Devious Maids Season 2 Premiere Recap: Mystery Men

1999
A young boy named Ethan watches as a man and woman argue outside his home. When the woman slaps the man and storms away, a second woman grabs Ethan and brings him outside, where the two join the man in the car and chase after the woman. They quickly track down the woman, who turns out to be Ethan’s mother Dalia, and hear how she wants to confess to being involved in a murder with the man (her husband Nicholas) and the second woman (their housekeeper Opal). Dalia is distraught at the circumstances facing her family and falls off the bridge the group was arguing on – but was she pushed? Or did she have a little help in plummeting to her death?

The authorities arrive and Nicholas, Opal, and Ethan all pledge that Dalia jumped, with Nicholas mentioning his wife’s history of mental illness.

2014
An adult Ethan waits in his home with Opal, as they’re expecting the arrival of Nicholas’ girlfriend of three months, the woman he wants to propose to and bring into their lives. Opal questions whether this woman will love Nicholas after she finds out what they were involved with, but before the two can have a talk about their torrid past, Nicholas’ new girlfriend Marisol arrives. The following day, Marisol, Zoila, and Carmen attend Rosie’s immigration review; after spending three months behind bars, Rosie’s filed for asylum and receives it when her lawyer mentions the possibility of retaliation from the drug cartel that killed his client’s husband. The judge orders Rosie’s immigration hearing in six months and after thanking her friends for being there, she heads off to see Spence. Over at the Westmore’s, though, the two, who are debating whether to go to Paris or Porta Vellarta for their vacation, believe that Rosie’s been in Mexico this entire time, a guilty Spencer saddened that his (former?) flame hadn’t returned any of his calls.

Adrian and Evelyn arrive home after spending the past three months reconnecting in South America. Though they’re expecting dinner guests at 7:00, Adrian is more concerned about their new Lebanese maid Fatima, someone who doesn’t fit his definition of what’s attractive. However, Evelyn reminds him that she’s there to clean, not to be ogled, and warns him not to ruin the good thing they’ve built recently. At the Delatour residence, Genevieve is still wearing all-black and grieving the loss of Phillipe, even though she now has his money at her disposal. Zoila tries to get her out of the house and on the road to moving on, telling her that life goes on and she should to, only to see that Remi wrote his mother a letter. Genevieve reads it and noticeably becomes affected by what was written, but instead of sharing, she tells Zoila she’s going out to shop. That night, Carmen and Alejandro arrive home from their latest red carpet jaunt and while she can’t help but gush at the experience, she upsets Odessa by demanding Alejandro up her clothing budget and ordering her friend to get her a martini to go along with the one Alejandro asked for. Though Odessa brings Alejandro his drink, she refuses to serve Carmen, telling her friend that she’s not her boss.

Genevieve heads to the Moondust Motel where she finds Valentina, home from Africa. In Remi’s letter, he mentioned how the two broke up and Valentina explains that when he said he wanted to stay for another year after working three-months of 12-hour days, she asked him what it would mean for her career. When he dismissed fashion as a viable career option and something important to Valentina, she came home and didn’t tell her mother about it, since she’s still upset at Zoila pushing Remi to Africa in the first place. While Genevieve convinces Valentina to come stay with her, the Powells have their dinner party, where the guests admire Evelyn’s ruby necklace Adrian purchased in Argentina. A knock on the door brings four masked men into the Powell residence, men who open black bags in front of each of the guests and confiscate their jewelry, including Evelyn’s necklace. When Adrian stands up and tries to talk them down, he gets knocked to the floor by one of the assailants.

