Netflix Painkiller recap guide: All 6 episodes explained

From creators Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster comes a new Netflix limited series tackling a real-life, devastating crisis in the United States. Painkiller tells the story of the rise of OxyContin, a highly addictive drug manufactured and sold by Purdue Pharma in the 1990s and 2000s.

The six-episode show takes focus on a fictional character, a lawyer named Edie Flowers who works for the US attorney’s office in Roanoke, Virginia. After conducting an investigation, Edie has a first-hand account of how the drug first started spreading across the country, and she recounts the story while assisting in a lawsuit against the corrupt pharmaceutical company.

As we’re told at the start of the series, the true story of Purdue Pharma has been fictionalized in Painkiller, but the opioid crisis causing so many deaths and long-lasting trauma at the hands of the Sackler family is all too real.

Painkiller is based on the 2017 New Yorker article “The Family That Built an Empire of Pain” by Patrick Radden Keefe, along with Barry Meier’s 2018 book Pain Killer: An Empire of Deceit and the Origin of America’s Opioid Epidemic. All six episodes are directed by Peter Berg, best known for directing movies like Friday Night Lights, Lone Survivor, and Patriots Day.

Painkiller on Netflix episode guide: Complete recaps for episodes 1-6

We’re breaking down every episode of Painkiller and explaining the most important moments. Missed a scene or two and need a recap? Look no further than Netflix Life.

Netflix Painkiller episode 1 recap: The One to Start With, The One to Stay With

Each episode of Painkiller begins with a real-life account of a person affected by the OxyContin crisis, including parents who have lost their children to addiction. This gets the viewer ready for what they’re about to see; while the show is dramatized, the effects of the opioid crisis are so real and so devastating. This reminds us of that.

The fictionalized story opens up with Richard Sackler (Matthew Broderick), the nephew of Purdue Pharma founder Arthur Sackler (Clark Gregg) and the emerging leader of the company. We see him awaken in his lavish mansion to multiple smoke alarms going off, and he walks around his huge home trying to turn them off. It’s not until a worker comes by to help him that he’s able to stop the noise.

We then meet Edie Flowers (Uzo Aduba), a lawyer who travels to Washington, D.C. to meet with a law group about the Sacklers. Though she isn’t thrilled to be there, feeling like there’s no use to keep going after the billionaire family, she’s surprised to hear that they have a deposition from Richard Sackler himself. Knowing a lawsuit against Purdue Pharma might actually get somewhere this time, she agrees to tell her story.

A majority of the events in Painkiller are flashbacks, so we’ll be sure to let you know what scenes are in the present day.

Working for the US attorney’s office in Roanoke, Edie started to hear about OxyContin through various doctors. In one instance, which she recalls in a flashback, she attempts to bust a doctor named Dr. Coyle for fraud and finds out way more than she bargains for. While this is going on, we also learn about a man in North Carolina who is negatively affected by the drug.

Glen Kryger (Taylor Kitsch) and his wife Lily Kryger (Carolina Bartczak) run a tire shop and one day, unfortunately, Glen gets into a bad accident when trying to get his stepson Tyler (Jack Mulhern) off an excavator. He hurts his back very badly after suffering a fall, and he has to undergo surgery. While the surgery is successful, Glen is subscribed to pain pills that don’t work as well as he hoped.

In present-day, Edie explains that Arthur Sackler started his pharmaceutical business wanting customers for life, incorporating drug marketing to get people on board. The family targets people like Glen — honest, manual workers who get injured and, eventually, become addicted to their drugs.

When Arthur died, however, he left his family in debt. Feeling pressure from his family and wanting to fill the shoes of his uncle, Richard comes up with an idea that’ll make their money back. But of course, it’s highly unethical. He decides to take the Purdue Pharma drug MS Contin and tweak it a little bit to become OxyContin. Sure, the drug can seriously help with pain, but it’s also very easy to abuse. As the Sacklers prove, however, when money is one’s only priority, the well-being of others just doesn’t matter. Richard puts a sales force of good-looking young people together to go out and sell it.

