Summary
“That Damn Arm Is Back” shuffles several pieces and players around the board to get things positioned for the back half of the season. It’s fun, but not as consequential as prior outings.
It would be an incredibly bold move for a crime drama to kill off its lead detective halfway through the season, so it’s perhaps just as well that Bad Monkey didn’t do that, despite Episode 4’s cliffhanger ending suggesting it might have. Episode 5, “That Damn Arm Is Back”, reveals quite quickly that Yancy is alive and well, but the case is far from solved.
To be fair, this episode does open with a mostly wordless sequence in which the illusion of Yancy’s death is maintained, with Nick dragging his body down the pier and dumping him into the water. A drunken fishing accident is the story. It would do the job if it weren’t for Nick grossly underestimating Yancy’s capacity for survival and determination to ruin peoples’ days.
Back from the Dead
Case in point: Yancy just so happens to wake up in Evan’s garish home while he’s showing a couple of potential buyers around, and his first act of consciousness is to completely ruin the deal. There’s no need to include this scene – even though Evan remains truly awful – except to allow Yancy another chance to annoy people. It’s only when he leaves and finds Nick’s phone, which he dropped during the assault, that the episode’s main plot kicks in.
Yancy and Rosa are now on the run. Yancy is wanted for the murder of Dr. Israel thanks to Mendez’s vendetta, and since Rosa helps him escape the morgue in a body bag, she’s aiding and abetting. It doesn’t help that Yancy headbutts Mendez on the way out to avoid being caught.
Meet the Parents
With pressure being put on Rogelio to turn Yancy in, he and Rosa head to Rosa’s family’s place to lay low, which isn’t exactly how Yancy imagined meeting his new beau’s parents. But to be fair it’s not exactly how they imagined meeting him, either, and Rosa’s mother is very suspicious, especially when he starts asking Rosa’s younger brother to try and crack the security on Nick’s phone.
Yancy is eventually told to leave, and not entirely politely, but the revelation that the phone is locked with Nick’s fingerprint is enough. Yancy digs up the arm, uses it to unlock the phone, and then rips off the digit for safekeeping.
Checking In
Bad Monkey Episode 5 | Image via Apple TV+
While all this is going on, the rest of the cast are similarly getting up to no good. We’ll touch on Nick and Eve in a moment, but in the meantime, we can check in on the Dragon Queen and Neville.
The Dragon Queen, for instance, seems to be in the midst of a developing romance with Egg, of all people, who is still searching for Neville after he stole the USB. We learn in Bad Monkey Episode 5 that her real name is Gracie and that, despite her frosty exterior, she isn’t as big of a believer in her ancient practices as she pretends to be. She’s mostly just trying to squirrel away enough cash to move elsewhere, despite Ya-Ya’s repeated insistence that they have a responsibility to their gifts.
This connection with Egg shows a slightly softer side to him, though he does spend the entirety of “That Damn Arm Is Back” chasing Neville around with ill intentions. On the subject of Neville, his womanizing bona fides are established when his only option for help is one of his exes, and his only means of getting the contents of the USB – a damning collection of evidence proving Nick’s illegal activities – out into the world is another ex.
Crucially, the second ex, Tanny, isn’t fond of Neville after he ghosted her, and under the pretext of helping him, she sells him out to Egg. Neville and Dawnie are able to escape in Neville’s boat, but the USB ends up in Egg’s hand.
And then there’s Bonnie, whose life on the lam comes to an abrupt end after her husband cuts off her access to money. With nowhere else to go she heads to Yancy’s place, but he’s busy with Rosa’s family, so she breaks in to wait for him. Unfortunately, an uninvited guest surprises her – Cody, the student she had an illegal relationship with back when he was a student.
Trouble in Paradise
Anyway, let’s get to Nick and Eve. Nick has a couple of issues in “That Damn Arm Is Back”. One is that Yancy is alive, which he learns when he sees his face plastered all over the television. The other is that he already told Eve he was dead and doesn’t dare tell her the truth now, especially since his phone is also missing.
It’s a little unclear whether Nick is just so in love with Eve that he doesn’t want to disappoint her or is actively terrified of her. This is no clearer when, before leaving for Andros, the two of them visit Caitlin to say goodbye and Nick takes his wife’s side when she viciously berates and threatens his daughter.
Nick’s plan is to get Eve to Andros before she can learn about Yancy’s survival. And he almost makes it. But since Yancy was able to use his dug-up arm to unlock his phone, he and Rosa manage to track down the airfield they’re leaving from. They arrive just as Nick and Eve are taking off, but despite his valiant efforts chasing the plan, Yancy isn’t able to catch up.
He does, though, give Eve a call from Nick’s phone, letting her know that he’ll see her again soon. With Nick’s secret out and a growing list of people who have no intention of letting him live out the rest of his days in luxury, there’s trouble brewing in paradise.
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