No Good Deed Finale Recap: Cracking the Case
You’d think discovering that you might have had this awful thing that’s haunted your family for three years all wrong might bring people together, but not Paul and Lydia Morgan. Perhaps too much damage has already been done. Words can’t be unsaid, you know? At the top of No Good Deed’s finale, “Sold,” the grieving couple is both reeling from the revelation that there was a second bullet casing at the scene of Jacob’s death and it is definitely not from their gun and still taking swipes at each other after their blowout fight.
Lydia thinks they should open up Jacob’s autopsy. Maybe an answer about the bullet discrepancy is in there, just waiting to be found. Paul thinks it’s a terrible idea — what if they open it up and they all end up going to prison? He is so scared of losing the rest of his family. That’s always been his way of operating, right? Cover up the mess and move on to keep everyone safe. Lydia now sees that this is all really a way for him to pretend that night never happened. It’s like he’s erasing their son so that he doesn’t have to feel the pain. “No, I just don’t want to relive the worst night of my life every fucking day like you do,” he spits at her. But she doesn’t want to let that awful night replace all of the good memories they’ve had. She can’t live that way, and so she can’t live with him. When Paul tells her not to leave, there is this brief moment where you can see Lydia is so hoping that he’s going to tell her to stay because he loves her — but he can’t say it. Instead, he heads over to Mikey’s place.
Who would’ve thought the guy shoving people’s fingers into buzzsaws would actually be the voice of reason on this show? It’s kind of nice that he gets a fairly happy ending, considering … everything. The next morning, when he finds Paul asleep on his mattress, we learn that he had a nice time with Nate and even got to meet his fiancée and he could really turn things around. He’s doing so well, I guess, that he’s the one who tells Paul to get his shit together and go fight for his wife. The brothers, in their own “men who were raised to repress their feelings” way, even make up as best they can: Mikey’s still upset Paul never came to visit him in prison, and Paul finally explains that it wasn’t because he hates him or is embarrassed by him — he couldn’t face him after that night. He couldn’t be reminded of it all. (So like Paul, right?) And, he adds, he didn’t call Mikey to come help that night because he’s a criminal and he would know what to do; he called him because he’s his brother and he needed him. Brothers! Even their little “go fuck yourself,” “you too” way of saying “I love you” on Paul’s way out is so sweet. Paul seems to realize that he’s been really shitty to the people he cares about most, so hopefully this apology tour will remain a very positive experience for the guy.
Meanwhile, Lydia decides to go through with getting the autopsy unsealed. She learns, however, that her lawyer picked up the documents the day before. This comes as a huge surprise, since Lydia doesn’t have a lawyer. Once she learns it was Leslie who got the report, she marches over to her house for an explanation. Leslie admits that her compulsion to know the truth of a situation maybe got away from her this time, but she really thought getting Lydia and Paul some answers would help. And she has gotten answers: She tells Lydia about Jacob dying from a gunshot wound that definitely came from a .40 caliber gun. When Lydia shakily holds up her own gun, Leslie confirms that hers is a 9-mm. — that was not the gun that killed Jacob. Lydia sobs in relief.
Back at the Morgan house, Emily has finally been able to step back inside those walls just in time to pack some of her things up before the house is sold. The doorbell rings and she finds Margo standing there, practically pushing Harper inside. As you may recall, Margo had kidnapped her stepdaughter to threaten JD. When he calls her to find out where his daughter is, he tells her that she better get home before he does to her what he did to her brother Bobby (which we come to find out is all a bluff; he saved Bobby’s ass from drowning, he never hurt him). You can see Margo already trying to lay her little bread crumbs for her con, telling both Harper and then Emily about JD’s temper and how he’s off his meds and acting crazy.
Margo is resourceful! When she dumps Harper with Emily and returns home to JD, he tells her he’s done, that he cannot take any more of her lies, and that the joke’s on her because their prenup is worth nothing now that he’s broke. She demands he give her the house in exchange for Harper’s whereabouts. When he refuses, she starts punching herself in the face to make it look like he hurt her — and her brother Bobby is there to corroborate her story. Oh, she’s going to get everything she ever wanted, all right.
Lydia returns home and tells Emily and Paul about the gun — now they know for sure that Emily wasn’t the one who killed Jacob. It is a relief, to say the absolute least. Maybe now these people can start living their lives again. First, of course, they want to figure out what really happened that night. Just as they’re theorizing that JD must’ve killed Jacob — it was his gun, he has a temper, and Jacob stole from them — the guy shows up at the door to get his daughter. Obviously, Paul and Lydia want to have a chat, so Emily offers to get Harper out of the room. She tells her that they could go play Jacob’s keyboard if she wants. But why would she want to do that? She doesn’t know how to play. The Morgans are confused: Harper was getting piano lessons from Jacob for a year. But Harper tells them they’ve got it wrong. She had one lesson with Jacob, and then he just started coming over to hang out with Margo.
