Showtime 2.7 - Down with Sickness

Showtime - Down with Sickness
Genre : Drama / Comedy / Sports
Showrunner: Steven Soderbergh
Writer : Chad Taylor & Mo Buck

Cast: Barry Keoghan, Dacre Montgomery, Cooper Andrews, Zoey Dutch, Anna Gunn, Clayne Crawford, Tom Hopper, Alan Ritchson, Paul Rust, Toby Huss, O'Shea Jackson Jr, Samara Weaving and Rachael Harris

Plot: Brad Wolfe (Clayne Crawford) lays naked in bed with Diane (Anna Gunn) laying next to him, cuddling. He caresses her hair and kisses her head, He asks her what is she going to do about all of this and she says she doesn’t want to think about it right now. He gets up and opens the blinds, letting the sunlight flood the room. He says she’ll have to confront him today, it’s inevitable. She agrees, but it doesn’t change the fact that she doesn’t want to. She reluctantly gets up and goes on about her morning routine with Brad. 

Paul Martin (Toby Huss) is already at the arena, going over various paperwork in his office. A worker is here to repair the broken window. Cain Khan (O'Shea Jackson Jr.) is the first wrestler here and he enters Paul’s office. He asks him if he’s satisfied with how things went after his title win and he says it was everything that he dreamed of. He had insane heat, people hate him even more now, they will come in hoards to see him fail and that’s where he will make his money. Cain says that Diane didn’t seem to see him like and neither did the original TCW wrestlers and he’s worried about that. Paul tells him to let him handle that. He asks Cain where Honey Moon is and he says he doesn’t know. Paul says it’s a shame, because he wanted to reward them for their good work. 

Diane is about to leave her condo alongside Brad when she receives a call from a panicked Dicky (Paul Rust), telling Diane that Loto woke up and is sick, so he won’t be able to wrestle tonight. She curses and tells Dicky to leave Loto alone for the day. They’ll do an angle tonight to explain Loto’s absence. She hangs up and tells Brad that it derails her plan for the evening. She receives another call from Thunderjack (Dacre Montgomery) and he says that he’s sick too, he threw up all night. Diane is getting angrier by the minute and asks him if Sweet Tea spent the night with him and he says she didn’t. Immediately after she hangs up, Tom Jackson (Tom Hopper) calls Diane to tell them his brother is sick and won’t be able to wrestle tonight. He also threw up all night. Diane hangs up and rips her phone off the wall and throws it across the room. Brad calms her down and he says everything will be alright.

Sitting on the bed of her cheap hotel room, Gwen Szymanski (Rachael Harris) looks at her notes, speaking on the phone to her boss, who’s back in Dallas. She says that he spilled the beans alright. The interview will air shortly and she has enough information that didn’t make the cut that she’ll try to turn this into a book if he agrees. She agrees that it would be a good idea. She’ll use the company credit card to send him a thank you gift. She hangs up, smiling, as she falls back on the bed.

Diane, meanwhile, is in crisis mode. She begrudgingly calls Paul, wanting to avoid any discussion of the Southern Showdown debacle. Instead, she gets to the point about the illnesses and he says he has heard the same thing. In total, around two-thirds of their roster has come down with something. She tells him that they need to cancel the show. Paul tells her to pump the breaks, which boils her skin. He says that the show must go on while she insists that they do no have enough people to stage an event. He tells her that while she may be in the wrestling business, he's in the business business and those losing those gates would hurt them financially. He's already thought of some things they could do. For one, Dicky could sub in as a wrestler to be squashed in a short match with Cain. And he says he really like what he's seen from Ben Carr so he's confident that he and Brad could go out there and have a forty minute match, which will take up a significant portion of the show. At this point, Diane has succeeded defeat and says fine.

When Dicky is told that he is going to have to wrestle tonight, he tells Diane that that is a very bad idea. Diane, mad at him for going behind her back and making a deal with Paul, says that he's going to have to take one for the team. Sweet Tea, who remains healthy, overhears this and says that she'd be willing to take one for the team as well. She jokingly (but not so jokingly) says she'd love to fight Honey Moon (Samara Weaving). Diane says that cannot happen. She admires Tea's ambition but the fans will not accept two women out there fighting, especially two who aren't trained fighters. Tea points out that Dicky isn't a trained fighter but Diane says that he's not going out there to fight - he's going there to get his ass kicked.

Dicky's match with Cain unsurprisingly goes terribly. His timing is off and he sustains real injuries from Cain's moves. Diane is red with embarrassment while Paul doesn't seem to mind as it is her roster member who looks bad, not his. Meanwhile, as Ben prepares for his big main event match, he is unexpectedly approached by Tea. She says she asks something big to ask him but he has to keep it a secret. He is stammering in his response, especially as Brad has them in the corner of his eye. She takes the seat next to him and, in a soft voice, asks if he can train her to be a wrestler. This is not what he was expecting, not that he had really any clue what she was going to say. However, he is quick in his response: absolutely. She thanks him, saying she was going to ask her brother but feels that he is of the old-school mindset that women don't belong in the ring. With no Thunderjack around, she gives Ben hug before his match. As they prepare to head out to the ring, Brad suspiciously asks what that was about and Ben stays mum. 

The impromptu match between Ben and Brad starts off well but starts to go off the rails as Brad fails to pace himself and runs out of steam only 15 minutes in. Ben, being the young ring general that he is, tries to call moves in the ring to slow things down but Brad is not good going off script. The crowd is starting to get bored and the two wrestlers agree to end things only, with Brad winning on a roll-up. When they get to the back, the crowd starts booing realizing how short the show is. Brad is pissed at himself, while Ben also wants to take the blame. Diane is pissed but seems resolute. Brad wants to confront Paul about everything but Diane tells him that he just left town for Georgia, mid-show. When Cain and Honey are out of view, Diane pulls Ben, Dicky, Brad, and Tom Jackson aside and asks if they're sick of Paul's decision-making. They all adamantly agree (although Ben is more timid). After seeing these responses, Diane tells them that their voices are heard and she agrees. She doesn't want to take his shit anymore.