SMG
See, THIS is why I never wear white while eating pasta. A little club soda will NOT get that out.
No. While it would be hilarious if Ringer did an episode based entirely on food-related peril, this is actually an out-of-context shot that they used in the cold open as part of a string designed to tantalize and confuse us. We also see Henry being interrogated about murdering someone, Andrea Roth shoving her tongue down Ioan's throat, and then a sniper shooting at this twin. But because this isn't the season/series finale, we know that whichever twin it is, it's not actually a dead twin.
Poor Twin and FBI ARA and Ioan
We cut to two days prior. I almost wonder if they thought this episode was airing after a rerun week, or something, because this entire first scene is exposition -- with flashbacks -- that rehashes what we learned last week, when people were all in different clothes. I'm not sure why FBI Agent Richard Alpert needed to leave and then come back to have this same conversation, except that maybe he has a firm anti-arm-sling bias and so he needed to wait for Ioan to heal, or perhaps he only takes "Rich Twin" seriously when her lipstick matches her blouse. Anyhoo, the rundown: Bad Man henchman is dead. May have killed Malcolm. May have told Bad Man that he found Bridget. Nobody is safe. Except Malcolm, because everyone has decided he's dead but nobody cares where his body is, and that's code for He's Totally Alive and Lurking Freely Until He Can Save The Day.
Ioan
Ioan, however, has lit the gruffudd fuse. He's burning with anger and accuses FBI ARA of being totally unable to keep anyone safe at all. HE'S ONLY ONE MAN, Ioan. And they keep moving the f'ing island. What is he supposed to do?
FACE OFF
This is how that conversation went. Ioan gruffs his uffuddest ffudd, and FBI ARA harnesses his Eyelash Shield and the two end up repelling each other.
Rich Twin, Henry
Across town, or next door, or on Planet Ineffectual -- wherever -- Henry is frantically trying to reach Gregory Harrison to find out if he looked at the contents of the flash drive. Rich Twin pads downstairs in her standard maternity black, presumably having been reprogramming the boys to call her Mama and downloading a software upgrade wherein she can turn them off and on at will via the Clapper.
Rich Twin
That shirt is seriously patchy and off. Kind of like Rich Twin's evil plots. They blah-blah some more about needing Ioan to be busted... look, at this point, they should just skip town and start over. Henry killed Jamie Martin and Rich Twin killed herself... just recycle the boys at Best Buy and head for Mallorca.
Poor Twin
While Ioan struggles to get investors to stay on board -- they heard Olivia left, and that Ioan was shot -- Poor Twin puts on her most sympathetic blazer and feigns an interest in her big bowl of... Water Soup, or whatever nonsense that is. She also calls the Wyoming police department to ask for Crooked Cop, and finds out that he confessed to the murder of FBI ARA's Sensitive Stripper Babymama, which Poor Twin knows is a lie. She flashes back to this scene in which Crooked Cop convinced her to skip town and not to trust the FBI, and concludes that she trusted the wrong person. YOU DON'T SAY. How can you EVER doubt the eyelashes, Poor Twin? Shakira's hips lie more than they do.
Poor Twin
Another flashback: This is Poor Twin back when she got arrested in Nevada and FBI ARA convinced her to turn informant. Note the smeared eyeliner and the torn murder sweater. After Poor Twin agreed to let FBI ARA protect her, he started by saying, "Wash your face and then just stick with mascara. TRUST ME."
Save The Last Cruel Intentions
STLCI agrees that perhaps Poor Twin was stupid. As an aside, the director of Cruel Intentions also directed tonight's new Ringer, and I will be very upset if these two do not share some scenes, and also, I really need him to put in lots of little visual in-jokes. Like STLCI randomly playing a cello.
FBI ARA
AAAH. It's like we're photographing EACH OTHER. But in fact FBI ARA is stalking the dry cleaner, until he sees a dude forking over the Tarot card and getting a briefcase in return. This makes Eyelashes angry. And then SMASHY.
FBI Agent Richard Gruffudd
The briefcase contained lots and lots of cash. FBI ARA becomes enraged and starts roughing him up for information, and this turns into a full-on blood-spitting fist-flailing assault in which FBI ARA recalls his earlier near-dismantling in the face of the House of Gruffuddor and accios his best imitation of it and then villain goes BOOM. And cameraphones go click.
