After last week’s underwhelming affair, Elsbeth Season 3 is back on track with “Glamazons.” My Name Is Earl’s Jaime Pressly guest stars in the episode as a murderous former model, with the uber-talented Pressly delivering a great – and arguably the deepest – villainous turn in a season that’s been filled with them. “Glamazons” is an episode filled with reunions, revenge, regrets, and rivals, and throws in some “sheroes,” old friends, and a Tonya Harding reference for good measure. Ready to hit the catwalk?
The Past Comes Back To Kill in ‘Elsbeth’s “Glamazons”
Dress Up magazine is getting ready to recreate its famous cover photo of the “Glamazons,” four 1990s supermodels, in celebration of its 25th anniversary by inviting back all four of the women. Despite years of separation and bad blood amongst them, three are confirmed to be taking part. But the fourth, Tiffany “Tiff” Giles (Jaime Pressly), has been a recluse since a violent act left her face damaged, leaving her participation up in the air. She’s in New York, and is seen working as a bartender, sporting an eye patch over her scarring, when Madison, one of the models and the one coordinating the shoot, walks in. Madison begs Tiff to come and take part, but the cynical Tiff refuses, believing her presence will sell the false narrative of all being forgiven, a public relations boost for her Madison’s new brand: “Sheroes.” If Madison wants Tiff, she’s going to have to do better than that.
Madison sighs, saying she has regrets, to which Tiff stops what she’s doing, expecting her to say… something. But whatever it is, Maddie doesn’t bite, simply saying that they never talked about her accident, and she should have come to the hospital like the other girls did. “We weren’t friends,” Tiff replies, “We were rivals.” Still, Maddie explains, she needed to let Tiff know just how bad her husband TJ (Josh Casaubon) felt that morning. “Which morning?” Tiff snaps. Turns out she wasn’t identified until the afternoon, and the news didn’t break until that evening, and if she’s talking about the morning after, as Maddie claims, that couldn’t be true either, as she would have been on a flight to Hawaii for the bikini photo shoot Tiff was supposed to go to. Maddie dismisses it as simply a fuzzy memory, and asks her to think about coming, leaving a stack of cash behind.
Tiff actually does show up at the photo shoot, and after a brief reunion with the other models — including Nadine (Laura Benanti), from Season 2 — they recreate their iconic photo. At the cocktail party, after Maddie introduces the Glamazons to her new “sheroes,” three international models from oppressive countries (“beautiful faces from ugly places”), and one invites Tiff to a yacht party to promote Freecycle, the first carbon negative vodka, that evening. A party crasher – Julian, who wrote the original photo’s accompanying article – interrupts the conversation and is quickly ushered out by TJ. TJ puts down his glass, and Tiff takes it, using a napkin to avoid leaving fingerprints, and places it in her purse.
The scene then picks up at the Sheroes model house, where Maddie, TJ, and the three models live. Maddie is stunned to see Tiff in her kitchen, with Tiff having used the secret entrance, but is happy to join her for a glass of wine. Tiff opens a new bottle of wine and pours two glasses, one of which is TJ’s from before, now full of “bennies” to drug Maddie. Tiff hands Maddie the glass, and after a few sips, Maddie begins to feel woozy. See, Maddie’s slip up at the bar shook what was already a shaky alibi to begin with, and Tiff demands to know the truth. Maddie admits they were behind her attack, but it was TJ who carried it out. “You’re both going to pay,” Tiff says coldly, and she pushes Maddie off the second floor to her death.
Elsbeth Discovers the Ugly Truth in ‘Elsbeth’s “Glamazons”
Elsbeth (Carrie Preston) joins Officer Hackett (Lindsay Mendez) and Detective Fleming (Daniel Oreskes) at the scene to find a distraught TJ, trying to make sense of her death. Of course, he’ll have to explain his own whereabouts. He claims to have been in his man-cave, listening to music and “chilling with edibles,” and found Maddie’s body when he came upstairs after the fact. Fleming is about to press harder when Tiff arrives. Elsbeth walks over to introduce herself and gets a bitterly cold response that speaks to Tiff’s negative feelings about the police handling of her attack.
Back at the precinct, Elsbeth joins Fleming in Captain Wagner’s (Wendell Pierce) office. She’s been reading up on the Glamazons, not realizing their popularity back in the day (she was in law school and more interested in keeping her pet Tamagotchi alive [SPOILER: it died]). She discovered that Tiff was the most popular of the group, right up to the attack, and her distrust of the police stems from her attacker never being caught. She posits that out of the four Glamazons, two have been victims: bad luck, or something more? Wagner suggests that the connection is TJ, and he’s already put a tail on him. The Sheroes arrive, an empty-headed lot, but they do share that TJ, who wasn’t at the yacht party, had been spending a lot of time in his man cave, and seemed to be keeping secrets.
Elsbeth turns to Nadine for a little more information, and as they walk down the street, Nadine explains how the “model house” works — models live rent-free in exchange for attending events. Elsbeth asks what TJ’s role is and learns that he is the promoter who coordinates the events, with Nadine adding that there’s no way TJ would have killed Maddie: they were crazy for each other. That contrasts with the story Tiff tells back at the station, with Tiff explaining that Maddie had plans to leave TJ, and told her that the tempestuous TJ tried controlling her, even resorting to drugging her to do so. But Elsbeth finds it odd that Maddie, who hasn’t seen Tiff in years, would confide in her, let alone fly to New York to do so. Tiff brushes it aside, saying that they were quite close, once, and because she had pegged TJ from the start, Maddie knew she would understand. Tiff then puts the next stage of her plan to frame TJ in place, explaining he would get nothing if Maddie divorced him, but get everything if something happened to her. She leaves, saying, “It’s not hard to connect the dots – you’re welcome.”
Elsbeth still isn’t sure – being in a man cave is a pretty weak alibi if you were planning on killing your wife, plus Nadine was pretty adamant that it wasn’t him – but TJ is brought in regardless. He explains that he was in his man cave and didn’t attend the party with the models because he’s been preparing for an IRS audit, which won’t go well since he’s been paid under the table since the ’90s. His lawyer adds that she’s already submitted his laptop to forensics as proof he was on it all night. As for the glass with his prints, he insists that someone is framing him, someone who hated Maddie enough to kill her and hated him enough to frame him for it: Tiff Giles.
“She has this crazy idea we were behind her attack,” he says, and, since the statute of limitations has passed, TJ admits that they were. Maddie didn’t like that Tiff was more popular, and with Tonya Harding serving as inspiration, TJ attacked Tiff when she returned from the club. It was meant to put her out of commission for a few days, tops, but a freak occurrence resulted in Tiff falling and her face getting cut up. Elsbeth asks if he did anything to help, like even call the ambulance, and he sheepishly looks away. “Guess she got her revenge,” Elsbeth sighs.
A Bartending Habit Leads to Tiff’s Arrest in ‘Elsbeth’s “Glamazons”
After learning that Tiff left the party just before 10:00 pm, they approach her back at the model house to tell her about TJ’s confession to her attack. She feigns surprise that Maddie would have been involved, and deep shock when she’s told TJ pointed to her as a suspect. But when Elsbeth questions her alibi, Tiff deftly changes the subject, claiming Elsbeth is “one of those women” that has hated her her whole life, jealous and trying to take her down, before indignantly claiming Elsbeth chooses to believe an obviously guilty man over her as proof.
Back at the model house, Nadine shows them the secret entrance out back, which leads into the kitchen where Elsbeth notices the wine glass they have as evidence doesn’t match the glasses in the home. Paired with the story behind why the attack occurred in the first place, Tiff is brought back in for questioning. But despite revenge serving as motive, Tiff still contends that TJ is the killer, and the constant questioning is becoming ghoulishly traumatic. With nothing to hold her for, Tiff storms out again. Now 0 for 2, Elsbeth and the gang go to the comedy club where Hackett is performing, when Elsbeth recognizes the bartender as Ivy (Paulina Singer), who was a murder suspect way back in Season 1. They start talking when Elsbeth notices that Ivy keeps the foil top from the wine bottles she opens. “It’s a bartender habit,” she says, but it’s more than that: it’s Elsbeth’s “gotcha” moment.
Back at Sheroes, Tiff is placed under arrest for the murder of Maddie. Turns out that despite wiping everything down to remove any trace of her fingerprints, she forgot about the foil cap on the wine bottle she opened, and when it was found her fingerprints were all over it. Plus, as a bartender, she would know how to mix the spritzer to hide the drugs inside. “Why now?” Elsbeth asks, and Tiff explains that after Maddie blew her alibi about the attack, she simply couldn’t let them get away with it.
“Glamazons” is another great Season 3 episode, but what elevates it is Pressly. It’s a brilliant performance, with Pressly leaning into her justification for killing Maddie, leaving us abhorred at her actions but, at the same time, feeling empathy for her. She’s bitter and cynical, but with reason; she’s arguably what Lana Condor’s Peyton should have been last week. Revisiting the Hackett/Fleming dynamic was fun, too, and Season 3’s penchant for bringing in characters from the past is such a nice touch for fans. With one episode left before a long winter break, let’s see Elsbeth end out the year with an almost-perfect 2025.
