My Review of Welcome To Chippendales: "Paper Is Paper"

 

Written by Jenni Konner

Directed by Richard Shepard

Steve (to FBI Agent): "I have everything and regret nothing."

Except in this episode, Steve, you ended up losing your club, more money and your family in one fell swoop and due to your more serious actions, your freedom. Yup, we've gotten to that point of this messy saga.

I had a feeling the penultimate episode would be the one where Nick would be killed off and of course, it happened when everything was going Nick's way. Nick had been successful in preventing Steve from launching a counter Chippendales tour, business was better than ever and while he did somewhat piss off Denise, Nick was about to take his relationship with Bradford to the next level.

Unfortunately for Nick, Steve's burning jealousy of him had gone too far and the latter ended up hiring a gun for hire in order to kill Nick with Bradford being the one to find Nick's dead. It also took Denise not time to openly accuse Steve of being the one who had Nick killed and of course, Irene also quickly realised that Steve had blood on his hands.

In the previous episode, Irene was actively encouraging Steve's worse impulses but here with the reality of the business going under, she was back to pointing out that Steve made terrible decisions. Her response to remove herself and her child away from Steve when she knew what he had done was one of her better moments in the episode.

As for Steve, he's already attracted the FBI's attention and they were pretty clear to him that they believed he was involved in Nick's death. Steve even knew himself the walls were closing in on him and keeping the gun used in Nick's murder wasn't his best idea either.

- I loved the cheesy opening sequence highlight the success and excess that Nick, Bradford and Denise were experiencing. 

- There was a good unicorn on Nick's table. I noticed it before he was killed off screen.

- Standout music: Nice use of Footloose at the start of the episode.

- Chronology: August 1987, given the main plot of the episode.

Paper Is Paper with an added ten to fifteen minutes probably would've served as the finale but there's one more episode to go in order to wrap up the series. It's a strong episode though with all four main cast members giving it their all.

Rating: 7 out of 10