Have you spent all season watching slimy Ellis on NBC’s “Smash” while throwing things at the screen? Well tell your TV there’s some good news, because the abuse will stop soon.

NBC revealed to Entertainment Weekly that two characters will be exiting stage right when the Broadway musical set drama premieres in season two.

While the network didn’t comment on the fact that both characters were reviled by both critics and fans, I think we can all read the writing on the closing curtain.

Neither Karen’s philandering fiancée Dev (Raza Jaffrey) or the scheming producer wannabe Ellis (Jaime Cepero) will be present when the curtain rises on season two of NBC’s much maligned show. The characters might pop up in an episode or two wrapping up their characters, but they will no longer be part of the ensemble as ‘Bombshell’ inches closer to Broadway.

This is almost undoubtedly in response to strong fan criticisms against both characters. Fans have rallied against almost both since the show’s pilot. Before cheating on fresh-faced ingénue Karen, Dev was mostly seen as a boring distraction from the main storyline about putting on a show. After cheating on Karen, viewers were ready to show Dev the door.

But nothing could equal the hatred felt by viewers for conniving Ellis. Whether it was poisoning smoothies on being literally everywhere at every time to hear every conversation, viewers tired of Ellis about halfway through his first sentence.

“Ringer” went out with a bang (pun intended) as the season closed out tonight. The bigger question is did the series just end as well? The ratings for “Ringer” have never been very good, even for the admittedly low standards set by The CW. Unlike “Gossip Girl” and “The Vampire Diaries”, “Ringer” has enjoyed neither critical praise nor a devoted cult following. Besides love for the uber-talented Sarah Michelle Gellar in its corner, “Ringer” doesn’t have a lot fighting for a second season. So I go into this recap with a (somewhat) heavy heart, knowing that this is mostly likely the series finale as well.

So what happened? Let’s get to the body count first! Number one down? Malcolm. (Well, probably anyway.) An agent working with Pretty Eyes says they got an ID off a body that seems to fit Malcolm. Now, this is “Ringer” so if the show returns next season, don’t be surprised if Malcolm returns with half his face missing like Two Face from “The Dark Knight”. But for the moment I think we can consider him toast. He’s tied to the big chair in the sky now. We barely knew ye Malcolm.

Good thing Solomon is there to be Bridget’s supportive black guy best friend this episode and make sure she takes his gun. If not, Macawi would have definitely killed her. Macawi, of course, decides to go after Siobhan who he thinks is Bridget for some undisclosed reason? I don’t know, it wasn’t clear what with him constantly shoving giant knives into people. He does manage to get Siobhan, in the apartment stealing her jewelry back, and nearly kills her. She’s saved at the last minute by a gun-toting Bridget, who shoots Macawi.

Then, of course, she makes the rookie mistake of walking right up to him and basically putting her foot directly into his hand. “Please grab me, I’ve never seen a horror movie before,” she’s basically saying. So of course he starts strangling her. This is “Ringer” Bridget! People are never dead on this show the first time you shoot them! Or the eight! When Agent Pretty Eyes bursts onto the scene with backup, Bridget shoots Macawi right in the head this time. If I was her, I would have put another ten or so bullets in him, just to be safe. She asks Agent Machado if Juliet was ok and I groan because of course Bridget didn’t see Siobhan.

But the biggest death all episode, and by far the saddest, is Siobhan’s gigantic and hilarious glamour shot. Stabbed right in the giant face! We will miss you, huge symbol of narcissism. You were always my favorite. The picture got more screen time than half the main cast of “Ringer”.

At least most of the other plots that had been simmering all season finally came to a boil tonight. First, Henry finally grew a brain and realized, very belatedly, that Siobhan is a psycho. He did this with some paternity tests and stealing. The way he goes about convincing Siobhan to buy him a house in Chicago was so see-through I couldn’t believe she was actually falling for it. Henry is seriously the worst actor ever. How did he manage to hide an affair for a whole year? He was practically giggling when he mentioned that the house for them in Chicago was out of his price range.

After figuring out that the demon-baby twins aren’t his, he drops Siobhan like it’s hot. But not before stealing her money! Because if there’s one thing you can say about Henry, it’s that he’s pretty consistent about living off the money of the women he hooks up with. Now Siobhan has decided it’s time to get her old life back. There is no way that she could possibly live like a poor person, forever stuck in that one ugly Oreo coat after all.

Things aren’t going much better for Bridget either. She decides to tell Juliet and Andrew about her real identity, but chickens out after Andrew reads some gooey love poems. This gives Henry’s father-in-law the time to tell Andrew about Siobhan and Henry’s affair. So Bridget drops the real truth on Andrew. She loves him and never cheated on him…in the seven months she’s known him. That makes things better right? Andrew….does not take it very well.

Neither does Juliet, which seemed a little weirder to me. Listen I didn’t expect Juliet to be like “Hey awesome fake-stepmother! Let’s do mani-pedis!” But I didn’t get why she was as super betrayed as she was. Didn’t she and Siobhan straight up hate each other? At least Bridget was decent to her and stood by her through some messed up stuff. I totally understood Andrew’s level of betrayal but I was a bit flimsy on Juliet’s. If there is a next season of “Ringer” Bridget is really going to have to work hard to repair the damage to those relationships.

