Summary
Loot’s second season really finds its stride in “Mr. Congeniality”. A fun guest star and pitch-perfect writing impress on all fronts.
Curiously, Episode 4 of Loot Season 2 picks up all the narrative threads established in the season premiere but oddly overlooked in Episode 3. So, if you’re curious about the state of Howard’s wrestling league and Molly’s libido, “Mr. Congeniality” is the place to be.
In short, Molly is horny. Like, dangerously so. So horny, in fact, that Sofia of all people tells her to have a one-night stand. But this isn’t exactly Molly’s speed, so she has instead booked herself into a swanky Malibu wellness retreat to recentre herself – which ends up backfiring spectacularly.
Molly’s Wellness Retreat
It’s worth pointing out that this is sneakily illuminating about Molly’s character. She says she won’t lower herself to casual flings, but what she means is that she’s being guarded with her emotions because she’s two for two on getting burned by men at this point. Flings aren’t the problem in and of themselves. The problem is that they lead to relationships, and Molly’s don’t tend to work out.
So, Molly attends that wellness retreat with no intention of having a fling. Only, Benjamin Bratt turns up. It’s a line-blurring cameo because Bratt’s playing himself, albeit a version of himself with his sexual charisma turned up to 11 (from, like, 10, so it’s not exactly an acting stretch.) In Loot’s universe, Bratt is a giant fan of Molly’s charitable endeavors and, it turns out, some of her other attributes.
Benjamin Bratt, Horny Angel
In this context, Bratt is almost like an angel. He isn’t just earnestly and uncomplicatedly into Molly in the same way she’s into him – they bump into each other sneaking around the retreat in the dead of night looking for each other – but also makes a point of saying that he’s heading to London for two years to shoot a live-action version of Despicable Me. He’s a fling who, through geographical necessity, must remain a fling.
Predictably, Molly jumps at the opportunity. She ends up being kicked out of the retreat, but to be honest, she wasn’t taking it seriously anyway.
Ainsley’s Family Drama
The subplots in “Mr. Congeniality” dovetail rather nicely, but they technically begin with Ainsley’s family drama.
Nicholas and Sofia take a vested interest in Ainley’s efforts to devise a wedding seating plan, which should be pretty simple but is wildly complicated by her family’s predilection for scandal, drama, and gossip. Naturally, this is right up Nicholas’s street.
After a while, though, he doubles down on ensuring that Ainsley gets the perfect wedding by trying to sort out the drama himself, namely by calling up a couple of bothersome aunts and unleashing vitriolic – and hilarious – tirades against them. And these are overheard…
Nicholas Might Have Become A Wrestler
Howard and Arthur spend Loot Season 2 Episode 4 auditioning potential heels for Howard’s wrestling league. The main problem they run into is that the applicants don’t get the idea of being a performative, pantomime wrestling villain. Instead, they just march in and viciously insult the pair of them.
Like Benjamin Bratt for Molly, Nicholas floats into the ambit of Howard and Arthur like some kind of foul-mouthed angel. He’s sassy, vicious, creative, looks good with his top off, and is easy to secretly root for. He is, in other words, the perfect pro-wrestling heel.
Nicholas doesn’t quite understand the assignment at first, but when it’s described to him as I’ve just described it above, he gets it. So, in the near future, we’re going to see Howard’s wrestling league in action, with Nicholas the bad guy. We might as well pack up the “Space for Everyone” plot and just focus on this from here.
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