The Better Sister – Season 1 Episode 6 'Steadying Hand' Recap & Review
Episode 6
Episode 6 of The Better Sister begins with a flashback of Adam at confession. He berates Ethan for being a wastrel. He claims Chloe enables Ethan's bad behaviour and he is the only one trying to fix his son.
At present, Nicky tries to confront Chloe who is more worried about appearances and it turns physical. Nancy jumps in and ends up hitting and cuffing Nicky. Michelle orders them to stand down as they need a new game plan.
Michelle tells Nicky to play the bad mom so Ethan can look grateful to have had Adam. As for Chloe, she needs to dig into Adam's files and find another suspect. She grabs whatever she can from Adam's office. Bill catches her but she is able to hide the USB.
Nancy hangs out with her former mentor, Clark at his bar and he tells her to be careful. She cannot afford to make another mistake and he hints that she has a messy rep. He wants her to do a psych eval to calm the brass. She also discusses the case and thinks Nicky is pretending to be a mess to take the attention away from Ethan.
A flashback shows Nicky arriving at her mom's, drunk out of her mind. Everyone's worried but Sheila simply looks after Nicky.
At present, Nicky goes to an AA meeting. She thought Chloe and Adam were saving Ethan from her. But she is upset that they messed him up too and now she is going to lose him again. After the meeting, she talks to her friend, Debbie about some orders.
Meanwhile, Matt shows up at the FBI HQs. He tries to ID the agent with Chloe but is forced to leave. At the same time, Chloe meets Agent Olivero and gives him the USB. He refuses to help with Ethan's case and even threatens her. Upset, she rushes off and calls Michelle.
Back to Nicky, she takes a walk with Ken and talks about Adam. He hated that Ethan needed her and hit her when she drank. Ken points out that Adam and Chloe left her instead of helping her. He pushes her to accept that she is angry about it. She goes skinny dipping and remembers the fateful day at the pool.
As for Chloe, she tells Jake about the FBI looking into Gentry and is upset that he knows. She wants him to testify against Gentry but he refuses as they are too powerful. He wishes he could help and she hooks up with him.
She is definitely scheming as Dom gets a tip that the sisters are going to drop a bomb during their testimonies. He lashes out at Nancy who points out that he himself ordered them to drop any leads not involving Ethan.
Back home, Chloe and Nicky break into Adam's briefcase and find the gun. Nicky wants to make themselves suspicious but Chloe begs her to listen to Michelle. She states that Ethan needs them and Nicky is touched. Chloe accepts that she made a mistake cutting Nicky out.
Before the next hearing, Michelle tells Ethan that his next best bet is a plea bargain, despite being innocent. He wishes he had hurt his father and she comforts him. Bill and Jake show up as support and Chloe pretends to be grateful. Catherine brings everyone Chloe has helped and sponsored. Ken advises Nicky to tell her truth and move on.
Nicky takes the stand and paints Adam as a good, disciplined and philanthropic guy. She thought she could change by being with him. She knew Adam was good for Ethan, unlike her, which is why she agreed to give away her custody rights. But when Dom questions her, he uses the burner phone to prove that Ethan is capable of lying. And since he didn't tell Nicky about the gun or the trolling account, she cannot vouch for his innocence.
The tide turns with Chloe's testimony. She pushed Ethan to switch from prosecution to a private law firm and he blamed her for their vapid, pretentious, rich life. He started hitting her. She claims no one knew about the abuse except Jake as they are having an affair. She adds that Jake was angry with Adam. Nicky looks impressed while Jake is upset that he's been thrown under the bus.
He is called up and Michelle treats him like a suspect. We also learn that he was the one Chloe was texting from her burner phone on the night of the murder. He looks sad but accepts his role for Ethan's sake. He refuses to answer every question, including the one asking if he killed Adam.
Michelle's closing statement reminds the jury that there is no murder weapon and no proof that Ethan was in the house on the night of the murder. The prosecution's argument is based on hearsay and assumptions. Michelle points out that Jake is a more likely suspect.
During the break, Nicky cries in the bathroom and Chloe holds her hand. Thankfully, the verdict is that Ethan is not guilty. Nicky looks relieved as she heads back alone. She has the gun in her purse.
