Clipped – Season 1 Episode 3 Recap & Review

Let The Games Begin

Episode 3 of Clipped begins with Donald’s audio with V doing the rounds online. Doc wants the clips sent to him, and on the way home he overhears exactly how awful this audio is.

Andy Roeser leaves the hotel early and hurries to escape Doc’s wrath, which is probably just as well give the team are justifiably pissed over the audio. Even worse, one of the team members, Chris, is snapped in the hallway with his Clippers gear on coming back from the gym. The entire social spectrum is blowing up, with team members, their families and even celebrities getting in on the action or being harassed. Doc knows they need to make a statement but in order to do so, he believes they need Andy.

Doc decides the entire team should get together and make a joint decision over what to do, while he’s convinced that Donald will apologize and help this whole situation blow over. When Doc finds Andy downstairs, he confronts the guy. He demands an apology live in the next hour. Doc wants the heat off the players and solely on Donald before they decide whether they’re going to play or not.

With an NBA player inbound to V’s, her lawyer implores her to memorize a recorded statement so she can get through the investigation. Reporters are starting to swarm the lawn, while Deja uses Kim Kardashian, of all people, as an example of how to turn a scandal into a positive.

Shelly and V both speak to the investigators separately, with the former claiming that V spiked his drink with drugs. Meanwhile, V simply claims that she has hundreds of tapes and it’s not a one-off situation.

In Donald’s room, Donald’s statement is a cookie-cutter affair that claims that his voice has been altered and denying everything, rather than owning up to what he’s done. All of this, under the Clippers logo. Doc is pissed, and the team talk about what they’re going to do off the back of this.

Most of them want to boycott, livid over the allegations and the idea of being “owned”. Others believe they should keep playing, as not playing would be doing the racists a favour. Doc chimes in and thinks they should succeed and become champions, playing for themselves – not for Donald. They all eventually agree to play but DJ is not happy and wants to do some form of protest.

That night, Andy and Donald head out for a couple’s dinner with Shelly and Anne. However, Shelly is not happy and eventually Donald snaps, telling her to “shut the fuck up”. Shelly laughs incredulously and eventually heads back to her hotel room with her friend Julie, who shows up to lend some support and is very much on the side of “Donald’s a scumbag”.

Julie broaches the idea of leaving Donald but Shelly hasn’t even considered it. Julie though believes it may be in her best interest. At the same time, V turns the whole thing into a big public fiasco and tries to leverage her fame by rolling out on skates, getting custom hats made and getting her pics snapped by the paparazzi.

Deja wants V to go out and talk about Donald. However, she refuses to do so, claiming nonchalantly that she didn’t put the tape out. And besides, according to her Deja is just jealous of the fame she’s getting. Deja is not happy, believing she’s a hypocrite and eventually leaving things on a tenuous knife-edge.

That night, the team show up to play. Their message of solidarity is already on tenterhooks as we reach Game 4, bur even worse, we have Donald en-route to the game. Doc threatens him and demands he turn back to the hotel, and thankfully he does just that. The team, in protest, decide to wear their shirts inside out. Even with all of this though, the team lose. Badly. Shelly tries to speak to the team after the game but it only makes things worse.

V decides to do another publicity stunt, this time taking a turtle outside the house and having her pics snapped. She claims that she’s the “next US President” when someone asks for her autograph. All of this is a ploy to try and leverage her social profile. That night though, she checks out more of Donald’s audio, this time with him questioning her skin and how she “doesn’t even look Black”

The Episode Review

The fallout from the tape is upon us and it’s very much all hands on deck for our characters. Donald gets less screentime this episode, which makes sense, while V starts to slip down that path toward fame, forgetting her friends along the way while simultaneously becoming obsessed with likes and follows.

The really interesting drama though, and the meat of this episode, stems from the team’s reaction to what’s happening and the drama with all the players and Doc. Doc in particular is stuck in a precarious position, caught playing middle-man as Donald walks around completely oblivious to the shitstorm that he’s caused.

The show is helped by good acting, and the drama eventually crescendos at the end, leaving things wide open for next week’s chapter.