Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | 17 USERS: C- YOU GRADE IT The Physical Impossibility of Being 2 Legit
By Jacob Clifton | Season 1 | Episode 13 | Aired on 12.16.2013
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Duncan admits to Nina that he has taken everyone hostage in the entire world, and will also be killing the President at some point. She finds this even less awesome than leukemia, and goes rogue. Gramps and Duncan are not feeling her, but luckily Soy-Soy comes downstairs in a smoking jacket and cigarette holder and everybody chills. Then Nina tries to call the cops, so Duncan of course takes her ass hostage.
While Sandrine and G-Man Logan have another conversation about how she is spying on her friends, their friends discuss how she is spying on them for G-Man Logan; Beardy, of course, writes a whole blues song about it for the Coen Brothers' seminal The Only Thing More Delightful Than Poor People Is The Music They Make series of feature films. He grabs Sandrine and they hit the road to have a frank talk about money and other topics, such as Beardy Erectile Dysfunction and maybe starting a family (after she murders him).
Vanessa spends the day hanging out with FLOTUS -- which we do not see -- while the VP accidentally alerts Colonel Blair to how his girlfriend has dicked him over, and will probably be murdering him soon. Later on, he meets up with her in a hallway to say she better murder him soon or else she will be murdered. They both seem to have forgotten what this is all about: Operation Total Information, a conspiracy to steal the bone marrow of a rapist, and a complicated plot to make the President's sister-in-law the new President, several years from now when everyone is dead.
Ellen and Brian are: Useless as usual. Duncan doesn't want to hear their stupid plan of quitting in the middle of this assassination, and Ellen doesn't want to hear Duncan's threats and nonsense anymore. She makes up some weird plan about not killing the President and acts like that's basically the same thing as killing the President. Needless to say, he goes for it. (At no point was I able to comprehend this plan, so keep that in mind.)
A gigantic hot oncologist shows up to ask Gramps why Nina's doing things today like calling the cops and disappearing from hospitals. Soy-Soy tries to ruin everything, but once again nobody cares what Soy-Soy has to say. Gramps summons Beardy to his sister's bedroom prison to knock some sense into her, so she gets to yell at him too. Then he points out that Soy-Soy will be murdered too if Nina or her mom call the President out for being a rapist.
Duncan figures out by sheer power of thinking that all of their vehicles have bombs on them, but then it turns out Sandrine has already removed the car bombs she just recently spent an entire episode putting under the cars. Duncan and Beardy talk about how making her feel bad was the point, to make her do this, and thus, they are safe and she is now the one that will get murdered. I don't know what she's thinking but I would imagine it's just dollar signs, whirling in a circle, over a pile of money.
Duncan screams at everybody forever and ever, and then locks the kids in the basement -- Blindfolded! Execution style! -- because he is back at square one, both emotionally and operationally. Then he shoots Jake for some reason, but holds off on killing Morgan because she is herself a kind of torture. (She then proves his wisdom by making the whole thing 100% about her.) Troubled by Jake's shocking death, as we all are, Sandrine tries to get Archer to ditch everything with her, but he is not hearing it.
Just kidding, Jake is fine and living it up at a bed and breakfast. The whole thing was a scary plan to do Ellen's plan from the beginning of the episode, but trick Archer and Sandrine into thinking that Duncan is crazy. (Crazy awesome, I mean.) Beardy and Brian are very sweet with Jake at this point, but Brian does not want any of their hugs. Then Ellen explains to Morgan that she needs to shut the fuck up because Jake is not dead, he's just more deserving of a week at a bed and breakfast than she is.
Duncan and Ellen get together for a sexy meeting about how they need to make everybody think they killed the President but without killing the President. (At this point I still didn't really understand what they were talking about, in a general way, but you gotta roll with it. You cannot let this show triumph over you. You must prevail.) Meanwhile, Soy-Soy helps Nina escape and/or Nina takes her daughter hostage.
Then Duncan goes to see some Tea Party anarchists headed by my darling Chance Kelly -- in his third appearance in a show I recap, in the last month -- and gives them magical Secret Service lapel pins that turn you into a glamorous rock diva when you touch them and say "Showtime, Synergy." Duncan Carlisle is at his most insufferable in this part, as he talks Tough Guy at Chance Kelly and Chance Kelly as to say things to him like he has "balls." It's a nightmare. Anyway, what will happen is that these guys will try to kill the President, diverting us all from the killing or not killing of the President.
