Evil Monkey

There is nothing wrong with it, I just don’t need it anymore

Season 1

Episode 4

Editor’s Rating

5 stars

*****

Photo: Apple TV+

It’s not easy to get away with murder, and it might be even harder to get away with insurance fraud. Successful criminals need discipline, a plan, patience, and cunning. Eve and Nick have precisely none of those qualities. They’re mostly cruel jerks. Eve believes the world has to bend to her will just because she’s convinced herself she’s special and deserves special things, even if those things come at the expense of the happiness and safety of others, and Nick believes the world has to bend to his will because he was somehow lucky enough to find a woman he can provide for.

The fourth episode of Evil Monkey tells the story of Eve and Nick’s relationship from love at first sight to double insurance fraud and several murder series. Within an hour, the duo develops from a mindless and slightly disgusting couple to a total Dexter Bait. If you don’t count Nick’s arm, that’s three dead – three and a half if you count the arm – and Eve seems convinced they can just murder their way to the top.

Eve and Nick are incredibly interesting characters, because like many stories like this – an unsuspecting couple tries to cheat, steal or swindle their way to a better life, with the moral dilemmas that come with the consequences escalating rapidly – ​​the story takes dark and tricky turns. (See: Fargo, A simple planetc.) It’s different with Eve and Nick. Sure, Nick thinks about the gravity of his actions and wants to be a good father to his daughter, but at the end of the day he’s just an asshole who thinks the world owes him a free pass. We have a little sympathy for Nick here – he’s generally likable because Rob Delaney plays him, and Rob Delaney is hilarious and seems like a super cuddly guy – but really he’s a piece of shit. He doesn’t go so far as to go along with Eve’s plan to kill his daughter Caitlin after she finds out he’s still alive, but the way he heartlessly treats the people of Andros is proof that he’s absolutely awful.

Eve, on the other hand, could be a full-blown sociopath. The flashback that opens the episode paints her as a wannabe actress with minimal talent who might have made it if she didn’t have such a temper and a tendency toward laziness. Despite the director’s obvious dislike for her, she ends up playing the lead role in the ghost play! But as soon as he criticizes her for not being able to cry during the famous “Ditto” scene, she freaks out and then (look)… accuses him of pedophilia. That seems like a strong reaction!

Meredith Hagner gives a wonderfully wacky performance as Eve, who vacillates between vague threats, raging anger and overjoyed delight at her own fate. She’s actually not far removed from Yancy’s method of quickly drawing strangers into her heart, as she relies on compliments and friendly banter to draw people in. She plays the friendly chick, when in reality she’s a wolf in a sarong who’ll pounce if someone shows a moment of weakness. The scene where Eve murders Heather in cold blood is absolutely chilling, as Eve leaves a terrified Heather rooted to the spot as a lighthearted story about her and Nick as an actor takes a hair-raising turn into a rant about meeting her favorite TV star. Heather is terrified, but she surely has no idea that this scrawny fangirl will pull a gun out of her purse and shoot her. After committing the act, Eve has no reaction to what she just did other than attacking Nick and telling him they’re even. She then lets out a torrent of bubbly cackling noises as her little dog trots around in Heather’s blood. Her emotions are completely inappropriate for this moment and the chaos she creates is just an absolute delight to watch.

In all honesty, Nick should have seen all this coming. From the first moments of their truly crazy relationship, Eve has always had his balls in a vice. When Eve and Nick meet, Nick is a single dad to Caitlin – we never find out what happened to her mother, but it feels like he’s had his fingers burned in the past – and he’s simply looking for some company as his baby bird begins to leave the nest. When he spots Eve at a party he’s accompanying his underage daughter to, he finds his mate and promises her she’ll have a beautiful life. Eve, who’s only ever wanted someone to take care of her, is completely smitten. She’s hot, he’s loving and rich, and it’s a match made in heaven in Florida. Honestly, the age difference isn’t even that crazy for Florida. But Eve keeps raising the stakes when it comes to what a good provider will do for her. When Nick mentions buying a nice little bungalow on the beach during a vacation on Andros, Eve suddenly comes up with the idea of ​​building an entire resort. We get the feeling that this woman has never thought about owning or running a resort in her entire life, but suddenly all she wants to do is see if this man who promised her everything can fulfill even her most capricious and exorbitant wishes.

