At 40 minutes, “Charger†is quite a bit shorter than the first episode of Full Circle. Accordingly, it feels much tenser and quicker-paced, reaching an impressive fever pitch toward the end. It’s not an installment that answers many questions, but by the end, I felt even more excited for next week’s episodes.
The episode picks up right where “Something Different†left off: with the Brownes debating how to handle the kidnapping situation, knowing that their kid wasn’t the one taken after all. Thankfully, despite Jeff’s visible reticence and Sam’s single-minded focus on protecting her own kid, everyone eventually agrees it’s their duty to protect Nicky. $314,159 is a big withdrawal, even for a celebrity chef, but they can afford it.
So the original plan plays out, with Derek and Jeff heading to a specified parking lot near the George Washington Bridge to meet with Jeff’s shady casino contacts for the money they need. From there, Derek is instructed to head down to lower Manhattan — but with the chaos playing out on the kidnapper side of the story, it’s too early to know where the exchange will actually happen.
The biggest holdup turns out to be Garmen’s discovery of the business card Mel gave Xavier. Normally, the presence of a rat would be reason enough to postpone a risky mission, but Mrs. Mahabir won’t have that. She’s spent all this time preparing the specified ritual to end her family curse forever, and too much could happen during the wait for next Saturday. It’s a recurring theme in this episode: Everyone involved knows that they need more time and planning to pull this off, but Mahabir and Clarence won’t permit any adjustments to the schedule.
So while Aked and his crew keep Nicky incapacitated with sleeping pills and wait, puzzling over the miscommunications about their destination, Garmen gets some assistance from Paul and their associate Viktor (Ilia Volok). When they arrive to meet the crew, there’s no time to waste grilling the potential rats individually; Viktor swiftly shoots Keesen in the head, though they find no wire on him when they check his body.
The death of Keesen is no big surprise; he’s the one member of the crew who isn’t a main cast member of this show, and it makes sense that he’d seem like the likely culprit given Mahabir’s vouching for Louis and Xavier. More effective than the obligatory redshirt killing, to me, is the way Ed Solomon’s script uses technology to drive up the tension — an area of interest that Soderbergh has explored often, especially in recent projects like Kimi. Here, Aked hears Louis’s phone and smashes it, potentially derailing his plans to coordinate a meeting with his sister and swap Nicky with the training dummy.
Lack of access to cell phones is a central obstacle in this episode: While all this is happening, Derek notices that his phone is about to die, so he stops for a car charger and drives to a parking garage on Houston as directed. That’s when he sees that the charger didn’t work, and he’s only on one percent — which becomes a real problem when the phone dies before he can hear where in Washington Square Park to bring the money.
That takes us to the final minutes before the 1:11 a.m. deadline, which are almost unbearably stressful. Everyone seems to converge in the dark park, including Mel, but none of the three parties directly interact; Derek’s phone is still dead and he can’t find the chalk circle, while Mel doesn’t see her “cooperator.†At least Louis manages to get word to Nat about his broken phone, so they’re able to quickly exchange the two bikes. When 1:11 a.m. passes and Viktor fires his silenced gun into the box, he’s shooting a dummy adorned with the wig Nat requested last episode.
As soon as we see Natalia take off with a very much alive Nicky, the tension deflates slightly; in the end, the only people who died during the operation were Keesen (a guy we barely know) and potentially Clarence, who abruptly had a heart attack. While there’s surely more violence to come, and the cover-up probably won’t stick, the episode ends with neither Louis nor Xavier in peril. (It’s a good thing Paul doesn’t even glance at the bodies before instructing the crew to dump them!)
Still, it’s not like everything is just okay now, and the de-escalation of life-or-death stakes doesn’t take away from the dramatic weight of this climax. Maybe I’ve just been watching a lot of Justified lately, but Olyphant really made me feel for Derek here. As far as he knows, his failure to get to the right spot on time got a kid killed — perhaps a kid he knows, based on the closing flashback to Derek spotting him in the bushes while he and Jared were playing catch. And he can’t even “go hug his kid,†like one detective suggests, since Jared is off in some remote cabin. “I can’t tell if I’m sitting or standing,†he tells Sam in the park, dazed.
By the end of these two episodes — really a two-part pilot — we’ve got a decent handle on all corners of the ensemble, even if we don’t fully understand or care about everyone yet. What makes these characters feel like more than stock types, at this point, is the specificity of their performances and dialogue. I’m surprised at how much I’m enjoying Quaid as Jeff, whose hilarious self-centeredness feels straight out of The White Lotus. A child has been kidnapped and possibly killed, but to him, the victim is just some stranger; the more pressing issue is why someone would want to get to Jeff. After all, he employs thousands of people and visits fans at “rest homes or whateverâ€! How could somebody think he’s an asshole?
“You put good things out there; good things come back around,†Jeff says at the end of this episode. “From that standpoint, this whole thing makes no sense.†It’s true that on some level, this whole thing doesn’t make sense yet — but Jeff’s confoundedness mostly just indicates a level of privilege that insulates him from a world ruled by anything other than “fairness.†It’s a philosophy not far from Mahabir’s own ideas about karmic balance, and the zero-sum game that makes one child’s life a justifiable payment for another child’s life. Everyone wants to believe that they’re doing the right thing, on both an individual moral level and a larger cosmic scale. But unwavering certainty about your own goodness is one of the biggest signs you’re not that good after all.
Elliptical Thoughts
• Mel really doesn’t have a great episode: She callously burns her relationship to the ground after Carol questions her work, then fails to notice anything significant at the park and ultimately gets sent home without any real breakthrough. Rough, but the cop mentioning a “sister agency†sets up her vindication.
• There is a little bit too much confusion about the constant shifting of the drop spot; it contributes to the feeling of chaos, but why wasn’t Aked clued into the specifics of his auntie’s plan when he’s supposed to be the one in charge this time?
• I still can’t really get a handle on Joey, who drives Jared up to stay at his family cabin off the grid. I’d like to hear more about his history with Jeff.
• Joey briefly raises the idea of consulting Jeff’s brother, which gets quickly shut down. But later, Kristin brings up Uncle Gene again, suggesting he might be involved as some sort of payback for Jeff getting him kicked off the police force — something to keep an eye on.
• We also see Derek call some office asking for a Mr. Whitmer, who helped with some kind of private family matter some years back. Interesting!
• Mrs. Mahabir’s coldest line, tossed off casually at the end of her instructions: “And clean up the mess in the van.â€
• After drawing the circle in the park himself (and suspiciously eyeing Mel), Mr. Willoughby (Franklin Ojeda Smith) happily embraces Mahabir at the celebration. But he was the one who found Clarence — shouldn’t his possible death disturb the balance again, even if she does think Jared is dead?