Brand New Cherry Flavor – Episode 2 “Hair of the Dog” Recap & Review

Hair of the Dog

Episode 2 of Brand New Cherry Flavor begins with a little more background surrounding Boro. Apparently she cooks using the ingredients inside her clients.

Boro also connects to the spirit world, and does so through using background information about those she works with. This gives us a good opportunity to learn more about Lisa’s background.

Lisa’s father is dead and, as we found out in the last episode, her Mother is estranged and gone. She also lost her virginity to a girl called Isabel too.

Boro soon turns her attention to Lou, and in particular his betrayal. This cocktail of emotion soon becomes clear as Boro wants to sort out a binding ritual. This begins with a weird paste that Lisa is forced to eat. In doing so, Boro reveals that she’s going to be swayed by different things from the spirit world. In order to complete this ritual though, she needs a photo of Lou and a pinch of pubic hair in order to make this a success.

At the same time, Lou sits with Roy as they watch Lisa’s film together and smoke. Roy marvels at the special effects and as the credits roll, tells Lou there’s no way he’s making the film without Lisa.

Lisa staggers home and tries to get Code and Christina to help her get her movie back. Although they don’t jump in directly, they do give Lisa the number for two men she can hire to help break into Lou’s place. She hands over 50 bucks a piece for each main and heads over to Lou’s pad.

All Lisa needs is 5 minutes to grab the things she needs, and she uses the two men as a distraction while hurrying in to snatch up the gear. As she does though, a creepy figure lurks around the periphery of the screen.

Lisa takes way too long though and as her reward, is thrown into prison as the police catch her red-handed at the front door. The drugs continue to work their way through her system. Someone happens to be inside her cell who knows about Boro though, claiming that she can cause a serious debt to pile up if you don’t live up to your end of the bargain.

Just like that, Lisa vomits another kitten inside the prison. She also makes bail not long after too, thanks to Roy. He wants her to Direct the movie and this could be her ticket back onto the project.

When Lisa heads home, Lou happens to be there waiting for her. He wants to patch things up – but to be honest he only wants to do so because of Roy. Anyway, Lou wants to start again and offers a truce.

Getting nowhere though, he instead offers up his pubes for her curse – and leaves while chuckling incredulously.

With 10 minutes left to go, Lisa makes it to Boro’s in time with the ingredients needed. She does ask abut the cats she keeps vomiting but Boro is all riddles and gives up no clues over what this means. She simply shrugs, claiming this is her payment as she can’t afford cash.

The binding ritual begins and Lisa immediately starts writhing around on the floor. This menacing figure from the spirit world arrives and looks down on Lisa. Boro grass the girl and holds her tight. It’s started. She now has a connection to Lou and next up is to start punishing the sleazy filmmaker.

The Episode Review

Thee second chapter of Brand New Cherry Flavor ramps up the weirdness, leaning into the psychological and visceral horror of shows like Channel Zero to really hammer home the tone this series is so obviously going for. And it works perfectly.

At the heart of this is a revenge thriller for a luckless filmmaker and seeing Lisa start to embrace her revenge and go after Lou following his deception is a nice angle. At the same time, the show throws in this strange supernatural angle with Boro and the cats, which is both unnerving and pretty gruesome.

The style and atmosphere are the real kickers here though and the ending hints that we’ve got plenty more drama to come in the rest of the season. Roll on the next episode!