Summary
Autocratic rule doesn’t suit Ryan, or anyone else, as “Intoxicating Clarity” once again leads the passengers of the Avenue 5 out of the frying pan and into the fire.
This recap of Avenue 5 season 2, episode 6, “Intoxicating Clarity”, contains spoilers.
After the bizarre events of Avenue 5 season 2, episode 5, the titular ship has kind of divided itself into two factions. One is happy about Ryan’s appointment to basically Supreme Leader of the entire vessel. And one… isn’t.
Ryan has been dressed up like his TV counterpart and has a new coterie of sycophantic adherents, none of which he’s especially happy with, but needs must for the sake of democracy. A lot of the other passengers and crew are on-board with this too, whereas Matt, of all people, is leading an underground revolt that is threatening to spill over into actual violence at any moment.
Avenue 5 season 2, episode 6 recap
But the lines quickly become blurry. Billie pretends to be anti-Ryan to ingratiate herself with Judd since it’s only CEOs who can negotiate with TOTOPOTUS but Billie needs to be there so she can finesse a renewed rescue effort, which is going to be predicated on Rav having discovered a lithium-rich meteor that they can use as leverage.
Needless to say, the odd-couple dynamic between Billie and Judd is one of the episode’s most consistent sources of gags. Another is Ryan accidentally becoming a kind of Mafia capo by blithely remarking someone should “deal with” Matt in Cuddle Club, leading to him being hospitalized after a violent compression by three men. Almost everything Ryan says after that sounds like a not-too-subtle incitement to violence, which isn’t good for morale, so he tries to publicly let bygones be bygones with Matt in a filmed handshake, during which Matt is shot in the stomach by a mysterious crossbow-wielding attacker.
There’s a bit of confusion about whether this is another of Ryan’s “instructions”, which leads to some fear beginning to develop among the passengers. (Ryan’s description of autocracy to Iris — “One minute it’s all caviar and wiping your arse with a swan’s neck, the next you’re perforating dissidents” — is easily the line of the episode.) It doesn’t take us long to learn it was Mads who shot Matt, though, and also initiated the cuddle that hospitalized him in the first place, apparently to help him gain popularity.
The centerpiece of “Intoxicating Clarity” is a costumed watch party of the Avenue 5 TV show where everyone goes in various hysterical outfits — Frank as Ryan, Elena and Charles as Judd, Judd as Iris, and Billie as the late Zara, who earlier died on the set of the show, much like Sarah — and bickers about nonsense. It’s around this time that Judd, still dressed as Iris, meets with Lucas and learns about the missile that is about to annihilate the ship and apparently can’t be stopped.
This wouldn’t be so bad if Judd didn’t a) mess up the negotiations and b) the entire crew didn’t learn about the missile’s impending arrival thanks to the TV show episode they’re all watching, in which the Avenue 5 is blown up by a missile in honor of the real ship being apparently destroyed by a terrorist strike. Of course, it’s a cover-up for the ship’s destruction, sending the passengers into an abject panic. Luckily, Iris wasn’t entirely joking earlier when she suggested installing secret police.
Maybe Ryan is getting used to being a dictator after all?
