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Its all coming apart now, or is it coming together?
Episode six is the penultimate inDisclaimers brief season, and it feels that way.
Apple released several episodes ofDisclaimerin pairs, and I wish they had done the same here.
Because episode six is pure set-up.
Catherines finally telling her story, but to what end?
The Drano is in the syringe, but will it ever be injected?
The call Catherine receives from her son in the middle of the night spooks her.
Like Robert, she cant believe he would callher.
Things must be really bad.
She knows that Nick knows.
If it wasnt Robert who told him, it was that madman Stephen.
Poor Sacha Baron Cohen, who is doing his best with what little hes given.
While Catherine scours the bedroom, Robert resumes the gendered moralizing hes been rehearsing since he saw her last.
The gist is this: Cathys a shit wife and a shit mother.
Maybe Nick slept badly the night before.
Maybe Catherine really needed her husbands help.
The Ravenscrofts rush to the emergency room but theres no such thing as fast enough.
It cant be undone.
Their baby boy their only son has had a stroke.
Hes stable but asleep.
There are more important things.
The world will still be here for you to hate tomorrow.
Stephen Brigstocke is not an above-board guy!
Most of episode six takes place at the hospital.
Nicholas in bed, burdened by the tubes that are sustaining him.
Yeah, okay, Sarah.
But, sure, put the incident in Catherines file, whatever that is.
He practices his stammer in the mirror, hoping hell sound feeble and unthreatening to the hospital staff.
Could this mild man, who lived a quiet life, really have murder in mind?
Hes so gleefully proud of the destruction hes already caused.
Not just Catherines distress, but Nicholass condition.
I took him there without laying a finger on him, Stephen narrates, dizzy at his own power.
He easily talks his way past the ICU receptionist, who really needs to start checking IDs.
Getting this close to killing Nicholas has only made him more giddy.
It can only be one person.
He grabs a bat before he finds Catherine with a knife in her hand.
Would he use it?
Stephen was an English teacher; now hes catfishing, circulating revenge porn, contemplating murder.
So this is who Catherine has been talking to since the opening scene of episode six.
Were transported back to Italy again, but this time Catherines given the privilege of a voiceover.
It is the first time well hear the story of what happened from someone who was actually there.
She starts at her own beginning.
She didnt want Robert to leave, and she didnt want to be there on her own.
But very quickly familiar moments reveal themselves to be out of place.
For example: The scandalous photos taken on the beach of Catherines nipple and her crotch.
Is it possible that Nancy changed the order of the photos?
Great writers embellish and subtract, Stephen tells us.
However, when he calls Nancy a great writer to Catherine, she smacks him hard.
Now I can start, she tells Stephen as they sit across his kitchen table.
They drink tea Stephens made for them, though hes laced hers with sleeping pills.
On this show, everything bad that can happen does happen.
Catherine will drink every drop of that tea, Im sure of it.
But before she drifts off, she tells Stephen about that day in Italy.
Not just what happened but how it felt to her.
By the time she took Nicky off the beach and to bed that night, she was happy.
Crucially, she was by herself.
She felt like a good mother.
Shed still never spoken to Jonathan.
Jonathan leered at her there, too, but that was that.
She liked being looked at.
It felt novel to her.
But that was that.
Earlier in the episode, Stephen ponders the liberties Nancy took when writingThe Perfect Stranger.
For example, Sasha didnt leave Jonathan in Venice because there was a death in her family.
She left because the kids got into a fight.
And whatever happened between them, it must have been bad.
Bad enough for Sasha to leave and bad enough for Sashas mother to call Nancy.
Before Jonathan died, Nancy already was a sad sack.
Why dont you go to Madagascar to see one, her husband innocently suggests.
Is that what Nancy finally did inThe Perfect Stranger?
Did she take the story of her lost sons holiday and fix it?
Embellish elements; subtract others.
Make the order of the story work out.
Kill off Sashas aunt and see the eclipse from her own backyard.
But Sashas mother wont let her daughter come to the phone, it seems.
Even after Nancy tells her that Jonathan is dead.
The Brigstockes never hear from Sasha again.
She skips the funeral, I suppose.
Nancy embellished and subtracted, like a great writer does.
Maybe the photos fell from their envelope and she collected them out of order.
Maybe she was simply fixing it as best she could.
What did her mother say to make Nancy so upset?
What in the world did Jonathan do to that girl?
