Bad Monkey Recap: The Monkey of It All

We’re three episodes in, so it’s time to talk about the monkey. Neville’s constant companion, Driggs, is a little scavenger, for sure, but the title of the show makes him out to be so much worse than he really is. Did anyone else think that the title of this show suggested that we might get an actual evil monkey in the thick of the plot? (Raises hand slowly.) That doesn’t seem to be what’s happening, and as an animal lover, I’m relieved. Driggs’s tiny paw prints and little diapered bum are all over this episode, and we get the sense that he’s honestly not that bad! This week, he gets side-eyed by Yancy for eating grapes while being a monkey, Christopher blindly shoots at him for trespassing, and we see his caring owner, Neville, callously trade him away like a handful of chips in a poker game. It’s starting to feel like Driggs isn’t a bad monkey, but he might just be hanging around some bad humans.

All right, Neville and Yancy aren’t bad … at least they’re not all bad. Even though Yancy objects to “the monkey of it all” as he inspects Neville’s sister’s kitchen, he doesn’t write her up because he waits to hear Neville make his case: He has the moral high ground at the moment with his sister, and he doesn’t want to lose it. This is something Yancy can relate to, so he says he’ll come back in a day or so. In exchange, Neville tells Yancy that he “owes him one,” which seems like something that will certainly come up in the near future.

Neville is trying his best to get his land back even though it feels like it’s already far gone. He wanders back to his old property to find his boat to go fishing, and he encounters Christopher (who we now know is Nick) lazing in a chair. Christopher says that he let the boat go because it was on his land, and Neville weakly (and hilariously) protests that it was on the water, which belongs to no man. Christopher responds by shooting at him and Driggs, solidifying his status as a grade-A asshole. Neville seems to be realizing more and more that logic doesn’t work with these people, so he heads back to see the Dragon Queen.

The Dragon Queen is attending the funeral of the man she helped to pass on, so she tells Neville to wait for her nearby. Here, we meet Lulu and Dawnie and learn that Dawnie is the object of Neville’s affection. She’s sweet and calls him on his b.s., but she also curiously lives in a house near the graveyard, and her daughter Lulu claims that she feels the Dragon Queen’s magic working. This all feels important somehow, but maybe it’s just to establish that the queen actually is harnessing some ineffable power on the island. Unlike Lulu, Neville doesn’t quite believe yet. When he finally gets his audience with the queen, she states, “Ain’t no magic without faith,” to which Neville responds, “Then I will find faith.” But that’s not enough for Ya-Ya. She compels him to make a sacrifice to illustrate his commitment. With nothing else to give, he gives Driggs away. In a heartbreaking moment, Driggs lifts his hairy little arms up to his human, beseeching him to take him back. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t even tell Ya-Ya and the queen of his simian’s love of grapes or provide them with some of the microscopic diapers that he wears! He just huffs away. Not great, Neville. But I think that Driggs will be well cared for in the company of L. Scott Caldwell because I love her forever and always, and I refuse to believe that she would ever take a role that required her to be mean to a monkey.

Now, the Dragon Queen has an additional $500 and a monkey to use in her machinations against Christopher, and Neville breaks into Christopher’s office and steals a potentially incriminating USB drive from a locked drawer. Oh! And all of this is happening while Yancy and Rosa are scoping out Midwestern Mobile Medical.

After getting information from Madeline that her (now dead) boyfriend Phinney agreed to bait the arm for the honeymooning couple to catch, she tells them that the person who gave it to him transported it in a cooler marked with the logo of Nick’s business … which Madeline is now using. Why these people keep using coolers that disembodied body parts were once in contact with, I don’t know? Is this a thing in the Keys? Gross. But I digress. Yancy and Rosa decide to impersonate a couple of Feds and go snooping around at Midwestern Mobile Medical for a folder marked “murder.” Or something. They meet resistance in the form of a security guard named Donald. Yancy immediately turns on the charm offensive, complimenting the guy on his haircut and telling him to reach for the stars. It’s giving try-hard vibes, but Donald initially seems into it because Yancy’s charisma is admittedly off the charts. This gives Yancy and Rosa time to find some paperwork pointing them to a shady doctor named Israel O’Peele. But not enough time to escape properly.

As the real Feds descend, Yancy and Rosa run out the back and meet up with a guard dog who hasn’t been traumatized by a monkey (if you watched the rest of the episode, you’ll understand that reference). Rosa is quick and agile while Yancy is just a smidge too slow, resulting in the dog taking a chomp out of his ass, an injury that turns out to be a running visual gag throughout the rest of the episode. The two head to O’Peele’s house, and lo and behold, who’s behind the door but Mr. Zach Braff! Now, friends, I’m not familiar with Braff’s work much beyond Scrubs and Garden State, so it was a true pleasure to watch him play a total deadbeat. O’Peele’s bathrobed shoulders sag with the weight of a lifetime of bad decisions and substance addiction as he shuffles to his intoxicant shelf to pour himself booze and pop pills, but Braff keeps the levity rolling in the scene by gamely engaging in banter with Yancy and Rosa, giving as good as he gets.

