Clipped – Season 1 Episode 2 Recap & Review

A Blessing And A Curse

Episode 2 of Clipped begins with V and her friend Deja wait in line for food while going over the legal documents V has been served. Despite V claiming that Donald was just giving her “gifts”, Deja reads the legal language, which claims that the money partly belongs to Shelly. “Community property” to be precise.

Deja believes this is all one big ploy to make her apologize and drop down back into her position. V though starts to drive all the way over to Donald’s… until Deja intervenes. She encourages her to think smart. She has a “blue chip pussy” and needs to use it. She’s 31 and Deja encourages her to lean into her assets and make Donald feel like a million bucks.

V though, decides that what Shelly is doing is stealing, justifying her own actions, given the Sterling family barely pay any tax as it is. According to her, all of this is just  a “rigged game”.

Meanwhile, Doc has strict rules to try and keep the team focused. He’s learned all the quirks the players have and wants to bring in mental stability to keep everything ticking over. However, Donald is not helping matters. He keeps ringing Doc and throwing his sporadic thoughts to mess everything up.

Donald is hard work, but Doc is convinced that he’s “managing” the situation. However, he misses his home in Boston and everyone around him

When he gets off the phone, V shows up and convinces Donald to get Shelly to drop the lawsuit. When Shelly finds out, she begins throwing all their photos in the pool.

However, this actually helps the pair patch up their differences, as Shelly and Donald talk down by the pool and reinforce that they’re in this together and very much in love. For Donald, he seems to see V as a charity case and giving her money “makes him happy”.

V seems to be losing her grip on Donald, and she tries to play the jealousy game. It has the adverse effect though, as she’s iced out and not allowed VIP tickets to the game. Instead, she decides to play the audio recordings she’s gathered to blackmail Donald that way. Specifically, the Magic Johnson audio where Donald berates him. Shelly hears it and knows this is bad news.

Shelly visits Pierce, who is apparently the finest legal mind in the US. He agrees to try and help, but Shelly wants Donald to be excluded from this given his poor judgment for women. The words V uses in the audio (as we see the full conversation played out) is definitely baiting him into admitting he’s racist but Donald does not help himself at all.

V has a lawyer of her own and he believes Shelly’s lawsuit has no merit. However, her sending out these videos has already turned this situation hostile and this could come back to bite her.

In fact, V soon learns that Donald has done his homework and even sent a lawyer over to Deja’s place to ask her questions. She doesn’t talk, but Deja does head over to see V, warning that her phone could be bugged and she needs to be careful.

Donald may also know about her adopted kids and Deja is shocked when he finds out that what she and Donald have is “just a friendship” and not anything sexual. She scoffs, telling her she’s screwed.

Backdropping all this drama, we see the LA Clippers hit the Playoffs and the first game does not go well. Thankfully, Doc manages to rile the team up by throwing aggressive retorts at them during training and thickens their skin. This seems to work as they win the second game.

V decides to give the audio to TMZ, bypassing the legal routes and going straight public. Shelly doesn’t want to go public and decides to drop Pierce as her lawyer too. The content of this is still unknown to the general public, as Doc and the rest of the team believe it’s simply sexual and blow it off. Anyway, the team win the second game… and then the tape is leaked to the press.

As the episode closes out, V receives another gift that night and as a smile crosses her face, this “Wicked Witch of the West” (something she initially called Shelly) puts on her roller-skates and heads off down the street.

The Episode Review

With the scandal now out, it remains to be seen exactly how the Sterlings will respond and how they’ll handle the racism that’s going to be a hot topic for both the team and themselves.

This sports drama has done well to keep things intriguing up until this point, and while the main focus is on the drama off the court, it’s interesting to see how that seeps into how the team perform and how that completely throws off their game-plan.

However, the play-offs are now in full swing and that can only mean bad news now that the TMZ story has leaked. How will the payers react to this? What does this mean for the Playoff hopes? We’ll have to wait and see…