Sirens Recap: Family Matters
“Does this look like fun to you? Being a Mrs. Somebody?”
Michaela Kell is a bad boss with control issues and terrible boundaries. But as this episode makes clear, she’s also a woman who fell in love with a man and quickly lost herself in his gilded world. It would be so much simpler if she were the nefarious villain Devon assumed. But at this point in Sirens, nobody’s perfect or entirely evil. They all just have broken wings that need fixing.
As dreamy and surreal as “Monster” was, “Persephone” brings things crashing back down to earth. It throws all our main characters together for one final night that’s so chaotic I completely forgot about Michaela’s gala. How can it outdo Peter’s miserable clam chowder and (mountains of) bread dinner party? I guess we’ll find out.
Until then, let’s unpack the aftermath of Ethan’s proposal, which is a disaster. Simone’s rightly furious he thought bringing her dad, Bruce, here would be romantic. As she points out several times in this episode, she explicitly told him they don’t speak for what are obviously painful reasons. Ethan’s flabbergasted that anyone, let alone a poor girl from Buffalo, would turn down New England’s (thrice!) most eligible bachelor.
Making matters worse and weirder, Michaela walks into this bizarre scene — looking gorgeous in a shade of emerald green Julianne Moore should have on retainer — and is met by an awestruck Bruce. “We’ve known each other a very, very, very long time,” he insists, gazing at her reverently. It’s an unsettling moment Michaela handles well — especially when it becomes clear that Bruce thinks that she’s his long-dead wife and that they should, and I quote, “FUCK.” The vibe simply could not be worse or weirder for a marriage proposal. Simone gets the hell out of there.
By the time she runs into the Cliff House kitchen and straight into Peter, I don’t blame her for almost forgetting why he’s trying to apologize. It has been only a couple of hours since he tried to kiss her, but so much has happened since then it really does seem like the smallest of potatoes, relatively speaking. Simone finally just assures him she won’t tell Michaela. “I have as much to lose as you do, so it’ll be our secret,” she says. Famous last words.
As rude as it was for Michaela to say Devon’s “in last place” when it comes to people Simone wants to see (and probably untrue given Bruce’s unwelcome presence), Simone really does need some advice from Kiki. As we saw in the episode’s opening flashback scene, Michaela told Simone at her job interview that she was once just a girl from Fresno who worked her ass off for the same law-school scholarship Simone eventually got. Michaela wasn’t born into this cashmere lap of luxury at all. But she knows what it means to marry a man who was — and what it would mean for Simone to do the same.
Michaela doesn’t outright tell her not to marry Ethan, but it’s clear what she really thinks. “When you’re a Mrs. Somebody, your life gets huge. But you get very tiny,” she admits. Also, with no financial freedom of her own, her “whole life hinges on his approval.” With that, Michaela makes a far more tempting proposal to Simone: the opportunity to chair her conservation foundation in New York City for triple her current salary. It’s almost as if Michaela’s offering an escape hatch that she — a Persephone whose temptation trapped her in a sinister world — can’t use herself.
Simone, as thrilled by this as she was horrified by Ethan, accepts. But first, Michaela asks, hilariously, “Can we just do 30 seconds of admin before you dump him?” She still wants to prove Peter’s infidelity, which she’s sure she can do if she can just break into his electronic devices. But Simone suggests his personal phone since it’s usually unlocked. Handy! When Michaela eventually finds it tucked behind even more piles of bread, she dials the unsaved number in Peter’s recent calls — which, of course, is his son’s.
Meanwhile, Simone’s emotionally taxing evening shows no signs of letting up. Although she’s firm while breaking with Ethan, he throws a prissy little tantrum (Glenn Howerton’s specialty) about not recognizing this version of her. “You’re like, dark,” he sputters. “It’s making me uncomfortable.” Simone’s not swayed. She explains that the last time she saw Bruce was at court when he lost custody of her due to negligence and abuse, which is finally terrible enough for Ethan to accept she has a point.
With this context in mind, Simone’s subsequent convo with Devon flips the first episode’s dynamic on its head. This time, when Simone calmly says she never wants to see their father again, it’s impossible to blame her. Well, at least for me; Devon’s agog. “You don’t feel any responsibility for him?” she asks. Simone scoffs: “He didn’t feel any responsibility for me as a kid.” What’s more, she says, his negligence not only led to her growing up in foster care but to her own suicide attempt. “He’s the reason [Mom] killed herself. He’s the reason I tried to kill myself. He’s the reason you’ll kill yourself,” she continues to Devon’s blinking shock because, in fairness, woof.
This is the third scene in as many episodes of the sisters coming to terms with their past, but it’s undeniably effective. Neither should have had to deal with any of it, but they did and the ways they had to cope may haunt them forever. Still, Simone has apparently done some work toward bettering her mental health. When Devon brings up her untouched Klonopin, for example, Simone says she and her long-term psychiatrist worked on a gradual plan to reduce her medication intake. Oh! Like Michaela, it would be way easier for Devon if her immediate impression of Simone as a brainwashed damsel in distress were the truth, but reality is rarely so black-and-white. With everything finally out on the table, everything contains far more shades of gray than either of them realized.
Reeling, Devon takes off to the beach to be alone. Almost immediately, she’s trailed by Captain Morgan, Married Raymond, and, to all their annoyance, That Random Gardener she boned in the morning. (Not to be crass, but Devon must be really good in bed.) Josh Segarra’s a little too good at playing dopey men with hearts of gold because I found myself sympathizing with Raymond maybe a little too much here. He clearly cares about Devon; he also doesn’t seem to understand how many unhealthy choices he encourages, from their sporadic hookups to the blackout binge drinking that landed her in jail. But when she takes out her frustration on him to the point of saying if he “walked into the ocean right now and drowned, I’d be better off,” I winced right along with him.
Inside, Michaela’s doing her best to keep Bruce calm after he emerges from Peter’s sad-man crow’s nest high as a kite and paranoid as hell. Even Simone tries to help when she stumbles upon the concerning scene, but her father has forgotten who she is, claiming Simone is “dead.” To keep him from spiraling further, Michaela plays along with his fantasy that she’s his wife, letting him wax poetic about their tumultuous relationship. She even shares a painful memory of her own about trying and failing to have children. Peter, looking on, suddenly seems to remember his wife just may be a human being.
When Bruce eventually wears himself out and goes to sleep, Peter and Michaela get to have their first frank conversation in what seems like a very long time. Peter comes clean about going to his grandson’s christening; Michaela insists she wants him to have a relationship with her kids even if they might hate her. They say they love each other. It seems good, or at least more real.
It’s too bad the night ends with that Vanity Fair photographer showing up with a sneaky pic of Peter and Simone kissing! Even though the episode closes with a trashed Ethan fully tumbling over Chekhov’s cliff, Michaela getting that photo feels like the most crushing blow for her and Simone both.
Bread crumbs
• Props to the hair, makeup, and costuming departments for differentiating Kiki’s Simone from pre-Michaela Simone, who showed up to the island with a scraggly ponytail, a gray button-down, uneven skin, and scrawled tattoos. (Props also to Milly Alcock, who expertly modulates her performance throughout this episode.)
• Once again, I am begging for the Cliff House staff to turn the sound off your phones. Your bosses can’t ask you what your texts say if they don’t know you got a text!
• Best Raymond line/Josh Segarra delivery is tied between his irritation at being mistaken for Bruce’s caretaker (“I’m a manager at a Falafel Balls with a 4.6 on Yelp, thank you very much”) and his reaction to a Buffalo Bills quarterback attending the gala (“Work’s canceled, I’ll just burn the restaurant down”).