The Book of Rannells: Black Monday: Season 2, Episode 2 – “So Antoine” (2020)

Today, I'm staying home for Stephen Sondheim.
 
Spoilers for the end of episode 1.

The second half of Black Monday’s new season premiere, while not as strong as the first half in my opinion, is still pretty entertaining. We continue to reset the board after everything got shuffled at the end of season 1, and we’re also getting more of a look at how the fallout from Black Monday is continuing to affect people.

Dawn has just discovered where Mo is – in a motel in Miami, anonymously hiding out with the newly-out Keith – and she’s not sure what to do with that information. She’s struggling to land all the deals she wants when Mo’s name is still attached to the firm, but he’s a wanted man, and exposing his whereabouts could bring a mountain of trouble down on his head. Elsewhere, Blair and Tiff look for new digs.

The Mo plot is good. I like seeing a Mo who’s trying to live simpler and cleaner (going back to his roots a bit?), and I enjoy his responses to those who can’t fathom the notion of him not being on step two of a multipronged plan designed to screw over his enemies and get himself back on top. In keeping with the ideas set up in the first half with both Dawn and Blair, Mo is trying to present himself as a new man – almost literally in his case, given his assumed identity – but how deep does this new self really go? Is the old Mo gone or just waiting to be reawakened?

Speaking of character transformations, Keith is out there living his best gay life in Miami, rocking his natural bald head, a Freddie Mercury mustache, and a new livelihood as a roller-skating coke dealer. It’s a delight, but as you can imagine, a chilled-out Keith who’s not screwing anything up is a scenario that can only be sustained so long.

We get more on Mo and Dawn’s relationship. They’re two people with a tremendous capacity to hurt each other – they’re similar to and different from one another in almost equal measure, and it seems that they have both best and worst qualities in common. It’s what can make them spark so well together, nigh unstoppable when they focus their drive and engenuity on a common goal, but it’s also what can make things implode royally when their goals either diverge or become too similar (i.e., they both want the the same thing but only one can get it.)

Slightly less Blair and Blair-Tiff in this half, but there’s still some good stuff here. I love their scenes with the “grim realtor,” a realtor who anticipates all the best properties opening up because her sister is a hospice nurse for wealthy patients. There’s also a delightfully-bizarre bit involving a stuffed horse made entirely of scraps of Georgina Jeans (Tiff’s family empire.)

As much as Blair continues to be cowed and steamrolled by Tiff, he’s also developing a bit more of a backbone of his own. Here, we see him caught between Tiff and her feuding parents, handling the situation his (underhanded) way rather than how either side would have him do it.