She cooks for Ethan while Chloe brings him his things. He apologises for the hate comments and Chloe understands that he was angry with her and Adam. He is worried about Jake but she doesn't care. She asks about the bloody shoes and he explains that he staged it all to cover for her. She is confused by his belief that she killed Adam and The Better Sister Episode 6 comes to a close.
The Episode Review
The Better Sister Episode 6 seems to be the strongest chapter of the show yet. It finally meshes the two different genres of drama and thriller to give a solid blend of a messy court case with a meddling and scheming family. It gives Jake his spotlight while allowing Chloe to finally lean into her manipulative nature.
Nancy's aggressive personality pays off, as her mistakes may lead to her quitting before the truth can be revealed. The tiny clues involving Nicky's drama also add to the murder mystery such as the gun and the abuse allegations. With Chloe and Ethan's confusion regarding the culprit, it seems that Nicky just may have something to do with Adam's murder.
The Gentry misdirect has been as vague as possible and we doubt the show will introduce a complete stranger as the culprit, as the killer reveal won't have the emotional payoff that is expected, thanks to Adam's toxic nature.
Previous Episode
Next Episode
Expect A Full Season Write-Up When This Season Concludes!
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
39 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
FBI storm Colorado terror suspect's home as Trump admin reveals how Biden allowed 'illegal alien' to stay in the US
The home of an illegal alien suspected of committing an atrocious firebomb terror attack at a Colorado pro-Israel demonstration was surrounded by police last night. Mohamed Soliman, 45, unleashed terror on a group of about 30 peaceful protestors in Boulder, using a flamethrower and Molotov cocktails to set eight victims alight. The casualties, which included an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor, were rushed to hospital on Sunday afternoon with varying injuries but at least one was considered critical. Soliman arrived in the United States from Egypt in August 2022, but overstayed his initial tourist visa and was ultimately handed a two-year work permit by the Biden administration, which he also overstayed, DHS sources told Fox News. Now an illegal alien, the Trump administration turned up the heat on Biden overnight, demanding answers as to why Soliman was allowed to remain in the country despite twice breaching the conditions of his visa. 'Suicidal migration must be fully reversed,' White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said. 'The Biden Admin granted the alien a visa and then, when he illegally overstayed, they gave him a work permit. 'Immigration security is national security. No more hostile migration. Keep them out and send them back.' Soliman's latest work permit lapsed in March 2025. The sources said he had filed a claim with the US Citizenship and Immigration Services on September 9, 2022, and the status of that claim remains unclear. Authorities revealed late on Sunday night that the casualty toll had risen from six to eight as the investigation into Soliman's alleged actions continues Authorities revealed late on Sunday night that the casualty toll had risen from six to eight as the investigation into Soliman's alleged actions continues. The victims are now aged between 52 and 88. Two of them had to be airlifted to a burn unit with serious injuries, while the remainder suffered minor injuries. In addition to the Holocaust refugee, who has been described as a 'very loving person', a second victim is a professor at Colorado University. The FBI was quick to describe Soliman's actions as hate motivated and an act of terror. Officers within the FBI's Denver unit arrived at a home linked to the suspect to conduct 'court-authorized law enforcement activity' as part of the investigation. The unassuming El Paso County home was surrounded by officers as confused neighbors noted they didn't know the residents of the address well. 'As this is an ongoing investigation, no additional information is available at this time,' the FBI said. According to the New York Times, a woman was allowed to enter the home which had been identified as belonging to Soliman. And according to CNN, senior officials are closely examining the 45-year-old's mental health history. 