The Undoing Recap: A Killer New Theory Emerges as We Pass the Halfway Point
“You… ground yourself by walking within footsteps of your husband’s bludgeoned-to-death lover? Yeah… it bumps me.”
Undoing Episode 4 (of six) opens with Grace’s no-BS lawyer Hayley Fitzgerald reacting to the breaking news that surveillance video captured Nicole Kidman’s Upper East Side mom strolling past Elena’s studio on the night of her murder (i.e. last week’s twist ending).
Fitzgerald then informs Grace that because the detectives have copious footage of her taking luxuriously jacketed jaunts around the nabe, the trek in question does not make her a suspect. The cops, however, “still think you’re withholding,” the attorney cautions, “because it’s what rich, entitled people do when threatened — they conceal the ugly truths, to protect themselves and their family units.”
During her first face-to-face with now-official new client Jonathan, Fitzgerald learns more about the maybe-murderer’s past, including that A) he’s been long estranged from his parents, and B) Elena was not the only other woman in his marriage (“There was a one-off years ago,” he confesses.). After quietly judging him, Fitzgerald urges J-bird to find a way to make bail, positing that potential jurors will have a more favorable opinion of him if he’s not behind bars.
Cut to Grace gently asking her moneybags pa Franklin to bankroll her hubby’s “Get Out of Jail Expensive” card, which he reluctantly agrees to do even though, as he later informs his embattled son-in-law, “I believe you killed that woman.” And just like that, Jonathan is a free-ish man, with Grace playing, in her words, “the assigned role of the wife — and that’s it.”
However, saying it and adhering to it are two different things. To wit, Grace spends much of the episode’s latter half resisting the strong pull to slip back into her once very happy marriage. The pressure from that exercise catches up to her and, while at the park chasing some light flurries or cocaine crumbs or airborne asbestos, she collapses. A bunch of kids playing nearby rush over to check for signs of life but mostly to admire and possibly steal her sumptuous long woolen green coat. Grace is hospitalized, diagnosed with a mild case of mylifeisadumpsterfireitis and released.
In an effort to make everything worse, Jonathan pays Elena’s widower Fernando an unannounced visit, during which he professes his innocence before awkwardly checking in on his former patient Miguel and bottle feeding his illegitimate infant daughter. Busy! Also: Dumb! “Are you out of your f–king mind?!” Fitzgerald later tears into him, before informing him that, “You just committed witness tampering.”
She nonetheless still believes he’s probably-maybe not a murderer, and decides it’s time for the scandal-ridden doc to plead his case to the American public via a live primetime interview with retired news legend Connie Chung. With Grace watching from home (while hosting the most awkward viewing party ever), Jonathan gives Chung the scoop of the year: he has a theory as to who really killed Elena! And he’ll reveal this person’s identity…. next week! Grrrr.
Final thought: A throwaway B-story involving Henry getting temporarily tossed from Reardon as a result of his father’s arrest pays off big-time when, during a tense meeting with the tony private school’s dean, Donald Sutherland’s Franklin delivers a dramatic (and slightly terrifying) dissertation on the word “c–ksucker.”
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