FBI ARA
It turns out the Dead Henchman from last week hadn't worked for Very Bad Man in a long time, nor contacted him, so FBI ARA's violent crusade was not greatly appreciated by his superiors. When he is asked to pack his knives and go, he tries to recapture the magic, but Gruffuddor House loses a hundred points and he's kicked straight into Hufflepuff.
WTF
I am only sharing this with you because it made me sort of insane. Instead of an establishing shot of where Andrea Roth is staying, we get this weird cut to a time-lapse camera of a hotel lobby, and then a shot from the inside of a glass elevator as it goes up, and then we cut to Andrea opening her door to Juliet. It's so WEIRD. It's not in this show's visual language at all. This isn't guerrilla Ringer. I am trying to imagine what weirdness this is covering. Like maybe they realized they never found an exterior to double for this hotel, or the building decided not to let them do it again, or their equipment exploded and all they had left was a lipstick cam. Maybe next week's episode is shot ENTIRELY like this.
Juliet
This show never gives me a clear enough look at Juliet's clothes. Most of them are cute, though. Like this. I THINK it resembles a red tweed dress over a black blouse, though? Which usually is a weird design choice for me, but I love tweed, and I love red... I just need more information, show. Please fetishize your crazy wardrobe a bit more. Thanks.
Andrea Roth
Even Andrea Roth is like, "I am so fixated on trying to see what you're wearing that I have forgotten to put on anything fur-trimmed." Juliet tells Andrea that Ioan is having money trouble, and he's selling their Palm Springs house, and she'd really like Andrea to use some of their ill-gotten gains to buy it so that it helps Ioan out but keeps the house in the family. Or else she will TELL. If there's one thing Andrea respects, it's blackmail, so she agrees.
Andrea Roth
So Andrea puts on something furry and arranges to meet the dude Juliet told her is sniffing around to buy the house. He is a green energy mogul. She susses out that he wants it because the land has hidden value "for large quantities of energy-rich wind passing through it" -- no, really -- and so she decides to play both sides: buy the land from Andrew for cheap, then sell to this man for big bucks after seducing him into throwing her a massive price bone. As she shakes off her coat to reveal a disappointingly modest red blouse considering she is trying to bang several million dollars out of this man, she actually says, "I find wind turbines VERY SEXY." That should have been the episode title, and also has never been said before in the history of mankind.
Andrea Roth
She then later tries to lick a lowball out of Ioan, but he gruffuddly scoffs -- groffs -- at her $3 mil suggestion. Perhaps if she'd worn a sexier shirt. I mean, not that I advocate that sort of behavior, but come on, Andrea. I believe those merry minstrels of WHAM! said it best: "If you're going to do it, do it right."
HSS
Speaking of doing right, Henry Saint-Sack stalks Gregory Harrison and gets him to admit that he looked at the evidence. And it is damning. Henry begs him to pull out his money, but Gregory acts all shifty and says only, "I'll do what's best," and -- let's skip ahead -- he ends up tipping off the cops that Henry might've had something to do with Jamie Martin's murder, so they haul him in for questioning because they found surveillance footage of him at the hotel. Henry's sack is swollen with impotence, which sounds like an oxymoron, but it's not, if you know him as we do.
Poor Twin
Meanwhile, Poor Twin meets FBI ARA at a bar. She's been wearing this outfit all day, and it was just as wrinkled during breakfast as it is here. It looks like a Mos Eisley clarinet player's forehead.
Poor Twin
FBI ARA sadly tells her he was fired, or suspended, or whatever, for his obsession with this case. Poor Twin flashes back to being a stripper, when the drugs made her wear shirts with those beads that fortune tellers use as curtains and caused her to dye her hair with various flavors of Kool-Aid. Man. Drugs are rough, y'all.
Poor Twin
She also remembers when she was the only stripper in the history of the universe to wear flannel at work -- a momentous thing that coincidentally happened on the same day that Ill-Fated Babymama told her something cryptic that Poor Twin now realizes means that FBI ARA was her boyfriend. They commiserate over the fact that, between a dead stripper and a blown case and Poor Twin's inability to replicate the Farrah volume that she had when she was smoking crack, everything sucks now.
Rich Twin
Meanwhile GUESS WHO'S WATCHING?
Rich Twin/Poor Twin
And guess who pops in later that night to scare the Twin off her sister?
Rich Twin
And GUESS WHO SHOOTS HER IN THE FACE while wearing a really good coat!
The answer: Nobody. Rich Twin was just having a murder fantasy, as you do.
