'Black Monday' Season 2 Episode 5 features hilarious digs at white-collar criminals, Trump, scientology and KKK
One of the best things about the writing of Showtime’s Wall Street comedy ‘Black Monday’ is how they place tiny witty jokes within the chaotic plot and just let them be. Episode 5 of season 2, ‘Violent Crooks and Cooks of Books’, written by Bridger Winegar saw way too many of them.
Like when talking about changing the public perception of Amerisavings Bank that recently saw a violent massacre in a Miami branch, Dawn (Regina Hall) comes up with a name for the plan: “Make Amerisavings Great Again”. When discussing why gun violence was at the root of the massacre, their solution was to have more guns so that this could be avoided. Every joke is a scathing critique of the present, even though the show is based in the late-’80s. It’s kind of what makes the show an engaging watch.
The episode sees Dawn and Blair (Andrew Rannells) discuss how they would raise 20 million dollars, now that the Lehmans activated their “pants on fire” clause in the event of Mo’s (Don Cheadle) dramatic and utterly unexpected return to Wall Street. Instead of taking Blair’s suggestion that was basically a Ponzi scheme, Dawn suggested they take money from Pastor Newell (Michael Hitchcock), the famously anti-gay Christian televangelist, whose son-in-law Congressman Roger Harris (Tuc Watkins) was heavily involved in a homosexual extramarital affair with none other than Blair.
Here again, the show’s writing is brilliant. Dawn explains that the televangelist’s network “Honor God Television” was technically a church. “It started as a TV network but was officially granted church status. The same way scientology started as a cruise line and the Mormons started as a name tag company,” she explains. The scientology dig was perhaps aimed at Sea Org, a scientology organization, which the Church of Scientology describes as a "fraternal religious order, comprising the church's most dedicated members". The organization has been described as a paramilitary organization and a private naval force.
The show also makes it a point to showcase (some would call it exaggerated, but that's debatable) how white-collar criminals are treated in the U.S. criminal justice system. Keith (Paul Scheer) who is now in jail is taken to a section for financial criminals. It looks like a country club. He gets a free gift basket. There’s a live acapella group that sings: “The prison system’s overstuffed thanks to the war on drugs, Reagan’s stand on contraband has swept up all the thugs, but violent crooks and cooks of books should never share a cell, so we designed some new confines that aren’t a living hell.”
There is also a not-so-subtle dig on the prison-industrial complex -- the white-collar private prison was owned by the Lehmans. The whole episode is basically a running commentary on race relations in the U.S. There is a call back to the previous episode where Governor Putnam (Patrick Fabian) once again mistakes Dawn for actor Regina King. The Pastor names Blair as his “Grand Wizard”-- the title given to the head of the Reconstruction era Ku Klux Klan. And there is even an early origin story to the unholy crossover between the Incel movement and the alt-Right. There can never be enough praise for the show’s writing.
‘Black Monday’ airs Sundays on Showtime at 10 pm ET.