Bad Monkey Episode 6: "Yo, Would You Tell Ms. Chase I Still Love Her Like Crazy"

The *ahem* hits the fanboat as everybody hits rock bottom in some very entertaining ways.

And we’re back. 

Fair warning, this one’s probably going to be shorter than usual. They went and scheduled a Presidential debate on the night I was going to review Episode Six of “Bad Monkey,” and being a responsible citizen, I decided to make that a priority. Whether that was a good idea or not is a matter for some other venue. For now, I have a duty to you, too, because it looks like people are really reading these recaps, so I’d better not let you down. Thanks for reading!

Anyway, our characters in “Bad Monkey” happen to be in a hurry, too, so let’s get right to it. All that chasing that was going on in our last episode pays off with a lot of catching in this one. There comes a time in every story when the protagonists have to hit their lowest point in order to be able to find their way back up. That time hits everybody in Episode Six, probably the best-written and most confidently staged episode of the series so far. (Hats off to director Liz Friedlander and writer Milla Bell-Hart.) Spoilers follow below, yo . . . 

First, the law catches up with Yancy, thanks unfortunately to his old partner Rogelio, who turns him in when he visits his house. The guilt from this will eat at Ro for the whole episode, and Yancy has no trouble twisting the knife, even as Ro’s husband Montenegro steps in to act as his defense attorney. Of course, we also get to see Yancy come face to face with Mendez, who can’t help but gloat that he gets to pin a murder on his old nemesis, with what he almost certainly knows is bad evidence. As usual, of course, Yancy does himself no favors. He seems utterly incapable of holding himself back from saying things that he will instantly regret. You can see it in Vince Vaughn’s face that he regrets them even as he’s speaking, but he’s being borne on a wave of motormouthed spite that he can do nothing but ride. 

We get a lot more time with Ro than we have previously, including a bit of background on his friendship with Yancy, so we get to see the whole process of his moral struggle with his choices, and what he owes to his friend and the truth. John Ortiz gives one of the more touching performances so far in “Bad Monkey,” as a good guy with a conscience who’s just trying to figure out how to balance the right thing with the least harm. 

On Andros, Gracie the Dragon Queen makes her move, quickly ramping up from her flirtation with Egg to outright seduction – cut short when Egg sees Neville and starts shooting. Neville is hit in the arm and badly wounded, but manages to escape and elude Egg’s search. But the Dragon has her claws into Egg now, and whether she has genuine interest in him or just wants to use him to get to his boss, she has in him a useful tool.

Armed with a forged deed, Gracie gets Egg to make an introduction, and gets the upper hand on Nick and Eve Stripling since that deed is for a piece of land they (and by they, I mean Eve) badly want. They’ll have to pay her price or risk her revealing what she knows about them, which has to be a lot, given how well-connected the Dragon Queen is around the island. Jodie Turner-Smith as Gracie has such immense power and poise that she reduces the Striplings to incompetent-looking schmucks in their presence, and they do not like it one bit. Eve and Nick increasingly feel like passengers in their own story. 

But all of this doesn’t happen before Yancy and Bonnie’s (or rather, Plover Chase; jeez, this show is chock-a-block with aliases) stories collide once more, as Yancy tries to swing by home after his grave robbing escapade and finds the mysterious dark SUV that’s been tailing him since the beginning. Bonnie’s reunion with young Cody is going on inside, and when Yancy figures Cody must be the driver of the SUV, he goes on the attack. Awkwardness ensuses but really, Yancy doesn’t have time for another mess, so he lets them go lie low at a secluded Yancy family cabin on a lagoon. 

There they find Jim, ready to dispense some more crusty Scott Glenn wisdom, and help Bonnie (possibly with the aid of a manatee?) to the realization that the kid who helped screw up her life and has just come back into it is still very much a kid, even though he’s now 27. Bonnie may not quite know what she wants from life now, but this is not it. Unfortunately, she realizes this just as the Oklahoma cop who’s been chasing her arrives at the door, and she decides to high-tail it away on Jim’s fanboat (leading to Scott Glenn’s delivery of one of the funniest lines of the show so far). 

As we wrap things up, the story blows wide open. 

First, Ro gets a satisfying redemption by busting into the room just as Yancy is about to be indicted, with further evidence from the eyewitness of Izzy O’Peele’s murder that puts a one-armed man at the scene as well (“like the guy from ‘The Fugitive!’”) – which she says she also told Mendez, who told her to stay quiet about it. Yancy may get his big break as Mendez bolts. 

Meanwhile, Rosa, having dodged the police when Yancy got caught, seeks evidence to corroborate the story of Nick Stripling’s survival, and tracks his private plane back to its hangar afer it returns to the Keys. She finds it has returned with unexpected cargo, as she opens the door to reveal . . . the bleeding Neville Stafford. 

Finally, the Dragon Queen walks home and suspects she may have a tail, which she most certainly does. A tail that puts a black bag over her head. What I really hope this means is that now we’ll get to find out, as she warned, what happens to people who f*** with her. 

We’re all set for a wild ride to the finish over the next three episodes, and I am here for it. Well, I will be anyway. Right here on the Film Yap every Wednesday until this thing wraps. Until then.