Well, well, well! How the turn tables …
But before we get to The Moment we’ve all been waiting for, let’s get to all the ones that made it happen — and the untimely reasons it’s about to make everything messier than ever.
Up to this point, the Garveys’ attempts to shake Angelica off have proved an ineffective disaster. Pointing out her impropriety offends her; intimidating her only encourages her self-righteousness; ignoring her is impossible when she keeps inserting herself where she doesn’t belong. So how do you solve a problem like Angelica?
In “Boom,” the Garveys are truly at the end of their rope trying to figure it out. Poor Grace was just trying to attend a bereavement group when she opened the door for Angelica to squeeze her way into her life and never leave. According to Ian, who (allegedly?) met Grace at the group, they even used to joke about how Angelica would “feed off your grief” and “get high off our lows.” Grace’s death has only made her double down on that particular impulse to intensely frustrating ends. They even now have to spend a precious week of their lives faking an ash dispersal for her sake; what’s more, they have to pretend it’s reasonable when she disinvites Eva, Ian, and Blánaid, i.e., arguably the three most important people in Grace’s life. By the time Eva finds out that Angelica’s now hired her trainer, a person she’s trusted and treated as a de facto therapist, her furious reaction makes total sense in my opinion.
Eva’s not someone who often tells people the truth about how she’s feeling. Losing a source of comfort at a time when she so desperately needs it is an unexpected hammer blow. It’s suffocating, as Grace put it in her frantic last days as Angelica similarly encroached on her most personal life. Pair that with Eva’s certainty that an ill-timed visit from social services was down to Angelica, and that Angelica is trying to force Blánaid away from her own family, and you’ve got yourself one hell of a potent cocktail for a total meltdown. “I swear to God, I’ve never wanted to kill that wagon more,” Eva fumes — at the worst possible time, because, of course, Detectives Loftus and Houlihan choose that moment to pop up for even more questioning. Though neither they nor even Ian seem to agree, everything Eva does in this episode is justified as a response to panic — but it’s admittedly not a great time for her to admit to the cops how much she hates and doesn’t trust Angelica given what happens by episode’s end.
But first, let’s have a brief chat about our intrepid detectives. Fergal’s an obvious mess, for one. Whatever satisfaction he gets out of throwing his weight around at work is offset by his helplessness in his personal life. Wanting to keep his daughter from moving to Australia with her mother, he decides to commit to the ugliness of a disputed custody battle; he also decides to break into Grace’s house and steal her stashed money from the turtle pen. Surely that won’t come back to haunt him! Interestingly enough, the only way he even knew to look for those emergency funds was thanks to Houlihan dropping another startling piece of family lore. This time, she mentions an aunt whose abusive relationship made her want to keep preparing for the worst. It’s strange to have her keep expressing commonalities with the Garveys’ trauma while getting more and more confrontational with them. I just hope the show has a reason for it beyond her wanting the mystery solved because it’s reading weirdly personal otherwise.
Okay, back to the “Boom.” In retrospect, everything in this episode is gearing us up for that last shock. Since I’m a bad person who considers herself to be Angelica’s No. 1 hater, my first reaction to the boom (get it?) bashing her in the face and dunking her overboard was, obviously, to burst out laughing. Fiona Shaw is so perfectly contemptible throughout those scenes on the sailboat, rendering Angelica so completely self-absorbed and so cruel, that her likely death feels like an immediate relief. Also, it’d be hilarious if the sisters accidentally killed her in such a stupid way after trying and failing to purposefully kill JP in so many convoluted ones. How ridiculous! How hilarious! How … incredibly inconvenient, given all the heat already on the Garveys without another body to deal with.
And look, I’m on record as hating just about everything Angelica stands for. I’m not sorry she’s (probably) dead, if only to give my increasingly clenched jaw a break. However, when it comes to her calling Ian “a snake in the grass,” might she … have a point? Not about Ian and Eva, because, frankly, I’m not about to give consenting grieving adults too much shit for finding some relief in each other. (Though if Eva wanted to take her trainer up on the “I’d do you” offer, I’d probably be more pro-that.) Still, there appear to be other reasons to maintain some healthy skepticism toward him. The last time we saw Ian and Grace together, the scene cut away from Grace trying to physically restrain him; the next time we saw her alone, she had a fresh hand bandage and a washer full of bloody clothes. He’s got a quick enough temper that he enjoyed telling off Angelica a little too much and then almost blew up at Eva for “overreacting” before her panic about Blánaid brought him back to earth. We know Blánaid trusts Angelica and has perhaps confided in her, but we don’t know why. I do think it’d be a bit of a repetitive shame to have Grace’s husband be the season’s Big Bad once again and would love for Blánaid to have one (1) male figure in her life who isn’t a total shitbag. But the show’s still laying enough clues and/or red herrings around Ian that I reluctantly have to admit we should be keeping a wary eye on him anyway.
At this point, though, I just want to give some time to the sisters, who’ve barely had any space of their own to grieve without distractions and panic. I loved their “surprise” party for Eva, her gamely trying to enjoy it, and all their terrible fancy-dress costumes. I loved seeing more of Bibi and Becka’s younger sibling dynamic, whether they’re sharing secrets or grocery shopping for a fake urn. I loved the haunted karaoke machine Grace ordered for Eva before her death and them all singing The Cranberries’ “When You’re Gone” while clinging to one another like life rafts. Even though Bad Sisters thrives on twists and the black comedy of screwball murders, it wouldn’t be half as affecting without such moments when the sisters just get to be sisters, fierce and loyal and loving despite it all.
Loose Ends
• If this is truly the end of Fiona Shaw’s time on this show, let me at least acknowledge how incredibly funny she was on that sailboat. Her melodramatic sniffing, her asking almost offhandedly if Grace’s sisters might want “to say a word?” and her clutching the biscotti can amid oceanic gales were all hilarious. With all the respect for her craft in the world, she will not be missed.
• Roger, please, I am begging you to read a single room without asking out whichever Garvey sister happens to be in it.
• It is unforgivably rude how everyone’s go-to insult for Eva is “You’re infertile and alone, lol!!” Last week it was Ursula, this week Blánaid; if someone pulls out this shit again next episode, I will bail Eva out after she quite rightly sets them on fire.
• As for the pregnant Garvey, Becka chooses Eva’s after-party to share the news with Urs and Bibi, the latter of whom has some complex feelings about it. At this point, I also realized there’s the very TV-twist possibility of Bibi and Nora adopting Becka’s baby in Garvey solidarity, and I will just note here that I would really hate that on Ruben’s behalf.
• I know some of you have been theorizing that Ian may be up to no good with Blanaid. I really hope that isn’t true for so many reasons, but I’m also going to go ahead and say that if it were, there’s no way in hell Grace’s reaction would’ve involved leaving Blanaid behind.
• What does it say about me that I wouldn’t mind getting cremated into that biscotti tin? Nice biscotti tin, tbh!
• “What wagon did you want to kill?” “Uh … my sister, Ursula. She’s a bitch, you’ve met her.”