It all comes undone for Sonia. Franky’s planning something, while Ferguson’s scheming starts to draw old enemies into her web.
So this week’s episode begins in the rather flash home of the newly released Sonia, as she taps down the stairs in her stilettos and pours herself a glass of (very expensive I’m guessing) wine. She’s had all charges dropped, the court knows Liz lied, she’s a free woman just sitting quietly and reminiscing about the time she shaved her best friend’s head then smacked her with a wine bottle and murdered her because “I don’t take well to blackmail.”
Wine and murder go so well together.
Yep, she did it – which we all pretty much knew all along, but that silly old Det. Don buggered up the investigation, and mixed up the order of a few of the details, and dropped Liz in it up to her neck… Of course, extrapolate a step further and we can guess that the blackmail was because Helen knew that Sonia had killed her husband (as she was suspected of doing) and the threat “to tell” would have landed Sonia in a very nasty mess indeed. So she killed again. She seems to be quite good at it too. Not much of a conscience, our Sonia, more a “piss me off and thy life shall end” mentality.
I don’t take well to blackmail.
Meanwhile, (almost) good-hearted Liz is still keeping mum for Dirty Det. Don, trusting that: 1. he has romantic feelings for her, and 2. he is going to “fix” the perjury charge and get everything all sorted for her. Poor Liz. She’s fully taking the rap for a complete arsehole who has played her like a French horn. Vera is flabbergasted that Liz would perjure herself, but she’s been around for long enough that really nothing surprises her much anymore. When Liz gets handed a number and a message from Smiles that Sonia wants her to call, she stresses out – of course.
She doesn’t want to call, afraid that Sonia will let her have it with both barrels; but Dors tells her if she doesn’t, Sonia might figure out she was Witness X. Despicable dilemma. Liz finally works up the courage to call Sonia, who tells her with much joy and cockiness that she “was completely vindicated” and that her barrister “reduced the mystery witness to a blithering idiot”.
And of course he would have, because as she said “liars always come undone in the end.” She offers to come and visit Liz, who can’t get it out of her mouth quick enough, almost tripping over her tongue, that Sonia should just move on with her life and put Wentworth behind her. Oh Sonia, the way you toy with people…
Did you just say you want to come and visit me?
So Juice starts poking around, asking Liz how she’s feeling after being in Medical all day yesterday – Juice of course having seen Liz being led out wearing her civilian clothes last episode. Liz assures her she’s fine, it was just indigestion, and after checking out Liz’s food tray, Juice comments, “can’t say I’m surprised.” But we all know Juice is keeping this piece of info locked away until the time it will benefit her most.
You should think about changing your diet Liz. Yeah, thanks Juice.
Meanwhile, phone call after phone call to Dirty Det. Don goes unanswered and Liz is no further along in knowing how the case against her is progressing. But that could be because – YES! As if we didn’t know he was crooked as a dog’s hind leg, but who saw this coming? SONIA and the DIRTY DETECTIVE! Liz – a mere pawn in the game of the big players; you’d better get used to the words “perjury – 15 years” on your record, because you won’t be getting out of Wentworth anytime soon. I must admit, when Sonia opened the door, before she even spoke, I just knew it was going to be him – but I didn’t expect the extent of their involvement. Gee whiz money talks. And when you’ve got a whole lot of the stuff, it seems it talks a whole lot too.
No. Just no. No, no, no, no, no.
Sonia and Don wake the next morning and they both have a giggle at Liz “the silly cow”, and Don talks of his dreams of a little bar on a beach and his “happily ever after”. Sonia almost laughs in his face when he suggests she come with him. That knocks the Dirty Det. down a peg or two and makes him realise his position in the whole scheme. He’s been used and abused almost as much as Liz has. And he can’t do a thing about it without implicating himself. She’ll pay him for services rendered, but don’t expect sentimentality.
Let’s run away and leave our guilt behind. Sonia: Pfft, I don’t know the meaning of the word.
But now he’s after the one thing she’s not prepared to tell – how she killed her husband and where she dumped his body. So Sonia does it again. She tells him – “Come for a drive, I’ll show you.” And she spikes his drink, with the plan of killing him and dumping him in the same lake where her husband lies in his watery grave. It reminds me of a Dutch film from some time ago.
A young woman goes missing and her boyfriend tracks down her murderer. The murderer won’t tell the boyfriend how he killed the young woman or what he did with her body, but the boyfriend is so wracked with desperation to find out, he agrees to do whatever the killer wants to get the info. He meets him at a fuel station and gets into his car – next thing he has a cloth held over his face until he passes out. He wakes up, and it takes him a few seconds to work it out – but he now knows how his girlfriend died, because he’s about to suffer the same fate. He’s in a coffin and he’s been buried alive…
But I digress. Sonia is very well prepared! A couple of tarps, a few lengths of rope, some heavy-arse bricks… perfect for dumping a body in a lake and sinking it to the bottom. But just as Sonia is about to drag the supposedly unconscious Don out of the car, he appears and cracks her over the head, taking her car and leaving her in the middle of nowhere.
She has to walk the (I assume) very long walk back to the city. She knows if she doesn’t get her shit together and get out of the country, that things are about to go pear-shaped for her very quickly – starting with being charged with the attempted murder of a police officer. She has to keep quiet about Don helping her get off for Helen’s murder, so she can’t stitch him up without becoming a patchwork quilt herself. AND she’s now confessed to him that she killed her husband. Oh Sonia – your charmed life is coming apart at the seams.
