“How to Choose a Tail”

Bad sisters

How to choose a tail

Season 2

Episode 7

Editor’s Rating

4 stars

****

Photo: Apple TV+

Sometimes you just have to admit when you’re wrong, and friends: I was very wrong! I’m humbled by the twists and turns this season has taken – although I’d argue that some of that is also due to inconsistencies on the show’s part. Between last week’s low point and this week’s return to form, it’s never been more obvious how much this season would have benefited from going back to ten episodes instead of eight.

Anyway, in this penultimate episode where shit hits the fan (…eth), let’s count how wrong I, your esteemed reporter, was.

Fuckup the First: “Ian” is actually the big bad of the second season.
As I’ve written before, this revelation isn’t the one I was hoping for, even if it seems obvious in retrospect. While I suspected his nefarious nature from the start, the extent to which “Ian” played everyone is truly mind-boggling – and I still find it incredible considering the sisters’ longstanding paranoia about everyone that they put on I don’t trust you yet.

So: Cormac Sweeney is not just a “Dirty John” scammer, but a corrupt ex-cop with a gambling problem And a second family. He also has his own past of domestic violence, the grim details of which lead a seething Houlihan to (accurately) call him a “nasty piece of shit.” His pregnant (yikes!) wife, who most likely dropped these charges due to coercion, apparently even knows about his side business of cheating on vulnerable women, but either has no power to stop him or gave up long ago.

And so Cormac found Angelica’s grief group and found the vulnerable widow Grace as his best blackmail target. Blánaid’s €100,000 inheritance may not have been his ultimate endgame; Grace’s death seems to have made his plan much more difficult. But when the opportunity that enabled Eva’s panic presented itself, he readily took it. He’s confident he’ll get away with it, especially after he drops off a USB drive at the police station for Houlihan, whose jaw drops when he sees the damning security camera footage it contains. But when Cormac’s wife has to turn Eva away from his actual front door, he goes one step further and picks up Blánaid from school as security. When he comes out of Eva’s house with that sharp smile, he’s never been more threatening.

When discussing the direction of this season, Sharon Horgan emphasized that she wanted to show the real effects of domestic violence rather than pretending that everyone, especially Grace, was fine after JP left the picture. It is absolutely true that abuse can also lead to bad actors continuing to take advantage of their harmed victims, and I respect that Bad sisters“Return” tried to untangle this much more confusing possibility, rather than living in the fantasy of last season’s final burst of joy. But it’s absolutely brutal to see how the show recontextualizes what seemed like an overdue piece of happiness for Grace – and Eva, too – as just another horrific trauma. It’s terrible to understand that these prickly, protective women have been screwed over again by a man as violent as he is ruthless. Grace picked another noxious cock – and this time she couldn’t escape it alive.

It’s all terrible, especially because:

Fuckup the Second: Angelica is innocent – and alive, by the way!.
In the words of my wife Bibi and me: “And I didn’t think it could get any worse.”

Not only was Angelica taken out of the sea in one piece, but her instinct that Ian was “a snake in the grass” was actually spot on. I still don’t like her and I still don’t trust her. Her instincts are always wildly inappropriate, and I won’t forgive all the disgusting crap she said about Eva before the boom cut her off. That being said, I admit that Angelica is due some Feeling sorry for myself after, you know, almost bleeding to death in the middle of the ocean. “Jonah was in the belly of the whale for three months. I was in the sea for three hours. A miracle,” she says – typically melodramatic, but fairer than her usual pleas for compassion.

Since Angelica appears to have no memory of what happened on the sailboat other than boarding it, it is unclear whether she harbors a dangerous grudge against the Garveys, which we know she is very capable of is. What’s notable at the moment is that she deflects Houlihan’s pointed questions about the sisters by voicing her own suspicions about “Ian.” She even stuns Houlihan into an unusual silence by saying he was faking his sadness. Angelica may be insufferable, but she seems to care about Blánaid and values ​​Grace’s friendship (whether it’s mutual or not), which ultimately puts her on the same page as the sisters – at least for now, anyway.

Also, I’ve been pretty rude about associating with the Garveys lately, so let’s acknowledge this:

Fuckup the Third: Roger is once again good and useful.
Roger really went through it. As if played with palpable pain and longing by Michael Smiley, he has always been one of the most devastating characters in the series. He’s lost and lonely and unsure how to fix any of this without making a fool of himself. He loved Grace and carried her secrets for as long as he could without collapsing in on himself. He loves Angelica, and when he tells Ursula that he “won’t forgive” the Garveys for not coming to terms with her after her disappearance, it’s hard to blame him.

