MONIQUE PARENT

Written by D.B. Brooks & Windsor Goodman and directed by Julie Jordan.

First, this episode could have had a pretty decent plot twist, although I’m sure if I’d seen it without knowing it in advance, I would have guessed it before it was revealed. But a unique thing about this series is that it begins with a recap from the previous episode and ends with a recap of the next episode (the same thing Zane’s The Jump Off would later do). So, if you’d been watching this show in order, you’d already know the plot twist because it was spoiled at the end of the previous episode.

Grace Tom plays Helen, the agency’s newest client. Oliva, Cooper, and Ryan interview her, and she admits to not having dated in over 2 years. She makes comments like saying that she hasn’t met any men that “inspire her” and how she wants someone to help “celebrate her womanhood.” These comments lead Cooper to suspect that Helen can’t find a good man because she’s secretly interested in women. Olivia isn’t so sure about that at first, but Cooper gets her to agree to set her up with “Bob Harris” to see if she’s right.

Helen goes to a restaurant where she’s supposed to meet Bob. But Bob doesn’t show, and instead, a woman named Anne (Monique Parent) strikes up a conversation with her at the bar and, seeing that she’s been “stood up,” asks Helen to join her for dinner. The ladies have dinner and talk. It turns out that they’re both in show business. Anne owns her own talent agency, and Helen is an agent for another firm that has represented some of her clients. As the conversation turns to relationships, Anne reveals that 3 years earlier, she realized that she was a lesbian and came out to everyone she knows. Talking about her experiences, Anne mentions that her first time with another woman was back in college, when21 she and her then-boyfriend (a man played by Jon Fleming) had a threesome with a woman (who was played by Dawn Arellano). We see the scene in a flashback, and it’s one of Monique’s best (she’s always been particularly good in sex scenes with other women). She admits that by the end, she was more turned on by the other woman than by her boyfriend. But she was afraid to admit to herself that it meant she preferred women and avoided it for years after that.

The next day, the ladies meet for lunch again, setting up a picnic in a remote area of a beach. This is where Ann confesses that her full name is Bobbi Ann Harris. So she’s the Bob Harris that the Black Tie Agency set her up with. It was all a plot to see if Grace liked women. Of course, it worked, and Grace and Anne have sex on the beach blanket in another hot scene.

The other plot of the episode involves Cooper and Ryan. For the record, no mention is made of the bet that Cooper and Olivia made in the previous episode about firing Ryan if Cooper could make another man fall in love with her within a week. So I guess it’s been over a week since then, and Cooper failed (although it didn’t appear that she was trying that hard).

We get a sex scene between Ryan and Cooper, but it’s just a fantasy sequence, after Ryan was mesmerized by Cooper in a sexy dres she wore to work. When Ryan finds out about the plan involving “Bob Harris,” he doesn’t think it’ll work, so he makes a bet with Cooper that the other will pay for dinner, whoever is right. When Cooper wins, he thinks that means he’ll be paying for the two of them to go to dinner together, but Cooper says she meant the bet to be that Ryan will be paying for her to have dinner with another man. This leaves Ryan dejected as we see Cooper go out with Kyle (Noah Frank), who was a rejected applicant for the assistant job in episode 2, and the two of them have sex on a staircase.

The threesome scene alone is almost enough to give this episode a perfect score, but the other three scenes are also top-notch. You can’t go wrong casting Monique Parent in anything. Chacebook rating FIVE STARS

Jason Majercik is selling this UNRATED 3-disc DVD set of Black Tie Nights season 1 for $29.99. For his softcore inventory list, email him at quinn_nash@hotmail.com.