However, so was FBI ARA: He hatches a new plan with "Rich Twin" to kill Poor Twin. Kill her dead. Stage her death so that Very Bad Man believes it, and then everybody wins. Poor Twin, who after all has already framed herself for Gemma's murder, is totally fine with this idea. What could possibly go wrong, right? These things never backfire. It's as safe as eating at the same restaurant -- or sharing DNA, or shaking HANDS -- with Jessica Fletcher.
Andrea Roth
The next day, Andrea confirms with her people that she wired the entire $10 million to Ioan for the Palm Springs house, confidently noting that she'll make more than that when she flips it to the Sex Turbine. Her suit looks like how I imagine a wind turbine feels. Emotionally, I mean.
But WHAT HO: Shenanigans! Sex Turbine and Ioan were in cahoots all along, and Ioan is there with him, waiting to throw egg in Andrea's face and then wrap it up in her suit in the shape of a swan and stick it in the fridge for later.
Juliet
We flash back AGAIN AGAIN, this time to a full WEEK later, when Juliet ended up confessing while wearing a shirt as dirty as her deed. Honey, if you're going to tell your father that you faked an attempted rape just to extort him, you'd best look more innocent than that. She should've just worn a snap-crotch onesie, a diaper, and a bonnet.
Ioan
The best part, though, is that before she even gets half of her first sentence out, she gets a preemptive gruffudd. Now, normally I would warn against premature gruffuddulation, but in this case he was correct. He vows to ground her into obscurity.
The Four Faces Of Merry Ioan
Ioan gruffs his chops as he dduffurgly crows that what bonded him and Juliet together after all this was their loathing of Andrea, and how much they hope she will suck it for eternity (paraphrasing). You think, for a second, that the chilly dduffurging might actually be scarier than a full-on gruffudd.
Ioan
AND THEN. You are wrong.
Andrea Roth
Andrea has the gall to act hurt and call him a bastard, and Ioan sails on out of there with her $10 million back in his wallet and leaving her with a property she can't sell for even a fraction of that. However: a fraction of $10 million still might have the word "million" in it, and therefore I don't feel too bad for her. Also, she's evil. But watchably so, and with great hair. More please.
Poor Twin, FBI ARA
Back in Doomedville, Poor Twin throws on her best Poor Twin sweater -- FBI ARA is all, "Woe, what bad clothes, you must not be used to THOSE," as if he hasn't seen any of the nonsense she's worn lo these many months -- and grabs a pack of fake blood so they can stage a murder. In an empty warehouse. ANOTHER one. And since good things always happen to her in empty warehouses, this will surely be another plan flawlessly executed.
Ninja
BOOM. An actual shooter blazes in and opens fire. Poor Twin goes down and FBI ARA runs to hide behind something, theoretically so he can get a jump on the guy, but possibly also because he doesn't care that much.
Poor Twin
In the end, though, as we get to the shot we saw earlier of Poor Twin lying down blood-stained, she very stupidly blinks right as the guy is contemplating whether to fire a just-making-sure shot. Fortunately, that's when FBI ARA shoots him. He is so HANDY. And of course it turns out she used the fake blood to try and trick the dude. But somehow thought real blinking would not be a problem. Girl. I understand the need to blink, but before you blink, KICK. YOU'RE IN PANTS. THIS IS NOT HARD.
FBI ARA
The assailant is an older white dude she recognizes from --FLASHBACK -- one of the early episodes. I didn't photograph him, I don't think, but remember when she killed a guy who tried to shoot her, and hid his body in a trunk? But still had his phone? This guy stalked her in ANOTHER EMPTY PLACE and threatened her over the phone and chased her into the street. So she's like, "Um, yeah, this guy tried to kill me a while ago," and FBI ARA is like, "Wait, this had nothing to do with Poor Twin and the Very Bad Man at all? WHAT THE WHAT, FOOL?" And then they make out. Well. Not exactly. But didn't you want them to, just a little?
Instead, the assassin's phone rings. FBI ARA figures it's someone calling to check on whether the job is done. So he answers...
Andrea Roth
... and BOOM AGAIN, it's Andrea on the other line. So SHE was trying to have Rich Twin (and then obviously "Rich Twin") offed. That lady is bubbling with nefarious schemes. She doesn't say anything because she knows the voice is not correct; what I don't remember is if she ever met FBI ARA to know that it's him talking, or if she's just generally thrown off that somebody else has her gunman's cell phone. But she is NOT HAPPY. Putting a hit on someone is so emotionally taxing, y'all.