A college student named Shannon Schaeffer (West Duchovny) gets recruited to join the OxyContin sales team and begins staying with another woman named Britt (Dina Shihabi) who’s already seen a lot of success working for Purdue. She’s clearly made a lot of money and leads a life of glamour because of OxyContin, and she’s happy to bring Shannon into the fold. The two start partying together and Shannon thinks her new job is great, not truly knowing what she’s selling.

Back in North Carolina, Glen is still in severe pain and has trouble adapting to his new life of recovery. He and his wife go back to the doctor and explain the medicine isn’t working, to which the doctor prescribes OxyContin. We start to see the effects the drug has on Glen in the first episode, which will only increase from here.

As Edie continues to pursue Dr. Coyle for fraud, she’s shocked to learn that he’s prescribed OxyContin over 1,000 times in the past six months. This is when the Purdue Pharma drug is officially on Edie’s radar.

Written by Natalie Zamora

Netflix Painkiller episode 2 recap: Jesus Gave Me Water

In present-day as Edie continues to tell her story, she explains that Arthur Sackler built Purdue Pharma off of lies, and Richard takes after him. This is proven as Richard continually sees visions of his uncle, guiding him as he takes a leadership role at the company.

Back to the flashbacks, Edie tries to get to the bottom of OxyContin and why it would be prescribed so much. She goes to a pharmacy with Dr. Coyle to see if he’s actually been medicating real people, and she discovers that they are real people, but seemingly being over-medicated.

They go to another pharmacy to talk to a different pharmacist about the drug, which is where Edie realizes how powerful OxyContin has already become first-hand. A crazed customer shocks her by trying to steal medicine from the pharmacy, demanding more OxyContin. Edie then starts going around to visit different doctors to see what they know about the drug. There’s already a major demand for it.

Britt and Shannon continue selling OxyContin to doctor’s offices and reaping the benefits, but it’s not until Shannon has to do a sales pitch alone does she realize what they’re doing might be unethical. The doctor in question tells her that the drug is highly addictive and tells her off, which seriously alarms her. But Britt simply tells her she has to try harder to sell the drug and they continue on. Shannon also meets a girl on crutches at the doctor’s office who will become important to the story in the third episode.

Glen is back at work but he’s unable to do as much as he used to, and he’s still taking OxyContin. It becomes apparent that the longer he’s taking it, the more reliant he is on it. He wants to take a dosage sooner than he’s supposed to, but when he visits the doctor he’s told he has to stick to the 12 hours. That said, the doctor is open to increasing the dosage so it lasts longer. One night, Tyler steals some of his stepdad’s pills and gives them to his friends.

While out asking around about OxyContin, Edie spots Shannon making a sales pitch and follows her outside. She asks the ladies how much money they’re getting paid before realizing Purdue’s sales strategy is one of the biggest reasons the drug has become so popular so fast.

Glen gets recruited by Purdue Pharma to appear in a testimonial video for OxyContin, in which he says he’s gotten his life back because of the drug. He seems super happy while talking about it, however, we see how he gets when the pills wear off. One evening, he can’t find his pill bottle and gets extremely irritated. He creates a whole scene at home trying to find his OxyContin before Tyler gives it back, acting as if he just found it. Of course, in reality, Glen’s stepson took the pills.

In present-day, Edie explains how Richard Sackler first started OxyContin tests on mice before moving to human trials in Puerto Rico and different locations in the United States. Overall, the trials were a mess. The mice displayed effects of withdrawal, and humans needed the pill more than every 12 hours. OxyContin is flawed, according to Edie, because it doesn’t last a full 12 hours so people go through withdrawal frequently while waiting to take the next dosage.

Apparently, only one person at the FDA was required to approve OxyContin, and that was someone named Curtis Wright. But as a surprise to Richard, Curtis had a lot of concerns about the drug.

We get a glimpse into Edie’s personal life in this episode when she goes to visit her brother Shawn in prison. We discover that she visits every year, though they don’t seem to have a close relationship. At this time, we don’t know what Shawn is serving time for.

The second episode of Painkiller ends on an alarming note when Glen passes out at a restaurant. He’s out to eat with Lily and Tyler, clearly under the influence of OxyContin. He’s very out of it, and accidentally bites down on his hand instead of food, causing himself to start bleeding. His family is extremely worried about his state before he falls to the floor.

