Summary
When some shows mix up the story and change from the normal pace, it doesn’t always work, but this is a class episode of Shining Girls.
This recap of Apple TV+ series Shining Girls season 1, episode 6, “Bright,” contains spoilers.
Read the recap of the previous episode.
Shining Girls season 1, episode 6 recap
In France 1918, after Harper nearly dies after fighting in the war, he watches an almost Kirby lookalike Klara (played by Handmaid’s Tale’s Madeline Brewer) dance. After the show is over, he speaks to her backstage and asks why she never responded to his letters. Klara claims that she never received any letter. Once they have a few drinks, they break into an older woman’s flat. Inside, they hear a watch alarm going off. To them, the item is almost futuristic. As the older woman returns, Klara flees outside of the flat. Harper, meanwhile, demands that the older woman tells him where the watch is from. But as he is a “small man”, she claims that he cannot know.
And shortly afterward, Harper returns to Klara with the lie that he hid under the bed. When Leo takes Harper to a house, Harper hears several weird noises. And as Leo finds several newspaper cuttings, Harper finds there is a male hiding in the house. The male is clearly from the future, shocking Harper that there will be a second World War. Harper and Leo try to chase the man, but he wound up dying after getting hit by a car.
As Klara has a coughing fit, Harper shows her how he can make things change. And shortly afterward, he takes her to a future timeline. Loving the experience, Klara reveals that she doesn’t want to go back to the 1920s, maybe not ever. After what was originally a lovely time, it turns frosty when Harper reveals that he knows Klara received his letters. When they return to the house, Leo waits for them.
Leo suggests to Harper that he charges Klara and reminds Harper that he wouldn’t have been able to put a mask on without him. Regardless of the tension, Harper, Klara, and Leo go into the “punk” era. And who serves them at the bar? Kirby! Klara senses that Harper likes Kirby and tries to keep Kirby around to please him. As Kirby and Klara dance, is this the moment his obsession with Kirby begins?
The ending
Seemingly growing tired of Harper, Klara tells Leo that Harper “takes up more space”. And Leo tells Klara that she doesn’t know Harper as well as she believes, as Harper didn’t even make it to Paris following the war. As Harper and Klara leave the club and the punk era, he has something up her coat “for later”. Shortly afterward, we learn that it was a video recorder and that Klara is the girl Kirby and Dan were watching in the closing section of the previous episode.
When an argument develops between Harper and Klara, he becomes aggressive when she doesn’t come back to him. Klara then realizes that he is reliving days that he has already experienced. After Klara calls him small, he punches her and pushes her onto the bed, and it would appear likely to assume he beats her to death. In the closing moments of Shining Girls episode 6, Harper returns to the bar that Kirby works at and retells her the story of how she got her earrings.
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