Rosie surprises Peri by visiting the Westmore home and after explaining where she was for the past three months, asks about Spence. Peri says that he’s working and that since she hired a new maid, there’s no position for Rosie, but Rosie already has something in mind that she wants to do. Over at Nick’s, Marisol recounts her meeting the handsome man while shopping for a book and Opal tells her that she should shower and change before dinner, seeing as how Dalia used to get dressed up for her husbad and how he enjoyed that. The Powells meet with the authorities after the home invasion and while Evelyn seems to be keeping it together, Adrian has lost it a bit, trying to change the locks himself and claiming to see shifty men in the faces of trees. With Fatima having quit, the police advise the Powells to hide a bodyguard to calm Adrian down and while Evelyn warms to the idea, Marisol gets out of the shower and finds a pair of diamond earrings on her dresser. However, when she shows them off to Nick, thinking that he was the one who gifted them to her, it’s revealed that Opal was the one behind the mystery box and that the earrings once belonged to Dalia.

Marisol knows that Opal did that to make her upset Nicholas, but Opal explains that she did it because Nick isn’t ready to love again after losing his former wife and that Dalia committed suicide by jumping off a bridge in front of him. Carmen makes something of a scene at a red carpet event when she refuses to come out of the limo she shared with Alejandro, citing the fact that she feels disrespected by Odessa refusing to treat her like she’s the matriarch of the home. Even though Alejandro thinks Carmen should be doing her own laundry anyway, he acquiesces to her demands when she leverages her status against him. While Evelyn learns that Adrian has hired handsome former Massad agent Tony Bashir as their new bodyguard, causing her to trip when she sees his face for the first time, Peri brings good and better news to Spence. The good? Rosie’s in the United States. The better? She herself is pregnant.

The following morning, Odessa deliberately turns on the garbage disposal to make Carmen’s charity ball-related hangover worse and refuses to make her “boss” a ham and cheese omelet. Carmen believes that jealousy is the root of the conflict and when Odessa hears this insinuation, she quits on the spot. Alejandro, understandably, freaks out when hearing that his good friend and best worker has decided to bolt and lashes out when Carmen suggests they just bring someone else into their household; it wouldn’t take much for anybody not in their camp to see that they’re not a happy couple and Alejandro threatens to demote Carmen back to maid if she doesn’t make things right. At the Delatour’s, Valentina meets adult Ethan, Genevieve’s new pool boy, and has her first encounter with her mother since she ran away to the Congo to be with Remi. Though she gives Zoila a hug, Valentina refuses to come home and live with her again, saying that she’s not scared of her mother anymore. However, Genevieve is terrified of Zoila and Valentina is forced to find a place without her mother’s employer to fall back on.

That night, Adrian wakes up with a start, which Evelyn chalks up to Ethiopian food and Percocet. A shirtless Tony rushes in to check on things and when he and Evelyn head to the kitchen to make Adrian some warm milk, she confesses that she’s stayed with her husband because of how fascinating he is yet the weakness that he’s showing following the invasion is weakening that fascination. After telling Tony to wear a shirt from now on, she goes back upstairs, just as Marisol tells Nick that she knows about Dalia killing herself. He admits that he worried that Marisol would be scared off by the revelation and implies that he blames himself, but Marisol assures him that it’s probably for the best that Opal admitted what happen, stating that the most important thing is that they don’t keep secrets from one another again.

The men who raided the Powell home sell off their haul and hand money out to the homeless on the street, with Evelyn’s necklace being too valuable to hock; as a result, they gift it to a homeless woman they encounter in their travels. Rosie gets a visit from Spence and tells him that she thought he was angry with her for not agreeing to marry him. He dismisses the idea that Peri could’ve been behind the arrest and confesses that his wife is pregnant, causing a distraught Rosie to pull away. While in prison, she did a lot of soul searching regarding whether being with Spence would be good for her, but she takes this as a sign that she should stay away from him at all costs. Carmen brings Odessa a bottle of vodka as a peace offering and learns the real reason behind the riff between the two; rather than it being about Odessa’s jealousy, Odessa is feeling like her friendship with Carmen is deteriorating. Carmen comes home from red carpets and events gushing about what she saw and doesn’t seem to care about what Odessa is doing, but the two patch things up and decide to share a drink together.

