Summary
Yet another slow episode in “Rapprochement” sees Dare Me approach its halfway point with little in the way of momentum.
This recap of Dare Me Season 1, Episode 4, “Rapprochement”, contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous episode by clicking these words.
Am I the only one who’s getting a bit sick of Dare Me at this point? Its fourth episode, “Rapprochement”, is a lot like the first three – lots of ominous foreshadowing and steadily developing dynamics without much in the way of narrative progression or genuine intrigue. It’s pretty easy to forget about the bloody hinting the first couple of episodes did, and some judicious editing could have smoothed out some of the character work; a ten-episode season order seems a mistake here when six or eight might have done the job a bit better.
Nevertheless, here we are. Colette, even without her infidelity being made public, continues to antagonize her husband by having the girls over for training and paying him little to no attention; she later sleeps with Sarge Will, to rub salt into the wound. Addy, becoming more and more enamored by her new coach, watches her from afar and continues to be given increasing responsibilities over the rest of the team – responsibilities which should be Colette’s, really, but whatever.
This backfires in Dare Me Episode 4 since the girls all turn on her. Beth is missing from practice, which means she’s lacking a valuable ally, and her reassurances don’t seem to amount to much. Nobody likes a teacher’s pet, after all, especially when the teacher herself barely seems able to keep on top of her own life, let alone the team.
Beth’s forced attempts to take responsibility for the ice-bath incident in the previous episode don’t go well either; her therapy sessions with Tacy do little to convince her to see the error of her ways. Is Beth’s constant antagonism getting tedious at this point? Perhaps. But since she’s really the driving force of the entire plot, we need her unpredictability to build any kind of tension – Colette’s arguments with Matt aren’t really enough in that regard.
When the girls head out to a party with the Marines in “Rapprochement”, you can sense disaster on the horizon. Some suspiciously young-looking arrivals only help to light the fuse. Like with the hazing business in the previous episode, there are some good ideas here, though I’m not entirely sure Dare Me knows how best to unpack them. The ending to this sequence, a missing Beth being discovered passed out in a car downstairs, does a decent job of developing tension but seems to end abruptly, perhaps having not made quite the point it wanted to.
Still, Addy taking Beth to Colette’s house at least leads us into the next episode with something potentially intriguing. As Dare Me approaches its halfway point, now is the time for things to start picking up.
