Julian Wells aka Catherine Sexton aka Suzy McCoppin

Written by D.B. Brooks and Anthony L. Greene and directed by Julie Jordan, this episode stars Julian Wells as Ellie, a famous romance novelist. She’s looking for love but wants the kind of love like the main character in her novels has, which often involves dramatic conflict, which is good to read but doesn’t always work out as well in real life.

Cooper (Tiffany Hendra), Olivia (Amy Lindsay), and Ryan (Glen Meadows) set her up with John, a book critic played by Brad Bartram. Cooper, hoping to create some kind of dramatic conflict, arranges for their date to be going on a ride-along with two police officers. Ellie and John meet and quickly realize that they know of each other, as John has written poor reviews of her novels, which she obviously doesn’t appreciate. So, during the ride-along, they argue about Ellie’s work but eventually warm up to each other and start sharing stories of past sexual experiences. At one point, the cops have to pull over and arrest someone. The cops have to leave Ellie and John to take the suspect back to the precinct, as there isn’t enough room in the car for all of them. So Ellie and John wait for the cops to come back for them, and in the meantime, they go inside this empty warehouse where they’ve been dropped off. And soon, they’re dropping off their clothes and banging each other’s brains out, giving them a happy ending.

This is a good story for the main plot. Brad Bartram is a softcore veteran and a very good actor, and Wells is good, too, so their scenes together, especially the sex scene, are well done.

There’s also a sex scene between Wells and Noah Frank, which is a fantasy scene that Ellie describes from one of her novels.

Shankura Collinson and Diana Rio play the two police officers. They also have a hot sex scene together, which I find particularly notable because Collinson is a Black male, which you don’t see enough of in softcore. And Rio is very sexy. It’s a shame neither of them has any other softcore roles (or anything else) after this episode.

The subplot of this episode involves Cooper and Ryan, who are now officially in a relationship, as of the previous episode. The episode opens with the two of them lying together in bed, going through Cooper’s phone to delete all of her various exes. Later, at lunch, she runs into one of her exes, Jackson (Cameron Graham), who reveals that he’s leaving to move to Paris at the end of the week. Jackson makes it clear that he’s hoping for one last fling before he leaves, but Cooper tells him she’s in a relationship now. But she does agree to meet him for lunch the next day because he has an old pair of earrings that she once left at his house, which she says she’s been looking for forever, and he’ll bring them to her.

Cooper tells Ryan what happened and invites him to come along with her to meet Jackson because she wants him to be sure that nothing is going to happen, Ryan declines and swears that he trusts her, so it’s unnecessary. After she leaves, Olivia praises Ryan for being so trusting and secure, saying that this is the kind of thing that will show Cooper how right he is for her because most men are untrusting, which is what drives her away from wanting to commit to anyone in the first place. She tells him she should meet her at her place when she goes home and he’ll surely get some hot sex as a reward.

So Cooper has lunch with Jackson, he gives back the earrings and we get a flashback scene of the last time they had sex. Then they leave, but he follows her home to say goodbye. She hugs him, but he goes in for a quick kiss on the lips. But, oh no, we see Ryan is in his car across the street and sees the whole thing. Predictably, he jumps to the wrong conclusion and decides to quit the Black Tie Agency without even talking to her.

I like the main story but going for this cheap “breakup” just as they finally got Cooper and Ryan together bugs me. It’s such a story cliche, I hate when writers do this. Realistically he’d confront her, and she’d at least get a chance to explain. But nope, can’t do that here. There’s one episode left in the season and I know it will obviously be resolved, so there’s no drama. It’s a shame, but up to this point, I loved the story; the cast was all good actors, and the four sex scenes were hot, with a better ending, I’d give it a perfect rating, but now the most I’ll grant it is FOUR STARS.

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