'Ringer' Season 1, Episode 6 Recap - 'Poor Kids Do It Everyday'

This week “Ringer” was unfortunately less delightfully nuts than last week’s outing. Still, the show should be pleased with itself that cat fights, murder cover-ups and forced heroin injections count as a slow episode.

This show badly wants to be a modern day noir but it works best when it hews closer to a primetime soap. To its credit, “Ringer” seems to be realizing this as well.

Speaking of modern day noirs remember the late, great “Veronica Mars"? If you don’t, you really should watch because that was a great show. This episode Logan Echols himself shows up when Jason Dohring guest stars as a teacher at Juliet’s new public school.

While his new teacher character seems like an upright moral kind of fellow, the law of TV averages tells me that he and Juliet will be having sex in approximately three episodes. Let the inappropriate student-teacher relationship countdown clock begin!

On the subject of clocks, it looks like time really is up for poor Gemma. We hardly knew you, Gemma! Thankfully, the show apparently didn’t back down from the twist reveal of last week’s ending where we saw Gemma’s blood splattered all over the walls. It did, however, tip-toe back from the assertion that Henry was responsible. As long as Gemma is really dead, and not just waiting until sweeps to pop back up, I’m generally fine with this. It takes gumption to kill off one of your main characters in the first five episodes, and that move caused me to give the show some major respect points.

When a show ups the stakes like that it’s essentially saying no one is safe, which makes a show like “Ringer” more exciting to watch. (Well, we can assume that Sarah Michelle Gellar is safe, because even if something happens to one sister we always have a spare.)

Henry, of course, spends half of the episode acting like an extra on “Criminal Minds”. He’s skulking around his apartment, cleaning things with bleach and giving the camera sexy serial killer looks he must have learned watching repeats of “Dexter”. After he throws some bloody rags and the shattered lamp in a trash bin across town, his presumed guilt seems established. Or is it? Seems Henry was only covering up because he thought that Siobhan was responsible for Gemma’s death and he was trying to protect her.

Why did he think that? Well there was that one time that Siobhan talked about killing Andrew and Gemma as a “joke." Because we all know nothing is more hilarious than double homicide. Siobhan was joking the same way you do when you admit something really embarrassing and then try to backtrack. “Man, I wish the Spice Girls were still making music! What? You thought I was serious? That was totally a joke! I own that copy of Spice World ironically!”

Bridget finally believes Henry after he breaks into her house and sneaks up on her. That would have convinced me too. He tells her about the evidence in the dumpster and she repays his trust by totally ratting him out to the cops. The cops, obviously, are interested in why Henry is sweating bullets. Henry might even be worse than Bridget when it comes to being interrogated.

But he lucks out when the cops suddenly let him go and he goes running off, pretty sure that Siobhan narc’d on him. Hey, has anyone checked any antique Titanic trunks for Gemma? Apparently that is the best place to hide dead bodies. Ask Bridget!

Speaking of narcs, Bridget gets a giant bag of them courtesy of Juliet’s new public school drug cleanse. Juliet may spend the episode battling mean girls with raccoon eyeliner and tacky braids but Bridget has her own demons to fight. Unfortunately for us, only one of these battles ends with a “Dynasty”-level hair-pulling cat fight. Bridget instead sees her semi-sponsor Charlie so he can toss the drugs in a coffee shop garbage and allow her to remember that this show started with a lot of heavy-handed mirror symbolism.

“What ever happened to Bridget’s old sponsor?” you may be asking yourself. Well, he’s still in that one corner of the strip club with creepy Native American Tommy Wiseau being injected with heroin and having just really amazing teeth. Seriously, Malcolm has somehow managed better dental hygiene than anyone else on this show while being strapped to a chair getting heroin shot into his eyeballs. It’s impressive.

Poor Mike Colter, who plays Malcolm, must have been so excited when he got a great part on what was supposed to be a show on CBS. He was one of the leads! Instead, the show ended up on the CW and his character ended up strapped to a chair for six episodes. Show business!

Still, at least it looks like Malcolm is getting closer to escaping.  Agent Machado is onto Macawi’s kidnapping and even busts into the club, but Malcolm has already been moved. At least he’ll get a change of scenery! Maybe they even upgraded the chair he’s strapped to? Maybe next episode we’ll find him chained to a La-Z-Boy?

The final two reveals of the episode are potentially the most interesting. First, Siobhan is the one behind Gemma’s “disappearance”. Why did Siobhan feel it was necessary to take Gemma out right before she revealed the Bridget/ Siobhan switch? We still don’t know. It might be time for the show to start tilting Siobhan’s hand, if only a little. Mysterious phrases are only intriguing for so long before they become tiring.

The more interesting revelation is that Henry was let go because the police found fingerprints on the smashed lamp belonging to a wanted fugitive: Bridget Kelly. And even more puzzling? Bridget put those fingerprints there herself, thoughtfully and deliberately.

Bridget has something up her sleeves, although there are some pretty valid instances of Bridget being less than stellar when it comes to intellect.

Why does Bridget want her fingerprints found at the crime scene? Wouldn’t that just bring more heat down on herself and her cover? We’ll have to wait until the next new episode on November 1^stto find out.

Until then, there are a lot of questions to ponder. How long until Jason Dohring and Juliet hook up? (I’m starting a pool!) What happened to Gemma? Why does Bridget want her fingerprints in a murder investigation? Leave your theories in the comments!