Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | 1 USERS: B+ YOU GRADE IT Sad Little Cipher
By Jacob Clifton | Season 1 | Episode 5 | Aired on 02.04.2013
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.What's Sofia on this week? I'm thinking pills. Also the road of revenge, now that Mia's parentage has been half-revealed. That hoodied monster at FameJunkie.com produces some random old lady who tells everybody that Sofia did not bear her daughter, which sends Robert into their offices to first buy out the website and then give Nichole (Is that her name? The awful one) the dressing-down of her life. Fired and feeling particularly bipolar, she takes a homeless man into the closed FJ.com offices, the better to fuck and do drugs and release sensitive family matters to the internet.
It all comes out in the moments before Mia's cotillion, which results in a thrillingly beautiful -- albeit befuddlingly pointless -- Cinematic Orchestra setpiece in which Mia debuts, gets the shit Nice Guy'd out of her by Carpet once again, has a grande kiki on the dancefloor, and then runs out into the flashing brilliance of the paparazzi, where her motorcycle-riding beau has arrived just in the nick. This show is retarded in a very specific, sort of loving way, and the last ten minutes are like... If you showed a person just the last ten minutes of this episode, they'd be able to make a fair judgment on whether it is the show for them. Does that make sense?
Not that it's a show for anybody, really. But it's fun. So like everybody runs around saying "Ben Preswick" -- who finally got hot, just before dying, as predicted -- about a million times, and because Tate Donovan has psychic powers or something he keeps being accidentally one-step-ahead of the FBI, taking possession of the mysterious computer files moments before Joanna is supposed to discover them, that kind of thing.
(It's one of the best parts of the episode, actually: An entire FBI team and a stolen corporate ID are all necessary in order to explain to Joanna how to navigate the Windows Explorer file organization system. "You're looking for a computer file. Do you know what that means, Joanna? A 'file'?" And she still can't find it. She's lookin' right at 'em, can't seem to see this very important and very logically titled file in this one folder. So then they fight about how maybe she should check again, and it goes on forever and ever, and frankly it's marvelous. "I see files with that name for every quarter except for the quarter that you are talking about! I think it has been deleted from the mainframe!")
The only other part that takes up this amount of unnecessary screentime is when Samantha throws the keys to Edward's Escalade off a bridge for no reason, and then they look for them for a really long time. I would estimate that the entire epic of Looking For Edward's Keys clocks in at about twenty minutes, conservatively, with the end result that Edward does a lot of running around and deleting things from the uh mainframe.
Julian, who despite his lack of charm or grace has fucked simply everybody, has fucked the consultant working to get a rival company's cancer drug to market first. I don't know what her deal is except she's easily as annoying as Julian, they are obnoxious as shit together, and at one point she excuses herself during a cotillion to vomit for no reason. My first thought is that perhaps she is taking Lyritrol and will soon perish, but with this show it's just as likely that Vivian got her pregnant somehow.
Senator Haverstock is also at the cotillion for even less of a reason, but he does awesomely snap the beak off an ice swan while smiling crazily at Joanna. So at least there was that moment. Then he drops it in his martini and swizzles it around, because he is the greatest thing besides Sofia on this entire show. Oh, and he might in fact be Mia's father, given his future-foreshadowing (but still currently meaningless) Zippo lighter. Or he might be the actual Devil. I would not be surprised either way. I just know I love him.
Anyway, Edward gets Ben out of FBI Jail -- a very real thing, it would seem -- so that he can't help Will (who, yes, still totally sucks) and Joanna (who kind of also sucks) figure out who killed Vivian, or whatever, but then just out of the blue Edward randomly spots Ben Preswick wandering around Manhattan (a city of 1.6 million people) just at the moment he is struck dead by a literal fucking bus.
Oh, did this recaplet make no sense? Guess what, it made more sense than the episode. Next week: Sofia goes ham on everybody, more flashbacks to Vivian smoking various substances, and we mourn Ben Preswick, probably by saying his name a bunch more times.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
The previouslies this week are mainly just that one repeated shot of Vivian's dead body, intercut with people saying Ben Preswick's name over and over. Dead girl, Ben Preswick, dead girl, Ben Preswick. Mia's Vivian's daughter, Will is a tantrum-throwing manchild, everybody says "babydaddy" over and over like it's the medical term for that, and Lyritrol is deadly for cancer patients. Joanna thought Julian might have killed his sister, for valid reasons, but because he too is a tantrum-throwing manchild, it went poorly. Tonight is Mia's society debut; the last thing Joanna did was say "Ben Preswick" a bunch of times and then tell him she's an undercover cop working for the FBI. Because when you're working undercover for the FBI, you should constantly be telling people about it.
SIX HRS LATER
Will: "Ben Preswick! Why did you clobber Edward Bowers, Ben Preswick?"
Ben Preswick: "I don't want to talk about it."
Joanna, apropos of nothing: "Ben Preswick, I am a San Francisco narcotics detective here on special detail to the FBI. I want to find out who killed my best friend, Ben Preswick, so I'm working undercover within the family."
Will: "Ben Preswick, my partner here is just a woman. She should not have told you all these things, Ben Preswick, but I guess she does not understand how this works."
Ben Preswick: "But in another way, she does. Intuitively she grasped that telling me she was Vivian's best friend twenty years ago and hasn't talked to her since then would be the one thing that would crack this case wide open."
Joanna: "Ben Preswick!"
Will: "Ben Preswick!"
Ben Preswick: "Ben Preswick!"
