S03.E07: Episode 7

[formerlyfreedom]

In the days following a fatal altercation in the webcam house, Dustin reaches out to Kimara for help, realizing he is no longer safe. Kimara struggles with the burden of a difficult moral choice and decides to take time off of work at her shelter. Meanwhile, Nicholas and Clair’s volatile marriage continues to unravel, which in turn makes Gabrielle commit an ill-conceived act based on fear for her life. Jeanette becomes alarmed when Raelyn overreacts to a random drug test request.

 

[janeta]

-scratching head- is that town so small that they can't get an interpreter in for Gabbi? Not even the local high school french teacher?

And i missed the first few minutes--has Coy simply vanished?

Edited April 24, 2017 by janeta

[Primetimer]

Several characters attempt to make their escape this week, be it from abusive domestic situations, locked-down internet brothels, or their super bummer jobs.

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[LizDC]

12 minutes ago, janeta said:

-scratching head- is that town so small that they can't get an interpreter in for Gabbi? Not even the local high school french teacher?

There are a bunch of colleges and universities in that part of NC.  A call to any one of them could have found a French professor. 

Edited April 24, 2017 by LizDC

[mrsbagnet]

I was really expecting Nick to say to Clair, "He's not my son."

How lucky for Gabrielle that the cops showed up when they did.

[Armchair Critic]

ACK this episode was so hard to watch. Save Gabrielle!

[Lostinthehouse]

Raelynn failing her drug test was no great surprise - you use drugs, you fail a random drug test, you go to jail.  Boom - easy as that.  And now what is Jeanette to do?  Raise the girls?  Leave them with baby sitter?  It's only mildly interesting to me.

Now Gabrielle's story - that's what's pulling me hard.  Will she be deported?  Will she ever get anyone to believe her stories of abuse in the Coates' home?  So much to resolve in only one hour next week.  Save Gabrielle indeed!!!!

[Rock knocker]

11 hours ago, janeta said:

-scratching head- is that town so small that they can't get an interpreter in for Gabbi? Not even the local high school french teacher?

And i missed the first few minutes--has Coy simply vanished?

Wondering the same

[Madding crowd]

There is no way that Gabrielle wouldn't be offered a translator at the hospital. They would want to know her medical history/allergies etc before administering medicine. There is just so much tragedy in this without any light. Regina King's character is someone who is on the right side of things, but even she is cynical and ready to quit. I don't know what to think about the drug testing. I think it mostly a lot of bullshit, but if you agree to not do drugs in order to be on probation, you should not be on drugs. Or are we supposed to think they routinely make mistakes so she was falsely arrested?

I also dont get why both Lily. Taylor and Timothy Hutton's characters have to be such awful people. I can see why the ratings have gone down. Very depressing.

Edited April 24, 2017 by Madding crowd

[NorthstarATL]

1 hour ago, Madding crowd said:

There is no way that Gabrielle wouldn't be offered a translator at the hospital. They would want to know her medical history/allergies etc before administering medicine.

I'm wondering how much lying Claire has managed to do to make them not take this route; i.e. offering history that she might have documented, however falsely, as Gabrielle's employer. Claire is evil enough to have made certain beforehand that French was not going to be readily available to Gabrielle before essentially kidnapping and enslaving her. Gabrielle's story is the scariest of all, because it seems she truly had no clue what she was getting herself into.

  On the plus side for Jeannette, she knows where there's a job opening! (Just kidding.)

[hula-la]

My French is kind of passable (written is ok, and I can understand it if people speak slowly). I understood enough of what Gabrielle was saying that I almost started to yell it to the TV. But then I recognised that the TV a) can't hear me and b) wouldn't do anything even if it did.  I am worried about how this storyline is going to end.

[Broderbits]

A lot of this season just isn't making much sense to me. It can't be that hard for the police to find a French translator, and Madding Crowd is right about the hospital not treating Gabrielle without taking a history. 

Regina King's character is depressed and ready to quit her job, but she's desperate to have a baby? She's smart enough to know that's a bad idea.

No sympathy for Jeanette's sister; if you know you're going to be drug-tested by 4 different agencies and use drugs anyway, maybe you shouldn't have custody of your kids. Jeanette herself seems pretty slow on the uptake; she's been part of that farm family for years but just now sees what's been going on? Her brother-in-law gives a bunch of reasons why he can't help her, but she just sits there gaping at him?

This season is such a mess I find it hard to care about any of the storylines.  

[mrsbagnet]

At this point the police and the hospital are treating Gabrielle as a criminal and someone who is mentally ill (thanks to Clair's lies). My impression is that their first priority is getting her away from the boy and keeping her from hurting herself. I'm not surprised a translator was not immediately on hand, but I have no doubt that they are looking for one.

My question to Clair would be, "Why would you leave a mentally ill person alone with your child?" Her lie is just preposterous. I hope she goes to jail.

[mtlchickie]

I feel there is a lot left to be made and said but with the condensed season we are going to speed through a good chunk of it and miss out on details as a result. With Shae being dead, I felt that Kimara's journey could have ended but with the IVF, that needs to be concluded. When the issue that Jeannette's sister was an addict, I can where this was headed immediately that Jeannette was going to have to man up to save her nieces.  Meanwhile Nick and Clair are just ugly people, but I am interested to find out what Clair did at the business that was so great that when she left things fell apart. Part of me hopes that Clair's friend will be one that helps Gabrielle out.  But this is a show where no one really gets a happy ending. Closest one is Coy and that is a biiiiiig stretch.

[Madding crowd]

1 hour ago, mrsbagnet said:

At this point the police and the hospital are treating Gabrielle as a criminal and someone who is mentally ill (thanks to Clair's lies). My impression is that their first priority is getting her away from the boy and keeping her from hurting herself. I'm not surprised a translator was not immediately on hand, but I have no doubt that they are looking for one.

