"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Thursday, March 19, 2020

The Book of Rannells: Black Monday: Season 2, Episode 1 – “Mixie-Dixie” (2020)


Before I get into things, let me say this first: talking about the new season of Black Monday won’t be feasible without spoiling some developments from last season. I’ll try and avoid major season 2 spoilers going forward, but anything from season 1 is on the table.

Really glad to have Black Monday back. Watching the season 2 premiere reminded me how much I enjoy it, despite its occasional messiness, and it’s been quite a while since I had some new Andrew Rannells content. While the first two episodes of the season aired back to back, I’ll just focus on episode 1 today and come back around to episode 2 for the next Book of Rannells review.

After the explosive finale last season, we kick things off with a new world order. Following their coup, Dawn and Blair have taken over Mo’s firm. Dawn revels in finally being an equal partner, but Blair continually getting all the credit for their shared work does start to get under her skin. As she runs the day-to-day trading at the firm, Blair is the golden boy who “predicted” Black Monday (rather than semi-inadvertantly caused it,) the one who gets on the magazine covers and schmoozes with senators. Mo, meanwhile, is on the run.

Maybe absence makes the heart grow fonder, but I thought this was a really strong opener. It deftly establishes how things have progressed for our major characters since we last saw them, with everyone in a new place and in some ways a new person (trying to be, anyway – scratch the surface of any of them, and they quickly reveal that they’re who they’ve always been.) The show does an especially nice job with Dawn, showing her transformation from long-suffering but ambitious trader to the big boss, rebuilding the firm in her own image and desperately trying to show how she can run things differently/better than Mo did.

Since Mo himself has disappeared to parts unknown, his screentime comes mainly in the form of flashbacks with Dawn, from the days before The Jammer Group. It’s neat to get some more insight into what they used to be like, both separately and as a duo, and the flashbacks also offer some fun glimpses into the pasts of other characters we know now.

Blair/Rannells has a pretty great episode, in my opinion. It’s fun to see how he’s tried to morph into the new rock star of Wall Street (he takes steroids now!), while also navigating the outcome of his gradual realization last season that he’s gay. Although he and Tiff went through with their wedding, everything is above board between them, and she’s happy to serve as his beard in exchange for the prestige of being the Wall Street hotshot’s wife. Their dynamic continues to be awesomely hilarious together. (Plus, they go to a swanky shindig that, if I recall correctly, is a birthday party for Nancy Reagan. I very definitely sang, “Nancy Reagan, / Meanest and thinnest of the First Ladies / Moves into the White House,” to myself.)

Speaking of nods to Rannells’s other works, this season features a new guest star: none other than Tuc Watkins, who played Hank to Rannells’s Larry in The Boys in the Band. Watkins appears as the House Minority Whip (Tiff: “that always sounds racist to me,”) a family-values conservative that Blair has to sell on bank deregulation. Their scenes together are also terrific, and a highlight of the episode for me is Blair feverishly trying to race through his 25-point lobbyist sales pitch before Congressman Harris makes it back to his hotel room.

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