'Bad Sisters' Season 2, Episode 1 Recap: Good Sisters
With all of the suspense of Big Little Lies and The Perfect Couple and the faithful notes of the Belgian series that inspired it, Clan, the inaugural, breakout star of Apple TV+'s roster, Bad Sisters, left every fan of its exactly where you could ever hope to be: satiated, content, relieved. The series unfurled while skipping between timelines as it became clear that the quintet of Garvey sisters each had their own reason for despising their sister Grace's (Anne-Marie Duff) husband, a mesmerisingly menacing John Paul (Claes Bang.) We started the series knowing that John Paul — otherwise christened by the sisters as 'The Prick' — was dead, but not knowing quite how he died. We ended the series gleeful at the sisters' collective sense of hard-earned liberation from his control after they learned that after each of their failed attempts, Grace had killed him. The Garveys had, it seemed, got away with murder. Except there'd be no mandate for a sophomore season — which, interestingly, the 2012 Belgian series the series is based on didn't attempt — if that were true.
'Everybody's gotta live,' sings Love, the band behind the opening song of the second season, 'Everybody's Gotta Live'. 'Everybody's gotta die. Everybody's gotta live, I think you know the reason why.' The camera spans across the gloomiest waters in the dead of night until we meet four of the Garvey sisters, sitting packed into Eva's (Sharon Horgan) car at the edge of these very cliffs trying to dispose of, well, something. The sisters all sit and look at each other sheepishly, Becka (Eve Hewson) arguably with more difficulty than her siblings owing to her black and bloody eye.
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When the car starts rolling backwards and looks set to veer off the cliff, Eva erupts: 'It's not my car! Sorry, it's not my car.' This, naturally, begs the question of whose car it is, and what exactly they're all doing in it. Once she's gathered herself, Eva slaps her hands on the wheel and says, 'Ready?' before the quartet of siblings inch towards the cliff edge. Ursula (Eva Birthistle) is the first to back out. 'I've changed my mind,' she stammers, stumbling back from the perilous edge of the cliff. 'I'm not ready.' Ah, the Garveys. Never more than a stone's throw away from a questionable action.
Similarly to the opening scene of the first season, Bad Sisters' second season sets the tone for the whodunnit that will inevitably unfold. It's through that lens, similarly to the first, that you watch with immense suspicion as questions of who's died rattle around your brain.
The second season of the show is set two years after the fateful incidents of the first as the Garvey sisters attempt to piece together their lives following the death of John Paul. In that timeframe, a lot has changed for each of them, which we learn at Grace's wedding (yes, really) to Ian (Owen McDonnell), a gentle giant she met in a grief support group. Becka attends with her boyfriend Callum (Peter Claffey), while Bibi's (Sarah Greene) wife Nora announces to the sisters that the couple has decided on an egg donor to have their second child (they already have an adopted son).
But the whisperings of the something that will inevitably go awry are sewn into the fabric of the show from the get-go. 'Stop waiting for something to go wrong,' Becka warns Eva, as she watches Grace taking a phone call like a hawk, before ten minutes has even elapsed. Shortly after, Roger's (Michael Smiley) sister Angelica (Fiona Shaw) approach the sisters and with just the faintest air of discomfort, you can see precisely who the Garveys newest nemesis is set to be.
After an untimely discovery of a body in John Paul's mother's pond from its new owners (they rather unfortunately found a suitcase filled with skeletal remains of John Paul's father, George, no less), the storyline for the second season begins to take shape. And when Roger's stoicism wobbles and he looks set to admit wrongdoing, Grace does the unthinkable and tells her new husband that she was responsible for her first husband's death. Talk about bursting the bubble. The Prick might be dead, but who else is set to be? There's almost no telling.
The Garveys are back! And what does that mean exactly remains to be seen but one thing's for sure, there'll never be a dull moment as far as the Garveys are concerned.
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