Picking up where “All Eyez on Me” left off, Darlington is placed on a campus lockdown as Jules and Ophelia struggle to maintain their vigilante covers. Being locked in Vinylton with Harris, Tyler, and a surprising addition makes it very difficult.
Lockdown
The lockdown provides the conflict for much of the episode as everyone is confined to very specific spaces. It’s not a true bottle episode because the action does bounce around between a few sets, but the effect is similar.
Having Nate decide to head to Vinylton when he realizes Jules and Tyler are there makes the lockdown feel more dangerous than the police patrolling the streets, so kudos to the writers for that decision.
As much as it made my skin crawl to hear Nate telling Jules he wanted to make sure she was okay, and then to have him hit on her, it ramped up the tension on the show in a way we hadn’t yet seen.
Ophelia is 'Fearless'
Not only is it Ophelia whose actions lead to the lockdown, but she spends a lot of the episode taking the biggest risks to make sure that Jules isn’t caught for her previous vigilantism.
In fact, she doesn’t just take risks, she literally puts herself in the line of fire on more than one occasion. Ophelia steps between Jules and Nate, she has to barrel her way through Harris to get out of the store as a vigilante, and then, she has to outrun the police once her plan is in action.
Those cops are armed too. Let’s all breathe a sigh of relief that this episode didn’t involve Ophelia getting shot in addition to the knife wound.
We also have to address how great of a friend she is. She apologizes profusely for injuring Harris, even though he doesn’t know she did it, and then she is Jules’ wingwoman all night.
We’ve not seen anyone in Jules’ corner the way Ophelia is, and it makes me hope all young women can have friends like her.
Kennedy finds out
While we’re on the subject of Jules’ friends, we have to address this Kennedy situation. Kennedy doesn’t believe Jules when Jules tells her that Nate raped her. On the one hand, I want to be angry that Kennedy is so torn between Nate’s story and Jules’.
On the other, Jules has been lying to her and she doesn’t know what to think.
But really, Kennedy needs to wake up.
Aisha Dee is fantastic in this role and I love that she genuinely shows the conflict in Kennedy’s situation. I just wish Kennedy wasn’t so oblivious to how exactly she’s seen Jules change over the last year. How can she possibly believe Nate when Jules has treated Nate with so much hostility and gone out of her way to avoid him?
Eliza Bennett is a boss
When I previewed this episode, one thing that stood out to me was just how much Eliza Bennett rocks her role. Bennett has always been a great actress, but she has to show an emotional vulnerability and anger in “Fearless” that has only been hinted at in the past.
Her standing up to Nate when she realizes he’s still on her mind after trying to get intimate with Tyler is one of the standout moments of the episode. While Jules is pouring out all of the anger, fear, and disgust she has at Nate, she’s also terrified. She might be holding Nate up against the wall in that scene, but there is a definite undercurrent of “what if I can’t fight back” that runs through their confrontation, and Bennett plays it beautifully.
Having this scene followed up by her attempt to tell Kennedy the truth about what happened just breaks your heart. We all want a happy ending for Jules.
Barton makes a discovery
Though Barton loses his job for presenting the evidence he and Harris have found to the school, he’s not out of the investigation just yet.
He knows the police haven’t caught the real vigilante, and he also tracks down that bathroom wall with the names of all the guys Jules and Ophelia have been targeting, calling Harris when he does. The duo might just be closer to the truth after this episode.
The verdict
I might be saying this with every new episode, but definitely my favorite "Sweet/Vicious" so far.
4.5 out of 5 stars
