We are not sure what High Desert is up to. Is it about Peggy’s messy life, is it about some art theft that is going on, or is it something entirely meta, like the ongoing series Mrs. Davis? Either way, this is very hard to care about, and we just don’t get the comedy of Peggy trying to bargain her way out of situations created by her carelessness. But here is the recap and ending of episode 3 of High Desert.
Spoilers Ahead
Is Peggy’s Mother Alive?
Remember how we said in our recap of High Desert Episode 2 that Peggy had crashed her car? Turns out, the accident had just sliced away the top half of her car, with Peggy still miraculously alive and taking a nap in the bottom half. However, we might criticize her, we want to be as unbothered as her one day. When she does wake up, she simply drives back home, where she meets her sister, Dianne, who is there with a realtor getting the house appraised. Peggy is completely against selling, even though she cannot afford the mortgage. She drives away the realtor, but she still has the nerve to ask Dianne for a down payment on a new car. Dianne agrees though we don’t know what comes of it. When she leaves, Peggy has new locks installed on the doors and windows to further avoid such scenarios. Additionally, she also discovers through her friend Carol that Bob’s wife ran away and that he has been telling everyone that she is in Mexico. But Carol and Peggy suspect that he probably killed her. The wife’s family put out a reward of $70000 for any information on her whereabouts, which the two women want to claim as soon as they can. However, when Peggy takes this news to Bruce, he tells her that he already knew that and that the reward has long since been withdrawn. Bruce is simply waiting for his client, who could be his last shot at saving his business, and clearly, he wants Peggy to go as he believes she would ruin everything.
Meanwhile, it turns out that when Peggy saw her “mother” get into a bus in High Desert Episode 2, she wasn’t hallucinating. The woman is an actual lookalike of Roslyn, and her name is Ginger. Peggy wastes no time and immediately chats her up, asking for her number to give to other theater agents since she is an actress. Looking at the situation, Carol encourages Peggy to write a play on her life, which the latter does, and compares it to Hamilton. She pushes around Owen to get them to host the play in Pioneertown, convincing him that it would be absolutely free for him while bringing in the money for their establishment. Owen agrees, but the following events test his faith and patience with Peggy.
What Does Guru Bob Want With Peggy?
When Guru’s nipple is cut off by the goons, he ends up in the hospital and asks for Peggy. Since her number is written on his arm, the hospital staff is able to contact her, and she comes to take him home. She puts her foot down, saying that she wants the money for Tammy, and when Bob is in a nearly unconscious state with his sedatives, she gets him to sign a check for $4000, which she gives to her boss, Owen. But of course, as it should be, Bob calls the police and says the check was stolen, which leads Bob to get arrested. Peggy bails him out, and Owen lets her know that she is fired. But here is the thing about people who refuse to take accountability: They know they are in the wrong but will smoothly talk their way out of things to get what they want, and Peggy does exactly that. She tells Owen that she will get him the money and that she will also get the charges dropped against him. Owen may not care for the cash, but he wants a clean record and has no choice but to agree with Peggy. But to his shock, he finds that it was his mother who paid for his bail, and being a mama’s boy, he is terrified of the consequences that are to come.
Meanwhile, Peggy rushes to Bob’s house and demands that he drop the charges against Owen while giving her Tammy’s money, but he wants to take her out for dinner. Once their food is in front of them, Bob tells her that he has a painting that was stolen in the 1990s that he wants sold. Peggy had previously told him that she knew some people, and he was hoping she would help him with those contacts for a sum of over a million. Peggy agrees, but she wants her demands fulfilled now, which Bob agrees to.
At the end of Episode 3 of High Desert, Peggy finds that her sister is able to get back into her house with the help of a locksmith and that Denny has been released from prison and has come looking for her at her house. Peggy wants nothing to do with him and says that they will be divorced soon enough either way. But that doesn’t stop Denny from getting into her house and waiting for her to come home. As for Bob, the goons who hurt him deliver a few more punches to his face and take his car away.
Final Thoughts
We are not sure if this would be a universal opinion, but we are finding it a bit hard to pay attention to what is going on-screen with this series. We don’t want to call it dull, but it is remarkably uninteresting, which we realize is the same thing. Considering how chaotic Peggy’s life is, that should not have been the case, but we suppose it is a little off how she is literally a bully who gets her way by bulldozing through situations. If this is going to be her personality throughout High Desert, we are certainly not going to like it.
