Sarah Greene Is Giving TV’s Most Badass Performance on ‘Bad Sisters’
Very few folks can pull off the “lob” hairstyle—short for a long bob, popular in the year 2008, nearly extinct in our current day—but when someone can, they really can. A person rocking a lob cut is someone you don’t want to mess with. A strong, powerful woman. This is someone who wakes up every morning and has to make sure every single strand is perfectly set.
Bad Sisters features such a woman: Bibi, played by a killer Sarah Greene. You may recognize Greene from her performance as Paul Mescal’s sweet mother in Normal People, but she’s departed completely from that demeanor in Bad Sisters. Now, she’s a no-bullshit, harsh, man-killing legend with one eye.
Well, almost man-killing. If you know anything about Bad Sisters, you should know exactly what I’m getting at here. Sharon Horgan’s new dark comedy puts an Irish twist on Big Little Lies: a band of four sisters put their heads together to plot the murder of their fifth sister Grace’s (Anne-Marie Duff) terrible husband, “the prick” John Paul (Claes Bang). He’s terrible in little ways (he calls his wife “mammy”) and big ways (he sexually harasses one of the sisters via text), and consistent with his evilness to inspire several murder plots.
(Warning: Some spoilers ahead.)
Before we get into more of the plot, I need to stress again that this show is so good. On top of it being another Sharon Horgan masterpiece (she’s the co-creator and co-star of the series Catastrophe), it’s an Apple TV+ Original. Now, Apple TV+ Originals can be hit or miss, but when an Apple TV+ Original hits, it hits. We’re talking Ted Lasso and Severance levels of greatness. Bad Sisters will drive you nuts, watching failed murder attempt after failed murder attempt—which is all to say, everyone and their four sisters should be talking about it.
Nearly every episode features some sort of plot to kill John Paul—that prick! They poison his dinner, but Grace feeds it to the dog, who dies. They burn down his cabin, but he’s taking a call outside. Now, for the prick’s birthday, Grace plans a paintball outing (How berserk is that?), inviting her sisters to come. They oblige; but only so they can hatch another plan to shoot him in the hole in his head with a frozen paintball.
Each sister has taken an episode to agree to the murder plan. Eva wasn’t sure until John Paul shamed her for buying his daughter a bra. Ursula (Eva Birthistle) committed after John Paul threatened to tell her husband about the affair. Becka (Eve Hewson) signed on, hurt by John Paul backing out on his offer to fund her massage business. But Bibi’s been the only one locked and loaded from the start, the original mastermind behind the kill.
‘Bad Sisters’ Proves How Much Fun It Is to Kill Bad Men
Why? Because, simply put, Bibi is a badass. We need more Bibis in this world; women who are unafraid of murdering cruel men when there’s no other option.
For legal purposes, I must state that I’m kidding. Still, Bibi helps to keep the show grounded in the plan. We all want to see John Paul die—it’s not a spoiler to say he’s in his coffin in a flashback in the first episode, so there’s some success—and if the other sisters were shaky, we’d lose hope. But Bibi consistently has her eyes on the prize. We can trust her to carry out the plan until the end.
There are deeper layers to Bibi, too. JP is the reason she lost her eye—he was behind the wheel, futzing around when he crashed his car, leading her to be impaled with a Mother Mary figurine. She’s insecure about parenting. As someone who is harsh and blunt, Bibi worries she might be like JP when it comes to raising a child. (She is nowhere near his level of harshness.)
The real twist in Bibi’s story, though, comes in the most recent episode, aptly titled “An Eye for an Eye.” She is the final sister to receive a backstory episode—they’ve been following each of the other four, akin to Euphoria’s laser-focused character backgrounds—and it’s worth the wait. We finally get to know more about her wife Nora (Yasmine Akram). And we get to see her take a shot at killing John Paul.
Sharon Horgan on ‘Bad Sisters,’ ‘Catastrophe,’ and Trying Not to ‘Die Alone’
A new plan is set: At JP’s birthday paintball extravaganza, the gals will make room for Bibi to shoot the prick in his “head hole.” Lodging an explosive paintball in his brain won’t work, so Bibi figures she’ll have to freeze the pellets beforehand. But JP, the maniac that he is, forces everyone to aim for his wife Grace, throwing off the logistics of the plan.
Spoilers here: Though she tries to put the plan back on target (no pun intended), Bibi misses JP. While aiming straight for his head, Bibi misses and hits the paintball instructor in the face. More specifically, his eye. Talk about full circle.
It’s a sad moment for Bibi, who panics as soon as she learns what’s happened. But for us at home, it’s a moment to leap from the sofa, scream “NO!!!” and curse Apple TV+ for releasing episodes weekly. Worry not: The sixth episode comes out Friday. What will the Garvey sisters plot next?
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