I like to periodically remind myself that, once upon a time, Somen “Steve” Banerjee just wanted to open a gas station. Later down the line, he would fancy himself the besuited proprietor of a backgammon club. Steve only became Mister Chippendales out of necessity when those more modest dreams didn’t pan out.
So did owning a nightclub make Steve this greedy and ruthless, or is it because he was so greedy and ruthless that he eventually found success wherever he could? If Chippendales failed, what would he have done next? The world is made up of two kinds of people: Those of us who were startled by Vito Corleone’s threat to “make him an offer he can’t refuse” and megalomaniacs like Steve and Nick, who couldn’t wait for the day they’d get to use the line themselves. (Even Michael — who promised his wife Kay he’d take the family business legit — eventually echoed his father’s words.)
But before we deal with the feud at the top of the Chippendales org chart, let’s start with the plight of my personal main character. I have been emotionally steeling myself for something to go wrong since Otis’s introduction. He’s just too nice. And the fact of a Black man stripping for a white audience was too easily dismissed. At one point, I worried that the club’s protesters might harass him or even that some deranged husband might attack him. Of course, by halfway through this series, I should have known better. The only real enemy to anyone is Steve.
When the first batch of pin-up calendars arrive from the printer, Otis is disheartened to find he’s not Mr. February or even featured on a lesser month. Not even April. Given that he’s the top-billed act at Chippendales, the snub can’t be accidental, but Otis still takes it in stride. It’s not until Steve arranges for the calendar models to do a signing at a local mall that the spurned protegee finally confronts his mentor, just feet from the food court Ice-N-Tasty.
Steve’s defense is as depressing as you would predict. It’s okay to have a Black guy dance in the club, but these calendars will be in homes where wives will see them as well as husbands. Otis makes the very reasonable observation that Steve is a strip club titan in 1980s California and not, for example, the Jim Crow south. But Steve implores him not to take the tremendous slight personally. He really likes Otis as much as he can like anyone or anything that he thinks is bad for business.
It’s only later in the episode, as Otis prepares to take the stage, that it becomes clear how much Steve’s racism affects his star dancer. First of all, what happened to the bell-hop routine? Now, Otis has been cast as a pimp who the emcee calls “the freakiest freak this side of Harlem.” But you watch Otis shake it all off like a pro and plaster on a smile for the crowd. Then you watch that smile falter again and again as he’s forced to perform to the sounds of ladies loudly clamoring for that $5 calendar at the nearby merch booth.
But Otis’ growing antipathy is a comparatively minor problem for Steve. His big issue is Nick, who is MIA. Nick hasn’t even called his roommate/collaborator/bestie Denise with proof of life. On a scale from one to ten, Steve is so pissed he “could kill him.”
Which is a shame because Nick may have just found true love! His old Broadway connex are a little too buttoned up for “U.S. Male,” the dreadfully-named East Coast rival to Chippendales Nick’s been describing to potential investors as “Folies Bergere meets Playgirl.” He envisions his venture as this decade’s answer to Studio 54 and, unlike Steve’s club full of suburban moms from the San Gabriel Valley, USM would be open to any and everybody. I, personally, was moved by his vision. Sadly, the money walked.
It’s as Nick drowns his sorrows at the bar that redemption enters his life in the form of Bradford Barton, an improbably-named rich and handsome show tune crooner played by Andrew Rannells. The flirting here is so painfully believable: two people trading likes and dislikes, willing a repartee into existence via a little light negging. How could it possibly work between them? Nick is mostly in the closet; Bradford’s been out since hanabata days. Nick thinks “Someone is Waiting” is Sondheim’s best; Brad’s more of a “Being Alive” guy. It can’t possibly work between these polar opposites! Can it????
