Say what you want about Death and Other Details, but you have to admit, the show does deliver answers. It feels right for a series so obsessed with details to leave no stone or snowy mountaintop unturned, right? Now, that doesn’t mean those answers are wholly satisfying — the long-awaited Viktor Sams reveal was, for many, I suspect, very much telegraphed thanks to some less-than-convincing CGI face manipulation and a few other would-be surprises that viewers have sussed out (I told you those blue smoothies were suspect). But I will say I was genuinely surprised at that final reveal and the seamless transition it provided into making a case for Death and Other Details to be more than just a one-off. Hey, maybe if there is a second season, we can drastically cut down the number of characters so that there can be room for some true, interesting development with the most important ones so everything doesn’t feel so surface-level! If I’m really dreaming, I’d also hope that a second season could figure out what to do with the woefully underutilized Mandy Patinkin, who was, for the most part, sidelined for the entire conclusion of this series. What are we even doing here, people?
Oh, right: the case. Kira Scott’s death! Viktor Sams! The murders aboard the S.S. Varuna! Should we get to those answers now?
When we last left our passengers, Viktor Sams’s No. 1 boy, who we learn is named Andreas, arrives onboard, knocks out Hilde Eriksen, and declares that his boss has been watching and it’s time to play a little game. And, yes, that game definitely involves the bomb Sunil and Jules happened upon below deck.
The game is this: The bomb is set to detonate in one hour. All of the innocents — the crew (including Winnie), children (including Father Toby’s son Derek), and our two professional investigators — have been sent off to safety on shore via the ship’s lifeboats. There are no lifeboats left. The only way off the boat before it sinks to its watery grave is by way of the nine seats available on Viktor Sams’s helicopter. All the Richie McRichsters left onboard, and those who “ride their tailcoats,” will have one hour to bid for their lives. Now, I just spent all that time explaining that game, and I regret to inform you that the game doesn’t matter all that much in the end. Two characters do make some interesting choices when it comes down to it, though. Celia Chun, forever an icon, refuses to play a game in which only the rich can win. Wouldn’t you know? Her morals mean she ends up “winning” all nine seats. I would watch an entire series about Celia Chun.
The second character who really shines here is, surprisingly, Tripp Collier. I never would’ve guessed it from the pilot episode, but Tripp Collier might get the best character arc — or at least, the most believable and well-developed one — of the season. His sister Anna is catatonic after her mother’s death (and finding out her dad is not her dad, losing her company, her wife asking for a divorce, etc., etc.) and therefore can’t even comprehend playing this little game, but Tripp is trying everything he can to save his family. In a moment when he could so easily reveal himself to be the selfish screwup everyone believes him to be, he refuses to leave the ship without his sister (going so far as to carry her to safety), as well as Leila and Imogene. Okay, and that bit about him going back and forth over whether or not he should make sure his dad is on that helicopter is honestly hilarious. I was so charmed to learn that in the end, post-Varuna, he winds up being the one to take care of both his dad and sister. I mean, they are two complete horror shows, but look at Tripp! Wearing a sensible cardigan and keeping his family intact! Our little coke fiend with the double-popped collar and terrible investing skills really won me over in the end.
What the game really does is provide stakes and a tight deadline for Imogene and her merry band of amateur sleuths — Leila, Teddy, Jules, and Sunil — to figure out who the hell Viktor Sams is. After a wildly unearned outburst from Imogene about how she just can’t do this without Rufus (again, not fully building the foundation of that relationship really muddles what are supposed to be some emotional peaks) and a pep talk from Sunil, Imogene makes a move. She heads over to see Andreas and uses the meeting time to get any kind of clue as to the identity of the person behind all of this — she winds up lifting Danny Turner’s confiscated notebook. Honestly, it’s the perfect thing to steal!
The At-Sea Scooby Gang’s deducing uses several callbacks to finally figure out this mystery. Danny’s notes are all in code, but, yes, you know it — the primer to crack his code is, like Rufus’s, “truth.” When they get through Danny’s notes, they find that the day on the pool deck — you know, right before he yells at Winnie — he noted that there was an “unknown crew member.” Hey, remember how the show made a big point of letting us know that Danny “never forgot a face”? Well, it pays off here. When Danny boarded the ship, he asked Teddy for a crew and passenger manifest complete with photo IDs (would Teddy actually give that to a guest?), and Imogene realizes that if he spotted someone he didn’t recognize from the manifest, that person had to be Viktor Sams. It’s why Danny was killed. So, who was Danny talking to that day on the pool deck before the Winnie incident? Imogene can’t remember because she’s only a stupid thief! But then she realizes one more thing: She may not remember who Danny was talking to, but she remembers that Derek was filming — he would have the interaction on his phone. The team grabs the phone from Father Toby and goes through the footage. They find the unknown crew member, and suddenly, they realize that Viktor Sams is Hilde Eriksen.
But wait! Imogene goes to confront Hilde as the rest of the team goes to grab Viktor Sams’s servers from the ship so they don’t go down when the bomb goes off — that will be important later. Imogene realizes that all of these murders and these games were much more personal than simply teaching the .01 percent a lesson. Imogene realizes that Viktor Sams is Hilde Eriksen is HER MOTHER. Hilde drops that wild accent, and it’s true: She is Kira Scott. Right in front of our very eyes the entire time. She wanted to make Alexandra fearful before she died to pay her back for dropping the Collier case. She wanted to make Llewellyn suffer — in a flashback to their night together, we see her reveal who she is to him and also inform him he’s been poisoned with the same ricin as Alexandra; he only had days to live before jumping to his death. She wanted to make the Colliers suffer, too, and she succeeded. Imogene is shocked but definitely not shocked enough. Imogene’s whole personality is “my mom died in front of my very eyes,” and yet, she takes this whole upending of her entire life fairly well. Admittedly, she doesn’t have a ton of time, because soon after the big reveal, Kira informs her that everyone on the boat will be totally fine. There is a ferry that will be by to rescue them all, but we need to get out of here.
