‘Big Sky’ Season 2 Episode 17 Recap: Daddy Issues

In this episode of Big Sky, things take a turn for the dramatic. Verr Bhullar proves he’s maybe the worst dad, while Scarlet continues to prove she’s definitely the worst mom. And Travis? Well, he’s certainly not winning any boyfriend contests.

Last week, the big shooting was Sheriff Tubb, who is not recovering in the hospital. Jenny enters Sheriff Tubb’s hospital room, only to find a nurse tending to him, and that nurse happens to be the same man who murdered Wolf Legarski in an ambulance after Wolf declared that he didn’t know where Scarlet and Phoebe were hiding. We still don’t know just who this fraudulent, homicidal essential worker is but we’re pretty sure he works for the sex trafficking syndicate that Ronald and Rick used to work for. The guy disappears before Jenny can pursue him but she’s immediately suspicious of him.

Poor Jag Bhullar, who will be (spoiler alert] the victim of this week’s big shooting.

Everyone (including Jag’s father) knows that Ren is the brains of the family’s Montana drug operation, but Verr Bhullar is traditional, the doesn’t want to give the family business to his daughter, he has always planned to pass it to his son. Knowing that, when Jag and Ren discuss their father’s recent volatility and Ren suggests they need to oust their dad (see: Verr ordering a scientist to cut their drug supply with rat poison), Jag knows that he has to be the one to tell his father that he’s being overthrown. And so, when he picks his father up from the airport, he lays it out there, and his father basically scoffs in his face, telling Jag that the ousting was probably all Ren’s idea and Jag is just doing her bidding.

When Jag and Verr enter their home, they’re met by Richard Ford, who’s on a mission to find Verr and hold him accountable for the overdose death of his son, Mason. “Are you the man in charge?” he asks Verr, and then he tells Verr and Jag that they’re all going for a ride. Right about at this very moment, Jenny and Cassie are at the Dewell & Hoyt offices speculating Richard’s next moves, when they realize the only logical place he might be is at the Bhullars. They head there, only to find the place ransacked with no sign of Jag or Verr, but Travis and Ren are there, tied up. Jenny and Cassie leave the captives there and head off in search of Richard, Verr and Jag.

Ren tells Travis, who she is tied to, that she knows he’s a cop. There’s no way he can avoid having this conversation on account of, you know, being tied to her. And she knows he’s looking into the death of Kate Garza, his informant that was on the inside of Verr’s business. He asks Ren, if she knows all of this about him, thenwhy is he still alive? “That is the question, isn’t it?” she responds. I feel like Ren, for the first time all season, is softening? Maybe she’s, like, 2% less homicidal than in previous episodes?

Richard has led Jag and Verr at gunpoint to the riverbank where his son died. Verr, offering some of his most harsh cruelty, tells Richard that Mason died not because of the drugs the Bhullars sold, but because Mason was weak, and Verr knows something about weak sons, he has one.

The whole time this is happening, I’m thinking, “Remember how Alicia had a dream that Jag would kill Verr?” I kept expecting Jag to wrestle Richard’s gun away and shoot his father, who is becoming more monstrous by the second. As Richard points a gun at Verr and Jag, who are kneeling before him, Veer gets up and walks away, telling Richard to just kill Jag. Jag screams out, and a moment later we see that Richard has indeed shot Jag.

When Jenny and Cassie show up, Verr is gone, Jag’s just lying there bleeding, and Richard is threatening to kill himself. They talk Richard down, and then, in the grand, Big Sky tradition of people not being dead when you assume they are, it turns out Jag is not dead, he still has a pulse. They rush him to the hospital where Jenny runs into Ren who is there to check on her brother, and Ren reveals to Jenny that she knows Travis is a cop, and she knows Jenny and Travis have a thing going. Jenny knows that she’s being threatened with this information, so she glowers back at Ren, “I sure hope nothing bad happens to your father.”

Turns out, maybe Ren wants something bad to happen to her father, because when she returns home after her hospital visit, she asks him how Jag got shot, and he deflects, saying this all happened because Ren and Jag were plotting to take his business from under him. “Do you really think you can do better than me?” he spits at Ren. “I know I can,” she tells him, walking out. There’s a war a-brewin’ inside the luxury AirBnB!

Over at… I don’t know, somewhere near the Canadian border?… our old friend Scarlet is at a diner with Phoebe grabbing some food to go, when who should they literally run into but our favorite disorderly orderly, the EMT who likes to TCB, the nurse with the curse, the… you know, the guy from the first scene, the nurse guy, the one who killed Wolf Legarski. That’s who I mean. Scarlet immediately realizes that he’s looking for her, and she and Phoebe take off for the hills.

This mystery man knows that Phoebe has information about the sex-trafficking syndicate that he’s in, and he just wants her to hand that over. Phoebe calls Cassie, who must seem like the only person she can trust at this point, which is ironic given their past, and says that she will give Cassie that information if Cassie can promise a better life for her and Phoebe. Cassie tells her there’s no deal, that Scarlet should hand Phoebe over to at least ensure that the child is safe. Scarlet isn’t a fan of that idea and threatens to kill Cassie. Cassie, fresh off her first session of grief counseling, has an energy she hasn’t shown in a while and is like, bring it on, babe. “You are the furthest thing from a victim,” Cassie tells Scarlet.

“You killed the love of my life,” Scarlet says.
“And I’d do it again,” Cassie tells her. COLD! But also, the love of her life also killed Cassie’s father so… that’s fair.

Once Ren made Travis, he disappeared and Jenny’s been looking for him. Everyone, including Travis’s own handler, thinks he’s a lost cause who has gone over to the dark side, but when Jenny comes home from sheriffing that night, there he is, in her living room. “I’m here to say goodbye,” he tells Jenny, saying that the only thing he was ever in Helena to do was get justice for Kate Garza. Falling for Jenny, well, that was unexpected and, sadly for Jenny, not a priority. “Deep down, you always knew you were gonna have to let me go,” he tells her as he leaves her house.

Verr doesn’t save his cruelty for just his kids, he also aims it at Alicia too. When Alicia suggests he give the business over to his kids, he shuts her out, telling her he’s not asking for her opinion. She tells him that no matter what he chooses to do, she doesn’t plan to stick around to see it. Is this goodbye for Alicia? She was so mysterious! Have we figured out all of her mysteries? No. We have not. But she seems like she’s done with the Bhullars and she hightails it out of there.

Verr and Ren prepare to go see Jag at the hospital, and Verr takes that moment to apologize to Ren for being so hard on her. He realizes, finally, that he needs to let her take over the business, telling her that he’s been so hard on her because she’s so very like him. Ren sees through his flattery, saying “Let’s go see your son.”

Is Alicia’s dream about Jag killing Verr ever going to come true?! There’s only one episode left, guess we won’t have to wait long to find out!