‘Notorious’ Episode 3 Recap: Oscar’s Name Is Dragged Through The Mud

Notorious‘s Episode 3, which aired Thursday night on ABC, was as exciting as it was disappointing. To be clear: not much happened, but it was still entertaining. If you missed this week’s episode, it’s honestly not that important. End of recap. I’m serious. Don’t scroll down there’s nothing there.

As the ending of last week’s episode pointed out, Sarah’s brother Alan has come to Louise Herrick Live for the specific purpose of dragging Oscar’s name through the mud, most likely to accuse him of murder. What a calm, not at all vengeful individual. Why not give him some ammo?  Louise reveals, live, of course, the blackmailed photos of Oscar cheating and a bruised Sarah. Alan gets his moment of truth, accusing Oscar for the murder of Sarah, which he says in an oddly concise and composed manner (considering how he seemed to be seething with rage in every scene of the last episode).

Ryan, completely ignoring his conversation with Julia stating, “if you keep doing illegal and risky crap I’m going to fire you,” he tries to help her find out who mailed the pictures. Through the use of technology and with the power of a drama by ABC, he finds out it was Levi, Oscar’s childhood friend. He tells his crush Julia who pats him on the head and says “good boy” when she should be either punishing him for clearly disobeying her or giving him a raise.

Jake talks with Oscar, who had indeed hit and cheated on Sarah, but “just one time.” It turns out the beating was caused from when Sarah found out about his infidelity some years back, but for the past few months he’s been dating someone online, Sweet Vicky. “Just one time.” What a guy Oscar is turning out to be. Julia talks to Levi about the photos, denying it at first, yet eventually admits it was him. However, he states that if she tries to get him involved again, he will leak the third photo, of Jake sleeping with Sarah, to another new station.

Jake and Ella go to a filming of a porno and find Vicky there in a nurse costume. Louise Herrick hasn’t gotten naked yet this episode so somebody has to (or in this case a fetish-y equivalent). Vicky says that she hasn’t done anything with Oscar, never mind talked to him, and that it must be somebody else acting like her. If Jake could do something complex find out her exact location, why couldn’t he have considered this to be an option? If the username was Alien Queen would he have contacted NASA and traveled to another planet without fact checking first?

Ryan, now drunk with power and possibly sporting an erection, he tries to break into Levi’s house, but runs into Ella who is trying to do the same thing. Kids these days. An officer catches them on Levi’s property, who begins to make out with Ella. He states “from the looks of that kiss, she’s all in. Don’t screw it up,” the cop tells him.

They’re… they’re still standing on private property…?

Apparently breaking the law and getting away with it, through using the power of love, made up for Ryan sending a picture of Ella holding coke and sending it to Julia. After eating Chinese food and hacking his computer from their car 50 feet away, they realize he’s been the one catfishing Oscar. Another twist involving love. Oh boy. Bromance is in the air and frankly I’m allergic.

Julia has a video of a soldier being beheaded and Louise talks with clothes on for once saying that they shouldn’t air it. Julia says sure thing and then plays the video live anyway, causing Louise to run off set screaming at Julia. Louise calms down and tells Julia her tale about how she fell — *sigh* — IN LOVE with some dead guy in Afghanistan named Pascal. Pascal gave her a compass before getting captured and beheaded. Louise then goes back to reprimanding Julia, stating that Julia looks down on her for partying so much when Julia should be recognizing how hard she works. I’d like to take this moment to thank Vicky for being a better character than Louise, who actually believes that she’s a hard worker when more than half of the time she’s drunk on set, and let’s not get into what she does off set. At the very end, Jake comes to Julia offering an interview with Oscar on LHL.

Honestly, this episode was kind of a letdown. There was no interesting side-plot like in the other two episodes, unless you count Louise’s side plot, which just proves how she’s a terrible person who has convinced herself she works hard. The truth about Levi was done without any confrontation, skipping over an interesting conflict by getting Ryan and Ella to make out. So many plots revolved around the love plot point that I feel like I have to beat somebody up just to switch it up a little. I certainly hope next week will pick up where episode 2 left off. In the end, this episode was only 1 fluke out of 3, so judging by those odds I’m still fairly excited for episode 4.