Main cast: Chris Makepeace (Jeremy Sacks), Samantha Follows (Candace Ryan), and Page Fletcher (The Hitchhiker)
Director: Gerard Ciccoritti
Hey, the guy from that cute 1980s horror comedy flick Vamp is here! Chris Makepeace went from that movie to… this, so I hope he has indeed made peace with his career trajectory.
One thing I haven’t made peace with is Page Fletcher’s hair. Why oh why hasn’t someone given him a freaking haircut yet? He’s so hot in the opening credits, but now he looks exactly like the hitchhiker that people will quickly drive past on the road.
Anyway, in Power Play, a tyrannical movie producer Paul forces Jeremy, his PA, to stay in the producer’s mansion while that man and his wife Laura go away for the weekend. The producer’s wife asks their new housekeeper Candace to do the same.
Things are already on a rocky start when Jeremy is asked by Laura to surrender his key to the house to Candace. As someone super paranoid and insecure about his position with Paul, as well as someone with pent-up hostility toward his employers, he sees red when he overhears Laura telling Paul just how good Candace is at doing the things that Jeremy is currently doing. Well, not if he can’t help it…
Mr Makepeace does a good with Jeremy, a smarmy guy with temper issues that can be charming when he wants to. Samantha Follows is pretty good too as the apparently naïve newcomer to the industry that Jeremy believes he can manipulate and sabotage. They have some chemistry together, and the episode is well paced, coherent, and pretty entertaining. I know, those are basic must-haves for any show, but this is the fifth season of The Hitchhiker. Just look at some of the crap in this season!
The only issue with this episode is its utter predictability. The episode hammers home that one thing that will be Jeremy’s downfall so heavily early in the episode that one has to be super oblivious in order to be caught off guard by the “twist”.
Still, if predictability were to be the only flaw of this episode, then it can’t be that bad.
