Last week on American Gigolo, we finally got to have a little fun. A little trauma, too, and still no real nudity, but some fun nonetheless. In our fifth episode, however, there’s no time for that. Remember that missing child, who was just molested by their teacher and also found said teacher’s dead body? Yeah, it’s time to give that a bit more attention.
“Nothing Is Real But the Girl” closed with Michelle waiting up for Julian outside his apartment. “The Escape Wheel” wastes no time getting right to what it is she went to talk to him about: Colin is indeed Julian’s son. For whatever reason, nobody else in the world seems to know this except Colin, which frankly seems inappropriate. What purpose does it serve to tell your teenage son about your gigolo lover and his true paternity, particularly when said gigolo had until recently been in prison for murder? Seems like the kind of thing you wait till he’s 18 for.
In any case, with the news that his child is missing, Julian settles almost immediately into his fatherly instincts. After some brief inner turmoil, he is set straight by the former inmate friend that got him his job, who tells him that he’d walk through hell with boxers doused in gasoline for his kid. This puts Julian into action. He goes to the motel room where Colin had been staying with the teacher and tries the door, which like Michelle telling Colin about Julian and giving him a photo of him, defies all logic. The room is basically a crime scene. He’s obviously not there. There’s not a motel room left in this country that doesn’t immediately lock when closed. It’s near here, however, that Julian runs into a woman who also used to work for the Queen who now appears to own both a strip club and a motel. After a quick tussle with a group of exceptionally handsome gay men addicted to drugs, Julian later spots Colin being dragged into the back of a vehicle.
Behind the scenes of all this, Detective Sunday is still working to put together what exactly connects Julian, the murder he was sent away for, and the murder of the Queen. She turns to Michelle for answers, where Sunday is able to learn that Colin is Michelle’s son and that everything is an interconnected, fucked-up web. Michelle is forced to get her husband Richard (played by Leland Orser) involved, and once at the station, he finally — finally — puts out an Amber Alert for the kid. Why did that not happen on day one of him running away is beyond me. Even with this delay, however, the episode points to Richard being one of the few people who behaves with any sense of rationality. He is supposed to be an extremely powerful, wealthy figure with something potentially shady and dangerous about him, but so far he really just seems like a decent dad who handles the news of his wife’s affair and the fact that his son is a murder suspect with relative decorum without being overly cold. We also learn that he’s really into watches.
Speaking of watches, what this motif rather obviously makes a point of expounding is how central the theme of time is here. Throughout the episode, we are taken back to a period of Colin’s youth where Richard teaches him how to assemble a watch. Once they are done with this project, the two will wear a matching set — no matter what happens, the two of them can always be in sync, always confident that they’re existing under the same metaphysical laws. “But doesn’t everyone experience time the same way?” young Colin asks his father. “Not everyone moves through time at the same speed,” he replies. One person who does not seem to have the privilege of moving through time at the same speed as everyone else, of course, is Julian. It’s not even the 15 years of prison that he struggles with, but rather all of the memories of his life prior. We have yet to escape from the wistful flashbacks of him and Michelle prancing on the beach, or whatever.
Michelle, however, isn’t able to escape them either. In one scene, she takes a bite of an In-N-Out Burger and is immediately brought back to a memory of a post-sex argument with Julian. In the fight, she keeps insisting that he “just be there with her,” not putting on any sort of gigolo persona. “Where does your pimp think you are? Are you on call and you have to go off and be some other person?” she throws at him, refusing to acknowledge that she herself is married and previously hired him. There continues to be little likable about Michelle. For someone who willingly had a child with a sex worker, she sure has a lot of disdain for them.
Meanwhile, Julian continues to be painted in a more endearing light. His immediate commitment to fatherhood is commendable, at least. Moreover, as he navigates the motels with his former colleague, we further see how adept he is at moving through different parts of society. He’s able to make $10,000 sleeping with elite women at night and is equally comfortable sitting on the curb drinking a Slurpee with a woman in a pair of Pleaser heels the following day. And yet there is also the sense that Julian never really thinks too hard about what to do next. He’s haunted by the past, yes, but he appears to allow the present to simply come to him in waves. Hate to say it, but he’s exactly the kind of guy you could frame for a murder. This is, unfortunately, exactly how the episode closes — with Julian getting arrested on murder charges against the teacher. Once again, all the trouble in the world lands on Julian. But hey, at least he looks pretty slick while it happens.
Hustlin’
• What the fuck happened to the dog in the last episode? Did it live? I need to know!
• Continually, Rosie O’Donnell as Detective Sunday makes this show. Her lines give me something to think about week after week. She’s right — it is hit or miss with Bugles.
• Just a little fun fact: Paula Jai Parker, the actress who plays Julian’s former colleague Diamond, was the voice of the mom in the Disney cartoon The Proud Family and the 2022 reboot, The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder.
