Bad Monkey Episodes 1 & 2: Recap & Ending Explained – What do Yancy and Rosa find at Eve’s Miami house?

Apple TV’s new black comedy series, Bad Monkey, comes from the minds of the streamer’s most popular creator, Bill Lawrence (Ted Lasso, Shrinking), and stars Vince Vaughn as an off-duty detective who gets too involved in a case that includes a severed arm. Also starring Natalie Martinez, Michelle Monaghan, Jodie Turner-Smith, and Meredith Hagner, the show takes a glossier, over-the-top approach to its darker undertones, making it sort of inconsistent in its sensibilities. Episodes 1 & 2 of Bad Monkey feel like they are not too eager to establish the central conceit properly, making the series feel like it wishes it was smarter than it is.

That said, some of the internal banter between these weird, eccentric characters make it watchable allowing you to get invested in the case nonetheless. Please note, the article contains spoilers as I dive into explaining the plotline and what takes place in the ending of episode 2 of Bad Monkey.

Bad Monkey Episode 1 Recap:

The first episode of Bad Monkey begins with narration about how a supposed vacation turns into an adventure for a family when one member discovers the severely mutilated arm of a white man while fishing. The case of the missing man then somehow gets assigned to our protagonist, Andrew Yancy (Vince Vaughn).

Yancy, who was a reputable detective, has been paired with Rogelio (John Ortiz) for all his work life, and the two of them share a very close relationship, which is equivalent to a marital couple. Anyway, Yancy has been suspended for a while and has been loafing around in his picturesque beach house in the Florida Keys, Florida.

The Chaos that follows Yancy despite his suspension

The district sheriff, Sonny Summers (Todd Allen Durkin), is desperate for quick answers and orders Yancy to gather the clues. However, Yancy wants his suspension lifted first, but Sonny directs him to take it up with the man who got him suspended. Yancy is a man with a big, yappy mouth, arrogance, and annoying quirks. He deliberately assaulted Bonnie Witt’s (Michelle Monaghan) husband after the husband found out that Yancy and Bonnie had been sleeping together.

After receiving the mutilated arm from Rogelio, Yancy decides to take it to a pathologist, Rosa Campesino (Natalie Martinez), to find any information that could help trace the person. However, Rosa can’t help him much but does point out that whoever the man was had a good-looking watch, and he should consider this information. Yancy, being the guy that he is, instead of focusing on the detail that could potentially be important, flirts with her instead.

While heading back, Yancy calls Rogelio for the next course of action and gets the advice to throw the arm into a stream filled with crocodiles, which could help him get rid of the case altogether. However, Yancy, being Yancy, does the opposite and takes the arm back home, only to keep it in his freezer. Later, we find Bonnie hanging out with Yancy, as they usually do, and this is when he tells her to speak to her husband to get his suspension lifted. Bonnie is reluctant at first, but after one of their romantic moments, she assures him that she’ll think about it.

Why is Caitlin so sure that Eve murdered her father?

Meanwhile, Rogelio meets Yancy again and tells him that a woman named Eve Stripling (Meredith Hagner) has been found reporting about her missing husband from a boat accident. According to Sonny, Yancy is the authorized custodian of the unclaimed remains, and he is supposed to meet Eve to hand over the arm so she can have a ‘full cascade funeral’ for her dead husband. Yancy and Eve decided to meet at a local superstore’s parking lot. Yancy feels Eve is a very young woman to be a widow to a middle-aged man.

So, he is quick to question her whereabouts when she found her husband missing. Eve tells him that while she was enjoying her trip to Europe, she thought her husband not reaching out to her was weird after his fishing trip. Yancy not noting down any of these details spooks Eve, and the next thing we know, he gets fired for going against every single word that he was told not to do.

Despite being fired, Yancy still visits the funeral service and finds out the dead man also had a daughter, Catlin (Charlotte Lawrence), who doesn’t share a good equation with Eve. After the service, he hands his card over to her with the hope that she will contact him in case she finds something odd about the sudden death of her father. Caitlin obviously thinks Eve has murdered him.

Bad Monkey Episode 1 Ending Explained:

Why does Neville want to get rid of Christopher?

Meanwhile, the narrator also tells us another story about a young boy named Neville Stafford (Ronald Peet) and his cute little monkey, Driggs (Chrystal the Monkey). Neville lives a quiet life on the strip and loves fishing. However, things go south when he learns that the block has been purchased by a developer named Christopher, who plans to make a resort there. Neville’s sister has already taken the money from the developer after selling her part of the property.

Meanwhile, Neville’s friends urge him to visit the infamous Dragon Queen (Jodie Turner Smith), a legendary witch who can use her voodoo magic to get rid of Christopher. After careful thought and preparation, Neville visits the Dragon Queen, a mysterious and intimidating figure. He explains his problem to her and gives her a piece of clothing that he steals away from the developer’s place for her to use in her spells.

We then meet the narrator (Tom Nowicki), the captain of the ship who found the mutilated arm when Yancy goes out to his dock. The two of them talk for a bit before heading to the local bar, where the captain introduces Yancy to the young man responsible for finding the arm. Yancy questions him about his illegal oyster trading, which puts him off. He starts avoiding Yancy after that and rushes out of the bar. However, before Yancy can get more out of him, a biker comes out of nowhere and shoots him dead.

The episode ends with Neville on his way back to his house, finding the developer making an entrance to the shore, and Yancy telling Madelline (Mina Grollman) to keep his name out of any interrogation she may be part of about her boyfriend’s murder with whom she was hanging out in the bar just a while ago.

