Another entertaining fast paced and quite enjoyable outing of Notorious is behind us. "Friends and Other Strangers" was a strong episode with some interesting developments in the main arc and a really engaging side story. So let's start this review with the newly surfaced information surrounding Sarah Keating's murder case.
The show picked up right off last week's mini-cliffhanger, Alan, Sarah's brother, did an interview with Louise Herrick of Louise Herrick Live. Louise is fabulous in these scenes, the actress is very insightful and even though she has a cold approach you feel the "sincerity" in her words and desire to tell the real story ahead. Alan and the pictures of a beaten Sarah put a really bad light on Oscar and Jake did everything he could to reverse the damage made to his client. He met up with Alan and persuaded him to drop the hunt on Oscar and try to expand the search for his sister's killer. I've got a feeling this isn't the last we saw of Alan and that in a couple of swift moves he can turn into a suspect.
Even though Julia got some major buzz from Alan and the pics, she couldn't let go of the anonymous sender. She was greedy for more but also had a secondary agenda cause of Jake's involvement. I liked that they wrote Ryan into this story and he seems a lot smarter than those pimples would indicate. Ryan, is a solid character and lightens up the sometimes moody and darkish vibe of the show. I was quite shocked that the show chose to reveal the sender this early but not really shocked when they revealed Levi as the sender, as soon as they showed Levi in the previously happened section I knew some dirt on him will surface. The confrontation between Levi and Julia was well written and executed and Julia decided to protect her friend Jake over the big story. Not that I was surprised by it but I appreciated that they reassured us in the strength of their friendship.
On the other side of Notorious, Ella, Jake's paralegal assistant, was on a mission to help Jake and Oscar cover up Oscar's sexting escapades. Things turned interesting when it was revealed that Oscar was catfished and that apparently, Levi was behind it. Besides revealing even more dirt on Levi, this side arc set up some nice Ella & Ryan moments crowned with a kiss to throw off a cop from arresting them. The two have great chemistry and their totally different nature makes their interactions even more enjoyable.
As earlier mentioned the side story was really engaging this week. The story of the Grammy award winning musician in a coma that drugs and rapes girls certainly made my head turn once or twice. The story was a clean win for LHL but it was intriguing to see the Network president fight it and force Julia to apologize in the next episode of LHL. Julia being protective of her show and her fight to freely tell the story she wants were really inspiring. I enjoyed Jake's involvement in the story he was very supportive of Julia and her agenda and went the extra mile with Alexa. The scene where Alexa opens up about trying to poison her rapist to Jake was really impressive. The actress was really on point and draw out emotions with me.
The scenes between Julia and Jake work so well, it is really nice to see a non-sexual male-female friendship being explored and developed on such a basic level. The episode ended with Jake arranging Oscar to guest on the next episode of LHL live from prison and that should be a blast.
Today on Louise's Shenanigans: This week we saw a new side of our favorite naughty gurl provoked by Julia backstabbing her with a soldier getting decapitated story. We finally saw the real Louise, the one under many layers of self-love and shallow lines. Back in the day when Louise was a young reporter one of her lovers was decapitated as well. This brought up many deeply hidden emotions and delivered a tremendous confrontation with Julia and delivered a huge range of emotions from Louise while Kate J. Grant nailed every single line.
What did you think of this week's Notorious episode? Did it hit all the right notes with you? Feel free to share your notorious opinion in the comment section.
