Now that Monarch’s flash-forwards have become its present, the show doesn’t waste any time delivering some real answers to the mystery it’s been teasing since the pilot: That’s right, people, we’re learning whose death we’ve been watching the Romans cover up and whose body was tossed in that grave before someone swiped it. It’s Clive, everybody. Goddamned Clive.
Agh! I KNEW Clive had more to offer us as a villain than just spooning that bottle of Oxy and trying to blackmail his ex-wife before taking off for London. Good ol’ Clive. And by “good ol’,†I of course mean “piece of shit.†He’s the one who shows up at Nicky’s door the night of the Country Music Legacy awards. He’s wasted and he wants Nicky back. When she emphatically tells him no, he gets angry, hits her in the face, and then starts choking her. Suddenly, that CML trophy for “Single of the Year†comes smashing down on Clive’s dumb skull. It’s Gigi! You’ll recall that she was headed to Nicky’s that night to “tear her [sister] a new one†— a threat not one single person believed — and instead, look at her, tearing a hole in her brother-in-law’s head! No, seriously, there is a lot of blood!
We watch again as Nicky calls Albie for backup and he loads Clive’s body into the back of the truck to take him out into the woods and bury him. But what’s this? Clive isn’t dead! The two proceed to have a cute little shoot-out until Albie utters that ridiculous line from the pilot about Romans never forgetting friends or enemies. Even seven episodes in, I can’t stop thinking about how ridiculous it is. It’s even more ridiculous now that we know he was saying it to Clive! His son-in-law! Like, you didn’t have anything more Clive-specific you could utter before shooting him dead?
Anyway, Clive’s dead, Albie throws him in the grave, Luke stages Clive’s car to look like he’s been drinking, evidence is burned, and the Romans once again find that empty grave. I’m glad Monarch is leaving the whereabouts of Clive’s corpse unanswered — it not only gives the series some mystery to propel it forward, but it adds some real tension as the Romans try to move forward and pretend everything’s fine. We know there’s someone out there who could blow up everything the Romans have built at any moment.
We then jump one month ahead, and while Nicky has filed a missing-persons report for Clive, the Romans are mostly just trying to act normal and get on with business. Everyone’s onboard with that plan aside from Tatum, who, bless her heart, is very confused as to why no one seems to care that her father is missing. (Ace, you’ll remember, saw the entire bludgeoning in the living room, so he’s in on the secret.) I’m sorry, but I DIED laughing when Uncle Tripp waltzes up to Tatum and while trying to console her about her dad is just like, Well, sweetie, your dad is a slut, so he’s probably just shacked up with whoever he’s banging at the moment, there, there. Classic Uncle Tripp!
So, aside from keeping their murder pact, what does business as usual look like for the Romans? Well, this week Monarch Entertainment is … getting into the bourbon business, I guess? Truth Teller Bourbon is a pretty great name for a liquor label, but it only adds salt to the wound its namesake has been feeling as of late. Albie knows he’s no truth-teller. I mean, there’s the murder cover-up, for one, but also he’s still reeling from the revelation that Rosa had his baby before she was burned to a crisp in that barn fire. He sees Ana wearing the locket he gave Rosa back then and immediately realizes that Catt is his daughter. He meets with Catt to confirm it and she insists that she doesn’t want anything from him, except that he give Ana a chance to make it in the music business. Albie has Ana come perform on his album (or records a song with her for her album? It’s wildly unclear, per usual.).
Feeling like a fraud over his reputation isn’t something new for Albie. In fact, the whole “Truth Teller†brand, so to speak, was a lie from the start. It was all a plan hatched by Dottie to get her husband, once branded an outlaw (we know he served time at one point), into a deeper, more mature part of his career. We get a few flashbacks that tell that origin story, but mostly they serve to only once again reiterate how much of a misstep it was to kill Dottie off. Albie and Dottie were going through a rough patch in their marriage — something that apparently happened quite often — and in the flashback, Albie arrives backstage at her concert to tell her he’s going to go out onstage and serenade her in front of her fans to win her back. He’s made this movie before, and Dottie’s over it. How does she stop him from walking out there? This woman pulls out her pistol, shoots him in the leg, and leaves him there in the dressing room. “Try not to die before I finish my set,†she tells him as she walks by him to perform. It is so baller I can’t even stand it. This is the energy this show needs! Let this show live!
Albie decides he can finally start becoming the truth-teller he’s purported to be for so long. Now, let’s not get crazy; he’s not going to come clean to the authorities about Clive, but he does confide in Nicky about the whole Rosa and Catt situation — including the fact that Dottie is a murderer. “Lies are the real Roman legacy,†they agree. It’s very bleak!
Elsewhere, Gigi has a big magazine-cover photo shoot to attend to. The story line ends up about Gigi living in her truth and standing up for herself when the magazine Photoshops her image so drastically that she doesn’t even look like herself. No, really, it’s not some subtle Photoshop work — by the end it looks like M3GAN is on the cover of Beaucoups. It’s wild. Like, how in the world is Kayla okay with it for even one second? She says her wife looks “snatched,†which I can only assume she means literally body-snatched, because that person on the cover is an entirely different person. She’s genuinely upset when Gigi wants to push back on using these. Kayla! Get your head out of your ass for just one second! In order to fight back, Gigi posts her own “day in the life†videos on social media to not just show who she really is, but to show how proud she is of her life and her body just the way it is. She ends up losing the cover deal, but the video wins over a lot of fans.
The part of this story line that bothers me the most, however, is that Gigi doesn’t mention what happened with Clive EVEN ONCE. Sure, she saved her sister and Clive was awful, but I doubt Gigi has much experience bashing someone’s skull in — shouldn’t she be experiencing some level of PTSD? Just a tiny pang of concern? Simply seeing her sister being attacked like that would at the very least leave her a little unsettled. And yet, nothing.
Well, if Gigi isn’t concerned about what went down with Clive now, she might be very soon. Uncle Tripp can’t shake Tatum’s belief that something is really wrong with her dad and that her family is keeping something from her. Something doesn’t feel right with the Romans, and so he decides to put some pressure on the detectives assigned to the case. “Whatever it takes†to get to the truth of what happened, he tells them. That’s not great news for Country Music’s First Family.
Liner Notes
• Albie and Nicky have a quick exchange about Clive being the person who was blackmailing Dottie for all those years, but there’s not really any evidence to back that up. Also, Clive is way too much of an idiot to pull something like that off. I’m not buying it.
• Once again, Nicky has a shot to win over the tour promoter with a killer performance (another duet with Wade), only to be disappointed when the promoter doesn’t show. Luke promises that he’ll get his sister the tour she so desperately wants no matter what.
• You’d think Ace would be a little more rattled by seeing his father strangle his mother and then his aunt play Whac-A-Mole on his father’s head, but what is character consistency on Monarch even?
• Who do we think stole Clive’s corpse and are they partaking in a Weekend at Bernie’s type of scenario with it? Probing questions!