Oh, baby, the foundation is starting to crumble on No Good Deed. But, like, in a good, freeing way, not in a, oh my God, is my house going to collapse kind of way. Actually, who knows, houses both figuratively and literally could collapse by the end of this show because have you seen what Margo and JD are up to? Doesn’t seem great! But Lydia and Paul needed to have their lives shaken up, and that’s what trying to sell this house has done to them and for them. Things are still a little bleak and definitely raw, but no pain, no gain, and all that.
At the top of “Best and Final,†Lydia is fuming at Paul for keeping the fact that Jacob had stolen from his job site a year prior to his death from her but refuses to tell him that’s why she’s mad. She drops Mikey off at his place to start to patch things up with Nate and then heads out to watch Emily perform her little singer-songwriter set at a nearby bar. We know the two of them really haven’t spoken or seen each other since Jacob died, and things are definitely awkward; it’s extremely depressing. The song she performs seems quite pointed — she basically repeats “I’m still here†over and over, except for one line when she says, “It’s not fair that I’m still here,†which is alarming!
When they finally sit together, the conversation starts out slow, and Emily is definitely still bitter that her mom has basically ignored her for three years, but she eventually warms a little bit. She tells her that getting out of that house has been the best thing for her, and maybe it’ll be good for Lydia, too. “I know. It’s just that I feel your brother there,†she tells Emily. Emily gets it: She can feel Jacob, too, especially when she plays. She thinks music is what has helped her survive all of this.
Now that they’ve broached the subject of their grief, Lydia admits something she hasn’t even said to her husband: “If I let myself stop missing him for even a second, it’s like I’m saying it’s okay that he’s not here.†It had been Mikey who wondered if the hand-shaking and no piano was simply a way for Lydia to punish herself for what happened. Maybe a lot of the choices we’ve seen Lydia make are exactly that, she is punishing herself because if she feels any moment of joy or hope, she feels like she’s not honoring her son or erasing what happened to him.
At home, Paul is grappling with his own grief. Again, it was Mikey — is he the most perceptive person on this show? — who pointed out that Paul tends to sweep things under the rug and never deal with them. It has always been his way. And isn’t that what he’s been doing, trying to get this house sold, whatever the cost? (Well, avoiding feelings and trying to avoid a murder charge.) Even now, we watch him teeter between wanting to get the hell out of the house to forget about all the pain and acknowledging everything that’s happened there.
When Gwen — the woman Margo was sleeping with and trying to partner with to flip the Morgans’ house — reappears knowing that JD’s offer on the house fell through because he has no proof of funds and she can pay Margo back for fucking up her life, Paul seems like he just might take her offer even though it’s under asking. It doesn’t hurt her cause that she also knows Jacob was murdered in the house and that someone in the family might have something to do with it. Also, she seems like the worst and even mentions ripping out Lydia’s precious Mandarin tree. Still, selling quickly to Gwen would solve a lot of Paul’s problems.
But we also see Paul allowing himself to feel his grief. The pained look he has as he paints over the height markings on the door frame is crushing. He has to take a minute to process and winds up reading a letter Dennis has written and passed along to Greg. It’s gorgeous and heartfelt, about how, like so many things in his life right now, his wife, his baby, that thinking about buying the Morgans’ house is scary because of how much he wants it and how awful it would be to lose it. It’s about how love like that makes you brave but also makes you feel “so fragile you could break at any moment because you can’t live without it.†I mean, how can you not go with a letter like that? And then he goes and mentions the Mandarin tree? As a place he could “picture [his] son climbing and reaching for the sky?†It’s a great letter. And Paul knows he has to give them this house. Maybe it’s a sign that just as he makes this decision, Jacob’s phone, which was in Mikey’s box of evidence and Paul had left charging, dings with a new voicemail from Lydia. She’s called him 389 times since he died, as if that number doesn’t absolutely break your heart. He listens to his wife tell their son that they’re moving but begs him to find her wherever she ends up.
