An Embarrassment of Riches: Season Finale of "The Riches"

While the expression "an embarrassment of riches" might refer to having more of something good or pleasant than you need, that was just the opposite this year with the severely truncated season of The Riches, which wrapped its second season last night on FX.

Originally ordered for thirteen episodes this season, The Riches found itself downscaled to just seven when production was shut down during the writers strike. Personally, I am a huge fan of this series and hope that the shortened season doesn't bode against renewing this compelling, subtle drama for a third season. (Not helping matters is that creator Dmitry Lipkin has sold a pilot script for Hung to HBO.) Especially since last night's unintentional season finale ("The Lying King") left nearly every characters' plotlines hopelessly dangling in the wind.

While some viewers have found this season to be creatively uneven, I've been really intrigued by the second season of The Riches, which placed the characters in far more dire straits than in the freshman season and put them in morally compromising, soul-killing situations that pushed them to their breaking points.

It's never been in question that the name of their little adopted community, Eden Falls, was anything other than intentional. Here, it signifies the ultimate purgatory as each of the characters--from Wayne and Dahlia to poor Nina--are forced to relive their sins in a neverending and perpetual cycle of self-destruction. Try as they might to become buffers, to give themselves new names and iPhones, they can't escape their pasts. Wayne claims that everyone creates their own luck but they same holds true with bad luck and the Molloys seem to have found themselves surrounded by a big old mess of bad karma.

I was really on the edge of my seat as Dahlia contemplated returning to drug abuse and obliterating herself; when she wrapped that belt around her arm, I worried that she was totally and completely relapse. After all, she's been stripped of her armor completely now: her parole officer turned his back on her (more on that in a bit), Wayne was revealed as a liar and accomplice to murder, Cael ran away, and Nina abandoned her. Dahlia is a consummate liar but she's finally realized that she's been lying to herself... even if her confession to Nina resulted in a complete lack of belief on her friend's part.

I literally gasped when Nina asked her about what happened to Pete. I get that Dahlia wouldn't want to involve Nina in the entire Pete murder/cover-up but she did to Nina just what she's angry at Wayne for doing to her. For proving once again that the best thing a Traveler is good at is lying. Still, I couldn't believe that her married parole officer kissed her after he discovered Dahlia skulking outside his house... with his wife and kid just a few feet away. I could tell from the way he looked at her and fingered his wedding ring that he was attracted to Dahlia but I had no idea that he would actually act on this and cross that boundary. For Dahlia's part, at least she put a stop to it. In a lot of ways, this was Minnie Driver's episode and I was completely transfixed by her vulnerability and raw emotion as she portrayed Dahlia as a woman beset by demons, both internal and external.

As for Wayne, he's finding himself playing both sides against each other. He's made a deal with the devil by turning to Minkov to defend the Bayou Hills construction site from Quinn's men. He's obviously conflicted about this decision--with it comes the promise that he'll throw Hugh under the bus--but it seemed the most expedient way to ensure that he can collect his $13 million from the land deal. Likely he thinks the Molloys can just disappear into the night after that, but Minkov is far too cunning to let that happen. Wayne is playing with fire; he has Dale, Quinn, Minkov, and Hugh looking over his shoulder and none of them are going to let him off the hook for what's liable to happen next.

I loved the scene between Wayne and Nina in the kitchen as Nina lights up (much to Dr. Morgenstern's delight) and asks him, as he tries calling Dahlia for the nth time, if he's looking for Dahlia Molloy or Sherien Rich. Have they started living the lie? To me, this episode included some of the very best Nina-driven scenes of the series and actress Margo Martindale deserves an Emmy for her performance. Her distraught tantrum at Jim's funeral, her disbelief at Dahlia stringing her yet another lie, her confrontation with Wayne at the house; these all add up to a nuanced performance of a woman fed up with being lied to her whole life.

I was intrigued about where the writers were going with Sam and his new friend from school; she clearly accepts him for who he is and is going to great lengths to get him to express his true identity as a cross-dresser. I loved the scene in his bedroom where she dresses him up in girl's clothing and tells him how beautiful he looks. I am not sure where this will go but it was a fantastic coda to Sam's entire relationship with his conflicted nature.

Cael has begun to fit in among the Travelers again, helped along by his newfound relationship with Rosaleen. I loved the scene in which Quinn asked him to come with him to break up that fight and then stood beside Cael and offered a toast to the reunion of the clan, to a Quinn standing next to a Molloy... and then later called Wayne to say that they'd now be business partners and, if Wayne didn't like it, well, Quinn has his son.

As for Didi, it's only fitting that she'd suddenly be interested in how the other half was living, in skulking around the huge buffer mansions that pepper Eden Falls with her new security guard friend Ike (Joan of Arcadia's Michael Welch). Her affair with Ike and her breaking and entering routine are a surefire act of rebellion against everything Wayne has come to stand for. Of all of the Molloys, she did seem the most at home as a buffer, attending school and wanting more from life than just con and con. Lying in the palatial, imperial bed of her latest B&E victim's house, she can pretend for just a few minutes that this is her life and not the screwed up mess it's become now that she's seen her father for what he really is: the king of liars.

I really hope that FX does decide to renew The Riches for a third season. I for one am not done with the Molloys and hope that fans of the series have the opportunity to see these storylines pay off in a meaningful fashion rather than just have the series end on a slew of mini-cliffhangers that never get resolved. Fingers crossed that the cabler sees it the same way and rewards the cast and crew of The Riches with a reprieve.