It takes a real group effort to crack Joyce Tercek, but it leads to Paula’s biggest break in the case.
Photo: Apple TV
Avengers, assemble! The gang is back together, y’all. Did anyone else cheer at their TV screen when a distressed Paula walked up to her apartment building, only to find Rudy and Geri there offering help and apologies? Just me? Okay.
Things are getting serious for our motley investigative crew. At the top of the episode, Rudy gets attacked while he’s lounging in his apartment. He has a giant bong on his coffee table — I knew I loved you, Rudy — and Jennifer, the scary fixer lady, uses it to incapacitate him so she can locate Dennis’s phone. It’s a miracle that she doesn’t kill him, especially given that she’s not sure what he’s seen on the phone, but let’s be grateful to the TV gods because we all know Rudy is a real one. Jennifer, for her part, is pretty sure that the information on Dennis’s burner phone is completely useless. Joke’s on her! It’s incredibly useful! And, armed with that information, our super-investigators are set to get to the bottom of the Case of Joyce Tercek.
However, before the group reconvenes, Paula takes some time to dig into the files in the flash drive that Ashley dropped at the police station. Paula has some serious skills, locating all of these individuals by using information she gleans from their surroundings and sexy-time conversations with Trevor. She creates an unhinged-looking evidence wall in her apartment, cataloging everything she learns about each of Trevor’s marks. She clarifies something that we kind of already knew — Trevor and Dennis were working together to scam some of his clients — but what we didn’t know is that Dennis would direct Trevor to target specific, vulnerable individuals via DM and then proceed to blackmail them. Once Trevor had the incriminating video, Dennis would show up and demand things. He never wanted money, only gigantic favors.
The favors asked are a mishmash of weird. One food scientist gave up a patent for a special kind of yeast that he had been working on for years. Years, my dude? Just take the L with the kinky video. Seriously. After he leaked the recipe to Dennis, another company — Northeastern Food Group — released the yeast, and now his company is going under. Other targets were asked for mining rights, to rally a union to support a candidate in an election, and for a permit to build a factory over wetlands. It’s all nefarious business dealings, but what company needs all of these things? It’s like the purple row in Connections; it all hangs together, but only if you have very niche knowledge.
It’s curious that all these people are talking so readily to Paula, especially because she’s showing up and shoving their most intimate and, sometimes, shameful moments in their faces. (Trevor commands one dude to “Eat that banana, you chubby monkey.”) Perhaps it’s because she identifies as being similarly harmed by Trevor, and they’re all just dying to share their story with someone who understands, but she gets oodles of information out of four people in what seems like a very short period of time. Meanwhile, a clock starts ticking as Paula’s lawyer, Doug, tells her that Mallory and Karl have asked to push the custody hearing up, and the judge agrees because “there will always be extenuating circumstances.” A murder rap, judge?! That’s not work schedules or illness; it’s a murder charge. Did Mallory slip the judge a rare Magic: The Gathering card as a bribe, too? I wouldn’t put it past her.
Speaking of Mallory, my least favorite evil stepmother, how on earth does everyone at the school know about Paula’s arrest mere days after it happened? The only people who would have known about the arrest directly would have been Mallory and Karl, and I’m not sure elementary-school parents are regularly reading the police blotter. The only answer to this is that Mallory leaked the info to all those PTA bitches, and there’s going to be a special place for her in hell when she inevitably ends up there.
When Paula nervously heads to Hazel’s art show to support her little girl, gourmet cupcakes in hand, Karl and Mallory head her off, telling her that all the parents know, but Hazel doesn’t. If Paula goes in there, Hazel will figure out what’s been going on with her mom. This is a lame argument. If I were Paula, I would have avoided the art show out of fear that the other bougie parents would tar and feather me, but she’s brave to have shown up, and she’s even braver to take a beat and sob in her car while she binge eats the cupcakes she brought. Sweet Steve pops into her car and AirDrops all of the pictures from the art show to her, including Hazel’s portrait of Mallory.