An ambulance is called and someone starts doing chest compressions on Glen, but the situation doesn’t look good. While this is going on, we get a clip of Richard pulling up to his huge home, with the show very clearly juxtaposing his financial success with the grave effects of the drug he’s selling.

Written by Natalie Zamora

Netflix Painkiller episode 3 recap: Blizzard of the Century

Fortunately, we don’t have to wait long to find out what happens to Glen as the third episode of Painkiller begins with him recovering in the hospital. According to the doctor treating him, Glen overdosed and she says his dosage of OxyContin is far too high. She tells Glen and Lily that she’s going to call in their detox team, to which the family is confused. How could something a doctor prescribed need to be detoxed? The doctor says they have an ER full of people taking the drug.

In the present-day timeline, Edie explains that the Sackler family had mastered the art of manipulation, and Richard was ready to win over the FDA worker Curtis Wright by whatever means necessary. He chose to use the “MICE” method, which stands for money, ideology, coercion, and ego, to get to Curtis. Purdue Pharma started making close and frequent contact with Curtis, sending him things and providing him with opportunities.

After asking Curtis to establish an “informal relationship” with the Sacklers, Purdue booked him a hotel somewhere so they could all speak in person. No one knows what happened in that room, according to Edie, but afterward, Curtis approved the language Purdue needed to sell OxyContin. About a year after the drug was approved, Curtis left the FDA and started working for Purdue. Yup, super sketchy.

After OxyContin was approved by the FDA, Richard only got more and more powerful. In a flashback, we see him throw himself a big, lavish party where he encourages everyone to keep selling the drug. OxyContin becomes the most heavily prescribed narcotic in the country and the Sacklers are racking in the cash.

When Glen returns from the hospital, he flushes his remaining OxyContin down the toilet and tells his family that nothing will come between them. Lily seems nervous, understandably, telling Glen that the doctor said he needed to taper off. But Glen is adamant he’s going cold turkey.

Meanwhile, Purdue Pharma starts filling conference rooms around the country for the sales team to keep recruiting people, and Shannon realizes her peers are making way more money than she is. Britt reveals her bonus was $42,000, which apparently is not uncommon. Shannon asks what she’s doing wrong and Britt explains that she needs to get doctors to up the dosage of OxyContin they’re prescribing to patients. Then she’ll make more money.

In present-day, Edie recounts to the law group that amid her OxyContin investigation, she got a new boss, a U.S. attorney from Virginia named John Brownlee who seemed to not have a problem with the drug as long as the FDA approved it. Edie remembers being so confused, asking herself how something legally prescribed could be killing so many people. It must be a crime, but she just had to figure out how.

We see a flashback where Edie goes to a morgue to speak with a medical examiner who is doing autopsies on people killed by OxyContin. In one of the bodies, the examiner finds six pills of 60 milligrams, which doesn’t even surprise her. It’s become so common. As Edie is there, more and more bodies are rolled in. She decides to go to the sheriff to talk to him about the drug.

One day, Shannon witnesses the girl she met at the doctor’s office in the second episode pretending to still be hurt just to get prescribed OxyContin, and then the girl proceeds to snort the drug in the car with her friend. Shannon is extremely alarmed, going up to the car to make sure they’re okay. The two girls are clearly under the influence, but they presumably think Shannon is trying to bust them so they drive away, causing a car accident in the process. Shannon goes home to tell Britt what happened but Britt is unfazed, telling her that drug addicts existed before OxyContin was created.

Without OxyContin, Glen is very clearly struggling. He goes to the doctor and says his pain is at a nine or nine and a half out of 10, and he’s prescribed more.

Amid this, Shannon gets a phone call and is invited to Connecticut to the Purdue Pharma headquarters office to meet with someone named Mr. Udell.

As Edie attempts to put the pieces together of the rise of OxyContin, she thinks back to her prison visit to see her brother. As it turns out, he’s behind bars for selling drugs, and in a flashback, she asks him how he can make peace with himself for putting people’s lives at risk. He even sold drugs to their mother, who was addicted to crack, and Edie is still very angry about it.

Edie has a realization and goes to her new boss to talk about it. The rise of OxyContin is eerily similar to the rise of crack cocaine, maybe even worse. She tells him they’re on the verge of an epidemic and they need to go after Purdue Pharma.

