'Joan's Night Is Darkest Before the Dawn in "Stuck Between a Rock & a Hard Place"

Jail does not suit our titular heroine in Joan, as we quickly learn in the penultimate episode. Not only is she not allowed to speak to Kelly while on the inside, but the IRA also infiltrated the prison and sent her a message via a bout of severely bruised ribs. The terrorist organization was worried that she'd take a deal and rat on them, but if Joan didn't take the deal, she would face ten years on the inside. That would mean no hope of ever getting her daughter back, which was unacceptable. 

Boisie was sympathetic to Joan's plight, or at least the part about her not wanting to be in jail; he's also going through his own stuff. The IRA burned down his storage unit with all the stockpile of paintings and antiques he and Joan had planned to sell off, including the diamonds she stole in the series premiere. When Joan gets out on bail, she is battered, and she and Boisie have less money between them than when they met. 

What do two broke con artists do when down on their luck? They plan another job! Joan reconnected with her old boss, Bernard (Alex Blake), from whom she stole the diamonds in the premiere. She convinced him to give her another job, and she immediately devised a plan for her, Boisie, and Albie (Gershwyn Eustache Jr.) to rob the place and get enough money for her and Boisie to escape to Spain. They would get out of England and have a villa with a swimming pool and a baby tiger for a pet. Wouldn't Kelly just LOVE that?! 

Hold the phone; Boisie never agreed to kidnap Kelly and take her with them. To his point, adding a small child into the mix made escaping much riskier. However, Boisie has been anti-Kelly for multiple episodes now, and his adamance that she does not come felt more like he wanted Joan to himself rather than worry about the risk. He quickly realized that going to Spain without Kelly was not an option for Joan, though, and he compromised by saying that he'd come back for Kelly once they got settled themselves. 

That appeased Joan until she visited Kelly for her birthday (has it already been a year?!). Kelly was pleased to see her mum, but Joan couldn't handle watching Kelly flip out over the present from her foster mum (Caroline Faber) after giving Joan's present a lukewarm reception. Joan realized that missing out on a few months of Kelly's life, or worse, a year, could mean not being able to reconnect with her daughter at all. 

The need to have Kelly go with them to Spain was exacerbated when Joan also threw in a visit to her dying father before the big job. She expected her old man would be ready to apologize for beating her as a child, but instead, he told her she was a failure for getting in trouble with the law and putting Kelly in care. The rough encounter made Joan even more determined to prove she was a good mother and take her child. 

Joan goes behind Boisie's back, asking Albie to put Kelly on her passport. He urges her to tell Boisie what she was doing before they did the job, and Joan swore she would. She just needed to find the right time. But the episode ended with Joan calling Kelly's school with a fake American accent, setting the wheels in motion for her plan before telling Boisie their original plan had changed. 

There's only one episode left, but so much can go wrong. They are planning to rob Bernard during the day. The accomplice they hired didn't trust Joan. Boisie doesn't know that Kelly will be making the trip with them. The plan hitches on Joan keeping Bernard distracted in the back room. Boisie will have a weapon on him during the heist, which Joan is against, considering that the last time he brought a gun to a heist, it ended with her going to jail. And are we sure the IRA is done with this crime duo? There are so many balls in the air that it doesn't seem like all of them can fall gracefully in one episode. 

We're in for a tense ending for Joan, and we're not sure if her relationship with Boisie, Kelly, or both will go up and smoke before it's all over. 

Joan continues on Fridays at 9 p.m. ET on CW and airs/streams weekly through mid-November. Episodes will be available to stream the next day on the CW app. The series will also be available to stream on BritBox beginning December 5, with two episodes premiering weekly through December 19, 2024.