Summary
The cracks are beginning to show in “No Show” as emotions spill over into some nasty conflicts.
This recap of Breeders season 3, episode 6, “No Show”, contains spoilers.
In the opening scene of “No Show”, Paul describes himself as “a smart-casual grim reaper”, and while it’s a joke, there is a morbid feeling hanging over this episode. Paul’s new boss Brandon, presumably out of spite, has tasked him with axing several important community projects and delivering the news in person. Darren has fired everyone in the office through WhatsApp, though admittedly with a voice note to add a personal touch. Someone Jackie knows is dying, and Jim’s staying at home to paint the woodwork. Luke is becoming insular again, and Ava is desperate to see her favorite band, but tickets sold out immediately. When Ally suggests that she might be able to finesse some tickets through one of Darren’s Apollo sound engineer friends, it seems like a death knell rather than a ray of hope.
Breeders season 3, episode 6 recap
Ally does manage to snag the tickets, but it means working an unpaid shift, which isn’t a good idea at the moment, especially with Paul unsure if he can continue to work with Brandon. Luke is devoting all of his attention to his band because Jacob keeps ditching him for his girlfriend, Ruby, but Ruby turns to Luke for advice about potentially breaking up with Jacob, and a hungry, angry Paul comes home to find nothing in the fridge. It’s a cocktail of minor annoyances and inconveniences that always results in things being blown out of proportion. Paul snaps, Ally gets upset and storms off, and so on, and so forth.
You can just feel calamity building. Paul petitions Brandon to save a community theatre group that helps kids Luke’s age, and Brandon agrees to keep it going for another year, but you know that offer is going to come with some strings, probably involving that ill-advised “Seattle Initiative” that Paul is dead-against because it’s absolutely insane. And Ava plans to live-stream her trip to the arena with Ally and Grace, making a huge deal of an event that is absolutely, positively guaranteed to go badly wrong.
Lo and behold, in a mortifying exchange, Ally is told that her three tickets were actually for the previous night’s showing. Ava takes this humiliation very personally, and blames Ally for it, even though that’s kind of ridiculous. But teenage girls aren’t exactly known for being reasonable, are they? Elsewhere, Paul rushes home from work — much to Brandon’s calculating dismay that he can’t make the meeting — to advise Luke on what to do about Jacob and Ruby. He suggests he tells her to stay with him so that when she inevitably moves on anyway Luke will look like the good guy. But he gets there too late. Ruby has already dumped Jacob, and now Jacob thinks that Luke advised her to. It’s a mess, but as Paul points out, at least it frees up some space for Luke and Ruby to pursue a romance of their own.
As ever, Breeders is able to suddenly pivot into new emotional territory. It touches on poignancy when Carl, of all people, gives Ally some sage tablets that supposedly help with the symptoms of menopause, even if they do make you smell like a roast dinner, and when Jim accompanies Jackie to see their dying friend after Paul advised him to support her. But it quickly shifts again. Jackie witnesses a moment of closeness between Jim and their friend that rings some alarm bells, and Ally furiously berates Paul for… well, everything, really. It’s a nasty note to end things on, but a compelling one, and it raises some interesting questions about where things might go in the next episode.
You can stream Breeders season 3, episode 6, “No Show”, exclusively on FX.