As the third episode of Painkiller comes to an end, we get a few moments intertwined as Shannon arrives at the Purdue headquarters, Glen takes more OxyContin pills on his way home while driving recklessly, and the same girl Shannon tried to help is dropped off in the front yard of her doctor’s office. The girl, named Jess, is dead on arrival, likely due to an overdose of OxyContin. Just as Edie believes, it looks like a true opioid overdose epidemic is beginning.

Written by Natalie Zamora

Netflix Painkiller episode 4 recap: Is Believed

Shannon arrives in Connecticut at Purdue’s headquarters after receiving her summons. She’s one of several people asked to meet with Howard Udell. Shannon has made it into the company’s “Topper’s Club,” meaning receiving a substantial bonus and a new title as a member of their elite sales team.

Afterward, Howard pulls Shannon aside and clarifies that the next time she sees something amiss, she should call them, the implication being not to put it in writing, though Howard is careful with his wording. Given the swiftness of this decision, Shannon is suspicious of Purdue’s motives in promoting her.

She asks Britt if this is because she put her observation of Jess Brewster and her friend snorting Oxy in her notes. Britt says it’s because Shannon’s numbers are high. She earned it. As for the overdose, she adheres to Purdue’s blanket statement that it’s the addict’s fault, not the product.

Places like Blacksburg, Virginia, were overrun with this “dope economy” in 2000. The police were overwhelmed. Drug dealers were using homeless people as OxyContin mules, picking them up, taking them to pain clinics, and then bringing them to pharmacies to get their scripts filled to then flip and sell on the streets.

Edie and John Brownlee came to town to speak with the police force and find out exactly how wrong everything was on the ground level. Prosecuting a company as massive and wealthy as Purdue won’t be easy. Brownlee reiterates to Edie that she needs to find the crime.

Purdue is resilient, but they aren’t out of the woods yet. Across the country is growing unrest from concerned citizens, law enforcement, doctors who aren’t in the company’s pocket, and people like Edie who can see the writing on the wall: Oxy is a serious problem.

Maine’s US attorney Jay P. McCloskey holds a televised press conference, condemning OxyContin and labeling it as the most significant criminal and social threat to his state in addition to sending a warning letter detailing the increasing dangers of OxyContin to over 5,000 practicing physicians and members of Congress.

How will Purdue respond to this? Richard wants to blame the addicts. He thinks by admitting any fault, they’ll open themselves up to endless litigation. The best way to circumvent these claims is to pass the blame onto someone else. Target the users who are misusing Oxy. “Give them nothing, and they will go away.”

Checking in on Glen and the Kyrger family, things appear to be getting better—except they’re not. Despite Glen’s promises to kick his Oxy habit, he’s now taking the pills secretly. Sneaking out to his car during work hours to pop a pill or in the middle of the night to take one in his car. Tyler happens to catch Glen taking Oxy at night.

It doesn’t take long for Glen’s secretive drug use to catch up to him. The following day at the tire shop, Glen doesn’t latch the lift properly while working on a car, and the entire thing crashes to the ground. Glen narrowly avoids getting crushed to death beneath it. Lily rushes to help Glen. Tyler tells Lily to open her eyes because he’s obviously high out of his mind.

A nasty fight ensues between them, with Lily berating Tyler, kicking him out, and blaming him for this entire situation. Yikes. But as Edie says, the thing about opioids is they don’t just destroy the lives of those who abuse them. They destroy the lives of everyone in their orbit.

Not everyone is on a downward spiral. Thanks to Shannon’s recent promotion, she’s flying higher than ever. She gets an expensive car and a penthouse apartment. Shannon is officially stepping into Britt’s shoes, hosting seminars and recruiting girls like Molly, a bold young woman prepared to become the latest Oxy sales rep.

Shannon is startled to find angry protestors outside Dr. Cooper’s office the next time she visits. It seems Jess Brewster’s death has caused quite an outcry within the community. People are pissed. Shannon takes Cooper to a bar for a drink and to fluff his ego amid the ongoing protests. She helps nominate him as a guest speaker at a big Purdue event.

