Central Park season 3 episode 9 recap & review: A Killer Deadline

The ninth episode of Central Park season 3 sees Owen visiting Molly and Cole’s school as Playground Pop while Paige goes through a creative block. The episode is now streaming on Apple TV+.

Recap

Early in the morning, Owen prepares for the lunch he will eat at Molly and Cole’s school as he will be volunteering for Playground Pop.

Birdie explains that Playground Pop is a volunteer group that encourages dads to come to school and help out for a day. Most of the time, these dads end up embarrassing their kids.

As they leave for school, they notice Paige under a bunch of pillows, waking up, burned out. She has been working on an article for Marvin and at the same time, writing the next two chapters of her book.

The publisher is expecting these chapters by the night, therefore, Paige needs to get going, but her boss, Marvin, is also constantly asking her for an article.

The family leaves Paige alone so no one can disturb her while she writes.

At school, Owen, Molly, and Cole realize that it’s Kickball Day. On this day, the whole school plays kickball after lunch. The students have two choices. They can either choose to play or sign up for study hall to spend time there.

Molly over here chooses study hall over kickball, and Owen wonders why. He used to be good at it when he was in school, but that’s not the same for Molly, who feels she will embarrass herself at the game.

She prefers to spend time at the library with Carol, a librarian, who has been working on her YouTube channel since her divorce.

Cole leaves with Enrique to prepare for the kickball tournament, as they will be commentators for the same.

Owen offers to teach Molly how to play kickball. He strikes a deal with her. If she fails to master the tricks he will teach her, she can go and sit in the library.

Meanwhile, Paige’s boss finds an excuse to visit Paige and ask her about the article. He wonders if she will submit the article on time and suggests that she should work at a cheap and quiet motel, as the house can be a bit distracting at times.

Paige eventually realizes what her boss said is true and checks into a cheap motel.

Owen teaches Molly how to spin and flick at kickball, but when the time comes to prove herself on the field, she fails. She goes back to the library, and Carol’s embarrassing story about her first video encourages Molly to try kickball again.

She joins once a player gets injured and perfectly executes Owen’s trick. Thus, she helps her team win as they celebrate.

Back to Paige, she realizes how the room at the cheap motel has completely fallen apart. She moves things around for her comfort and discovers a hole in a socket.

As she starts writing, someone knocks on the door. Paige opens it only to find a box that belongs to Room No. 206. She knocks on that room’s door but doesn’t find anyone responding.

Then she goes to the front desk and finds no one there either. So she keeps it in her room until someone comes looking for it. Eventually, she overhears two people talking in the room next to her and discovers that this box belongs to them.

On top of that, she also realizes that these two might be criminals and that there is something shady inside that box. Paige opts to call her boss, Marvin, who asks her to not get involved.

The people inside the other room hear her phone ring and see their package inside Paige’s room through that small hole in the socket.

They try to break into her room, and Paige does everything in her power to stop them until her boss, Marvin, arrives. When he does, he reveals that this package belongs to him and that he is one of the criminals.

Now, Marvin has no option but to kill her to cover up his crime.

Marvin’s cat attacks Paige, and that’s the wrap for the story she was writing while Owen and the kids were away.

She never went out of her room and spent the whole day carving this story.

Amidst all of this, Abby tries to convince Helen to reshuffle her schedule as she needs an off on Wednesdays to attend Zach Wentz’s accent classes.

Abby tries to directly approach Bisty, but a woman calls her grandmother and spoils her day. Abby aids Helen in cheering Bitsy up.

From putting Vaseline on Bitsy’s mirror to bringing in a cool friend of hers, Abby goes through a number of attempts to make Helen feel young again.

In the end, Abby brings in Zac Wentz himself to pull off his accent and act to convince Bitsy that she is still very young. It works, and with that, Helen agrees to give Abby Wednesdays off.

Review

  • The episode did a good job of transitioning Paige’s day into the story she is writing. A compelling story for sure but the ending was quite quick and not satisfying at all.
  • Coming to the Kickball day, the highlight of that plot are Cole and Enrique. They just work smoothly with each other with their different personalities and the ‘Bloodbath’ joke leaves you cackling.
  • The show continues to build the Abby-Bitsy dynamic to the point a character just thought that they were related. Furthermore, Abby has a lot of tricks up her sleeves and she has often managed to convince Bitsy as no one can.
  • Unlike most of the Central Park episodes this season, the ninth episode manages to balance all the plots well and none of them seem like sub-plots or like filler.

Also Read: Bitsy’s plan to capture Central Park

More from The Envoy Web