Now that the book is closed on Welcome to Chippendales, it’s time to admit that the end of the miniseries fell very, very flat.
Welcome to Chippendales Season 1 Episode 8 was a very somber ending for a series that started strong but struggled once it got to the grittier pieces of the story.
During the hour, the series shrank down things to just Steve and Ray, and it was a bit disjointed and not all that interesting in the long run, which is a shame because, overall, the series was solid. But they failed to stick the landing.
It felt like there was a lot to wrap up heading into this finale, but the series chose to condense things down in a way that I’m not sure made a lot of sense.
If you research and look into the events leading up to Steve’s arrest, it’s a very wild and crazy tale. It involves more than just Nick’s murder, and it’s almost so unbelievable that they could have dedicated two hours to parsing through it all.
But what they choose to do instead is focus on the relationship between Steve and Ray, Steve’s paranoia, and then one last push to remind us why Steve felt it was necessary to do everything he did.
The thing with the Steve and Ray relationship is that it was never fully developed enough on-screen. It was never clear why Ray was so indebted to Steve and why he was willing to throw his life away potentially to make him happy. There never seemed to be any benefits for Ray, which made it hard to understand this part of the story.
Ray just did whatever Steve asked of him with very little pushback. He was always ready to get down on his knees and pledge his loyalty, but why? We never got the answer to the why, and it would have helped tremendously to know more about Ray, considering how much he factored into the end of the story.
What’s most interesting here is the time jump and the fact that five years have passed since Nick’s death and the FBI are no closer to capturing Steve until something falls into their lap.
Probably the craziest thing in the end about Steve was his inability to just stop.
Just stop and take stock of his life and all his success. He was winning well before Nick’s death and even afterward, but he was so scared of losing it all that he took these drastic measures to ensure Chippendales success.
Have you ever heard of Adonis? I haven’t outside of the context of this story because it was a flash-in-the-pan male revue that was making a little noise overseas but scared Steve so badly that he wanted their dancers dead. Think about just how insane that is and how cavalier Steve was with other people’s lives.
Instead of embracing the competition and pushing Chippendales to new heights, he sought to take everyone out. Talk about a complete lack of faith in yourself and your product.
Ray: But don’t you ever get lonely?
Steve: Lonely?
Ray: Back then, it was all of us. Now…
Steve: Hm, that’s what makes it even more impressive. The fact that I’m doing it all by myself.
But it always comes back to Steve’s extreme narcissism and jealousy. It’s what caused him to get rid of Nick and what pushed him years later to seek out another hit when life was going so well.
While the finale is mostly a snooze, a few key moments did a solid job of bringing everything full circle. The first is Steve’s confession, which shows again how out of his depth Steve has always been.
With his paranoia off the charts, he was right to second-guess Ray and worry about what he was getting into while the two were in that hotel room. Sure, they were in Switzerland, but the law can travel!
Ray was in his actor bag and went through a series of emotions throughout their time together that day. And he played Steve like a fiddle.
Steve will never miss an opportunity to bring someone down a peg, so as soon as Ray tapped into his anger, the floodgates opened, and the FBI had everything they needed to ensure Steve Bannerjee never saw the light of day.
Rule of thumb if you’re guilty of a crime: don’t admit to anything out loud!
Finding out that he’s being charged under the RICO act was probably the final straw for Steve because that meant everything he worked for would just be gone. If he couldn’t have it anymore, he would have wanted his family to have it, but that doesn’t happen once the government gets its hands on everything.
The dream, illusion, or whatever you want to call it with Nick was very heavy-handed but almost necessary at the end. It was a way to have someone almost rehash the entire series to Steve and try to show him how wrong he was and how unnecessary everything was.
Steve: Please go. Just go.
Nick: I’m already gone.
He was on top of the world, but his ego wouldn’t allow him to revel in his winnings. He couldn’t stand the thought of sharing any of the spotlight.
And it wasn’t just some nameless face telling him this. No, it was the man he had callously murdered, complete with the gaping bullet wound in his cheek. It really drives home Steve’s cruelty, and Nick’s words cut right to the matter.
He has no one to blame for his position outside of himself.
Today, Chippendales is still a thriving enterprise with a very popular Las Vegas act. And yet so many people have never even heard the name Steve Bannerjee before. If you have, it’s more likely to be connected with the word killer than anything involving the still-popular act.
They say the show must go on, and the show surely did.
Welcome to My Extra Thoughts
- Murray Bartlett shows up for a few minutes to do what he does best; chew up a scene!
- In the five years after Nick’s death, Steve has Chippendales doing pretty well, but he physically looks like he aged twenty years. All that bad karma will get to you!
- Denise was the only thing missing from that final montage of better times! She was an integral part of the team!
- Kumail Nanjiani is a terrific actor, and while his performance was very subdued, it was very impactful at times. Kudos to him and the whole team. The casting of this miniseries was perfect.
That’s all she wrote for Welcome to Chippendales! It was quite the ride, and while not wholly accurate and dramatized for television, it was still a good retelling of a tragic tale.
Let me know in the comments what you thought about the finale and the series overall! It may be over, but you can always watch Welcome to Chippendales online to see what you missed!
Whitney Evans is a staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow her on Twitter.
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