The Mess You Leave Behind episode 6 recap – “Your Dark Side”

By Jonathon Wilson - December 11, 2020 (Last updated: December 1, 2023)
The Mess You Leave Behind episode 6 recap - "Your Dark Side"
By Jonathon Wilson - December 11, 2020 (Last updated: December 1, 2023)
2.5

Summary

The midseason blues persist in “Your Dark Side”, which builds to a rather disappointing reveal but suggests there may be one or two twists still to come.

This recap of The Mess You Leave Behind episode 6, “Your Dark Side”, contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous episode by clicking these words.

Check out our spoiler-free season review.


Picking up right where we left off, “Your Dark Side” begins with German’s house party being ruined by Raquel, who kicks everyone out and demands to know what was going on between him and Viruca. His fumbling explanations are unsatisfactory so Raquel – after packing up Viruca’s phone – leaves for her mother’s house, where Tere joins her to laugh at German’s self-pitying voicemails and the admission that he was dealing Viruca cocaine.

“Your Dark Side” ventures back into the past to explain this connection, along with some others. German and Viruca have known each other forever and even used to bathe together in the hot springs. She interferes in German’s business dealings, introductions are made, wallets full of cash are handed over, and it seems like we have a motive – a mundane one, as it happens – for Viruca’s death. With that, we also have a suspect in German. If a substantial debt to the wrong kind of people couldn’t drive someone to commit murder, then what could?

This is the first of two big-ish reveals in “Your Dark Side”. The other comes courtesy of Roi, who bails on a drunken, drug-fuelled threesome with Iago and Nerea and discovers a webcam recording their activities. Appalled, he takes the information to Raquel, explaining how Iago was planning to stash the footage on Raquel’s computer and accuse her of being into child pornography. It’s hardly a clever plan given nobody seems to care about teachers having sex with students in this show, let alone teachers watching students have sex with each other, but whatever. The mere prospect of this scandal pushes Roi to confess that it was him, Iago, and Nerea who have been blackmailing Raquel all along, which seems a little disappointingly obvious given how many red herrings have been thrown at us. However, Roi does let on that he had an ulterior motive in doing so – he wanted Raquel to investigate Viruca’s death since he thinks she was murdered and that Iago had something to do with it. Raquel, though, doesn’t want to hear anymore and kicks him out.

When Raquel returns home her house has been broken into and the dog is missing. She calls German, and when he shows up to help, she immediately starts interrogating him about euthanizing her mother, evidence of which she found earlier. Now is not the time, Raquel! There is a doggo to worry about! As it turns out, said doggo is in a bad state, and Raquel and German find the pooch badly injured. This is such a pressing concern that even Raquel’s admission of having a much longer affair with Simon that she initially admitted is put on the backburner. They take Nanook to the vets, but “Your Dark Side” ends with them both sobbing as they’re informed that she didn’t make it.


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