Summary
The Calafat family secrets are revealed as more information turns up about Axel’s murder.
This recap of White Lines season 1, episode 8, contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous episode by clicking these words.
Check out our spoiler-free season review.
It’s an hour of exceptionally strained first meetings in White Lines Episode 8, which opens with Zoe waking up in Clint’s camper van and discovering that she’s at the airport. Mike and Jenny are here, and they’re expecting a much more loving reunion than the one they get.
First, they go to the beach with Anna and the kids. Anna makes incredibly light of Zoe’s affair with Boxer, but it’s obvious to everyone that Zoe doesn’t see it in quite the same casual way. Clint, meanwhile, goes to Boxer’s club, where Sissy is helping to move Zoe’s stuff out. He recognizes Boxer from the last time he was on the island 20 years ago; Boxer threatened him and told him to leave. Uh-oh.
Marcus is still living with Kika and the rest of the Calafat family. He immediately bonds with Andreu over a joint, which prompts Oriol to suggest a family sit-down that will mimic the frankness of the meal from the previous episode. He reckons it’ll do the family some good to get things off their chest. It’s a terrible idea, of course, but Andreu is high, so agrees. This, needless to say, will end very badly.
Another thing that’ll end badly: Anna takes Jenny and her daughter Tanit on a night out. Zoe, panicking, is left to spend time with Mike, who has all kinds of swanky things planned. All she wants to do, though, is stay inside, which he’s instantly suspicious about. She suggests a dip, but their attempts at closeness only make her feel more guilty. She finally admits that she met someone else — a revelation that he takes rather well, all things considered.
Clint, going over photos with Miguel, spots a suspicious red car that seems to have been moved. Miguel chases up the plate. We’re about to get our first solid lead on Axel’s death in ages, but naturally, there is family drama to handle first and foremost.
Thus: Anna returns home sans children, having left them out partying with some lads, and can’t see why this is kind of a big deal given that Jenny is only 14 and doesn’t know anyone. Zoe freaks out, naturally, and she and Anna argue, quite nastily. It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that Anna left them in Boxer’s club, so Zoe and Mike have to go there.
David, meanwhile, is hosting the Calafat family bonding session, which starts out reasonably enough; Oriol thinks his father doesn’t love him, and Andreu basically admits this but justifies his position by reminding everyone that Oriol is gutless and weak. Standard stuff. But the conversation quickly moves from Oriol being jealous of his sister to being sexually attracted to his mother, up to and including making his ex-wife wear her panties. Kika makes him admit that he wants to sleep with Conchita, which gets some wonderfully entertaining reactions.
More on this soon. Mike and Zoe arrive at the club, and of course, Mike immediately meets Boxer. It’s strained but friendly. Tanit says that Jenny left with some people, presumably headed to a private party. Some kids start drama with Boxer, and Mike slaps one of them. It’s embarrassing, and Boxer mocks him about it quite unsubtly. Getting juicy!
Speaking of which, we return to the Calafat Family Issues Hour, where Oriol’s incestuous attraction is being openly discussed and takes some particularly soapy turns. To summarize: Oriol used to ask to sleep in Conchita’s bed, and he used to get an erection, and she used to… calm him down, let’s say, which she equates to masturbating a pet so it isn’t stressed out. You couldn’t write it. Except, of course, someone did.
Lest we forget about Axel having been murdered, which used to be the entire point of the show, Miguel and Clint visit Cristobal, who has some flash new cochlear implants. That red car is his, part of his father’s collection, and he’s perfectly happy to show it off since it hasn’t been out of the garage for the last twenty years. What’s inside? Well, that revelation is interspersed with scenes at the Calafat house, since Oriol has another confession to get off his chest. It’s about the night of Axel’s party — Kika doesn’t want to hear it, but he persists anyway, explaining how he hated Axel and recounts the tooth-pulling challenge. We finally get to see what Axel dared him to do in return: Get a tattoo of Axel’s choosing, to be drawn on by Boxer. The tattoo is a portrait of Conchita, with the caption, “All yours, mum.” It apparently sent Oriol crackers; he would get as high as a kite out of sheer embarrassment and frequently forget what he did.
As Clint and Miguel discover Axel’s tooth in the boot of the car, it becomes obvious what Oriol might have forgotten about doing. Cristobal says that 20 years ago, the car wasn’t his. He bought it from Oriol. To confirm this, Oriol recounts waking up and finding the car full of blood. He can’t remember anything, but he thinks at some point during the night he killed Axel.
With that spicy revelation in the rear-view, we join Zoe, Mike, and Boxer at the private party where Jenny is. The doorman won’t let the men inside, so they’re left alone to… bond. Mike immediately confronts Boxer, intuiting that he’s the man Zoe has been philandering with, but Boxer says they have no future together; their lives are heading in different directions. Zoe finds Jenny inside, and she reveals that Tanit told her about Zoe’s affair. She’s devastated. We see a flashback to the night before, when, after he seemingly took the news so well, Zoe told Mike that when she’s with him she feels like she’s cheating on someone else. She doesn’t know what that means, but she knows she can’t be with him. It’s a morbid ending to White Lines Season 1, Episode 8. Just as we’re closer than ever to finding out what happened to Axel, Zoe’s own life is falling apart.
Excess Baggage:
- Marcus and Kika kiss.
- It’s too obvious for Oriol to be the killer, right?
