Some of these episodes end pretty abruptly, don’t they? The final scene of “Safe in the Circle,†in which two of Mrs. Mahabir’s men find Xavier in a fancy room at the Crowne Plaza wearing an ankle bracelet, isn’t a bad one — Xavier has been exposed as a rat, and everything could be over if he doesn’t manage to convince Garmen to spare his life. But the way it goes down, it doesn’t really feel like a natural ending place for the episode. I suppose it’s an effective cliffhanger in theory, but to me, it just felt like the story needed one more scene.
That’s partly a result of the way these episodes are broken up. Two episodes of Full Circle drop per week, and it feels like Solomon broke the story with that release schedule in mind; “Something Different†wouldn’t feel really complete without “Charger,†and this week’s pair has a strong middle-chapter vibe. But the structure is loose overall, even in the more intense episodes. Each installment feels less like a discrete story with a beginning, middle, and end and more like one slice of a larger story, often subverting those dramatic conventions. It makes me think of that showrunner cliché of the “six-hour movie.â€
That sounds harsher than I mean it, though. “Safe in the Circle†is another mostly exciting episode of Full Circle — one that clarifies some of the ambiguities left by the last episode while pushing forward with the plot. After an episode that kept most of the characters stranded in their own stories, individually processing that chaotic Saturday night while panicking about how to move forward, this one brings several conflicts to a head by bashing the different groups together.
For one, there’s more urgency to the search for Louis and Natalia in this episode now that everyone knows Jared is alive. Aked seems determined to obey his auntie and kill both his ex-fiancée and her brother, and he even uses Nat’s Postmates account to figure out where they’re holed up: a motel room in Paterson, New Jersey. But the timing is always just slightly off. By the time he arrives, gun in hand, they’ve left for Edward Chung’s, and by the time he learns about their meeting with Chung, it’s hours after they’ve escaped and returned to the same motel. But it’s only a matter of time before he catches up with them.
I’d bet on Aked at least protecting Nat when he finds her, though. We haven’t seen him share their location with any of the other men, and his failed call to Nat after Viktor gets the order to “resolve the situation†certainly feels like it could be a warning. Despite Jharrel Jerome’s acting chops, we haven’t gotten much of a sense of the young man he’s playing outside his violent rage. But a guy torn between protecting the woman he loves (who betrayed him) and serving someone who’s both a powerful crime boss and a mother figure to him? That’s a compelling character conflict.
Outside of Louis and Natalia’s aborted attempt to get transportation back to Guyana with Chung’s help — he immediately stabs Nat in the back by offering her up to Mahabir as an olive branch, along with half the money that Quincy apparently stole from both of them — their story is about once again making contact with the Brownes. They’re hoping to extort Jared’s parents the way Aked’s crew tried just last Saturday night, but this time it fails, with Sam finally just telling them the kid they have isn’t hers. (Speaking of Derek’s worry about his subconscious, does Sam care even less about saving Nicky now that she knows he’s the product of her husband’s affair?) Nicky owns up to his impersonation and suggests a way to get them the money they need: Steal the $250,000 drawing in the Brownes’ apartment. Then Louis offers his own idea: Blackmail Derek with the secret of Nicky’s existence.
It’s an interesting place to end the Louis-Natalia-Nicky story in this episode, but a bit of an odd one; they don’t show up again in the second half, and we’re left unsure about what plan they’re going with. Revealing Derek’s secret doesn’t seem quite so scary now that his wife knows the truth, even if it would still suck to be publicly outed.
It comes out in a dramatic confrontation after a visit from Mel, who seems intent on stirring up shit by poking and prodding Sam and Derek about their knowledge of each other’s secrets. When Sam finally asks Derek who Nicky is, straight up, he mentions the Colony at Essequibo, calling her out on her hypocrisy — but no matter what Sam was involved in 20 years ago, and no matter what she neglected to tell Derek, it doesn’t have the same personal sting as realizing your husband had a child with another woman while they were together. Derek tries to assure her that he has spent 16 years privately working to earn the right to be her partner again, but it reeks of bullshit rationalization, even if it comes from a place of truth.
Perhaps he sees the writing on the wall for his marriage at this point; he spends the rest of the episode looking into his wife’s lies, puzzling over the suspicious deposits and withdrawals on Jeff’s bank statements from back in 2002. They’re clearly connected to the properties in Guyana that got Gene arrested — and what we learn definitively in this episode is that Sam is the reason those deposits aren’t recorded in the books.
Everyone is busy doing detective work now in all corners of the story, and Mel is both a step ahead and a step behind. She’s capable of quickly sussing out lies and secrets, but that doesn’t automatically mean they can be proven in court. After all, she has a lot of people conspiring against her — the mighty creative and legal forces behind the rich chef Jeff, but also her own boss at the USPIS, who sends Pete Fong a psych evaluation that he’d previously done her the favor of keeping to himself. (It’s not an official BPD diagnosis, but she fits the bill.) He knows she’s on his trail, and he’s ready to start playing dirty.
In this show, we almost always see Mel being as abrasive as humanly possible, but her final scene with Gene offers her character a rare moment of calm respect. They start on the right foot, bonding over their mutual hatred for Manny, before she learns just how far Gene was willing to go — shooting himself in the foot for the disability benefits after Manny and Jeff threw him under the bus. Mel correctly deduces that Gene has proof of his brother’s crimes but would never snitch, even though he knows Jeff would. She can admire that, as we see in a great full shot of Gene standing up from the couch to shake her outstretched hand.
Of course, we know that Sam was as complicit in this as Jeff. Her meeting in the park with Manny clarifies that she not only accepted funding she knew came from bribing corrupt politicians, but she buried evidence at Manny’s instruction. (He benefited, taking Gene’s job after he retired.) Manny tries to assure her that all she needs to do now is keep quiet about what happened; they made sure there was no paper trail two decades ago. But as we’ve seen in every episode of Full Circle so far, things have a way of becoming unburied.
Elliptical Thoughts
• Manny and Detective Sanders want to wire Ron up for his meeting with Garmen to get the money he’s owed. They assure him they’ll be able to protect him, but … we’ll see about that.
• Nice small moment with Manny putting his daughter to bed.
• And it’s also good to get a window into Garmen’s family life, including his wife’s routines for getting the kids out of the house when he needs to have a meeting. (Did they try the Grimace shake?)
• I really felt for Louis when he left Xavier that emotional voicemail.
• Not entirely sure what to make of Xavier inviting Shakeela to his fancy hotel room, especially with an ankle bracelet on him, but I suppose he hasn’t been making good decisions for a while now. (Maybe it could help him prove that he wasn’t lying about his whereabouts when he told Aked he was with his girl.)
• I wish we saw more of Mahabir in general, but I’m really interested in the tension between her and Garmen, who is visibly frustrated by her single-minded fixation on how the curse on her husband comes into play.
• “Do you want to be right, or do you want to be married?â€