Chris Sheridan
The following recap contains spoilers for The Audacity S1E4 “Vanitas” (written by Arthur Phillips & Irving Ruan and directed by Daniel Sackheim).
After a very impressive chapter last week, things continue to be compelling in this week’s “Vanitas,” which floors the pedal with a lot more character development. By that I mean almost everyone is a huge d*ck in this one, which is packed to the gills with a lot of “Oh no…” moments which literally caused me to wince. I’ve become invested in these characters and there are numerous painful scenes, which is a good thing in the context of the drama of The Audacity.
Before the title card, we have Duncan (Billy Magnussen) dictating a message to JoAnne (Sarah Goldberg), talking about how he’s willing to forgive her (doubt), and how, while he’s doubted himself, he’s found a committed sexual partner. We cut to his wife Lili (Lucy Punch) asleep in their bed, before he says said sexual partner is himself. He continues self-fellating waxing poetic, making metaphoric sexual comparisons to his own success, and his own belief in himself. “Okay, call me back, it’s Duncan.” There was something extremely funny about how he has this whole-ass monologue ending with confirming who is sending the message, as if JoAnne wouldn’t have guessed. He howls like a wolf at the moon, before Lili awakens and screams at him to shut up.
At Hypergnosis, Duncan announces to his employees that he has recruited Carl (Zach Galifianakis) to the board, and the room erupts with cheering, applause, and chanting for him to take the playground-style slide down to the main floor. Why do they have a slide? Because Duncan f*cking Park, that’s why. At the foot of the slide, Duncan absolutely bathes in the admiration of his employees.
At the Phister household, Martin (Simon Helberg) continues to fine-tune his AI Alexander, which he found incredible success with last week. He has a large setup of servers and wires in the garage, and he’s more or less interrupted from his work by his wife Anushka (Meaghan Rath), who is very upset after he blew her off when she proposed they work together on Alexander. Anushka calls out the “horrible things” Martin said the previous night, and he counters that he was simply repeating the demeaning things she had said to him. Anushka name-drops the powerful Cupertino (who, at the outset of the show, was set to acquire Hypergnosis before talks fell through), and Martin says that they didn’t value her. Anushka doesn’t like this, and her last words before setting off are to tell Martin to ask Alexander if she’d be a net positive to the team. Sounds like someone’s jealous. This disdain for her husband and his creation “pays off” later in the episode.
It’s Parent’s Night at school, where they go through a day in the lives of their kids. Lili asks Duncan to attend, during which Duncan takes the class pairing up to sit with JoAnne for an impromptu therapy session. Duncan mentions JoAnne’s “stinko” investments, and when JoAnne tries to escape, Duncan follows while Gary (Paul Adelstein) eavesdrops. They do return to the table after a hushed argument, where Duncan tells JoAnne that she is an incredibly talented person, and that if she were running the world, it would be a better place. Sincerity? Who knows with Duncan.
Duncan and a furious Anushka go to Orson (Everett Blunck)’s old hideout in the dilapidated stage, where she confronts him about how it is believed that she leaked the acquisition rumor. Duncan is dead to her unless he fixes this by calling Nena the reporter and setting things straight. He reaches for her and she angrily backs off, but Duncan continues to slyly proposition her, and drops the news that he got Carl as an investor. They start to playfully touch and shove each other, and Duncan tells Anushka that she is an incredibly talented person, and if she were running the world, it would be a better place. Where have we heard that one before? He leans in for a kiss, and after shoving him away, she grabs him and starts kissing him back, leading to an aggressive lovemaking session. Afterwards, Duncan exits and spots the Alexander robot in the hallway before walking away, and as Anushka exits separately, Martin watches from a distance, putting two and two together.
Lili pulls Duncan away to leave, but he spots his tungsten cube in the trophy case and pivots to Jamison as a culprit of the theft of his cube, smashing the glass case to retrieve it. The next day, walking through the school, Orson approaches the partly boarded-up case to see the empty spot where the cube was. As he walks past Tess (Thailey Roberge), she also notices the empty spot in the case and barely catches Orson peeking around the corner at her from down the hall.
At home, Gary finishes a phone call stating the news that Alvin, their landlord, has passed away. They realize that with him gone, the grace he showed him with lower rent may be over. Not only that, Alvin’s daughter Beth might even sell the house and force them out of their home and by extension their offices. JoAnne leaves a message for Beth, asking for some grace in keeping the rent where it’s at. She goes to her home office to greet Carl, profusely apologizing to him for missing their session. Carl states that he’s firing her. She desperately tries to appeal to him, but he doesn’t back down, saying that the anger he was getting counseled for was what made him money, and he’s getting back into the game. It’s definitely a bad day for JoAnne.
