Rani finally gets her phone back and listens to Esme’s voice mail. Her attempts to connect with the brother-sister duo are to no avail, though. Greg is finally being considered for a partner after his success with Lady Gaby. Spencer, his arch-nemesis, spies on him to find a fault. Meanwhile, a parallel sequence sees two characters and their respective fathers engage in an important business meeting with significant financial consideration. Lady Gaby presents to her father, the Earl, an idea for the music festival titled “Pryvet”, while John takes Frank – with the name Howard Cherry – to explain his sudden investment to his father. Both sequences run side by side and end positively for John, just about managing, and negatively for Gaby, whose father agrees in front of her to fund the festival, asks Greg to sabotage the plan. Christian and Esme make it back home to finally run away. The two share a tender moment and wonder what lies ahead for them. Rano, still reeling from snitching on Christian, is threatened by Diane about the gun incident. Greg, now at a crossroads with the festival, attempts to honor his word to Lady Gaby’s father. In the process, he upsets her so much that her rant takes all of the group in its wrath. Rani adamantly brings up the necessity to find Christian and help him with the money. The group ignores her pleadings, with the exception of Myrna. She visits her sister to ask for advice on the issue: help Christian and thereby losing the chance to help the thousands who will benefit from the money received from the loot. Another Diane flashback shows how she was asked to make a choice between her current life and the one she wanted by her supervisor. Gaby is still upset with Greg’s comments about his father. In an act of rage, she stops her party midway and decides to ruin the bungalow’s lawns – the exact reason why her father said no to the festival. She ends up in jail again and calls Greg, who comforts her. They decide to help Rani find Christian and are supported by Myrna and Frank. John, however, snitches on them and the plan is on hold for the time being. His father discovers Howard Cherry’s truth when he visits the center and spots Frank. The group continues with their plan of breaking into Diane’s office. Meanwhile, Spencer gets a whiff of Greg’s possible wrongdoing and fraud of the firm and looks into his stash of files, possibly finding something incriminating. The plan is successfully executed with some last-minute improvisations The Sargent visits Diane about her observations regarding Christian. To everyone’s surprise, when he opens his file, it is actually Malacki’s photo on it, not Christian’s.
The Episode Review
The cliffhanger that the episode ended on is just one of the things that makes the wait for the season finale a nightmare. So many different subplots crescendoed ominously for our group. Spencer discovers the fake files; John’s father discovers his lie about Howard Cherry’s identity; Tom discovers Frank’s plan to abandon the family – the list is a good one. Episode 5 functioned on weighty themes of abandonment, and good parenting among others. The mutuality of the characters’ conditions is craftily brought out in the writing and how they are developed. The parallels drawn are heartbreaking in the end but also worthy of praise. Other important elements of the storytelling in the episode include the need for a stronger human connection, i.e., empathy, and the strength of togetherness. Other key ideas that were explored in this episode were the threshold to live with yourself on the basis of your actions and the uncertainty of choices we make. Both combine to form the core of the reason why they decided to help Rani get the information about Christian. They also experienced that in their own lives and made the decision to be content with their mistakes. The web of lies spread in the first four episodes of The Outlaws seems to be finally catching up. The season finale promises to be something truly extraordinary. If done well, it will end Season 1 on a high note!
