Oh boy! Tess is having a really bad night. In fact, everyone’s having a weird night and things get crazy at the restaurant. What’s the best course of action? Drugs, drinking, and dancing. Here’s our recap of “Weird Night”!
Tess’s day starts out great! She’s getting ready for her big date with Jake and wears a matching bra and panty set because she wants to be prepared. After she heads to work, she meets Santos and cashes his check for him since he can’t do it himself (he’s undocumented).
She runs into Sasha outside the restaurant, and he’s wearing a very nice suit.
“What’s the occasion? You look straight.”
Sasha tells her that he has a review with Howard, and this could be the moment he moves from back waiter to server. It’s a big day for him, too! Those two are super connected this episode.
Still, everything is really looking up, but then Tess goes inside to start her shift…
Jake isn’t there. Someone is filling in for him that night, and everything goes downhill. Next, she can’t find her shoes. Will gives her a pair of Crocs because she won’t be out on the floor tonight at all. The dishwasher is broken, so she’s going to have to help do all that by hand.
“Some days you gotta make lemons out of lemonade.”
Tess points out that’s not the saying, but Will doesn’t care at all. His night is screwed up, too. He’s still pretty prickly about how she turned him down for a date after sleeping with him a couple of times, but he mentions he’ll be bringing a girl to Ari’s show that night, so it looks like he’s moved on.
As she’s at the dish washing station, Scott brings her something new to try. It’s octopus and delicious, but he makes the comment that the restaurant is stuck in the 80s, and Howard will never put anything new on the menu.
Ari turns up next, and she’s super pissed at Howard because she’s going to be late for her show. That’s when she pulls out a pill and takes it. She tells Tess that it makes her stay happy for the guests. Tess asks if she can have one, too.
This is where the self-destruction spiral really takes off.
Tess is an absolute mess. She’s methodically cleaning silverware on one of the tables in the restaurant when Sasha approaches her. She asks him how it went, and he tells her that the meeting lasted two minutes. Howard said he didn’t have the time, and Sasha is defeated. Tess tells him to talk to Howard, who is coming there way, but when Sasha tries to talk to him, Howard shuts him down again.
Then he points Tess back into the kitchen and tells her to never wear those shoes on the floor again. He’s being a real dick tonight.
Tess starts to come down from the half of a pill she took from Ari and is drinking all the water she can find. That’s when one of the dishwasher guys throws a wet towel at her. Scott breaks up the confrontation as the guy is going off on her in Spanish. It turns out that Santos getting her to cash that check was a big no-no. Since the guys are undocumented, the head dishwasher always cashes their checks and takes a little off the top himself.
It’s a pretty crappy thing to do, but Scott tells her to apologize to the guy, which she does, grudgingly.
“Fuck this night.”
Then things get super crazy after Tess takes the other half of her pill.
Becky shows up at the restaurant, demanding to see Howard, and smashes a guest’s glass. She wants to know why she’s being transferred, and it super obvious that Howard has been sleeping with her. It causes a huge scene in the restaurant, to which Howard says, “Weird night.” to Tess when he comes back inside.
After they leave for the night, Tess is walking with Sasha and Heather. Sasha is complaining about Howard not hiring any diverse staff as servers, and Heather points out that she’s a server. That’s when Sasha tells her that she can’t be all that black if she went to Georgetown. This is super rude and racist, and Sasha’s lashing out because he’s pretty much lost everything with Howard turning down his promotion.
Heather leaves them, and Tess tells him that she should go. She’s got her final tests tomorrow, and she really doesn’t need to be out partying late. Then she changes her mind.
“I don’t want to.”
“What do you want?”
“To feel better.”
“How fucked up do you want to get?”
They get to Ari’s DJ gig, and it’s time for drugs, drinking, and dancing…and really bad decisions regarding Will. Tess takes more drugs from Sasha, dances with Sasha, tries to dance with Scott who calls her unprofessional, she halluncinates Jake, and then makes eyes at Will, leading to them having sex AGAIN.
She tells him it’s a mistake and she’s sorry. Yeah, this will end well. Honestly, he should have known better since she was so messed up, but sigh.
At the end, they make it to Ari’s apartment. She comes from money and it’s huge. She’s drinking water straight out of the facet, and Sasha continues his binge. Somehow, she ends up in the shower with Sasha. He’s naked and she’s shaving his legs while she remains dressed.
They talk about Jake, and she said she hoped…
“Hope is the ugliest word.”
Later, they are on the balcony, talking some more. Sasha is in a very bad space. That meeting with Howard was his future. That promotion and having Howard sponsor his visa would have changed his life because right now he has:
“No wife. No server. No America.”
When Tess tells him that he would run that restaurant better than Howard, Sasha stops her with a very hard truth:
“Tomorrow Jake will be back and you won’t care about me or Howard or anything else.”
“Fine.”
After she goes back inside, you can see the devastation on Sasha’s face. While Tess is going through some disappointment with Jake and feeling alone coming to the city, Sasha’s really hitting rock bottom. His future is in total jeopardy.
When Tess comes back outside, she can’t find Sasha. She calls his name and looks over the edge and sees him on a balcony below them.
The scene changes to the hospital, and Sasha is awake and bruised, but tells Tess to get in the bed with him. Right before “Weird Night” ends, Tess asks if he fell…
“What do you think, Baby Monster?”
—-
That was a wild ride, and next week is the season finale! It looks like Will is going to have a run in with Tess about what happened between them, and Jake is back! So is Simone, and I really need this to come to head because what’s the deal with those two?
Sweetbitter airs Sundays at 8/7c on STARZ.