Finally, the two of them are both home at the same time, and oh wow, do they have the argument that we’ve been building up to this entire time. They are both so unraveled that they can say exactly what they’ve been holding in this entire time and it is brutal! Lydia blames Paul for never communicating with their son — he would simply punish Jacob instead of talking to him. It’s obvious that the stealing was a way for Jacob to act out for Paul’s attention. Paul won’t be blamed for this — it was Lydia who brought a gun into this house and if she hadn’t, Paul says, “our son would still be alive.â€
While it’s cruel and harsh, Lydia has thought the exact same thing. She admits she has been punishing herself because of it ever since that night. And then she looks at Paul and realizes something: “You really hate me, don’t you?†He wants her to stop, but she pushes because she hasn’t been able to put her finger on what it meant when he looked at her the way he has for three years, and now she gets it. “You despise me.†When he tries to deny it — not very convincingly, by the way — she screams at him to be real, for once. And he goes off on her. He screams back about how these past few years have been “absolute hell†and that he’s wanted to leave her but felt too guilty about leaving her alone because “no one in their right might would want to be with the fucking person you’ve become.†Romano and Kudrow are so good here, just unleashing all of this pent-up anger, unloading all of their grief and guilt in one fell swoop. We’ve been watching it build for seven episodes and this is the payoff. It is, to put it mildly, quite effective.
And when you wonder what could ever deescalate the situation, in walks Emily. She’s been there the whole time, and she’s holding the box of evidence they got from Mikey. She is in tears. “Why do you have all this?†she asks her parents. “To protect you,†Lydia answers.
It was Emily who shot the gun that night, thinking Jacob was the burglar. It was Emily who accidentally killed her brother. All of this time, they’ve been trying to protect their daughter from what could happen if anyone found out what she did. They’ve all been carrying around this heaviness ever since that night.
But what if they’ve been wrong this whole time about what actually happened? Because as Paul shuffles through the box of evidence, he finds a bullet casing. It’s weird because Emily only shot once that night, but Paul has already found a bullet casing from that night, and it’s been safely hiding in that pillowcase of Jacob’s stolen jewelry. How is there a second bullet casing if it didn’t come from the gun Emily fired? Was there a second shooter?
Well, No Good Deed already provides us with a suspect going into the finale episode thanks to our amateur detectives, Leslie and Sarah. A lot of what they learned from Phyllis was, as Leslie puts it, “kook-a-dook.†But they do learn a few interesting things. First, that something is definitely up with JD and Margo. They know about his meltdown on set — there’s even a magazine article with a nice big picture of him wielding his gun around in the middle of his menty b. They also learn that the Morgans had Jacob’s autopsy sealed, and Leslie thinks that is fishy.
When Sarah learns that the Morgans accepted Dennis and Carla’s bid, because, fun twist, she winds up delivering their baby, she comes home to tell Leslie the bad news. She’s bummed because she thinks she just solved Jacob’s murder. She was able to get the autopsy report because lawyers are gonna lawyer, and it says that Jacob died of a gunshot wound that came from a .40 caliber … the same kind of gun JD was waving around in that picture from the magazine article. We needed a second shooter and he might just be the man from Rising Tides. Maybe.
Closing Costs
• Carla delivers a beautiful baby boy named Jimmy, after Dennis’s father, but as Dennis gets all weepy about his impending death and becomes just a blurry memory to his sweet son, the woman cannot keep Denise’s secret from him any longer. She tells him that he isn’t dying; he hasn’t inherited sarcoidosis because his father wasn’t his biological father. He is shocked, but then he gets the call that they got the house. It’s a real good news/bad news sort of situation.
• Margo tries to salvage the whole “lying about her identity†thing by claiming to be embarrassed by her upbringing and swearing the whole space heater fire story is mostly true, but Bobby didn’t die, he was just disfigured and now looks like a Ken doll below the belt. JD questions Bobby alone and learns that, yup, the Ken doll thing is true, but more importantly, that Margo, or Luann, orchestrated their entire meeting. She stalked JD until there was an opening to meet and manipulate him. And now she’s only staying in the marriage because of the prenup — she’s waiting to get her cut.
• Margo is going full unhinged once she realizes she might be losing control of the situation and she decides to kidnap Harper. Not cool, Margo!
• When Paul tries to get ahold of Lydia, Mikey answers her phone, but he knows she has to be in the room because he can hear her clearing her throat. “You don’t know my throat!†she yells back.
• JD trying to explain that he also comes from humble beginnings, like Margo/Luann: “I’m from Possums Hollow. Our mayor was an actual possum. He was an elected official.â€