Nick joins in, thinking he can just pad the prescriptions at Midwestern Mobile Medical to raise more capital. But soon after, Nick and Izzy’s Super Rollie scam is exposed by the government, and Nick realizes he may have to leave with minimal cash. This is totally unacceptable to Eve, who is used to a life of luxury. So Nick comes up with the idea of ​​faking his own death. At first he says he’ll cut off two of his fingers to make it look real. But one sideways glance from his wife is enough for him to up the ante. Instead, he’ll cut off his arm. And of course, his good friend Izzy will be the one to do it.

It’s unclear what Izzy gets out of this part of the con. Even if Nick is declared dead, wouldn’t Izzy still be responsible for the thousands of bogus scooter prescriptions he signed? Or maybe he’s just a good friend. The scene with the arm is predictably gruesome, and even grimmer when Izzy drags the limb into the shower to treat it to make it look like a boating accident rather than a voluntary backyard amputation. (Okay, it wasn’t a backyard; it was a thickly tarped area of ​​Eve and Nick’s McMansion that looked eerily like a Dexter Killing room. The Dexter the vibe is so strong, guys. I’m dying for a crossover where Dexter kills those idiots. Maybe I’ll write a fan story. Stay tuned.)

A little flash forward shows Izzy offering her arm to Phinney, Phinney bending her fingers to give him the middle finger, and then the poor stupid boy goes over and demands more money. Nick kills him, we know that, but then Izzy’s guilt over killing Phinney leads to him wanting to talk to Yancy, and Nick and Eve can’t let that happen. So Nick kills his best friend in cold blood. I hope this isn’t the last we see of Braff on the show, but if it is, I’d just like to say that he should be in more things, and I’d love to see him in more dramatic roles too, because he balanced Izzy’s tragicomic arc beautifully while still providing some of the biggest laughs in this episode.

In the present, we learn that Izzy is being framed for Phinney’s death by a corrupt cop named Jonny Mendez, the same guy who caused Yancy’s departure from the Miami Police Department. We get the backstory: Mendez was in charge of the Crime Busters hotline, where he gave information about solved crimes to his friends and family so they could collect the bounty and share it with him. This is pretty outrageous and disgusting, but the city thinks Mendez can stay. And they’re kicking Yancy out because of his general attitude toward, well, everything. That’s why there can’t be nice things in Miami! Anyway. After five years, Mendez is promoted to detective anyway, where he botches his job by overlooking the fact that a man shot in the back of the head couldn’t possibly commit suicide.

Rosa and Yancy pity Izzy’s body and both come to the perfectly logical conclusion that his death wasn’t a suicide. But the detective work turns them on, and Rosa commits Yancy’s bones on an examination table, which is one of the most disgusting places I can think of to do that with a new partner, but I’m not trying to spoil Rosa’s lust here. Yancy leaves, but not before Rosa can tell him the story of how she wasted three years of her life on a guy who lied about going to the symphony. Somehow that story — along with a three-legged Key deer — helps Yancy connect the dots that Christopher and Nick might be the same person. While leaving a message on Rosa’s voicemail, Nick comes and hits Yancy on the head with a crowbar. My only hope is that Yancy wakes up long enough to joke with him, because Vaughn and Delaney are undoubtedly some of the greatest pranksters of our time.

• One of the funniest bits of dialogue in the episode is when Eve compares Phinney’s request for more money to the children’s book “If You Give A Mouse A Cookie.” Nick replies that he has a kid, so of course he read it. But then he briefly shakes his head and asks Eve why she would have read it. The head shake and his response of “Why did you read it?” are priceless, but if we’re being honest, the age difference between him and Eve is the problem. Eve is in her thirties and the book came out in 1985, so she definitely read it as a kid, not as an adult. And she obviously learned the wrong lessons from it.

• My favorite scene in the episode is when Ya-Ya casually (pun intended, people) asks Nick what happened to his arm, and Nick responds with a certain irreverence. Ya-Ya responds by silently raising a finger and circling his face in the air in a motion that resembles a curse. Nick’s reaction and then the Dragon Queen’s response as her grandmother keeps circling people near her, “That’s enough circling for today, Ya-Ya,” is riveting and it’s hilarious and that makes Evil Monkey so damn funny.

• Tom Nowicki continues to be a hit with his voice-over narration. I’m starting to feel like this show needs to learn a few pages from the Arrested development playbook in his ability to deliver ironic and unexpected one-liners from an omniscient being to get laughs.

• Tom Petty cover monitoring: The only cover in this episode is “You’re Gonna Get It” by Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit.