S01.E03: My Dripping Sleep

[biakbiak]

Quote

 Marty finds a way to control Ruth. Wendy worms her way into a job. Looking for another business to invest in, Marty digs for info on the strip bar.

[veronicalodge44]

what i have been enjoying about this show continued for me with this episode - the acting, the family and spousal relationships, the 'fish out of water' aspects, the byrdes' settling in and (marty especially) figuring out how to meet their challenge(s), the production values.  and i look forward to seeing the rachel character fleshed out more and to seeing how her and marty's relationship evolves (and i don't mean anything romantic, just that it seems like they could have an interesting dynamic as they get to know each other better - there's something intriguing there for me).

 

i think this episode had more humour for me—albeit pretty dark, but i found myself laughing several times (including when charlotte clocked that guy).  

 

what was bothering me - the somewhat one-dimensional portrayal of the 'rednecks - this episode continued, with one of my least favorite scenarios, which involves an exceptionally stupid member of a group of criminals, who doesn't listen to smarter members and does something not only stupid but directly undermining of the leader's instructions and groups' needs.  (i realise this is a very irrational thing to be so annoyed by.)  an example from a different show was ziggy sobatka from season 2 of the wire (a season i enjoyed but a character which made me cringe too often).  i wanted to strangle him and felt similarly about the two guys who obtained the pair of female bobcats.  (and all this emotion when i'm not necessarily rooting for the local family to triumph over marty & the byrdes, and definitely do not want ruth's plan to kill marty to work out, obviously.)

[suzeecat]

This show is a new favorite!  I binge-watched the first five episodes this past weekend and can't wait to get into the rest.  Great characters and tons of plot twists!

I can't remember which episode Wendy found the house that they are living in, but I'm sure it's before episode 3 so I'm putting my question here to avoid any spoilers.  Can someone explain the reason the old dude MUST live in the house with them?  I realize it's a convenient story line to explain how the Byrds can afford to live there, but why couldn't he just sell outright and live somewhere else until he dies?  I must not have been paying close enough attention at the time. 

[luna1122]

I think he just doesn't WANT to leave. I don't believe we're given any more real reason. It's his home, he wants to stay there.

[hincandenza]

On 7/24/2017 at 7:20 AM, suzeecat said:

This show is a new favorite!  I binge-watched the first five episodes this past weekend and can't wait to get into the rest.  Great characters and tons of plot twists!

I can't remember which episode Wendy found the house that they are living in, but I'm sure it's before episode 3 so I'm putting my question here to avoid any spoilers.  Can someone explain the reason the old dude MUST live in the house with them?  I realize it's a convenient story line to explain how the Byrds can afford to live there, but why couldn't he just sell outright and live somewhere else until he dies?  I must not have been paying close enough attention at the time. 

 

On 7/24/2017 at 7:21 AM, luna1122 said:

I think he just doesn't WANT to leave. I don't believe we're given any more real reason. It's his home, he wants to stay there.

Yeah, the impression I get is that he doesn't really have any family (plus he gives off serious Ehrmantraut vibes of past transgressions), so he's "selling" the house at a discount on the condition that it basically be a friendlier hospice than some cold anonymous facility.  It's kind of like viatical loans (why yes, I have seen "Joe Versus the Volcano", why do you ask?), where he can effectively be paid now for a good chunk of his home's eventual sale price after he died/moved away, still stay in his home after selling it, and use the proceeds from the sale to comfortably keep himself in food, beer, porn, ammunition, and whatever else for the last 12-18 months he has to live.  He's a terminally ill patient, he now has the luxury of dying peacefully in the home he lived in for years, in a beautiful wooded spot right by the lake, without any messy estate issues to settle or trouble him at this point.  It's an unusual situation to request, and when Wendy is viewing the house he explicitly says that's why the price is heavily lowered: to offset the weird living situation.

 

I actually thought there would be a twist when we saw him walking around naked in the morning: that this was like that scam in that awful Ben Stiller movie about the perfect apartment in NYC, where the real estate guy shows unsuspecting out of towners this place, they hear the sob story and buy it... then he ratchets the crazy up to 11 and they eventually move out and sell it back for a loss (split the difference half to his pocket, half to the agent).  Rinse, repeat.

[Misstify]

I assumed the plot reasons for this scenario would be that it's a lot harder to hide whatever Marty is up to when there's a non-family member living on the premises.  A built-in snoopy neighbor, if you will.  But now that a good chunk of the residents of Lake of the Ozarks know that Marty is a money-launderer (his kids, the strip-club owner, at least five members of the Langmore family), it doesn't seem like adding one more could possibly hurt.  I hope the character of the old man does get used in some later plot twist.  

[iMonrey]

I'm not digging the hillbilly family. I would have been fine with them as a one-off in Episode 2 but if the whole season is going to be The Byrde's vs. The Hillbillies I'm going to be very disappointed. Also, in the previous episode when Marty went to the strip club there was just one (very pregnant) stripper and the owner said something about not wanting pretty girls. But when he went back in this episode the place seemed packed and the stripper giving him the lap dance was quite attractive. What happened?

Also, Charlotte appeared to be on the verge of being hired at the clothing store when she left the interview to go punch Wyatt in the face and she didn't seem to return to the interview. I'm guessing she didn't get the job? Jeez, she could have waited.

Edited August 2, 2017 by iMonrey

[paulvdb]

She probably didn't get the job. I certainly would not hire someone who walked out during a job interview to punch someone in the face.

[Guest]

The manager asked if she could start Sat. so she kind of had the job, if she hadn't walked out and not returned.  It bugged me, too.  It's not that easy to get a job when you're 15 and know nobody in a small town.  Ruth had just said there were no jobs because everyone was staffed up for the season, too. 

[Cheezwiz]

Yeah, the little detail about the job interview bugged me too. She could've smiled broadly and said "Great! what time would you like me to start?" and then gone and punched the kid in the face.

On 7/23/2017 at 11:05 PM, veronicalodge44 said:

 i look forward to seeing the rachel character fleshed out more and to seeing how her and marty's relationship evolves (and i don't mean anything romantic, just that it seems like they could have an interesting dynamic as they get to know each other better - there's something intriguing there for me).

I'm very intrigued by this relationship as well - I like the actress playing Rachel.

There was a lot of stuff I enjoyed this episode: Laura Linney being all bad-ass and swinging the dead possum at the Langmore kid, and I laughed out loud at the Sarah McLaughlin pet rescue ads that Marty kept seeing on TV.

I still can't figure out how the Langmore family are related. Is Ruth older sister to the two younger Langmore boys, or are they cousins? Who are the two older men? Uncles? Curious about their backstory.

[paulvdb]

Ruth is the boys' cousin. The two older men are brothers. One of them is the father of the boys. The binging makes it sometimes difficult to remember what happened in which episode, but I don't think we'd seen Ruth's father yet in this episode.

[mtlchick]

Marty had the nightmare most of us thought would happen to us: Sarah Maclaughlin talking to me by NAME in order to donate to the ASPCA.

 

Rednecks aside, I am enjoying this.  I figured Laura Linney would bring it.  Never thought Jason Bateman could, but this is almost a revelation even though he's been in the business for almost as long as I've been alive. 

[Raja]

Maybe that FBI Agent should have come with a full tactical team instead of alone so they would have felt safe.  I would have jumped at the witness protection lifeline when thrown at me.  I guess that I just trust Inspector Shannon.

[Blue Plastic]

I was kind of surprised the wife didn’t jump at the witness protection offer.

[SlovakPrincess]

Ok, now I have that damn Bob Seger song stuck in my head.

Ruth is something else -- she sure seems committed to killing Marty at some point LOL.  "I'm not leaving without gainful motherfucking employment!"  was my favorite line of the episode.   

Agree with other posters here that Buddy simply wants to live out his remaining days in his home and this arrangement is the simplest way to do that.  He doesn't seem like the type of guy to want to mess with a reverse mortgage.

I hope we find out more about the undercover FBI Agent and what makes him tick ... so far he's just a big blank who's a jerk to his ex-boyfriend (though he probably shouldn't have been dating his partner in the first place).  

Edited May 7, 2022 by SlovakPrincess

[SlovakPrincess]

On 4/29/2020 at 3:26 AM, Blue Plastic said:

I was kind of surprised the wife didn’t jump at the witness protection offer.

Yeah, for a minute, I thought Wendy's fake smile got even more frozen, like she was considering it.  

Although that would obviously require Marty to testify in court and the risk that Del could get to them all before he had the chance.  

I'm so curious as to how Marty got himself into this situation in the first place ... how does someone like Marty even meet someone like Del and agree to money laundering drug cartel money?!  Marty has shown some real emotion and cracks in his eerily calm facade in episodes 2 and 3 -- how does a normal dude get himself mixed up in this??  Hope we get a flashback episode at some point!