Paula is sad, but she soldiers on, and, as a reward for her fortitude, the universe delivers her Rudy and Geri. The two friends make up in short order once Rudy tells Geri that he was attacked with his bong. On the way to Paula’s, Geri mentions her article, and Rudy kindly steers her away from writing it, telling her that she thinks she’s capable of so much more. Then they hug for a very long time! I’m officially shipping them, you guys. I like Rury better than Gedy for a couple name, but I’m fine with either. To be honest, I’d watch an entire show about these two without hesitation. Apple, are you listening?
Somehow, Rudy emerges as the hero of this episode as he’s instrumental in cracking the Case of Joyce Tercek due to his simmering masculinity issues. His motivation is kind of problematic, and how he threatens Joyce is kind of problematic, but let’s set that aside because he ends up getting a lot of Very Important Information. Joyce, when confronted in a pool where she is conspicuously alone and swimming laps, initially stonewalls Paula, Geri, and Rudy until Rudy has had enough of her shit — and the world’s shit — and jumps into the pool, shoes and all. He screams, “I’m six-five and I’m fucking jacked! Tell us, or I’m going to do something bad. I will be the end of you!” Terrified, Joyce spills the beans on what she knows: Dennis visited her so she would admit a boy named Blake Vanderwalle (again, I must remark upon what a wonderfully douchey name this is) to Yale.
Now, after a bit of research on Paula’s part, it looks like Dennis’s most recent work with the shady, white-collar organization was to get the kid of his boss’s boss — or maybe even boss’s boss’s boss? — into an Ivy League college without merit. This coincidence is quite a boon for Paula. Dennis could have been blackmailing someone for another yeast recipe or some sort of land-rights issue, but he was just on a personal errand for a bigwig named Cecilia Vanderwalle. Never poop where you eat, Cecilia; it’s how you get fact-checking moms coming after you on the golf course.
Instead of going to the cops with this information, Paula decides to scope out the situation for herself. Alone. Without even notifying Paula and Rudy of where she’s going or what she’s doing. Does Paula have a death wish? Or is she just hyperindependent? At any rate, she finds out that there’s a golf tournament for the Souter Group at the Bedford Hills Golf Club that very day at 3 p.m. Coincidentally, Baxter also has a line on the car that Jennifer stole, and it’s headed over the Throgs Neck Bridge, a.k.a. in the direction of Bedford Hills. So it comes to pass that Baxter pulls into the golf-course parking lot only moments after Paula sneaks into the woods, and Jennifer follows with her giant gun.
The atmosphere and tension in this scene are A-plus. The strings on the score flutter and increase in pitch as the three lone trackers enter the woods one by one. Jennifer, the hunter, trains her scope on Paula, her prey, as she obliviously makes her way over a fence. But Baxter isn’t far behind. He pulls his pistol on Jennifer and shouts, “Drop the weapon! Now, or I will fucking shoot you!” The camera cuts up to the trees, a gunshot goes off, and a flock of birds dramatically takes flight. With one episode left before the season finale, it’s highly unlikely that Paula Sanders is dead, but both Baxter and Jennifer are expendable at this point in time. It’s arguable that both of these characters have done Paula dirty throughout the season, so I’m not sure I really care if either of them got shot. That might be cold, but I really only care about the survival of Rudy, Hazel, Paula, and Geri, in that order. Everyone else is expendable.
• Did that gunshot sound like it might have come from a gun with a silencer? I’m no gun expert, but I have watched a ton of TV, and I feel like that gunshot was quieter than usual. Jennifer’s giant gun had a silencer on it. But TV plays by its own set of rules, so I could definitely be wrong.
• I kind of love Steve for Paula. When she says, “See you soon. Maybe like ten to 20, but wait for me?” and he smiles, I knew he was the one for her. They have the same dark sense of humor, and humor is so important in a relationship.