After so many secrets, lies and on-screen acts of creepiness and necrophilia, you may be thinking Spotless has already plunged you as deep as you could go into the darker side of humanity. You’d be wrong.
Here’s a lesson that everyone should know: If someone asks you about a lie, they probably already know the truth. Jean clearly hasn’t learned that lesson as he tries to tell Julie about “everything” – except for his affair. Hell hath no [better investigator] than a woman scorned.
After finding out about Jean’s affair, Julie takes it upon herself to meet Claire, Jean’s former mistress/therapist. Julie acts as if she’s going to buy a necklace from Claire and hands her a credit card. As Claire reads the name, she freezes. In the next scene the two are sharing tea while Julie searches for answers Claire isn’t willing to provide about her marriage. But Claire does let it slip that she knew about Jean’s illegal activity, meaning Jean felt he could confide more in his mistress than his wife.
Later, when Jean surprises Julie with some sushi for lunch, she confronts him about how he never told her someone was murdered in front of him and that their family might be in danger. Jean promises her that she and their kids aren’t in any trouble and that he’s being completely honest. To test him, Julie asks Jean if there’s anything else he’d like to say. Without blinking, he says no, which leads Julie to admit she met Claire and wants him to move out of the house as a result.
Martin took it upon himself to tell Jean he’s been sleeping with Sonny Clay, Nelson’s wife, to which Jean tells him he has to fix his own problem. So Martin spent almost the entire episode following Victor Clay around London in a giant gray van (way to be inconspicuous, right?). But what he doesn’t know is that Nelson has plans to take Sonny to Portugal, leave Victor his empire and not come back. Unless Victor’s even more insane than we think he is, there’s no reason he’d risk that by telling Nelson about his wife and business partner’s infidelity.
Luckily, Martin’s game of cat and mouse ends when he follows Victor to Julie’s workshop where he’s still pretending to be a client. While Victor is upstairs asking the very recently separated Julie out to dinner, Martin calls her and warns her. Julie plays it smart and tells Victor she’ll go on a date with him just to get away and stand him up later from the safety of her own home.
All of that being said, the most interesting storyline in the episode actually focuses on Maddy. The episode began with her at a party with “Steven,” the guy she met online who looks nothing like his profile picture, before she passes out after being drugged. She wakes up to texts looking to blackmail her with the use of naked pictures that were taken the night before.
Maddy spends most of the episode trying to get advice from people she trusts. She goes to a classmate who gives the worst advice in the history of mankind, her uncle Martin (you know, the one she awkwardly dropped her towel for) and her mother, who lashes out because she just confronted her cheating husband.
Later, Maddy ends up meeting Steven at a bar with a man named Jerry, a john that Steven’s worked with in the past that has a thing for underage girls. To stall, Maddy goes off to the bathroom and calls her dad, her last line of defense, who comes to the bar a few minutes later to rescue her. Jean holds “Steven” against a wall by his throat and destroys his phone after threatening to cut his balls off if the pictures of his 13-year-old daughter ever go public.
The episode ends with Martin and Jean agreeing that Victor Clay needs to die because he’s a threat to everyone they love. But instead of doing it themselves, Jean declares that they’ll find a way to get Nelson to kill his own brother.
To watch Jean threaten a total scumbag and find out how he plans to get Victor Clay out of the picture, catch Spotless on Esquire Network on Saturdays at 10|9c.
