Bad Sisters S2E2: Penance
In the first episode of the season, we talked a bit about two open questions: where this season is going, given there isn’t an obvious person for the sisters to murder, and how Fiona Shaw’s new character Angelica fits into things.
We’ll start with the second. Angelica is a complicated, contradictory personality who’s instantly recognizable. The busybody who has to intrude in everyone else’s lives because she doesn’t have much going on in her own, and who masks her meddling with “just trying to help,” the same way she sweetly dispatches other characters with acidic backhanded compliments.
If you’re her neighbor, that makes her a supreme annoyance. If you’ve covered up a murder, it makes her extremely dangerous. Especially as her brother Roger, consumed by guilt, tells her Grace killed her first husband and Roger himself helped stage things to look like an accident. The sisters put the screws to Roger, reminding him that Grace’s late husband was a monster, and that going to the police won’t help anyone at all, but would hurt all of them, Grace’s daughter Blanaid most of all.
But while they’re doing that, Angelica corners Grace in church — exactly the place to lay on guilt and elicit a confession — and tells her she knows everything. Grace is rattled by this, but refuses to talk about it, telling Angelica they’ll talk later. Except that isn’t the first time Grace has said that — at some point in the past, Angelica thought they were friends, Grace didn’t, and Angelica’s felt slighted ever since. Is that enough motivation to destroy Grace and everyone she cares about? It just might be.
And Grace isn’t doing herself any favors. When Detective Inspector Loftus questioned her last week, she blurted out that her husband’s death was suicide — a baffling claim, given his apparent cause of death was strangulation when his scarf got caught in the wheels of his ATV. And she refuses to talk about her missing current husband with her sisters, to the point where they start to wonder if maybe she offed him as well, especially when they find his phone secreted away in the bathroom.
As the audience, we saw Ian storm out after Grace confessed to murdering John Paul. We’re pretty sure Grace didn’t kill Ian too. But did she? It’s the last we’ve seen of Ian, and we’ve had no hints as to where he went, or even what happened in the immediate aftermath of the fight.
Only that, without Ian, Grace is even more withdrawn and angry than usual, her cover story about John Paul is in danger of falling apart, she’s fighting with her teenage daughter, and her assembled sisters can’t get through to her. (Not helping matters is that Ursula, who it turns out has been pilfering pills from her job at the hospital, slips Grace some to help calm her down.)
All the while, Loftus is asking more questions, and digging up more info on John Paul’s father, George. The evidence is clear that JP not only murdered George, he had been stealing money from him for years. But upon JP’s death, all that money went to Grace. She has an apparent motive to kill him, even if it’s not the actual motive that did lead her to kill him.
And that, more than the actual murders, is what the episode is about. How difficult it is to keep guilt and secrets buried. Eventually the pressure builds, and things come to a head. Which brings us back to our first open question. After two episodes of setup, the episode builds to a definitive climax, and after this one, it’s no longer a mystery what this season is going to be about.
Stray thoughts:
• John Paul’s father was named George, and there’s an obvious Ringo joke that the show thankfully isn’t corny enough to make. But I just might be.
• Director Dearbhla Walsh again shoots everything gorgeously, particularly the overhead shots she’s made terrific use of in both episodes so far. As overcast and rainy as Ireland generally is, it’s honestly remarkable she found so many bright, sunny shooting days.
• While not tormenting Grace, Angelica manages to corner Bibi’s wife Nora, and casually mention Bibi didn’t bond with their adopted son for the first two years. That is in fact something Bibi said and Angelica overheard, but she also amplified and twisted it around to drive a wedge between the couple. Sure enough, Nora blows up at Bibi, and cancels the artificial insemination they had been planning, in order to have a second kid. It’s expertly played, the way Angelica knows exactly which pressure points to push on to cause maximum discord. It’s still not clear whether she’s going to kill or be killed this season, but it’s very clear she’s going to be a nightmare for the Garvey sisters.
