Briarpatch – Season 1 Episode 6 Recap & Review

The Assault

As we cross the halfway point of the show, Briarpatch steps it up a notch this week for an action-packed episode with more answers revealed and plenty more layers to the game unveiled. Quite how all the pieces slot together in this whodunit remains to be seen but for now, Briarpatch is developing nicely and it’ll be interesting to see what happens in the weeks ahead.

Episode 6 of Briarpatch begins with Clyde Brattle showing up at a burger joint and confronting a group of youths over a prank they pull on him. He sits down and tells them about their joke investment and mentions how they can do better, slamming a gun down on the table infront of them. He tells the kids he’s the “accelerant” and proceeds to leave.

As the blackout ensues, Allegra confronts Lalo over his operation and she learns that Felicity knew about this human trafficking scheme. Allegra soon realizes Jake is part of this too and requests she be brought to him. As Allegra questions what will happen if they’re attacked, outside Jake’s complex armed guards surround the building.

It turns out someone planned the blackout from the very beginning and as Gene scrambles outside with the troops to figure out what’s happening, Allegra makes her way to Jake’s house. When she gets there, she finds Jake giving a rousing speech to the men infront of him, imploring them to hold their ground despite not being trained guards.

As Allegra bursts in and punches Jake square in the jaw, Jake eventually gets up and manhandles her, throwing our protagonist in an underground room where Jake’s attorney Daphne happens to be sitting. Allegra asks about Felicity and she tells her the only Dill Jake mentions is her.

While Jake holds his own inside as gunfire reigns outside, Allegra realizes with astonishment that Jake is actually broke and not the multi-millionaire he claims to be. Jake meanwhile squares up to one of the men who break into his house and they decide to go mano a mano and fight.

At the same time, Allegra learns from Daphne that the only reason Jake’s engaged in the human trafficking scheme is for money to keep up this facade of living the high life. Daphne helps Allegra out the room and hands her a gun, but not before asking her to tell Jake she’s quitting her job. Outside in the hallway, she witnesses him choking out a guard but as Jake stands up, the antagonist raises his gun to fire, prompting Jake to throw himself in the way, shielding Allegra to avoid her being hit. In the aftermath of this, he charges back at the man again and punches him constantly in the face.

During the aftermath of the assault, Allegra sits with Jake and learns more about the operation. Allegra however, tells him that Brattle knows what he’s doing, especially after dropping her off at the warehouse. It turns out the house fight isn’t actually the real target – the warehouse is. As Lalo tries to fix the generator, it explodes and fire rages throughout. Allegra hurries out Jake’s house, now knowing what Brattle is up to, while Gene makes his way to Jake’s and examines the aftermath of the shootout.

It turns out Eve got there first and she berates him for what happened. He soon leaves with his tail tucked between his legs, leaving Eve and Jake to discuss their chain of command, with the latter berating her for not bringing reinforcements sooner.

Allegra meanwhile hurries up to the warehouse and starts helping the refugees escape in the face of the fire. Down on his luck, Lalo berates his own morals, especially given he failed to protect the people, and parts ways with Allegra. As he does, Brattle gets to Lalo first and shoots, killing him in cold blood.

In the aftermath of this, and as the power goes back on, Eve announces her candidacy for Mayor after throwing Tony under the bus for his lack of leadership during this event. As Allegra questions what this mean, A.D. tells her that she was one of the ringleaders for the articles about Felicity back when she was alive.

As the episode closes out, Gene Wilder visits Brattle on the outskirts of town and tells him he can make amends for this.

With a slightly shorter episode run this time around, Briarpatch more than makes up for that by squeezing as much story and action as possible into its 40 minutes. Whether it be the assault on Jake’s house through to Brattle oozing charisma in every scene he finds himself in, Briarpatch is really starting to come into its own now after laying the foundations for its whodunit plot.

There’s plenty of fingers being pointed all over the place right now but it seems likely that Eve and Gene both have their own game plans here and it’ll be interesting to see what Gene and Brattle’s end game really is as well. For now though, Briarpatch does a wonderful job keeping things ticking along and quite what the rest of the season has in store for us, remains to be seen.