Due to Teo's relationship with the criminal girlfriend Adriana, all his friends land in prison, too: Robi, Irena, Kazo, Lucija and the Boss. Luckily, they are all released. Since Adriana serves a prison sentence, she gives birth and thus Teo has to take care of their baby alone, much to dismay of the jealous Lucija, who is secretly in love with him. Kazo starts a relationship with an urologist, but is insecure since she sees so many bigger penises every day. The Boss hires Irena and Kazo to work in his marketing Agency, where they receive strange requests from customers: from a celebrity woman who wants them to make a commercial proving she is not a man; sponsors wanting to film a commercial about Croatia's accession into the EU; conservative men from the Sinj area... In the meantime, Teo secretly works as a secret agent, hunting for small time criminals.
Season 4 of "Bums and Princesses", the popular Croatian version of "Friends", doesn't quite hold up—it has one genius episode of comedy perfection, 4.10; and five good ones: 4.16, 4.17, 4.22, 4.23 and 4.24; yet in order to get to those good ones, the viewers have to pave their way through 18 lackluster, schematic and inept episodes full of too much empty walk and corny gags. It is a pity, but the first nine episodes of season 4 are underwhelming, failing to conjure up some good jokes. Teo's misadventures as a secret agent do not lead to much and fall flat. The subplot involving Robi working as a butler for a count in a castle, where Teo feared that the count wants to restore Austria-Hungary, but is in reality just preparing to start a career as a folk singer, also disappoints. Excellent actor Hrvoje Keckes gives a surprisingly energetic performance as the clumsy movie buff Kazo, and is able to say even the most mundane lines with enthusiasm, but is equally as limited by the thin storyline. One miniscule exemption is episode 4.3 which features three hooligans, fans of association football who storm into Kazo's apartment, even though he doesn't know them, but surprise in a plot twist when two of the them later turn out to be police officers in disguise and arrest a criminal at Kazo's Agency—leaving even the third hooligan bewildered, puzzled that they were all "faking it" all the time. However, the first truly "juicy" part does not show up all until the legendary episode 4.10, which is funnier than all previous nine episodes combined.
Episode 4.10 is presented as a series of short TV commercials of the Agency, and all of them end on a non sequitur when the viewers find out what product or service they are promoting. In one clip, Mile Kekin wants to pay at a shopping store with a giant, 3 ft long credit card, but the clerk declines it. When a police officer asks for Mile's identification, Mile pulls out an equally oversized ID, causing the policeman to lose his patience and decide to arrest him. But just as the policeman wants to book him, the handcuffs suddenly shrink into miniscule size compared to Mile's hands. The policeman just looks at the handcuffs in confusion, until the commercial ends with: "Prepare yourself for new perspectives: EU! Coming soon!" In another clip, Kazo plays a caricature man who discovers that his neighbor, played by Robi, is driver's license counterfeiter, and blackmails him into fabricating one, too, which leads to the slogan: "You can do it that way, but you can also do it legally! Car driving school "Tires"!" But the comedy height is the clip where Kazo enters a porn store and is relaxed when he orders eatable underwear, a vibrator ("Cockmaster soft or Long-John?" - "Whatever. The black one." - "Long-John Black."), and a porn DVD, but stutters when he makes one last request—a car map of Croatia. Upon getting it, Kazo rushes to enter a car with Robi, showing him how he bought the map ("The guy didn't suspect anything." - "Yes! Bjelovar, here we come!"). A similar gag is repeated when Kazo enters a brothel run by Mile, but is only interested in the "illegal" tour guides to Bjelovar ("Bjelovar. The best hidden secret of the Mediterranean") . All the actors have a field day in this episode, which has a staggering level of humorous inspiration. No further episode reaches that creative zenith, though another good one is 4.22 which features a similar style of the crew trying to create a TV clip for promoting the EU, with Irena and Robi bickering over whether to talk about the Croatian Miss Universe or football players ("Who cares about some guys chasing after a skin bubble?"), until Kazo delivers a black-and-white art-film clip in which Teo laments how Croatia "gave so much to Europe" only for him to now stand with other Balkan people in line at the borders. TV host Krešimir Mišak also has a neat cameo in episode 4.23. While it has sadly too much lame jokes, "Bums and Princesses" still have enough good jokes even in season 4 to satisfy their comedy fans.
Grade:++
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