II – Episode 2 resumes in the past on the beach in Venice where Catherine Ravenscroft (Cate Blanchett/Leila George) embarrasses Jonathan Brigstocke (Louis Partridge) after noticing him taking her picture. He only becomes more embarrassed and awkward as he tries to explain why he was taking her photo, but lucky for him, a very young Nicky/Nicholas Ravenscroft (Kodi Smit-McPhee/Bertie Haarer/George Haarer) interrupts with his announcements of hunger. She and Nicholas leave without so as much as word of departure. Despite his earlier awkwardness, Jonathan immediately intervenes and hits it off with Nicholas when he notices Catherine struggling with her beach gear.
Despite a near-sleepless night, Catherine wakes with the newfound goal of restoring balance to her life. She immediately begins downstairs by taking over breakfast while Robert Ravenscroft (Sacha Baron Cohen) disputes the family’s charities with his brother Hugo over the phone. Before Robert is off to work, the scene reveals that the two of them met at University and Catherine is two years his elder.
Posing as a helpless widow, Stephen Brigstocke (Kevin Kline) visits a home goods store where he turns buying a vacuum cleaner into a huge ordeal. Although he makes the Snappy Snaps Attendant (Roby Singh) spend several minutes comparing two models, he ends up leaving without buying anything. It appears that he staged the entire encounter so he could covertly slip a cardboard sign on the sales counter.
Catherine is still receiving praise from her coworkers about the award when she shows up at work. She briefly speaks with Jisoo (Hoyeon) about average, everyday stuff before Simon (Michael Spicer) interrupts to congratulate her even further. For some reason, she feels the need to lie to him about her latest work being turned into a movie. She tells Jisoo that she was lying once he leaves.
While Stephen makes copies of Catherine’s photos, she tries to piece together who could have sent her the book. Despite now being dead and only meeting her one time, Catherine’s prime suspect is Nancy Brigstock (Lesley Manville). This realization leads back to a flashback of their first meeting. This takes place years after Jonathan’s death and around the time that Nancy’s cancer becomes terminal. Nancy doesn’t even bother attempting to restrain her disdain for Catherine and vilifies Catherine for not even sending flowers to the funeral. The heated encounter ends with Catherine storming out after Nancy demands to meet with Nicholas and reminds her that he wouldn’t even be alive had it not been for Jonathan. Thanks to the efforts of Jisoo, Stephen now becomes Catherine’s prime suspect.
Later that day while Catherine shops for fresh dinner ingredients at the market, Stephen personally delivers Catherine’s provocative photos along with a copy of The Perfect Stranger to Robert’s Hope charity. Robert practically freaks out when Emily (Whitney Kehinde) drops these off at his desk. When Catherine speaks with her mother and prepares dinner, Robert realizes that the photos were taken during their trip to Italy. As it turns out, he was in attendance but was forced to return home. Something about this realization inspires him to call Nick and make dinner plans, despite him and Catherine already having plans.
By the time Catherine has dinner on the table, Robert has stopped responding to her texts and calls. His disdain for her only grows when he shows up at Nicky’s apartment to find it filthy and reeking of dope. For Nicky’s part, he does very little to hide the evidence. Robert manages to keep his opinions to himself, but he does attempt to rush Nicky along.
Despite everything, Robert and Nicky’s dinner goes well, except for a slight moment where Robert pushes a bit too hard to learn what happened in Italy after he left. Being that Nicky was only 5 at the time, he claims he doesn’t even remember the trip. In addition to this, Nicky appears to have a positive outlook about his very meager job and hints at wanting to eventually try for management. It would also appear that he’s begun spending a lot of time with a girl he recently met. Robert volunteers to finance a summer getaway with her.
Catherine is asleep by the time Robert returns home. He uses the time to drink and stew so when she finally joins him in the kitchen, he’s completely beside himself. In light of that, he manages to remain fairly composed throughout the confrontation. As it turns out, what bothers Robert the most is how everything changed after that trip. It was after the trip that Catherine went back to work, their sex became nonexistent, and she took frequent ‘work trips.’
The episode ends with Robert storming off.
Disclaimer Review
I am surprised by how enthralling this series is turning out to be. It seems like with every major reveal, there’s another ghastly secret around the corner waiting to spew out. I’m not sure how I feel about the narration, but I’ll give the creators credit for trying something new. Perhaps, a more compelling narrator or someone with an iconic voice would have been more effective. The narration was one of the things I enjoyed most about the Bad Monkey series. I also have to give credit to Sacha. Due to his time as Borat and Ali G, I had trouble thinking of him as anything other than a parody, but he’s actually got some acting chops.
I am still confused about the purpose of Stephen’s visit to the home goods store and what the sign said. I’ve tried to enhance and freeze but I was unable to make out what it said. Despite all this, the episode gets a solid 6.2 out of 10.
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