It finally happened. About halfway through this episode, we got the moment we’ve been waiting for since Siobhan faked her death in the pilot: Siobhan and Bridget, face-to-face, finally squaring off once and for all.
Just kidding! You didn’t really think Ringer would do anything bold and exciting, now, did you?
I’ve gotten used to this show teasing something potentially interesting and then pulling the rug out from underneath itself to reveal something tired and boring instead, but I must admit, when Bridget and Siobhan’s meeting turned out to be Siobhan’s dirty daydream, I was angry. Part of this is because the show has actually been kind of decent the last few weeks, but the majority of my ire is simply because it was so cheap. Why cheapen the inevitable moment by using its promise to tease viewers? The only thing the audience potentially gains from this scene is the insight of Siobhan’s desire to see Bridget dead, which we already know about.
Other than this one moment of blinding anger, the rest of “Let’s Kill Bridget” was fairly unremarkable. It started with a ridiculous triple in medias res teaser—Henry being interrogated for Tyler’s murder! Catherine kissing Andrew! Sniper with his sight trained on Bridget!—of which two of the three scenarios were proved complete falsehoods by the end of the episode. Ringer obviously wants to be seen as tricky and clever, but it fails so spectacularly at it that it becomes more comedic than anything else, and this teaser was no exception.
With a title like “Let’s Kill Bridget,” the focus was obviously going to be on killing Bridget. The twist here is that the idea was Machado’s, posited when Bridget-as-Siobhan comes to him hoping to testify against Macawi. As Siobhan. Pretending to be Bridget. I’ll let you think about that for a second, because it’s kind of a brain twister. Surprisingly, Machado isn’t into committing major perjury and fraud. Machado does realize that someone might be after Siobhan thinking she’s Bridget (which she is, but never mind you that), so they should fake “Bridget’s” death. This might officially be the most complicated show it really won’t matter if you are following along with or not. In the end, they go to fake Bridget’s death but a real shooter actually shows up and it’s… that random guy from the beginning of the season! Thankfully Bridget identifies him immediately, because I wouldn’t have recognized him for all the money in the Mega Millions. I definitely give Ringer credit: Its plotting may be horrible and its stories nonsensical, but it does tend to recognize its own history.
The identity of the shooter may have been from too far in the wayback machine, but the reveal of who was behind his hit is decidedly more interesting. It seems, all this time Siobhan was worried about Andrew coming after her she really should have been worried about Catherine. Catherine is a completely awful and soulless human being, so this surprise was definitely in character. If they can manage to make her involvement in the entire twisty mystery rational and sane, I will be duly impressed.
As for Andrew, his kissing of Catherine was quickly rebuffed and had an ulterior motive: getting his money back. Juliet once again proves the perfect manipulator, goading her mother into buying some property of Andrew’s to “help him out” and turning it into a mind game in order to get Catherine interested. The player manages to get played, as she pays $10 million for property worth much less and Andrew gets the last laugh. That is, until she manages to kill his wife/wife’s twin sister someday. The idea of Andrew kissing Catherine was so ridiculous the teaser couldn’t have been true, making it simply seem like a waiting game until we saw what actually happened. How many times will the show try to paint Andrew as a bad guy and then immediately retract? We know better by now.
Finally, there’s Henry, the only person whose status in the teaser seems to be more of a permanent situation. Henry is such a sucker, he of the invisible children, dead wife, and love for a murder-craving sociopath. Last week, he added “accidental murderer” to his portfolio of pathetic, and this week, his father-in-law turns him in for it. They don’t make it clear if Arbogast turns in Henry because he holds him responsible for Gemma’s murder, or because Henry told him to invest in a fund that’s a complete fraud, but either are pretty horrible so it’s pretty understandable either way. The most perfect way for this story to resolve would be for Henry to go to jail for manslaughter, because someone has to be the ultimate pawn in this game. Poor Henry is already so pathetic; it might as well be him.
Although the result hasn’t been especially exciting, I’m fairly impressed with how forthcoming Ringer is being with information in the last few weeks. It’s almost as if the writers suspect the end is near and want to tie up as many loose ends as possible by the end of the season. With The CW’s horrible ratings, it is impossible to tell if Ringer has another season to look forward to, but as a viewer, it’s nice to see that this seems to be shaping up as only a single-season mystery. All I know is, whether the end is nigh or not, I’m ready for Bridget to find out about Siobhan. It’s time.
Stray observations:
- Bridget’s would-be killer wasn’t the person who was training their sights on the apartment. So are two different people after Siobhan? One after Siobhan/one Bridget? Or is this just a mistake on the writers’ part?
- Andrew sure was up and about very quickly considering he was almost paralyzed last week!
- Machado is still investigating the tarot cards and how they lead to Macawi, and it’s still silly. At least we got to see him beat some guy to a bloody pulp. Now that he’s been suspended, he might actually be able to get his hands dirty in this whole thing.
- Best Ringer Moment, Possibly Ever: Henry googles “MARTIN/CHARLES PONZI FRAUD” and gets no matches. I can’t believe he didn’t Bing it.