Archive

“The Family” recap (1.11): Even More Terrible Plans

Meyer gets the voiceover: “Some stories you know the ending to before they’re even written,” she says. Well, that’s because sometimes suspense shows telegraph they’re punches.

Doug, who turned himself in last week, is in the interview room and Meyer seems to be happy to mess with him. She says she gets to keep him for 36 hours before she has to charge him with anything. She keeps him there for 14 hours while she grills him, taunting him about how difficult it must be to stay in a confined space for so long.

Meyer asks Doug if he has to take a pill to have sex with Jane or if he just pictures a little boy. Holy crap. She theorizes on who must have groomed Doug to turn him into someone who could keep a little boy in a pit. Doug counters that he knows Meyer can’t afford to get the wrong guy twice. And he knows he’s already on Hour 35.

Ben is in Willa’s room watching her sleep. Eeeek. He asks her about confession. She says you confess your sins, you get a penance, and then you’re absolved. He wants to know if it works, and Willa says not for everything. (Do you confess ongoing things, like an illicit lady-lady relationship?) Ben says he didn’t mean to scare her and leaves. Willa locks her damn door, because yikes.

Ben leaves his new polling place with Claire as the teeming hordes of Red Pines reporters fight to know how he voted. If only they knew that he has just committed voter fraud. John and Danny compliment his performance as a Political Kid. John gets a call from Nina: They want Adam to ID Doug. Does it really seem like a good idea for Nina to contact John first when everyone in creation knows they had an affair? I guess it’s awkward either way.

Jane hacksaws at Clements’ shackles. It’s not working. After a back-and-forth about whether Doug, who they know kept at least one boy in a hole for 10 years, could murder someone, Clements asks her to get a clean towel and rubber bands and a bunch of whiskey and some ice because he wants her to cut off his thumbs. Holy crap. Also, Clements, I hope you have really thought out the measurements of this, because it would suck to get your thumbs cut off and still not be able to get out of the shackles.

(Look at your hands: Would this even work? It seems like you would have to go real, real low on where the thumb attaches for it to even come close to working. I think we might have the ultimate terrible plan here on Terrible Plans.)

Ben looks at a lineup that Doug is in. He says he wants the man to say “bracelet” and “key,” because Doug called the shackle his bracelet and made him toss him the key. But Ben doesn’t just identify Doug, who we know he’s seen in full light several times. So why does he bother using significant words? Ben says “Wait” after Doug speaks, but then says it’s not the guy. What is Ben’s arrangement with Doug, exactly? If he’s just scared, I can think of a real easy way to make sure Doug stays in police custody. And it’s mutually assured destruction if Doug reveals who ben is. Meyer is all what the HELL, but Claire stops her. Ben says he’s done and the guy isn’t there and he wants to go home. Meyer is pissed.

Ten years ago, Hank, a popular and admired accountant, is in his old office. He skips lunch plans with the dudes to sit in his car and stare at boys playing soccer.

Back at home in the present, Hank can’t figure out why he’s not on the news being hailed as a hero. He calls a news station pretending he’s from the police and tells them there’s been a break in the Adam Warren case and that the tip came from Hank Asher—he bothers to spell the name.

Bad Reporter is at a truck stop with her laptop. She asks the waitress to keep her coffee full of free refills—suuuper classy when you’re just planning on camping out and working and not ordering anything—and asks about WiFi. The waitress says they don’t get too many people with computers in there because we’ve Brigadooned back into small-town past. Why would long-haul truckers want to keep in touch with people with laptops, right? Bad Reporter says she’s about to break a huge story with sex and lies and politics in it. Sally the waitress says she’d better keep Bad Reporter’s coffee coming, then, and Jesus Christ, no one associated with this show has waited tables either. If you’re going to take up a whole booth for a long time, as Bad Reporter is doing, it’s polite to order more than free coffee refills. Bad Reporter, bad in every way, actually points at her cup and says “I’m going to be here for a while, so I’m going to need this to always be full.” Rude Reporter ignores the fact that she’s tanking Sally’s income for the day and pulls out the tiny thumb drive that she’s loaded Willa’s entire computer onto.

Meyer lets Doug go because she has to. She hands him his jacket, all mad and significant. Doug tells her he hopes she finds the guy and also she should relax.

Ben asks Claire when they count all the votes. Claire asks when Ben and Adam had to start wearing the bracelets. Ben says not at first—only when they were older and started fighting back. Ben says Adam fought back the most. Claire asks Ben if he’s sure that Doug wasn’t the guy. It’s almost like going along with this charade was a terrible plan.

