{"id":421698,"date":"2026-05-11T03:59:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T03:59:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/421698\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T03:59:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T03:59:07","slug":"the-audacity-season-1-episode-5-recap-lamplighters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/421698\/","title":{"rendered":"The Audacity season 1, episode 5 recap: \u201cLamplighters\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cLamplighters\u201d makes an interesting companion to last week\u2019s \u201cVanitas<\/a>.\u201d After showing off the rotting floorboards and cracked foundation of Silicon Valley, The Audacity daydreams about skipping town and getting away from it all. It just requires its main character to lose everything first.<\/p>\n

Well, not quite everything: Duncan\u2019s marriage is still intact when he beats feet to Hamish\u2019s off-the-grid glass-and-steel bunker. But like his control of HyperGnosis, the Park-Hoffsteader union doesn\u2019t survive \u201cLamplighters\u201d\u2014itself a victim of someone trying to find a way out, i.e., Lili, who is reeling from the humiliation of Nana\u2019s reporting on Duncan, a dismissal from the Las Altas board, and her husband\u2019s week-long disappearing act. In between these two bits of bad news for The Man With The Punchable Face (and those aren\u2019t my words this time<\/a>\u2014they\u2019re Carl\u2019s), The Audacity entertains the fantasy of escape through the extremely privileged example of Gabe\u2019s island stronghold, JoAnne and Gary\u2019s dream of settling among the garlic fields of Gilroy, and Anushka\u2019s path out from under Big Tim\u2019s thumb and into the CEO chair that\u2019s still warm from Duncan melting down in it.<\/p>\n

Having illuminated several reasons why its characters might want to pull up stakes in \u201cVanitas,\u201d The Audacity is free to use \u201cLamplighters\u201d to show why they can\u2019t. It\u2019s an eclectic variety appropriate to the ensemble nature of the show\u2014some plot-based, some character-based. The one that works best for me arises in the driveway of the farmhouse that won\u2019t become the new home base for JoAnne and Gary\u2019s practices: With a feeling that he\u2019s finally getting his young life under control in Palo Alto, Orson can\u2019t stomach (figuratively or anatomically) moving out to the sticks. And it doesn\u2019t take any of the strategies he\u2019s picked up from the looksmaxxing internet weirdos feeding him garbage about how to manipulate \u201cfemale humans\u201d\u2014he just has to remind his mom that he overheard some pretty damning talk about her investment portfolio. And just like that, the dream of picking apples and watching the sunset over fields of wildflowers is dead.<\/p>\n

There is the teensiest trace of Surf Dracula syndrome<\/a> in this and the later scene between JoAnne and Duncan. For three episodes and change, The Audacity has been stringing the insider-trading, JoAnne-as-Wall-Street-whisperer thread along, hesitating to make too much out of the fragile, SEC-flouting alliance she made with Duncan. And while I\u2019m not exactly ready to declare that the vampires are finally hanging ten after Duncan presents JoAnne with (some of) the money he made by betting Jamison\u2019s college fund on Smote\u2019s stock market valleys and peaks, what once appeared to be The Audacity\u2019s core relationship\u2014only for it to retreat into the background\u2014now feels a little more central to the story. And it\u2019s nice to get a line like, \u201cI should have never blackmailed you. It should have always been a bribe. Will you be my bribe?\u201d out of it, too.<\/p>\n

