Summary
Loot Season 3 finds some real form in Episode 4, a return to the cringe comedy the show is best at, underpinned by genuine sentiment for good measure.
It wouldn’t be hard to improve on the latest episode of Loot Season 3, a deeply lazy grab-bag of semi-offensive cliches about England that didn’t have much of a point beyond Molly trying to repair her floundering reputation. This makes it easy for Episode 4, “Buona Sera”, to feel better on just about every level, but it helps that it genuinely is better. Thank goodness for that.
It even starts like the Halloween episode that its release date would suggest it is. The disembodied voice of John, Molly’s philandering ex-husband, would be terrifying enough as it is, but the fact that it’s emanating from random home appliances he has hacked into is truly terrifying. Almost as terrifying as the idea that he’s opening a foundation he wants to “pick Molly’s brain” about. A foundation? John Novak?
Molly is understandably sceptical about John’s supposedly charitable endeavours, and his ability to wriggle his consciousness through the gadgets produced by all the companies he owns has made her rightly paranoid. It’s Arthur, of all people, who encourages Molly to reconcile with him, or at least learn to tolerate each other, since they move in the same circles. And it’s a better path to healing than crystals, not that Molly’s crystologist, Dr. Robert Vibes, would agree.
John is a changed man — again. But the changes this time are coming from a busty new girlfriend, Luciana — the episode’s title, “Buona Sera”, is how she greets Molly and Arthur when they arrive — whom John has been suckling into personal reinvention. Naturally, Molly takes the revelation of a buxom new partner as something of a provocation and resolves to compete by force-feeding Arthur so intensely that he almost chokes to death.
This is the kind of awkward cringe comedy that Loot really excels at, and since it has been lacking in Season 3, I was pleased to see Episode 4 bring it back with a vengeance. The nicknames, the dancing, the mutual motorboating, Arthur’s deeply uncomfortable reaction to all of the above — it’s vintage stuff. But it is hiding something a bit deeper on a character level. John does have ulterior motives, as ever, but this time it’s mostly a cry for help. He’s deeply unhappy with Luciana, who only lets him eat grapes, and doesn’t have any idea who he is beyond being a rich guy. All of Luciana’s ridiculously forward swinger-style advances only serve to reiterate to Molly how happy she is with Arthur, and that allows her to impart some serious advice.
Predictably, John doesn’t take it. Instead, he bottles the big break-up scene and proposes instead. Maybe we’ll get a wedding episode down the line. Perhaps not, though, since as Molly and Arthur are leaving, Luciana reveals she’s really an imposter from Delaware and will make it her life’s mission to ruin Molly’s life if she gives John any more “advice”.
Elsewhere in Loot Season 3, Episode 4, while Molly deals with John, Howard gives a cybersecurity presentation. This doesn’t come out of nowhere. Sofia has secured her sister, Destiny, a temporary job at the foundation, and Howard immediately takes a shine to her. The presentation is an outgrowth of Sofia’s request that, given John’s technological infiltration and their many billionaire enemies, Howard send out a memo reminding everyone about basic stuff like passwords. Since he’s so into Destiny, that morphs into a full-on stand-up comedy routine and a Back to the Future-themed PowerPoint presentation.
Sofia quickly nixes this idea, and Destiny reveals that she has a boyfriend, which takes the spring out of Howard’s step. But all’s well that ends well, since Howard’s facility for roleplaying and comedy charms Destiny in the end. She wants her computer password to be “LetsGoOnARealDate”. Ceramics class, anyone?
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