At episode’s end, Solomon shows Bridget a tape from surveillance footage starring Siobhan only four hours after she committed suicide. So now Bridget knows that Siobhan is alive and trying to kill her. I was honestly disappointed that we didn’t get to see the twins interact with each other at all. It seemed like all season, with its many fake-outs, was leading up to a twin on twin confrontation. I was really looking forward to seeing if the green screen was as bad as the infamous boating scene.

Listen, “Ringer” wasn’t a perfect show. It tried much too hard to be a good show early on, instead of realizing it was much better at being an overly dramatic camp fest. By the time it embraced its campy roots, “Revenge”-style, it might have been too late for some viewers.

Throughout the season, I have enjoyed many things about “Ringer”. Two off the top of my head? Sarah Michelle Gellar and Sarah Michelle Gellar. But I also enjoyed Agent Machado and his guyliner, when he bothered to show up and/or matter. I enjoyed watching people get shot multiple times and still live. I found the actress who played Juliet oddly likable, despite how horrible her character often was. The pill-popping evil ex-wife reveal last week was some pretty killer daytime soap opera levels of awesome. And of course, Trunky, always and forever will be my favorite.

—Read the full recap and sound off at Yidio.com HERE!!

Things are beginning to tie together on this week’s episode of “Ringer”. Who knew when we first started the show that Catherine, Andrew’s bitter ex-wife, would play such a prominent role in everything? Or that Olivia was involved? Or that she was a lesbian? It was just truth-bomb after truth-bomb this week.

Catherine tries to once more unsuccessfully kill Bridget by drugging her and leaving her to drown in the bath. How many times has Catherine failed to kill Siobhan and/or Bridget at this point? She’s attempted to kill her at least five times by now. Catherine is the worst at this.

Although on “Ringer”,  as we all know, being shot directly in the face doesn’t necessarily mean you’re dead. Similarly, being pumped full of drugs has basically no effect on Bridget after Andrew saves her from the tub. I was under the impression she was overdosing, but after Andrew’s save she’s alert enough to pull a clever phone trick on Catherine.

Someone who did successfully overdose? The Russian maid who planned to testify against Henry. First she impolitely takes a sex-customer while Siobhan is trying to blackmail her, then she shoves the 100 months pregnant Siobhan into a little closet. While knowing the whole time that Siobhan is in the closet, trying to find dirt on her to use as blackmail material, she does a bunch of drugs with her hooker customer and then dies. We barely knew you, Russian mail-order-hooker cliché!

Siobhan manages to escape the closet in time to deliver two twin baby girls, for maximum irony. I can’t wait until 30 years from now, when we can all relive this show in the spinoff “Ringer: The Next Generation”.  It’ll be like “Degrassi”, only with more misunderstandings and less Canadian accents.

After finding out about the dead Russian, Henry asks to get a paternity test on the twins. That’s clearly bad news for everyone. It really does take an extraordinary amount to get Henry to finally wise up and realize Siobhan’s crazy though. His wife has been killed, he’s lost his kids, he murdered a dude, Siobhan basically said straight up to his face that she wanted to kill her sister but it takes a random Russian prostitute for Henry to really draw the line.

Meanwhile, Catherine is getting progressively crazier as the episode wears on and she acquires more and more hostages. You can tell the progression of her crazy by the state of her eye makeup. She starts out the episode normal-crazy and ends the episode somewhere around Heath Ledger as the Joker levels of crazy.

We also learn that Olivia was much more involved in the main action than we otherwise would have thought. Sadly for the actress, none of this was on screen until this very second. But isn’t that the way with most of the cast members on “Ringer”? I would have loved to hear these actors get pitched on the show. “You’re going to have this juicy arc where you’re hooking up with your partner’s ex-wife because you are a lesbian with really excellent lipstick and also you guys plot to kill Siobhan! It’ll be so scandalous! It’ll also all happen off screen!”

(Then again, where is Malcolm? Probably getting heroin injected into his eyeballs while tied to a chair, occasionally being shot in the face for good measure. I hope the television karma gods give him a really great pilot next season.)

We learn through flashbacks that Catherina was angry at Siobhan because she convinced Andrew to sell the Miami property. “But where will I live?!” Catherine cries, at if at that very moment she wasn’t standing in a fancy cocktail party, but was instead begging Siobhan from a cardboard box on the street. Siobhan wisely surmises that she will find some poor sucker to hook up with and then subsequently mooch off. That poor sucker? Olivia, who Catherine goes to after Andrew throws her out after the Juliet “Wild Things” plotline fiasco. Olivia hits on her and Catherine is like “You seem pretty rich so I’m down” and they start a relationship.

Maybe the greatest part in the episode is that the whole family seems more shocked that Catherine is in love with Olivia than they are that she’s currently got them tied up and held at gunpoint. Oh Martins, you have the worst priorities.