Just when you think Margo couldn’t get any more depraved! She had some kind of affair with this teenage kid. Lydia takes it upon herself to find Margo — she does know the security code, after all — and, wow, isn’t it nice to watch someone finally get to this woman who, up until this point, seemed like she was made of Teflon. You can see Margo cycling through all of her old tricks. She tells her it was nothing; he had a crush and brought her little trinkets and jewelry, and she let him. When the innocent act doesn’t work, she tells Lydia that she felt bad for Jacob, who had a troubled relationship with his dad, but that only pisses Lydia off more. Then, she blames her: Lydia didn’t even know that her own son was robbing people’s homes. Finally, she makes it look like JD did it and that he had every right to protect his home. When Lydia sees Margo reaching for that .40 caliber in her purse, she pulls out her own gun, but it’s her words that do the most damage: “You might be able to put on a pretty face, but I can see the real you. You’re just a fucking pathetic nobody with a dark soul. And bad fucking taste! It’s like a fucking Vegas brothel in here!” she yells at her as she leaves. For the first time, you can see the real Margo; the mask is gone. No one has ever read her for absolute filth like that.
Back at the Morgans’, Paul is upset to learn that Lydia would’ve confronted someone so dangerous. But she blows by him — she doesn’t need him to protect her, and she is calling her lawyer. Paul takes this to mean she is finally going to divorce him, but we all know that she means she’s going to tell Leslie that she got the murder weapon. Still, a despondent Paul winds up in his son’s room talking to that light. He wants his son to know he’s sorry, that he really loved him, and that if he has any pull with Lydia, he could let her know that he really loves her, too. Lydia is standing at the door. All she wanted to hear was that Paul still loved her. “All I know is that wherever you go, I wanna go,” he says to her, and if that isn’t one of the loveliest things you can say to a person, I don’t know what is.
A few other lovely things happen, too: Mikey wants to thank Lydia for helping him get sober, and so he gets her grandmother’s piano back. And, since Dennis and Carla pulled out of the house once they heard about all the murder going on there, Lydia decides to call up Leslie and Sarah and accept their bid.
And while this isn’t exactly lovely, it is justice: Reeling from the truth of Lydia’s words, Margo stews in the bathtub and remembers what actually happened that night. She found Jacob stealing her jewelry, telling her that now that she had forbidden him from coming over, he was taking back all the gifts he’d given her. She argues with him, but he threatens to tell JD about them (yup, they were definitely sleeping together). She freaks out, realizing this kid could blow up her whole life. She chases him down the street and just as he is shoving his way inside his house, she pulls out her gun and shoots him right before Emily fires her gun inside. When Margo comes out of that memory, the bathroom is full of smoke. Her entire house is engulfed in flames, and JD is driving off into the proverbial sunset, free of her at last.
But we don’t end on such a sour note; No Good Deed has revealed itself to have some real heart, hasn’t it? Six months later, Sarah and Leslie have moved into the house, and their future son’s nursery is going to be in Jacob’s room. (And, yes, they are going to take care of the Mandarin tree.) JD finally got that gig in the Yellowstone universe on a show called Teton Territory. Margo’s alive, but half of her face is covered in severe burns, and while she’s still trying to run cons, the next guy she tries to pick up ends up being Nate, who is there to arrest her.
We find the Morgans at another one of Emily’s shows. This time, she’s singing a song she wrote using Jacob’s music, and Lydia is joining her onstage. Paul watches them perform from a table in the bar and, suddenly, the light at his table flickers. “Hi,” he says, echoing Lydia the first time she noticed the flicker. Jacob’s there, too.
Closing Costs
• I wish No Good Deed had done a better job tying Dennis and Carla’s story into the main plot, although if this show gets a season two, I’d guess it might put them in the spotlight. By the end, they wind up buying JD and Margo’s burned-down house and building the dream house Carla designed for them (which means both they and Leslie and Sarah will be neighbors). Carla confesses that her father is actually a billionaire, but she doesn’t want to take handouts from him … which might be a problem because Dennis secretly takes $5 million from the guy and lies about it being a book advance. Carla’s dad is demanding to see his grandson in return for the gift, and he doesn’t seem like a guy who will relent.