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written by Margaret Royal

Love, Lies and Voldemort

The Lianca Recaps

Wednesday, October 8, 2003

Episode summary: Aidan quizzes Bianca about what she might know about Michael's murder, but she wants him to stay out of it; Aidan nearly gets Maggie to spill about what she knows but is unsuccessful; Maggie tries to tell Bianca what she saw, but Bianca doesn't want to hear it; Lena shows Kendall a plan to ruin Ryan, but Kendall begs off at the last minute, citing the damage it would do to her Fusion friendships; Maggie's flashback reveals that she saw two people in black carrying something heavy out of Michael's condo.

Bianca, Maggie, and Aidan enter SOS, and Binks grins that she "really needed a break"; Aidan agrees. Bianca spots "Dan and Diane," two PVU randos—Dan is Annoying Term Paper Guy—and Dan dorks, "Hallright! Back in circulation!" Eeek, I cringe in embarrassment. Diane actually goes, "You and me, Bianca? Karaoke." Binks is nice about it, but you can tell she's like, "no, that's some bullshit." Aidan suggests margaritas, but Bianca and Maggie both decline in favor of ginger ale. He remarks that he must be off his trolley, and I don't know if that's supposed to be because they're underage or what. Anyway, Binks asks if he's got something else on his mind. He feels bad for bringing it up, but the night Michael disappeared—"I don't know anything about that," Binks replies immediately. "Well, you have no idea who might have been angry enough to shoot him?" he wonders. "Aidan?" Maggie snits, "why are you saying that? You're Bianca's friend." Aidan duhs that he is, but he also cares about Kendall, and he knows Binks "[does]n't want to see [Kendall] take the rap for a murder she didn't commit."

The lady in question closes the door to her office at Chandler and asks LegalPad!Lena if her plan will get Fusion, Enchantment, and Chandler away from Ryan. "It'll take about six months, but Ryan'll never see it coming," replies the Hot Polish Fox. Kendall's into it, and Lena reminds her that it "won't win [her] any friends," but it'll get her what she wants. (I thought she wanted fast-acting? Maybe six months fits into the fast-acting window.) So the plan is to drive each company to the brink of bankruptcy, forcing layoffs and cutbacks, then persuade Ryan to sign them over to Kendall before he has to be responsible for the "fallout." Kendall wants Lena's assurance that afterwards, she can get the companies back to the way they were. "The only thing you stand to lose here is Ryan," Lena replies. (And if Ryan is in control of those companies until he signs them over to Kendall, how will Lena have access to their holdings and accounts so as to be able to engineer their near-bankruptcies? Is he keeping Kendall on as an underling or something? And why are they—why is the Fox—taking this war out on innocent employees?) Kendall hesitates. Damn, Lena is sexy. "You do want Ryan Lavery out of your life, don't you?" she smiles. Kendall looks unsure.

"Of course I want Ryan out of my life," Kendall tells Lena, but, sadly, she's lying. "Good," Lena replies. "I'll get straight to work." She's almost at the door when Kendall stops her. She claims not to care about Adam or Erica—"it would almost be fun destroying their companies, and they deserve it"—but she does care about Fusion. "I can't do it to them; these women are my partners and my friends." Lena, clasping her legal pad to her chest like a true lesbian icon, steps forward and says she thought Grendall "had a falling out." Yeah, but Kendall knows they'll make up (please, girl, I know it too), and besides, the Bullshit party is on Friday, and she doesn't want to "trash that or the few friendships that I have." Lena thinks for a moment. Then: "You extended yourself to me when no one else would." "I did that for Bianca," Kendall replies. "And I hired you because you're good at your job." ". . . And now you don't want to double-cross your friends . . ." "Have you ever seen Simone or Greenlee angry? Not pretty." Lena tells her that she can be kind, "just like Bianca." Awww. "Look, Lena, I'm not doing this with you, okay?" Kendall says firmly. "You want to be impressive, stop analyzing me and come up with another way to hit Ryan where it hurts."

Bianca tells Aidan to "leave it alone," because "it's none of [his] business who killed Michael Cambias." He reminds her that he cares about her, Kendall, and Erica, all victims of Michael, and he thinks Kendall is innocent. She thinks he should just let the police deal with it, because "[her] Uncle Jack wouldn't let anybody go to jail for something that they didn't do." Well, that's just because he doesn't let anybody go to jail, whether they did it or not. "The police aren't considering anybody else," Aidan says. "Like who?" Maggie wonders, a little annoyed herself. Aidan brings up David's name, which freaks Binks out. As she stresses that "there's no way" David could be involved, Maggie looks uncomfortable. Aidan apologizes and says he doesn't want Kendall falsely accused of murder, because he knows what that's like. From the corner, Dan waves at Bianca, and she uses his "unreadable" English paper as an excuse to leave the table. Maggie sits back down and chews Aidan out: "you know that she does not want to talk about Michael, with anyone." Aidan tells her that Binks is lucky to have her as a friend, and Maggie explains that "it never lets up" for Binks. Maybe she should move out of Pine Valley. I hear things are less eventful in other parts of Pennsylvania. Aidan thinks Bianca's troubles are a lot for Maggie to take on, but Maggie says she wants to. "I'm her best friend. I would do anything for her." "Yeah. You've made that quite clear," Aidan replies, smirking. Maggie's all "what's that supposed to mean?" He explains that he's been watching her, and Maggie still plays dumb, so he tells her she can trust him—"we're family"—not to tell anyone what she knows about Michael's murder. She looks caught.