Thankfully, Agent Pretty Eyes ignores his orders to stay out of the Martin’s affairs and saves the day when he has Olivia convince Catherine to bring Bridget over as a hostage. Bridget and Machado tag-team Catherine and haul her away. But not before she accuses Bridget of being pathetic because she needed to steal someone else’s life. You can see the tiny hamster wheel inside Bridget’s head turn at that comment. Seems like someone might be coming clean about her mistaken identity soon.

— Read the full recap at Yidio.com HERE!!

Things are getting intensely crazy on this week’s episode of “Ringer”. This is mostly thanks to Catherine, who reveals herself to be progressively more unhinged as the episode goes on.

 Last week we learned that Catherine was behind the hit on Siobhan that introduced us all to Trunky, the assassin Bridget killed and shoved into a trunk and my personal favorite “Ringer” character. This week Catherine decides to pick up where Trunky left off and just finish the job herself. God Bridget, never take tea from people with eyes that crazy. That is such an amateur move.

The episode starts with Catherine talking crazy in Juliet’s room, only for Andrew to discover that Catherine had slit her wrists. She leaves a perfect blood handprint on his shirt, which is ascetically impressive. For a second after Andrew gets off the phone with Bridget, he appears to find his serial killer shadow and the music goes crazy and I was sure that the twist would be that he was secretly in league with Catherine. I’m constantly impressed by Ioan Gruffudd’s ability to go from looking cuddly to looking like he’s planning how to dismember someone in five seconds flat.

Juliet is suitably freaked out over her mother’s suicide attempt, one minute thinking Catherine is faking and the next moment being struck by overwhelming concern. There are some weird heart to heart moments where Catherine basically admits to being a horrible mother/person and Juliet seems oddly touched by this but then calls her suicidal mother an evil bitch. The Martins are just like the “Brady Bunch” only more homicidal and on more drugs!

While all this is happening Henry and Siobhan are busy being really, really stupid. I thought Siobhan was the smart twin (smart being very relative on “Ringer”) but it appears whatever disease has eaten Henry’s brain has finally gotten her too. Her magic fix to the Tyler situation was to bribe the maid at the hotel in the least suave way possible. She basically just rolled into the hotel a million months pregnant wearing her pregnancy invisibility cloak and shoved some money at the maid. Great job!

Henry, meanwhile, has miraculously remembered he has children. But alas, for it is too late! Gemma’s father has taken them and he is none too happy with Henry due to all the cheating and murdering and such. I mean, those are pretty good reasons to be an unfit parent but the way Henry has been acting I’m surprised he even noticed his kids were gone. I guess he walked into his apartment and was like “where is that giggling children background noise I’d grown so accustomed too?  I feel like something is missing!” At this point I was surprised his kids were actually real and not all in his head in some kind of weird “Black Swan” twist.

Henry finally decides that losing his kids is the last straw for his relationship with Siobhan. How will he ignore them if he doesn’t have custody?! I predict next week Siobhan will say something insane to him like “Hey let’s hold up a liquor store and then sell crack to kittens” and he will think this is a great idea and go along with it.

I haven’t even gotten to the most important part of the episode though: the triumphant return of Trunky! We missed you Trunky! I hope next season Trunky is the star and “Ringer” just becomes an extended “Weekend at Bernie’s” riff.

Agent Pretty Eyes discovers the remarkably well preserved remains of Trunky in a mobster’s basement while looking for clues that tie him to Andrew’s shooter. I get that Trunky is the best “Ringer” character of all time, but doesn’t it seem a little absurd for a mobster to keep a dead body conveniently stowed in a refrigerator for like nine months? When Trunky ended up in that Titanic trunk Siobhan was barely pregnant and now she looks like she’s going to explode homicidal twins at any moment. Shouldn’t the mobster have gotten rid of Trunky by now?

Also I feel I should note that said mobster is actually Mike from AMC’s fantastic, award winning “Breaking Bad” and is clearly slumming it for a paycheck by appearing on the CW. Mike should have just run his underground operation through a car wash instead of a dry cleaner and this could have all been avoided!

Machado finds the picture of Siobhan and Andrew that once belonged to Trunky and tells Bridget he’ll have a friend run it for prints. Unfortunately Catherine hears this as well and starts plotting nefarious things. While Catherine is foisting poised OD tea on Bridget, Agent Machado’s 1990 AOL internet connection slowly loads Catherine’s picture from the prints. Poor Machado, first his stripper girlfriend is killed, then he loses his badge and now we find out he doesn’t even have Wi-Fi? Can’t this poor guy catch a break?

As the episode ends Machado heads out to save the day again while Catherine cackles evilly over Bridget’s nearly dead body. Next week Bridget drowns and OD’s at the same time, but unless she’s shot in the head ten times I won’t believe she’s really dead. This is “Ringer” after all.

—Read the full recap and sound off in the comments at Yidio.com HERE!!