My question to Clair would be, "Why would you leave a mentally ill person alone with your child?" Her lie is just preposterous. I hope she goes to jail.

 But hospital risk management policies would require them to verify medical information before administering drugs. In the cas of emergency they would rely on Clair's words but not beyond that point. The police department would be unable to press charges against her without a translator, but they could and did arrest her.

[HeyThere83]

17 hours ago, Lostinthehouse said:

 

Now Gabrielle's story - that's what's pulling me hard.  Will she be deported?  Will she ever get anyone to believe her stories of abuse in the Coates' home?  So much to resolve in only one hour next week.  Save Gabrielle indeed!!!!

I need this story to keep going. And the acting is great.

[seasquared]

When watching this series, I thought all along that it was Clair injuring Gabrielle, but after this episode and seeing the way she stood in front of the boy when Nick was leaving the house and peered into the living room...I'm not so sure. Is it possible Nick is injuring her as well? Or did I miss something that points conclusively to it only being Clair?

[ludem93]

1 hour ago, seasquared said:

When watching this series, I thought all along that it was Clair injuring Gabrielle, but after this episode and seeing the way she stood in front of the boy when Nick was leaving the house and peered into the living room...I'm not so sure. Is it possible Nick is injuring her as well? Or did I miss something that points conclusively to it only being Clair?

the thing I don't get is why would Claire (and Nick) injure Gabrielle in the first place?

[PQuinn]

Clair may just be an inherently evil person, or, as I suspect, she's acting out late-stage postpartum and stress from losing her mother, and that she's living with an emotionally abusive husband, and then taking it out on Gabrielle in the most horrific way.

 

I'm reticent to say postpartum because I don't want to equate that with violent tendencies. If it were any other actor playing Clair, I would say she's just an all out nasty person, but Taylor plays her with a flicker of humanity that I feel there's something else going on.

[Neurochick]

8 hours ago, PQuinn said:

Clair may just be an inherently evil person, or, as I suspect, she's acting out late-stage postpartum and stress from losing her mother, and that she's living with an emotionally abusive husband, and then taking it out on Gabrielle in the most horrific way.

 

I'm reticent to say postpartum because I don't want to equate that with violent tendencies. If it were any other actor playing Clair, I would say she's just an all out nasty person, but Taylor plays her with a flicker of humanity that I feel there's something else going on.

I don't see any flicker of humanity with Clair.  I also think that both she and her husband are emotionally abusive to each other.  I also think Clair is the type of woman who would want a baby because she probably saw another woman with a baby and decided she wanted one.  

[nutty1]

What was happening to the boy left behind in the car when Dustin went into the store? 

[gunderda]

12 hours ago, nutty1 said:

What was happening to the boy left behind in the car when Dustin went into the store? 

Nothing was happening yet.... I think Dustin wanted him to come along so they could both escape.  The head guy threw a wrench in that plan when he wanted the other kid to stay behind, probably to make sure Dustin would not run off.  

Not sure why he tried to ask a random person in the store for help and not the cashier? 

[tennisgurl]

The Gabby plot is definitely really intense, but, as others have said, its just bizarre to me that no one bothered to find a French translator to speak to this clearly upset women who is obviously desperately trying to communicate. Yeah they would probably listen to Clair over her, but they would at least try to talk to her before giving her treatment. Its not like French is some obscure, random language, there have to be people around who speak it!

My big issue with this season is that all these disparate plots and characters are interesting and really well done, but they're so spread out and end so quickly, we don't get a full picture of any of it, and I don't feel like I really know any of the characters like I did in the last few seasons.

[virginia blue]

My main problem with the Claire/Gabrielle storyline is that I don't understand Claire's motivations. Everyone else's actions are driven by clearly understandable motives: to find (and avenge) a lost son, to escape an abusive relationship, to help someone else, to make money. Even when I don't agree with something a character does or find it abhorrent, I can see why they took that action. But I don't understand what is driving Claire to hurt Gabrielle, and it's taking me out of the story.

[nutty1]

I hope a few stories come together tonight but I don't have my hopes up. 

[possibilities]

I think the cops just saw Gabrielle as a kidnapper, and they didn't consider that she may have had reasons for what she did or that she might be in trouble. I thought Gabrielle was actually trying to protect the child by not leaving him alone with his hateful, abusive, demented parents. But the cops just saw her as a worthless domestic worker piece of shit who tried to steal from her nice, white middle class employers and take a child hostage. I am not excusing it. I think it's basic racism and police stupidity, but I don't find it lacking credibility from a storytelling perspective.

Drugging her without communicating did strike me as a bit out of date, though.

I think Clair is just sadistically acting out her personal rage on Gabrielle, like any abuser who does that. What is the motive for any sick fuck who abuses another person? They're just sick abusive evil fucks. It's not a rational thing, done for any material purpose, it's just acting out, done for pleasure or emotional release. Again, I'm not excusing it, I'm just saying I don't think there is any other explanation. She did it because she could. It cost her nothing, because to her Gabrielle was nothing. The reward was in the power and control.

Sickening, but that's how batterers are.

Edited May 1, 2017 by possibilities

[PQuinn]

On 4/25/2017 at 9:20 PM, Neurochick said:

I don't see any flicker of humanity with Clair.  I also think that both she and her husband are emotionally abusive to each other.  I also think Clair is the type of woman who would want a baby because she probably saw another woman with a baby and decided she wanted one.  

 

I was wrong in trying to explain her behavior because it was giving her a pass for her racism and her violent abuse of Gabrielle, and she doesn't deserve a pass; her actions are reprehensible.