So if I was hard on him this season, it was mostly because I desperately wanted him to change his own fate. It’s really great to see the light in his eyes fly back as Becka and Bibi beg for his help – which he’s happy to give when he realizes he can give Grace some long-overdue justice. His hint that he recognized the imposter formerly known as “Ian” from the race track sends them all on a field trip back to the site of Grace’s bachelorette, one of the last great memories of their sister they will ever have .

Fuck the fourth It’s not mine, but I’m still extremely depressed about it: Eva opened her heart to a fraudster.

The Cormac variant just sucks So Hard for Eva, who always wants to do the right thing by her sisters. She will now condemn herself for the rest of her life for following one of the few semi-selfish instincts she may have ever had. As the eldest daughter who sometimes barely manages to keep herself together, I feel so sorry for her to realize the extent of the damage she has caused by trusting this deeply unworthy man.

Horgan, who co-wrote “How to Pick a Prick” with Perrie Balthazar, is gearing up for a big acting job as Eva melts all over the place. She has a panic attack in the bank; she breaks into her emergency supply of lukewarm wine with angry defiance; She stumbles around the tracks, dodging her own distorted visions of the man she thought she knew. Eventually, she ignores her sisters’ advice to wait until they can all face the idiot together (her favorite extracurricular activity) and heads north alone.

Eva’s loss of control immediately distorts the Garveys’ typical dynamic. Although Ursula is technically the eldest after Grace’s death, it is Bibi who tries to bring order. “Leave the lady’s gas,” she tries to joke, gently steering her big sister away from the crappy wine. “The last thing you need is to fuel your anger.” But Eva doesn’t want to hear that yet. “That’s exactly what I have to do,” she says, slightly frightening in her desperation. Lest we all forget, this season began with a flash-forward of the sisters trying to dispose of… something… from their trunk, so uh, that can’t mean anything good!

Finally, I want to give Becka’s B-plot more space than she usually gets in these recaps – because as it turns out, I have to admit that:

Fuckup the Fifth: Becka is Team Becka-Joe, and we all have to respect it, fine.
Becka’s pregnancy seemed, by and large, less urgent than the blackmail, violence, and extortion that underlay the rest of the season. However, her decision to keep the baby and embrace a different life is a significant development.

So unfortunately we have to say goodbye to dear Daryl McCormack/Matt Claffin and acknowledge that even though Joe isn’t the brightest star, he still pulled it off when it mattered most. Even though he gives Becka plenty of reason to ask for a favor at this point, it’s Joe’s tip that “Ian” is a gambler that puts her on the right track.

While I will miss the chemistry between McCormack and Eve Hewson, it’s hard to deny the bittersweet conclusion they reach at the end of the episode. Their romance will always represent a particularly chaotic time in their lives that they both need to let go of in order to move forward. As for Becka and Joe…well, I see a lot of bar fights in their future, but hopefully a lot of loving fun too. As Joe says, “they just breathe equally well.” Air. That’s actually worth something.”

As final as Becka and Matt’s farewell scene may feel, only the season finale will reveal whether leaving the past behind is a real possibility. Knowing the Garveys, there is always a twist in the road that could bring them all back to where they started – or they could fall off a cliff into darkness.

• Sorry, Loftus, but your sad retirement is a big topic this week. He’s definitely having a breakdown since his daughter moves to Australia and gets caught by Houlihan, but now the stage is set for him to rise from his own puddle of self-pitying drunkenness (RIP Loftula) and help Houlihan save the day. I hope he does!

• If not, Houlihan is also willing to do the unthinkable: follow his advice. “Sometimes the only way to do something good is to do something bad” may be a dubious wisdom, but for someone who followed the book so closely, she abandoned the kind of empathy she expected from the authorities, for example for her own traumatized family members… well, those words might resonate at just the right time.

• Joe’s genuine disgust for Matt’s music made for one of the funniest runners of the entire season, thanks to Peter Claffey. It wasn’t the band The bad (…or am I just blinded by Matt’s eyes?).

• “He always kept an eye on the horses. (Looks at Bibi) Excuse me.”

• Quick note about the program: The season finale will not take place next Wednesday as usual, but instead on Monday, December 23rd, presumably to keep the actual holiday free from the dark shit that awaits the evil sisters on that seaside cliff . See you then!