Everyone has murder on the mind in this week’s episode of “Ringer”. Siobhan fantasizes about killing Bridget in a scene that was produced entirely to be put into misleading promos. Bridget, as per usual, is nearly killed a million times.

Agent Pretty Eyes delivers a beat down, loses his badge and nearly dies, which is really a Malcolm kind of day minus being tied to something. And in the shocking twist present in every episode ending of “Ringer”, it turns out the hit on Siobhan was put out by the former Mrs. Martin. As per usual, props need to be given to the show, because I didn’t see that one coming.

It’s beginning to feel like “Ringer” is just a series of events leading up to an ‘OMFG’ episode ending. I’m increasingly not sure that is a workable model for a series. This week, “Ringer” switches up the format a bit, making both the beginning and end of the episode into cliffhanger moments.

Here’s what the beginning of the episode would lead you to believe: Bridget is dead, Andrew and Catherine are nefariously hooking up and Henry is booked in the slammer, possibly for her murder. “What?!” you scream. Then the episode flashes back in time to explain all these events in completely reasonable fashion, or at least what “Ringer”’s version of reasonable is.

The following are the explanations:

Why is Henry in the Slammer?

Henry is at the police station for the same reason that Henry does anything on this show—because he is really, really dumb. At this point Henry has somehow surpassed normal dumb levels and gotten to a level of dumb that only golden retrievers who run into sliding glass doors can hear.

What happened is that Henry convinced Siobhan that he would talk to his father-in-law, the person he gave Tyler’s flashdrive with all the Ponzi information. Remember Tyler, that guy he killed by accident? Honestly, neither did I until he was explicitly mentioned. Apparently too many disposable characters are killed in this show, so unless they are shot five times in the face like Gemma I can’t remember them all.

Henry talks to his father-in-law, who assures him that he’ll take care of the whole business with the kind of oily charm usually reserved for people perpetuating Ponzi schemes, not being victimized by them. Right at this moment, Henry should have picked up on something amiss. His father-in-law practically cackles evilly while getting into his car. But Henry pats himself awkwardly on the back for a job well done and treats himself to a Scooby snack or whatever Henry does on his down time. Certainly not spend time with his soulless ginger children.

Shocking no one in the audience, Henry’s father-in-law double crosses him in order to avoid being taken down by the whole Ponzi mess. He somehow implicates Henry in Tyler’s murder (how did he even know about that? Did I miss something) and now Henry is being questioned by police. I can’t wait until next week, when Siobhan smuggles him out of jail by shoving him underneath one of her magical pregnancy-obscuring coats.

Why Were Andrew and Catherine Kissing?

Another good question! You see, Juliet tries to convince her mother to be a decent person and help Andrew out with all his pilling bills by saving their property in Palm Springs. All Catherine hears is “blah blah green investor, dollar signs, moneymoneymoney, blah” and heads off to double-cross Andrew under the guise of a good deed. She tries to pick the property off Andrew for far below what it’s worth so that she can sell it to a green developer for wind turbines. I’m sorry, is there such a thing as a place that has especially good wind? Is that a thing?

To take her ruse one step further, she uses her feminine wiles to try to get Andrew to agree to sell. He does agree, not to her kiss, but to selling her the property for 10 million dollars. Of course that’s because Juliet told him about the “Wild Things” scheme and he has double-crossed Catherine’s double-cross. It’s a triple-cross! Or is it a quadruple-cross? I’ve honestly lost track. The moral of this story: the Martin clan is a very loving and functional family unit.

Is Bridget Dead?

Nope! Although we get to see Siobhan’s fantasy of killing her, which does nothing except reinforce that “Ringer” is still terrible at the twin CGI. How can you pitch an entire show built on the basis of twins and not bother to figure out how that CGI would work? This is perhaps “Ringer”’s biggest mystery. I’ve been hoping that Bridget would find out Siobhan was actually alive for ages now, but after that brief view into the future I think I can stand to wait a bit longer.

Bridget decides that she wants to testify against Macawi after all, only as Siobhan pretending to be Bridget. So she’d be Bridget pretending to be Siobhan pretending to be Bridget. Got that? Would she actually be committing any kind of fraud if she did that? My brain hurts from this whole paragraph.

Unfortunately, she picked the wrong time to start trusting Agent Pretty Eyes. (And not just because apparently he has a new pilot on ABC!) After a sting gone wrong at the tarot dry cleaners, he’s relieved of his badge and gun.

But he still comes up with a brilliant idea: they’ll pretend to kill Bridget, saving Siobhan and her family from danger! Brilliant! Except for how they’re almost killed. Good thing Sarah Michelle Gellar knows her way around a fake blood bag after all those years on “Buffy”.

It turns out the killer was some random guy from a million episodes ago that chased after Bridget trying to get assassin number one’s phone back. I miss hired killer number one, or Trunky as I affectionately call him. Trunky is more real and three-dimensional to me than most of the characters on this show. Killing Bridget would have made no difference though, because it’s Siobhan the killers are really after on Catherine’s orders. Make your own ‘woman scorned’ jokes here.

