Butt Plug
Episode 5 of The Premise dives into a philosophical fable between the power of redemption and the drive for revenge. And the title of this episode? Butt Plug. Right, let’s dive in. The main crux of drama here stems from a montage. Within these flashbacks, a whole group of kids begin bullying a poor immigrant boy called Daniel, sporting worn-out shoes and forced to go through hell. The ringleader through all of this is a kid called Eli Spector. Years later, the tables turn and fate has a funny way of twisting. Eli is down on his luck, getting nowhere with a start-up and struggling to provide for his kids. Daniel Jung meanwhile, is now one of the world’s richest men. Sensing an opportunity to make amends (and sponge off Daniel’s ricches) Eli meets him in a swanky restaurant to apologize. Our ex-bully wants to get involved with Blockchain and needs Daniel’s help to make the righ moves. Daniel waves it away, claiming he needs to zig where everyone else zags. In other words, don’t follow what the cool kids are doing. Daniel instead gleefully suggests that he develop a revolutionary butt plug. There’s no contract or promise that this will work but he will grant him a meeting with the board of investors at his company in a year’s time. Only, that would mean he needs to quit his job and develop it. The thing is, it’s difficult to know whether Daniel is just messing with him or whether he’s being genuine. Either way, Eli takes a leap of faith and starts to develop this product. A year passes and Eli shows up at Daniel’s office. Daniel immediately greets him, throwing some cryptic chatter his way and hoping he has more to share than a butt plug. It’s all designed to throw Eli off his game but it doesn’t deter him in the slightest. He manages to deliver an excellent presentation, much to Daniel’s dismay. Eli absolutely kills it and by the end, he turns it around to Daniel and uses his own words to talk about mercy. It’s enough to win the board over… except for Daniel. He tells Eli, in no uncertain terms, to shove his idea up his ass. Eli leaves, head held high, and thanks Daniel for the opportunity all the same. Eli is convinced that he has a big revolutionary product and intends to prove Daniel wrong. As we pan back to Daniel one more time, he puts Eli’s butt plug product inside a trophy case, which is full of butt plugs; his own personal revenge stash. Despite his initial concerns, it seems like he’s systematically gone after all these different bullies and put them through their paces. The idea of mercy VS revenge is ultimately the main drive of this episode and in the end, revenge is the stronger emotion. Daniel has built his whole empire on the ability to prove others wrong, using his past scars as a trophy of sorts, making sure that he’s never bullied again. In the end, Eli manages to become a better person through developing this product, rekindling those passionate fires that he seemed to lose. His utterance of “thank you” just before leaving reinforces this. Although Daniel is determined to make these bullies pay for what they did to him in the past, Eli’s mercy and ability to look past Daniel’s very-obvious set-up leaves an interesting debate to ponder over whether mercy or revenge is the biggest drive to succeed. In the end, that is left up to us, as an audience, to decide.
The Episode Review
Despite a really solid presentation and a pretty convincing argument, Daniel comes out on top as his drive for revenge overcomes mercy. It’s a clever inclusion, and one that feels quite reminiscent of those pitches from Dragon’s Den that actually go right… until the last second where everything just falls apart. As far as season finales go, this one’s pretty good and the acting from both Eric Lange and Daniel Dae Kim is enough to elevate this chapter. However, the shooting during episode 2 is by far the highlight of this whole anthology. This weird blend of different ideas has been a bit hit or miss at times in The Premise but it’s undoubtedly one of the more unusual projects to hit our screens in 2021. Whether we’ll get a second season off the back of this is anyone’s guess but there’s certainly enough to like here!
