Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: F | 91 USERS: B YOU GRADE IT Frequency Awful
By Jacob Clifton | Season 1 | Episode 15 | Aired on 01.06.2014
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.The day is finally here! Everybody is very excited, from Duncan and Ellen to the anarchists currently infiltrating the hospital to do their terrorism and then get killed by the Secret Service, to even Sandrine and Beardy and Archer.
Well, not Archer. Archer has taken Ellen's family hostage to ensure -- get this -- that she will kill the President today. He found Jake's safe house through the GPS and realized the boy was never murdered, and quickly figured out that whole trick. Brian helps by explaining the entire rest of the plot of this show to him, and then he just gets mad because Duncan lied to him about the events of the last day, and thus retroactively must have been planning to screw him over at a later time. He leaves the lesser Sanderses tied up execution-style at one of those warehouses he's always killing people at, then heads to their house to beat on Duncan for a while before getting shot to death by Kramer.
Duncan, Sandrine and Vanessa hit up the open bar at a Middle East Security Summit in the middle of the day, Sandrine pretends to be a waiter long enough to distract the Colonel's security detail and then Vanessa and Duncan take him hostage. He agrees to let Nina and Soy-Soy go regardless of whether the President dies, and Kramer goes to pick them up while Duncan and Blair plan a fun double-confession video they can both hold as leverage. Blair attacks Sandrine with a cast-iron skillet, so Duncan shoots him, so that's two dead black dudes in two paragraphs. (There would be more, except the show has no more alive black people, having killed at least one in each previous episode.)
The actual "killing the President" that we've been leading up to for fifteen episodes, that part was pretty snazzy. Lots of twists and turns and anarchists and G-Man Logan tricking the anarchists and Secret Service guys killing the anarchists and Ellen dosing the G-Man Logan before almost killing the President sheerly out of her incompetence, then getting locked in a room with him long enough to save his life and steal his marrow, then send it to herself via the First Lady, which was all smoothly and beautifully done. She was even kind of cool doing it, if we're being honest.
Nina, tuckered out after just three episodes of this nonstop excitement, finally decides to use the magical rapist's marrow to save her own life, but questions whether or not she can stay married to Duncan. Ellen is similarly ambivalent about her future with Brian, due to his swamp ways. And the FLOTUS? Well, between his rape babies and Vanessa's theory that he killed their brother in that airplane, she is pretty happy to be allied with her sister and ready to fuck up the President and/or murder him, which frankly I'm just going to pretend that's what happened because it's hilarious, and because it would make Ellen Sanders feel like shit if he died later that day, despite her impressive efforts.
It's hard to say who finds it more difficult to say goodbye to Duncan Carlisle: His wife, who hates his ass but also loves him, or Ellen Sanders, who is brainwashed. I am going to say Ellen. And where is he going? Not running, because there's nobody left to run from: He is turning himself into the police! That's the end of the show! He strides into a police station, slaps his badge and gun on the desk as dramatically as possible, and gruffs out, "MY NAME IS DUNCAN CARLISLE AND I AM HERE TO SURRENDER!" in exactly the flesh-crawling way you're imagining him saying that.
Having taken everyone hostage, including his wife and daughter three separate times, Duncan Carlisle had no choice but to take himself hostage. Or perhaps he was his own hostage, all along. A hostage of love, perhaps. A hostage of hope.
...But even worse than Duncan Carlisle being a skinny-jeans martyr of the universe after taking everyone hostage seventy times and killing every black person, even grosser than Sandrine and Beardy kissing and running away together to reenact every single drug addict movie ever made, even all of those things are still not as nuts-twistingly horrible as when the Sanders family all show back up at their house, and Ellen is like, "I guess I'll have to settle for you assholes," rolling her eyes, and then the dog comes in barking and wagging his fucking tail, and they all have a big goddamn belly laugh and it freeze-frames on their stupid idiot American faces that have learned a lesson about family and whatever: That was by far the most chilling thing that happened, in this forever finale of this terrible show.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!PREVIOUSLY
Colonel Blair was playing a dangerous game! It was called "kidnap Duncan Carlisle's bitching wife," and the twist is that nobody wins. And nobody knows that more than Duncan Carlisle, who cannot win for losing at this point in the story, so he hooked up with Vanessa Moore -- girlfriend of the NSA, sister of a dead Presidential hopeful and the FLOTUS, former mistress of the POTUS, and all-around Murderer of People -- to see about getting the head of the NSA killed before he ruin Duncan and Ellen's plan to not kill the President and not get killed, by doing both of those things. Ellen was given an innocuous smoke grenade to detonate innocuously during surgery, and Archer re-abducted the formerly un-abducted Sanders family, after first contracting with some adorable anarchists for them to do actual shenanigans.
BRIEF
Duncan: "Are you ready to not kill the President?"
Ellen: "I was born ready to not do that. Except for my brief brainwashing period."
Duncan: "Okay, here is the plan for you to leave town after this happens. What you need to do is, leave town. That's it, that's the plan."
Ellen: "Of all the Duncan Carlisles in the world, Duncan Carlisle, you are the Duncan Carliliest."
GOP B&B
Brian: "Archer I don't know how else to tell you this but you are fucked. No offense, but my wife is not going to kill the President. And I think you might know more about this, if you hadn't suddenly turned into a big ol' Sandrine in front of Duncan Carlisle, apropos of nothing, talking about your money and warning of the bloodbath of you not getting your money."
Archer: "How do I know you're telling the truth?"
Brian: "Because you thought Jake was murdered but really he was getting spa treatments in this cute cottage upstate? The exact opposite of dying young?"
Archer: "Duncan wouldn't change the plan! If Ellen doesn't kill the POTUS we are all in trouble. You, me, even Soy-Soy."
Brian: "Then I guess you better shift ya ass, huh? Because it's happening."
Archer: "But I want my money! That money I'm never going to get, I want it!"
Brian: "When you got stupid, dude, you got all the way stupid."
Archer: "It's kind of racist. It will lead to my death."
HOSPITAL
Anarchist: "How will we know who our contact is?"