The Riches TV Show

The Riches is recession-proof entertainment. FX’s drama, entering its second season, actually feels sharper amidst a foundering economy of subprime mortgages, credit crises, and supersize debts. The Riches runs on the fuel of acquisition: It’s all about getting and keeping, and the mental costs of possession. Last season, the Malloy family of Travellers — Irish-American gypsies — slipped into the identity of the late Rich family, taking their mansion, luxury cars, and high-end job as a real estate lawyer for dad Wayne (Eddie Izzard). The new life also includes the constant threat of discovery and never-ending pressure to make more money. This season’s premiere sees the family in crisis in the wake of potential exposure: Wayne tries to deal with everything from drunk bosses to dead bodies while matriarch Dahlia (Minnie Driver) goes on the run with the kids. Whizzing down the highway, she declares, ”We are grifters and drifters and nomads, we’re the scourge of the goddamned earth — we’re Travellers!” Penniless and pursued, she looks more at home than she ever was in the snooty — and ominously named — suburb of Edenfalls, La.

Season 2 wrestles constantly and noisily with the idea of freedom: Is freedom money or the absence of money? Is it a home or rattle-around homelessness? And how does anyone stop craving? ”The minute you get what you think you want, you always want more,” Dahlia frets, and she’s right. Everyone in this drama, rich or poor, is on the make, from Dahlia’s murderous, coyote-eyed cousin Dale (Todd Stashwick), who blackmails the Malloys for a piece of the action, to Wayne’s venal boss, Hugh (Gregg Henry), whose latest real estate venture depends on screwing over Katrina victims. Even the Malloys’ marks have crushing needs. In the midst of stealing a car, Dahlia and her crew get taken hostage by the vehicle’s fed-up owner. At his house, the man paces with a gun as a collection agency rings constantly, his wife grumbles about her Wal-job, and Dahlia tries to figure out what the man needs to feel better. After all his debts and desires are summed up, it turns out he needs about $6,158.87. Hey, everyone has a price. The Malloys eventually decide to risk staying in Edenfalls another few months, until Wayne can cash in on his share of the Katrina land scheme for a tidy $13 million.

The Riches isn’t subtle: It’s filled with symbolic sing-alongs, boisterous speechifying, and a lot of unbelievable story lines, the biggest requiring us to believe that pretender Wayne, in his top legal perch, still hasn’t made a huge foul-up. The drama’s strange coincidences and unlikely twists are boundless. But The Riches is like a skillful shell game: Even when you know you’re being played, the dizzying machinations are irresistible.

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(S02E07) I debated whether or not I should follow that post title up with a “kind of” or an “unfortunately.” Because really, it is unfortunate that season two was cut short by the strike. If we were gearing up to watch the next six episodes of season two, this would have been a pivotal episode.

With Dahlia’s breakdown, Didi rebelling against her father, and the growing tension between Wayne and Quinn, things are building nicely. As a season finale though, I’m left feeling disappointed. Still, “The Lying King” did offer up some good bits to the story. More on that, after the jump.

To start, let us go to the end, with Quinn’s closing words for the season, “I have your son.” Last week I suspected that was the motivation for his interest in Cael. But they did do a good job selling the possibility that Quinn could have other ideas. For just a moment, as he defended Wayne to Cael, you could almost believe that he was a changed man and did want to take the family in a different direction. Alas, as we saw, not so much.

Clearly, Wayne wants no part of a partnership with Quinn. We’re missing some pretty big bits to that back story, and it’s something that I would really like to see in season three. Of course, even if Quinn was sincere in his desire to deal with Wayne, that ship had already sailed with what happened at the Bayou Hills construction site. Sabotage and just showing up to take over are not the friendliest of methods for saying let’s be partners.

For me, the best part of the Bayou Hills construction story was the entrance of Wayne’s mafia muscle. It was good to get Minkov back into the story. It’s a great example of just what the Riches project has become for the Malloys. It did all start on a fluke. It was a perfect storm of coincidences that brought them into this situation to begin with. And with everything that has happened, all the close calls, they should have cut and run by now, cashing out for whatever they could from Doug’s estate.

And they almost did, but then we had Bayou Hills and the promise of the big payday. It’s just as much the definitive deadline as it is the $13 million. When they first took this gamble, it was all wide open. But now, if Wayne can just get to the end of the Bayou Hills project he can disappear with a big score. So now the game becomes juggling all of the balls until the very last minute. It’s a tricky bit of business. He doesn’t have to actually solve all of these problems. He just has to delay any negative resolutions until just after he’s out.

That’s what we see shaping up with Minkov. Given the choice, Wayne would surely side with Hugh and turn the tables on Minkov. And really, unless he absolutely has to in order to keep the game going, he’s not going to throw Hugh under the bus. At some level, Wayne is growing to like Hugh. When we see Hugh stop to share a genuine moment where he thanks Doug for everything he does for him, it is just that much more pressure on Wayne. It all makes for a fascinating story.

On the other side of our tale, we have Dahlia. I found myself mesmerized by Minnie Driver this week. The breakdown of Dahlia as her past and her present just overwhelm her is great TV. It was impressive how much of her story they were able to tell by letting us watch her think about her situation. Dahlia’s part of the story also served as the setting for some of the best Nina scenes we have had yet. I’ve liked the Nina character from the start, but watching her deal with Jim’s death, and both Dahlia and Wayne, was Nina at her best. It really showed just how much alike Wayne and Dahlia are. She is so angry with Wayne, yet doing the exact same thing to Nina.

The only part of Dahlia’s story, and the episode, that didn’t work for me was the scene with Devereaux. I just wasn’t buying his sudden kiss of Dahlia to start with, let alone with his wife and kids just inside the house. That’s just not at all what I got from all of the earlier Devereaux scenes.

As to the kids, there’s not a lot to take from Sam and Cael’s involvement this week. I’m curious to see more with Sam and his new friend, but as this was the season finale, that bit felt kind of tacked on because they needed something for Sam to be doing. And Cael, he was more or less playing support to get to Quinn’s big line. There was a bit more for Didi this week though. Dahlia tossing Wayne under the bus by telling Didi about Pete set a lot of things in motion. The telling line for me was Didi asking Wayne if that’s who they are now. She’s left searching and confused, seeing everything falling apart and takes off for some good old fashioned teen age rebellion.

And there we are. All the seeds have been planted for what should surely be a great season three. I do wish that we could get all of those answers over the next couple months as a full season two raps up, but what are you gonna do? I suppose we should take from it that six episodes of a very good show is still a check in the win column.

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