Smashley Rose
Episode 2 of Blindspotting begins with Miles’ trial. Despite believing he’s going to be out in a month, everyone here is about to get a serious wake-up call. Miles is sentenced to five years behind bars. Ashley, Trish and Rainey each try to come to terms with this, with Trish pretty much absent for the rest of the episode. Rainey’s road to recovery is the most annoying, in an overlong segment that sees her chanting and meditating. Ashley meanwhile, finds herself hung up over the engagement ring. While she’s at work, Jenelle phones and tries to talk to her about Miles’ sentencing. Ashley is busy though and struggles to concentrate. Even worse, a hotshot lawyer called Rory McElveen shows up and offers to take “Rose” (Ashley’s alias at work for… reasons?) out for the evening. Apparently his wife likes it when people watch him have sex and he wants Ashley to be his next side-piece. She’s obviously taken aback by this though and eventually declines his offer. These class wars continue as Ashley finds herself on the receiving end of a Karen. She’s actually called Rory’s wife, who might as well be called Karen by this point. She immediately asks Ashley for cocaine, given she looks like the sort to do it. Ashley obviously takes offence to this, prompting Sarah to fly off the handle, calling her racist remarks and eventually leaving on Scotty’s instruction. Ashley gets her own back though by heading up to the hotel room and smashing the place up, with a tennis racket no less. While this occurs, another of Ashley’s venomous, hard-hitting poems are read out. On the back of this, Ashley calls in a noise report and claims her vandalism act is as a result of the two having an argument. Karen definitely deserves it, but let’s hope she deleted the security footage from the hallway because surely this would show Ashley entering the room. Anyway, it does the trick and solidifies the big topic this episode which is class. The divides between rich and poor are only getting bigger – while the weight on Ashley’s shoulders becomes too big to bear. She struggles to admit the truth to Sean about Miles, eventually deciding against it as Rainey and Ashley sit together and reflect on the rough day they’ve both had.
The Episode Review
Blindspotting returns with another pretty good chapter, albeit one that’s a bit heavy-handed on the themes. The whole class idea is a good one, but it’s not particularly subtle with what it’s trying to say. Yes, rich people do play by a different set of rules and we’ve seen that numerous times play out in various media forms. It’s not exactly original but it does help to at least showcase more of Ashley’s inner conflict. Seeing this play out through the medium of poetry – and angry, violent poetry no less – really portrays the storm brewing inside her nicely. This is easily the strongest part of the show, although one can’t help but feel this series would have benefited from being released in quick succession rather than one episode a week. Still, with Miles now put away for 5 years and Ashley forced to rethink her strategy, this episode leaves things wide open for the rest of the show.
