‘Wilfred’ is one strange, dark show. That much has been obvious from the first episode, but it just keeps getting stranger and darker as it goes. In Episode 3, Ryan questions whether his friend the talking dog has been trying to get him killed all along.

‘Fear’ brings us back around to a storyline from the pilot. After Ryan stole the pot stash from the neighborhood’s psycho drug dealer Spencer (a crazy thin Ethan Suplee), Wilfred purposefully left Ryan’s wallet behind. He wants Spencer to find and confront him. He claims that he’s doing this to teach Ryan how to be a real man, how to fight, how to dominate, and how to… ummm… rape his opponent? It’s also possible that Wilfred just gets off on watching Ryan get hurt. Yeah, like I said, strange and dark.

Ryan tries to solve this dilemma in his own way, much to Wilfred’s disappointment. He lies to Spencer and tells him that the same thieves who stole the pot also broke into his house and must have dropped his wallet in Spencer’s yard. Being a complete dumbass, Spencer falls for this ploy easily.

Problem solved, right? Almost. The thing is, now Spencer wants to be Ryan’s new BFF. He invites himself in for a night of beer and pornography. “Who doesn’t like porn?” When Ryan tries to extricate himself from this situation by saying that he’s had enough porn for the evening, Spencer drags him along to a strip club. It’s here that we learn that Spencer’s father was a transsexual stripper, which only seems logical at this point.

All the while, Wilfred keeps leaving clues for Spencer that Ryan was really the one who stole the pot. Eventually, Ryan confesses because he can’t take the pressure anymore. Spencer punches him in the face, breaking his eye socket. Wilfred in turn sneaks up and knocks Spencer cold. The next day, Ryan is strangely proud of having gotten in a fight, and Spencer (who thinks that Ryan is the one who knocked him out) keeps a respectful distance. Ryan is the alpha dog in the neighborhood now.

The episode also has a hilarious running gag where Spencer keeps distracting Wilfred with a laser pointer (“This defies all logic!”), which leads to Wilfred attacking an Indian woman in the neighborhood – because she has a red dot on her forehead, of course.