Exiting a therapy session with Gary in which she observes a bust of Sigmund Freud, Tess attempts to get Orson’s attention through the basement window, and then by coming down the stairs, but he desperately hides from her as he experiences another gastrointestinal attack. She angrily leaves. Orson goes to Gary and breaks down, saying that the antibiotics are not working, they are just making him worse, and Gary says they can visit a nutritionist to help him. Said nutritionist is…a little out there, to say the least. She starts by moving her hands above Orson, and prescribes him a proprietary tincture. It also costs almost $2k, which is not good for the cash-strapped Felders, especially with the uncertain future of their house.
At Hypergnosis, Tom (Rob Corddry) and Jeffery (Andrew Bushell) visit to tell Duncan that the Secretary regrets not coming to the barbecue, and has approved the transfer of some engineers to work with Hypergnosis. They’re a little older, retired, but—Duncan cuts them off to say that he doesn’t want them (“No walkers in my war room!”). What’s more, he drops the bomb that this whole endeavor is to sell vets’ data. Tom furiously terminates the deal. Jeffery’s still interested in trying to make things work, but Duncan sends him away.
School principal Beatrice (Rukiya Bernard) meets with Lili at a helicopter to set out on a spa night in Napa. Over the course of their trip, spread over the course of a few scenes, they bond, discuss family, and so on. It’s all, quite frankly, pretty boring and I found myself not particularly liking these scenes. They get drunk, continue to bond, and go home, and I didn’t really get the point of these scenes. Maybe they’ll be built upon in later episodes.
Still believing that Jamison stole his cube, Duncan has Harper (Jess McLeod) look into his daughter. Carl shows up, and after seeing Gnodin, remains unconvinced and even incendiary. Duncan continues to sing the praises of the algorithm and how much it sees of executives, everything down to who is buying tampons. He also throws out a bunch of numbers and percentages regarding what else can be predicted, mostly concerning stock prices, and how the tumultuous wave can be ridden to wealth. Carl still doesn’t seem entirely convinced. After he leaves, Duncan is told that the CEO he was specifically speaking about was mentored by Carl, and if Carl spills the beans, Duncan’s entire prediction is absolutely screwed.
Tess continues to be neglected by her parents at home, particularly by Martin, who can’t even look up from his phone during dinner to engage with her. Anushka is glued to her phone as well, but at least she has a modicum of knowledge of their daughter’s schoolwork. After Tess leaves the table in a righteous huff, Martin tells Anushka that he’s surprised he saw any of her work at the Parent’s Night given how much time she was spending with Duncan. He asks her what they were doing, and she carefully crafts the excuse that the Hypergnosis isn’t doing well and she was trying to stop Duncan from having a public meltdown. She asks Martin if he’s insinuating anything, and he denies it and says that her explanation makes sense. I don’t believe him.
After dinner, Anushka receives a call from an unknown number with a distorted voice stating “We know what you did.” She starts to panic, and Alexander attempts to calm her down, repeatedly mispronouncing her name, and tells her that when she carries shame around, it makes the people around her unhappy. She yells at him to stop, but he continues to try to appeal to her, citing her guilt and telling her to take deep breaths. Anushka is having none of it, and smashes Alexander’s tablet with a heavy decoration. She then calls Nena to tell her that the acquisition talks failed. We end the scene there, but there’s definitely a lot more that we’ll probably learn more about next week.
JoAnne returns home to find Gary, Beth and a man named Irvin talking about the house. Irvin’s in charge of “the sale.” The Felders will not be able to continue renting their home, unless they’re willing to pay $8 million in cash to buy it. It’s clear from the Felder’s nonverbal reactions to this proposal that they will be unable to do it. At school, Orson emerges from his hideout and approaches the trophy case to see the Freud bust that Tess somehow appears to have pilfered from Gary’s office. He looks around and catches Tess watching him from around the corner before ducking away.
I didn’t particularly love the pacing of “Vanitas,” specifically with the Lili and Beatrice scenes, but there are a few more things here that move the overall plot forward. I’m glad the tryst between Duncan and Anushka is out of the way, since we all knew it was coming. I’m very curious to know who was calling Anushka: was it Lili and Beatrice, drunkenly using the voice distorting/number concealing app they were talking about during their spa trip? Or was it someone else calling about something Anushka is guilty of that we aren’t aware of yet? I’m also interested to see where things are going with Duncan and Carl, now that we’ve got proof of his algorithm working. Duncan feels on top of the world again, but how long will that last?
