Welcome to Chippendales
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Welcome to Chippendalesis television at its slickest.
What are these guys even talking about?
Its not life and death.
Its just a strip club!
In Leeches, though, the show turns a dark corner.
Backbiting at the club is different from humiliation on national TV.
Hating your enemies is different from burning down their houses.
Somehow, it actuallyislife and death now.
The man-sters body parts fly hilariously through the air.
There are original songs and a production value to rival Broadway.
The crowd loves it.
Even Steve loves it.
Sadly, Nicks not there to witness the adoration for himself.
But Nick cant help himself.
He simply must remind Steve that Hunkerstein was the number that killed their partnership in Los Angeles.
When Steve proffers an olive branch, Nick needles away at his old boss.
In search of an apology?
What is it that Nick is hoping to accomplish in this moment?
He goes out into the alley, where a wintry mix is gently falling (snow two ways).
Steve has never seen snow before.
New York is the only place he has been outside of California and Bombay.
Is this how men with the emotional intelligence of adolescent boys heal?
No, of course not.
Its how they bully each other under the pretense of play.
Nick pelts Steve with snowballs until Steve throws him against a wall.
Still, theres much to be excited about in Steves life.
Nicks an unrelenting bully, but he is going to make them both a ton of cash.
And back in L.A., Irene has made French toast for breakfast.
And, oh yeah, shes pregnant.
Show me the receipts.
(Alas, it happened.)
We dont do things like this, she tells him, seemingly unaware of why Otis quit.
The first scene of the first episode ofWelcome to Chippendalesopens with a racist assault on Steve.
Steve is a complicated man, clearly, but not a blinkered one.
Still, thats a personal consideration, and this is business.
Is it Nick, whose creative tunnel vision threatens the clubs bottom line?
Not that things are smooth sailing in the Big Apple either.
Halfway through Leeches, it seems possible that infighting and insult-hurling are simply endemic to Chippendales.
Nick and Denise are as close as ever, but Denise and Bradfords relationship is frosty.
Plus Nick and Bradford are a PSA for how much PDA is too much in an intimate office setting.
Steve tells Nick to quit the moniker.
Nick responds by calling himself Mr. Chippendales more frequently and loudly on every channel on the dial.
And Steve is predictably terrible on TV stiff, timorous, ill at ease.
His answers are short and involve explaining to the host that people generally keep their keys on key rings.
Steves not Mr. Chippendales.
Monopoly with a Rolex instead of a monocle a silent figure who knows where the money is.
Its a mercy that the show doesnt subject us to the entire painful five-minute segment.
In the aftermath, Ray does his best to raise Steves spirits, but its impossible.
Plus its not really this shows MO.
When things get bad for Steve, he prefers to make them worse.
The Electric Tomato owner calls Steve an immigrant, which he means as an insult.
For reasons so far unexplained, though, Ray does it.
He lights the match or chucks the Molotov cocktail or damages the gas line or whatever.
Was he not broken when he started handing out whites only cards?
