Finley hadn’t been okay to drive.
We begin this week’s episode with Sophie collecting Finley from an L.A. jail the morning after they were pulled over by the police on their way home from the MS charity event. Finley, who had been over the limit when she’d taken the wheel, had to spend the night behind bars. They’re irritated with each other: Sophie at Finley for drunk driving, and Finley for Sophie assuming she’d been sober enough to take the wheel.
The scene sets the tone for this week’s episode, in which all relationships are tried, tested, and run through the proverbial ringer — with mixed results.
Let’s start with Bette and Dani. The friends have an immediate falling out when Dani surprises Bette with an unexpected endowment: a hefty donation to the museum where Pippa’s show is about to open in a wing now named after the Nunez family. A furious Bette denounces the move, accusing Nunez Incorporated of exploiting the Black community by helping to drive the opioid crisis. Bette threatens to pull Pippa’s show unless the name of the wing is changed, effectively driving a wedge between her and Dani.
Dani isn’t the only one Bette’s upset with this demand. When Bette shares news of the move to Pippa later in her office at Zakarian’s, Pippa’s not exactly thrilled with the development. Bette assures her the demand is simply a bargaining move. Pippa tells her that her art is not a bargaining chip. Things get infinitely worse when Bette’s assistance summons her with the news that the museum has called her bluff: they’re going to pull all Zakarian artists from the exhibit. A devastated Pippa storms out of Bette’s office.
For Alice, the launch of her book presents a new problem: Does she tell Tom about her fling with Nat while he was away in New York? She confides in Bette and Shane, who’ve come to the launch to support her. Bette, still preoccupied with her own Pippa problem, breaks the solution down for her: Alice can risk “telling him and losing him” or “living with a lie.”
“Whose night is this?” Alice asks her.
She does, however, break down and tell Tom, who’s returned from New York in time for the launch. He is not exactly happy with the news, and calls BS when Alice tries to explain that the situation is “confusing.” Her timing isn’t great, either, as she tells him right before he’s slated to introduce her for the reading. But Tom is a professional and, despite his anger and hurt, introduces Alice as “one of the most amazing people I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with.” Cue more guilt for Alice.
Meanwhile, Gigi and Dani have their first fight as a couple after Dani is called away to attend to “crisis mode” at the Nunez company, now dealing with the fallout of Bette’s bargaining tactics. “Do you ever say no to him?” Gigi asks Dani of her father.
In response, Dani storms off to the crisis intervention, where she suggests that the company double their endowment to the museum and earmark the funds for BIPOC artists. (She also gets into a battle with her father, who has the audacity to tell her that she needs to clean up the mess. And who’s looking after the company in the wake of his arrest? she reminds him.)
Back at the launch, Alice reads from what she calls her favorite chapter of her book: “Dana.” In it, she opens up about her relationship with Dana, and her friend’s final moments, which she’d missed. Her timing, she says, was “tragically off and I missed her go.”
The recollection of Dana, and a backstage reminiscence with Bette and Shane, allow Alice to realize that she cares about Tom, and doesn’t want to let him go. She goes to his hotel — a “splurge” from the publishing house — and the two reconcile.
Dani and Gigi reconcile, too, as do Bette and Pippa after Bette does something truly shocking: she backs down from her original demands that the museum remove the Nunez name from its wing. She admits to Pippa that she’d been motivated by revenge — presumably over her sister Kit’s death, of an overdose — and that she was sorry Pippa had been hurt in the process. They end with a hug, and then later in bed, where Pippa asks Bette, “Have you considered that it’s possible to burn shit down and still leave something standing?”
“You want to do it together?” Bette asks.
In other relationship news, Micah and Mirabel finally get back together after the disastrous karaoke reunion. Shane goes to Las Vegas to meet with Tess, where she’s gone to tend to her sick mother. And Sophie has realized that Finley’s DUI is indeed the sign of a much larger problem. She leaves Alice’s launch alone after Finley, already drunk, stays for another round. Later, when Finley stumbles home to their bed, Sophie confesses that Finley is scaring her. “It’s like your light goes out and nobody’s home,” she says, “and it’s the scariest, loneliest feeling.”
Finley responds, as Finley is prone to doing, by heading out alone into the night.
While the other couples are allowed their happy reunions by the episode’s end, Finley and Sophie are left in a similar limbo to where they ended last week, only this time, it isn’t with the wail of a police siren. When Sophie wakes up the next morning, Finley hasn’t returned, and is nowhere to be found.
What Do You Think?