peppers. But the main thrust of the episode is everything leading up to the debate and immediately following it, and I think, on balance, it made its point fairly well.

See, with the help of Calvin, Dave comes up with a bunch of pithy, hip slogans which they brag about to Isaiah before the debate, and he steals them all and uses them as his own messaging, capping things off with a song and dance number. With all of their material used up, Dave instead lets Calvin question Isaiah directly, which proves that he’s all performance and no substance. Dave might be a boring dork, but at least he has an actual plan. The crowd see the logic behind this and support Dave, who ultimately loses the election anyway.

Dave is dejected at having lost even after proving that Isaiah doesn’t have the best interests of his constituents at heart, but Calvin sees it a different way. All those ideas Isaiah stole he’s going to have to live up to now in order to not look stupid. The community will ultimately benefit from that, which is why Dave got into the race in the first place. It’s hardly a revolutionary conclusion, but it shows a pretty keen understanding of contemporary politics.

This recap of The Neighborhood season 3, episode 2 mp4, “Welcome to the Election”, contains spoilers. We recapped every episode — check out the episodes tag.