Well, I stand corrected. Nile Jarvis did indeed kill his wife, as Aggie and Abbott suspected. Martin and Rick assisted in the disposal of her body, but Nile was the one who pulled the trigger. The Beast in Me takes a dramatic plunge with this episode-long reveal, and I'm not minimizing its impact just because I was wrong. For one, it deflates the mystery: Now all that's left is to see what Aggie will do with this information once she uncovers it, if she's able to uncover it while also dealing with being framed for Teddy's murder. Abbott is no longer alive to have his perspective vindicated, nor is Madison around to be freed of her abusive husband. But the real crime (haha) is that "Ghosts" shortcuts what was most interesting about the show's premise and its characters.
Before I delve further, let's recap what actually happened. The episode opens with Abbott and his colleagues seizing thousands of dollars from inside the leather seats of a private jet. It's December 2019, and Abbott heads from the tarmac to a party at Madison's Jacon Gallery—now owned by Nina—to arrest Pedro Dominguez, the owner of the jet. Dominguez is a real-estate developer from Miami who launders money for the cartel, providing the remaining $100 million the Jarvises needed to get out of their credit squeeze. As Abbott arrives at the party, he remembers arresting someone at Madison's gallery on this night; however, he was there to arrest Nile, not his chum/friend/investor. Madison is so enraged that she even throws her glass of Champagne at Abbott. Her understandable rage at being embarrassed in her own gallery is fueled by the fact that she's putting on a show and is high on cocaine.
Just as Abbott arrives, Nick Ryder, the in-house counsel for the Ingram family foundation, comes over to alert Nile that Abbott is in the building. He assures James Ingram that their money and the construction of Jarvis Yards are both safe—no matter how hard he tries, Abbott is never going to find anything. That's because all of Dominguez's cash has been funneled into Ryder's own account; as Nile puts it, Ryder's fingerprints are all over this. Nile explains all of this to a furious Martin after the last opening guest leaves. Martin is livid that Nile didn't tell him about taking cartel money and that Abbott somehow figured out the connection between Dominguez and Ryder in the first place. It could only have been a leak: Someone close to them must be feeding information to Abbott. Nile suspects it's Nina.
Granted, she's been acting weird: Nile saw her whispering on her phone at the gallery, and all night she walked around edgy and wide-eyed. Nina takes Madison back to her house in the car, where she gets a call from a private number that she promises to call back later. Upstairs, she rifles through Madison's drawer as Madison rants about the bad publicity they're already getting from the in-gallery arrest. When Madison catches her in the act, Nina maintains she's only looking for Madison's medication to make sure she takes it. Madison is cruel to Nina, taking all of her frustrations out on her and then apologizing when she sees that she's being hurtful. But even when she tells Nina to keep the dress she borrowed for the party, there's a sharpness to her voice. It's obvious that Madison doesn't see Nina as an equal but as a person who exists solely to serve her needs. In this dynamic, Madison can both diminish her assistant ("I don't need a babysitter") and demand her undivided attention—Nina is there essentially to put Madison to bed. But when Nile comes home, he finds Madison still up and angry.
Yet, despite the hour's passage, she remains awake when Nile returns home, her anger palpable. Nile's suspicions rise, wondering if Nina tipped Abbott off about Dominguez, but Madison insists they are friends; Nina would never betray her in such a manner. To illustrate Nile's point that Nina is driven by ambition, we witness her admiring her new dress in the mirror of her apartment, its decorations of string lights excessive even for the standards of 2015 Tumblr. The next morning, Madison sits on her balcony, drawing a pigeon and weeping.
Meanwhile, Rick and Martin grapple with what to do about Nile's recklessness and the subsequent fiasco with Dominguez. Martin inquires if Rick knows a trustworthy source within the bureau who can reveal the leak to Abbott. This leads Rick to approach Erika, who finds herself in a predicament of her own. Frank's "trouble," as she referred to it in the previous episode, turns out to be a charge of criminal negligence filed by the district attorney after one of his buildings collapsed on someone's legs. Despite Erika's role as a lawyer, she eagerly seeks ways to exonerate Frank from this felony charge. Frank is unique among this cast of characters for his willingness to accept the consequences of his actions. He believes he deserves a felony for purchasing off-market concrete from a truck's back. He suggests they divorce so that Erika can protect half of their assets, her career, and their children.
Frank is not the only one facing jail time. Nile offers Ryder a point in Jarvis Yards plus ten times his annual pay for every year he serves in exchange for taking the fall. It's enough for Ryder. Abbott is enraged at his confession, unable to shame Ryder into doing the right thing—what's the right thing when faced with such money? Abbott becomes so incensed that he grabs Ryder by the neck. His supervisors intervene to break up the fight, and it's over. There's no connection between Dominguez's money and the Jarvises. Abbott pleads that they are "so close" to getting Nile, but his boss—Becky Ann Baker in a cameo that earns this episode its third star—tells him he has to let go; it's been two years. We never learn what drove Abbott down this path in the first place, but we do find out that if he cared, it was at least partly because of his source.
The source turns out to be...Madison. She tells Abbott that Nile knows someone is talking, though he suspects it's Nina. Abbott informs her that the bureau is discontinuing the investigation in light of Ryder's confession. They will never get Nile. Madison is desperate; she needs Nile in jail so she can escape him. Abbott suggests an easier exit route: just divorce him. But Madison thinks Nile will kill her if she tries. She tells Abbott that there's "something" in him (a beast, perhaps?); people around him have been disappearing since he was 17. She recounts a story of a young sculptor who was stabbed to death in "a mugging gone wrong" after Nile suspected Madison of having an affair with him. This is what Christopher meant when he told Aggie that Madison feared for her life—she was so trapped in her marriage that the only way out would be if Nile were behind bars.
