A strong first-season finale is a good sign for a show. It’s an indication that the story is gathering strength as it grows, that the characters are displaying increased complexity and depth, that the filmmakers understand what they have and why it works and plan continuing to make it work in the future.
The Better Sister’s season finale indicates none of those things.
Its primary task is tying a bow on the murder of Adam Macintosh, now that we know who really dunit. It was Nicky — and there’s your first problem. We’re shown via flashback that after receiving a disturbing report from her biological son Ethan over the phone that his father was abusing Chloe, his adoptive mother and Nicky’s sister, Nicky drove all the way to Long Island, got in an altercation, and killed him in self-defense when her attempt to shut down the abuse failed.
Let’s review this plan, shall we? Without a word of goodbye, Nicky abandons Ethan’s disabled mother (perpetual TV mom Deirdre O’Connell, making a little meal out of the role as ever), whom she helps care for, to drive all the way to Long Island. She does this using a paper map she buys at a convenience store because she left her phone at Adam’s mom’s — convenient if the story later depends on not being able to trace her movements, but absurd from a reality perspective. If I’m driving from Cleveland to East Hampton, I’m using Google Maps.
The next part of Nicky’s plan is to show up unannounced, against the legally binding terms of a custody agreement, at the house of the man she knows for a fact abused her, drugged her, framed her for the near-death of her child (which didn’t even happen), and took both the baby and her sister away from her — a sister he is now also abusing. Once she arrives, she barges in, confronts him with what she knows, and plops herself down on the couch to wait for Chloe and Ethan to return.
What could possibly go wrong?
Exactly what you’d expect, that’s what. Adam, the physically abusive husband, puts his hands on Nicky as he’s done countless times before, and she stabs him in the ensuing struggle. Later, Ethan comes home, finds Adam alive but barely conscious, assumes his mother did it, and stages a break-in to cover her tracks. Ethan tells Nicky he’d leave his father to die all over again if he had the chance. It’s a sweet, heartwarming, we’re-all-in-this-together family-style murder, in other words.
Back in the present, both the sisters and the cops continue their respective investigations and assorted capers. Nicky hires Chloe’s IT expert to dig up Detective Guidry’s relationship to that man in the nursing home and uncovers her history of misconduct. Using Catherine’s connections, she blows the story up wide and gets Guidry yanked from the case. (Meanwhile the IT guy just kind of aimlessly wanders away across the beach as the rest of the scene takes place, like a sight gag from Wet Hot American Summer.)
Before her removal, Guidry gets the goods. Traveling to Ohio without authorization, she interviews Adam’s mom and finds out that Nicky was mysterious unaccounted for the night of the murder. When she returned, she knew Adam had been stabbed, information only the cops and the killer would have had at that point. Coupled with the DNA Guidry lifted off Nicky’s discarded cigarette, she’s sure she can make a case — or could, if her boss would let her.
Guidry’s partner Bowen, meanwhile, is following leads of his own into the sordid Gentry Group, a series of shell corporations that fund the slave-labor construction of megastructures in the Middle East. (You have to imagine partners at a white-shoe law firm are unaware of how the construction business works over there for this to make sense. Just roll with it.) Bill, Adam’s boss, is in it the deepest, personally taking on some of the most legally precarious holdings on his biggest client’s behalf.
There’s only one problem: However scared Chloe and her boyfriend Jake are of the Gentry Group, we know they didn’t do it — Nicky did. But that doesn’t stop Chloe from framing Bill by including the murder weapon in a packet of files she takes from Adam’s home safe and returns to the firm as a phony make-good for their earlier arguments. With the help of rogue FBI Agent Olivero, who’s suddenly trustworthy, Bowen raids Bill’s apartment and makes the arrest.
The episode ends with a series of characters watching this development on the news — Guidry, Catherine, Arty the red-herring doorman. But there are notable exceptions: Michelle, Ethan’s lawyer and Jake’s friend and former lover, shows up at his house in person — that’s all this episode is, people showing up in person to have conversations, as you do — perhaps to discuss the case. But Jake is shown dead on the beach in his wetsuit. Maybe Gentry really did get to him after all. Maybe it was Olivero. Maybe it was Bill. Maybe it was Michelle! Maybe we’ll find out if the show gets a second season.
Which it might. Adam’s mother compares the story to a Danielle Steele novel, a cutesy attempt by the script to head accusations of outrageous, unrealistic potboiling off at the pass. But she’s right! The show’s entire appeal is in watching rich and poor characters argue with each other sexily, with some sex and some stabbings thrown in now and then, like the big dips and loop-the-loops on a roller coaster. For a lot of viewers, that’s plenty. And if none of the performances are spectacular — with this writing, it’s hard to be — I can’t see anyone complaining about watching this cast. Jessica Biel, Elizabeth Banks, Matthew Modine, Lorraine Toussaint, Corey Stoll, Paul Sparks, and Kim Dickens are fun performers all. Though his name lacks the recognition factor, Bobby Naderi in particular impresses as Detective Bowen, a handsome guy who’s trying really hard to be good at his job. It’s an endearing performance — and as Bill continuously points out, the guy’s easy on the eyes, too.
But in the end, that’s true of basically the entire cast, and that only gets you so far. There’s one moment in this episode in particular that I think speaks to a much broader problem with The Better Sister as a whole: a phone call in which Chloe reports Agent Olivero’s misconduct to an FBI complaint hotline. The operator’s dialogue is stiff and wooden. The report, if you can call it that, goes into no details whatsoever beyond saying his behavior was inappropriate and hanging up. This takes place while actor Jessica Biel is behind the wheel of a car, with sunglasses on, effectively making it impossible for her to convey emotion.
And the entire conversation lasts about 20 seconds. It’s so abrupt, so goofy, like on the level of a Mystery Science Theater 3000 movie, that I actually laughed. The effort feels so minimal! If The Better Sister had put half the energy into making little scenes like this work that it did into ensuring everyone dresses exclusively in shades of blue-green and orange-brown, it might have been something, well, better.
Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.