The Residence S1E2: Dial M For Murder
Last week set the stage: White House Head Usher A.B. Wynter (Giancarlo Esposito) has been murdered while a reception for the Australian Prime Minister was going on downstairs. The D.C. Police have sent in eccentric, brilliant consulting detective Cordelia Cupp (Uzo Aduba) to investigate. Everyone, naturally, is a suspect.
That includes the hot-tempered White House Chef (Star Trek Discovery‘s Mary Wiseman), who we meet in flashback, cursing out Usher for bringing the Australian Foreign Minister through her kitchen. Tempers flare when Usher points out (not unreasonably) that the flaming wagyu beef she intends to light on fire at the table is a safety issue. (The French pastry chef also can’t light up his bananas foster at the table, although he’s at least quietly upset about it) The chef blows up at him, breaks some glass, and ends by shouting, “I am going to kill you!” Not a great look for someone who’s now a murder suspect.
If you’ve ever seen a television show before, you can surmise that the chef is the first prime suspect, who by episode’s end will be dismissed as too obvious. Except we closed last week with Cupp’s observation that David Rylance, the Australian Foreign Minister, was wearing Wynter’s shirt. And Wynter was wearing Rylance’s, covered in blood.
Rylance opens by reminding Cupp that he has diplomatic immunity. Not a great look for an innocent man. He recounts what happened next — he saw the angry chef across the dining room, intends to seek her out to apologize, finds her in the kitchen holding a very sharp knife… and we quickly cut to them knocking pots and pans out of the way so they can have sex on the kitchen counter. (Although they quickly move outside for no reason other than to have him notice someone suspicious on the grounds.) They overexert themselves, she accidentally gives him a bloody nose, when he returns back inside, Wynter sees the blood on his shirt, they switch shirts so the Minister can look presentable, QED.
So not the most predictable outcome, but also nothing that’s a huge shock either. There are a very small number of explanations as to why the dead man would be wearing someone else’s bloody shirt, and this one was pretty high on the list. Except it leads us to our next too-obvious clue. After switching shirts, Wynter gets a phone call, hangs up, and solemnly pronounces, “I am going to be dead by the end of the night.” A little too on the nose, even for a future murder victim in a murder mystery.
They decide to stop anyone from leaving the White House until Cupp has a chance to question all of them. Her method for the first White House staffer is to stare at him silently until he spills everything just to break the silence (to the exasperation of straightlaced FBI agent Randall Park). “Everything” includes an overheard phone call, in which the usually calm-and-collected Wynter was shouting at someone, saying, “I’m going to tell them everything!”
Cupp also interviews Presidential BFF Harry Hollinger (Ken Marino), and we mostly learn that he’s lying his ass off — most significantly about leaving the Kylie Minogue performance, and about seeing Wynter there. And we get a flood of details about the evening, with no real way to know what’s important. But as the details pile up, they start to conflict.
White House Social Secretary Lilly Schumaker delves into the dysfunction of the White House staff and the stress that had put on Wynter, and how difficult it was to work under the indecisive new First Gentleman, and a President who didn’t particularly like Wynter.
On another show, we’d get a few episodes of clues piling up, with the audience unsure what’s important and what isn’t. Except the episode ends with a full-on flashback to the murder being committed. Has Cupp identified the killer this early on? Or are we just seeing a what-if? Our money’s on the latter. In fact, virtually everything we learn this episode is second-hand, and at this point we don’t know who to trust.
So we’re no closer to solving the mystery, but the episode works well because, amid the typical mystery-show misdirection, we get a richer portrait of Wynter. He felt a deep responsibility for the White House, and was deeply upset that it wasn’t being run to his standard. Is that an explanation for murder? Not yet. But we’re only on episode two.
Amendments:
• Hollinger’s assistant seems to only exist to insert unfunny reactions that disrupt the flow of the story and the tone. You could edit him out of the show completely and it would get another half-star immediately. It is possible to crack wise during a murder investigation — that’s a big part of the appeal of Poker Face — but the writing here just isn’t up to it and the shift in tone is too jarring, as Aduba’s humor as Cupp is bone dry.
• What does work well is the character-driven humor, like Cupp’s complete lack of respect for Randall Park’s FBI agent. “I’ll ask the questions. If you feel like you have something to say, try and make that feeling go away.” And Wiseman’s foul-mouthed, volatile, horny chef is a delight.
• There’s also a pretty solid running gag of Hugh Jackman being part of the Australian delegation, but being played by a very-obviously-not-Hugh-Jackman actor with his face obscured.
• We finally meet Jason Lee as the President’s slacker brother, essentially channeling The Dude playing Billy Carter.
• The show makes a meal out of comparing Cupp’s love of birdwatching with her methods as a detective. But two episodes in she’s already seen an astonishing number of birds at nighttime that don’t fly around at night.