FLOTUS sits down with her enemy Ellen Sanders, who tells her about a newfound genetic marker in the POTUS for early-onset dementia that she just made up. Loving the idea of a cover-up involving the mental faculties of a sitting President, FLOTUS gets on board with the idea of smuggling Kincaid's marrow out of the hospital. (This part actually is genius.)
Tate and Morgan go meet a big old grouchy growly-bear at a bar, who provides them with documents to escape this show altogether. Morgan immediately speaks up to tell everybody she has no idea what is going on, and they look at her like she's dumb. But I think it will be Tate that screws this one up in the end, because how novel.
Okay, so I guess the plan now is, protect everybody related to Nina and everybody related to Ellen, and then everybody else can just go to hell? So this elaborate plan with the fake deaths, the disappearing/reappearing car bombs, the marrow-smuggling, the lying to Sandrine and Archer but not Weak Link Beardy, the Chance Kelly guys -- and maybe some more things I forgot or didn't understand -- is about getting some marrow for Nina and some disappearing for the Sanderses. (And then probably set up antique stores in Bethesda like Nina's dumb Mom did.) And that's the whole thing, now. Except they don't know about Vanessa and Blair going after each other, or G-Man's highly tuned intuition, or what the FLOTUS is actually going to do when she obviously is the twist.
The rest is a blur of setting up the two-hour finale, in what's honestly a pretty satisfying and exciting way -- not least because the hour eschewed the weird procedural format of this show that is not a procedural, in which things put themselves together and then diligently take themselves apart every week. This week's only person on the hamster wheel of futility was Nina, which balanced out fine since she's the only one worth a good goddamn:
Duncan sends Beardy to find Nina and Soy-Soy, and gets his boyfriend G-Man to send Colonel Blair after them, to take them hostage. Archer intuitively locates Sandrine's car bombs, taking them hostage. Blair and Vanessa are probably going to murder each other, Chance Kelly is going to have a Tea Party, Jake's at a B&B, and Tate and Morg-Morg are running away with fake identities again. Ellen finally broke down the walls put up by the First Lady, in the grodiest way possible of course. And as ever, Duncan Carlisle has your shit on lock. It's all happening.
See you in January... and then never ever again, because this show is most certainly due to be itself taken hostage, by the TV Gods, right around 11:01 Eastern Time on 6 January 2014. The downside will be: No Duncan Carlisle, ever again, to show us what being cool is all about. The upside will be: Whatever one-season show Tate Donovan will be on by this time next year. I'm hoping for something right down the middle between Damages and Deception, which if you didn't get to see it, I will tell you: It was like the Autobahn of Tate Donovan acting. (The Tate Donovahn, if you will.) No rules, no limits, just rubber meeting road in a world-class battle for supremacy.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
Ellen decided to kill the President and kiss Duncan Carlisle, and then realized both of those things are crazy people things for a person to do, so she changed course yet again. And while Duncan Carlisle will not be pleased about that, I'm guessing he will feel more drags on his super-coolness from what Tate Donovan did next. Which was to call Nina Carlisle and tell her not only that she is the child of rape, but that her husband is a torturer and kidnapper and stealer of brainwashed daughters. All of which came as a surprise to Nina, who just thought he was kind of a douchebag.
Meanwhile, Sandrine is going to blow up everybody on Team Duncan after the President is dead, details forthcoming. Vanessa is just using the hapless Colonel Blair to further her deadly nonsense, which now includes killing the President and then becoming Vice President of the current Vice President, and then presumably killing him to become President. And then she is presumably using her powers as Commander-in-Chief to kill as many people as possible because it is what she loves best. But the best part was definitely when Tate Donovan called up a stranger with stage IV leukemia, just to yell at her about a bunch of stuff that is not really her problem.
HOSPITAL
Nina: "Even through the phone, Tate Donovan has a cheeky charm. A certain sparkle. Now, what's this about taking his family hostage? Why would you do that? Especially to Tate Donovan?"
Duncan: "Just go to bed or I will take you hostage. I am on a roll, and you are weakened by illness."
Nina: "I am not comfortable with this. The only thing worse than cancer is not having cancer, if it comes via killing a rapist through intrigue and deception."
Duncan: "He has a body full of magic beans that are just going to waste, then."
Nina: "So make a magical gazpacho, motherfucker. Nina's goin' ghost."
Nina grabs her bug-out bag full of scarves, and contemporary casuals, and tailored shirts, and playful cashmere wraps and, gets the fuck on up outta there.
G-MAN
Spokane: "I put bombs all over everything. It took an entire episode."
G-Man: "What is the plan?"
Stoatface: "You will give me money. And passports."
G-Man: "No I know that, honey. I mean, what is Duncan's plan for the two-hour finale?"