The Beast and Me
Season 1
Episode 6
Editor’s Rating
4 stars
****
Aggie has no idea how bad things are getting for her (and the book).
Photo: Netflix
Two episodes out from the finale, we have hit the point of no return: Whatever lingering doubts we might have still had about Nile’s potential innocence, or even his dormant capacity for love and tenderness, are duly extinguished. But, from the way secrets from the past are still being revealed — we get maddeningly close to finding out what it is that the Jarvises, or at least Rick, have on Special Agent Breton — I remain convinced that someone other than Nile is responsible for Madison’s disappearance. He might know all about it, but I think it will turn out to have been caused by some third element, some unsuspecting character whose involvement will only make sense once we have all the pieces to the puzzle. Rick? Martin? Could Nina have gone gonzo?
It wouldn’t be surprising, since everyone seems to be doing just that. Nile’s nothing-to-see-here façade is hanging by a thread. When he checks in on Teddy Fenig at the opening of “The Beast and Me,” he can’t stop cursing. It’s unclear exactly what he planned to do with Teddy, but whatever it was, it has been thwarted by the situation with Abbott. Since he moved to Oyster Bay, two people Nile was connected to through Aggie have died, disappeared, or both. That doesn’t look great for Nile, but it doesn’t look great for Aggie, either.
Aggie, of course, is not stupid: She knows shit is about to hit the fan. Still unable to reach Abbott, she goes over to his apartment. When he doesn’t answer the door, she lies to the super that she is Abbott’s cousin who needs to get into his apartment. The super is suspicious, so Aggie schemes to get around him. She asks him to store a fake suitcase and, when he has his back turned, swipes Abbott’s spare key from his pegboard. Abbott’s apartment is deserted. There is blood and hair all over the bathroom sink. Aggie rifles through his stuff, hoping to find a clue as to where he might be. Taped to the top of the drawer that stores all of his Madison Jarvis documents, she finds … a thumb drive! I’m telling you, it’ll always be relevant.
Just as Aggie is about to plug it in Abbott’s computer, she hears a knock on the door and the turn of a key. She hides in a closet as Erika comes in looking for Abbott. Aggie tries to sneak out, but Erika catches her red-handed. Aggie says that she’s been worried about Abbott, like Erika herself has been. Desperate to make something out of the information she’s been carrying around, Aggie tells Erika: “I think I have proof that Nile murdered his wife.” She shows her the suicide note and the birding diary, and points Erika to the blood in the bathroom. Finally, she gives her the thumb drive. When they open it, they see that it contains the live feed of Teddy Fenig’s location. Aggie catches Erika up on everything that she and Abbott got up to, including taking stuff from Nile’s computer. Erika promises to get a warrant to search Nile’s property and get forensics in Abbott’s apartment. She also instructs Aggie to stay away from Nile, no matter what.
Elsewhere in the city, Olivia Benitez and her chief of staff, Elijah, prepare for a press conference to address the rioting at her Jarvis Yards rally, which is all over the news and social media. Elijah thinks they should just let the cycle play out, but Benitez wants to nip it in the bud before it gets worse. To a crowded press room, she condemns the violence. “But make no mistake,” she points out, “this is a crisis manufactured in no small part by real estate speculators like Martin and Nile Jarvis.” Martin, who watches the conference from his office with Rick, has journalists in the room who throw gotcha questions at Benitez. He’s pleased with his efforts. Fresh from torturing Teddy, Nile joins them. But Martin doesn’t want him to talk to Benitez anymore — he’ll do it himself, since Nile didn’t get anywhere when he tried. When Martin leaves the room, Nile asks to speak with Rick one-on-one. “You said you’d do whatever it takes to protect [Martin]”, he says, “Let’s see if you can really mean it.”
I’m guessing that means that Rick, already well-versed in the breaking and entering arts, has something to do with the scene that appears in Aggie’s house later. For now, though, Nile is approaching the storage unit where he keeps Teddy when he gets a call from Nina, who is just coming from the doctor’s office. Despite believing that she was infertile due to endometriosis, Nina is pregnant. She’s shocked at the news and scared; she knows Nile is adamant about not having kids. She had resigned herself to the fact that she would never be a mother, but now that the opportunity has presented itself, she wants to see it through. Nile receives the news coldly. “It’s fine, Nina, it’s great,” he says. Nina is sobbing, but Nile is in a rush to get her off the phone so he can go about his nefarious, murderous errands. This woman has got to get out of this marriage.
On the other end of nefarious Jarvis activity, Martin calls Benitez wanting to set up a meeting in person. Benitez is short on patience and more than a little convinced that Martin is behind the riot, not that Martin does anything to dispel the notion. For him, it’s better if Benitez knows that he is. In fact, that’s what this whole thing comes down to: His ability to strongarm her into doing what he wants by proving that he has enough power and influence to mold her reputation according to his needs. When Martin gives Benitez a manila folder with a proposal for the same property-swap deal that Nile offered her, she says that she’s already rejected it. But after Martin points out that she’d be wise to accept it in light of recent events, she relents. She weakly tries to make a point about wanting to make a better world, but it lands flat when she cowers at Martin’s intimidation tactics. I’m looking forward to this plotline being over; I’m getting weary of it. It gestures vaguely at contemporary issues around housing affordability, environmental concerns, political foul play, etc., but is too brief to be meaningful. Benitez is a one-dimensional caricature of a “young Democrat,” which gives Aleyse Shannon very little to work with. I get it: Martin Jarvis is scary. I’d know just from looking at him!