Bad Monkey Episode 2 Recap:

Episode 2 begins with happy news for Yancy as he learns that his suspension has been lifted. However, that doesn’t imply that he is on duty immediately. He speaks to Sonny about it but learns that he can only get back to the case after working as a food inspector for some time as a way of redemption, whether he likes it or not. In the meantime, Caitlin also calls Yancy to meet up so that she can discuss Eve and how she plans to settle back into normal life with her new boyfriend.

During one of her beach walks, Eve sees Neville at his place and later complains it to her boyfriend ‘Christopher’ about how she and ‘her dog’ are disgusted by his presence because they are building a 5-star property there. Christopher sends one of his men to deal with it so he can stop Eve from nagging him about trivial things. On the other hand, Rosa is still affected by the missing clues about that ‘arm case’ so she does a little homework on her own and finds out that the man had a tan on his wrist because he was wearing a handsomely expensive watch.

Does Yancy get reinstated as a detective?

After meeting Sonny and finding out that he cannot get his detective possessions back just yet (that includes his car), Yancy calls Bonnie for a lift. This is when he learns two things: he is being followed, and Bonnie has to leave the town permanently with no explanation. Yancy prioritizes the first point, gets out of the car immediately, and calls Rogelio to check if the particular car belongs to Eve. However, again, before he can finish his thoughts, the car approaches him, perhaps to kill him, but he somehow manages to save himself.

Starting off his new job as a food inspector, Yancy finds Madeleine dining at the restaurant he just declared shut due to poor food quality and sanitation. However, he neither cares about his work nor Madelline running away at the sight of him. Instead, he makes sure that Rogelio knows about it so that he is in the loop on the topic, just in case.

Later, Yancy meets Caitlin, who shares that Eve is after the insurance money, which is why she thinks she murdered her father. She even persuades him to tag along with her to the Miami house so they can find anything on Eve to solidify her theories. Yancy declines the offer; however, soon, Rosa finds him at the Miami house, and she can’t resist doing a little investigation on her own.

Caitlin, who is high on adrenaline due to finding cues on what Eve is up to, sends a text warning her about calling the insurance company. Eve, on the other hand, has been having a gala time with her boyfriend Christopher, who is waiting on the insurance money before celebrating anything.

Bad Monkey Episode 2 Ending Explained:

What do Yancy and Rosa find at Eve’s Miami house?

Eve tells Christopher that she will have to go to her Miami house to deal with things and visits Caitlin, sympathizing with her anguish and turmoil over everything that has happened in the family. When Caitlin notices her father’s platinum wedding ring that Eve is now wearing as a pendant, she instantly dilutes down to Eve’s manipulative tricks.

Meanwhile, while going over the house, Yancy and Rosa have to hide in a bathroom when they see cleaners coming in. During this time, Yancy accidentally turns on the shower that gushes out blood water from the bathroom drain faucet. This entices the duo, and Yancy immediately opens up the drain to find crooked conch shells that were also found in the mutilated arms. Rosa decides to take the evidence to test it in her labs to match it with the dead man’s blood type in order to come to a conclusion.

Subsequently, we also find out that Yancy’s girlfriend, Bonnie, is now a runaway when a detective, Johnna Russell (Ashley Nicole Black), visits him. She tells him that Bonnie’s real name is Plover Chase and that she is a wanted woman in Oklahoma for sexual misconduct with one of her students at the university where she used to teach. All this is big news for Yancy, so Detective Russell leaves her card with him in case he wants to reach out to her once he has processed the information that she blasted on him.

On the other hand, Neville visits his sister, Dawnie (Reese Antoinette), in Miami in order to get hold of more money (from the deal she got from selling the property) so he can pay the Dragon Queen, as Neville wants immediate solutions to his problems.

How did the Dragon Queen become a legend in the Florida Keys?

Dawnie offers to give away his part of the money only after opening up her restaurant the next day. Briefly, we also see Dragon Queen beachwalking with her Ya-Ya (mother, played by L. Scott Caldwell), and we learn how Dragon Queen become a legend in the strip.

It turns out that her first husband apparently choked to death in a restaurant, but according to Ya-Ya, her daughter’s pain wished for his death. The pain came from being heartbroken when the man she loved betrayed her. Since then, it has been a legend that the woman has a cosmic and witchy gift that has turned into a solace for those in need of a quick fix for their pain and miseries.

The duo then chants magical syllables, and with Dragon Queen’s voice in the background, as she maps a magical spell in the sea sand, we see our main characters coming together as episode 2 prepares us for what will come forth in the upcoming episodes. The ending of Bad Monkey, episode 2, shows us Yancy and Rosa meeting again (to discuss their course of action on their findings) at the same restaurant where Neville is helping his sister.

Bad Monkey Episodes 1 & 2 Key Pointers:

Episode 2 of Bad Monkey concludes by hinting that the development of the main characters—Yancy, Rosa, and Neville—will be significantly influenced by the sub-characters Christopher, Eve, and Caitlin. These sub-characters will play a crucial role in shaping the journeys of Yancy, Rosa, and Neville, and their stories will come full circle if and when all of them eventually meet later in the series.

While we can assume that Eve and Christopher may have killed Caitlin’s father for his wealth and Neville has grudges from Christopher for destroying his little house that his father built in a day, I am pretty sure the series will not be as loose as it seems. However, with the tone it is going for, am certain it is likely to mess things up midway, potentially ruining the series, but let’s keep the judgment away until the next episode!

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Bad Monkey Trailer:

Bad Monkey Episodes 1 & 2 Links: IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, Wikipedia
Bad Monkey Episodes 1 & 2 Cast: Vince Vaughn, Michelle Monaghan, Jodie Turner-Smith, Meredith Hagner, Rob Delaney, Natalie Martinez, L. Scott Caldwell, Ronald Peet, John Ortiz
Bad Monkey Episode 3 comes out on 21 August 2024

Where to watch Bad Monkey