Truth Be Told – Season 3 Episode 7 “The Luxury of Self-Reproach” Recap & Review

The Luxury of Self-Reproach

Episode 7 of Truth Be Told Season 3 starts with Eva on-air with Poppy, telling her story. She brings up how Andrew Finney wanted “more” from her while working together. Calling her Tamara, Eva is encouraged to be his main girl and work as his bottom, luring rich clients in to help his career.

Eva had a lifeline in Vince, who offered her a way out from this way of life. However, Eva refused to take it, admitting she was very much in love with Finney and believed they had a future together.

Meanwhile, Aames’ partner, Detective Sun, is arrested for tampering with evidence and obstructing justice. “Dead man walking,” Aames says as he’s taken out in handcuffs. Aames is convinced that they’ve found their CUBO, prompting Poppy to show up and congratulate him. With Sun gone, it allows Poppy to head off and see Aubrey. Without the pressure of a CUBO breathing down his neck, it would allow Poppy to squeeze him for info about Finney and his connection to the traffickers.

In the middle of this, Poppy learns that Sun has evidence against Shreve that he intends to leak. In the past, he beat Alexander Michael Troy close to death and Sun wants to make this public.

Trini starts her therapy sessions at home, where Markus finds it difficult to learn about how Trini is feeling. Specifically, how she’s most upset about Aubrey rotting away in jail. She’s scared for him.

Well, Aubrey seems to be doing fine. Aames and Poppy show up at prison where Aubrey confirms that Sun was the dirty cop. He was never at the mixer-house, but Aubrey also confirms that he has never seen Andrew Finney either. Except for one time though, when he saw him over at a motel right off Boulevard when he was talking to Sun.

According to Aubrey, the motel staff let him walk around like he was the boss so Finney must have spent a lot of time there. This was a couple of days after Drea’s death, which seems to hint that Trini was supposed to replace Drea.

At the motel, Aames and Poppy begin looking for more evidence, looking through the safe in the drawer. They find a tie and the needle and floss which was taken out of the evidence cage. They deduce that it wasn’t Trey who killed Drea after all. It could well have been Sun.

Markus has been doing some digging around of his own, specifically looking into Finney and his ties with Ochoa. Markus has his call log, where he susses out that a call was made as soon as police raided the place. The phone number looks familiar to Poppy, who checks it and realizes it links to Finney’s private number.

It could well be that they’re on the right path but there’s a problem. The evidence wasn’t collected legally so they can’t bust him on this. However, with Finney at the head of this, alongside Detective Sun and Ochoa, Poppy isn’t sure whether this is the whole ring or if there’s more going on here.

In order to figure this out, Poppy sits down with Shreve and asks him to set up a meeting for her with Lee Hackman. She needs to access private Questeur accounts and that’s the only way to do it. Poppy’s desire to figure out the truth is given an extra burst of motivation when she learns more about Eva’s past, including how one of her girls died.

Finney slipped out and didn’t take responsibility, while the authorities rounded them up like they were the criminals. When they realizes she was udnerage, Eva’s mum bailed her out. One of the officers asked about her connection to the drugs and eventually INS took Eva’s mum and deported her.

Unfortunately, Eva’s mum died within the year and Eva was never able to say goodbye. This was enough to convince Eva that actually, Finney was never going to help her after all, not really. Vince picked her up and she left, setting Eva up with another family, moving forward with her life. However, she still has conflicting feelings toward him.

Poppy brings up Nadia, the girl she encouraged to get into the trafficking business, and goes on the attack, blaming Eva for not helping her. She does backtrack and apologize but Eva takes it on the chin. When she leaves though, Poppy bemoans that she can’t use some of her statement on the podcast, especially the bits about Nadia, as she’s worried that she’ll be “crucified” by the public.

Trini decides to try and help herself, suggesting she’s going to go for a run in the afternoon to get herself back on track. In reality, she tries to pass a message on to Aubrey behind bars.

Markus is also off the rails, struggling to control his temper and causing a path of destruction in his wake. Shreve can sense that and speaks to Markus about his own issues, including how he almost beat Alexander to death but stopped at the last second, despite wanting to do it. Shreve offers to try and get Markus some help, and tells him to keep talking and opening up about how he’s feeling.

As the episode closes out, Poppy meets with Lee Hackman, a man who has previously advocated for standing up for those marginalized voices in the community. It’s enough to convince him to play ball with Aames and Poppy, who look through the private records he has.

Payments, including transactions a day before the mixer, seems to hint toward Finney’s involvement. Only… Finney has been making payments to Ochoa going back months. Hackman eventually leaves and promises to send over an unmarked documents so they can look through this.

Ames shows up at Marv’s apartment with a warrant to search the place. Shockingly, Aames finds Emily Mills upstairs, locked in a cage.

The Episode Review

A couple of big revelations this episode work as bright spots to flesh out more of the past. The fact that Detective Sun was just captured so easily and revealed as the CUBO, shows how simple the storyline has been this year, and anyone would have seen this coming several episodes back.

Furthermore, the Andrew Finney situation appears very simple right now and I can’t help but feel it’s so simple that it might be a red herring. Given all those payments Finney has been making to Ochoa, could it be that Ochoa is the real head honcho here and Finney is giving him payments because he’s being blackmailed about the past?

Poppy is arguably the weakest part of this whole show. She steamrolls her way through different situations and seems to have awful social skills. That’s especially true when it comes to this chapter with Eva. Her outburst was incredibly unprofessional.

With less than a handful of episodes to go and Emily Mills now found, we’ll have to wait and see if there are any more twists and turns to come in the future!