John confronts Meyer behind the police station because the Red Vines press is in front, possibly stretching all the way to New Hampshire. He asks what the hell with Meyer calling Ben a liar and she plays it close to the vest. They’re angry at each other and they really want to kiss. Finally they hug. It’s well played—both actors show the old comfort and the new discomfort and the wish that things had turned out differently. And then John tells her not to come near his family ever again.

Doug pulls up at an arcade and Meyer pulls out the GPS tracer for the tracker she planted in Doug’s jacket.

Jane does not want to cut off Clements’ thumbs and also she just had a baby. (She’s watching it on a monitor on her phone. The plan is that she’s going to cut off his thumbs real clean and close to the joint so they’ll be easy to sew back on when they get to a hospital. That is one hell of a ballsy (terrible) plan, Clements. Clements says he is going home to his husband so they can keep their bees and his husband can keep singing to him and making him Christmas cookies, so Jane, cut off his damn thumbs. Holy shit, she grabs the shears and does it. (Does this make anyone else want to watch Bound again? Just me? Fine.)

The Warrens are working the phones getting out the vote. (Danny orders pizzas.) Willa hears Ben identify himself as Adam Warren on the phone and can’t handle it. She takes Ben upstairs and tells him that if he wants to make up for “what he did,” he has to say that he wants to go to a boarding school in California with special facilities for trauma survivors. She says he gets to come home for one Christmas and then never again. Ben doesn’t want this. He says Claire won’t either, but Willa points out that Claire’s tune will change when she knows that Ben hurt Adam. Ben says he’ll give her back the $10,000 (She hasn’t brought that up with him yet? Their bus deal is clearly null and void.) Willa’s offended that that’s what he thinks her brother’s life was worth. Ben points out that that’s what his was worth to Willa.

Bad Reporter is still at a table, taking up space and just drinking coffee. Bad Customer. Sally the Waitress points out that Bad Reporter stopped typing “hours ago.” (But she doesn’t say “So how about fucking ordering something?”) Bad Reporter seems to be having an undefined crisis. She says she’s “just grabbing a headline” and that guy over there at the counter—see how you can sit at the counter if you’re just drinking coffee?—won’t care about it and it’s all so she can see her name in print. What? Bad Crisis. Sally the Waitress says that Bad Reporter is just crashing from eleven cups of coffee and needs to eat something. Well, at least she’s being subtle about it.

Bad Reporter tells Sally that she slept with a brother and a sister to get that thumb drive. Sally suggests a BLT. Bad Reporter says she’s “a horrible human being and a slut.” Oh, good. I was worried that the show’s sexual politics couldn’t get worse, but now I’m sort of proud to see it hit that bell at the top of the carnival game. And while you’re unironically throwing the word “slut” around, show, by all means have the bi character call herself that. As a moment of truth. Did everyone on this show learn about life from watching old soap operas, or what?

(By the way, I asked Jenna Bans and anyone in the writer’s room for The Family to talk to me about Willa and Bad Reporter and why Bad Reporter is so problematic again this week and got stonewalled again. So super responsiveness all around.)

Sally asks if Bad Reporter wants that BLT on white or wheat because Jesus Christ, just order something, and Bad Reporter says “You’re not one of those folksy advice-giving waitresses, are you?” Sally says “If you’re going to regret it, don’t do it” and Bad Reporter asks her for some pie. (No, just regular dessert pie.)

Meyer runs into the arcade following the tracker signal. It leads her to some skaters out back. A skater kid is in Doug’s jacket, and said some dude gave him $40 to wear it. What exactly is Doug’s monthly jacket budget? He goes through a lot.

Ten years ago, Hank is sitting in his car watching the boys again, crying while whacking off. A cop knocks on the window and Hank tries to do up his pants real fast, but not fast enough. OK, as annoyed as I am about Bad Reporter, this is where the show gets seriously repellent. We’re acting like this sex offender thing is not really Hank’s fault, since he didn’t actually get out and expose himself; he was just masturbating in the car while he watched young boys play soccer. It’s also supposed to seem unfair that Hank has to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life. He says he never hurt anyone. We are clearly meant to sympathize with Hank being caught up in The System and question whether he really did anything so wrong.

Hey. Show. It was established ages ago that HE HAD CHILD PORN ON HIS COMPUTER. That stuff does not happen in a vacuum, it is made with children who cannot possibly consent, and is often made with children who have been abducted. If we as the audience are really supposed to be thinking that Hank’s only crimes are “victimless,” that is fucking reprehensible. This show is an asshole. (Here’s a link to RAINN to remind us that there are people handling this issue in a way that isn’t appalling.)

Hank runs to Meyer, demanding to know when he’ll be on TV as a hero and when the right guy gets punished. Meyer says Hank set his terrible life in stone when he pulled up to that park and nothing will ever make it right. I think we’re supposed to see her assessment as unfair because, as we have established, this show is an asshole. Hank says people make mistakes. HE HAD CHILD PORN. If he consumed it, he is the market for child abductions and child rape. How about taking a break from trying so desperately hard to be edgy and pointing that out, show?

