Written by Ron Cosentino and directed by Buddy Giovinazzo, I’m going to go ahead and spoil how this episode ends because, in my opinion, it just doesn’t make any sense and so I need to talk about it to express my opinion of this episode. So if you’re waiting to watch this episode first, and this sort of thing matters to you, skip this review until you’ve seen it.
Leilani Sarelle stars as Veronica, and this episode opens with her in a strip club meeting with Bendix, an ex-cop played by Chris Mulkey. Apparently, Bendix had a reputation for being crooked and got off on two wrongful death charges, which is why she sought him out for this job, although he is skeptical.
She explains that her husband Gil (John Enos III) is having an affair with a woman named Tatiana (Shani Pride) and they’re plotting to kill her. Veronica has managed to bug Tatiana’s apartment, which Gil pays for, and plays Bendix an audio tape where Tatiana is angrily arguing with Gil about why he hasn’t done it yet. Tatiana says they should take Veronica out to the desert, kill her, and bury her body there. This will be easier than divorce because Veronica would take him to the cleaners. Bendix rightfully points out how incriminating that tape is and says she should just take it to the police, but she says Gil is a “mobbed-up lawyer” who would just get that evidence dismissed somehow. So with the offer of $20k in cash upfront and another $20k in cash after it’s done, Bendix takes the job, but Veronica insists that it has to be done on her terms.
The plan Veronica comes up with is she slips some poison into a champagne bottle that she knows Gil will take to Tatiani’s place, and then she and Bendix follow them and sneak in, finding both of them passed out. They load the bodies into a car and drive to the middle of the desert, where they wake them up and Bendix forces Gil at gunpoint to dig a large hole with a shovel. When Gil is finished Bendix makes them both get in the hole a prepares to shoot them. Gil is relatively calm, while Tatiana is crying and pleading for her life. But as Bendix is about to shoot Tatiana, suddenly Veronica shoots him, and Bendix’s body falls into the hole too.
So at this point, it looks like a classic double-cross on Veronica’s part, maybe just wanting to keep all the money for herself. But then she shoots Tatiana, and gets ready to shoot Gil, but instead says happy birthday to him, and he laughs and climbs out of the hole. And the episode ends with the two of them starting to have sex on the hood of the car.
WTF?!?
That ending was ridiculous and kills the whole episode for me. And it wasn’t even that great of an episode from the start anyway. Even things like the way the female nudity was included on this show felt a bit exploitative, yeah, even for me. There are brief glimpses of several topless and fully nude women in the strip club scene. Tatiana is topless for no reason while arguing with Gil in her first scene, and again when Veronica and Gil sneak into her apartment, Tatiana is found topless in just her panties while passed out on the floor. The only time her being topless makes sense for the story is in the one sex scene with Gil, where she’s on top of him. But even that scene is more angry (Tatiana is constantly slapping him in the face) than erotic.
Veronica also briefly shows her breasts in a weird scene where she gives Bendix a handjob and then a blowjob in the car.
I mean, this is no fault of the cast, who are all decent mainstream actors and do the best job they can with the material they’re given, but this episode can just be skipped. Chacebook rating: THREE STARS
Jason Majercik is selling this UNRATED 4-disc DVD set of Femme Fatale season 2 for $29.99. Email him at quinn_nash@hotmail.com for his softcore inventory list.
Categories: SOFTCORE TELEVISION
