Bad Monkey Ep. 7 - "A Total Cat Person"

None of this is gonna go the way you want it to.

There’s no rest for the wicked, but everybody’s trying to find a little peace and take a break in this episode of “Bad Monkey,” wicked or not. Those who seek it will find rest in inverse proportion to their wickedness, though – well, all but one, perhaps. 

First, I must make a correction that will shortly become relevant – I was wrong about the magic that the Dragon Queen and Yaya practice. I have referred to it previously as “voodoo,” but that’s not quite right. Voodoo is practiced in Haiti, but in the Bahamas, the similar folkloric tradition is known as obeah. It’s also a blend of many religious and cultural beliefs, originating with the Yoruba people of West Africa, whose language Yaya specifically invokes as she describes the initiation that the Dragon Queen must undergo. (Incidentally, “Yaya” is as much of a title as it is a nickname for Gracie’s grandmother. It describes one who has been initiated into the rites of obeah, and relates to a Yoruba word for “eldest daughter.”)

My research detour was inspired by the greater depth that we finally find in Episode 7 for the story of Gracie, the Dragon Queen – and also because it feels important at this specific moment in America to get one’s facts straight about the people of the Caribbean, especially Haiti. We’re about to discover a lot more, so beware of spoilers. Let’s go . . . 

One consistently delightful thing about “Bad Monkey” is that the story seldom ends up going the way we expect it to, given the tropes of the detective genre that we’re all familiar with. In fact, that’s almost exactly what the Dragon Queen says when she’s brought before Nick and Eve Stripling: “None of this is gonna go the way you want it to.” Which is right, but not for the Striplings – it’s for herself. For the first time, we see her scared as Eve looks her in the eye and tells her about the people she’s murdered in cold blood for getting in her way. But there’s something besides fear motivating Gracie, too, and that may be what convinces her to sell her land (which, technically, she stole with the forged deed) to the Striplings. That was definitely not what I expected, anyway. 

You see, Gracie didn’t actually want to be the Dragon Queen at first. In some brief but wonderfully effective flashbacks, we get the main events of Gracie’s own history. She lost her mother at a young age and has been raised by Yaya, the former Dragon Queen. Young Gracie doesn’t want to go into the family business, though, until her own heart is broken by a boy on a vacation fling. Then she’s all in, we assume, so she can learn how to curse the likes of that boy. But going through the initiation entails sacrifice, Yaya insists, and thereafter the Dragon Queen, powerful as she will become, won’t really be able to live a life of her own, but one of service to her people.

Eve Stripling recognizes some of this as she appraises Gracie, telling her that they share the desire for a “beautiful life” and the strength of will to get it by any means necessary – but Gracie has something that Eve lacks, a conscience, and it will haunt her. 

That, if anything, is the moral of this episode, a bit of truth known as “the pickle speech” by the Yancy family, whose upshot is this: a lie is the easiest path when you’re in trouble and want to get out, but even if no one else finds out about it, it will stick with you for the rest of your life. 

For Gracie, the lie means the chance at financial freedom that she’s never known before - there may be prestige in magic, but apparently there isn’t a lot of money. It also occasions a crisis of faith when her friend Asia – whose deceased father really owned the land that Gracie claimed – and Yaya both call her out for her fraud. The latter specifically and ominously warns that Gracie has “stepped into the middle of [her] own curse,” and will come to ruin if she doesn’t change her path. Frustrated with her own sacrifices, Gracie loudly denies even believing in obeah, and seems ready to leave the island altogether, though before she gets a chance, she winds up again in the arms of Egg. 

Nick Stripling, on the other hand, is more trapped than ever in the lie he’s living. He’s unable to rescue his relationship with Caitlin, and he’s now terrified of Eve – he now wants to keep her happy more out of self-preservation than love. Eve wants to move against Yancy, which we assume Nick will go along with for the same reasons. 

Things on the Keys are a little messier, as everybody ends up crashing into each other at some point, though not so literally as Yancy crashing into Cody in the last episode. Yancy is actually busy trying to repair his life back in the Keys, and for once it seems to be going fairly well as everyone finally comes together to help set things right. Rogelio and Yancy end up catching the fugitive Officer Mendez, whose loyalty to his cat proves his undoing, but not before Ro gets shot in the leg. Rosa turns up with Neville, whom she’s patched up offscreen, and he produces a smoking gun in the form of a photo of a living Nick Stripling. This gives our gang the evidence they need to bring a case to the FBI, restoring Yancy to the police force as a detective once more. 

Of course it’s not quite that easy – once they have the evidence, the FBI basically tells Yancy to take a hike and let them take over. Only they’re not planning to make a move yet, which Yancy insists will cost them their chance to catch the Striplings. Anybody want to bet on the chances of Yancy staying clear of the case at this point?

At any rate, the down time gives Yancy a chance to get closer to Rosa. They both cheerfully insist they want to keep their relationship casual, fun, and expectation-free, but they’re clearly starting to expect more from each other anyway  – especially as each is discovering how cornered they feel in their lives and jobs. 

Finally, we have Bonnie, whose fanboat joyride comes to a quick end, underlining the inescapability of her situation. She bounces back to Yancy’s place and bounces her thoughts off of him, and for once Yancy is a voice of wisdom, channeling his dad and the “pickle speech.” Speaking of Jim, he’s been left in the cabin with the irritatingly immature Cody and can’t quite figure out what to do with him.

Bonnie makes the choice to turn herself in and embarks on the long trip back to Oklahoma with an extremely un-amused officer. At this point, this feels more like getting Bonnie out of the way of the story than anything, as her storyline has only sporadically intersected with the main plot, and she’s been given little to do but drift, agonize, and evade capture for several episodes. Perhaps we’ll see more of her, but at the moment, she’s out of the picture and not much seems to have been lost for it, despite Michelle Monaghan’s lovely, understated performance.

Everybody else, though, seems to find their way back to Yancy’s house, where decompressing with Rosa is interrupted by Jim bringing the wayward puppy Cody back, to make him someone else’s problem. Our problems are about to get a lot bigger, though, as silhouetted forms stalk the house carrying semi-automatic weapons. 

We’ve got three episodes left to wrap this up, and it looks like we’ll be starting with a bang next week. We still have plenty of unanswered questions left, both large and small. I’m still personally wondering if Driggs the Monkey will end up giving this series more than a title, and there’s the matter of the crusty sea captain narrator – will we find out why he’s telling the story? And one thread I haven’t even mentioned yet involves Yancy’s constant sparring with an obnoxiously smug real estate agent named Evan Shook, who’s so far been entirely unsuccessful in selling an enormous yellow eyesore of a house next to Yancy’s – no thanks to Yancy himself. Will he find a way to insert himself into the story? 

These are fairly trivial things, I know, but with a show so adept (mostly) at juggling multiple story threads and finding unpredictable ways for minor things to take major significance, every detail seems to count. We’ll find out soon how it all adds up.