Bad Sisters Recap: Stranger in My House
Sometimes you just have to admit when you’re wrong, and friends: I have been very wrong! The turns this season has taken have humbled me — though I do maintain that some of that’s down to inconsistency on the show’s part, too. Between last week’s nadir and this week’s return to form, it’s never been more obvious how much this season would’ve benefitted from having ten episodes again rather than eight.
Anyway: for this penultimate episode, in which the shit hath hitteth the fan(….eth), let us count the ways in which I, your esteemed recapper, was wrong.
Fuckup the First: “Ian” is, in fact, season two’s Big Bad.
As I wrote earlier, this reveal isn’t the one I was hoping for, even if it seems obvious in retrospect. Even if I did suspect his nefarious nature from the offset, though, the extent to which “Ian” has been playing everyone is jaw-dropping, really — and I still think unbelievable, given the sisters’ longstanding paranoia towards anyone they don’t already trust.
So: Cormac Sweeney isn’t only a “dirty John” con man, but a crooked ex-cop with a gambling problem and a second family. He also has his own domestic violence record, the grim details of which prompts a seething Houlihan to (accurately) call him a “nasty piece of shit.” His pregnant (yikes) wife, who dropped those charges almost certainly under duress, apparently even knows about his side hustle conning vulnerable women, but either has no power to stop him or gave up long ago.
And so Cormac found Angelica’s bereavement group and landed on vulnerable widow Grace as his best target for extortion. Blánaid’s €100,000 inheritance may not have been his ultimate endgame; Grace’s death seems to have considerably complicated his scheme. But when given the opportunity that Eva’s panic made possible, he readily grabbed it. He’s confident he’ll get away with it, especially after dropping off a USB at the police station for Houlihan, whose jaw drops at the damning security camera footage it contains. But when Cormac’s wife has to brush Eva off from his actual doorstep, he takes things even further by picking Blánaid up from school as collateral. When he emerges from inside Eva’s own house with that hard-edged smile, he’s never been more of a threat.
When speaking about the direction of this season, Horgan emphasized wanting to show the actual effects of domestic violence rather than pretend that everyone, especially Grace, would be okay after JP left the picture. It’s absolutely true that abuse’s ripple effects can include bad actors continuing to prey on its bruised victims, and I respect that Bad Sisters’ return tried to untangle this far messier possibility rather than live in the fantasy of last season’s final burst of joy. But it’s absolutely brutal to watch the show recontextualize what looked like an overdue bit of happiness for Grace — as well as Eva, for that matter — as yet another awful trauma. It’s terrible to understand that these prickly, protective women got fucked over by a man as violent as he is careless, again. Grace picked yet another noxious prick — and this time, she couldn’t escape him alive.
It’s all horrific stuff, especially because:
Fuckup the Second: Angelica is innocent(ish — and alive, by the way!).
In the words of my wife Bibi and I: “And I didn’t think it could get worse.”
Not only was Angelica plucked out of the ocean in one piece, but her instinct on Ian being “a snake in the grass” was indeed spot on. I still don’t like or trust her; her instincts are always wildly inappropriate, and I shan’t forgive all the disgusting shit she said about Eva before the boom cut her off. That being said, I’ll admit that Angelica’s due some self-pity after, y’know, almost bleeding out in the middle of the ocean. “Jonah was in the belly of the whale for three months. I was in the ocean for three hours. A miracle,” she intones — typically melodramatic, but fairer than her usual pleas for sympathy.
Since Angelica apparently doesn’t remember what happened on the sailboat besides getting on it, it’s unclear if she’ll hold a dangerous grudge against the Garveys, as we know she’s very capable of doing. For now, it’s notable that she deflects Houlihan’s pointed questions about the sisters by raising her own suspicions about “Ian.” She even stuns Houlihan into uncharacteristic silence by saying he’s been faking his grief altogether. Angelica may be insufferable, but she does seem to care about Blánaid and has treasured Grace’s friendship (whether it was mutual or not), which ultimately puts her on the same side as the sisters — at least for now, anyway.
Also, allying with the Garveys is someone I’ve been quite rude to recently, so let’s acknowledge:
Fuckup the Third: Roger is good and useful, once again.
Roger’s really been through it. As played with palpable pain and longing by Michael Smiley, he’s been one of the show’s most quietly devastating characters all along. He’s been lost and lonely and unsure how to fix any of it without making a fool of himself. He loved Grace and carried her secrets as long as he could without collapsing in on himself. He loves Angelica, and when he tells Ursula he’ll “not forgive” the Garveys for not coming clean once she disappeared, it’s hard to fault him for it.