Besides, I’m more interested in other targets of the Jarvis’ manipulations. Back in the office from Abbott’s apartment, Erika calls Frank from a staircase to instruct him to pick up the kids from school and take them to her parents’ house. She tells him she crossed some uncrossable lines when Frank was “in trouble” a few years ago, thinking she was doing the right thing for her family, but now she’ll have to tell the Bureau, and there will be consequences. Frank doesn’t know what she’s talking about, but she hangs up before she can explain. I’m guessing she took some kind of favor from the Jarvises in exchange for cover in the Bureau, a deal that is about to explode in light of … well, everything. But even that will have to wait, because when Erika comes back in, the whole office is mobilized to another task. They’ve been tipped about a kidnapping in Oyster Bay, and it’s all hands on deck.
Aggie, who is just getting back to Oyster Bay, has no idea how bad things are about to get. She’s on her way to visit Cooper’s grave when she gets a call from Carol, which she sends to voicemail. Driving home, she picks up Carol’s second call. The editor is so excited about the first four chapters of the book. “It’s like In Cold Blood meets The Year of Magical Thinking,” she beams. Bob, the publisher, is also thrilled, and planning for a big summer release. But Carol can tell there’s something off about Aggie, who is only half-listening, and definitely not as excited. It only gets worse when Aggie pulls up to her driveway and sees Nile standing there. She tells Carol to call her back in five minutes, and if she doesn’t pick up, to call the police.
Aggie does a terrible job pretending to Nile that nothing is wrong. The jogging path comes back as predicted — Nile wants to show Aggie where “his guys” have marked and staked it. Aggie puts off getting out of her car as she talks to Nile. It’s a good scene, because we know that Nile knows what Aggie knows, but she doesn’t know that he knows. As is his wont, Nile revels in torturing Aggie, like a mean kid torturing a hamster. He jokes that it feels weird between them now because Aggie saw him dance. Aggie tries to get rid of him by saying she’s waiting for a call from Carol, but Nile is Nile — he won’t let it go. So, Aggie follows him out to the path, where he does a rerun of their on-the-ledge-of-Jarvis-Yards conversation. Except this time, he comes across even more menacing. He asks her when he’ll get to read the first hundred pages of the book as promised, and if Aggie already knows how it will end. “Did I do it?” He asks. Carol calls, on cue. Aggie tells her she’s in the woods with Nile Jarvis and to stay on the line until she gets to her desk, then she literally runs back to her house.
There, she locks all the doors and tells Carol she’ll explain everything later. She tries to reach Erika at her personal number and the FBI office, both to no avail. The action mounts to a fever pitch. As she’s driving home, a string of black SUVs passes Nina on the road. Aggie enters her office to see that her manuscript has been tampered with — it’s all marked up in red pen. Someone has changed the title from “The Beast and Me” to “The Beast in Me.” Nile calls and asks if Aggie’s editor liked the pages. She asks him directly whether he broke into her house, but he wants to talk about other stuff, like how he thought they were friends. He reminds her of that time outside of Eleanor’s, when he could tell that she wanted Teddy to get what he “deserved.” He says he didn’t think she had it in her to give it to him until he went upstairs. Puzzled, Aggie climbs the stairs and — as Nile continues to adlib — finds Teddy, dead, suffocated with a bag, in Cooper’s room, which is decked out to match the live feed.
• Supposedly, Nile doesn’t know everything Aggie told Erika back in Abbott’s apartment, or that Aggie was trying to reach the FBI, or even what exactly the incriminating proof is that she has of his involvement in Madison’s disappearance. That might all come together to absolve Aggie of the framing. But we still don’t know how powerful whatever agreement Erika has with the Jarvises is, so it might not even matter…
• Noted: Martin speaking in Russian with Olga, who works in his house.
• The Beast in Me is still engaging, but as the plot thickens, I’m missing some of the nuance of the earlier episodes. Nile was more interesting when his psychopathic impulses were ambiguous; now, he’s approaching cartoonish-villain territory. As the story accelerates toward the conclusion, we’re also missing what I thought was going to be a strong feature of the show: Aggie’s work on the book. We got a glimpse into her writing in “Thanatos,” but other than that, the book exists solely to service the plot, rather than the plot and the character. One movie that does a good job balancing the writing process parts of the story with the unraveling mystery at hand is The Ghost Writer, from 2010, directed by notorious pedophile Roman Polanski. It’s good fall watching — lots of sweaters and upturned collars — and Kim Cattrall does an insane English accent in it. But I digress!
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