It seems as if someone at Apple TV+ is trying to subtly communicate a message, for two very different shows are releasing episodes revolving around AI on the same day. While "Loot" may not be as dramatic in its portrayal as "The Morning Show," the underlying point is still made: Season 3 is attempting to take its themes and ideas more seriously. However, Episode 3 feels like a notable step down from the two-part premiere.
"Lady Molly" is a mess of played-out clichés that ultimately arrives at too-obvious conclusions. In essence, Molly has been deepfaked—someone has used AI to create a video of her singing and dancing about her wealth and her disdain for the poor, which has tarnished the public goodwill surrounding the Wells Foundation's work. Fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on your perspective—Molly has been invited to receive the Silver Cross in recognition of her good deeds from Lady Olivia Tottenham, a snooty British aristocrat whose family fortune is built on African diamond mines.
Molly thinks accepting the award at a big ceremony during a charity cricket match in England will help repair her reputation. But Sofia is not so sure. She's skeptical of the long shadow of colonialism that looms over the whole thing and Molly's motivations in indulging it, worrying that she's more concerned about wearing a small hat and receiving a pretty bauble than she is about the very real issues her foundation professes to care so deeply about. Is the deepfake video perhaps not quite as inaccurate as Molly would like people to think?
Essentially, this episode of "Loot" Season 3 is a trip to England that indulges every misguided idea Americans have about the country. We're talking about jibes about accents—some of the worst I've ever heard—and the weather, teeth, food, cricket, and our colonial history, which is a valid point of concern. But everything else is so flippant and familiar that it's genuinely aggravating.
Sure, we must entertain the possibility that I'm just being a defensive little Englander, but even though the whole thing is deliberately exaggerated, it also just feels lazy and derivative. That's not to say there aren't funny bits. There's a recurring gag about Molly misunderstanding a particular word that ends up yielding a couple of amusing moments and then a half-decent payoff. And Arthur, Nicholas, and Howard get a funny string of scenes where they all explore the various seating areas they've been assigned to—as "mistress," "assistant," and "extended family," respectively—and what that says about their relationship with Molly. It's designed to create parallels between Molly and Lady Olivia, who turns out to be a homophobic colonialist monster, but the men aren't especially keen on what it says about them as loyal billionaire beneficiaries.
In the end, Molly realizes she's violating her core principles by indulging the ceremony and gives Lady Olivia and the assembled aristocracy a verbal lashing that repairs her reputation just as she claims to have intended. But it also feels like one of those episodes you sometimes get in comedies that exist just for the sake of it, cobbled together out of overly obvious ideas and familiar jokes. "Loot" has historically been a lot better than this; I hope it's just a blip rather than a sign of things to come.