While Peri goes to the fertility doctor, needing to become pregnant ASAP, Remi Skypes Valentina, claiming to be worried about her after their very quick breakup. She gets off the phone to go to a job interview with Evelyn Powell, while Opal and Ethan look on at Nick and Marisol embracing outside their limo. However, Opal claims that Marisol won’t be here much longer.

Additional thoughts and observations:
-“My grief is sincere. The fact that black is slimming is merely coincidental.”
-“I can’t be selfish. The US economy needs me.”
-“That’s Oscar Wilde.” “And this is heavy.”
-“I respect you plenty. Now get your butt out of this car.”
-“Oh, you sounded less attractive on the phone.”
-So, we’re all in agreement that Opal has an unhealthy attraction/attachment to Nicholas and is making sure that he can never be happy with anyone but her? And that Dalia definitely didn’t jump off the bridge? And that Ethan is either going to be the weak link, exposing what really happened that night later this season, or someone so psychologically damaged by what he saw that he’s the one to be afraid of? We are? Good.
-Spence fully believes Peri when she drops big news like a pregnancy? And doesn’t demand to see a test or anything of the sort? He’s not especially conflict-friendly, so I can see him not wanting to start something by questioning the paternity, but this is a life-changing announcement and you’d think he’d make sure before telling Rosie.
-I’m not usually a fan of flashback cold opens, but I thought this episode’s opening scene was especially creepy and made for a solid kick off to the second season mystery. Bonus points for the bookend-y final scene and having Ethan infiltrate the Delatour residence as the new pool boy, the latter of which added to how unnerving that entire storyline was and could be in the future.
-A Beverly Hills Robin Hood? I like it. We don’t have any suspects, though, since word travels fast around town and it doesn’t mean anything that the robbers knew of the dinner party.
-Marisol’s hair is kind of fab, no?
-I love the idea of Valentina working for Evelyn. It shifts the dynamic of the show just enough without completing altering it beyond recognition. Plus, it’s a way to keep the Powells tied to the maids without things getting too complicated/unbelievable and I think it should breed some interesting tension between Genevieve and Evelyn.
–Here’s the work that Nick gave to Marisol during the episode, whose title is also the title of this episode. Very fun for a show like this to include literary tie-ins, as last season had the fairy tale book at the Powell’s.
-Oh, Carmen. You are so beautiful, but I wouldn’t have blamed Odessa for clawing your eyes out. A tiny bit of fame (at the expense of a romantic relationship, not anything related to her talent, mind you) and she acts like she’s Jennifer Lopez? C’mon. She might want to think about using hew newfound public recognition to get her singing career off the ground instead of stepping on people who care about you.
-I take it Valentina is the one who broke up with Remi, hence his attitude during the Skype session. Could she have been looking for a way out of Africa and used the career put down as an escape hatch? Also, unless Drew Van Acker was filming something else at the time of production, I don’t understand the choice to sideline him like this.
-Suspicions I wrote in my notes that were later disproven: Adrian being behind the gunmen, Opal trying to turn Marisol into Dalia. Crackpot suspicion: Ethan pushed Dalia off the bridge.
-So, Tony’s hot. Let’s start a prayer circle for Evelyn to get some lovin’, because she’s in desperate need.
-I hope the show integrates more scenes where the maids bounce off of one another. Some of the strongest material in season one was when they sat around and gossiped or when at least two teamed up together, so here’s hoping the show doesn’t stretch itself too much and lose what made the first season so good.
-As with last season, I won’t be recapping the rest of the season, but I’ll for sure post sneak peek videos and I might check in sometime midseason. Additionally, a finale recap is almost a definite, but please keep up with the coverage this season. It should be a fun season and let’s all enjoy it together.
-Next week on Devious Maids: Carmen feels threatened when an old flame from Alejandro’s past resurfaces, while Rosie begins a new job with a dysfunctional family, Adrian fails to protect Evelyn in a dangerous situation, and Peri threatens Spence so he’ll stay with her.