Election returns are coming in! Ben is talking to John about the governor’s mansion, wondering if his room will be bigger and smugly showing Willa that he has every intention of staying with the Warrens for the full ride. Willa asks Danny if he wants to get out of there. Always.

Clements wakes up from passing out and is pissed off that Jane couldn’t handle it and didn’t finish the job. He still has a thumb left and thus one hand shackled. He talks her into taking off the other one, but then we hear Doug coming home. Clements screams at her to just cut his other thumb off already, but Jane says it’s too late and rushes upstairs. You know what Jane could have kept after she hit Clements the first time? His gun.

Ten years ago, Hank’s boss was notified about his sex offender rap. We’re still on the Poor Hank train. I’m not sure what to do to mark this occasion since I already sent the show a flaming box of dicks last week. I guess this week we’ll go with a tasteful helium balloon/flaming dick arrangement. A little garish, but it’s from the heart.

Today, Claire heads over to Hank’s place. She’s all polite now, because argh, this show. She wants to know how Hank is sure that Doug was the guy. Hank says he knows Doug was watching Adam “that way” because he watched him that way too. Which makes zero frigging sense, because if Hank had seen and recognized that behavior, he would have sent the police charging after Doug 10 years ago.

Meanwhile, Willa and Danny are bonding over alcohol poured into Slurpees. He says he’s noticed that she’s been weird and depressed, and Bad Reporter isn’t worth it. Willa wants to know how he knew that she was gay. He says because Willa’s not into dudes and used to wear corduroy overalls every day. Then he goes back to his point that Bad Reporter is bad, and Willa can do better. Willa starts laugh-crying because she just finally came out to Danny. Willa’s glad she can’t taste the alcohol and Danny assures her she’ll taste it on the way back up.

Doug comes home and a) claims he was at the market for two days and b) does not notice right away that Jane’s freaking hands are covered in blood. He gets all threatening and asks if Jane was trying to help Clements. She stands up and says “I had the baby” and her stomach is already perfectly flat because nobody on this show researched pregnancy and childbirth either.

Back at the Warren place, Claire knows damn well that Ben looked right at his abductor in the lineup and still let him go. Willa says it was to protect himself. She says Doug didn’t kill Adam, Ben did. (Did we ever establish that in a firm way? I feel like we’ve talked around it.) Willa checks the news: Claire won.

Ten years ago, Hank moves in and Young Adam offers to help. Hank says yes because he’s a fucking idiot. Are we meant to believe that he’s constantly trying to restrain himself or not? Adam introduces himself and they discover a shared love of ships. Hank does not mention the pictures of unwilling children that he has on his hard drive.

Back in the present, we learn that Hank missed his hormone injection that keeps him from feeling sexual urges.

Willa gives a victory speech from the Warrens’ freaking front porch. She says Governor-Elect Claire Warren can’t give her speech because she lost her voice and the roiling flocks of reporters on her lawn are sad.

Clements tells Jane to tell Doug to kill him quickly, right in the back of the head. Jane says they won’t kill him if he’ll make the cops and FBI stop looking for him. My hope right now is that they’re going to have Clements call his husband to claim he’s leaving, and Clements will pretend to comply, but actually he’ll give coded directions to his location just like their beloved bees do.

Meyer, who seems to be getting hammered in the interview room in plain view of anyone who walks by, drops a bottle cap on the floor and then sees something else down there. The interview room is filmed in Darkorama, so it’s really hard to tell, but it seems to be dirt and leaves from Doug’s shoes. She bags it.

It’s night now at the truck stop. Sally laughs delightedly at Bad Reporter having sex with both Warren siblings, “but not at the same time.”

She’s bonding with the woman who took up her station all day. NOPE, no one on this show has ever waited tables. Bad Reporter asks Sally what she regrets. It’s going to jail and losing her son in the foster care system. Yes, she’s Ben’s mom. Sally the truck stop waitress offers to pay for Bad Reporter’s food (NOPE), and Bad Reporter, who has a salary, lets her. Heinous Reporter.

Bad Reporter calls Gus to say she got the mom, even though that was a Terrible Plan.

Claire sits in her room with her back against the door, not answering Ben’s knock.

Meyer’s voiceover returns. “Some stories you know the ending to before they’re even written,” she says. “But not this one.” I wish this show was as mind-blowing as it wants to be. I really do.

Welp, this all wraps up next week. Good luck to us all.

Lesbian Apparel and Accessories Gay All Day sweatshirt -- AE exclusive

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Back to top button