Three fun storylines this week, featuring some good character moments and a hilariously-unhinged performance from Andrew Rannells. Be warned: in order to talk about the A-plot here, I’m going to need to include some relationship spoilers for season 3.
Mo’s attempt at a birthday surprise for Nomi, his client/fiancée (yep – whether trading on Wall Street or producing jazz music, Mo’s love life is all kinds of messy,) goes off the rails in a major way, and Dawn is put in an awkward position trying to salvage it. Blair, still rattled from his assassination attempt and a number of grisly occurrences that seem to keep happening in his vicinity, retreats into his brand-new panic room. And Tiff and Keith try to brainstorm a new ad for Pfaff Fashions that caters to both their core market of conservative Christians and their emerging new market of gay men.
I avoided getting too specific about Nomi before now, but I want to get into it a little here because I really like where this episode takes her and the Mo/Dawn stuff. Nomi’s introduction on the show is all about Mo rebounding from Dawn, which immediately cues up Dawn’s jealousy over the much younger woman that Mo is now fawning over. It’s always been clear that Nomi is a plot device derailing the complicated love/hate thing that Dawn and Mo have going on, and I’m not saying that she’s not. I don’t foresee any scenario in which she’s not a midgame pitstop for Mo, and “A doesn’t realize the extent of their feelings for B until B gives up on them and starts dating C” is a very well-traveled storyline.
But Nomi being a plot device doesn’t mean she can’t also be a character in her own right, and this episode starts to make a little more room for that. We get to know her more, seeing her relationship with Mo from her perspective for the first time, and we learn things about her that Mo doesn’t know. Even better, Dawn starts to see her as a person too. While Dawn is still wrapped up in her own warring feelings about Mo, she connects with Nomi in this episode and starts to care about her well-being, not wanting to see Mo/Nomi settle down in domestic bliss but not wanting to see her mistreated either. It’s so much more interesting to me than the usual routine of the two women who love the same man hating each other to various degrees.
The Tiff-Keith plot is a hoot. I love the field trip Keith takes Trish on to introduce her to the untapped gay market for her burgeoning denim empire. “Everyone knows that trends start with the gays and end with television comedy writers!” Tiff notes excitedly, and she squeals over how many drag versions of herself she encounters. Their ridiculous efforts to appeal to ultraconservatives and gay folks in the same ad are also great.
Blair’s blossoming paranoia means that he’s mostly on his own today, with no one to bounce comedy off of besides himself, but Rannells still holds it down. The panic room scenes have a good Hitchcockian bent to them (that gets aptly lampshaded,) and Blair’s rapid spiral into twitchiness and seeing threats around every corner is great. Rannells leans hard into the aesthetic, keeping it funny while also hitting the beats of that type of psychological thriller.
The performance is weighted more toward unspoken comedy and physical stuff, with periodic lapses into rambling monologues, but there are some gems in the dialogue as well. I especially like the wildly-panicked, “There’s someone out there, watching, waiting – probably sharpening something or cutting the eyes out of something!” Too funny, and Rannells does a great job with this episode.
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