S02.E10: The Lady Confesses

[shapeshifter]

S02.E10, season 2 finale  🎬: "The Lady Confesses"

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In order to protect her glory, notoriety, and newly glamorous life, Alma concocts a desperate and dramatic scheme after Vern's investigation leads to his new in-laws.

Recap from TV Fanatic: tvfanatic.com/shows/why-women-kill/episodes/season-2/the-lady-confesses

Well done, Show! 👏🏻🖐🏼️🙌🏼🖐🏾️👍

 

Edited July 30, 2021 by shapeshifter

[Chaos Theory]

Well Grace is a little bit ruthless too telling Rita how much Alma benefitted from her going to jail  But it was a great scene in the end and showed that Grace had a soul.

There was always going to be a confrontation between Alma and Rita.   One of them had to die in the end. Having Rita die in shoddy old clothes in an ally outside the Garden Club murdered by Alma was a brilliant way to end the character.

I liked the talk between Dee and Scooter.  Scooter turned out to be an ok guy in the end.  He wanted to do right by his kid.  I liked his opinion that he wanted his kid to be average looking because he wouldn't expect the world to be handed to him.  Small dreams.  

Alma ends as the most famous murderess of all time is a brilliant way to compare fame and infamy.  But I thought the final scene was a brilliant way to end the show.  

 

 

 

 

Edited July 29, 2021 by Chaos Theory

[Kiddvideo]

Great season! Very different from S1, but that kept it fresh.

I really hoped Alma would get away with it. Didn't see Rita's death coming at all. I thought maybe the coverage had launched Scooter's successful acting career, but it looks like he continued his position as a boy toy. Tick tock, Scooter, you're not getting any younger. Catherine just gets away with attempted murder and still has Daddy's money? Happy for the Loomis family and that Dee has a her own people. Alma's walk at the end -- toggling between reality and fantasy -- was brilliant.

[shapeshifter]

Near the end, we see Alma making a keepsake of Bert's glasses in the same style as all of Bert's souvenirs of his dearly departed victims.
I assume this means that Alma is doing for Bert what he was willing to do for her: She takes the blame for all of the killings, including the euthanasia killings.
But, being Alma, there is nothing selfless about it; she  intends to bask in the "glory" of being the GOAT female American serial killer. 
So. At the end, when we see Alma interpreting the angry crowd as adoring fans, is she crazy? Was she always?

 

1 hour ago, Kiddvideo said:

Catherine just gets away with attempted murder and still has Daddy's money?

Ooo, good point.
I will fanwank that her lawyer makes a case for her thinking her life was in danger. Catherine was aiming at Rita, and Rita had been framed as having murdered Catherine's father, so she had some legitimate reason to be fearful. 
But I'm open to better ideas. 

 

[cardigirl]

So ... Scooter didn't die?  😄

[AllyB]

4 hours ago, Chaos Theory said:

Well Grace is a little bit ruthless too telling Rita how much Alma benefitted from her going to jail  But it was a great scene in the end and showed that Grace had a soul.

It only occurred to me now but poor Grace would have been left feeling so awful and guilty when she learned that Alma murdered Rita.

[Chaos Theory]

You can fanwank Catherine rich peopled  her way out of trouble.   Think about it really.  There were three witness to what happened.  Rita, who is now dead.   Scooter, Catherine’s gigolo boyfriend.   And Catherine’s driver.      It probably wasn’t hard for Catherine to talk and buy her way out of trouble especially back then.     

55 minutes ago, AllyB said:

It only occurred to me now but poor Grace would have been left feeling so awful and guilty when she learned that Alma murdered Rita.

Grace probably felt guilty as  hell for pointing Rita straight at Alma.  
 

1 hour ago, shapeshifter said:

Near the end, we see Alma making a keepsake of Bert's glasses in the same style as all of Bert's souvenirs of his dearly departed victims.
I assume this means that Alma is doing for Bert what he was willing to do for her: She takes the blame for all of the killings, including the euthanasia killings.
 

 

I took it to mean she has become a serial killer who has fallen so far that she has begun taken trophies.  If she hadn’t gotten caught she would have continued killing for the pleasure of it.   

Edited July 29, 2021 by Chaos Theory

[skotnikov]

3 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

 So. At the end, when we see Alma interpreting the angry crowd as adoring fans, is she crazy? Was she always?

That was clearly a hommage to the final of the Sunset Boulevard. 

[Tammy12]

I enjoyed the finale very much. Both seasons have been great fun to watch and I really hope we get a third. 

[txhorns79]

9 hours ago, Kiddvideo said:

Didn't see Rita's death coming at all.

It's funny.  Snow White triumphed in Season 1, while the Evil Queen died in Season 2.

[CRT]

This episode's title came from the 1945 film noir starring Barbara Slater, Hugh Beaumont, and Mary Beth Hughes.  It's about a woman who, 7 years after being presumed dead, returns to inform her husband's new fiancee that she's alive.

So Alma told Scooter about Dee's pregnancy and marriage.  What a way for the two to finally meet! I had given up on the idea of Scooter ever learning about the pregnancy.  On many shows, Scooter learning about Dee's pregnancy (after she married Vern) would be one of the finale's big events, but here Dee's like, "Yeah, we'll be fine, you go to NYC, I have other issues."

