Ripley – Season 1 Episode 7 “VII Macabre Entertainment” Recap & Review

VII Macabre Entertainment

Episode 7 of Ripley begins with Tom in Palermo where the hotel clerk is over-friendly. Tom instantly gets a letter from Ravini that he is keeping an eye on him. Meanwhile, Ravini looks around for Freddie’s haunts. The bank sends a letter for Dickie to his Atrani address and it is returned. In Rome, the dog walker tells Ravini that he saw a drunk Freddie with someone. But he has no other details and it annoys Ravini.

Ravini then heads to Marge’s place in Atrani. The room is full of photos of Dickie and his bad paintings but he doesn’t notice. She refutes all of Tom’s negative descriptions of Freddie and finds it odd that Dickie would say that. She lets it slip that she spoke to Tom in Rome recently and she gives him the fake address Tom gave her. He goes to the fake address and doesn’t find anything on Ripley.

As for Tom, he writes to the Greenleafs that the cops are hounding him so he cannot leave the country. He is in a bad state but Tom is making him feel better. He then pretends to talk to Dickie and Marge on how to deal with their relationship.

At that moment, the Naples bank branch manager calls the Rome police as there has been some fraudulent activity regarding Dickie’s account. A reporter follows Tom in Palermo while he visits Caravaggio’s paintings. He escapes and heads to his hotel. He gets an angry letter from Marge in which she breaks up with Dickie as she finally believes that he and Tom are having an affair. But that’s the only silver lining.

Tom finds in the news that Dickie is a murder suspect and has been spotted in Palermo. He also gets the bank letters – Wendell Trust has told the Naples branch that the latest signature used to withdraw money may have been forged and they need confirmation. They have told the cops and he needs to confirm his identity immediately. Worried, he sneaks out with the help of the hotel clerk as there are cops waiting at the front desk. He then holes up in a small underground hotel.

Meanwhile, Ravini makes Marge come all the way to Rome as he is angry with her for giving him the fake address. He feels like she lied about seeing Tom in Rome and hints that she is a suspect now and cannot leave the country.

Tom loses his nerve on confirming his ID with the bank when he sees that his photo is coming out of Dickie’s passport. He ends up sending a letter typed on Dickie’s typewriter to Wendell Trust that everything is fine. The Palermo cops find him in the end and insist that he return to Rome the next day. The news says that Thomas Ripley is dead and Dickie may be responsible for two deaths now.

Tom writes a letter to the landlady, apologising that he has to give up the Rome apartment. He asks the hotel clerk for Tunis ferries and acts tired. He then sneaks into his Rome apartment and takes his things. At the end of Ripley Episode 7, he is in Venice.

The Episode Review

Ripley Episode 7 is now like the last lap of a race, no one is slowing down and despite being close to the finish line, it feels like it is taking forever. Tom is constantly going round and round in circles but as usual, he keeps getting away. And it does seem that he is getting better at clearing up his mess.

While his constant hotel changing made us wonder what he is up to, in the end, it pays off as we realise that he has just given the biggest red herring ever by telling the clerk he is heading for Tunis. 

Though we kind of feel bad that Ravini is going on this endless goose chase all because his very real witnesses have been fed false information by Tom. If only he had allied with Marge… Do they not have physical descriptions in interrogations? Just say Dickie is short and Marge will point out that that’s not the right guy. And girl, Marge you are a photographer, maybe give the cops a photo of Dickie!?