In response to the overdose and mounting pressure, Howard Udell goes on television as part of a press conference. He says Jess died with multiple other drugs in her body, so there is no way of knowing that OxyContin, specifically, caused her death.

Dr. Gregory Fitzgibbons, the guy who found Jess’s body and the man from an earlier episode who Shannon tried to recruit, is at the conference and disgusted by Purdue’s lack of response. Dr. Fitzgibbons is close to Jess’s mother, Carol Brewster, and even delivered Jess as a baby. Edie meets him there and is surprised to find he’s one of the only doctors around who hasn’t been upping their Oxy prescriptions and, in fact, has only prescribed it twice in cases of near-death for cancer patients.

Since the start, Dr. Fitzgibbons has been a vocal dissident against Purdue and Oxy. He keeps an entire box of letters he sent to the company in 1998 and shows Edie an old tape he recorded showing someone from Purdue saying the rate of addiction amid pain patients is less than 1%. Gregory says that’s a lie.

Isn’t Purdue’s claim a direct quote pulled from a 1980 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine? Not quite. The so-called “study” is a letter to the editor written by Dr. Hershel Jick.

Edie visits Dr. Jick, who tells her the letter referred to a survey conducted from a short-term study on opioid use in a controlled hospital setting. It’s not even remotely related to long-term, unsupervised opioid use. Dr. Jick is stunned by the FDA allowing them to use that language. It’s all over Purdue’s training manuals and everything. So, Edie goes straight to the source: the FDA.

The woman she speaks with shares similar concerns. She points out that Purdue uses language like “is believed to reduce the abuse liability of the drug” on the packaging. Believed by who? Exactly. But she wasn’t the medical officer who approved the language. That honor belonged to Curtis Wright. Remember him?

Purdue is called to testify in front of Congress. Richard elects Howard and the heads of his marketing and medical teams to testify because god forbid he does it. Richard wants to avoid attaching the Sackler name to this mess as much as possible, so he’s using those three as a firewall between his name and the product.

After giving his speech at the Purdue event, Cooper is riding high on his reception and all the flattery. He chooses that moment to make a move on Shannon, gifting her an expensive Tiffany bracelet and then assaulting her on a couch as countless other people roam around. He tells her he wants to take her back to his hotel room and all kinds of horribly degrading things. Shannon resists his advances and is clearly shocked and traumatized by Cooper’s actions.

In Mt. Airy, Glen drives to pick up Tyler from Jack’s (Tyler’s biological father, I’m assuming) house. Jack immediately sees Glen is as high as a kite and refuses to let Tyler go with him. Glen drives off and pulls into a parking lot to do more Oxy. This time, he recalls what his doctor said about people crushing it up and snorting it to get high faster, so that’s exactly what he does.

We pivot to Washington, D.C., 2001, where Udell testified before Congress that no one at Purdue was aware of the drug abuse issues until February 2000. Edie knows that’s a lie because Dr. Fitzgibbons wrote letters to Purdue in 1998. She takes the evidence straight to John Brownlee and tells him that’s the crime. Udell lied under oath, and they can prove it.

Written by Maddy Lennon

Netflix Painkiller episode 5 recap: Hot! Hot! Hot!

Painkiller episode 5 takes us back to the 1950s, the beginning of Arthur Sackler’s legacy. A very much alive Arthur teaches a young Richard a valuable lesson about legacy. He uses Arthur Nobel as an example. Nobel invented dynamite, but people remember him for the Nobel Peace Prize.

In the present, Edie points out that the Rockefellers poisoned half the planet, but when people think of them, they generally remember museums and theaters; why wouldn’t the Sacklers think they could do the same thing? Purdue believed they’d sailed through the congressional hearing and were now untouchable. But that one lie allowed John Brownlee’s team to subpoena Purdue and force them to turn over all their documents.

A maliciously compliant Purdue does just that. The company gives Edie and her team everything, meaning millions of pages of interoffice memos, call logs, emails, etc. Almost all of it, by design, was useless. Edie and everyone else on Brownlee’s team gets to work combing through everything to find something credible they can use.

Meanwhile, a desperate Glen is doing anything he can to get his hands on more Oxy. His doctor has already realized Glen has an addiction and refuses to give him another prescription. He offers to prescribe methadone instead, but Glen refuses.

