#gutter black

I’ve been demurring on this one, partly because of real life shit (well, mostly that to be honest) but also because this episode isn’t all that good. It’s an episode entirely centering around Antony Starr’s characters, and I sure hope they paid him double, cos the range he needed for it was tremendous. But, unfortunately, one of those characters (Van) just isn’t all that interesting yet, and the other (Jethro) is ill-served by one of the dumbest and most unfortunate sideplots the show has yet had. So, without further ado, we’ll get this one out of the way, and I’ll try and keep it short. 

We open with a dual appearance from the two most irritating characters in the show: Tracy and Suzy Hong, their differences now thoroughly mended and united in enjoying themselves by tormenting Van.

Yeah, it’s as insufferable as it looks. An incensed Van finally snaps and threatens to quit; Mr. Hong overhears, but Van finally manages to stand up for himself and it pays off: Mr. Hong makes him manager of one of his local little stores, which seems to sell mostly cheap novelty junk. I’m not entirely sure why he does this, honestly, but it’s a mildly important character moment for Van, so okay, I guess?

Meanwhile, in the West household, things are getting a little crazy.

Cheryl and Kacey are promoting their new underwear business with a sorta quasi-striptease party, hosted by and for middle-aged women. It’s one of the aspects of the episode I like best, not because the women are sexy but more because they really aren’t; they’re a bunch of trashy fortysomething women, reminding the world that it isn’t just model-type people who like having sex, or who know how to have fun with it. Kacey makes this explicit with a little barb at the morbidly fascinated Pascalle, telling her they didn’t offer to use her as a model because they wanted to use “real women”, which is a nice reminder that toxic standards of femininity cut cruelly in both directions. So, yeah, good segment - made all the better by the horror of the younger girls who’ve been dragged along.

Van returns, utterly nonplussed at the scene before him, and they all retreat to the bedroom. Antony Starr’s comic acting here is great, actually - he follows the others to the room and finds them using his drugs with an indignant and confused response of “well... don’t!”, and it makes me laugh every time. Draska expresses some clear interest in him, which he once again ignores, as usual. The next scene is where the plot properly begins.

The gist of it is this: the Hongs’ local store has their goods transported from warehouse to shelf by Draska’s clan, the Doslics. Van discovers that there’s a discrepancy between the number of trading cards he was meant to be shipped and the number he actually received; he goes and politely asks the Doslics about it, and they do not take that well.

   I come from good people - HONEST people! Made strong by our troubles!

Naturally, they think he’s accusing them of thievery. Naturally, this makes Van pretty sure they really are committing thievery, and a raging Mr. Hong agrees. The two proceed to keep escalating tensions, and the rest of the Wests get caught in the crossfire; mama Doslic gets into a fight with Cheryl in a supermarket car park, Pascalle finds her old tyre-modelling photos all defaced with violent graffiti, and it’s all mildly funny but also kinda dull. Eventually, it turns out that Van’s mate Munter has been stealing the cards from the warehouse all along, using the keys Van gave him for safekeeping. This is not the last time Van will find himself victimized by the consequences of his own actions.

I’m blasting through *a lot* of this plot here really quickly, and that’s cos it just isn’t very interesting for the most part. It’s trying to be a farce, mostly, and it sometimes succeeds; Van’s initial confrontation with the Doslics is really quite funny, and his steadily increasing panic as the situation just goes more and more wrong isn’t bad either. But it’s all a bit too by-the-numbers and predictable, and in the end none of the stakes feel real; we all know that in an episode like this, the Hongs and the Doslics were never really gonna properly come to blows, and they don’t. Van confesses a lot of stuff to Draska in a couple of secret meetings, and while he’s initially paranoid about her loyalty, she proves herself by finding a way to fix the issue; she places all the blame for the break-ins on Eric (who was selling the stolen cards anyway, after buying them from Munter) and the two families come together to absolutely motherfucking whoop the guy’s ass, leaving him looking rather worse for wear. 

      ...next thing I know I’m getting the shit kicked out of me by half the West                                                   Auckland United Nations!

If I have a favorite moment in this plot, it’s probably near the beginning, when the elder Doslic is first bringing in what he believes to be the full shipment of cards. He’s ranting and raving, the whole time he does it, about how much he just damn well hates the “chinks” and their terrible language skills, not to mention their driving - all while speaking in a heavy Croatian accent himself and also, oh yeah, taking their money. This show really does get quite a lot of comedy out of the idea that solidarity between marginalized groups really just doesn’t exist.

The rest of it, though? I mean, it does contain a couple of important moments, I guess. Van, after initially lying to protect Munter and only making everything worse, is genuinely willing to offer himself up, blame himself entirely, and essentially sacrifice himself in order to save everyone’s hides, and only doesn’t end up doing it because Draska fixes it all before he has to. That’s a nice reminder that Van, at his core, really is a genuinely good person, and that his internal conflict as a character all comes from the tension between that and the toxic masculinity he’s had indoctrinated deep within him by his father and the culture he’s grown up in. Cheryl demonstrates where her loyalties lie and takes Van’s side without a second’s hesitation after mama Doslic shows up with complaints; for all her problems with Van, she really does love him unconditionally. But there’s also too much stuff that doesn’t come off, like Van’s boring interactions with a mildly delinquent kid who likes the trading cards, or Tracy’s ever-one-dimensional mistreatment of Van. 

Still, at least it’s better than Jethro’s plot.

Remember how Tracy knows now about Jethro’s little rape-by-deception thing a few episodes ago? Well, she still doesn’t seem to be thinking of it as rape, but she is trying to get him to apologize for it nonetheless. Jethro, meanwhile, wants to root her again, and he knows he can’t do that without apologizing. So Jethro’s plot this episode is several scenes in a row of him miserably failing to pull off a convincing apology, and... that’s it, really. Hugh’s back, being annoying as usual (though it’s intentional enough that it doesn’t bother me too much), and Loretta briefly shows up to mock him for how bad he is at apologizing (talk about the pot calling the kettle black!), but for the most part this is all really redundant and dull. The only interesting part comes in Loretta’s video shack, where Jethro straight up lies to Caroline’s face, right in front of Loretta, in order to make himself some free time to go and keep trying it with Tracy. Loretta, of course, is too sociopathic to feel sorry for her, and we all knew a couple of episodes ago that Jethro wasn’t gonna be able to maintain it with her as a regular relationship, but the beginnings of heartbreak on Caroline’s face as she begins to get an inkling, in her subconscious, of what’s going on is genuinely sad.

But the ending of this plot? It’s awful, and in a really unfortunate way. In the end, see, it turns out Tracy never really wanted an apology; she likes Jethro, doesn’t really care about the fact that he deceived her in such an intimate way, and wants it with him again. She decides he’s ready when... he just refuses to apologize one time, admitting he isn’t sorry because (and this is possibly the worst line of dialogue in the whole show, so brace yourselves): “why would I be, when it was the best fuck I’ve ever had?” 

Eugh.

Gutter Black - alternative edit

Gutter Black by Hello Sailor 

(not actually Hello Sailor in clip - just friends and my dog Astra)

Here a group of 4 girls and I made this for our second Assignment in one of our classes at Uni. The little doggy is my baby girl Astriny she looks so cute in it!!! So glad I made the suggestion =:) So surprised on the day with how well behaved she was, usually she just tries to get away with anything using her puppylike factor with her eyes.