Summary
An introspective episode provides some strong character work and knits together various storylines in interesting ways.
This recap of American Gigolo season 1, episode 6, “Sunday Girl”, contains spoilers.
“Sunday Girl” is an interesting episode of American Gigolo because it essentially hits pause and forces its characters and the audience to look back on what we’ve learned and how the various storylines relate and intersect. With the help of some flashbacks, we’re given some more insight into the lives of both Julian and Detective Sunday as each reflects on Julian’s initial sentencing 15 years prior, driven to introspection by the fact that, thanks to the events of American Gigolo episode 5, he’s currently in a very similar predicament.
American Gigolo season 1, episode 6 recap
The crucial difference this time is that Sunday believes Julian is innocent. With the additional context she has gleaned from his mother, she now knows he was abused in his childhood and groomed as a sex worker and has continued to be used and manipulated ever since, in a variety of ways. He didn’t commit the crime he was initially accused of and, she suspects, he didn’t commit this one either, which means the evidence suggesting he did has been planted by others with a vested interest in the murder of Elizabeth. But if Julian won’t talk to Sunday, she can’t help him.
While he deliberates his options, we delve a little into Sunday’s past, seeing how her urgency to secure a confession from Julian in the first place was related to her having just discovered her brother almost died of an overdose. With that burden, she effectively coerces Julian into a confession, despite the fact he genuinely doesn’t remember having committed the crime or not.
We also see how a previous moment of violence in Julian’s past, which he has mentioned before, was intimately tied to his confession. Since he knew he was capable of essentially losing himself completely, which we see when he stoves some kid’s head in with a stone, he believes himself to have been capable of murder. This, combined with Sunday’s coercion, cost him a decade and a half of his life.
Of course, Julian doesn’t know who set him up – but Michelle does, and she contacts Sunday to reveal it was Panish since she can’t stand to see Julian go down again for something he didn’t do. With this news, Sunday is able to lean on the motel worker Panish bribed and get Julian exonerated, which doesn’t exactly make up for last time, but it’s a start.
Julian sees it that way too, so he informs Sunday about Lisa Beck, the fact that Olga drew his attention back to her right before her death, and that Isabelle was there when she committed suicide. When Sunday talks to Isabelle later, the madame says that she simply couldn’t handle the life that Julian brought her into, but it clearly sets some alarm bells ringing, which is why when Julian returns home at the end of the episode, she’s there waiting for him.
Elsewhere, McGregor is holding Colin to ransom for a cool three million, and Stratton doesn’t even bother to tell Michelle at first, instead trying to sort it out on his own behind her back. He decides to pay up, though his relationship with Michelle is worse than ever given recent revelations about her and Julian and the fact that the timeline implies Colin might not be his – something he doesn’t seem willing to consider or accept.
It seems pretty obvious at this point that Isabelle is behind everything related to Julian’s initial incarceration and the subsequent murder of Olga, but motives remain mysterious for now, and we still don’t know how, exactly, Lisa Beck fits into everything. As we enter the back half of the season, though, American Gigolo really seems to be hitting its stride with some strong character work and interesting developments.
You can catch American Gigolo season 1, episode 6, “Sunday Girl”, exclusively on Showtime.