Instead, he starts pawning tools and anything else he can find at his shop—even his wedding ring. Glen goes to a pain clinic and tries to bribe the bouncer to let him cut in line. Waving a wad of cash around in a place like that isn’t smart. Within minutes, Glen gets robbed. Now he’s back to square one.

Brownlee, Edie, and their team arrive in Connecticut to speak directly with Howard Udell. Unfortunately, the secretary, a woman named Deborah Marlowe, refuses to let Edie in because she wasn’t “pre-approved.” Edie has to wait in the lobby while the discussion takes place. Things don’t take long to turn weird and ugly behind closed doors.

For starters, Richard plays with his dog in the lobby, throwing the ball against the glass and generally making lots of noise. It’s rude and unprofessional. Inside the conference room, Brownlee lays out their terms. They want Purdue to issue a public apology, taking responsibility for the harmful effects of OxyContin.

They also want billions of dollars donated to the communities most affected and new labeling on Oxy’s packaging. Udell, acting on Richard’s orders, doesn’t give them anything. His counteroffer is a $10 million “gift” to a charity of Brownlee’s choice…and that’s about it. Brownlee ups the ante, now saying he wants Purdue to take Oxy off the shelves altogether and pay more money to rectify the damage they’ve done. They reach a stalemate.

Brownlee’s team shifted strategies since the paperwork didn’t lead them anywhere. They start cold-calling people, hoping to get someone from the inside to speak out against Purdue. Edie contacts everyone from Shannon Shaeffer to the secretary she met at Purdue, Deborah Marlowe.

Deborah immediately hangs up when Edie tells her why she’s calling, but then during a meeting, the men, especially Howard Udell, berate her and belittle her work, dismissing her from the office. Enraged by the treatment she’s received there over the years, Deborah calls Edie and tells her she’s ready to burn it all down.

The year before the McCloskey statement, Deborah had been instructed to compile a report on all the bad things Oxycontin was supposedly doing to people. She created an in-depth memo highlighting the addictive properties, how people were abusing it, where, etc.

Everything. Howard was pissed that she’d actually written it down and sent it to people in the office; supposedly, “interoffice memo” means something different to him. Regardless, Deborah ended up shredding it all. But Edie convinces her to testify. They agree to fly back to meet with her the following day to get her on the record. This would prove, definitively, that Purdue lied under oath and knew about the dangers of OxyContin before February 2000, as they’d claimed.

Edie and Brownlee fly back to Connecticut to prepare for the deposition, unaware that Deborah is a long-time addict and Oxy user. She never shows up to the meeting, instead going doctor-shopping and trying to get a script for the drug. Down in North Carolina, Glen also hits rock bottom, going to Tyler to ask for money or a hook-up to get him more Oxy.

Thinking they’re in the clear from their legal troubles, Purdue goes big on their annual sales conference. Richard flies out all his employees to Miami, where the company is hosting the event, which is basically just a giant party/rave. Richard brings out OxyContin cheerleaders, plushies, an Oxy theme song, and mascots. All the bells and whistles you can think of are at this event.

It’s at this party that Shannon starts to realize just how insidious Oxy is and how powerful Purdue is overall. She’s shocked when she finds none other than Jay McCloskey in attendance, the Maine attorney who previously sent 5,000 letters to various physicians trying to warn them of the drug’s dangers. Now he’s a “consultant” for Purdue. Curtis Wright from the FDA is there, too, and so is Dr. Cooper.

Shannon notices Molly is wearing the Tiffany bracelet he tried to give Shannon. Molly pointedly calls Shannon out for pawning her off on Cooper. Shannon couldn’t f**k him, so she did. People like Britt and the other sales reps aren’t even phased. Edie wasn’t necessarily wrong when she called Britt a madam; these girls are pimping themselves out to doctors to get them to sell more OxyContin and put more money in their pockets.

It’s disturbing, but Shannon finally seems to be understanding that. She also learns that all of these female sales reps, cheerleaders, and other Purdue employees are using Oxy recreationally. Britt and another girl convince Shannon to try the drug, coaxing her into snorting a line. Shannon gets incredibly high and falls into a swimming pool, where she nearly drowns.

