Ringer recap: Burn Notice

An early holiday gift for the writing staff of Ringer might be a Thesaurus. If you were playing a drinking game tonight and drank every time you heard the word “whore,” you’d be as tanked as Juliet by the first five minutes (a close second would be imbibing every time you heard “bitch”). While I was thrilled to not hear “Shiv” as much, the use of “whore” got a lil out of control. Now I loved it last week when Gemma said the immortal line, “That’s for sleeping with my husband you whore!” But it just became down right brutes after a while.

Still, the opening moments of Bridget arriving home and seeing a giant “WHORE” painted on Siobhan’s wall-sized photo cracked me up. Funnier still was the fact that THEY KEPT THAT PHOTO UP! Wouldn’t you immediately take it down? It literally stayed up the entire episode. At least grab a tarp from Tarpland aka the loft and cover that stuff up. I can’t take 17 more episodes without a ginormous wall sized photos of Siobhan. It’s my reasons for recapping.

So we started off the episode with Gemma MIA and Bridget, the Brit, and the Cute Boring Guy returning to the city. We also flashed back to the previous night and saw Bridget pleading/yelling in her Hampton’s house not to tell anyone. Um, wasn’t Agent Machado like just in that house?

So Andrew and Bridget arrive home and realize that Juliet has thrown a huge party. There’s a keg (along with some ping pong balls — nice touch) in the kitchen. But I don’t really buy Juliet throwing a kegger. She seems like the kinda girl who would get a college kid to buy her some Skinnygirl Margarita bottles and call it a day. Right?

Meanwhile, Gemma decided to do some research and watch some old videos of Siobhan and her. Wow, turns out Gemma’s bad hair is not a recent mistake — she’s had it for years! Someone needs to give the gurl some advice. Are there no gays in this version of New York? Gemma noticed that Siobhan had a weird burn on her hand from a “cooking class.” Uh okay. She finally decided to meet with Bridget and she realized that Bridget was telling the truth when she didn’t have the mysterious burn. Basically, then Gemma became livid at Bridget and left in a big huff. This episode should have been subtitled “Gemma Frowns.”

So Juliet returned to the apartment and realized that fake Siobhan and her father had rummaged through her things. So naturally she decided to ruin Siobhan’s closet. She ripped up Siobhan’s wedding dress, which wasn’t really in a special place — just some box. And then she poured perfume on some shoes and took some bags off the shelf. Frankly, Juliet might need a tutorial on destruction. She did however find a pamphlet for Bridget’s NA meetings.

With all this stress, Bridget decided to go to a meeting and met a very cute new recovering addict named Charlie, whom I think kinda looked like a lion. Anyone else think that? I think it was his beard and someone feline-esque teeth. Anyhoo, he and Bridget also had a little sexual tension which I feel like will come back into play. Lord knows she likes to fall for her meeting attendees. Speaking of, there were various shots of Malcolm still being tortured and doped up. And that’s about it. That poor actor might as well be a mime for how much he talks.

NEXT: Gemma says a completely ridiculous sentence…and not in a good way

Mean girl Juliet revealed to her father that she had seen Bridget at an NA meeting. Both of them assumed that faux Siobhan was trying to get info to send Juliet to rehab. Why are these people so dumb?!?!

So then crazyhair Gemma shows up and lays down a truth bomb: “What I have to say is a game changer.” Well, what I have to say Gemma is that NO ONE in reality talks like that. The only people that talk like that are CW characters in previews for upcoming episodes to make their series sound more dramatic than it actually is. Kthnxbye. Gemma then laid another truth bomb: she wants Bridget to sleep with Henry so that she can catch them and activate the adultery clause in their pre-nup. Basically, she wants Henry to get no money.

After some soul searching (aka smearing the “Whore” paint over the photo dramatically), Bridget decided to tell Henry what was going on. He obviously complimented her first but then got realz angry about this whole situation. Also, did we know that Andrew and Gemma had children? Where the hell have these kids been this whole time?

So Bridget also tells Gemma that she won’t go through with the whole sleeping with Henry thing. Gemma once again invokes “whore” but then at least questions Bridget’s whole identity-switching plan, which I found amusing.

Bridget returns home to Andrew worried about Juliet missing. She got upset after Andrew told her she’s going to public school. Good call dude. Definitely no drugs in public school. Why don’t you just send her to Miami? Oh wait you already did that.

The pair finds Juliet at a nightclub and there’s an awkward afterchool special moment where Bridget apologizes to Juliet. Also, this LA-shot show is really struggling with its New York depiction. None of this felt remotely NYC to me.

Finally at the very end, we see Bridget and Juliet cleaning the photo. Juliet says, “You’re doing it wrong.” Clearly, Juliet has cleaned up “Whore” paint before. It’s very popular with high school kids these days.

So I think I’ve realized that Ringer doesn’t really sustain an entire hour of television. Basically the main reason to tune in is for the final 5 minutes or so of the episode. Last week’s installment proved that as did the most recent. This week’s big twist was truly a doozy. Although, given how good last week’s twist was and how lamely they resolved it, I’m a little worried. On to the main event: So Andrew came over to see Gemma when she called him upset. When he answered the door, Henry was there alone and claimed that he hadn’t seen Gemma. After Andrew left, Henry walked through the apartment, which had looked like it had hosted quite a scuffle, and there was blood all over the walls. So either Juliet was having another painting party or Gemma is six feet under.

Follow Tim on Twitter: @EWTimStack

RATE THIS EPISODE: