Notorious recap: Season 1, Episode 9

This week on Notorious, Louise and Julia took a much-needed vacation to Mexico for spring break headed to Mexico for what could be the biggest story of their careers. Meanwhile, Jake tried to work his magic to keep Maya out of prison.

We begin with Max heading to LHL to tell the world Maya’s been arrested in Johnny’s murder and that she and her roommates were part of the “bling ring” scheme. The opening of this episode definitely would’ve been helped by another Ray J cameo, but hey, I’ll take what I can get. He cites the gunpowder residue on her hands, the fact Johnny slept with her mother, and her journal as “proof” Maya is the killer — and considering she was the only one of the surviving roommates without an alibi, things aren’t looking too good for Maya.

Meanwhile, Louise is ambushed as she heads home after the night’s taping and receives a rather unique “opportunity” from a mysterious fellow named Eduardo, who definitely didn’t mistake her for his Uber when he hopped in the front seat of her car uninvited. Eduardo comes to her with an intriguing proposition: El Toro, an on-the-run mass murderer and drug pusher who’s currently the most wanted man alive (hmm, was this inspired by El Chapo, by chance?), wants to do an interview with Louise in a secret, undisclosed location. She has 48 hours to decide if she’s in, or they’ll go to another network. What, Sean Penn wasn’t available?

Despite her reluctance, Dana agrees to go on the show and defends Maya’s journal (where she wrote she wanted to kill Jake) as a healthy form of expression — she was just airing her feelings as a form of therapy. She also admits that while she didn’t know Johnny was Maya’s boyfriend, Maya didn’t know Dana and Johnny had slept together, meaning it couldn’t be considered a motive. Though the appearance goes smoothly, Julia receives a call midway through informing her Maya tried to kill herself. She visits her in the hospital, the two have a nice chat, and all seems to be well…for now.

NEXT: A shocking confession is revealed on LHL

Once news breaks about Maya’s suicide attempt, Willow goes to Jake’s office to find out how she can recant her statement to the police in which she told them Maya killed Johnny. She’s now insistent Maya didn’t kill Johnny. Come on, girl, get your story straight! Jake continues digging into Willow and Preston’s alibis (they claimed they were bowling) and finds a mysterious hour-long gap in Preston’s bowling record. Could that be the hour he took off to kill Johnny?! Or was it just a really long bathroom break?

Julia and Louise, meanwhile, disregard all common sense and advice from their peers and superiors when they agree to fly to a mysterious location for an interview with El Toro. They don’t tell anyone except Megan where they’re going, but everyone figures it out anyway when they both coincidentally “get food poisoning” on the same day and have to miss the show. They try to leave it to Megan to anchor, but their boss has other plans: He wants Dana to anchor to drive in ratings.

Dana’s hesitant, of course, since she’s currently embroiled in a murder trial and all. But she agrees to fill in as anchor, with Willow and Preston as her guests. She grills them on their alibis, but Preston defends the missing hour by saying he was scoping out Gwen Stefani’s house to rob — and he has the pictures to prove it. (But actually, who’s to say those aren’t just random photos of a house? Does anyone know what Gwen Stefani’s house looks like and can reasonably say “Oh yeah, that’s totally Gwen’s house, this story seems sound”?) Feeling thrown for a loop by Preston’s defense, Dana goes way off script and CONFESSES to murdering Johnny! She tells the police if they check a safe deposit box at a specific bank, they’ll find the murder weapon. Guess that explains the gloves from last week? Dana is arrested, but we know she was just trying to protect her daughter. Max is also not totally convinced, telling Jake he won’t drop the charges against Maya until he finds the gun and runs a ballistics test.

While all this is going down, Louise and Julia have exited their fancy private jet and are downing tequila shots in a Mexican bar while they wait to be taken to El Toro. Miraculously, the hole-in-the-wall bar they’ve found just so happens to air Louise Herrick Live (in English, no less!), so they get to watch Dana’s entire confession go down. Minus the fact their laptops and cell phones were destroyed to bits by machine guns, the two seem to be having a decent time under the Eduardo’s careful watch…until nightfall, that is, when Julia is kidnapped from her hotel room, duct-taped, and put in a burlap sack. But that’s just how they’re taking her to see El Toro, right? So she can’t see where she’s going? If that’s not the case, welp, it was nice knowing you, Julia.

In other news, it seems Ella and Ryan are back on. I liked them together more before he turned out to be an annoyingly pushy control freak, but I guess nobody’s perfect. Despite the fact it feels like they haven’t spoken in weeks, Ryan is insistent Ella move out of her motel because it’s “not normal.” He aggressively pushes her into looking for an actual apartment, which at one point had me yelling “Just leave her alone, dude!” at my TV screen. They kiss and make up in the end, but Ryan still rubbed me the wrong way this week.

Episode grade: C+

What did you think of this week’s Notorious? Let us know in the comments!