The Gulf Episode 4: Jess Savage battles morphine addiction as she solves a case that hits too close to home
'The Gulf' episode 4 is a high point in what has been, till now, an uneven show. It recaptures some of the beautiful, eerie cinematography of episode 1. It also leans into the blending of the personal and professional lives, absent in Episode 2 and 3 when the show felt like any run-of-the-mill police procedural.
In this week's episode, we see the resolution of the "missing Chelsea Lee" case. There are also plenty of dives into the personal lives of the two main investigating pair -- Jess Savage (Kate Elliot) and Justin Harding (Ido Trent).
Jess has a heated conversation with her daughter, Ruby, and boyfriend, AJ, about the party where Chelsea disappeared and also her daughter's desire to keep the baby. Jess rightly points out that Ruby, at 18, doesn't know just how difficult it is to bring up a baby. Ruby storms off and stays incommunicado for the rest of the episode until the last scene.
When Chelsea Lee's body is found in the ocean, Jess wonders if her daughter has gone missing too. She makes increasingly panicked calls to her daughter's phone that go straight to voice mail, providing the episode's tense moments. We also get a little look-see into the strained relationship Jess shares with her own mother that thaws just a little as they worry about Ruby in the context of the case.
Justin Harding, who has been a closed book till now, also has to confront his childhood as a foster kid with a mother in jail. The old lady with a criminal background, one of the suspects, calls him out on his prejudice against her because he is a "prison brat". The next scene shows Justin out in the open, crouching and screaming his lungs out - possibly the most vulnerable he has been since the show started.
The killer, Ronan, one of Craig's idle rich friends, is identified as the one who took off with Chelsea Lee and her unidentified friend (whose dead body turned up at the end of last week's episode) on his yacht. The tip is given by the old lady who asks her criminal background to be kept on the down-low in return for her help. As the police swarm on to his yacht, the girl he is with turns out to be the old lady's lodger rather than Ruby, as Jess had feared.
When Jess comes back home, she finds a sobbing Ruby, who is also scared about being too much of a "f**k up" to take care of the baby. Just when Jess agrees to help bring the baby up and Ruby brings up AJ needing help too, Jess gets a phone call. Despite Jess's assurance, there is the question of whether her job will allow her to "help" Ruby.
So far, she hasn't managed to find enough time for Ruby except for quick sweep in-sweep out interventions. But what is even more worrying is that she stops the police from going ahead and searching Ronan's boat because she had stolen the morphine pills from the yacht earlier. Thankfully, Ronan confesses and the police can close the case.
Jess, addicted to drugs, is too damaged to help her daughter. She is in denial about it, even avoiding her doctor so that she won't have to confront this fact. The mystery of her car crash still remains unsolved but we can expect some resolution in the last two episodes of the series.
'The Gulf' airs on Wednesdays at 3 a.m. EST on Sundance Now.