A Man in His Room
This week starts with the couple from the end of the previous episode scurrying down the street as they are menaced by some louts in Niners gear looking for trouble. Utilizing the standard playbook of assholes everywhere, the harassers grab the girlfriend by the arm which prompts the boyfriend to push them away. Now they get the chance to play the victim with shouts of “Don’t start something you can’t finish, guy” and other epithets too crass to print on the internet. The couple jogs across the trafficked street and into a Chaing Maestro Thai restaurant around the corner. End of scene, right? Not in these times lacking adequate access to JUSTICE!
The thugs predictably follow, now with some straggling friends from back up the block. The restaurant manager urges calm, while a waiter gets shoved, and everyone is trapped inside. That is until girlfriend Lana pulls up the Sherwood app and presses a distress button. Nothing happens for a tense beat – then two off-duty firemen dining from the back stand up… and promptly leave. But wait! The odds tilt in the couple’s favor when a few everyday citizens enter through the front door to help. It’s not exactly the cavalry but it might as well be. The thugs slink out after mumbling some more drunken threats. This was another solid commercial within the show for Sherwood’s new “S.O.S flare” feature. Seriously, so much production work went into this scene that there must be real investors in this app, right? The entire show seems like a multilevel scheme that I can’t quite figure out but I so want in on.
The next morning, we see Cabot at a board meeting for the Build Up Youth children’s charity promising big things to a couple of retired judges and some big shot business types. Cabot brags about his latest venture and all the good it will do towards rewiring “inefficiencies of the city.” There’s a sly contrast of the mostly older, grey-haired cohorts wearing casually tailored suits while late 40s Cabot is in wrinkled chinos, a blousy Eddie Bauer button down and neon trail runners. His is not the slick Rick Owens wardrobe that shows up in shiny magazines highlighting society’s victors, but rather the getup of a guy who stumbled into success and thinks he earned it. It’s a minor note that thumbs its nose both at the aging Patricians of the city and the new rush of get-rich-quick schemers digging for market leverage in these Golden Hills.
Meanwhile, Jenya is over at her family’s small apartment trying to help dad and the Brothers Zhao with Grandma, who has been displaced from her elder care facility which is being retrofitted for earthquakes. There is nowhere else for her to go and the boys have no room and no interest. This leads to an onscreen guilting only seen over tense holiday dinners in small towns fled long ago. Jenya wins the Great Grandma Giveaway and is forced to move her into her own one-bedroom apartment in the Richmond district. This should be cozy. (Would it have been inappropriate for Jenya to hit that S.O.S. button on the app?) Joking aside, Grandma seems like a peach.
Duc and Amrita get to have a field trip out with Mathilde at community organizers’ offices. The overtaxed director Erik and his team aren’t buying that the Sherwood mission fits with their charge. The ESL counseling group is underfunded as it is and can’t take on more overhead for a totally distinct service, nor would they lend their name to something this out there.
Mathilde tries unsuccessfully to secure their promise to sign-on should other service groups be brought onboard but they hedge. There is a palpable mistrust by the career volunteers who are skeptical of the Sherwood concept and technology in general. The Alphas face rejection at several more offices, including an area food donation and distribution center. The on-duty Operations leader Sydney throws this haymaker when pressed:
“Look, I don’t know you. But I know that people like you are the problem. You displace whole populations for decades and then try to make money cleaning up issues you made on top of it?”
(Cue Ad-Rock) Mmmmic drop!
Mathilde shakes off the rebuff and Amrita opines that if they can just get some momentum with a local, well-known charitable organization then everyone will be quick to jump on board. I didn’t think Showrunner Joseph Cicchetti would be willing to explore the natural resentment of long-standing community groups towards private capital. But as Mathilde retorts to her scold “What other choice do you have? City Hall isn’t stepping in anytime soon. You see what they did to Market Street”, a reference to the cushy deals given to the tech behemoths to redevelop a huge stretch of previously down-market businesses and residents.
Back at the Sherwood Forest, Sheriff Cabot swings by to show off the team he invested in to a few of the boys from the charity board. The only problem is it’s completely deserted except for Pascal who is busy crunching the numbers. Cabot is bent out of shape that he can’t flaunt his workers and doesn’t like Pascal’s mumbling answers. He’s soon on the phone to Jenya, who is dealing with Granny and cooking up a storm while she handles Cabot’s tirade. I know that ultimately everybody has a boss, even hotshot CEOs, but I didn’t expect the angel investor to be so hands on with the day to day. Is this normal?
The end of the episode cuts back and forth to the evening scenes of the Robin Hooders. Duc and Nancy eating in a cramped dining room, Jenya working on her computer while Grandma watches TV in bed, and Pascal and his girlfriend Kasia at a Belgian restaurant sharing steamed mussels and Duvels with a group of college friends.
We join Amrita out on a first date with Celine, a high-strung, Adderalled mess in a fancy print jumpsuit. (I am assured that this is in fact a thing.) Amrita, dressed to the nines, tries to find common ground with her self-focused date as Celine steers the conversation to her profiles on other dating apps and how each requires a different persona. She seems shocked when Amrita cuts it short and the night ends with the Millennial Mambo: Venmo.
But where’s Carlo you ask? Oh, he’s just alone in his empty apartment in the Tenderloin sitting on a thin sleeping mat organizing his Herschel backpack for five minutes of uninterrupted screen time. Seriously. Alphas gives us the quintessential single-take Bresson scene while he tallies his clothing, which includes a hotel bell hop jacket. He meticulously arranges some tools along with a compass, night vision goggles, crowbar and a black expandable baton.
The original scene from A Man Escaped has the protagonist Fontaine braiding a rope from torn bed sheets and scraps of other cloth to be used to escape from a Nazi prison in occupied France. Viewers may be slightly more familiar with the Taxi Driver scene that it inspired with Robert De Niro building a wearable contraption that allows a small hidden firearm to slip down his arm on a repurposed slide from a drawer.
Remember earlier in the episode where Carlo complained about the useless misty drizzle to Duc and said the Bay Area needed a real rain? It echoes the famous line from Scorsese’s Gotham Horror flick: “Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets.” Things are getting interesting.
Ancillary Notes
Amrita’s AirPods with multicolored feathers are something. Is this a real fashion? It shouldn’t be, should it? But I could be persuaded.
Now we have our answer as to why the Sherwood platform is named TRAViS. Travis Bickle (might be) comin’!
Mochi donut and muffin delivery every morning? Now this is a decent office perk…
…but the struggle of trying to get your lunch order in by 9:30 a.m. is not. Mis-marked grain bowls leading to confusion as to whose is whose was a nice touch that resonates with anyone who deals with the headache of company provided meals on the reg.
Cabot has his pilot’s license, trained as an EMT, and bakes his own sourdough bread with a proprietary starter. If you’re interested in what else he can do, just ask! He’ll be happy to tell you.
However, it seems like the ending of his previous venture Watch 6 with Jenya was not without some controversy and hard feelings.
I counted five Fjallraven backpacks in the episode. Though I don’t mind the easily identifiable sleek Swedish product, I felt like I was in another commercial. Are they really this omnipresent? Maybe it’s a collab with Cabot to break into the merch market.
That look Kasia gives Pascal when he’s extolling Jenya’s “big brain” and “unparalleled ambition”. Dial down the rhapsodizing, dude. Talking too much about Jenya Zhao in your house is going to bring trouble. Trust me.