The Madness – Season 1 Episode 5 “Icarus” Recap & Review

Icarus

Lucie’s Journey

Episode 5 of The Madness begins with Lucie showing up at Stu’s mansion to talk. Apparently Mark was getting increasingly paranoid in the last few months, given the frequency of messages between the pair. Stu needs to rid himself of any evidence linking him with Mark, believing the same people will be after him next. He claims not to be involved with Mark’s death, but Lucie brings up another name here – Linda Pfaelzner. She’s part of the FBI and came sniffing around, but Lucie didn’t tell her anything… apparently.

For now, Stu hands over 5000 as part of the estate being sold, but he also needs her to do him a favour too. Lucie heads to the furniture store, where she finds Mark’s things are missing from the safe. Furthermore, it would appear that within his Will, he’s made someone called Bobby Woods part-owner. He’s the one who currently has Marks belongings and very much embroiled within the Forge gang.

Given the Forge are the ringleaders here, she needs a way in to get the hard-drive that holds all of Mark’s work and family files. The group are understandably wary of her when she shows (after the outburst at the furniture store among other things) but Levi agrees to hear her out.

Lucie brings up how Muncie is the fall-guy and there’s no way Mark would have let his guard down around someone like that. Interestingly, Lucie’s little speech rallies them to her cause and she’s even encouraged to put her name forward to become the next leader. For now though, she does manage to obtain the disk drive.

Back home, she looks through the data and finds a bunch of other folders including weekly reports for work and a whole folder on Revitalize. Oh, and within that? Only a whole bunch of audio recordings that don’t paint Stu or Mark in a favourable light. There’s also another bombshell reveal here too. Remember the agent called Linda? Well, she’s actually a woman called Julia and she works for Revitalize as a security consultant.

Muncie’s Journey

At the police station Muncie… is allowed to go? He leaves out the back and it turns out all of this was Franco’s doing. Muncie is still under arrest but he’s also now going to be working with the feds to try and clear up this mess he’s stumbled into. The cover story is that he’s out on bail and in Franco’s jurisdiction. Given Stu has been ringing Muncie, they’re going to use him to hook their “white whale” and with him unframing Muncie, he’d be off the hook.

Turns out Stu was making payments to Mark for 18 months prior to his murder. Every week for something, which Franco believes is influence. Given what transpires in Lucie’s part of this story, we know that’s not necessarily true. Franco’s story is that when the payments stopped and Brother14 called politicians “undercover globalists”, he was killed as a result. Stu is also in charge of Revitalize, so if this was affecting his bottom line, then Stu had him taken out.

Muncie agrees to wearing a wire (although he doesn’t have much of a choice to be honest) and he waits for Stu at the alleyway as agreed. Unfortunately, Stu is quick to realize he’s working with the feds and the meet is off. Unless he follows Stu’s instructions that is. With eyes on him, Muncie takes his chance. He ditches the wire and his phone, before being taken to Stu.

Stu is joined by Jayne, and in exchange for revealing what he knows, they promise to represent him with top lawyers and good PR work. Muncie is convinced that he’s been framed by Stu but Stu has no idea who Don Sloss is, which means that someone from within Revitalize may be working against him, given Don was paid from the same account that Mark was.

Stu doesn’t seem to be the ringleader here but he does agree to entertain Muncie’s story all the same. That is, until Don himself shows and shoots up the place, killing both Stu and Stu’s security detail. Turns out Julia is the real boss here and after erasing details on the computer, she kills Don (who Muncie holds up as a hostage) and almost kills Muncie too, until he hightails it and jumps off the balcony out back into the water below.

The Episode Review

This episode splits the focus between Lucie and Muncie as they both go about trying to find information on their respective causes. While the episode flip flops between the two, they both come to the same conclusion – Julia is the real puppet master behind everything here.

However, Lucie somehow being in the running to be the next leader of the Forge seems to be a bit of a reach given their distrusting ways, but it at least gets her foot in the door to get the information that she needs.

As for Muncie, he’s let go by the FBI and thankfully Stu doesn’t fall for the BS. It’s now clear that he’s just the red herring as the real brains behind this has revealed herself. Quite how and why she’s working against Muncie and taking him down is still unclear, but we do know that there’s a much bigger conspiracy at the heart of this.

The show has been a decent watch so far and although these past few episodes have been a bit slow, it’s still been a really intriguing watch all the same. With Muncie seemingly out of options, everything is left on a precarious knife edge.