‘Daisy Jones & The Six’ Episode 6 Recap: “Whatever Gets You Thru The Night”

It seems like Daisy and Billy’s banishment to Isolation Island is gonna go down as both the best and worst thing to ever happen to The Six. “We must have written eight or nine songs in the first couple weeks,” present-day Daisy says in Daisy Jones & The Six Episode 6 (“Whatever Gets You Thru The Night”). We see the two songwriters thick as thieves, huddling over crumpled lyric sheets torn from composition books, laughing about in-jokes, writing guitar parts, and – forever – bickering. (“Not every song needs a bridge!”) It’s intimate though, separate, and the rest of the band learns the arrangements whenever the two of them reveal their creations at Sound City Studios. “Did this concern you?” his interviewer asks Graham in the present. “Not really. Not yet, anyway…”

The thing is, the band, their producer, everyone in the recording studio – they knew the material was fantastic. Or as Karen puts it in the present, “Great. Fucking. Songs.” And they weren’t going to stop the dance as long as Billy and Daisy were inventing new steps. “Here’s how confident Teddy was,” Warren tells us with a swig from his longneck. “Before we even finished recording, he called in a favor at Rolling Stone.” And this is where Jonah Berg (Nick Pupo) reappears, who we saw for two seconds in the pilot episode. He was a cub music journalist when he got the Six feature assignment, but in the future he’s the author of The Rise of Daisy Jones. And Berg has his own sense of the electricity crackling during the Aurora sessions. Every song, he says, is a coded message. “From Billy to Daisy, Daisy to Billy.”

Notice who isn’t on that sonic group chat. Camila has been raising their daughter Julia largely on her own while her husband Billy’s in the studio and off scribbling with Daisy. Not only that, she tells Karen, but she feels excluded from the project, from making it together like they had before. Camila’s on her own Isolation Island, while Billy and Daisy are tooling his Mustang to the beach at night – “This is new for me; this is new for me too, Daisy” – and ultimately hesitating before her door. “I looked in that room, and all I saw was temptation,” Billy says in the present as the camera takes in Daisy’s wet bar, but she says it wasn’t drugs or booze he was talking about.

A day of studio time is lost when Daisy blows off recording vocals in favor of partying her face off at the Chateau Marmont, and that leads to major acrimony and an icky form of argumentative, very public sexual tension between her and Billy. And then, one day, during an argument in the midst of tracking a song called “More Fun to Miss,” Daisy storms out. Billy follows. And they kiss in the parking lot outside the studio, sunlight glinting off his wedding ring.

The next day, at the desert photo shoot for the Aurora album cover, there are invisible cacti growing between Daisy and Billy. The band feels it, Camila sniffs it out during an encounter with Daisy at the craft services card table, and photographer Larry Scardino (Jeremy Gram Weaver) tries to capture their weird prickly auras in magic hour close-ups. (The band, with Eddie in particular, aren’t vibing with being kicked out of the frame.) But it’s Camila, not Scardino, who gets the shot of the day. She captures her husband and Daisy in a shouting match about their kiss. “We used to fight like that,” she tells him later. 

“There were so many secrets,” Camila says in the present. “I think I just needed one of my own.” And soon after the photo shoot debacle, she dresses up and goes out on the town, leaving Billy with their daughter. Eddie happens to be at the poolside bar where she ends up, and he blows off his date to join her. 

With all of this Daisy/Billy/Camila drama – plus Eddie Roundtree drama? Oh God, where does it end – what’s going on with Graham and Karen? Well, they’re still on the DL, even while frequently sneaking off to closets at Sound City, and Graham wonders if he embarrasses her. But Karen asks him to consider what the boys in the band would think of their relationship. Or for that matter, the world. “I’ve worked too fucking hard and I’m too fucking good to be forever known as the girlfriend in The Six.” He says he gets it, and they’re soon seen snuggling to the sound of ���Aurora” on the radio, so at least that seems to be going well.

There’s one last song, though, for the album sessions. And it’s not an Isolation Island special. It’s a new one, a Daisy original entitled “Regret Me.” And when he reads the lyrics, Billy flusters and stamps his feet while everybody else in the studio votes to add it. “It’s a good song, Billy. Isn’t that what we’re here for?” But Billy storms out. No kisses this time. Daisy joins the band to sing it. “Go ahead and regret me but I’m beating you to it, dude.” 

“And that’s how we ended the Aurora sessions,” she says in the present.

With three weeks off before tour, everybody scatters. Billy swears to Camila that nothing is happening between him and Daisy. He promises Cam it’s her, always. Maybe except in recording studio parking lots? Unclear. But she accepts his promise. “Then, everything else we can handle.” And in the present, Daisy is thoughtful about this time, when Aurora was out and their first US tour as the Daisy Jones & The Six loomed. “I knew I should’ve been happy,” she says. “I made something I was proud of. But when the drugs wore off, and the adrenaline faded, all I could hear was my mother’s voice telling me I wasn’t worth anything.” When Berg sends her a draft of his Rolling Stone piece – the gist is she’s a pill-popping, perpetually tardy drunk who makes magic whenever she’s near a microphone, particularly with Billy Dunne – the cacophony in her head gets louder. 

Later, Billy goes by her room at the Chateau. Empty. “No one’s lived here since Wednesday.” And that’s because Daisy Jones has stepped off the plane in Greece. At least for now, it’s a one-way ticket. Is it too late to book some Six gigs in Mykonos?  

Needle drops in Daisy Jones & The Six Episode 6: 

Jaco Pastorius, “Come On, Come Over” 

Daisy Jones & The Six, “The River”

Hot Chocolate, “Don’t Stop It Now”

Daisy Jones & The Six, “More Fun to Miss” 

Daisy Jones & The Six, “Aurora”

Daisy Jones & The Six, “Regret Me”

Heart, “Crazy On You”

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges