Sarah and Greylock can’t win.
You would think that discovering the town had a spare $35 million would have solved some problems on The Republic of Sarah Season 1 Episode 12.
But this episode proved once again that money can’t buy happiness. It was still up in the air what it might do for the town.
Sarah’s personal life was going all right for once. Sure, she broke up with Weston after he outed Paul as the State Department whistleblower in his article on The Republic of Sarah Season 1 Episode 11.
But that needed to happen. A head of state shouldn’t have been in a relationship with a journalist to start with.
But it was six weeks later, and CIA ninjas hadn’t snuck into Greylock to hustle off Paul to a black site.
Frankly, once the truth came out, if anything had happened to Paul, he would have become a very public martyr. It was simpler to let a dozen bureaucrats be indicted.
Sarah was actually developing a friendly but very late relationship with her father. Ellen was back in town, and she and Paul were wisely keeping their distance from each other.
As was proven, Ellen and Paul blamed each other for the piss-poor jobs they did as parents. Truly, it’s a wonder that Sarah and Danny turned out as normal as they did.
Paul ran away because Ellen was such a handful. Ellen became a drunk because Paul ran away. So from whom did Sarah and Danny learn about personal responsibility? Not those two.
At least, after Sarah tongue-lashed Ellen, the former spouses got together and admitted to some of the many mistakes they had made as parents. That’s progress by any measure.
And frankly, Sarah doesn’t need to be babysitting either of them. She’s got a country to run.
And everybody had an idea how she should spend the surprise $35 million from the coltan that none of them thought should have been mined in the first place. Hypocrites!
Sarah ended up wrestling with the question of who should benefit: the individual or the town. How timely: Politicians having to decide between spending on infrastructure or stimulus.
That quandary made for strange bedfellows, with Danny and Tyler (filling in for Maya) voting for infrastructure and A.J. and Liz (who let her back in the country?) opting for stimulus. That should have been enough to make A.J. doubt her position.
Sarah ended up in a hard place, with her best friends coming to ask for personal favors.
It was hard to fault A.J., whose father’s facility was about to be gobbled up by a medical conglomerate, making it unaffordable on her cop’s salary.
Corinne’s pitch was that pumping money into the school system would make Greylock look better on the international stage. That was a weak argument, especially after Corinne admitted she was angling for the principal’s chair after the current occupant retired.
Corinne was hardly her best self yet again. She was kowtowing to Adam to get back in his good graces.
That went out the window after Adam’s brawl with Danny when he discovered that Danny and Corinne were both holding onto mementos from their tryst, and Adam kicked her out.
Still, it seemed out of character for Adam to blow out of town with Josh in tow, filing for divorce from Corinne.
Sure, he was hurt because she cheated on him. But he’s got to know inside that he’s lucky Corinne wants to be with him rather than model Danny. Seriously.
Danny was nice-guy enough to set her up with a quality divorce attorney that he knew. Yet, somehow, she still let Adam’s lawyer rattle her badly at the hearing. Couldn’t she have held it together when she truly needed to?
She brought down Sarah from her triumphant national address, causing Sarah to admit what we’d all suspected: Danny is Josh’s father.
And unfortunately, Sarah hadn’t been quick-witted enough to take off her hot mic so that the entire town heard their drama.
I felt worse for Bella than Sarah because she was really hitting her stride as Sarah’s intern. It’s about time there was some professionalism injected into Greylock’s government, even if it came from a high-school kid.
Bella must have learned something as the daughter of a glad-handing local politician who was knocked out of office by an inspirational history teacher.
She did a stellar job getting the oft-times scattered Sarah on track; too bad she didn’t understand that she should pull the plug on the sound system.
Bella took advantage of Maya’s absence to step up into the spotlight and be her own self instead of just a caretaker for her battling parents. (Sarah would understand that.)
Tyler also stepped up with Maya gone, filling in admirably for her at congress meetings.
He also found an outlet for his creative side when he borrowed Patience’s old movie camera from Grover and set out to create little vignettes of townsfolk.
Grover revealed how touchy he was about his private world with Patience. But Tyler’s film brought their good times back to life for him.
The big question for the finale is what will be the fallout now that all of Greylock knows that Danny is Josh’s father.
To follow Greylock’s tentative appearance on the world stage, watch The Republic of Sarah online.
Were you at all surprised by Sarah’s confession?
Why was Corinne?
How will Danny take the news?
Comment below.
Dale McGarrigle is a staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow him on Twitter.