Here and Now Season 1 Episode 6: Fight, Death Review

If you would like to read my review of the last episode, click here.

Synopsis: Rocked by a disturbing revelation, Ramon escapes into the past. Farid looks for meaning in a translation, while Kristen takes comfort in the music of the Torah. Audrey finds that an old college friend, Steven Benjamin, is receptive to her Empathy Initiative pitch. Greg works out with Duc and Michael, and submits a foreword to Duc’s soon-to-be-published self-help book. (HBO)

Writer: Wes Taylor

Director: Lisa Cholodenko

Rating: TV-MA

Running Time: 58mins

And they all went their separate ways once again.

This episode started with Shokrani getting a dream about his mother, younger self, and Ramon in his house. He became fixated by something Ramon said in Spanish. He wasn’t looking forward to seeing his uncle Amir (Anthony Azizi) due to their troubled past. He looked up the Spanish phrase and it was related to butterflies which were a common theme.

Greg’s TA named Michael (Kevin Bigley) woke him up after he slept in his office after his fight with Audrey at the end of the last episode. He was still reeling. Michael read Duc’s manuscript and thought it was good. He wrote a draft for Greg’s foreward for the book. Meanwhile, Duc went for a jog past Carmen’s house before heading to the gym with Greg and Michael.

Michael told Duc that he read his manuscript for Greg and that he liked it and it reminded him of his father. Greg revealed that he had a brother who went missing and was found deceased near the village where Duc was found. He also gave Duc his foreward. His publisher loved the foreward

Ashley got the edited video of Audrey from earlier. Audrey visited her and Ashley asked about it. Ashley was a little upset since she didn’t know that it was edited but she’s already been frustrated about her identity for a while. Ashley took a self-defense class while Audrey made her presentation to Steven who was impressed and thought she was thinking too small.

Ashley learned from Hailey that another girl at daycare called her a bad name. When confronting the girl’s mother, she denied that her daughter would ever say something like that. She also claimed that Hailey called her daughter a bad name. The mother called Malcolm, telling him that Ashley called her racist.

Ramon and Kristen went out for coffee. She told him about their parents’ fight. She struggled with telling him what she knew about Henry. She showed him the video, however, he was upset at her for stirring stuff up with him. Perhaps not in the right frame of mind, he cancelled his next appointment with Shokrani but he tried to call Ramon to get him to come in. Shokrani then brought groceries to his uncle who set him off.

Navid took Kristen to his noon prayer since she was curious and when she was there, she seemed into it. During dinner, Shokrani shared his belief about something connecting all of us, presumably his connection with Ramon.

Ramon went to see Henry at his work to confront him about the video. Henry was more or less homeless which was why he did what he did. That didn’t make Ramon less upset as he kicked Henry out. Going through his things in his apartment, he found drawings similar to his past dreams/hallucinations. Heartbroken, he went home to his mother. Ramon didn’t know Greg wasn’t staying there so she called him over to console Ramon and to keep up appearances.

When discussing Ramon’s situation, there were obvious similarities to Greg and Audrey. While giving advice to Ramon, Greg seemed to also be talking to Audrey. Duc walked into an argument between Audrey and Greg and left. Audrey walked into Kristen listening to Arab music. They both laid down and listened to it.

Duc sent an email to his publisher asking for a new foreward to his book because he knew Greg didn’t write it. While calling Greg to tell him that his girlfriend said yes to marrying him, Michael got into an accident on his bicycle.

Overall, this was a good episode that had characters go their separate ways once again. There was a lot to follow here which did convolute things a little so not all the subplots were as impactful. Ramon’s breakup was probably the most impactful along with Greg and Audrey’s marital problems as the two more or less echoed each other. Duc wants to be his own person so the foreward story was kind of glossed over as was Ashley’s racism story and Kristen’s forray into Islam although it gave her and Audrey a nice moment near the end. Shokrani was on a good run but nothing really happened here. Is this about multi-family drama, the Ramon and Shokrani connection and the fact that we are all connected? Hopefully it picks one or the other.

Score: 8/10

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Keith Noakes

The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.