'He's shirtless, screaming, used rudimentary (explosive) devices, and stuck around to be arrested,' one source said. The source said Soliman's method of attack did not align with a thought-out plan to cause large scale casualties. But chilling footage clearly demonstrated that Soliman was able to exact terror upon his targets at Pearl Street Mall on Sunday. Witnesses recalled the horror of seeing victims writhe around on the floor in pain as their skin melted off their bodies as Soliman paced up and down shouting vile accusations at the traumatized group. One witness, identified only as Brian, said he watched Good Samaritans rush toward the carnage to offer assistance to the victims. One woman was being wrapped up and attended to on the ground. Another, he said, 'looked like their skin had just melted off their bodies. 'He was very erratic, shouting and spewing terrible things at different people.' During the attack, he was shouting 'Free Palestine' at the Jewish demonstrators. California tourist Alex Osante was eating at an Italian restaurant off Boulder's famed Pearl Street pedestrian mall when he heard a 'big boom' and saw a woman 'on fire from head to toe on fire.' Within minutes, a nearby man ran to his table to grab two bottles of water before rushing back to victims writhing in flames on the ground. 'People were screaming and yelling … tripping over each other,' he told Daily Mail. 'The terrorist had a Molotov cocktail in his hand. He had two other bottles, and he threw a bottle at the group, and a lady caught on fire from head to toe – fully immersed in fire. 'And then the other few people, maybe four others, were also on fire – but not as bad,' he said. He said he saw victims lying on the grass and writhing around while it felt 'way too long' until first responders arrived. Meanwhile, Soliman appeared to taunt the victims while brandishing bottles of alcohol for the Molotov cocktails in each hand as smoke rose from the scene. Wearing only jeans and sunglasses, he yelled: 'End Zionists... they are terrorists' and 'free Palestine'. He also said: 'How many children have you killed?' according to the ADL Center on Extremism. Ed Victor, who was participating in the walk, told CBS he and a group of about 30 people had gathered for their peaceful demonstration on Sunday afternoon as they had every week since the October 7 attacks. He said they would sing songs and share the names of the hostages in Gaza each week. Sometimes they were heckled, often they were praised and clapped by onlookers. Whatever reception they received, they never expected to be attacked. Sharing details of Sunday's chilling events, he said: 'So we stood up, lined up in front of the old Boulder courthouse, and I was actually on the far west side. 'And there was somebody there that I didn't even notice, although he was making a lot of noise, but I'm just focused on my job of being quiet and getting lined up. 'From my point of view, all of a sudden, I felt the heat. 'It was a Molotov cocktail equivalent, a gas bomb in a glass jar, thrown. Av [another marcher] saw it, a big flame as high as a tree, and all I saw was someone on fire.' While another participant who had medical experience rushed in to help the victim, Victor stayed back with her husband, providing him comfort. Street performer Peter Irish described witnessing the horrors of the attack as 'traumatic'. 'I saw the aftermath,' he told CBS Colorado. 'It was like minutes after. I came out, it was chaos, people were writhing on the ground. It was traumatic to watch, to be honest with you. It was chaos.' Jewish human rights organization the Simon Wiesenthal Center told the Boulder attack came on the first day of a religious holiday. 'On the eve of Shavuot, a sacred celebration of Jewish identity and tradition, we are forced yet again to confront a horrifying reality: Being Jewish, supporting Israel, or simply gathering as a community now makes American Jews a target,' the center's CEO Jim Berk said. The incident has attracted an outpouring of support for the community and outrage for the suspect's actions, particularly as the Jewish diaspora in America still reels from the shooting death of two young embassy employees just a fortnight ago. FBI Director Kash Patel called the incident a 'terror attack' while Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said it 'appears to be a hate crime given the group that was targeted.' New York Congressman Ritchie Torres blamed a 'hate movement' for contributing to rising anti-Semitism in the community, while Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino issued a chilling warning that his department would not rest until justice was served.
