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Yay, my mini reviews are back to caught up:
In this episode, Bridget's and Siobhan's secrets come pouring out where it comes to Henry and Gemma, though only to Gemma. We get some more back story for Siobhan and why Juliet is such a hate on for her (it isn't shocking) and poor, poor Malcolm... poor, poor Malcolm.
And, poor, poor Gemma... oohh, spiteful bitch Gemma... oh, poor, poor Gemma... OH NO, POOR GEMMA!? So when last we saw Gemma, she was staring in shock at her friend after she blurted out she isn't the backstabbing best friend who slept with and got pregnant by her husband, but is in fact her identical twin sister! Gemma calls Siobhan out on her outrageously bold lies and storms out anyway.
We pick up in this episode with Bridget, Andrew and Henry in the Martin's car. We get a flashback of Gemma not buying Bridget's story.
Andrew & Bridget get home after dropping off Henry with Gemma not returning Bridget's calls. Her huge picture that sits on the wall at the penthouse elevator has WHORE written across it. The apartment, as they go further into it, is trashed. But, no, it isn't Gemma's handiwork -- this is all Juliet, who had returned from Miami. She's passed out on a sofa and has obviously had a wild party while her father was gone. She's also hostile toward Siobhan, again.
At the Butlers, Gemma is checking out old video on her laptop of a party they attended with the Martin's. She now notices all of the longing, smirking, winking smiles and staring that Siobhan and Henry were sharing. Henry arrives and tries to speak to her, but she's all "whatever, lying bitch-boy", except she doesn't say that and should have. But, she does see a scar on Siobhan's wrist....
Henry finds his manuscript in the mail, returned to him by his publisher with a note that he needs to call them.
Juliet has another storm out. Andrew expresses confusion over her attitude after the bathroom scene he saw before she went to Miami. Bridget tells him it's drugs.
Later, Gemma confronts Bridget about what she had said and she sees that Siobhan's burn scar from a cooking class accident is gone. She now has to believe her.
Elsewhere, Malcolm is still full of junk.
Juliet returns and is pissed that her room has been gone through. She tears Siobhan's wedding dress and some shoes and dumps really expensive perfume on everything. She nearly finds Bridget's purloined gun, but is distracted by a NA pamphlet.
Back with Gemma, Bridget explains why she had to take her sister's place and that Siobhan is dead. Bridget reveals she's been in her sister's shoes for two weeks. She pisses off Gemma by making her loss all about Bridget's utter selfishness in what she has done. She doesn't promise not to spill everything.
Following the mess with Gemma, Bridget goes to a NA meeting, where she meets Charlie. She's being spied on by Juliet.
With Malcolm, he comes around and finds himself strangely unsecured, the cage where he is locked up unlocked and able to make a clumsy escape from Bodaway Macawi, except oops -- not -- it turns out that was a drug-dream.
That night, Juliet yells at Siobhan about the NA meeting -- she tells her father that she isn't going to any rehab. Andrew asks Siobhan to let him handle things, even though he's so obviously ineffective about everything.
Gemma drops by the Martin's, scaring the crap out of Bridget, but instead of telling everything to Andrew, she just reveals that she has to withdraw from their loft project. She then tells Bridget that she wants a divorce from Henry and to do that without giving him any of her money or access to her children, she plans to invoke a clause in their pre-nup. So, she tells Bridget that Siobhan is going to sleep with her husband and she'll bust them red-handed.
The following morning, Bridget is really feeling things spin out of control. She almost takes a handful of pills from the medicine cabinet. She reaches out to Malcolm again in desperation, but he can't reach his phone. She dumps the pills down the sink instead - and calls Charlie. They meet. She tells him vaguely of what she's going through.
Gemma returns home to overhear Henry on the phone. It sounds to her like he is talking to Bridget, perhaps, but it sounds like he's asking for advice on how to save his marriage. She gets a bitter disappointment when it turns out that he was talking to his book agent about the publisher choosing to pass on his manuscript and drop him as a client. She's understandably pissed again.
Gemma goes to the loft to pick up things she left there for the design job. Bridget meets her there for another plea that she take a breath and not to anything drastic. Bridget refuses to seduce Henry. Gemma tells her she'll go to the FBI agent, Machato, and spill everything if she doesn't help Gemma bust her husband. Obviously, if this happened, it would ruin things for Bridget and Andrew and she pleads that Juliet needs her right now - Gemma tells her she's not interested in Juliet or Andrew or anyone else.
In Andrew's office, he's confronting Juliet about her latest debacle. He informs her that he's enrolled her in public school and that she needs to stop hanging around her bad-influence friends. She goes on another rage against Siobhan. He tries to point out how Shib hasn't doesn't anything except tried to to help her. Juliet is unimpressed and makes the implication she hates Siobhan and always will because she sleeps with married men... i.e. her father.
Meanwhile, Bridget has met with Henry at 'their bar' and informs him all about Gemma's plans. She begs him to go home and work things out with his wife. He refuses to pretend that he loves anyone but Siobhan.
When she gets home that evening, Andrew tells her that Juliet now knows they were sleeping together while he was still married to her mother. She's also gone off again and he doesn't know where. Bridget gives him a club matchbook she found in Juliet's drawers during the drug search and tells him to start there. This is perfect to get him out of the house, because she's expecting Gemma to show up anytime now when she doesn't catch her in Henry's bed.
With the gangster, he tells Malcolm to dial Bridget. He promises he will if he can get another syringe full of stuff first. This is a fake out and Malcolm tries to break free and run for it, but is subdued with a plastic bag over his head. Lackey asks if they're finally going to kill him, but Bodaway replies that he'll only wish they had.
