Monday 9 November 2015

TV review: The Beautiful Lie, episode 4, ABC (2015)

This episode is really Xander's main platform to formalise the way he will be remembered by viewers, as Anna goes into labour and gives birth to her second child.

Confused, her son Casper lashes out at his mother because he cannot understand why he is barred from being with her. Xander reveals that he is doing everything legally possible to keep Casper away from Anna. Skeet's mother turns into a psychopath fuelled by malicious vitriol, and so introduces emotions and ideas that make you wonder what Xander is going to ultimately do in his effort to punish Anna, in this emotionally unstable series.

Skeet, meanwhile, turns out to be just as unreliable as you feared he might be, holding court with his colleagues into the early hours of the morning, and making Anna wait, alone, in bed for him. It is a punishing downfall for a young man who had such potential to cement himself in our affections forever as the responsible hippy. Unfortunately, he has turned into the irresponsible one and it hurts to admit it.

Peter and Kitty are meanwhile secure in their mutual embrace, a couple of turtle-doves cooing without cease into the starry night. Kitty reveals some insalubrious and flighty parts of her personality, like the silly woman she really is, but Peter is besotted, drunk on the ichor of her burning nates. She buys a new bed to roll around in.

Dolly and Kingsley turn out to be the reliable, responsible ones. This is a turn-out for the doubters, and a revelation in the arc of the series, now more than halfway spent. This development tells you that you still have much to fear from the series. If this louche couple, who are no better than they should be, can turn out to be the series' stolid pair of homemakers, the world really has shifted off its axis.

The au-pair turns out to have a boyfriend in Greece who she talks with on Skype. Perhaps we should be relieved to find that the worst thing that Dolly can do is to walk into the au-pair's room in the night looking for a clean towel and interrupt the poor girl masturbating in front of her boyfriend's image on her laptop.

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