Catch up first: read Anika’s Episode 1 review, Episode 2 review, Episode 3 review, Episode 4 review, Episode 5 review and Episode 6 review before diving into this Episode 7 spoiler review.
What a heartbreaking end to an episode. Usually when these episodes end, I am left in shock, disbelief, confusion, or fear for our main character. However, this ending left me feeling quite melancholy. After Paula spends the majority of the episode trying to cope with possibly having murdered Dennis and live as close to normally as possible (with minimal success), to have the episode end with her arrest broke my heart. I was excited for her to finally have a date with Steve, amidst everything terrible that has happened. I was moved by the juxtaposition of Steve headed to her house with flowers, and Paula in the back of the cop car, a pane of glass separating her from normalcy and what she knew as her life.
Without fail, this show has been really successful at making me consistently feel for Paula. And I have to give all that credit to Tatiana Maslany. In this episode, Tatiana plays the skillful embodiment of multiple conflicting emotions so effectively. Some have called her character annoying or frustrating, but rather I find her to be continuously compelling and real. Her complexity is honest and relatable. The emotional beats she embodies keep me invested week to week.
Much to my surprise, I actually found Geri and Rudy to be funny in this episode, even laughing out loud at some of their comedic moments. I have to admit Rudy's line about "Die-ya" got me, I couldn't help it. Their personal fears coming to the forefront - Rudy's fear leading to his doubt of Paula, Geri's desperate unethical attempts at finding a story - made them a bit more complex and interesting than just the snarky co-workers they've been framed as.
The dynamic between Detective Gonzalez and Detective Baxter was also intriguing. Detective Baxter seems to be in such a rush to close the case, and I am beginning to wonder if he is somehow implicated in this twisted web of murder and blackmail or just bad at his job. Detective Gonzalez is smart, she knows that Paula isn't strong enough to strangle Trevor, and also has a sense that something larger is at play. Baxter telling her to ignore her intuition is incredibly suspicious. The last time we saw the two of them speak together was this conversation, so I wonder what swayed her to make this decision to arrest Paula.
We also begin to see more of the network that Dennis was so afraid of. We meet Edith, if that's even her real name, inform someone of Paula, Geri and Rudy's visit to Dennis' fake address. We then see the infamous Bri-dog, in his classic creepy corporate bro glory, speak to the ominous Jennifer to procure her services. What those services are is not stated, but I assume it to be of the murder variety. The web has gotten so big now that I find it a little disconnected from our main emotional beats when we see glimpses of this bigger shady organization. They feel like an amorphous "big bad", and the lack of specificity is starting to feel uninteresting. We shall see though. Now that we've seen Bri-dog on screen, perhaps this will make the complex web clearer.
In the online discourse, people have shared that they believe that Dennis is still alive. It's the classic rule - unless it is absolutely clear on screen that the character has died, then it's always possible that they survived. At the beginning of the episode when I saw that Paula had indeed shot Dennis in his cheek rather than in his head (which I had originally assumed), I began to experience those same doubts. Either he escaped driving away with a pretty traumatic facial wound or the "powers that be" found out and scooped him up. All I know is his death no longer feels definitive. The mystery continues.
Upon seeing Ash, despite the fact that her phone had been "hacked" the episode prior, and she had been a key player in the episode before that, I slightly forgot that we would likely be coming back to her story. There are so many parts of this story at this point that it can feel hard to keep track and stay equally invested in each of them. The shots of her in finding the hidden lunchbox in Florida, were captured beautifully. All warm colours and softness, in comparison to the rest of the show. When she is looking through the videos, seeing all of the people they had blackmailed, I began to think again of my question about how the show is representing sex work. This seemed to highlight that people who engage with sex workers come from all walks of life, and are looking for different things - pleasure, companionship, confidence, and much more. I appreciated that they reflected this spectrum of experience in the videos, and still was concerned that the only sex work representation in the show is that of those who manipulate the people that trust them. Once again, this sets up a really troubling message about sex workers and continues to be a concern for me.
We've got a lot more story to uncover and themes to clarify with only 3 episodes left. I wonder what will be uncovered as we continue into this last portion of the season. Will it be maximum melancholy or maximum mystery or a combination of both? Only time will tell!