Summary
Alma continues to turn to the dark side in “They Made Me A Killer”, but how far is she capable of going?
This recap of Why Women Kill season 2, episode 5, “They Made Me A Killer”, contains spoilers.
All throughout this season of Why Women Kill (now streaming on Paramount+!) the meek, put-upon housewife Alma has been on something of a dark path. First, she realized her husband was a serial killer. Then, she teamed up with him to hide the death of their nosy neighbor, Mrs. Yost, after she heard them arguing about all the murders. They buried her body in the garden and dumped her car in a lake, and then Alma stole all her valuables and put them around her own house to win the admiration of the exclusive Garden Club. And she did! The only problem is that no sooner had she earned it than she had lost it again since Rita realized that Dee, who had been sleeping with her secret boyfriend, Scooter, was Alma’s daughter.
In “They Made Me A Killer”, then, Rita is out to sabotage Alma to get at Dee, and Alma finally decides she isn’t having it. But it takes a while to get there. First, Rita sends Alma a telegram congratulating her on her membership of the Garden Club and inviting her to a celebratory dinner – when Alma arrives, though, she learns that the position was actually given to someone else and that Rita has deliberately set her up to make a fool of her. But why would she do that?
Well, it’s Dee who tips her off, since Dee also finds herself on the receiving end of Rita’s spite when she calls Dee’s boss and says Dee was rude to her, angling to get her fired. Dee puts two and two together, confesses everything to Alma, and in so doing gives Alma the information she needs – that Rita was cheating on her husband – to blackmail her into securing her membership in the Garden Club after all.
As it turns out, Rita doesn’t respond especially well to blackmail and threatens Alma back in turn. It would just be tit-for-tat, though, if Alma didn’t have a secret weapon – her husband is a serial killer. That might be a bit more useful than first imagined if things continue to escalate.
When Rita isn’t trying to destroy Alma and Dee, she’s trying to destroy Catherine instead by furthering her plan to have Scooter seduce her so she can be removed from Carlo’s will. Scooter was initially reluctant to participate in this but since Rita basically bankrolls his entire life, he doesn’t have much choice. Of course, he’s also using it as a way to get back at Rita, and his own smugness might prove to be their undoing since Carlo has a pretty clear view of what’s going on. He might not be fit as a fiddle, but he’s still pretty capable of figuring out what’s what, and there’s a strong possibility that he’ll do something about it.
Why Women Kill season 2, episode 5 also has some revelations about Bertram, including why he got into helping old, sick ladies shuffle off their mortal coil in the first place – his mother persuaded him to off her when she herself was terminally ill, and he must have gotten a taste for it. Now, though, he’d quite like those urges to stop so he can live something resembling a normal life with Alma – and the only person he can turn to about it all is Father Tim (Dakin Matthews), a holy man to whom he confessed back in the day. The good Father is shocked, though, to learn that Bertram’s “helping” didn’t stop with his mother, which makes for a string of very funny scenes in which the determined teetotal man of God turns quickly back to the bottle.
The only person who seems to be having any luck in “They Made Me A Killer” is Dee, who finally makes some progress with Vern. This is a touching little subplot about people who feel decidedly uncomfortable in their own skins learning to open up to one another, but I’m not sure how well it necessarily fits alongside the rest of the drama. Still, it’s sweet, so what can you do?
