Dope Thief has premiered with the first two episodes on Apple TV+. After leaving us on a cliffhanger in the pilot "Jolly Ranchers," with Ray and Manny cooped up in a hotel, knowing that their recent robbery victim may only be a few steps behind them, Dope Thief was all too keen to deliver on its promise of high-octane serial drama. If you're looking for a recap of episode 2, look no further! SPOILERS BELOW.
The second episode, "Bat Out of Hell," opens with a shot of Manny and Ray watching their van burn in a ditch. After taking the night to recoup and strategize, they burn the van and throw the license plates and the murder weapon, Ray's pistol, into a nearby river. We see in a flashback that this is the same river that they would stand over as kids, the show cuts between shots of them as teenagers throwing sticks and shots of their adult selves throwing the license plates.
Getting to the safe house
Ray barges through Theresa's door, she asks him if he's high, "I can't just pick up and go to Atlantic City. I'm an old lady!" She also says she has a meeting with a lawyer tomorrow afternoon, and just paid them a retainer (the ten grand she had asked him for). He needs her to get out, can't tell her why, and won't take no for an answer. He tells another lie to make the story more convincing, saying he won a radio contest and the prize will expire if Theresa doesn't leave tonight. One thing is for certain: he is not going anywhere until he knows his Ma is safe.
He packs fresh supplies into a duffel, along with an old arm cast, sized for a teenager, covered in signatures. He evaluates it for a moment and then stuffs it into the bag and heads back downstairs, while hollering to Theresa that what he does is actually "the opposite" of selling dope.
He finally convinces her to pack up and go to Atlantic City if he promises to dog-sit Shermie and meet with the lawyer in her stead. By this point we still don't know precisely what the lawyer is for, but during the exchange it comes out that it is for his incarcerated father, who has had yet to make an appearance in the show.
Stowing the Goods
Ray drops off Theresa and heads to a nicer part of town. He rings the doorbell and is welcomed into a small mansion by a young Vietnamese mother, who offers him breakfast. He sits down at the table among a gaggle of children of varying ages while their grandmother stirs soup on the stove, before eventually being taken to the back study by Son, his connection to the criminal underworld. He evaluates Ray's holdings from their most recent hit, and tells him that the aloe vera bottles they took are filled with liquid meth, which only needs to be converted to crystal for selling.
We are also given another small but significant detail: Son had asked Ray and Manny to take out his competition in the past, flipping the product they stole, cornering the local drug market to his supply.
The two of them suss out who their potential weak points are in maintaining secrecy, Ray mentions that Rick, who died in the previous episode, was only recently paroled. Son says he would be "point A" for anyone looking for Ray or Manny, then chastises him for not getting rid of the body, but Ray is focused on the sinister Bostonian from the walkie-talkie.
The next scene, Ray painfully tends to his wounds. This scene is interspersed with a flashback from the first time Ray stepped onto the bus to juvie, where he met Manny for the first time. We see in this scene that he is wearing the cast from the attic, but it is completely devoid of signatures. When he sits down, Manny begins to doodle on the cast, and when we cut back to Ray's bathroom, he is touching the same arm, now tattooed with Manny's drawing.
He and Manny head to the storage locker to divide up their cash. Manny seems reluctant to continue and soft-pitches Ray about giving it all back. He doesn't take the suggestion seriously and continues sorting the money into equal-sized luxury suitcases. He tells Manny that if anything happens to him, he has to give Ray's suitcase to Theresa.
While they sort the money they talk about what happened at the meth lab, with Ray commenting that the house "didn't seem like [Rick's] turf," prompting Manny to ask if someone had sent Rick to them, as a pawn. He then points out that Rick was incarcerated in the same place as Ray's dad, Bart. The camera lingers on Ray's face, and it's clear this hadn't occurred to him.
Tying Up Loose Ends
At the prison, Bart and Ray sit on opposite sides of a plexiglass pane, Bart with a bathrobe over his clothes. Ray passes a pack of Newports around the plexiglass and Bart pockets them, after which point Ray begins to grill him about his own reputation inside of the prison. Ray tries to figure out if Rick and his dad had crossed paths at any point, Bart tells him he worries too much.
We know by this point that Ray's childhood had been traumatic and abusive, but during this conversation Ray reveals some actual details, that Bart held "Ma" (a name he calls Theresa but could also refer to his biological) by the back of the head and told Ray to hit her when he was less than 10 years old. Bart denies the memory, asking why he would do a thing like that, saying memory can be unreliable. If you or someone you know is ever confused about the definition of "gaslighting," show them this scene.
Bart eventually comes clean, saying that once he may have let Ray's actual profession slip during an AA meeting (a sacred space), and that a white guy named Danny Loebsack who had been in the meeting with him just recently got paroled. Bart elaborates that he ran with a crew called "Eden's Gardeners," but that he has no idea where they're posted up now.
Ray and Manny canvass rural Pennsylvania for people named, "Loebsack," eventually finding an overgrown farm property filled with loose junk, they round a corner to see two motorcycles gleaming in the driveway. Ray cautiously enters the house, kitted out in his usual phony-DEA costume, and finds three residents inside, all dead, two in the bedroom, one in the bathtub.
He runs outside to get Manny and sees him standing over another body, this one with his hand tacked to a stump with an axe. Manny calls Sherry and tells her to get out of the house right away, and as their voices raise out of panic, shots from a yet-invisible assailant begin to pelt their car. The fire fight ends in two more dead bikers.
They search the bodies and find a cell phone. At the car wash while they're getting the car back to a respectable state, Ray answers the phone and puts on a Bostonian accent to try and trick the caller, who sounds like the same voice from the walkie-talkie. The caller tells him to find Raymond Driscoll. They deduce that they have until Mr. Scary Voice realizes that the biker is dead to get the hell out of dodge.
On the Run Again
We get another scene of the federal agents B-plot, Mina has survived surgery but is still unable to talk. They two male agents with her tell her she's being taken off the case, that their operation is blown and they need to get it under control before they go any further. Mina tries to protest through text-to-speach on an iPad, but they shut her down. She tells them to keep her cover regardless, that she is a criminal in custody as far as the public is concerned, and they agree.
Ray goes back to his apartment to grab Shermie and his records and hunkers down in his storage locker. He wakes to the sound of the phone ringing, and is caught out by the voice, who now knows he is not his guy Elden. Scary Voice does a threatening monologue over the phone, telling him that he is going to kill Manny, and that there's nothing Ray can do about it.
Manny doesn't answer the phone and his house is abandoned when Ray pulls up, both doors slightly ajar. When he comes back outside he spots two gangsters in a car, watching him. He breaks into a run, the resulting chase ending with a biker crushed between a dumpster and a semi truck in an alleyway. Ray walks away unscathed and makes his way to the lawyer's office while calling Manny, who still doesn't answer.
Ray arrives late, just as the lawyer, Michelle, is planning on heading out for the night, she graciously lets him into the office anyway and comforts him while he breaks down about Manny's whereabouts. He eventually calms down and begins to talk about his father's case, and we learn exactly why Theresa needed a lawyer for Bart: compassionate release. Bart has cancer, the medical bills on Theresa's counter were his, and with COVID, Michelle thinks it could be the perfect storm to get him out early so he can spend time with his loved ones.
Dope Thief releases new episodes Fridays on Apple TV+.