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Eight injured in ‘flamethrower' attack at pro-Israel rally in Colorado
Six people were injured in Boulder, Colorado, when a man attacked a group calling for the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza using a makeshift flamethrower and an incendiary device. The FBI is investigating the incident as a "targeted terror Attack," with the suspect yelling "Free Palestine" during the assault. The victims, aged 67 to 88, sustained injuries consistent with being set on fire and were hospitalised with injuries ranging from serious to minor. A man was arrested at the scene; authorities expect to hold him accountable, with the FBI treating the Attack as an act of ideologically motivated violence. The Attack occurred at the Pearl Street pedestrian mall and follows a rise in antisemitic violence in the U.S. amid ongoing Israel-Hamas war tensions.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
The Möbius Book by Catherine Lacey review – beyond the bounds of fiction
From her debut, Nobody Is Ever Missing, to 2023's Biography of X, Catherine Lacey's work has tested the forms and fabric of the novel with brilliant unease. In The Möbius Book, her experiment crosses the blurred border of fiction into something else. Life writing, autofiction, memoir? Whatever you call it, The Möbius Book is deeply serious and engrossingly playful, and it lavishly rewards serious, playful attention. A Möbius strip is a length of any material joined into a loop with a half twist. It's an uncanny shape, common and obvious, easily created and yet awkward to describe geometrically. For literary purposes, a Möbius is interesting because there's intricate structure and constraint but no ending. It goes around again, mirrored with a twist. Lacey's book takes this literally, the text printed from both ends, with memoir and fiction joined in the middle. Twin stories experiment with plotlessness and irresolution, while remaining aware of the way fiction attaches itself to linear plot and reverts to romance and quest. Characters find and lose love, find and lose meaning. In one half, two women, Edie and Marie, reminisce about their messy love lives and Christian beliefs in Marie's grotty apartment, ignoring the pool of blood forming outside a neighbour's door. In the other half, the first-person narrator leaves a controlling partner, recalls an ascetic adolescence and struggles to write and think about faith with clever friends during lockdown. Lacey is fascinated by literary form and by the metaphors for literary form, finding fiction at once a constraint and a space for play. Late in the day, the narrator, 'with trusted friends who knew how, got tied up and whipped', as 'a rite in all this, the chaos of having more freedom than I knew what to do with'. It's impossible, in a book so preoccupied with crucifixion, martyrdom and self-denial, not to see the image of the twisted Möbius loop in this friendly bondage. The structures of novels and the iconography of Christian martyrdom are both narrative responses to suffering; both offer freedom through constraint. But for Lacey, suspicious of pleasure, the compatibility of faith and art is questionable. The two modes of the book, which I hesitate to call fiction and memoir because neither is wholly committed to realism or reality, undermine each other, with images and anecdotes reappearing in transmuted form. The shadow of the angry, manipulative ex-partner falls across both, challenging the narrator's memories and intentions although, reassuringly, never inviting the reader's distrust. Edie's recounting of a transformative encounter with a dying, talking dog which speaks of the meaning of suffering (is 'dog' a Möbius rendition of 'God'?) is reprised when the narrator attends to a man lying on the street. In the first-person section, the narrator sees Matisse's painting The Red Studio in New York's Museum of Modern Art, 'the red I imagine on the floor of an otherwise white room', reflecting the blood pooling under a neighbour's door that Edie and Marie in the novel section decide is probably 'paint or something'. As the narrator comments: 'Reality at large has never been my subject, but interiority always has been.' Lacey asks large questions about interiority, especially with regard to the subject of Christian faith. For some readers, it may be an alien idea that the sharply modern intellectual rigour on display here could be combined with religious conviction. How can a narrator who can play off Proust against Gillian Rose seriously expect to find consolation in the old myths about the baby in the manger and the man rising from death? It's a question Lacey acknowledges, partly as unanswerable: 'We want to speak of gnosis and mysticism without our phones listening to us and populating browser ad space with advertisements for Goddess Retreats and bogus supplements and acupuncture mats.' Even so, the narrator attempts an exorcism, employs an 'energy healer', is seduced by ideas about magic numbers. 'Symbolism is both hollow and solid, a crutch, yes, but what's so wrong with needing help to get around?' The question is not rhetorical. There's a deep ambivalence in this book about needing literary and philosophical 'help to get around', about whether we're allowed to want or need art, which is related to the narrator's lack of appetite and consequent emaciation. 'I was afraid of the line between basic needs and cravings, between living and lust.' The fear of slipping from necessity into pleasure shapes the distrust of fiction. What if storytelling is for fun? What if we don't really need it? What if only what's necessary is true, or only truth is necessary? Inevitably, the fictional half of this book refuses many of the satisfactions of a novel. Like a miniature homage to WG Sebald's Austerlitz, the present action is mostly the recounting of past events, so that most of the characters, times and places appear only through a conversation between friends. There are complicated, triangular relationships in the background, between characters who never quite take shape, whose voices are only – and unreliably – recalled. Third-person narrative always calls into being a narrator, another layer of artifice, and here the slippage between present, past and past historic tenses also constantly reminds us that this story is at once engaging and not real. The questions are constant, implicit, teasing, elaborated rather than answered in the dark mirror of life writing. They don't go away. You can go round again. Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion The Möbius Book by Catherine Lacey is published by Granta (£16.99). To support the Guardian buy a copy at Delivery charges may apply.