— Read the full recap and sound off with your theories at Yidio.com HERE!!

This week’s “Ringer” was wildly uneven, managing to pack in a lot of edge-of-your-seat moments and revelations with an equal amount of boring conversations in hospital rooms. Even though we found out huge information bombs like Henry’s unwitting murder of Tyler and that it’s Bridget, not Siobhan the shooter was gunning for (pun fully intended) the hour still dragged.

After last week’s action-packed episode, “Ringer” unwisely chose to slow the pace down to give the audience a breather with the characters. But let’s be honest, likable characters aren’t the reason we’re still sticking it out with “Ringer”. At least for this recapper, the appeal of “Ringer” lies almost wholly in its intense melodramatics and twisty shocks and they were spaced too far between in this outing my for liking.

Also, while confided to a hospital bed Andrew was unable to find any creepy shadows to lurk in, making him at least 90% less interesting than last week. I don’t know what it is about this series that makes me perpetually root for all the characters to turn out to be serial murderers. We find out that Andrew wasn’t as interestingly diabolical as I had hoped, and then I softly snored through the rest of his love declaration scenes with Bridget. Man, nefarious Andrew was so great. Remember how the lights would dim any time he walked into a room so he could find an appropriately spooky patch of shadows to emerge from, like a British vampire? I miss those days.

Machado is still off investigating things and being super psyched about mattering once again on this show. Still, the funnier aspect of this episode is that Bridget’s driver Solomon manages to be a better investigator than Agent Pretty Eyes has been all season. Solomon just shows up, immediately assesses every situation and figures out what’s going on. I hope when the season (series?) ends in April we find out that Solomon was behind everything. We could just see a shot of him in a huge wingback chair, petting a cat and laughing like the “Inspector Gadget” villain.

The clue Solomon does end up finding by using the oldest notepad-pencil trick in the television book ends up sending them on a wild goose chase after Olivia. Especially when they think that she has kidnapped Juliet. Turns out Juliet, afraid of moving to Miami with her psychopathic mother, is just hiding out in another Martin property. And she would have gotten away with it too if it wasn’t for that ugly beanie hat! Juliet finally comes clean to Bridget about the “Wild Things” scheme while begging Bridget not to tell Andrew. So there’s another thing on Bridget’s already packed dance card to deal with.

Meanwhile Siobhan convinces Henry she’s not a psychopath by doing something crazy. Henry is so touched that she would really reveal her secret to Andrew that he welcomes her back with open arms. I would complain about how stupid Henry is but a.) if you’re still watching the show I don’t need to tell you that and b.) I’m afraid nothing gets through that thick, lustrous mane of 70s porn hair anyway. Henry of course has his own secret to hide, which is that he accidentally killed Tyler. Twist!

It’s all in vain because he stupidly gave away the flash drive with all the evidence to his father-in-law, who is probably at this moment shacked up with Olivia somewhere selling Henry’s demon children to the highest bidder. Because on “Ringer” why not?

Another body turns up with Malcolm’s ID but it’s not Malcolm, it’s one of Macawi’s henchmen. This means that the bullet was actually meant for Bridget, not Siobhan. You mean looking exactly like someone means you might be mistaken for that person? What a crazy concept!

Other important things we learned this episode of “Ringer”:

- Was I the only one who yelled out “OH COME ON” when Siobhan was almost uncovered at the hospital? First, it’s convenient that Juliet had just magically gone missing so Andrew didn’t ask Bridget what Henry pulled her out of the room to talk to her about. Second, it’s a good thing the twins have similar fashion sense and were good enough to wear almost identical black coats. I’m so glad it looks like Bridget and Siobhan finally come face to face next week, because it’s getting a little ridiculous now.

- Hey, Henry’s kids are still alive! I mean, probably. We didn’t actually see them, although we did hear their creepy disembodied laughter upstairs. I’m glad Henry is fighting so hard for his new family with Siobhan, because he’s certainly father of the year material already.

- I’m not worried that Malcolm is dead because we all know that “Ringer” is unsatisfied unless it kills a character multiple times. I’m sure there’s an episode coming up where Malcolm, strapped to a chair, will be shot five times directly in the face but will still manage to live until the end of the season when he’ll get hit by a bus.

—Read the full recap and sound off in the comments at Yidio.com HERE!!

We hardly knew ye “Luck”! The HBO drama about horse racing featuring the star power of Dustin Hoffman and Nick Nolte has officially closed up shop today, according a statement from HBO.

This is hot on the heels of several scandals of the equine-death variety. At least three horses that starred in the booze-soaked tale of gambling on horse races have died since the show started production. This has angered animal rights activists and drawn sharp criticisms.

Below is the full release from HBO Networks on the cancellation of “Luck”:

It is with heartbreak that executive producers David Milch and Michael Mann together with HBO have decided to cease all future production on the series LUCK.

