Marcus
Episode 8 of Spinning Out begins with Marcus and his family moving into their new house in a flashback that sees his Father arrested, while our present day bar-man passes on another offer for advancing his skiing career. Alana however, watches from afar and tries to convince him otherwise. At the hospital, Jenn learns her skating career is over. With tears stinging her eyes, she grits her teeth and tells her Father she has no faith given what’s happened to her. Back home she throws her trophies in containers and despite her brother’s best attempts to try and comfort her, Jenn is directionless and unable to accept her newfound reality. Meanwhile an erratic Kat flies off the handle when Carol arrives at her therapy sessions, prompting her to head home and jump on Justin, demanding they make love. However, he manages to stave off her advances for now and heads home himself where he speaks to his Father about Mandy’s pregnancy. Meanwhile, Kat heads to a pawnbrokers and her mental health issues really begin to come out, while back at Dasha’s her surgery appears to be a success and she convinces the delivery man to head in and help her set up the computer. Kat continues to spiral out of control, throwing a party and convincing Justin to lighten up and indulge too. He doesn’t though, and with Sectionals in a week, he struggles to contain everyone arriving and spilling into the hotel room for the party. Justin eventually loses his temper when he sees Kat about to snort prescription drugs and heading downstairs he swallows his pride and convinces Marcus to help him sort Kat out. Serena heads over to Reggie’s after he invites her to a fishing trip but as it turns out, he’s leaving again despite promising to stay in Colorado. With him seemingly leaving the story, it all feels like the past couple of episodes’ drama surrounding his return have felt a bit pointless given what we now know. Back at the hotel room, Justin and Marcus arrive leading to a fight breaking out while Kat sits in the corner of the room, struggling to control herself. As hotel security arrive, Kat falls off the deep-end, screaming for her pills. As the episode closes out, Marcus and Justin are imprisoned where they wind up talking and seemingly settling their differences. Only, Justin manages to be released while Marcus is forced to stay overnight, despite their ski team competing in the morning. Much like before, Spinning Out ignores the ice skating and instead doubles down on the teen drama bubbling away in the background. Between Mandy’s baby problems in hospital and Kat flying off the handle, I do appreciate that there needed to be some respite after the dramatic events last time out but with absolutely nothing ice-skating related this episode, it all feels a little disappointing. Kat’s mental health problems are ultimately the main drive here and as we see her flying off the deep-end, big question marks hang over her future in the sport. Quite what will happen next though remains to be seen but given we only have 2 episodes left, I wouldn’t be surprised if this one ends on another cliffhanger, setting up more drama to ensue in future seasons.