At the same time, Glenn realizes he needs to change something if he ever hopes to get his family back. He hunkers down in his garage on a mattress and spends a terrible night alone, going through drug withdrawal.

Written by Maddy Lennon

Netflix Painkiller episode 6 recap: What’s in a Name?

The Miami sales conference debacle is enough of a wake-up call for Shannon to finally turn on Purdue. She takes all her documents, emails, training material, and more straight to Edie and agrees to help their case.

Thanks to Shannon, Edie and Brownlee’s team now have more than enough to go after Purdue. But how do you legally prosecute a company that big? They start by making cases against three of the main guys, Sackler’s “firewall” of Michael Friedman, Howard Udell, and Dr. Paul Goldenheim. Brownlee already went to the DOJ and White House to get approval for this, so it’s real.

Of course, Richard is still in denial and doesn’t want to face the reality that someone could go to jail. He and Purdue hire the richest lawyers money can buy, including Mary Jo White, the first woman to be the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York; Howard Shapiro, former general counsel for the FBI; and Rudolph William Louis Giuliani, yes, that “Rudy” Giuliani.

Edie believed everything would finally work out, that they would make a real dent in Purdue and affect change. But that’s not what happened. Richard Sackler called Rudy Giuliani, who contacted the DOJ, then the White House, then Brownlee. A settlement with Purdue is reached. It’s hardly a slap on the wrist. Edie is disappointed and feels supremely betrayed by Brownlee.

Giuliani secured an agreement that would keep Purdue’s top executives out of prison and allow them to continue selling Oxy. The deal also made it harder for prosecutors to bring criminal charges against the company. So despite Brownlee bringing criminal charges against Purdue’s execs, it ended up amounting to, well, nothing behind a payment on Purdue’s part. Striking that deal also meant they had to bury all of their evidence and seal it away.

On the personal side of things, Edie finally reads all of her brother’s letters. This ordeal with Purdue made her realize that her brother isn’t evil, and a lot of her anger toward him was misplaced. She visits him at the jail again, and they make amends.

Shannon gets a visit from a seriously pissed-off Britt, who is obviously facing some fallout from everything Shannon turned over to Edie. Britt slaps Shannon in the face a few times, claiming she’s “not a bad person.” I guess that’s the end of that friendship. Shannon is probably way better off.

Elsewhere, Glen is doing much better after his horrible night of withdrawal. He’s more than 30 days sober and is slowly earning his way back into Lily’s life. He apologizes to Tyler and makes it clear to him that none of this was his fault. But even though he’s come a long way, Lily isn’t quite ready to let Glen move back in yet.

One night, Glen is staying at a hotel when he hears his neighbors blasting music. They don’t hear him pounding on the wall to quiet down, so he walks over there himself. He finds several people knocked out, either dead or unconscious, after overdosing on…you guessed it, Oxy.

Glen sees they left behind several pills. It’s a serious test for his sobriety, and, tragically, Glen can’t resist. He steals all of their pills and falls hard back into his addiction. Not long after, Glen overdoses in his car and dies, leaving a bunch of strangers to find his body.

On a slightly more positive note, Edie finishes her story in the present. She’s told attorneys Brianna Ortiz and Bill Havens everything she knows about Purdue and wishes them luck. Then she leaves to see her brother, who has since gotten out of jail and appears to be doing well for himself!

The episode ends on a somewhat strange note, with Richard Sackler getting beaten to a bloody pulp by his vision of Arthur Sackler. His version of Arthur is livid at Richard for settling and cozying up to “swamp creature” Rudy Giuliani, as he feels doing that will ruin his beloved legacy. Then we get a few black cards explaining the aftermath and an update on Purdue.

• It is estimated that over 300,000 people have died over the past two decades from overdoses involving prescription painkillers like OxyContin.
• Over 40 people die in the US from prescription opioid overdoses every day.
• As of March 2023, final approval for Purdue Pharma’s bankruptcy is still pending.
• No member of the Sackler family has been criminally charged in connection with the marketing of OxyContin or any overdose deaths involving the drug.
• The Sackler family “is believed” to be worth over 11 billion dollars.

Written by Maddy Lennon

This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the series being covered here wouldn’t exist.