Well, that was an interesting episode. Hugh has gone off the rails since his stripper wife left him. He’s too busy drowning his sorrows in liquor or buying sports cars to even think about the Bayou Hills development – the $150 million deal that brought the Malloys back to Eden Falls. Dale is busy trying to integrate himself into Panco; he sniffed some of Wayne’s $13 million, and there’s no way that he’s leaving now. Meanwhile, Dahila is having another crisis of conscience, Cael is trying to figure out how to get out of the buffer lifestyle, DiDi is trying to figure out how to get herself in the lifestyle, Sam’s cleaning up bloodstains on the stairs, and Nina is researching “Irish Travelers” on the Internet. Whew!
Dale won’t be alone in his pressuring of the Malloy family. Eamon Quinn (Jared Harris) is a Malloy family member that has just rolled in to town. He’s just been released from prison after serving a 20 year sentence for killing Ginny Dannegan’s father and uncle. He’s actually, you know, Irish, and all… and he’s badass. He’s 100 times smarter than Dale will ever be, and I feel that he’s going to pose a real challenge to Wayne over the coming weeks. He’s also ruthless, too. Dale met Eamon at a local bar to talk about Dale’s latest scam; just to show Dale who is in charge, Eamon stuck a fork in his arm at the end of their conversation:
There was also some serious tension between Wayne and Cael. You see, at the very beginning of the episode, we see the Malloys walking back towards their house. A police car pulls up and the cop arrests Cael for breaking into the school and changing the grades of several students. Of course, Cael didn’t do it by himself, and Wayne has lunch with all the fathers of the accused students (in a strip club, thanks to Hugh’s recommendation). They all agree to donate a large sum of money to the school as a “bribe” to keep the incident under wraps. However, when they all get together at the school for a meeting with the headmistress, Cale (unconvincingly) admits to the room that he was the sole mastermind behind the break-in (since two of the students were arguing about the break-in being each other’s idea before Cael confessed, I don’t think anyone really believes him). In any case, Cael made it clear to Wayne that he does not like the “rich buffer life”. And indeed, the scene where the rich families attempt to “buy off” the school is, in a way, even worse than the scams the Malloy family has pulled over the years. At least the Malloys admit that they’re petty grifters; the rich families try to give their bribe a veneer of respectability that Cael just cannot stomach. And he’s got a point.
While all this is going on, Dahlia runs in to Nina, who convinces her to go out to dinner and meet her weed hook-up. The only thing is that her hook-up is in AA, so they have to go to a church to buy Nina’s weed. Classy. In any event, Dahila sits and listens to the horror stories from the AA members while Nina does her business. This gives Dahila a “moment of clarity” (or, if you prefer, a “crisis of conscience”)… and she turns herself in to the police as a parole violator! As soon as she says “My name is Dahila Malloy and I’m a parole violator”, the screen turns to black and the episode ends… Wow!
One last thing about The Riches: Hugh really needs to get his act together. Throughout most of the first season, he was a big-dick asshole businessman who saw the entire world as a Panco development waiting to happen. And he was awesome. But now he’s just a sniveling baby. It’s as if J.R. Ewing from Dallas spent an entire season sobbing quietly to himself in a corner. I get that the writers are probably working on some kind of a huge comeback for him… just speed it up, OK?