Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | 24 USERS: B- YOU GRADE IT Live Together, Die Also Together
By Jacob Clifton | Season 1 | Episode 7 | Aired on 11.04.2013
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Since their original plan of shooting Duncan didn't pan out -- and because she is like fully in love with him -- Ellen's a little reticent about trying another murder this episode/today. But with only eight days/weeks until the murder of the President of the United States, they've got plenty of time to figure it out. Eventually Tate remembers how they have a vial of untraceable instant poison in their upstairs bathroom, and offers to put it in Duncan for purposes of him dying, but Ellen decides on a belt-and-suspenders approach, and heads off to see a hit man she just happens to know from her time as a serial killer in med school:
Her lawyer, who also happens to be... Grandpa! As we learn in one hundred totally unnecessary flashbacks that make both their faces look like horrible CGI creations from a trilogy of movies about a fantasy world full of monsters and creatures, and also don't tell us jack shit we didn't already know.
How thoroughly ridiculous is that coincidence, though -- you're thinking -- but it turns out actually kind of awesome. Ellen gets fingered by Soy-Soy basically the second she shows up, but continues begging Grandpa to kill his son-in-law anyway, just in case she's not the stupidest person alive. Once she figures out that both Duncan and Beardy are relatives of Grandpa, she demands a full explanation of this Conspiracy and her part in it, and ... pretty much gets it.
She also gets some important news, which is that if she and Tate ever were to kill Duncan -- or if she screws up in the finale -- the higher-ups will scratch the whole operation and kill everyone on the show. No pressure! But also, that is fabulous. The show could not be making this shit more top-heavy, no-fault, zero-consequence if they cut to the President actually heiling a portrait of Adolph Hitler at this point or like, bathing in blood in a Satanic ritual, down in a secret room under the Pentagon or something.
At the White House, we get a huge bolus of information as the cast over there finally reveals themselves, and says vague shit to each other: The FLOTUS's sister (Joanna Kelley!) had an affair with POTUS once, but is now angry at him because their brother Peter, a Virginia Senator, died in some kind of plot to make the President the President, I think, so maybe all of them are in the Conspiracy. FLOTUS is very mean to Ellen -- always good -- but also to Quentin Creasy, which I didn't find very pleasant.
Morgan and Jake are pulled into a stultifying whirlpool of guidance counseling after the school is notified about all the bruises they've been receiving from terrorists and drug dealers, and the counselor is so insistent that eventually she gets Jake to randomly blame Pickup Truck for all of it, so then we have to look at his mug again? I guess the point is that now Pickup's on the case, but I mean, good luck with that. Good luck piecing together the difference between her family being taken hostage, vs. her family cutting ties with you because you are repulsive and embarrassing.
If you remember, Beardy helped out Smithsonia last week with her Gunther cash problems, and beat up a security guy in the process of robbing some hedge funders. Well, it turns out that guy is dead now, which sends Beardy running around all over town to confess to priests and whine to Grandpa and masturbate over the taste of beer. Eventually though, Smashmouth finds him at the bar before he can drink, and decides to make out with him instead. But before they can round third, cops take him into custody for bonking that man.
Over at the jailhouse, Archer is having trouble convincing Malik to keep himself in jail by not agreeing to a plea bargain, so instead he engineers an actual, literal race riot and then snaps Malik's neck in the hubbub. I guess the moral of the story is, don't traffic coke or chop up nurses and probably your neck will not get snapped during a race riot in a prison yard. If this dumb story even has a moral, probably it is that.
Anyway, Beardy's in jail and Ellen's on her way home to stop the killing of Duncan, but what's this? After all day of flirting and being flirted with and followed around by the mysterious Mr. Carlisle, Tate finally has pulled his gut-shot self enough together to actually follow through with something. He takes fully half the episode to put together how a syringe works (seriously), all so that when Ellen walks in the door, it's at the very second he gets Duncan in the left pec.
Next Week: Presumably Duncan dies immediately, based on everything the show has told us, and then assassins shortly thereafter descend on everyone else on the show to murder them quickly and cleanly, and then the next eight episodes is just people in the White House explaining basic shit to each other in a bitchy tone. Which frankly I am fine with.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
Ellen creeped on Soy-Soy at school, eventually figuring out Duncan's whole career and identity. Ellen's daughter, whose name I believe is Morgan, reaped the benefits of dating down when her erstwhile abortionist called the authorities due to her hostage-related bumps and bruises. Beardy and Sassafrass cheated a cute hedge funder out of his poker winnings in a pretend heist, brutally beating one of the security guys in the process. Duncan is still pretending to search for Nurse Angela -- despite having killed her eleven times -- and put Archer in jail for reasons that are his own. Tate got shot in the tum-tum, and the Sanders Family Stockholm Syndrome abated enough that they want to murder Duncan.
GRANDPA'S HOUSE/BEARDY CHURCH
Soy-Soy: "Daddy, I love it when you carry me up and down the stairs because I don't know what fun is. But why is it always so dark in this house? And where is Uncle Beardy?"
Duncan: "Who knows? I hope not doing drugs."
Priest: "What are your sins?"
Beardy: "All kinds of things!"
Grandpa: "I never thought my son Beardy was cool enough to take hostages! But then, nobody is as cool as you, Duncan Carlisle."
Duncan: "Well, just yesterday he fucked up majorly but brutally, so that's good."
Beardy: "My sister has cancer and I have been tricked into helping her husband buy magic beans for it, through violence."
Priest: "That sounds like Jesus is pretty cool with that. But tell me more."
Grandpa: "Let's talk in vague terms about vague things."
Duncan: "Done."
Grandpa: "Worst case scenario, Soy-Soy goes to live on a farm upstate with somebody named Leslie, with lots of money to spend on the things Soy-Soy loves best."
Duncan: "I too will go to live on a farm upstate, but it will be a metaphor."
Grandpa: "Can we trust Ellen? To be brainwashed, I mean. We still have eight episodes before anything actually happens, so you have tons of time."
Duncan: "She is like nobody I have ever met, in terms of how she is a serial killer and also keeps dicking everything up. I just have to get her away from her husband! I will do it through friendship."
G-Man: "That snarky PD that wants to help Malik keeps wanting to do that!"
Duncan: "Why didn't you kill everybody like we said?"