The Book of Rannells: Black Monday: Season 2, Episode 6 – “Arthur Ponzarelli” (2020)

Today, I’m staying home for Samuel L. Jackson.

Unfortunately, this will be the last episode of Black Monday for a while. I haven’t heard any suggestion that production was shut down and the season is incomplete, but Showtime is “pressing pause” on the remaining episodes and promises to air the rest of the season “later this year.” Both a bummer and maddeningly impressive. This show is a wild roller coaster, and it’s a shame the momentum built here won’t be followed up on anytime soon (see you later, I guess, Showtime subscription?)

The events of last week put a bandaid on Dawn and Blair’s financial woes, but now they’re back in dire straits. While Dawn attempts to deal with this, Blair is mentally AWOL, obsessing over some new distance between him and Roger (I called him Harris, his last name, initially, but Blair always calls him Roger now, so we’ll stick with that.) Dawn also attracts the attention of Marcus, who manages a massive scholarship fund for African-American students, and she’s wary of pursuing any deals she believes in at a time when she’s only in the market for shady deals with people she can screw over. Elsewhere, Mo and Keith are both sniffing around for trouble for their own respective reasons, and Tiff suffers an existential crisis.

For me, not quite as satisfying as the awesomeness of last week, but still pretty good. The highlights include Yassir giving Mo a tour of the office as reinvented by Dawn, Dawn awkwardly trying not to flirt with Marcus (he has a very large endowment,) an extended Phantom of the Opera gag, and some good jokes about Mo’s unfortunate hair. Tiff is also quite funny on her personal quest to rediscover herself now that Georgina Jeans is no more (although her new denim pitch at the top of the episode, before she starts spiraling, is the best part.)

Some decent Blair scenes here. His mooning over Roger is equal parts funny and tender, and it involves a low-key spying sequence set to the song “Private Eyes” that culminates in the delightful exchange (no context,) “Well, we’ve got these hats, we should do something.” “Yeah, let’s do hat stuff!”

We also get a little deeper into Blair’s relationships with most of the major characters. There’s him and Roger, of course, but we additionally see further demonstration of how he takes both Tiff and Dawn for granted. On the latter in particular, he’s gotta watch out – Mo played that game last season, and if that’s any indication, Blair is in for a reckoning before too long. Lots more Blair-Mo too. They have a fun conversation ruminating on where their relationship has gone, and Mo’s involvement in the Roger plot pays off in a big way. Plus, we also get a return to Blair’s rather fraught interactions with Keith, with the tables somewhat turned this time.