Whose stupid idea was it to wear stilettoes to a murder. My feet are killing me after that walk.
She arrives, dishevelled and exhausted back at her house, sees Dirty Don’s bag of money is gone, realises he’s been there, and she doesn’t have much time to get out. Sonia moves faster than she’s probably ever moved before, packing a case and grabbing her passport… but she’s not fast enough to outrun the half a dozen cop cars that turn up in her driveway.
She’s charged with the murder of her husband and promptly sent back to Wentworth. Liz freaks when she sees her, almost as much as when she finds out Dirty Don has gone on stress leave and can’t be contacted, leaving her with an unshakable perjury charge. So now she’s stuck inside with Sonia. Sonia who knows she’s Witness X, but Liz doesn’t know that Sonia knows. Methinks Sonia will be like a cat playing with a mouse, making Liz’s life miserable – but at least there’s someone as evil as the Freak to keep her on her toes also!
Damn! Busted.
Then there’s Franky. As the date for her committal hearing is set, she comes up with a theory that maybe the beneficiary of Pennisi’s will knocked him off. There would have been a pretty hefty payout for the injuries she inflicted on him, and given the police are convinced she did it, and aren’t out looking for any other suspects, she asks her lawyer to look into it. The lawyer isn’t convinced – there doesn’t seem to be anyone who thinks she has a hope of getting off this charge.
If you’re not gonna help me, I’ll have to help myself.
Now we all know Franky isn’t one to let something drop – and especially not when she has something as serious as her innocence and freedom at stake. So she puts some tricky-arse plan into place where she sneaks into the kitchen and smashes up one of the pipes. You can’t help but get the feeling that she’s likely to get herself into even more trouble with whatever scheme she’s concocting, and quite likely take a few others down with her too, but that’s never stopped our Francesca in the past now, has it? When the spunky young plumber comes in (much to the delight of Boomer), Franky distracts the screws with setting up a chant of “shit, shit, shit” about the standard of prison food, and nicks one of his spanners, concealing it up her sleeve as she heads back to her unit, passing Bridget on the way. Franky’s backward glance is fleeting, Bridget’s lingers a little longer, but I’m afraid that’s all the Fridget action we get this week.
A little bit of smash and bash DIY plumbing. What a good lesbian she is.
But back to the spanner – just what is Franky’s plan here? She gets herself out of laundry duty, and despite Vera’s offer for her to put her legal expertise to work in the education unit to help the women, she insists on getting outside “in the fresh air”, so Vera has her transferred to grounds duty, which Franky is very happy about thank you very much. Vera is none too happy about the missing spanner and calls a cell toss, in turn causing Jake to go into low-key meltdown and shove what remains of Tina’s stash down his pants. He’s literally, as well as figuratively, in it up to his balls now.
Franky recruits Allie to hide the spanner she stole in her bandaged arm to avoid detection, and their banter when she goes to Allie’s cell to get it back turns a little “two desperately sad lesbians on a bed together have a ‘moment’ as they realise that they are two desperately sad lesbians on a bed together.” They stop before it goes anywhere, but Allie soon works out that Franky is planning to escape – a seriously DUMB idea, that really isn’t going to do her case any good at all, but Franky being Franky is as hard-headed as a tree-stump and won’t be changing her mind anytime soon.
How much do we need each other in the deepest hour of our grief and sadness?
A lot of people are having very HIGH-KEY melts on social media at the idea of Frallie. Like – Ballie’s only just gone, Fridget are a committed couple; what could anyone possibly gain out of getting Franky and Allie together? Personally, I can see it happening – but not as a permanent thing. A one-off, “I’m grieving, you’re grieving, we both need someone – to love, to take away the pain we’re both feeling” kind of thing.
Allie is never getting Bea back, Franky doesn’t know if she’ll ever get out and get her life with Bridget back. There could be worse things that happen than the two of them finding some short-term emotional and physical relief together. I don’t think too many people minded when Alex and Piper “angry-fucked” on OITNB – could we see some “grief-fucking” here? What I would not like to see would be Franky flaunt anything in front of Bridget – she’s already done a fair old job of hurting her, she doesn’t need to twist the knife any further.
I, Queen Joan upon my throne, hold the answers to all your problems. Follow me and I shall lead you to a land of easy drugs and easy money.
So, while Juice is disposing of her stash as the cell toss rolls on, Ferguson distracts Smiles to give Juice more time. Juice is of course totally suspicious of Joan, but Joan assures her it’s because she wants ‘allies not enemies’ if they’re going to be spending a long time together inside. It’s all part of the Freak’s manoeuvres and manipulations as she soon calls a meeting to offer the sellers, Mercado and crew, and the buyers, Juice and crew, a solution to the issue of the drug crackdown that both Vera and Kaz have put in place. Somewhere along the line Joan calls Kaz a ‘toothless tiger’, which pretty much sums up the respect Joan has for Kaz as Top Dog. Which pretty much suggests that before too long Joan will be challenging Kaz for Top Dog.
And once she’s got the drug conduits back in order, the buyers and sellers will all be beholden, and she’ll start calling in her owed favours. She’s clever like that, Joan. But don’t discount Sonia – she can manipulate like the best of them too. Interesting times ahead.