Gemma shows up at Siobhan's and tells Bridget she's fucked. Bridget tries to get her to see reason and tells her that Siobhan did her wrong and she gets her hurt and anger, but that Bridget was the one that put a stop to Henry's affair and she can be a better friend than her sister was to her, if she'll just give her some more time to fix the messes that Siobhan left behind. For some reason (IITS), Gemma chooses now to grow a conscience over what she tried to arrange with Henry and agrees to keep quiet. She leaves in a cab for her office to pick up her car.
In the cab ride, Henry calls Gemma to rage about her trying to set him up. She's hurt again by Bridget ratting her out to Henry. She tells Henry that she isn't arguing about this over the phone and that she'll be home soon. He tells her he won't be there waiting. The kids remain invisible... or somewhere else.
Following her apparent success with Gemma, Bridget goes to the club to help Andrew retrieve Juliet, where she apologizes for everything that Siobhan had put her through in regards to the affair with her father. She promises her that she only wants to make up for the hurt she's caused. Juliet, for some reason (IITS) doesn't tell her to F-off. They get ready to leave.
Gemma, though, now pissed that Bridget ran to Henry to rat out her plan before begging her to let her be the sort of friend that Siobhan should have been, has called Andrew. She asks him to come over to her home right away, as it is an emergency.
Andrew leaves Siobhan to take Juliet home. But, when he gets to the Butler's he finds Henry at the door. Henry claims that he hasn't seen his wife and she might have called him from the office. He also, suspiciously, won't allow Andrew in.
After Andrew leaves, we see Henry walk dazedly back through his house. There are signs of a struggle, including bloody finger prints on the wall. As he heads upstairs, we see a blood streak against the staircase wall....
The Good: Any scene with Gemma and Bridget is good, with special mentions of Gemma pointing out that she doesn't owe Bridget anything since she doesn't even know her. I also liked the twist of Gemma suddenly deciding to use Bridget in the scheme to get rid of her husband... though she wasn't really likeable about it at all, so I also liked it when she was suitably appalled at herself later.
Malcolm's dire situation is holding my interest. I especially like that the lame escape was entirely due to the fact it was only happening in his head.
I really like the pacing on this one, especially again, when it came to the Tara/Sarah scenes together.
The cliffhanger! OH NO, GEMMA!? {Because right now, her and Malcolm are the only ones I'm interested in.}
The Bad: Oh, brother... Juliet. Sure we find out more about why she hates Siobhan with good reason, but I just don't care. Her character is entirely too selfish and self-centered and unpleasant. And yes... she's a hurt and angry teen... but it's boring.
Wow, we're really going to introduce another secondary character to keep track of? Not that I don't like Charlie - the actor is certainly charismatic, but honestly if he's going to take Malcolm's place I'm going to be pissed.
Other Thoughts: This episode also benefited by no interruptions for Machado's repetitive 'investigation' scenes.
Andrew is really bugging me as a character. He's had no real impact on anything and Ioan seems as bored at his character as I am, which makes what scenes he does have fall extremely flat and nearly grating. It doesn't help that so much of his dialog is about his daughter, and I really liked when she was stuck in another state.
The Score: I definitely liked this one equally with last weeks, exclusively due to Gemma. And, I really liked this cliffhanger for next episode: 3.75 out of 5
-end-
Ringer - ep 5 mini reviewed
October 13th, 2011
2011-10-16 03:55 am (UTC)
The introduction of Charlie confused me too. It was just a convenient way to prevent Bridget from falling off the wagon. Personally, I think they should've just let her fall off it -- Bridget's becoming annoyingly Mary Sue-ish. Especially with respect to Juliet.
I have a feeling all is not what it seems with Andrew and Gemma. They didn't show a body, which usually means (in mediocre writing) that she's not dead.
Your pointers and my rejoinders :-)
2011-10-17 11:57 pm (UTC)
At first, I had a mild negative reaction to Gemma's heel-face turn, but then I remembered we don't really know any of these people yet. We don't know how long resentment at Henry has been building, and this affair may have just been one straw too many. It made me wonder if Gemma has been feeling like a doormat for years. Plus, her sudden turn into mild villainy didn't really seem out of place for an 'adult soap' -- I keep flashing back to Dynasty.
2. Malcolm's current predicament also has that little problem. I'm sure the intent is to get him hooked and then string him out to force him to contact Bridget. This is all fine and good, expect it doesn't match what we've seen of Bodoway as a character. He doesn't seem like he'd be this patient. In fact, I would expect him to already be in New York, menacing 'Siobhan', instead of wasting any more time with Malcolm. But since I like his character, I'd rather that Bodoway not to the sensible thing and put a bullet in his head and be done with him.
3. Bridget = Mary Sue-ish: I'm getting this uncomfortable vibe, too. Especially since we haven't really seen her do anything reprehensible when she was "screwing up her life". We need to see her really unlikeable, so we can understand her motivations for trying to fix things. OH - and the resolution to the Julia-hatred! THAT WAS SUDDEN.
I'm not sure if it was good thing or a bad though. I just want Julia to be less there all around.
4. I'm also sure that Gemma isn't dead. That wouldn't be soapy enough. I'm going to go, just with blind speculation, that she'll show up with amnesia. Bridget's secret is re-saved, and Henry's guilt remains in question/he isn't immediately written out of the show for assault/battery/attempted murder.
Re: Your pointers and my rejoinders :-)
2011-10-17 11:59 pm (UTC)