"And for the record, I don't have to do anything. I don't even know you." —Gemma
Take a good look at that "new" cast photo, ladies and gents. It was recently released by The CW's Twitter profile late last week, but if you study closely, you may find a clue.
Here's a hint: what exactly is
lacking from that picture? Who has been in every episode thus far and still isn't in the cast photo? Hm… Gemma!
Okay, to be fair, Tara Summers (the actress who plays Gemma) hasn't been in all of the promotional cast photos and I'm most definitely reaching here. And I will not discuss whether or not she has appeared in episode promo photos for future episodes or if she's listed to be on future episodes on IMDb or something (though you can easily look those up yourself and I would be remissed if I didn't mention that
being in an episode doesn't mean it's present time and IMDb isn't the be-all and end-all of correct information). Any discussion like that is spoiler-y. And
unlike Psychological Science, I fully believe spoilers, y'know,
spoil shows. (And no, the irony that I'm reposting this review on a site called SpoilerTV is not lost on me.)
Instead, I want to discuss speculation of Gemma's death. In my last review, I mentioned that
Ringer wasn't going to give us a ton of red herrings and it wouldn't
The Killing[*] us into watching something that went nowhere. I strongly believe that. And the show could prove me right indefinitely with what it plans to do with Henry and Gemma here. Of course, the presumption is that Henry killed Gemma.
*For those that didn't watch The Killing
: it's a murder whodunit that SPOILER ALERT (here we go again with the spoilers) took the entire season to finally solve the mystery and then in the last 30 seconds completely removed the rug from under its audience and decided that the murderer they presented to us wasn't actually the murderer and someone we thought was "good" actually framed the one who took the blame in its season finale.
And if the show decided to do that, we could be headed down towards a very dark spiraled story here. And I'd be okay with that, actually. Heck, I would love that. I gasped at that ending and was practically giddy the entire episode! But I don't believe that is the case. I just don't believe that they would let their biggest secret out of the bag one week and kill off a series regular (albeit, who isn't in the cast photos nor in the title cards) the next week. But what are their options here? What else could be splattered on the walls? Wine that she threw at Henry when they were having an argument of some kind?
How lame would that be? Very.
The
Ringer exec producers
called it blood specifically in a somewhat post-mortem interview with The Hollywood Reporter. Then again, they could just be calling it that because that's what it's supposed to be perceived as. I just don't know what options they have here. Could Gemma have faked her own death? (If you saw the promo, there's a line in it that would justify why Gemma could actually pull it off and make Henry believe she died.) If so, I'd be asking, "Who's next to jump on that bandwagon?" And what motive would she have to do that?
Obviously, this was quite an amazing cliffhanger because I'm asking about a million and two questions. (But I can't stress enough that the way they choose to handle this will be monumental in my liking of this show moving forward. Make it something with enough gravitas to have been used as a cliffhanger. Otherwise… well, I don't know…)
The cliffhanger included, this was a very entertaining episode. I had some gripes, as usual. Namely, why would Andrew ever marry someone he thinks doesn't care about his daughter? When Siobhan-Bridget is giving him advice about Juliet, he asks something to the effect of "Why do you even care?" I don't have kids, and I'm nowhere close to that, but I would imagine a future spouse would have to be caring and considerate of my child to even be considered as my wife. I don't exactly like the cliché stepmom the daughter hates storyline despite this issue. But I think Andrew is more caring than this of his daughter, regardless of Juliet's retcon in this episode. (They did explain why she wasn't exactly forgiving, however, by making her think Siobhan was "a whole new kind of bitch.")
Though, I did love the twist of Juliet saying, "She sleeps with married men" giving Siobhan-Bridget (we need a new name for Bridget playing Siobhan; the exec producers call her "Siobette," what do you guys suggest?) and Andrew that tense scene where he says she told him. And don't even get me started on how much I loved Gemma calling the shots. So much so, I was a little disappointed that she caved after Bridget gave that tiny speech. Though as a person who cares a bit for development, it was a bit weird to have Gemma be this ruthless so it was nice to have her be grounded again… but only in that sense. Entertainment-wise, it was a little anticlimactic, of course.
I kind of hoped that the writers would leave Gemma with this, well, gem of a secret and play the card for some time. But as last week, and maybe even this week, proved, this show isn't trying to hold on to all of its cards forever.
My second problem is Bodaway Macawi. This guy obviously isn't someone to be feared. How hasn't he figured out where Bridget is? She's calling Malcolm. And she's not even using the non-trackable phone! Come on.
But that's neither here nor there because I'm already anxious for the next episode! Is it Tuesday yet!? I can't wait for another 42 minutes of
Ringer! And no matter how much speculation (and complaining) I do about a possible Gemma death, I want to know what happened already!
—
Read more of my
Ringer reviews:
Episode 1.01 Pilot
Episode 1.02 "She's Ruining Everything"
Episode 1.03 "If You Ever Want a French Lesson"
Episode 1.04 "It's Gonna Kill Me, But I'll Do It"
Also, people say they find my photo recaps funny. I'm thinking of maybe doing one for Ringer, but I don't know if I should mix shows I review and recap. I think they should be mutually exclusive.
