In The Dark Season 4 Episode 9 Review: Center of Gravity

Roughly 45 minutes of that installment felt like a waste of time.

For the Murphy and Max shippers who weren’t put off by their love story over the past two seasons, In The Dark Season 4 Episode 9 was memorable and an installment to cherish since we got an engagement.

And for the rest of us, we learned that the person behind Bolt is none other than Trey.

It was time for another bottle installment for the series, and In the Dark provided us with an hour that was similar to the frustrating In the Dark Season 3 Episode 8.

Most of the hour was devoted to Murphy and Max and these two resolving their issues and choosing to be with one another.

The problem is that they’ve made Murphy and Max so unlikeable and unshippable as a pairing, particularly over the course of this season, that there was a limited investment.

They overplayed their hand, pushing them too far apart, putting their dynamic’s toxicity under a microscope, and running with that. The series did too good of a job with that, so it feels desperate and contrived to walk things back and put a band-aid on them in a single installment.

Murphy: If you wanna hash it out, then let’s hash it out.
Max: So you want to make this work?
Murphy: I want to at least try.

It’s enough to leave a sour taste in your mouth.

It felt too far gone to bring these two back together like this and even toss in a proposal. It’s giving us the Murphy and Max endgame that we’ve come to expect whether it works or not, but it’s minus the work to justify why they should be endgame.

At best, all I can conclude is that they’re both such awful, toxic people that they deserve each other.

Their love for one another is an addiction, and the sex certainly is. It wasn’t surprising that Murphy wanted to kick Max to the curb and shut him down after their first round of sex.

But then Max finally had to cajones to give Murphy an ultimatum because he’s tired of his chain getting jerked, and no, I’m not talking about the fun one.

What followed that was Murphy and Max engaging in the Oppression Olympics, throwing out all of this exposition about why one of them was more screwed up than the other.

It’s quite sad that we didn’t get more of these tidbits about these characters over the years. It showed a startling amount of self-awareness, but their chit-chat only highlighted why both of them need to be in therapy.

They’ve spent some time filling in and rounding out Max’s character, giving us more information about his background history and adding depth to him beyond the guy Murphy loves.

Murphy: You didn’t feel like you were worth something with me?
Max: No.

So much of it feels cliche on its own. The delivery of these gems about how poor Max grew up amid this shouting match with Murphy in a fleabag motel didn’t remotely hit the emotional mark despite Deidrick’s best efforts because it was so exposition-heavy.

It was like the series was trying to make up for multiple seasons of neglected character development with a thinly veiled prototype for a generic bad boy with a heart of gold. And Murphy tossed in her two cents as she acknowledged her abandonment issues due to her biological parents giving her up when she was two.

By now, we’re so deep into why these two can be the absolute worst sometimes that they simply look silly as two grown adults who’ve gone through everything that they have in what boils down to a few months, citing their tragic, sad childhoods for why they are they way that they are.

By the half-hour point of their back and forth, you just wanted to yell at them to grow up, take accountability, and go to therapy.

Max: If anything were to happen to you…
Murphy: Nothing is going to happen to me.

Despite their long overdue talk, they still managed not to address things like how Max crawled back to Leslie after he confessed his feelings for Murphy. The way Max speaks about Leslie continues to disappoint and disturb, making his phone call to her immediately seeking her help all the more irritating.

The hour was long, dull, and annoying for those who wanted off this Max and Murphy hot mess express.

They managed to have more angry sex, talked some more, and then Max finally got the truth about Murphy’s stint as C.I. And then he proposed to her with a ring that he apparently chose after their second date.

Maybe it was just me, but that was more creepy than romantic. But, hey, after four seasons, we have a Murphy and Max engagement. Congratulations to them.

Amid all of this, they continued to have this deeply involved conversation and sex even though they kept hearing a mysterious beeping that could’ve been anything used to track, destroy, or kill them.

Their self-preservation skills were non-existent.

I’m still in awe that it was a Tamagotchi. Those things haven’t been popular in, like, 23 years. Oh, In the Dark.

The interesting aspects of this season pertained to the big boss learning who Murphy and Darnell are. Darnell reaching out to warn Murphy added some tension, and the kidnapping made things interesting, too.

It was a way to officially draw Max into everything as he served as the worst, most obvious tail ever when tracking Murphy’s kidnappers down.

Darnell and Murphy never want to involve the cops, but it’s still weird that Gene and Sarah have just left Murphy and Darnell on their own and don’t even check in with them or anything.

But the biggest surprise was when they discovered that Trey was the Bolt distributor. They didn’t see it coming, and I’m sure none of us did either.

Trey seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth. In that sense, it’s nice to see him again, especially since he was a popular, likable character, and it’s the final season.

Hey, strangers. You want to tell me what you guys are up to?

Trey

On the flip side, even though Trey had a history of plotting and trying to aquire power in the drug game, it’s outlandish that he’s running anything.

Are we supposed to believe that Paula was afraid of Trey? I can’t take Trey seriously as an intimidating Big Boss of anything, but it was great to see a familiar face.

Speaking of faces, two installments without Felix is not fun. I miss his face. Although, Felix finding out that Max and Murphy are engaged won’t be good times.

Over to you, In the Dark Fanatics. How do you feel about Murphy and Max’s engagement? Would you have guessed Trey was behind Bolt? Sound off below.

You can watch In The Dark online here via TV Fanatic.

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Jasmine Blu is a senior staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow her on Twitter.

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