This episode really pressed my anger buttons, because I was onto things from the start.
The series has featured some pretty despicable couples, over the year, but none so recently, as Richard and Mary Matthews, played by Darren Goldstein (who was Oscar Hubbard, in the 2017 Broadway revival of "The Little Foxes") and Erin Dilly (who sometimes, with that face, plays sweet things, and other times, as here, a bitch where butter would not melt in her mouth). The moment I saw them all gathered around Emilia's bed, I knew they were the culprits. And once I heard Lara and her sister were exchange students, and how angrily they reacted in the hospital room, when Lara reached for the phone, I knew I was right.
And I was. As Mary said, she and Richard met in high school in Rego Park, Queens. It is never explained how they made it to the top in Manhattan, but, with Richard at the helm, it was not, to be sure, on the up and up. This is the perfect example of a loser couple from Queens, who had no business aspiring to anything higher. The best they should have hoped for was a tract house in the same neighborhood, just blocks from where both grew up.
Instead, Richard cheats his way in business, while Mary is some hanger on. When it becomes clear Lara and Emilia were exchange students, and there had been others before them, I wondered if they were taking them in as a profitable business scheme. Instead, it is much worse.
Richard is Mr. Control, who runs the show, with Mary having nothing to say about anything. When he openly took the therapist card from Besnon that should have gone to Emilia, I had his number. But it was not until Lara showed them the X-rated video on the phone, of Emilia engaging in illegal sex acts with older men that I realized Richard is a sex sicko, who likes girls young, not pre-pubescent, but just on the cusp of womanhood. He grooms and brainwashes them; I should have felt more sorry for Lara, but I did not; in the end, I felt she should have gone to prison, too.
This episode kept talking about the big twist. So, I thought, devious as Richard is, Mary might turn out to be the abusive mastermind. But, when things close, in, and the squad is summoned to the Matthews' apartment, where it is clear Mary has been punched in the face, by Richard, while he just looks out on the terrace. It is to Darren Goldstein's skill as an actor that he delivers the most sickening monologue, going from the money he could have made, to that the girls, all of them, he loved, it was not dirty, even though they were his kids. Yuck. When asked about his wife, he arrogantly replies, "Oh, she had her day." In the arrest skirmish, Richard Matthews commits suicide, and jumps off the balcony, in front of everyone. I was glad he did, and wanted to watch his fall down 27 stories, and see his body split apart. He deserved to go to prison, but now everyone knows what a selfish narcissus he is--or was.
I did not feel sorry for Mary, but not for long. When interrogated, she says she knew what was going on, how she wanted to help the girls, but Richard made her watch him with them, through the unclosed bedroom doors, asking her to applaud his performance. As she said, "the old bitch, watching the younger bitches." When she said she did this, and stayed, because she was afraid Richard would leave, that ended my sympathy for her. I think Mary, and Lara, should go to prison. Lara maintained Richard loved her, so she did anything he said, even if it meant harm to her sister. Mary just wanted the affluent life style. Well, Mary, either you will go to prison, or be thrown on the street, lucky enough to either crawl back to some derelict hole, in Rego Park, Queens, or share an efficiency apartment in Connecticut, with Ruthie Madoff!!!!!!!!!!! "Why, oh why," darlings????????
I wish Olivia or someone had smacked Mary and Lara's faces. Instead, everything ends all phony and rosy for these traumatized girls. Emilia should be reunited with her mother; Lara should hit the streets, as a prostitute. Which she will probably do.
Everyone, save Emilia, was evil on this show, and none of them got comeuppance enough. Though Richard Matthews' suicide was the first one that ever made me happy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The show is going soft. It needs to toughen up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Where is Stephanie, when needed?????????????????
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