Safety is always of paramount concern.  We maintained the highest safety standards throughout production, higher in fact than any protocols existing in horseracing anywhere with many fewer incidents than occur in racing or than befall horses normally in barns at night or pastures.  While we maintained the highest safety standards possible, accidents unfortunately happen and it is impossible to guarantee they won’t in the future.  Accordingly, we have reached this difficult decision.

We are immensely proud of this series, the writing, the acting, the filmmaking, the celebration of the culture of horses, and everyone involved in its creation.

“The two of us loved this series, loved the cast, crew and writers.  This has been a tremendous collaboration and one that we plan to continue in the future,” said executive producers Michael Mann and David Milch.

More cynically the HBO star-studder had taken a beating in the ratings, even for pay-cable standards. Perhaps HBO just saw an excuse to off-load an expensive and low-rated series, despite it’s prestige.

—What do you think? Are you upset to say goodbye to “Luck”? Sound off in the comments at Yidio.com HERE!

A lot of secrets were revealed and a lot of truth bombs were dropped in this week’s episode of “Ringer”. We finally have the background on why Siobhan went to all this trouble to disappear. Like any good “Bond” movie villain, Siobhan finally described her dastardly plan to her main minion squeeze Henry.

The mystery of what happened to Tyler, where the flash drive went and what happened to Malcolm still loom large however. This week also gave Agent Pretty Eyes something to do other than fall in love with clichés in sepia-toned flashbacks, and for that I’m glad. When Malcolm goes missing he freaks out, as once again his only witness has vanished into thin air. Agent Pretty Eyes has some pretty rank luck. Soon he’s realizing that all is not right at Martin Charles, where Andrew and Olivia are giving off a particularly strong whiff of serial killer today. By episode’s end, Malcolm is still in the wind after his cell phone is discovered on a homeless person and a text purporting to be from him lures Bridget to her near-death.

Meanwhile Malcolm actor Mike Colter gets his agent on the phone to yell about how he’s only ever kidnapped or missing on this show. I can’t imagine that’s the way his part was originally pitched to him. What would that pitch be like do you think? “You’re going to spend the first part of the season tied to a chair and then the next part missing! It’s a very meaty role of sitting and not being on screen!” SOLD!

Now that we finally know of Siobhan’s evil plan, I will give the show props for at least having it make sense. You see, after Siobhan threatened Andrew with her knowledge of the Ponzi scheme six months ago he threatened to kill her. So Siobhan was instrumental in setting Bridget up to take her place, even going so far as paying off the police officer that got Bridget to run in the first place.

Her thought process was that Andrew would kill Bridget and Siobhan would get time to gather evidence and then go to the police. With Bridget’s death proving that Andrew was willing (and able) to kill her, Siobhan would manage to have an iron-clad defense against Andrew’s money, power and lawyers. Also Bridget would be dead because of that time she agreed to go to a carnival and indirectly—yet not at all— killed Siobhan’s son.

Again, I’m disappointed they made Bridget’s role in the death of Siobhan’s son such a non-entity. This would be a much more compelling story if Bridget was indeed more directly responsible. It would make the story less of a black-and-white, good-and-evil tale and move it more into ambiguous shades of grey. Siobhan’s actions still wouldn’t be justified, but they would at the very least be more understandable. Right now she comes off like a cartoon villain, cackling with Henry about killing her sister and finally having her perfect twin family.

During all this plotting Andrew spends the episode finding every shady, scary looking corner in every room that he inhabits. Anywhere Bridget’s at, there’s Andrew lurking in a shadow somewhere about to say ambiguously evil sounding things. So we’ve officially found out, it seems, that Andrew is not a good dude. Watching British television has sort of primed me to hear a British accent and imagine that I will be suddenly transported through time like on “Doctor Who” or someone will be talking about dinner jackets like on “Downton Abbey” so this was slightly shocking for me. Yet there’s still some hope for him.

On the evil side he’s running a Ponzi scheme and he threatened to kill Siobhan six months ago. On the good side, he still loves his daughter and even when Siobhan-pretending-to-be-not-pregnant-Bridget-pretending-to-be-Siobhan (got that?) told him she didn’t love him and she was turning him in, he still wanted to fight for their relationship. On the minus side…what was he doing with Malcolm before he disappeared? Was he or Olivia responsible for Tyler’s death? They had the flash drive, after all, just not the correct one. Also there’s that Ponzi scheme and those death threats and all those mysterious shadows he keeps skulking into. Consider me on the fence in regards to Andrew’s evil.

At episode’s end Andrew takes a bullet intended for Bridget while Olivia hightails it out of town and Malcolm is still missing. Who tried to kill Bridget? It could be anyone or everyone on this show; she’s a popular person to want dead.

Other important things we learned this episode of “Ringer”:

- Juliet finally figured out that her mother was behind Tessa’s attack and also that her mother is a horrible person. It took her a really, really long time to come to this conclusion. Now Mommy Dearest’s hired thug is after Juliet for more money. You know what they say, mo’ money, mo’ problems. (And by they I clearly meant 90s rappers.)

