Dope Thief has premiered with the first two episodes this week on Apple TV+, and we're already enjoying every minute of the new series! If you're looking for a recap of the episode 1, "Jolly Ranchers," then look no further. Read on below to know what happens in the premiere. SPOILERS BELOW.
Dope Thief episode 1 recap
The cold open begins on a bleak suburban street, fairly quiet, all things considered. Ray and Manny, two hustlers who have been friends since their time in juvie, sit in the front seats of a van while scoping a decrepit house with binoculars. The way that they speak to one another implies that they have some official authority, denoted also by the visible letters "DEA" printed on their hats and shirts, and the police badges strung around their necks.
But something seems off. They don't appear to have any backup with them, their van isn't kitted out like the typical recon-vehicle in sting scenes. When they raid the house they go in alone, forcing everyone there to lay face down in the living room while they raid the place for money and drugs. It's only once they take off from the house in their van that the show confirms they just robbed those guys blind, if the title hadn't already tipped you off.
After the intro sequence the audience is introduced to Ray's foster-mom, Theresa, a troubled elderly woman who is dealing with a nebulous yet-to-be-identified illness, indicated only by the pile of medical bills that Ray points out, which she seems to be ignoring. Ray says a brief affectionately-antagonistic "hello" before heading upstairs and loading up his gear for that day's work (the gear is mainly bullets). Before he can leave, his foster-mom asks if he'll walk her crusty white dog; he takes the dog outside just as his ride is pulling up. In the driver's side sits Manny, with a person known as "Rick" riding shotgun, who we learn is a recently-freed convict that Ray had made friends with during his own time incarcerated.
The boys all get lunch together before work and we are clued in on the impetus for the show: Ray and Manny are trying to make a living. They go after small-fry dealers who are too weak to fight back and too guilty to call the cops. Ray emphasizes the importance of his own ethics in his job of deceit, "Just because we're not real cops doesn't mean we're not professional." Even if Ray threatened a teenager with a gun while they were lying face-down on the floor, it doesn't mean he can't feel bad about it.
Rick tells them that if they move to his turf they'll get more bang for their buck, and so we are confronted with the inciting incident: Ray needs more money, so they'll case a house out of town and hopefully get two or three-times as much money out of it, and we then see a few shots of Ray casing a farmhouse in Rick's territory.
At this point in the episode, there is a narrative lull, and we get more of Ray's history and insight into his personal life. We learn he's been sober for some years, regularly attends AA meetings, and that at some point in his past, he was innocent, even pure. We see him sneakily watching a girls' gymnastics meet, not lasciviously, but with interest and longing.
The show cuts back to him having a meltdown in his bathroom, where he fishes a single beer out of the toilet tank, chugs it, then frantically shakes down the rest of the room trying to find more. He eventually recovers a small stash of weed and lights up, at which point we are treated to the second half of his flashback. He is suddenly a teenager again, sharing a blunt with the girl from the gymnastics meet. We cut again to a car's interior, where Ray puts his hand on the girl's knee just as the hood of his car crumples into the side of someone else's.
We cut to their prep for the second hit. Rick takes a hit of something and offers it to Ray, who declines. Ray warns him not to fire his revolver inside the cook house because of the volatile chemicals which likely fill the air, then they raid the rambler from either end. Ray takes the guy in the kitchen by surprise, and while they're busy cuffing him, a woman shows up and can tell they're not feds, and threatens them with her own pistol while screaming for "Jack." Rick panics and shoots the one they already had in cuffs, and the woman fires on him at the same time he fires on her, they both go down.
Jack bursts through the door with a shotgun and blasts the Ray before Manny takes him down, knocking a can of gas onto an open flame in the process. They are suddenly alone in an empty kitchen with three cooling bodies and a growing fire. Ray insists they look for the money before they leave, even as fire begins to spread in the lab and kitchen. In all the kerfuffle the woman (we learn later her name is Mina) goes missing from her place on the floor, and they realize she might not be dead yet. Ray and Manny finally decide to get the hell out of dodge, soaking the bodies in acetate in an attempt destroy their evidence before the farmhouse goes up in flames.
A gloved hand picks up Ray's abandoned walkie-talkie on ground outside the burning property. In their haste, Ray and Manny hit a deer on their getaway route. When they get out to move it, a voice pipes over the remaining radio. Manny tells Ray the radio only works within a half-mile, so the only reason it's working now is because the one the he dropped is in the car tailing them down the country road. The voice tells them that they don't have to make this an issue, they can just drop their bags of stolen dope and cash out the car door and be done with it. The radio fades out and Ray tosses it out the window as they turn off onto an exit.
The scene cuts back to the house that was just engulfed in flames, which is now swarming with paramedics. The woman from before is loaded onto a hospital gurney, leaving an eye-witness alive.
We then cut to a shot of a hotel room where Ray is pulling bullets out of his torso with tweezers while Manny looks on. We cut again to the hospital where the Mina is awaiting surgery, two federal officers have arrived just in time to interrogate her. She communicates through pen and paper that their lab had been raided by fake DEA agents, and that this act constitutes a war.
We then learn why Mina was able to tell that the dope thieves weren't real agents: she herself was undercover. She asks on her pad of paper where Jack is, to which one of the investigating agents responds, "you shouldn't have been out there with no support." Mina insists one more time before going into surgery that her fellow agents keep her cover.
We cut back to the hotel room where Manny and Ray are counting their earnings. They both know that their days are numbered, with Manny blaming Ray for his underdone recon. They emphasize to themselves that they're not killers, that nothing has seemed real up till now, and only when their lives seem over are they receptive to their reality.
Dope Thief releases new episodes Fridays on Apple TV+.