Coleman you dirty rat fink! Okay, though many things
happened in “Fugitive”, Coleman being a dirty rat fink is what’s left at the
bottom of the pot when everything else boils away. That and Rachel’s mom being
an ABSOLUTE VILLAIN. But onto that later.
“Fugitive” pretty actively redefines everyone’s jobs: Quinn
is firmly back in charge after Romeo and Darius’ disastrous run-in with the cops, Jay is
her Number Two when he manages to bring Darius back into fold, Coleman is all
but fired, left to run out his contract with no actual job to do, and Rachel is
out of commission, locked away in a psych ward somewhere under her mother’s
total control. With nothing better to do (and because he “loves” her?), Coleman
finds Rachel and rescues her from her mother’s creepy psych prison- was that
her home? A chilling thought. Of course, he only does so after forming a vague
alliance with Yael, who reveals herself to being an investigative journalist
covering Mary’s murder and its cover-up last season (well, manslaughter, I
think).
I’m actually pretty impressed with Yael after this. She is
super “snobby”, to quote Madison, and not particularly likeable, but the girl
came in with a mission and she’s committed. Of course, I’ll never get past her
hooking up with the likes of Jeremy, for ethical reasons, sure, but mostly
because he is an awful source regardless. He’d be spewing hateful crap no
matter what, which is questionable material to form a piece of journalism
around. That being said, I’m happy to fully understand Yael’s motives now and
wish it had come earlier in the season.
She gets Coleman on board pretty easily, and I see how their
views align, but the way he goes about using Rachel is despicable. Trying to
coax a confession out of someone who is coming off a trauma and heavily medicated
is beyond shady, but when it’s your girlfriend? I love that Rachel caught right
on to the fact that she was being filmed, and I think she had been feeling
guilty for so long that it was easy for her to just let it out.
Afterwards, when her mother shows up on set once again, I
found it incredibly maddening the way the two talked in circles around their “big
secret”. Rachel’s mental health has been a fairly constant part of show and
that has built suspense around her past far better than her mother showing up
and basically twirling her bad-guy mustache at everyone until Rachel finally
confesses what we already knew: her mom is evil. Rachel’s mother covering up
her own daughter’s rape is vile, and controlling her treatment after is truly
villainous, but the build-up to its disclosure could have used some subtlety.
On the set, Darius is MIA and everyone is constructing a
filler episode with the remaining contestants while Jay tracks him down. Darius
is absolutely justified in leaving the show at this point, and I’m sure he
feels guilty for not having left earlier, but he is also running out of career
prospects fast. His conversation with Ruby was beautiful. He tracks her down, confessing
he regrets letting her go for the sake of his image and that he wants to be
with her now, but Ruby has an excellent bullshit-o-meter and calls him out with
zero mercy. “You told the world I’m not a love story,” she says, for nearly every
black woman on television ever, and she walks away proud. Again, I wish that
story had been told all season and not in one five-minute scene, but it was
still great to watch.
Off that punch to the gut, Jay levels with Darius, laying
out his options going forward. Football is out, so his tentative celebrity is
all that remains. Jay sets Tiffany up as Darius’ best future- if the “Everlasting”
itself isn’t enough to save him, marrying the daughter of a pro-football magnate
might do it. Darius follows Jay back to set, but he is very much over
EVERYTHING about the show and he lets everyone know it. The last scene where he
saves Tiffany, ruins snooty Chantal’s idiotic dream date, and unceremonious
dumps Jameson was maybe a little harsh, but it did not lack for energy. There
were too many twists and emotional dumps in “Fugitive” to call it a good
episode, but it did finally find some momentum at the end. Hopefully UnREAL can
find a way to better focus its energy for the remainder of the season.
In “Espionage”, Coleman and Yael are officially in cahoots.
He tries to bring Rachel on board, not trusting her with the truth about Yael,
of course, but hoping he can turn her against Quinn and “Everlasting”. Rachel
is toeing the line at this point; the show is obviously toxic, and her
relationship with Quinn is fractured, but it has also become something of a
home to her. Plus, we’ve all seen how proud Rachel is of doing her job well,
and that’s only magnified when earning hard-won approval from Quinn. Amid this professional
conflict is Yael’s shameless seduction of Coleman, which Madison picks up on
right away. She rubs it in Rachel’s face and it plants a seed: Can Rachel trust
Coleman?
In a word, no, but the audience knows more of this than
Rachel does. Before that seed can sprout, however, Rachel first focuses on
making Yael’s life miserable. She’s an easy target, the last contestant left
who isn’t a wifey, and she’s also tremendously unlikeable on the show. The way
Rachel sets her up, though, is… just so extra. Poisoning a contestant is
horrendous, though it’s a mild poisoning and producers have certainly done
worse, they’ve done worse this season, but the embarrassment that comes with
getting diarrhea in a white dress on camera is a special kind of awful. It’s an
almost poetic punishment for Yael though, the worst imaginable experience for a
woman who takes herself so seriously, reveling in the “Hot Rachel” persona just
to make Regular Rachel suffer, and in that Rachel really succeeds. It’s a
perfect checkmate.
Of course, it’s sort of overkill, since all she really knows
is that Yael flirted with Coleman, but the prospect of getting in good with
Quinn again is another bonus, and it pays off. There’s also a lot of debate
about Chantal: should she bow out and save face, as Tiffany is all but chosen,
or should she go all in and try to snake the whole competition? Her date with
Darius finally illustrates chemistry between them, albeit at the latest
possible moment, but just in time.
Rachel and Quinn drinking margaritas was a “FINALLY” moment
for me, even though I assumed Rachel was setting her up the entire time.
Revealing later that Coleman tapped Rachel’s cell and got the entire
conversation without her permission was just another reason to dislike and distrust
him, which sets up Quinn and Rachel’s reunion even better. The bigger set up,
though, was Quinn’s meltdown after finding out she can’t have kids. I was actually
getting really uncomfortable seeing Quinn so happy all the time, it’s actually
pretty satisfying to see her miserable again. Her abrupt dumping of Booth,
assuming she could now never make him happy, was sharp and brutal, but the
subsequent tantrum was a bit over the top.
It made a certain sense. I can see how, as a self-professed
workaholic, Quinn would just assume she always had the option to live another
life, a better life, whenever one came along, but in that moment Quinn realizes
she no longer has a choice. She assumed her life would get better when the
right person came along. Well that person did, and it won’t. That is powerful
as an idea, but the entire Booth relationship was so rushed, especially the
part about wanting kids, that the meltdown didn’t feel entirely earned and I
had to reach a bit to understand why Quinn was so upset. It’s all there, it’s
just not laid out well.
The final scene between Rachel and Coleman serves to firmly
establish Coleman as an enemy to Rachel, not to mention his hook-up with Yael,
which I very much hope will be found out soon. She confesses everything to
Quinn, and they are brought together by the best possible circumstances for an impending television finale: a common enemy.
Post script:
I don’t really care about the Quinn/Booth baby stuff. It
feels so out of left field.
Was Coleman the first person Rachel told about her rape? I
thought so, but it seemed like Quinn knew why Rachel hates her mom?
What’s worse than Ruby and Yael only getting a decent
narrative in the eight episode of the season is how Romeo’s been handled: he
gets passed around early on without much purpose and kicked off just to isolate
Darius, then brought back only to be SHOT by the COPS and then never seen
again?? What the hell?
Darius' "Bitch, please" to Rachel was such a knife twist... He's not wrong, though.
Thoughts on Tiffany and Chet? Namely, what, like... is that?
That last scene where Quinn tells Rachel she loves her and tries to fire her is everything. So many crying emojis.
