Off-Season Week 8

8/13

And then there were three...

Following Hell on Wheels' conclusion, this roundup is going to be a little lighter. But fear not, because The Night Shift makes its return just in time, OITNB cooks on gas (pun intended) and I come across an interesting predicament in Deadbeat.

DEADBEAT - 3x09 "The Duchess of Stourbridge"

"After leaving Danny Poker's party, Pac is followed home by a naked Duchess who says the royal painting of her is flawed: she only has one chin. Pac and Clyde try to get the painting at auction but when that fails they attempt to steal it - only to run into a second burglar."

Deadbeat's yo-yoing continues, as today it returns to the brilliant form that has characterised most of its third and final season. The frequent and explicit sexual advances of the Duchess made Pac uncomfortable and me laugh, but everything else was laced with just the right amount of laugh-out-loud humour, including the auctioneer's questionable descriptions of buyers ("Sold to the couple who haven't gone down on each other in a decade") and the name of the second burglar, with whom they team up to try and retrieve the Duchess's painting, Hugh Janus.

   But where was Danny Poker? Pac and Clyde spent at least two episodes trying to get a meet with him but when it finally happens it's completely skated over and ignored by the writers? That cannot be right. Oh wait, the episodes have been listed out of their natural order online. OK, so it looks like we've reviewed episode 9, not 8, so we'll have to do some off-kilter backtracking and fastforwarding over the next couple of weeks.

VERDICT: A truly exceptional episode. Frustratingly ordered wrongly online, but that's nothing to do with writing quality. 9.5/10

THE NIGHT SHIFT - 3x09 "Unexpected"

"Paul and Shannon struggle to find an equilibrium after their passionate encounter and the nurses go on strike over pay. Then a bomb goes off in the ER, and the team have to scramble to save everybody and figure out why they were targeted. But it becomes clear that the bomb was just the beginning."

The Night Shift writers are smart. Knowing they probably won't get the 15 seasons their source material show ER got, they've managed to steal from the final episodes of ER's season 8 and the early episodes of season 9 and cook up one big nurse's-strike-and-anthrax plot. They even threw in a bit of the patient-needs-a-transplant arc from ER's fifteenth season. At least they used anthrax rather than monkeypox, though.

   But that's not to say the episode felt like a rehashing, just that it's easy to find parallels in plot. It's the characters who made this episode stand out, especially since after the first twenty minutes had gone by it (and the nurses) petered out, ending with something close to eight minutes of emotive wrap-up scenes that felt about four minutes too long. Shannon and Paul's cute relationship has hit a stumble as they've both agreed to not date because of work (that won't last), which admittedly is an annoying obstacle, Jordan is reminded of the death of her baby when she recognises the bomber, whose motive (revenge for them not saving her husband and son - I think?) I felt was rather weak (this might have worked a little better if it was a character who had featured before that the show had actually made memorable), Kenny goes to bat for a young patient he's been training up (gotta love Kenny) and Topher can be the brilliant big boss and make as many magnificent motivational speeches all he wants, to me he's still always going to be the lovable idiot Leon Tao from Person of Interest. It was a nice moment when the nurses quit their strike in the explosion's aftermath to help, recognising this was more important, but they didn't appear at all afterwards so ... they may as well have carried on.

   And lastly, the cliffhanger of the hospital being bought by an insurance company wanting to sell off the ER ... setting up a series end in case it doesn't get renewed or actual plot they want to carry through in a similar manner to OITNB's prison privatisation arc? Either way, the last third of season 3 is going to be stunning.

VERDICT: Loads to talk about because it was filled with loads of good stuff and has set up a lot more. Seeing anthrax at work rather than as a spoken-about airborne virus gave it more of an urgency, but it did lose its momentum at the end. 8/10

ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK - 4x07 "It Sounded Nicer In My Head"

* "Piper starts to realise her power has corrupted her, and though she takes steps to make amends, a plan of revenge is already in motion. Her new 'bodyguard' turns against her, handing her to Maria and her gang, who burn the Nazi swastika into her arm. Lolly finds a friend in a kindly Healy, and her past as a journalist who turned into a homeless 'crazy woman' is explored. Nicky continues on her self-destructive drug binge."

For once a very short and sweet Wiki description for you! I'll start with the main bit of business: Piper's comeuppance. It's been brewing, and in a Wentworth v OITNB comparison blog that's coming to you soon which I've part-written, I talk about the value of loyalty between a top dog and her bodyguard, and today's episode shows exactly how you don't treat your bodyguard. After all the disrespect, Piper crosses the line by leaving her bodyguard (I literally don't know what the woman's name is) out in the cold, so she gets revenge by shopping Piper to the Latinas. Poetic, just and may I say, Taylor Schilling's acting in this episode was top draw. Seeing Piper get the devil's share (to quote my POI buddy Fusco's phrase to describe when someone gets what's coming to them), in that scene I've been waiting for where the Latinas have her arm over a gas hob, was excellent after all her pretence of being a big bad so far this season.

   Lolly's past was extremely interesting but it didn't really reveal anything about her - like she tells Healy at the end, there wasn't a point in time that she would go back to to change her insanity (except birth), and that conclusion made the flashbacks rather pointless.

   Daya got her customary two lines an episode, I loved Nicky's return (which was honoured well by the writers) and Red got some good airtime. Caputo is becoming further disillusioned by MCC and that will hopefully reach breaking point at the end of the season, and Alex Vause continues to slither in the background in a wholly disappointing misuse of Laura Prepon's acting ability.

VERDICT: Now we're getting somewhere. When OITNB doesn't take its bloody time about things each episode can be a thoroughly gripping ride, but its bloated cast list keeps consigning previously major characters to the sidelines, a fact that is becoming glaringly obvious and frustrating. 7.5/10

Final thoughts

OK, so it's disappointing we saw Deadbeat out of order, but we'll skip back in the canon and watch episode 8 next week. Our next The Night Shift offering is another double header, so look out for that, while OITNB will hopefully kick on from its stunning cliffhanger ending.

Thanks for reading everyone and see you all next time!

Sam