“The Riches” — Waiting for Dogot (Season Finale)
Easy kids, it’s just red paint
I LOVE THIS SHOW. The Riches is hands down one of the biggest surprises of the TV season, and while I know plenty of people who watch it, it seems to have built little buzz — the ultimate currency in television programming. I blame this on the time of year the series premiered. It’s hard for a new show to carve out its place at the water cooler so close to the end of the broadcast season (especially when the cable competition is The Shield and The Sopranos). I hope when The Riches comes back, its in the summer. It is the perfect summer show.
But that’s neither here nor there as the first season has just wrapped and demands to be discussed… which we’ll do right after the break…
All season long I’ve been impressed by how this show (and by extension the Malloys themselves) has been able to keep up the charade of being “The Riches” without it seeming forced. Until these last two episodes when their cover was legitimately threatened, the family didn’t come into contact with anyone who even cared whether or not they were legit.
All of this is presented within the framework of American suburbia, though a version of suburbia we haven’t seen a lot of in popular entertainment. It’s a place where people are aware that their surroundings are mundane and desperately want to believe in something — OR — people who very clearly understand their place and are hoping to exploit it to their advantage. It’s brilliantly fun to watch because everyone on the show is trying to con everyone else and yet The Riches never feels like a “con” show. This isn’t Hustle, though there are hustles.
The introduction of Pete was the dramatic momentum of these last two episodes. Pete, who was just looking for his best friend, Doug Rich, was the perfect foil for the Malloys because he was so damn fragile. He’s their opposite and yet clearly had the upper hand.
If last week’s episode hadn’t revolved around Pete going through his own personal meltdown (one that Wayne and Dalia helped him get out of) he’d never be vulnerable enough to go along with all the lies spun this week. That is the magic of the show. It puts our characters in inescapable situations and lets them escape because of the hangups and the supporting cast. It’s problem solving through character development not problem solving through narrative trickery (one of the reasons why The Riches is so much more interesting and fun to watch than Big Love, which is working with these same themes).
The other obvious plot point was the appearance of the maybe-not-so-idiotic Dale. He’s smart enough to blow their cover but too dumb to really be that big of a threat. He just wants his piece of the pie. What makes the character interesting is he is the only regular (outside of Hugh, maybe) whose base instincts are mostly violent. So when Dale and Pete finally meet up, it isn’t a surprise what ends up happening.
The brilliance of their scene together is the call back to something Pete had said earlier in the episode, “There are two kinds of people in the world victims and criminals.” Pete being, obviously, the victim. Dale offers to help him exploit the Malloys and if he would have remembered his own creed he would have high tailed it out of there. Instead, he gets a hammer to the face and Dale now has our heroes in the palm of his hand.
I can not wait for next season.
