Ringer - It Just Got Normal

Oh man. That was SUCH a weak midseason opener. This episode wasted so much time and spent so long on stupidity (Juliet and her teacher), and then it ended on a cliffhanger that probably won’t deliver any twists. The episode was hyped for showing the twins in the same location, but they didn’t even exchange words. Siobhan just watched Bridget in the shower. Agent Machado has to be the worst agent of all time if he can’t think, “Hmm, none of this is making sense and they look the same. Maybe I should make sure Siobhan isn’t Bridget.” By this point, with all the clues he’s gotten, why hasn’t the thought crossed his mind?

One of the reasons we hated this episode is that we had to wait so long to watch it. The return was promised on January 10^th and delivered on January 31^st. When the show left us, we still cared, at least a little. The show spent half a season winning us over, slowly. Now we are having trouble remembering where we left off and WHY we cared in the first place. The most intriguing thing in this episode was Bridget’s hair. She has bangs now, and we can’t tell if it’s a win or a fail. We’re leaning toward win, since SMG looked so young near the end of the episode with them. That’s right, douche-y kid at Ern’s school: SMG is not looking “old and saggy.” She’s still got it. Now with bangs. You, however, are still weird-looking.

Bridget meets an old friend of Siobhan’s named Greer. Shiv and Greer had a falling out, so Greer is acting cold, but Bridget wants to make up with Greer. She volunteers to help Greer’s fundraiser for Juliet’s public school. Bridget hosts a benefit for Greer’s cause. Juliet attends and gets drunk, so Andrew sends Juliet to her bedroom. Bridget intuits that something is going on with Juliet, so she goes into Juliet’s room to talk to her. You don’t get inappropriately drunk and holler across the room at your teacher for no reason. Juliet tells Bridget that she is trying to avoid Logan Carpenter. Juliet also tells a big fat fib that Logan slept with her.

This makes us seriously hate Juliet. Logan has handled this situation almost perfectly. He should have alerted a guidance counselor and another teacher that Juliet was throwing herself at him. Of course, that would have embarrassed Juliet. Bridget believes Juliet, marches out into the middle of the party, and punches Logan in the face. It’s a really good punch. Nice to see you, Buffy. The whole episode kind of built up to this moment, but we knew it was coming, because when the last episode of Ringer aired, we saw the preview for this episode. Then we waited until January 31^st to see the moment, AFTER about 35 minutes of people walking around with their heads in their asses.

Greer and Bridget have a heart-to-heart and make up. Bridget finds out that Greer knew about the Henry affair and resented it. Bridget tells Greer that Henry is no longer in the picture and Andrew never found out. Speaking of Henry, Siobhan is in town and determined to get him back. We watch Siobhan sneak into Andrew’s apartment and then into his home so that she can steal info about his company. We don’t know what her endgame is and this takes up time, so it was more boring than it sounds. Siobhan also steals the ring that Andrew gave to Bridget. Bridget doesn’t know where it went and has to tell Andrew that she got it re-sized.

Andrew and Bridget are getting along swimmingly. While Juliet was mortified at the punching incident, Andrew was impressed with his “wife’s” new motherly tendencies. They are cute together, even though you know it’s all going to come crashing down. Agent Machado might be the reason these two will break up, because he’s getting ever closer, if only as slowly as a three-year-old piecing together a 500-piece Mona Lisa jigsaw puzzle. Henry is helping Machado find Bridget Kelly. At the end of the episode, the real Siobhan seems close to explaining things to Henry. Finally, Malcolm gets a job at Andrew’s firm so that he can keep an eye on Andrew.

You have to keep in mind that nearly everything that we just recapped happened in the last half of the episode. Maybe even the last quarter. We’re not going back to check. So there was a lot of filler and time wasting. There were no new revelations and we really could have skipped this one and watched the “previously” next week. There was a long wait and it was not worth it for this premiere. One of us considered dropping this show on this episode alone, because she’s sick of watching 43 minutes drag by every week with no pay-off. Nothing freaking happened, even though the manic tone of the episode suggested that it did. Also, we still haven't connected with Bridget's motives. We will tune in next week, but it had better be good.

Episode grade: D