So, if I’ve been harsh on him this season, it’s mostly because I’m desperate for him to change his own fortunes. It’s genuinely great to watch the light spark back in his eyes as Becka and Bibi plead for his help — which he happily gives once he realizes he could bestow Grace some overdue justice. His tip that he recognized the con artist formerly known as “Ian” from the racetracks 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’ll ever have.
Fuckup the Fourth isn’t mine, but I’m extremely bummed out by it regardless: Eva opened her heart to a scammer.
The Cormac twist just sucks so hard for Eva, who only ever wants to do right by her sisters. She’ll now beat herself up the rest of her life for following one of the only half-selfish instincts she’s maybe ever had. As an eldest daughter who only barely keeps it together sometimes, I feel so hard for her as she realizes the extent of the damage she’s done by putting her trust in this deeply unworthy man.
Horgan, who co-wrote “How to Pick a Prick” with Perrie Balthazar, sets herself up for a doozy of an acting job as Eva melts down all over the place. She has a panic attack in the bank; she breaks into her emergency stash of lukewarm wine with furious defiance; she stumbles around the racetracks, dodging her own warped visions of the man she thought she knew. Finally, she ignores her sisters’ advice to wait until they can all confront the prick together (their favorite extracurricular activity) to drive north, alone.
Eva losing control immediately warps the Garveys’ typical dynamic. Though Ursula is technically the next eldest after Grace’s death, it’s Bibi who tries to impose some kind of order. “Lay off the lady petrol,” she tries to joke, gently steering her big sister away from the shitty 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 need to do,” she says, slightly terrifying in her desperation. Lest we all forget, this season began with a flash forward of the sisters attempting to dispose of … something … from their car trunk, so uh, this can’t be going anywhere good!
Finally, I’ll grant Becka’s B-plot more space than it’s otherwise gotten in these recaps — because, as it turns out, I have to own up to:
Fuckup the Fifth: Becka is Team Becka-Joe, and we all must respect it, fine.
Becka’s pregnancy has seemed less urgent in the grand scheme of all the blackmail and violence and extortion underlying the rest of the season. However, her decision to keep the baby and commit to a different kind of life is a significant development.
As such, we must sadly say good-bye to the lovely Daryl McCormack/Matt Claffin and acknowledge that even if Joe isn’t the brightest bulb, he did eventually come through when it counted. Though he gives Becka plenty of stick for wanting a favor at this point, it’s Joe’s tip about “Ian” being a gambler that gets them on the right racetrack.
So even though I’ll miss McCormack and Eve Hewson’s chemistry, it’s hard to dispute the bittersweet conclusion they reach by episode’s end. Their romance will always represent a particularly chaotic time in their lives that they both need to let go in order to move forward. As for Becka and Joe…well, I see plenty of pub arguments in their future, but hopefully plenty of affectionate fun, too. As Joe says, they’re “just comfortable breathing the same air. That’s actually worth something.”
As final as Becka and Matt’s good-bye scene feels, only the season finale will tell if leaving the past behind is a real possibility. Knowing the Garveys, there’s always some twist in the road ahead that could bring them all right back to where they started — or else careening off some cliff into the dark.
Loose Ends
• Sorry, Loftus, but your sad retirement is bullet-point fodder this week. He’s definitely having a breakdown, between his daughter moving to Australia and getting caught by Houlihan, but the stage is now set for him to rise up out of his own puddle of self-pitying drunkenness (RIP Loftula) and help Houlihan save the day. I hope he does!
• If not, Houlihan’s also primed to do the unthinkable: follow his advice. “Sometimes the only way of making something good is doing something bad” might be dodgy wisdom, but for someone who’s followed the book so hard she’s abandoned the kind of empathy she might’ve liked authorities to show for, say, her own traumatized family members … well, those words might just resonate at exactly the right time.
• Joe’s genuine disgust for Matt’s music has been one of the funniest runners all season, due credit to Peter Claffey. The band wasn’t that bad (….or am I also just blinded by Matt’s eyes?).
• “He always had one eye on the horses. [looks at Bibi] Sorry.”
• Quick programming note: the season finale will not be dropping next Wednesday as per usual, but Monday the 23rd, presumably to keep the actual holidays free of whatever dark shit awaits the bad sisters on that seaside cliff. See you then!