- Siobhan/Bridget’s driver Solomon is now officially the smartest person on this show. He immediately realized that Bridget wasn’t Siobhan because of how her behavior was all weird and then he fingerprinted the glass to confirm his suspicions. A random driver managed to figure this out but Andrew is still totally in the dark. I really hope at some point we find out that Andrew has known all along. I’m not sure someone can be a criminal mastermind and a straight-up idiot at the same time.

- Distracting coats hide GIANT pregnancy bellies. The more you know!

-Read the full recap and sound off in the comments at Yidio.com HERE!!

The stakes have never felt higher than they have on this week’s episode of “Ringer”. Sure, the show started with Bridget realizing that twin sister Siobhan’s life wasn’t as charmed as she had once thought after a murder attempt. Since the comedy of errors with the body of the would-be assassin in the trunk, however, the show has stuck mostly to its mistaken identity trappings. This episode of “Ringer” returns to the two central driving mysteries of the show, with both involving murder. It made this episode a twisty, wild ride.

“Ringer” might never be great television or even as deliciously campy as fellow pretty-people-and-murder sudser “Revenge” but it certainly knows how to dole out surprises. Never let it be said that the endings to “Ringer” are boring, even if the episode preceding it was. This week, however, there was enough murder and mayhem to earn the show’s “OMG” closer.

The two main murder-rific plots revolved around the origins of the Macawi investigation and Andrew’s Ponzi scheme, revealed last episode. Let’s start off with the more straightforward of the two, shall we?

So Agent Pretty Eyes is back. Remember him? No, me neither. Nestor Carbonell is basically such a nonentity on this show that I’m continually surprised when he pops up. It’s like he’s a special guest star that keeps returning, except he’s a main cast member. What’s Pretty Eyes been up to? Well, you know the usual: trying to track down Bridget and having sepia-toned flashbacks about strippers. Some other FBI detective tries to hone in on his case on Macawi all “drop the strippers I’ve got this whole cigarette angle that sounds like it would make for a very boring TV show!” The starved for hits CW, meanwhile, starts trying to think up marketing campaigns for ‘Law and Order: Cigarette Unit’.

We finally find out more about the dead stripper that lead to this whole mess in the first place. It turns out that Agent Pretty Eyes recruited her into the Macawi mess. But then he broke the cardinal rule:  don’t fall in love with your criminal informant (or at the “Jersey Shore”). He fell hard for his stripper with heart of gold and planned to run away with her. She had one last stripping gig to do at Macawi’s party with Bridget and then he was going to pull her out for good. Of course, she didn’t make it out alive and he later learned she was four months pregnant.

Props need to be given to the actress playing murder victim zero here, who made a minor guest role sweetly likable. She and Machado had such nice, flirtatious chemistry; a rarity on this show. Seeing her ultimate fate drives home how much danger Bridget (and now Malcolm) are in from the often-mentioned Macawi. As far as boogeymen go Macawi has gotten less and less effective as the season has progressed, so it’s nice that the show is re-emphasizing how dangerous he truly is.

As for Andrew’s Ponzi scheme, we learn just how culpable he is this week. Verdict: guilty! Bridget has a hard time believing that Andrew is capable of murder, even though she now knows he’s shady as anything. Malcolm is like “girl, you are too dumb to live” and Bridget banishes him from self-portrait-ville. When she talks to Andrew though, she starts to pick up on the murdering vibe. Mostly because he’s subtly going “shut up or I’ll murder you” in every scene. This is Bridget though, so it takes until the end of the episode, seeing a dead body and a threatening voice message for her to come around to realizing she may be fake-married to  “The Talented Mr. Ripley”.

Siobhan and Henry continue working together, with Siobhan playing poor Tyler like a fiddle. We barely knew you Tyler! If there’s one thing that can be said for “Ringer” it’s that the show isn’t afraid to kill off characters. Henry, meanwhile, continues to be the best version of himself as long as he works as Siobhan’s minion. Like seriously, in every scene that he’s double-crossing someone he looks as giddy as a schoolgirl hanging up Justin Bieber posters. The best moment this episode was after he smooched Bridget and played it off like this random hotel was their “special spot”. Having Henry use his knowledge of the double-identity against Bridget is hilarious, because it allows the show to make fun of its own misunderstanding trappings.

Finally, the revelation that Andrew might be a cold-hearted murderer under his polite British demeanor really feels like it gives new life to the show. I know I get excited every time it seems like someone on this show is about to turn out to be a serial killer, but what else can you really expect from “Ringer” at this point? The problem with this show is that all the characters are extremely flat, making it nearly impossible to care about any of them. So instead the show has to rely on extreme twists and turns in the narrative to keep up audience interest. Thankfully for “Ringer”, big twists are what the show is good at.

Next week Andrew murders Malcolm and then comically drags around his body all episode before dumping him in a giant Titanic trunk, only to find that Malcolm is still alive. Then he shoots Malcolm fifty more times in the face, has a cup of tea and sets off to murder Bridget.

—Read the full recap at Yidio.com and sound off in the comments (please!) HERE!

