Kaleidoscope – “Violet” Recap & Review

Violet

Kaleidoscope’s Violet episode starts 24 years before the heist, way before the events of the rest of the series. Leo breaks into a house and begins cracking the safe while Roger works to distract the guests downstairs. After cracking the lock, they take as much money and jewellery as possible.

Leo is forced to wait it out inside the safe until the coast is clear. It’s touch and go for a while but they do manage to get out in one piece, thankfully!

After, the pair split their $70k winnings and discuss how close they came to this being game over for them. Leo has a whole family back home, including daughter Hannah and his partner, Lily. While taking Hannah out to the diner, Leo is encouraged by Roger to come to Vegas as they have another job on the table.

Even this far back Leo and Ava have history, with Leo ferrying his stolen wares to her to exchange for cash. She tries to encourage him to play ball, promising the biggest haul ever if they team up.

Leo is unsure what to do, given his family situation, and eventually suggests to Roger that they take a break and slow down. When Roger refuses to indulge his request, Leo instead plays the race card. Eventually that works out and Leo taps out the operation.

8 months pass and Leo is living a simple life, working as a key cutter. Roger shows up and suggests he make copies of keys to make for easy pickings. Although he claims it’s a joke, the amount of debt Roger is in is certainly no laughing matter. He’s around 300k down and needs Leo’s help.

When a meeting goes awry between Lily and a businessman named Kyle, thanks in part to Hannah running around and breaking the rules, Leo hits out when Kyle throws out a slur about the ghetto. As a result, Leo decides to go all-in on his latest plan with Roger, deciding to make counterfeit jewellery for an auction.

Part of the plan here comes from breaking in and switching out the real jewellery (which they can sell to Ava’s buyers) for fakes. It’s touch and go for a while but they do manage to take out the guard in the area who spots Leo hiding behind a table. Roger decides to stage a fire in order for them to escape in the chaos, intending to hide the evidence and get away in the panic.

It turns out Leo’s wife Lily is actually inside the building all this time, having decided to work for her boss. Disaster strikes and Leo is forced to watch his wife pass away. Roger however, decides to leave his friend in hot water.

Naturally, Leo is spotted by police who show up and prepare to arrest him at the hospital. As for Hannah, Leo gives her some words of advice and tells her to be strong, hugging her tightly before leaving this poor girl with no parents and kept under the care of Ava, who shows up at the hospital.

The Episode Review

This episode essentially serves as one big flashback, as we learn more about Leo’s history and what led to him being arrested. It was clear that Roger and Leo had history but here it’s fleshed out in a lot more detail, especially learning that the pair were close friends. It certainly works to explain why there’s such a bitter rivalry between them now.

Beyond that, there’s not a whole lot of history for our ensemble characters which is a shame as it would have been good to see what led all these heist members to where they are – especially Stan, Judy and Bob. Despite that, this is probably the strongest episode of the bunch so far, and it’ll be interesting to see what happens next.