The greatest mystery of this series might actually be, “Okay, but how long did Imogene sit on that plane blindfolded, and couldn’t they have just pulled the shades down?” The second is definitely: “When did Kira have time to give herself a cute new blowout?” Regardless, Kira brings her daughter to her secret headquarters in an airplane hangar and tells her the entire story of how she teamed up with Andreas to fake her own death and disappear after the Colliers tried to have her killed. I don’t know why we need to watch Imogene-as-Kira, in Kira’s memory, pull out multiple teeth in that car to leave behind DNA, but we do. Imogene realizes her memory of that moment was a lie — she didn’t see her mother in the front seat turning on the car before it exploded because Kira was already gone. Imogene never turned around until after the explosion. “Memory is a motherfucker,” she remembers Rufus wisely imparting.
Kira tries to explain to her daughter that she left not only to keep Imogene safe but because she saw “corruption was winning” and that the billionaire class needed to be stopped, so she did something about it. Like, she isn’t wrong, but also … murder is bad! Blackmail is bad! She wants Imogene to join her fight, but Imogene has a better idea: They should just, like, hang out and have fun.
It is honestly hilarious that Death and Other Details wants us to believe either of these characters would be totally cool giving up everything and just … go skiing together for six months? The moment we find the mother-and-daughter snow bunnies six months post-cruise, having a great laugh together at a fancy-shmancy ski resort, you know there is much more to it. It doesn’t take long for us to learn that despite her new, darker hair shade and insistence that she wants to make up for lost time with her daughter, Kira Scott has not given up her life’s work of making the rich people eat it. Not even a little bit.
Imogene hasn’t given up, either. Her mother’s methods don’t sit right with her, and the fact that Kira shows no remorse for the collateral damage that a very innocent Danny Turner turned out to be really bothers her. It’s not that much of a surprise when Imogene pulls up a third chair to the table where she’s about to have lunch with her mother, and Rufus, taking a break from writing the novel we’ve been hearing him narrate all along, sits down. It’s time to put this thing to bed once and for all. It does kind of muddy what Death and Other Details is attempting to say about the billionaire class, but, yeah, Kira Scott has sort of lost the plot of her crusade.
Imogene and Rufus finally have the one-up on ol’ Viktor Sams. They know Kira has been slowly poisoning Lawrence Collier with his own Captionem Blue by way of those blue protein smoothies — pretty dastardly if you ask me — and thanks to those servers the gang pulled off the Varuna, they also know Kira has been active this entire time away with Imogene; she never stopped running her operation. The FBI is raiding Kira’s hangar, the gun she’s had placed under the table has had its bullets removed, and in a fun reveal, along with Leila, Jules, and Teddy present to watch all of this go down, the entire restaurant they’ve been sitting in is full of FBI agents. Kira is cooked.
Imogene looks sort of upset, but again, here’s where one final Rufus/Imogene scene would’ve come in handy. This is huge! The mother Imogene thought was dead for 18 years is alive and a supervillain! Shouldn’t we, like, talk about it?
No, instead we learn that Imogene, Jules, Leila, and Teddy are forming some kind of sleuthing group, which I don’t hate. They very quickly find blood in the snow and severed limbs everywhere. A new case, indeed! And who might be behind it all?
Well, Imogene, Rufus, et al. didn’t know everything about what Kira was up to. It turns out she has a secret asset whom she has Andreas activate just as she’s dealing with her new legal issues. That asset? Anna Collier. You see, when Anna found her mother face-down in the pool, it was because Anna put her there. In a rage after learning about Llewellyn, her dad confessing to putting a hit out on Kira, and Katherine showing no remorse for any of it, Anna smashes her mother’s head in. If you were wondering why she was so catatonic as the Varuna was going down, now we know! As Anna takes in what she’s done to her mother, Kira appears. She uses the knowledge of what Anna has done to turn her into an asset, and now it’s time for Anna to come through for the woman who helped her cover up her crime. Okay, now I want a season two, if only to make sure Anna doesn’t hurt my sweet Tripp! I don’t care about that pile of limbs — protect Tripp at all costs!
The Aforementioned Other Details
• One element that was super underbaked — again, too many characters! — is this sort of ongoing love triangle between Imogene, Jules, and Sunil? On the boat, before the bomb goes off, Jules seems to be pushing Sunil to go after Imogene. After the FBI raid, Imogene gets a call from Sunil, who is under house arrest for his involvement with Viktor Sams (and perhaps his previous dark-money dealings as a banker), and although he seems to ask her to wait for him to finish his impending prison stint, she sets her eyes on Jules — the two make out in the snow not long after. Fine? There’s nothing really between Imogene and either of these guys to make me root for one or the other.
• Also! Is this more of a love square? What was with that look between Jules and Teddy when he saves her life during their escape with the servers? Are they into each other, too? Do we care?
• Leila gets a nice little send-off to her character arc, too. Anna is spiraling with coke and women and, well, murder now, probably, but Leila refuses to sign any divorce papers because, as she tells Imogene, she knows what it feels like to have everyone give up on you. She won’t do that to Anna.
• The greatest reveal in this entire finale: The winterwear is just as fabulous as the summer wardrobes! We get a houndstooth snowsuit, Imogene trades in her crop tops for a great yellow turtleneck, there are some gorgeous knits, and in her short time in the snow, Leila gets two perfect winter coats. Costume designer Mandi Line treated us so well.
Maggie Fremont , 2024-03-05 19:28:32
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