Well, we finally know who Albie Roman buried out in Monarch's not-so-deep, not-so-dark woods, and it's not even that big of a surprise. This week's episode, "About Last Night," opens with the events of that fateful night, starting with Nicky's loving caress of her CML Award. After hearing a knock at the door, she opens it to reveal a very drunk Clive, who's come with shitty grocery store flowers in an attempt to either win her back or neg her so hard that she slinks back into their marriage with her tail between her legs.
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The big (unsurprising) reveal
When Nicky tells Clive to hit the bricks, he hits her. He then starts choking her, insinuating he knows things about her family that she doesn't want the world to know when — bam! — Gigi clocks him with Nicky's beloved award. Nicky calls Albie, who comes over and helps the two wrap Clive in a tarp, throwing him in the back of his truck. When Gigi asks why they're not calling the cops, Albie tells her (stupidly), "the last thing this family needs is more scandal," as if he's not making the whole thing 100 times worse doing what he's doing.
When Albie drives Clive out to the woods to bury him, he discovers Clive's body isn't actually in the truck. Surprise! He's alive, and he springs from the darkness in an effort to overtake Albie. There's a scrap and a shootout, but ultimately Albie nails Clive a few times with a shotgun before burying him. When Albie peels out, the cops spot him, which leads to the whole "uh-oh, there's no body here" moment that's been teased for a few episodes now. So is Clive dead? Did he limp off somewhere? Did someone else dig him up and save him in an effort to blackmail the Romans down the road? Would fire actually burn a glass CML Award? Only time will tell, especially if the Romans really "stick to their truth and stick together."
Does anyone care about Clive anyway?
About a month after the shooting, Nicky and Luke meet with D.A. Uncle Tripp to discuss the ongoing investigation into where Clive is. Nicky, it seems, filed a police report, even though she absolutely wouldn't have had to do any such thing considering, as far as she knew, he took off for London. It's not like he would have had to call his soon to be ex-wife, so the fact that she did that is suspect to me, frankly. One could argue that she did it for her daughter, who's clearly torn up about the whole thing. But she did it weirdly fast, so I doubt that was much of a concern. (I should mention: Ace saw the entire thing go down, so he knows that Clive was a bad guy and who did what in the whole scenario.)
Anyway, while Tripp is initially convinced that Clive is just off bird-dogging some lady and "not wanting to be found," after a discussion with Nicky's daughter at the Truthteller Whiskey party (more on that later), he decides to reignite the task force and look further into the Brit's location, "whoever it hurts, whatever it takes." Those Romans had better watch their backs.
Speaking of Truthteller: Luke is launching his father's namesake bourbon whiskey with a party, and he wants Nicky to perform with her ex-flame Wade. He goads her into it eventually, but not before a bunch of hemming and hawing on her part. Wade tries to flirt with her, and she gives him the cold shoulder. She's still pretty eaten up over what happened with Clive, it seems, and she's been dodging Jamie as well. Maybe now's the time for Nicky to work on Nicky, truthfully. She could probably use some reflection.
Gigi's wife is kind of a terrible manager
Meanwhile, Gigi knows who she is. Her ridiculous storyline this week is that she's been picked to be on the cover of Beaucoups Magazine. There's a photoshoot, and when she sees the edits, it's clear she's been airbrushed to shit. They made her look about 100 pounds lighter and given her a sort of Ree Drummond gloss. Gigi's wife Kayla seems weirdly into the images, saying Gigi looks "mega-snatched," which ... if I were Gigi, I'd be incredibly pissed that my wife/manager would give those pics a second thought, let alone an admiring look.
Kayla tells Gigi she cannot do anything about the pics, which is straight-up bad management. Any good manager would absolutely have either gotten approval on the pics when they agreed to do the cover or at least made a call to the magazine to tell them the star was quite upset about the shoot. Gigi fires back in her own way, making a social media video exposing her very unglamorous life warts, weight, poop and all, ending it with #ScrewYouBeaucoupsMagazine. (#ScrewYouBeaucoups is catchier, shorter, and rhymes, but I digress.) Gigi becomes a social media sensation and Beaucoups decides not to use her as their cover model, which makes no sense. What they should have done would be to use the un-airbrushed photos because that's where the magazine industry is these days. But Monarch is a TV show. This is just a plot point, not reality, so I'll allow it.
Trace finally gets to shine
Trace Adkins' Albie is really the star of this week's episode as we get a glimpse into his past with Susan Sarandon's Dottie. Seems like Albie had a bit of a boozy outlaw past that manifested itself in trashed hotel rooms, one pissed-off wife, and public declarations of love, but when Dottie tells Albie she's done for real, he chooses not to believe her and shows up at her show. In an effort to keep him from walking out on her stage, she shoots him in the leg as Earl watches. "Try not to die before I finish my set," Dottie tells Albie. He doesn't. When they reconcile in the hospital later, Dottie tells Albie he'll have to quit doing his outlaw schtick and she's rebranding him "the Texas truthteller," a phrase she says is "total malarkey."
Albie also gets a lot of screen time this episode because after spotting Rosa's locket on Ana, he puts two and two together and figures out Catt is his daughter. He meets with her in the same bar the show always uses, where he finds out that all she wants — for now at least — is for her daughter to be given a fair shake at Monarch. Since Luke has told the younger Phoenix she's not ready for a solo record, Albie calls her in to record with his band. They tear through a slightly convoluted cover of Kelsea Ballerini's "Half Of My Hometown." I'm not sure if it's going to end up on her record or his — hopefully the former, since it's a weird song to be on Albie's gritty "Johnny Cash does Nine Inch Nails" phase. But again, TV show, plot points, etc.
Meanwhile, at the Truthteller Whiskey show, Nicky and Wade perform a cover of Eddie Rabbit's "I Love A Rainy Night" while lil Tatum shoots eye daggers at her mom. Afterward, Luke tells Nicky that while the whiskey found a worldwide distributor at the party — a thing that, in theory, should have happened before they made cases and cases of the stuff — the promoters, who work at Open Horizon, didn't make it to the event, meaning there's still no big tour on her calendar. One would think that promoters would be itching to work with the artist who won the CML for Single Of The Year or know that it's booking agents — not promoters — who actually put together a tour, but details, details. Maybe Luke's trying to land Nicky a 360-deal or something, and Open Horizon is supposed to be code for LiveNation?
Ultimately, Albie sits Nicky down and tells her about Catt and about what Dottie did with the barn. "Lies are the real Roman legacy," he says, "and Mama and I passed them on to you." Nicky seems shocked and then tells him, "And now I'm passing them on to my children." Of course, doing anything different would mean that she would have to go to the police and turn herself in for her husband and mother's deaths. And we all know she's not going to do that, but at least she knows what she's doing is wrong, so that's something. And, hey, if everyone on Monarch was just good and righteous all the time, we wouldn't have a dramatic TV soap to gasp over, and what fun would that be?
Random observations:
- I dug Albie's cover of Townes Van Zandt's "Waiting Around To Die." It fits with his outlaw background, and it's topical as well.
- Cute Earl made Nicky's family "taters straight from the Kenny Rogers cookbook." Adorable.
READ MORE: Susan Sarandon's Daughter Joins Her Mom in Country Music Drama 'Monarch'