Whenever twins turn up in “Ringer” you can be assured they will be double the trouble. So it is for Siobhan when she learns that the father of her babies isn’t turtleneck-enthusiast Henry like she hoped, but most likely Andrew. Isn’t it such a bummer when your husband turns out to be the father of your children?

 Siobhan seems to be having the slightest of second thoughts about Andrew after this news, especially when she hears that he’s planning on tying the knot with her sister. Soon Siobhan is thrown into the misty water-colored memories of the way they were. Once upon a time, you see, Andrew and Siobhan were sort of in love. You can tell because Siobhan’s hair is down and when Siobhan is being evil her hair is always up, the better to contain her secrets.

On their wedding night, they immediately start arguing about having children with Siobhan on the nay and Andrew on the yay side. Foreshadowing! Andrew mentions that he saw the picture of the little boy in her jewelry box and instead of explaining about Sean, Siobhan gets all weird. I get that this is a show based on secrets and lies but does everything have to be a secret? She couldn’t have just said “that was my son that died?” These people really over-complicate their own lives.

Speaking of over-complicating, Bridget is trying to force down that tiny voice of conscience about all her lies to Andrew after he asks her to marry him with a ring pop. She accepts, of course, but that little voice in her head keeps acting up. She’s starting to feel bad about how her relationship with Andrew is built on a bed of lies and bad CGI boat trips. So instead of facing the problem, she puts her hair up and tries scheming for a little while. This is a problem, as in every other scene this episode I kept going “Why is Malcolm all buddy-buddy with Siobhan? Oh, Bridget. Never mind. Curse you hair!”

Meanwhile, Malcolm has gotten onto the trail of Martin-Charles. He tells Bridget that she can’t marry Andrew. I was expecting Malcolm to suddenly declare his love for her, but he instead tells her it would be a mistake to marry Andrew because he’s a crook. Whew! The last thing we need on “Ringer” is another overly-complicated love triangle.

Malcolm then spends the whole episode skulking around after various people. He skulks with Henry. He skulks into Olivia’s office, stealing some info on a flash drive. He skulks his way to a backwater accountant’s office. Malcolm is like “Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy” if all the characters in that movie were completely obvious about their spying. After following Olivia to the accountant’s I half expected him to pop out of the car while in her eye line and wave.

What did all of Malcolm’s skulking uncover? Well that Martin-Charles is Bernie Madoff-ing the company. It’s a Ponzi Scheme y’all! When Bridget sadly tells Andrew about how Olivia has gone behind his back with the scheme Andrew looks confused. This is mostly because he totally knows about the Ponzi scheme, since it was his idea. Well played Andrew! The British accent and soft puppy dog eyes always throw me off, but it’s nice to know there’s some evil under the surface after all.

What about the “Wild Things” plotline? Well it’s getting even wilder. (I’m really sorry about that pun. Not sorry enough not to use it though.) When Juliet starts having second thoughts about the whole plan, it’s mommy dearest to the rescue. She tells Juliet that she’ll take care of Mr. Carpenter, who has been calling to harass her lately. And boy, does she ever take care of him. Sexually, that is. Turns out that Mr. Carpenter and the former Mrs. Martin were in on this plan all along. Is there anyone left who isn’t in on this “Wild Things” plot? Is it even a really good scheme if every other person on the show knows about it?

It turns out that Mrs. Martin is even more devious than we could have imagined though. First, she was behind Tessa’s beating. Then when Juliet sends a text threatening to tell her father about what happened, Mrs. Martin uses it as an excuse to double-cross Mr. Carpenter. While he’s in the shower she takes all the money he left lying conveniently on the bed and leaves behind a tape showing him laughing it up with Juliet and Tessa post courtroom meltdown. But don’t worry, mommy dearest left a note to tell Mr. Carpenter to leave Juliet alone and that he’s an idiot. Clearly she went to the Bluth school of always leaving a note.

Other important things we learned this episode of “Ringer”:

-  Agent Pretty Eyes played an important and integral part of the story this episode when he…I’m sorry, I couldn’t even finish that sentence because I started laughing. Remember how Nestor Carbonell is on this show? Yea, me neither.

- Henry was hilarious this episode. He was so excited to be playing spy games with Siobhan that he looked like he wanted to fist pump after every successful plan. After he gives Bridget the box of Ponzi he was practically giggling to himself like a twelve-year-old girl reading “Twilight”. I hope this version of Henry never leaves.

-  Andrew is thinking about selling the penthouse, or at least downsizing. But what will become of the giant poster of Siobhan’s face? I hope they eventually end up in a loft and that poster ends up like floor to ceiling on one of the walls.

- Bridget was wearing the same shiny, pumpkin orange coat as Georgina did on this week’s episode of “Gossip Girl”. I would wonder if “Ringer” was stealing some of their wardrobe except I know “Ringer” is filmed in LA instead of New York. Still, seeing the same hideous coat on back-to-back Upper East Siders makes me seriously question the taste level of that segment of Manhattan.

—Read the full recap on Yidio.com and be sure to sound off in the comments HERE!!