CUT TO: Hotel sex and bonding over post-coital cigarettes. Nick even confesses that his ex-wife is CoverGirl star Jennifer O’Neill. Brad’s response — “If you’re going to be closeted, you may as well go big” — is a joke Nick’s likely heard a few times by now, but Brad says it with a good deal of charm. When Brad learns that Nick is on the founding team of Chippendales, he thankfully convinces Nick to ditch the U.S. Male concept in favor of opening an east coast franchise that capitalizes on the name recognition they’ve already built. What’s more, Brad also happens to be very rich. How do I know that? Because he says so. How is he so rich? Not a clue! The character’s declaration of his own wealth is so nakedly expositional it’s almost refreshing. I guffawed.
An angel investor should be great news for Steve — who would surely like to be raking in double the profits — but there are some issues with the arrangement. The first is that Steve fundamentally mistrusts Nick, a man who has abandoned the club for the last week without warning. The second is that Steve has already decided to branch out in a more familiar direction. See, the demand for Chippys calendars is bananas. He needs more calendars, and he needs them before the New Year’s Eve ball drops. The calendar business is reliable, but it is cyclical. Nobody needs to know the date in February. Steve needs more calendars than the printing press can make, and, honestly, the set-up here is so glorious that I’m ashamed I didn’t see it coming. Of course, Steve bought the printing press. Steve was always going to end up in the family business.
He tells Irene about the acquisition with a braggadocious allusion to The Godfather: “I made him an offer he can’t refuse.” In this case, I’m pretty sure Steve just means he paid the guy a lot of money and not that he severed the head of a beloved thoroughbred. Still, Steve is feeling pretty powerful. To celebrate, he takes his level-headed wife to the members-only Palisades Club for dinner despite not having a reservation or a membership or probably even the right skin color to make the membership rolls in the first place. Almost as soon as Steve learns what his money can get him and how quickly, he learns what, even in 1980s Los Angeles, money alone can’t buy.
The kind of snooty exclusivity that fascinates Steve is the opposite of what Nick hopes to achieve at the strip club utopia of Chippendales New York. Armed with Brad’s money, he comes back to Los Angeles to steal Denise and, you guessed it, make Steve an offer he can’t refuse. The offer is still money, to be clear, but at least Nick’s is paired with a threat. What is Steve more prepared to accept: a business partner he doesn’t trust or a rival club he can’t control? He goes for the devil he knows, though by the time news of the Chippendales expansion plan makes it to Irene, Steve has rebranded Nick’s idea as his own.
For Nick, in the end, three thousand miles felt like enough space to put between himself and his nemesis. He can’t work with Steve, but he can’t bring himself to forfeit what they’ve built. For Otis, who Nick invites to come out to NYC, distance is not enough. See, after Steve omitted him from the calendar, Otis decided to make his own, which honestly seems like a decent idea. I bet if he’d pitched the idea to Steve, he might have been into it. In fact, maybe a few of the club favorites could each have their own dedicated calendars. Steve has many flaws, but he’s proven he’s open to outside ideas.
But Otis doesn’t float it, and when Steve catches him developing photos with handyman Ray, the energy is more “I know it was you, Fredo” than future business partner. Steve doesn’t fire Otis over the disloyalty, but it’s the last straw in Otis’ disenchantment.
This should be a learning moment for Steve, but it’s already clear that Steve doesn’t learn. When Otis originally confronted him about the calendars, for example, Steve doubled down. Now he makes whites-only calendars and owns the means of production to make them.
And when he was faced with bigots at the private club, he responded by craving exclusivity, even emulating the system at his own sleazy cabaret. By the end of the episode, Chippendales is issuing membership cards.
So it makes sense that what he learns from Otis’ departure is to seek out men prepared to be even more loyal to him. Ray is almost tearful when he apologizes for his role in Otis’ big deception. He doesn’t want to be Steve’s employee; he’s the Godfather’s willing soldier. When he literally kneeled to kiss the ring, I gasped. Steve’s lie to Irene isn’t as big as the one Michael told Kay, but the echo is unmistakable. Some men can’t be saved.
