The Act: Season 1, Episode 5 “Plan B” – Recap, Review (with Spoilers)
Gypsy presents Dee Dee her last opportunity to make some form of amends. Which leads to Gypsy’s decision to ask Victor to do something horrible.
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Gypsy presents Dee Dee her last opportunity to make some form of amends. Which leads to Gypsy’s decision to ask Victor to do something horrible.
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| Network | |
| Hulu | |
| Director(s) | Steven Piet |
| Writer(s) | Lisa Long, Nick Antosca |
| Air Date | 4/10/2019 |
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Nick’s Life In Wisconsin: Nick, Gypsy
Nick gets to be seen beyond Gypsy’s computer screen, and we see what his normal day is. He works at a pizza shop where, at best, he does advertisement since he has trouble doing more demanding work. It’s thankless, he probably doesn’t like it, but it makes him money. Also, it gives him something to do until he gets to see Gypsy in the nighttime. Then he has someone to talk to, masturbate, and perhaps get his mind off his dark and sometimes troubling thoughts.
Meet The Boyfriend: Nick, Gypsy, Dee Dee
It has been two years of talking, camming, masturbating with each other and now there is a mutual desire to meet up. Heck, maybe see if they can make something real. The problem is, Nick isn’t good in social situations and Dee Dee isn’t that trusting when it comes to strangers, guys especially. So Gypsy’s idea of them just so happening to meet at the movies, it goes to hell.
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Problem #1: Nick was late. Problem #2: The boy keeps following Dee Dee and Gypsy with the kind of smile which is off-putting. Then comes the biggest problem: He doesn’t take a hint. In the theater, Dee Dee moves when she sees him, and he keeps following them. Before they leave, he tries talking to them, and this is after Dee Dee nearly going off on him in the theater. Now she is making it public, and he is just left stunned.
Oh, and what does Gypsy do during all this? Well, she tries to help, but the damage seemingly is done. Nick is persona non grata, and Dee Dee thinks he is a pedophile. Thus ending any possibility for Nick and Gypsy to have their happy ending. Add in Victor has her on his list and, that pretty much ended everything.
I Tried Everything I Could: Nick, Gypsy, Dee Dee
Gypsy wants to be happy. Her mom claims she wants Gypsy to be happy, but having to pretend to be crippled, being tied up when she angers Dee Dee, that doesn’t make Gypsy happy. As you can see, it is making her feel trapped and like there is no easy way to grow up and leave. No matter what she does, Dee Dee will find her and bring her back.
So, taking note of Victor’s anger and the idea he could and has done bad things, Gypsy plays with that. Sees if that is just something said in the heat of passion or is Nick truly capable, I mean Victor, of killing someone. She is told yes. So, a knife is bought, a plan is made, and it seems within the next episode, Dee Dee might die.
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Question(s) Left Unanswered
- Nick is living with his parents, right?
Highlights
A Taste Of Who Nick Is
At this point, we’ve seen Gypsy and Dee Dee as three-dimensional characters/ people. Nick, however, was just this guy we knew killed Dee Dee. Yet, the more of his ticks we see, the more you are led to ask is there something different about him beyond social anxiety and being a bit weird, it pushes different thoughts. First and foremost, did he really understand what he was getting into? Also, it makes you wonder how much of this is just the writers filling in details, getting a bit creative, and how much is fact to performance?
On The Fence
It Pushes You To Remind Yourself This Was A Real Situation, Some Of This Is Embellished, And No One Is Innocent In The Situation
Similar to Dirty John, though with far less frustration, there comes a point where you recognize there is a need to know the truth. You can’t just use this like how you watch a biopic and think you got a good sense of what went on. And one of the main things triggering that is Gypsy. There is just something about the way she is played which makes it clear she has learned a thing about manipulation from her momma, and is using it on Nick, and it pushes you to want to understand the real relationship. Did Gypsy perhaps use sex and the skills she absorbed from her mom to know a mark when she saw one?
Don’t get me wrong, I see her as a victim. Yet, in the back of my mind, I keep thinking about Sharp Objects and Amma. Someone fictional, in that case, yet with her also dealing with a mother who has Munchausen syndrome by proxy, and becoming twisted due to that, it reminds me how much representation matters. For with every move Gypsy makes, as much as I recognize why some could see her as a victim, there comes this idea she is also a villain too. Since, like Amma, she found someone to enable her dark side and also like Amma, she absorbed the attention and wants to take out the person who is not only threatening that but is keeping her from being in control of how much she gets.
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Thus leaving me in the mindset of, as the comparisons mount up, as I recognize Dee Dee stole Gypsy’s teen years and early adulthood, it lessens any means of justification for killing her mom. In fact, her pushing Nick to do so shows she may have been as bad, if not worse, than her mother in some ways. Since it appears everything she did was premeditated, and she made sure to find someone she could control to do what she clearly couldn’t. So, as we saw, when she got caught, she could offload some of the negative attention and take on that victim role.
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