FAMEJUNKIE
EIC Darcy: "[Tabloid chatter.]"
Horrible Nichole Frishette: "I found this old lady wandering around."
Old Lady: "You know, I'm very close with Dominick Dunne."
EIC Darcy: "What's happening here?"
What's happening here is that the old lady, name of Buffy, was friends with Robert's first wife Catherine that Sofia probably murdered. After Catherine died, Buffy was kicked out of the Bowers circle, because Sofia only wants soldiers and not old-lady friends. But guess what?
Nichole: "Buffy didn't see Robert and Sofia for years, until she ran into them at a dude ranch."
EIC Darcy: "Naturally."
Buffy took a picture of them at the dude ranch, a week before Sofia supposedly gave birth to Mia Bowers, and Sofia was cutting a trim figure atop a majestic Montana dude equine. So if Sofia was running around all unpregnant and horse whispering that week, then who was the babymama? Darcy can't wait to find out.
MIA
Sofia: "Mia! I brought you this dress for cotillion, and these pearls!"
Mia: "What young woman doesn't simply adore the classic look of pearls."
Sofia: (Eats her daughter's face in that way we've come to see she identifies with affection; Mia is grossed out.)
Mia: "Anyway, I'm still dating that motorcycle person."
Sofia: "Even after these pearls? Whatever, I'm just so glad to be your mom. My mother gave me these pearls right before she and Clyde Barrow went on that crime spree."
Mia: "That's nice. I wish you weren't digging your nails into my arm as you say it, though."
Sofia: "I would murder anybody that tried to take you away from me. Just keeping that on the table."
FAMEJUNKIE
Buffy: "So in summation, Vivian Bowers was not only a whore and a junkie, but also a teen mom. Bless her heart. Where's my check?"
Darcy: "Are we saying Mia has no idea about any of this? What a wonderful piece of mischief with which to concern ourselves today."
Nichole: "I love being the worst, don't you?"
Darcy: "With any luck she'll kill herself and we'll sell more internet clicks or whatever."
BEN PRESWICK
Ben Preswick: "So generally with a drug trial of 1200 patients you can get a couple deaths without anybody saying anything, and Lyritrol caused 27. But when I got back from Thailand I saw a report that ignored 25 of those. I knew something was up."
Will: "Ben Preswick, when does the deceased enter this story?"
Ben Preswick: "I told Vivian about it, and we fell in love around this time. We got ahold of some records that proved a payoff to those 25 families, but now it is gone."
Will: "Ben Preswick, is that why you were in the IT last night Ben Preswick? To pull the payoff spreadsheets from the mainframe?"
Ben Preswick: "I guess that's one way to describe it?"
Will: "In your opinion, Ben Preswick, do people who are up to no good keep payoff spreadsheets in offline accounting servers?"
Ben Preswick: "Now you're basically just saying random words."
Joanna: "And you say Edward also knew about this, Ben Preswick?"
Ben Preswick: "Yeah, and now she's dead. On the other hand, he put me in a safehouse. But on the other-other hand, it wasn't so safe after all, because I was ambushed by a charmless horrible FBI agent there and forced to run across rat-infested roofs."
Will: "Ben Preswick, I'm familiar with this part of the story. Will you excuse us, Ben Preswick?"
OUTSIDE
Joanna: "Are you going to bitch at me for telling Ben Preswick I'm working undercover? The one thing people shouldn't do when they are working undercover?"
Will: "I have a whole list of things to bitch at you about. That is merely one."
Joanna: "It seems pretty clear that Edward killed his sister. And is also very rude."
Will: "Counter to all evidence, I am still very sure that Julian killed his sister. Mainly because you are a whore."
Joanna: "Please, please forgive me for existing! Without your approval I am nothing!"
Ken Leung: "Could you guys quit sucking? It's making me look bad."
Joanna: "You mean people in the office aren't totally fascinated by a love triangle between the three least compelling people on this entire show?"
Will: "He's right. You really need to act more mature."
Joanna: "I know, I'm just a silly dumb whore. God, Joanna! Quit fucking up, Joanna!"
Will: "Hey, don't beat yourself up. Wait for me to do it -- emotionally. Now, let's arrange a complicated mission where it takes three guys and a variety of subterfuges in order for you to look for a file on a computer."
Joanna: "That sounds really hard!"
Will: "Ben Preswick and I will remain in constant radio contact throughout."
EDDIE SPAGHESCALADE
Edward: "I allowed myself like one moment to be happy I'm out of my coma, and now it's back to dourly hating everything. Especially you."
Samantha: "I'm just glad this is one of those episodes where we're married. Hey, are you coming to Cotillion tonight? Lots of young girls there to rape and murder, I shouldn't wonder. Oh, and I forgot to tell you this until just now, but the guy who stole your car used your ID to get into Bowers Pharmaceuticals and download certain payoff spreadsheets from the offline accounting mainframe."
Edward: "Ben Preswick? Do the police still have him in custody? Turn this Escalade around! Take me to the IT department of my family's company! I need to check our mainframe for spreadsheets!"
Instead of doing that, Samantha throws the keys out of the window. They are stopped on a two-lane bridge, meaning she has just created like five problems for no reason.
UNDER THE BRIDGE
Edward explains the entire plot of this show one more time to Samantha, making this the third time the entire plot of this show has been described in this episode alone. It is super boring and goes on and on forever and the only good part is that it's Marin Hinkle and Tate Donovan doing it, proving the whole "I wo