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Kirby must be on her apology tour this week because she’s nowhere to be found and no one even mentions her in casual conversation. Probably because Fallon and Sam have a lot more to worry about than Kirby this week.
Sam has gotten wind that a reporter is working on a story exposing Leo (RIP) as an Atlanta crime boss murdered by Adam Carrington. Feeling an attack of conscience, Sam asks Cristal to call a family meeting and he reveals to Blake, with Cristal and Adam in attendance, that he and Culhane electrocuted Leo ‘a little’ without knowing he had a pacemaker. Adam clarifies that he attempted to revive the man but there was nothing he could do … and he made sure there were no witnesses, even though one nurse claims that he let Leo die. Blake wants to plant a story favorable to the family in the paper, because he can’t have any of this (particularly the organized crime part) derailing his campaign. Sam promises he’ll take care of it.
When Culhane finds out what Sam is planning, he stands by him because they’re partners and he’s not going to let Sam do this alone. And so they talk to the reporter in the most blatantly obvious attempt to paint Leo as an angel who just had a bad accident. The reporter stops them and says none of this will sell papers, so Sam notes he has an A-lister in the hotel who could really dish some dirt. The reporter says he has a different angle to work for his article. The next thing Sam and Culhane know, the new article drops and … it’s a complete hit job on La Mirage, painting it as the ‘most dangerous place in Atlanta’. One thing, however, stands out to Sam — the details of Leo’s ‘accident’. He never went into exactly how Leo was electrocuted at the club, but it was there in black and white, and only he, Culhane, Cristal, Blake and Adam knew the truth. We know neither Sam nor Culhane ratted themselves out so which one of the other three did the deed? (I’m going to go out on a limb and say Adam, because he was all kinds of shady this week.)
Blake is still trying to wrest Amanda away from Alexis, offering her a job at his new airline in the legal department even though she knows nothing about aviation law. But he wants her by his side, and he immediately tosses her into the deep end, handing her the company’s largest client, telling her that handling it herself will earn her the respect of everyone else (and maybe soothe the anger of the other employees over the overt nepotism at play). She gets to work and at six o’clock she punches out.
Showing up at the manor, she pays a visit to Fallon to do a little more bonding, and to perhaps offer her some words of advice on how to manage her work with her marriage. Fallon is shocked that Amanda can turn off her brain (her work brain) at the end of the day and just unwind at home. Amanda, who barely knows Blake or Fallon, can already see that Fallon has inherited Blake’s drive to be completely focused on business. Cristal basically told her the same thing earlier, and that it was losing Carrington Atlantic that pretty much saved their marriage. No matter how Fallon is ‘wired’, she has to find a way to leave business at the office.
Noting that not even meditation is helping settle her mind, Fallon accepts an offer of an edible to help calm her so she can relax and focus on Liam. But, as Fallon does, she over-indulges and has a handful, expecting an immediate result. She doesn’t feel a thing, but the next thing she knows she’s waking up in her bed with the ghost of Anders paying her a visit. And he is going to try to help guide her in the right direction with scenes of how life would be different if she wasn’t who she is today. Fallon rightly recognizes this is a riff on It’s a Wonderful Life, she’s George Bailey and Anders is Clarence the angel.
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The scenes Anders presents are pretty funny. Fallon and her brother are the best of friends — no, not Steven because even Fallon’s memory of him has been erased — and Blake and Alexis are still married. Fallon spends her days playing tennis (!) and being an ambassador rather than focusing on business which she has no interest in. Meanwhile, Amanda has always been there and she and Jeff work at Carrington Atlantic, handling all the legal and financial business like good family members should. And Cristal works for Alexis as her tennis instructor (Mark Jennings apparently doesn’t exist in this version of Fallon’s life). Okay, but where’s Liam?
Liam does show up at the manor to do an interview, and the two are immediately smitten with each other. Okay, this is more like it! Anders tries to tell Fallon this is all she needs to see and now she needs to get to work on balancing her life. But Fallon wants to see more … and she instantly regrets is. As the story progresses, she learns everyone has been putting up a facade of a big, happy family because of her lack of interest in the family business. She sees Blake a Cristal making out while Alexis discovers them … and finds out they’ve only stayed together for the children. Blake reminds Alexis that the children are adults, so they don’t have to keep pretending. Jeff and Amanda don’t really enjoy working for Blake either. In fact, they’re miserable. But maybe there’s still a silver lining with Liam? As they talk and she goes on about being an ambassador and she’ll be heading to France soon (maybe she’ll bump into Steven there), Liam quickly realizes she means she’s a ‘brand ambassador’ (for what, we don’t know) and that quickly puts the kibosh on any interest Liam had in her. Wait what? That’s a bit shallow on his part and really doesn’t seem to help Fallon with her situation.
When she wakes up, her bedroom is a mess and Amanda is still there. Both of them are confronted by Blake, who admonishes Amanda for indulging in whatever it was they did all night (how on earth did that room look like a tornado went through when the edibles were supposed to mellow them out?). Blake tells Amanda that there was some calculations wrong in the paperwork she was handling the day before, and she insisted that there was no error. She also informs Blake that what she does on her personal time is not his business and, in fact, she quits because she can’t work under these circumstances. And Fallon has come to a conclusion of what she must do to save her marriage.
Asking to meet Liam by the death pond, she tells him she’s going to change who she is and she will step away from her company for as long as it takes to make things right. But that’s not what he wants at all. He can’t expect her to give up her life and be someone different … in fact, he’s now not even sure what he wants or who he is, saying he’s been not that great of a husband. Fallon insists he’s been a wonderful husband, but Liam seems to have his mind made up — they need to take a break. NOOOOOOOOO! Liam packs his stuff and sits on his motorcycle outside the open door, waiting for Fallon to come say goodbye. But she doesn’t. He doesn’t know she’s on the other side of the door, unwilling or unable to say goodbye, so she just watching him drive away, both of their hearts broken. (Ours too.)
On the bright side, Blake has a chat with Amanda and admits that she’s right — what she does on her own time is none of his business. He actually admires her independent spirit and asks her to return to work with him but she says she’s more comfortable with medical law and maybe he can put in a good word for her at the hospital. The place does have the Carrington name on a few wings so that won’t be a problem. Amanda then confronts Adam, revealing that she knows it was he who had her figures tampered with to make her look bad. He smugly believed he had driven her away from Blake (while Alexis crowed to Blake that his treatment of Amanda drove her back to mother), but found out the joke was on him as she revealed her new job at his hospital. Oops.
Meanwhile, Dominique’s ex has come to town after more than a decade to have a talk. Jeff thinks the guy is only after her money since in the space of a week or two her fashion company is now raking in millions, and he’s going to find out what this guy is up to. Dom agrees to have lunch with Brady the next day, and he reveals to her that he had to leave because he was mixed up in some bad stuff and his life was in danger … as was hers if he stayed. She’s buying what Brady is selling and tells him that she’s not quite yet ready for him to leave Atlanta. Jeff, meanwhile, learns that Brady is not Dom’s ex — because they’re still married. A little fact she revealed to Alexis while they were trapped in the mine and then she tried to claim was not true. So, was Alexis behind Brady’s sudden appearance in the same way she was with Oliver? Perhaps we’ll find out soon as the season is rapidly coming to an end with three episodes over the next two weeks. Stay tuned!
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