The money solves JoAnne\u2019s most pressing problem, and it also acts as a lure back into the belly of the beast. It\u2019s nothing new for the show, but even a dopamine-detoxing Colonel Kurtz like Gabe (Randall Park) is powerless to resist the call of the Valley. The third Fah-Fah founder\u2019s digs mark a new escalation in The Audacity\u2019s game of ludicrous real estate holdings: When we\u2019re dealing with armed guards and a brutalist fortress reachable only by helicopter, we can take the \u201clooks like\u201d out of \u201clooks like a supervillain\u2019s lair.\u201d The character trades well off of Parks\u2019 innate affability, burying the clean-cut look of that persona in patchy facial hair and grubby promo Ts. Pronouncements about societal collapse, and perineum sunning sound all the stranger in the cheery voice that once sold Wild West steak specials to the citizens of Orlando on Fresh Off The Boat<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As weird as the proprietor of Gamblesluts (mind the pluralization: \u201cGambleslut is an accusation. Sluts is an invitation.\u201d) has grown in isolation, he\u2019s not immune to spite, either. Jonathan Glatzer and Charlotte Ahlin\u2019s \u201cLamplighter\u201d script is dotted with little background details (JoAnne\u2019s tour of a Palo Alto fixer-upper reveals that Gary was once her instructor, for example), none more devastating than Duncan costing Gabe and Hamish beaucoup bucks over his refusal to cash out of Fah-Fah. And so he\u2019s happy to sell his HyperGnosis stake to aid Carl\u2019s campaign against Duncan, just as Anushka is willing to take the CEO offer to stick it to Cupertino. <\/p>\n

The quiet of that latter scene and the way it\u2019s staged is intriguing to me. It\u2019s not quite the unexpected explosion of pathos that occurs when Lili enters Hamish\u2019s untouched basement bedroom, but Carl and Anushka sidling up side-by-side against that shared desk is still shot through with a sort of sympathy and understanding. There\u2019s an intimation of the billionaire and the rising exec being on equal footing in that moment, but the whole thing is really Carl demonstrating his power: The way he uses it to make Anushka feel flattered is just a variation on how he humiliates Duncan at the beginning of the episode. (Both acts even require little flourishes of hypeman backup from his right hand man, Stan). In reality, spite is the only thing Carl and Anushka share in that moment.<\/p>\n

The symphony of the stuff Carl conducts at the beginning of the episode accelerates the story in ways that are a little hard to buy\u2014could Duncan\u2019s entire Kingdom really come tumbling down that quickly? Nonetheless, it\u2019s an electrifyingly directed display of what everybody\u2019s really trying to escape from in \u201cLamplighters\u201d: Duncan Park and everything about Silicon Valley that he represents. One of the guy\u2019s two best friends tried to put a bunch of nautical miles between them; to say Hamish\u2019s is suicide had similar motivations is a deeply grim reading of that plot point, but I can\u2019t deny that the thought occurred to me. And based on what he\u2019s expressed in his most private moments, there\u2019s a sense that Duncan would like to get away from himself, too. For now though, he\u2019s all he has\u2014the guy on his own metaphorical island. The acts of spite he\u2019s planning out there can\u2019t be good for anyone\u2014Duncan included.<\/p>\n

Stray observations<\/p>\n

\u2022 Harper\u2019s still hanging in the background, but their calculating ingenuity keeps surfacing in in clever ways, as with the tracking assignment they turn into a salary negotiation with Carl.
\n\u2022 Things Carl is missing out on in order to meet with Duncan at HyperGnosis HQ: A gigayacht, a 300-year-old cognac, and an android Beverly D\u2019Angelo.
\n\u2022 Orson\u2019s \u201cdo your own research\u201d phase clearly doesn\u2019t apply to sound arguments: \u201cIt\u2019s not fascist to know anatomy.\u201d \u201cYes, it is. That\u2019s their whole thing!\u201d
\n\u2022 The rift between Martin and Anushka is only going to grow wider if she keeps talking about Xander like this: \u201cHow could he wee himself? He\u2019s pixels!\u201d \u201cYou care about the Tamigotchi\u2019s feelings but not mine!\u201d
\n\u2022 Duncan\u2019s misquotation of the week: Thinking the \u201cAttica! Attica!\u201d chant from Dog Day Afternoon is \u201cGattaca! Gattaca!\u201d
\n\u2022 There\u2019s no disputing Orson\u2019s improved condition, but Gary can quibble with the substance and the woman responsible for it: \u201cI can\u2019t really recommend something unregulated from someone who spells \u2018science\u2019 with a \u2018y\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cLamplighters\u201d makes an interesting companion to last week\u2019s \u201cVanitas.\u201d After showing off the rotting floorboards and cracked foundation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":421699,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[156,111,139,69,437],"class_list":["post-421698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=421698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/421699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=421698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=421698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=421698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}