I’m really enjoying this show. I can’t decide if I appreciate that it’s a miniseries with a clear, defined story to tell, or if I wish it stretched the timeline out more so it could stick around for multiple seasons. Either way, everyone is doing great work here.
Nick started the New York Chippendales to get away from Steve, but that seems to be backfiring. Steve is constantly flying in from the west coast to visit the club, partially to check up on Nick and partially to seethe with jealousy at how instantly popular and upscale the New York club is. Oh, and partially to get away from his own problems back in LA, where Chippendales 1.0 can’t keep up with its expenses and Steve is being sued for racial discrimination. Irene wants to help fix things, but Steve’s insistence on being the sole infallible business genius means he’s too proud to let her do what she does best.
It's a good episode for Irene. Of the core four, she’s probably the “purest” of the bunch, the one who generally assumes positive intent in others and doesn’t really have a self-serving agenda. Here, as Steve unravels over basically everything, she finds herself in a tough spot as both his business partner and his romantic partner. His desperation, jealousy, and ego leads to increasingly bad business decisions, and she has to tiptoe to keep him from spiraling further. She has a reckoning this episode, deciding who she wants to be, what she wants her marriage to be like, and how she wants the business to be run.
It's clear that 3,000 miles between Steve and Nick isn’t enough. Steve is constantly showing up as a thorn in Nick’s side, and although they make nice in front of the customers, they’re driving one another up the wall. Even in what seems to be a scene of more honest connection between them, hearkening back just slightly to the early days of their collaboration, you can feel that the geniality is thin and fragile, prepared to break at the smallest provocation on either side.
Not as much from Andrew Rannells/Bradford in this episode, though he does play a key role in a major step that brings the plot forward. He’s only in a few scenes, but he plays them well, forever trying to pacify Nick when Steve infuriates him. In a scene where they’re talking about how embarrassing Steve can be during his visits to New York, especially with their celebrity clientele, I appreciate that Bradford does an impression of Steve without doing any sort of accent. Given the time period and the general A-holeness of most of the characters, it was certainly within the realm of possibility, but avoiding it was the right choice.
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