'Ringer' Season 1, Episode 19 Recap - 'Let's Kill Bridget'

Everyone has murder on the mind in this week’s episode of “Ringer”. Siobhan fantasizes about killing Bridget in a scene that was produced entirely to be put into misleading promos. Bridget, as per usual, is nearly killed a million times.

Agent Pretty Eyes delivers a beat down, loses his badge and nearly dies, which is really a Malcolm kind of day minus being tied to something. And in the shocking twist present in every episode ending of “Ringer”, it turns out the hit on Siobhan was put out by the former Mrs. Martin. As per usual, props need to be given to the show, because I didn’t see that one coming.

It’s beginning to feel like “Ringer” is just a series of events leading up to an ‘OMFG’ episode ending. I’m increasingly not sure that is a workable model for a series. This week, “Ringer” switches up the format a bit, making both the beginning and end of the episode into cliffhanger moments.

Here’s what the beginning of the episode would lead you to believe: Bridget is dead, Andrew and Catherine are nefariously hooking up and Henry is booked in the slammer, possibly for her murder. “What?!” you scream. Then the episode flashes back in time to explain all these events in completely reasonable fashion, or at least what “Ringer”’s version of reasonable is.

The following are the explanations:

Why is Henry in the Slammer?

Henry is at the police station for the same reason that Henry does anything on this show—because he is really, really dumb. At this point Henry has somehow surpassed normal dumb levels and gotten to a level of dumb that only golden retrievers who run into sliding glass doors can hear.

What happened is that Henry convinced Siobhan that he would talk to his father-in-law, the person he gave Tyler’s flashdrive with all the Ponzi information. Remember Tyler, that guy he killed by accident? Honestly, neither did I until he was explicitly mentioned. Apparently too many disposable characters are killed in this show, so unless they are shot five times in the face like Gemma I can’t remember them all.

Henry talks to his father-in-law, who assures him that he’ll take care of the whole business with the kind of oily charm usually reserved for people perpetuating Ponzi schemes, not being victimized by them. Right at this moment, Henry should have picked up on something amiss. His father-in-law practically cackles evilly while getting into his car. But Henry pats himself awkwardly on the back for a job well done and treats himself to a Scooby snack or whatever Henry does on his down time. Certainly not spend time with his soulless ginger children.

Shocking no one in the audience, Henry’s father-in-law double crosses him in order to avoid being taken down by the whole Ponzi mess. He somehow implicates Henry in Tyler’s murder (how did he even know about that? Did I miss something) and now Henry is being questioned by police. I can’t wait until next week, when Siobhan smuggles him out of jail by shoving him underneath one of her magical pregnancy-obscuring coats.

Why Were Andrew and Catherine Kissing?

Another good question! You see, Juliet tries to convince her mother to be a decent person and help Andrew out with all his pilling bills by saving their property in Palm Springs. All Catherine hears is “blah blah green investor, dollar signs, moneymoneymoney, blah” and heads off to double-cross Andrew under the guise of a good deed. She tries to pick the property off Andrew for far below what it’s worth so that she can sell it to a green developer for wind turbines. I’m sorry, is there such a thing as a place that has especially good wind? Is that a thing?

To take her ruse one step further, she uses her feminine wiles to try to get Andrew to agree to sell. He does agree, not to her kiss, but to selling her the property for 10 million dollars. Of course that’s because Juliet told him about the “Wild Things” scheme and he has double-crossed Catherine’s double-cross. It’s a triple-cross! Or is it a quadruple-cross? I’ve honestly lost track. The moral of this story: the Martin clan is a very loving and functional family unit.

Is Bridget Dead?

Nope! Although we get to see Siobhan’s fantasy of killing her, which does nothing except reinforce that “Ringer” is still terrible at the twin CGI. How can you pitch an entire show built on the basis of twins and not bother to figure out how that CGI would work? This is perhaps “Ringer”’s biggest mystery. I’ve been hoping that Bridget would find out Siobhan was actually alive for ages now, but after that brief view into the future I think I can stand to wait a bit longer.

Bridget decides that she wants to testify against Macawi after all, only as Siobhan pretending to be Bridget. So she’d be Bridget pretending to be Siobhan pretending to be Bridget. Got that? Would she actually be committing any kind of fraud if she did that? My brain hurts from this whole paragraph.

Unfortunately, she picked the wrong time to start trusting Agent Pretty Eyes. (And not just because apparently he has a new pilot on ABC!) After a sting gone wrong at the tarot dry cleaners, he’s relieved of his badge and gun.

But he still comes up with a brilliant idea: they’ll pretend to kill Bridget, saving Siobhan and her family from danger! Brilliant! Except for how they’re almost killed. Good thing Sarah Michelle Gellar knows her way around a fake blood bag after all those years on “Buffy”.

It turns out the killer was some random guy from a million episodes ago that chased after Bridget trying to get assassin number one’s phone back. I miss hired killer number one, or Trunky as I affectionately call him. Trunky is more real and three-dimensional to me than most of the characters on this show. Killing Bridget would have made no difference though, because it’s Siobhan the killers are really after on Catherine’s orders. Make your own ‘woman scorned’ jokes here.

What did you think of the twist ending on this week’s “Ringer”? Do you think Catherine has more up her sleeve than meets the eye? Will Henry ever get out of jail, or grow a brain? Sound off in the comments!