Maggie tells Aidan she doesn't know anything about Michael's murder. He understands that she wants to protect Bianca, and that's why she won't talk. "It wasn't Bianca," Maggie interrupts. Aidan looks surprised. (Was he bluffing, then? Or did he see something with Bianca himself?) "Look, I don't wanna talk about this right now; there's no point. If I saw something that night, then I would have gone to the police," Maggie lies. He asks her directly what she saw. She hesitates, then says she can't. "Now I'm not asking you to go to the police," he says, "I'm asking you to have faith in me. What did you see the night that Cambias disappeared?" Maggie stares and stares into space. Aidan asks her if she saw the person who killed Michael. Maggie looks ill. Commercials.

Maggie again says that she didn't see anything and tells Aidan she won't talk about it. He looks frustrated, but Bianca conveniently arrives and sits down. Mags inquires with interest after Dan's paper; Binks says he paid $40 for it, so was none too happy with the critique. Maggie and Aidan are totally not listening and look pissed, so Binks asks if everything is okay. Aidan says it is, then adds something unintelligible and leaves despite Bianca's protests. Maggie sighs, so Binks asks if Aidan said something to her. "No, it's more like what I didn't say to him," Maggie sulks. She suggests that Binks sit down, and Binks obliges, and she begins: "Look, I need to tell you something. I've kept something from you—on purpose—because I was afraid it would change what you think of me." "Maggie, nothing could do that," Binks says earnestly, but Maggie thinks this could, so Binks asks her simply to spill—"whatever it is, I'll understand, I promise." Maggie begins: "Um. When you told me what Michael Cambias did to you, I was extremely angry. I'd never felt anger like that before. And all I could think was that he needed to pay." Bianca listens darkly. Maggie continues: "And then the hearing happened, and the judge let him go free, and all I thought was that it was the end for you, and that was when I made the choice that . . . something had to be done. And Michael Cambias needed to die." "Oh my God," Binks says, sounding sick. "What did you do, Maggie?" Maggie breathes and leans closer so she can drop her voice. "I got a gun, and I went to Michael's condo." Bianca looks terrified.

Lendall pore over some "vulnerable area[s]" when Boyd walks in and asks if he's interrupting. Kendall asks Lena for a minute, so the Fox leaves, telling Boyd it's nice to see him again.

Maggie continues to tell her story to an intrigued but uncomfortable-looking Bianca. She explains how she went to Michael's condo with the gun in her purse. "I was so overwhelmed with anger, Bianca. Michael had to pay for what he did, and he was gloating, and how he treated you, I . . . something needed to be done." "Oh my God, Maggie," Binks says pleadingly. Turns out Mags couldn't do it, though. Big surprise there. Binks exhales with sweet relief and assures an anxious Maggie that she's not mad at her. But Maggie's got something else to reveal: she did see something, and she's afraid that she might have seen who killed Michael. Bianca stares at her, Maggie stares back, and we go to commercials.

Maggie says that it was very dark on the night of Michael's disappearance, but she thinks she saw . . . Bianca stands up abruptly and asks her to stop; she doesn't want to hear anymore. Maggie pleads with her, but Binks tells her that although she "love[s] [her] so much," she just doesn't want to know. She flees SOS in a tizzy. Sad!Maggie is left alone at the table to revisit her memories:

(By the way, the music overlaying this montage is really effective. It's got a winding synth-track, some yearning strings, and a tense bass line. Very thriller-psychodrama-y. Her black-and-white flashback shows her entering the condo courtyard, hiding behind a plant, and pulling a gun out of her purse. Now the flashback switches to slo-mo, and she turns to her right, evidently startled, and drops into a crouch, from which position she can see towards Michael's doorway. There she sees two people in black, with ski masks, who are walking funny, because they've got a large heavy object on the ground between them. We see Maggie watching from behind the plant, then we see the figures again, and they're both crouching now over the thing on the ground. They rise again and stagger off with the heavy thing between them. The nearest figure is wearing feminine stacked-heel boots. Cut back to Mags at SOS, where she sighs with the task of trying to remember and rakes her hands through her hair.

Cut to the Chandler offices, where a pissed-looking Kendall appears to be finishing delivering some instruction. Boyd backs up and turns from her towards Lena, who is also there; they kneel down simultaneously, and we flash back to the figures in black crouching over the object on the ground. Boyd and Lena pick some papers off the floor and put them on top of storage boxes; flash back again. They pick up the boxes and begin walking out; flash back again. By the way, those boxes appear to have nothing in them, unlike the actually heavy-looking object of Maggie's flashback. Come on, AMC props.

Cut to Jackson and Reggie putting some clothes in boxes on the floor of the loft, flash back to the shadowy figures again, cut back, flash back, cut back, etc., as they walk away out of the living room.

Cut to David returning to the park with a flashlight. He shines it under a bench, where he finds his cell phone, which fell out of his jacket when he was tussling with Jackson. He crouches down to retrieve it. Flash to the shadowy figures. Cut back to him pocketing the phone; flash back. Cut back to him putting the phone to his ear. "Erica, hi," he says. "We really need to talk." The music fades into just the synth part, which then stops. Ooo, that was a good montage.

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