O’Peele confirms that Midwest Mobile Medical was a total scam. They never laid eyes on any patients, and Nick gave him a thousand bucks for every scooter prescription written. The patients never even knew about it because Nick sent the bills to the insurance company, and the companies paid Midwestern Mobile Medical directly. Honestly? Screw the insurance companies! I approve of this scam. But somehow, it ended in Nick losing his arm and O’Peele living in a drug haze in a shitty apartment, so I guess it’s also got its downsides. As far as interrogations go, it’s an engaging and funny chat, that is, until O’Peele finds out that Phinney is dead. Then his eyes go dead and he ends the convo.

Yancy and Rosa head out for ice cream. She informs him that the bone shards were a match for Nick Stripling, they engage in more mild flirtation, and then they call it a night. But O’Peele is worried. He calls Eve (!) and expresses concern, but she allays those concerns with promises of turndown oxy service if he comes to visit in Andros. This is appealing to him, but once he sees that the brochure for the appallingly named Curly Tail Lane development in Andros is missing, he texts Yancy in a panic.

Our guy is just trying to fish to clear his head when everyone decides to text him at once. Madeline expresses concern that she’s being followed, O’Peele reaches out, and Sonny tells him to come claim his new car. The first thing he does with it is go on some very illegal business to visit O’Peele. On the way, he finds time to call Caitlin to tell her that the bone shards in Eve’s shower matched her father’s DNA. Caitlin is surprised, but Yancy doesn’t have much time to chat because he rolls up on O’Peele’s place. He hears a gunshot as he enters the apartment complex and runs up the stairs to find O’Peele dead, shot in the head in front of his emotional-support drug nook. Yancy scoots out as fast as possible, but not before being spotted by one of the neighbors.

He goes to see Rosa to say what’s up and also to get his dog bite stitched up. After telling her that O’Peele is dead, they decide that someone should go protect Madeline, as she’s the only one left who knows the truth. They try to call Rogelio, but he claims to be too full of paella to help, so the dynamic duo heads to Chest Candy to check it out.

As Yancy tries in vain to call Madeline, we see that he’s saved as “Weird Detective Dude” on her phone. Touché, Madeline. She’s okay, but spooked by the convergence of Yancy, Rosa, and Rogelio checking in on her in the middle of the night while she presses lewd tees. Keep Madeline safe at all costs, I say!

Elsewhere in the Keys, Caitlin descends into the dragon’s lair, ready to confront Eve about killing her father. Eve is exasperated — they’ve been over this! — but when Caitlin pulls a gun on her, there’s nothing left but the truth. “I’ll never tell you I killed your father … because I didn’t,” Eve says triumphantly as Nick walks up behind his daughter and gives her a big, one-armed hug.

Gasp! Plot twist! Other excited noises! Okay, well, some of you may have suspected that Christopher and Nick were the same dude, but I didn’t! I’m letting this series seep into my brain like delicious rays of midday Florida sun, and I have to admit that this reveal was very exciting. I love dumb criminals, and these two are fascinating versions of Florida Man and Florida Woman, so I look forward to them either getting caught by Yancy and Rosa, exposed by Neville, cursed by the Dragon Queen, or a potent mixture of all three. Or maybe Driggs will surprise us and break bad, after all.

Monkeying Around

• Eve and Nick’s boat was called Summer’s Eve, and now their luxury resort is going to be called Curly Tail Lane? Put these people in jail for their absolute incompetence at naming things that are supposed to be awesome.

• Biggest laugh of the episode: “You can’t get tigers in Florida!” “There was a documentary about it, dumbass!”

• We find out that there’s a story behind why Yancy left the Miami PD for the Keys, and it involves a guy named Johnny Mendez. We don’t get the full story yet, but we do find out that he rips the guy’s mailbox out of the ground every time he passes by his house, which is just so wonderfully petty.

• Heather with the weather is missing? Who will report to us about the heavily foreshadowed hurricane now?

• Tom Petty Cover Watch: The two Petty covers in this episode are Larkin Poe’s “Runnin’ Down a Dream,” which plays as Rosa and Yancy escape Midwest Mobile Medical, and a haunting version of “Mary Jane’s Last Dance,” by composer Jamie Jackson. Jackson approached the cover from the perspective of Mary Jane herself and enlisted the help of an all-female orchestra to create the cover. Check out more about her process here.