It's clear that Madison is desperate to save herself, but it doesn't help her case that she acts so erratically. She even kisses Abbott at one point, saying she can tell he cares about her. He admits as much, but still thinks she needs "help more than she needs protection." In general, Madison's spiral comes off as a caricature; for one hour, we see her cry and yell nonstop. Outside the building where she met Abbott, Nina waits for her, having followed her there to confront her about not taking her medication and to tell her she has accepted a job offer at a different gallery. Though Madison promised Nina she'd have opportunities to grow at Jacon, she has spent all her time as Madison's caretaker and punching bag. Madison is cruel to her, saying Nina will never be anything more than a social climber from New Jersey with no talent and bad taste. Yikes indeed.
As the phone on his desk rang, Nile found himself in his office, with Martin on the other end of the line. Martin informed him that Rick had enlisted someone within the bureau to uncover the source of Abbott's information. The precise terms of Rick's deal with Erika were still shrouded in mystery; he had offered a substantial sum of money to the accident victim and something "bigger" that would sway the District Attorney into giving Frank a misdemeanor in exchange for a "favor." Erika had warned Rick that she would throw him in jail for his tactics, but Nile knew all too well that she was willing to bend the rules to protect her family.
From the corner of his eye, Nile caught a glimpse of Nina entering the office. He crept up on her, curious about her presence. She informed him that she was quitting, a move Nile deemed "funny timing" given their search for the mole. But Nina was deeply involved with this family and their intricate web of deceit. She revealed that Madison was in communication with Abbott, and she knew this because she had followed Madison after the party, suspecting an affair.
Nile had been right about Nina's ambition, but he had overlooked the fact that with ambition came an instinct for self-preservation. She was neither stupid nor insane enough to mess with the Jarvises. She shoved two bottles of Madison's medication at Nile, which she had taken to prevent Madison from "trying again," and stormed off.
The rest, as they say, is history. Nile found Madison at the gallery, where she had gone to pick up her passport and a large sum of cash, seemingly preparing to run away. He teased her about his conversation with Nina for a bit, then wondered if Madison was having an affair with Abbott while also feeding him her secrets. Madison was done putting up with his "animal eyes"; she no longer had a death wish. She tried to leave, but Nile grabbed her by the neck and squeezed tightly. "Don't make me do this," he said as he strangled her, "I love you!" She managed to spray him with Mace, but by the time she reached the door of the gallery, it was too late. He threw her across the room and bludgeoned her in the head, much in the same way he had killed Abbott earlier in the gallery opening scene. For a moment, Nile lay next to his dead wife, holding her hand. Then, sobbing, he called his father.
When Martin arrived with Rick, he was shocked and incensed to see what his son had done. Rick had to pull Martin off Nile. It was unclear if his shock stemmed from not knowing his son was capable of such violence or from realizing he had done it again. Rick, ever the pragmatic one, encouraged Martin to protect their legacy and make arrangements. He knew that even then that the worst that would happen to Nile was that he would live his life under suspicion, though no one would be able to prove his guilt. They put Madison's body in a suitcase and buried it in a MHJ-owned demolition landfill. Like a child being punished, they made Nile dig the hole himself.
The next day, when Nina came into the gallery, it looked as if nothing had happened. She found Madison's suicide note on a table. No one thought it strange that Madison would have left the note at work rather than at home? Why would she do that? Perhaps Aggie was asking herself the same questions as she watched the news in her cozy pre-tragedy life with her wife and child in Brooklyn.
As the FBI offices hummed with activity, Erika made her way to Abbott by the coffee machine, their introduction punctuated by the steamy hiss of the machine. The Erika subplot served as one of several underwhelming threads in this episode. If the entire purpose of approaching and engaging Erika was to uncover the source of Abbott's information, why did her agreement with the Jarvises remain intact even after Nile's discovery of Madison's betrayal and subsequent murder? I suppose the terms of their deal shifted, with Frank's freedom now tied to a favor to be redeemed at some future point, mirroring Simone's offer to Abbott in previous episodes. They finally cashed in when Rick asked Erika about Abbott's communications with Aggie.
However, my main issue with this extended flashback episode lies in the revelation of Madison's murder and disappearance. These events have no direct connection to Aggie or her relationship with Nile. The premise of having Aggie as a reporter investigating a case was to have her uncover the truths behind it. Instead, we learn all this information through exposition rather than through her own work. Yes, Aggie was already convinced of Nile's guilt thanks to the suicide note revelation, but whether she could prove it or not, the details of the past remained obscure to her. Until this episode, Aggie carried our perspective: We didn't know anything she didn't. Now that we do, the tone of the show suffers. Exposition is boring when it's imposed by the narrative rather than emerging from the character.
As the season reaches its climax, the development of character has taken a back seat to plot mechanics. One of the most compelling aspects of "The Beast in Me" was the shared bloodlust between Aggie and Nile; now that Nile has become a full-blown villain, that uncomfortable similarity between them has lost its strength. It would have been far more interesting to see if Aggie could push Nile to confess the truth. It would have been better for her book and better for us too.
