Cruel Intentions – Season 1 Episode 5 “Epsilon” Recap & Review

Epsilon

Episode 5 of Cruel Intentions begins three weeks later. Caroline is not happy as it turns out we’re about to hit dreaded Parent’s Day. Annie is shacked up with Scott and the pair are kissing, but the latter is pretty dorky. The parents may well be meeting one another, and Scott is pretty awkward around Annie as he encourages her to come to the hotel that night. Annie, surprisingly, agrees.

Out in the corridor, Lucien is dressed in a towel and quizzes Annie about where she’s been. She’s still giving him the cold shoulder, while Cece has been vomiting a lot lately. She’s worried that she may be pregnant, despite not having sex with Blandsman, and it would appear that her bulimia may be back.

Lucien and Caroline continue to go back and forth here, as he promises that Scott isn’t going to get in his way of winning over Annie. Caroline tries to call him off (as does Blaise later in the episode) but Lucien is determined to see this through to the end.

Blaise continues to work with Scott, getting him to sign off on a pig for the upcoming Parent’s Night. However, the extra high cost is actually to cover for him embezzling funds and paying his tuition.

At the same time, Annie comes to Caroline for advice around how to handle Scott. All of this is turned upside down when Claudia shows up at the dorm. There’s iciness around Annie rejecting Caroline’s dinner, and it’s enough for her to completely shun her daughter and regret heading down to the dorm. Naturally, she’s only here for herself and her business, not for Caroline or Lucien.

Annie heads out shopping, where Caroline manipulates and guilt-trips her into showing at the dinner that night, which she does in the end. There are hostilities between Claudia and Annie’s mum though, which rattles Caroline as she ends up doing cocaine in the toilets to calm herself down. In the bathroom, Caroline brings up the truth about Claudia’s plot and apologizes for “using their friendship” in this way.

All of this is manipulation on Caroline’s part, and it works as Annie decides to invite the pair along to the upcoming Christmas Tree lighting ceremony. Caroline wants her mum’s approval but right now, it doesn’t seem to be working.

Lucien shows up at the dinner and immediately puts himself about, making a big, charismatic show of it. Caroline is not happy but Claudia scathingly retorts to her daughter that she just needs to “sit and look pretty” while lavishing praise on Lucien.

Lucien’s game though takes a sinister turn when he speaks to Blaise in private. Given his dad has a history of finance, he’s checked the books and noticed that he’s embezzling funds. 3 grand for a big pig? Yeah, that’s not going to fly.

At the dinner table, Lucien and Claudia continue to get her Caroline’s skin as they flirt with each other, until Caroline snaps and lashes out at the pair. She’s angry at doing everything for her mum and not getting any praise, and eventually walks away.

Meanwhile, we have this ongoing “comedic” and I use comedy lightly, story surrounding Cece’s vomiting and  potential bulimia. She’s been having heart palpitations and struggling, and it’s Professor Chadwick who shows and helps her out. He brings her into the hospital and stays by her side but she eventually ends up fainting.

Annie and Scott get together in bed but before they can properly have sex, Scott leaves in the middle of the night. He heads back to the dorm, while Lucien speaks to Cece on the stairs. He realizes that she and the Professor have potential feelings for one another, and decides to try and use that to his liking. The sickness she’s been feeling? He theorizes that it could actually be love.

Lucien finds Annie outside the Sorority and agrees to walk her home in silence. As she does, Caroline ends up masturbating while watching videos of Lucien and the various women he sleeps with.

The Episode Review

Remember in the original how monumental that moment of Sebastian and Anette having sex and the way they loved one another, including how sensitive everything was between them because it was Annie’s first time? That’s been completely destroyed in this adaptation by including this weird angle involving Scott. He has absolutely no charisma about him, and there’s no chemistry between him and Annie either, which doesn’t help.

It also renders any potential love between Lucien and Annie nowhere near as monumental as it should be, and that’s before even mentioning the weird kiss between Caroline and Annie that seems to have been there just to show that these two are now besties.

As for the show itself, not only does it bastardize the source material, we also get a butchered rendition of Placebo’s Every You Every Me as well, just to rub salt in the wound I guess!

The subplots here are also really disappointing, and the array of extra characters here don’t have anywhere near enough depth to carry this one. It also feels like they had no idea what to do with Cecille, who’s just kinda here.