'The Audacity' Episode 6 Recap: Does Anushka Retain Her Position As CEO?

Episode 5 of The Audacity felt a whole lot like the start of Duncan’s downfall, and with good reason; that’s exactly what it was. Now, you’d expect that’d be a point at which the show would start doing things to make us feel sympathetic for Duncan, and maybe set the stage for a redemption arc. But that’s not the case at all here, and if anything, we see Duncan at his most slimy, disgusting, and spineless. In contrast, we see a lot more depth in Carl Bardolph’s character, and Orson starts to see his arc going somewhere after the whole manosphere turn. All in all, The Audacity episode 6 sees a lot going on for all the major players, and a bunch of the characters see their storylines start to intersect at this point. So, without any further ado, let’s jump into this recap of episode 6.

Spoiler Alert

How Does Anushka’s Attempt At Ethical Data Management Go? 

Anushka’s term as interim CEO starts with her interrupting Carl Bardolph in the middle of a WW1 reenactment, giving us a peek behind the curtain at some of the tech billionaire’s eccentricities. But then she’s confronted by a tech not-quite billionaire when she gets home to see Duncan waiting for her. Turns out, he hasn’t yet heard about Anushka getting the CEO role, and he’d shown up with a $4000 truffle as a present for her so they could start working again. In response to his offer (to be co-CEOs and start sleeping together because he’s divorcing Lili), Anushka responds she doesn’t want to share a chair, an office, a company, or a bed with him ever again, and Duncan reacts by throwing the truffle straight at her face.

At the Hypergnosis office, Anushka says she has a new vision for the company, and she uses the example of a self-driving car company called Torren. Torren’s recently had data leaks where the cameras on the car have shown passengers getting up to all sorts of private activities, and so Anushka talks about how privacy has become premium, and they should start marketing privacy as their guarantee. Naturally, this rubs Harper the wrong way, given handling private data and drawing conclusions from it is her whole thing. When Anushka has her meeting with Torren, she talks about using Hypergnosis’ Gnome as a symbol to guarantee privacy, but it doesn’t strike a chord. One of the Torren guys says “we don’t sell cars, we sell data collection devices on heated seats,” which kind of sums up how badly Anushka’s approach is going to go. Bardolph is so disappointed by this new direction that he tells her she has to clean up her act in time for the next board meeting, otherwise, he’s kicking her out. Meanwhile, Harper has gone to Duncan, and she says she’d rather bet on him, since Anushka wants to hit the pause button on data collection and analysis altogether, pretty much. Together, they go meet the Torren guys, and we finally see how well Duncan can sell to tech bros. He starts out by calling Anushka a hypocrite, and then he talks about how the industry polices itself, and not taking advantage of all the data they can access is police self-brutality, which really hits home with the Torren guys (one of whom makes a “tech lives matter” joke). But the real thing Duncan pushes is his idea of PINATA, i.e. Privacy Is Not A Thing Anymore, and this really appeals to his clients. He talks about charging $29.99 monthly for customer data not being sold. And $299 a month for premium access to other customers’ data, and it’s dystopian enough for him to bag Torren as clients, pulling them away from Hypergnosis. Safe to say Anushka’s initial attempt at “ethical” data management flopped pretty hard.

Why Do Ruffage And Anushka Start Working Together? 

After a failed meeting with a company called DataApe, VA representative Tom Ruffage is pretty bummed, but his day just gets worse when he finds out his partner, Jeffrey, is quitting to get a cushy job working for a surveillance military recon contractor. When Jeffrey says he can try to do some good from the inside, Ruffage just says he’ll become corrupt and complacent once he’s comfortable, and the two part ways on a sour note. Disillusioned and unwilling to go on alone, Ruffage quits the VA and takes to day-drinking and singing karaoke at dive bars, and it’s at one such establishment that Anushka tracks him down and finds him. Anushka has an offer for him; come help her oversee the VA data deal, and she’ll get him a 7-figure job at Hypergnosis as an advisor. Ruffage can’t see what she gets out of picking him in particular, but he agrees. The only thing is, when he brings up Xander, Anushka visibly stiffens, indicating things still aren’t okay between her and Martin. 

When it’s time for the board meeting, Anushka’s ethical approach still isn’t earning her any favors in Bardolph’s eyes, and he’s just about to write off her VA contract when Ruffage speaks up. To start with, Bardolph gives him 10 seconds to talk, but when he learns the guy’s a veteran, he becomes much more keen on listening to what he has to say. In Ruffage’s words, he even hits him with some “inside baseball” when he can tell just by his period of service that Ruffage must have been at the Battle of Medina Ridge. Finally, Bardolph starts paying attention to what Hypergnosis’ algorithm can do for veterans, and when Ruffage asks if he served in the military, he says he didn’t, but he does start to mention his “daddy” (presumably transported back to his childhood) before we’re hit with another twist. Turns out, Duncan’s still a board member, and since this is a board meeting, he’s decided to show everyone he’s still the boss. He boasts to them about how he’s already secured three of Hypergnosis’ biggest clients for his own brand new firm, and he threatens to walk off with them unless they make him the main man again. It does feel like this kind of argument ought to work in the tech world. In the middle of asking to be reinstated as CEO and demanding his stake in the company back, Duncan tells Ruffage to shut up, and it makes Bardolph so mad that he jumps across the table and tries to attack him. In the aftermath of the scuffle, which sees Ruffage thrown into a refreshments table, Bardolph calls a vote to kick Duncan off the board, and it seems to pass unanimously, so the prick leaves by taking the slide down. It seems Anushka’s time as CEO isn’t over yet, plus she’s just brought a quarter-billion-dollar VA contract to Hypergnosis that can help suffering veterans, a topic Bardolph clearly cares a surprising amount about. This all has to tie in to his WW1 reenactment from earlier too; he seems to glorify military service, even though he never served himself, it’s almost like war is his special interest.

Is JoAnne Going To Get To Keep Her House? 

In episode 5, Duncan had “gifted” JoAnne $1.2 million he got from insider trading on information he’d gotten from her as a bribe. While that’s an astronomical amount, the house she and Gary live in and have their offices in is now on sale for somewhere around $8 million. When it’s time for an open house, she burns plastic into the AC intake so that it freaks the prospective buyers out, and then she walks among them and lies about there being protected redwood trees in the front yard. When Irwin, the real estate agent, sees her there, he says residents aren’t allowed, but she says she’s looking to buy and is willing to put down a deposit any day. She’s used Duncan’s info about Anushka becoming CEO to insider trade again, and she manages to grow the value of her portfolio to $1.4 million. This is not quite enough to reach the 1/5th mark she needs to hit for the down payment, and she tries to talk Gary into giving up his 401K so they can buy the house, but he’s resistant. Ultimately, JoAnne ends up getting a call from Irwin telling her that someone not only bought the house in cash, but paid $400k above the asking price, sending her into a spiral.

In the meanwhile, Tess has started to sneak around the house after her appointments with Gary, and she hangs out with Orson, with him showing her the hidden room in the basement where they can eavesdrop on JoAnne’s therapy sessions. They even open up about personal traumas, with Orson saying he was born to “save” a marriage, though it didn’t work. The first time they eavesdrop, it’s the typical JoAnne digging for any info she can use to insider trade, but the second time is different. Anushka has had a fight at home with Martin (Tess’ dad) after he saw the footage of her smashing Xander in. He calls her abusive and threatens to leave her unless she gets therapy, since he views Xander like his own child, and what Anushka did permanently damaged him by forming what he calls scar tissue. So the second appointment they listen in on is Anushka’s, and she’s pretty honest about Martin and Tess. She finds Martin is weird, though not a creep and hates that she has to handle therapy when she’d rather be dealing with work. Anushka ends up revealing that she thinks Martin’s previous wife is the reason Tess is messed up all while Martin kept himself locked up in a room. Since he doesn’t know how to fix or “reboot” a person, he took up the Xander project, at least in Anushka’s eyes. This means Tess has to hear her stepmother talk about how her dad thinks she’s beyond repair, and she’s going to be replaced by a piece of software. As if that wasn’t bad enough, after Anushka leaves, Orson tries to kiss Tess, not once, not twice, but three times, ultimately stopping when she asks him what’s wrong with him and runs away. Clearly, he’s let the manosphere stuff go completely to his head, and he needs to stop before he actually hurts someone.

In the ending of episode 6, as JoAnne takes her next session with Duncan, she’s still contemplating what she’s going to do after she’s forced to leave the house in 3 months. This is when Duncan spooks her by telling her exactly how much the house cost ($8.5 million), and it all clicks for her. Her evil benefactor has bought the house she lives in, essentially holding her and her business hostage. It’s like Duncan says, some people are meant to be puppets, and others puppeteers. Is it Duncan’s fault if the puppets hate him for being a puppeteer? Yes, yes it is. Essentially, Duncan now has complete control over JoAnne (again). She gets to keep living where she lives so long as she continues to be his “oracle.”

Does Lili Agree To Take Duncan Back?

When Lili said she wanted a divorce in the last episode, it shook Duncan, but it wasn’t the end of the world, as evidenced by how quickly he propositioned Anushka right after. Now that Anushka’s turned him down, Duncan switches tactics. If there’s one thing Gabe was right about, it’s that Duncan’s great at talking people into doing what he wants. So that’s why Duncan doesn’t just ask Lili to stay with him because he needs her, because that would never work. Instead, he says this is the worst time for Lili to leave him, because his net worth is lower than it was, and lower than it will be again. Clearly, she deserves better, so she should leave him when he’s at his best, because she deserves half of a lot more than what he’s currently worth. You almost have to admire his deviousness (only if you’re a man). When Lili tells him never to be alone with Anushka again, he agrees in a heartbeat, given Anushka’s already said she doesn’t want to be alone with him anyway. When he asks her what else she wants, she simply says “I’ll let you know” before she walks off, reclaiming her power in their dynamic. It looks like she’s going to stick around for now, because she has more to gain that way, but will their relationship last? Is Duncan’s exit from Hypergnosis permanent? What new plots will he come up with to torment his enemies? We’ll have to keep watching to find out.

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