"I don't regret what I've become.  No, I regret what I was. A timid little nobody.  Too afraid to ask for attention or power or anything else worth having. But that woman is dead. Now, when I want something, I take it. When I have a problem, I fix it by myself, without help from you or anyone else. And let me tell you . . . it feels damn good."

I didn't expect another scene between Grace and Rita but it proved to be illuminating for Rita.  "Here's what I've come to learn about Alma Fillcot: she's a sweet-talking vampire, and if she'd fought for the Nazis, we'd all be speaking German."

I think Alma was at her most demented when Dee confronted her over all she knew and suspected, and all Alma could say was, "You haven't said a thing about the way I look. . . . All of the work that I've put in on my hair and my nails. My clothes. It's all come together. Surely, you must have noticed."

I clapped when the bloody stole exposed Alma as a killer!  But I think my biggest laugh of the episode came when Alma said, "We don't have to do this" a second after Bertram injected himself (and then he said "What?").

This was a really great season.  It was especially well plotted.

[showme]

I don't like the ending! It is so predictable and old fashioned. God forbid if a desperate housewife acted badly, and she had to be punished, but does she really? Why can't Alma get away with it? She's only pushed back against people who tried to oppress her. In real life, really evil men and women got away with much worse.

Edited July 30, 2021 by showme

[shapeshifter]

33 minutes ago, showme said:

I don't like the ending! It is so predictable and old fashioned. God forbid if a desperate housewife acted badly, and she had to be punished, but does she really? Why can't Alma get away with it? She's only pushed back against people who tried to oppress her. In real life, really evil men and women got away with much worse.

It is all too true @showme, that  "really evil men and women got away with much worse," but also, in her own way, Alma did express agency when she set up her inevitable moment of arrest by the police with her being in the act of making a "souvenir" of Bert's glasses in the exact style of the 26(?) others in the round box, which earned her the title of Most Famous American Female serial killer rather than just Jealous Backstabber on the front page of the local paper.

 

[Chaos Theory]

The truth is I think it would have driven Alma crazy if someone else had gone down for her murders.   The Garden Club was just an excuse an symbol of what Alma really wanted and that was to be noticed/.   If anything I think this season is about fame and infamy and the thin line between them.   Alma was never truly happy until the whole world knew who she was. 

[Kiddvideo]

4 hours ago, showme said:

In real life, really evil men and women got away with much worse.

Curious what you think is worse than multiple murders and serial killing?

Edited July 30, 2021 by Kiddvideo

[Joimiaroxeu]

Good grief, was Alma going to kill everyone who got in her way? That plan was not sustainable but she had pretty much checked out of reality anyway, so...

A sweet-talking vampire. That's our Alma.

Dang, Alma in that red gown. With the red gloves too. Nah, Alma, Rita could work that look but you just looked like a pimp's date at the Players Ball.

Alma was always a bloody murder ahead of Bertram!

I wish they hadn't killed Rita. She'd been a mean person and a golddigger but she didn't deserve to die for it. The only person I really wanted to see dead at the end was Alma. At least she was living on borrowed time.

Great series. Will there be a third season or is the pandemic putting that on hold?

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It only occurred to me now but poor Grace would have been left feeling so awful and guilty when she learned that Alma murdered Rita.

As well Grace should've felt bad IMO. Hopefully the garden club was forced to disband after the huge scandal surrounding Alma.

Edited July 31, 2021 by Joimiaroxeu

[shapeshifter]

4 hours ago, Joimiaroxeu said:

I wish they hadn't killed Rita. She'd been a mean person and a golddigger but she didn't deserve to die for it.

It did look for a moment there as if Rita and Scooter were going to do okay in NYC, but that town has a habit of eating people alive, so it was almost as if Rita's death was a mercy killing.

 

[allonsyalice]

Okay, but does anyone else wanna read the book Scooter would write? I feel like that would be a blast and a half, definitely titled "Aw, Jeez"

[laprin]

On 7/30/2021 at 8:23 AM, showme said:

I don't like the ending! It is so predictable and old fashioned. God forbid if a desperate housewife acted badly, and she had to be punished, but does she really? Why can't Alma get away with it? She's only pushed back against people who tried to oppress her. In real life, really evil men and women got away with much worse.

But for her to truly get away with it, Vern would have had to die. Why should one of the only truly good people on the show have to die so Alma can win? 

I just can’t root for evil even for a dark comedy. In real life I also hope that evil people get what’s coming to them and think it’s a crime when they don’t. In that way, I am consistent. 

[SomeTameGazelle]

On 7/30/2021 at 8:23 AM, showme said:

I don't like the ending! It is so predictable and old fashioned. God forbid if a desperate housewife acted badly, and she had to be punished, but does she really? Why can't Alma get away with it? She's only pushed back against people who tried to oppress her. In real life, really evil men and women got away with much worse.

There might have been a point where Alma was oppressed and entitled to assert herself, but blackmailing Grace who had always been kind to her and deciding to kill Vern (and frame Scooter) were absolutely beyond the pale. 

I was a little disappointed that Rita was somehow humbled enough to seem sympathetic. Before now she had had plenty of chances to show a softer side and almost every time she took the opportunity to be twice as nasty instead. 

I also thought it was a bit of a cheat for both Scooter and Bertie to have survived so easily. And before she shot them, I had hoped that Catherine would wind up as the heroine of the whole thing.