"All's Fair" has been a rollercoaster of sorts since its inception, making it difficult to take seriously at times. But Episode 7 takes the show's blurring of drama and comedy to an extreme that leaves one pondering whether it's finally revealing itself as an outright parody or simply so poor in quality that the distinction becomes moot. Time, as they say, will tell.
Regardless, "Letting Go" is a comically-inclined episode with minimal serious drama, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. However, the subjects it chooses to make light of are absurd. We saw at the end of the previous episode that Doug had passed away, leaving Dina devastated. We also saw that Allura and Chase had more or less finalized their divorce, or at least agreed on a reasonable distribution of their assets. These are serious matters, but "All's Fair" decides to make them ludicrously entertaining.
Dina, for instance, isn't handling Doug's death well. His corpse is still in the bed, and she's essentially carrying on a normal life around him while he decomposes before her eyes, as Liberty puts it later. Speaking of Liberty, who was absent from the last episode, she decides to express a sentiment she's never hinted at throughout the series: She feels left out of the gang due to being British. Brilliant! This means she takes Dina's refusal to speak to her especially personally and decides to assuage her own imposter syndrome by visiting Dina at home and making herself useful.
By chance, she happens to arrive at the same time as Carr, who is taking the opportunity to... well, it's a bit unclear. Gloat? Atone? Ultimately, it doesn't matter since her sole focus immediately becomes further ostracizing Liberty while exploiting Dina's grief to amplify Liberty's feelings of isolation—which, you'll note, Liberty wouldn't even be aware of—and dropping a series of vicious barbs that completely undo all of the progress she made last time out. Although it's very funny—Sarah Paulson is once again the standout of the entire episode—it's also very stupid.
Glenn Close has been one of the few consistently grounded presences in this show, but her biggest actorly moment is consistently undercut by an increasingly ridiculous game of one-upmanship as Carr and Liberty wildly overcompensate to try and prove who's the better friend to Dina in her time of need. Close does get a couple of moments to sell her grief, including one with Emerald during a swanky wake that Carr organizes and Liberty ruins with a coterie of bagpipers, but at no point does it ever feel like it's being taken halfway seriously. It's like everything else—a showcase for Sarah Paulson pulling faces and hurling snarky insults—the only difference now being that the script can't decide whether she's part of the core group or not.
In the B-plot of the seventh episode of "All's Fair," Allura's desire to finalize her divorce with Chase takes a comedic turn as she includes an apology tour, complete with a list of extramarital sexual partners in a comedic montage. While Matthew Noszka's comedic skills are put to good use, there are moments that are meant to be serious that come across as preposterous.
One such moment involves Milan, who has been barely seen since it was revealed that she was pregnant with Chase's child. She is the last name on Chase's list of people he needs to make amends to, and he asks Allura to help facilitate a chat, despite her reluctance. Allura agrees, on the condition that she legally represents Milan. However, in the mediation, Milan goes completely off the rails, throwing things at Chase in a situation that inexplicably portrays Chase as the bad guy, even though he's right that he does have some rights. The whole scenario is bizarre.
But what's even more bizarre is the impact this has on Chase's relationship with Allura. At the end of the episode, she turns up at his house to sleep with him, despite her earlier guarantee that she wouldn't. This isn't the weirdest thing that has ever happened in TV—after all, two people this good-looking can only stay away from each other for so long—but it's totally contrary to Allura's established character and the events depicted in the rest of this very strange episode.
At least Dina finally agrees to let Doug be taken away before he melts into the bedsheets, providing a silver lining in an otherwise strange tale.
