Patience Season 2 Episode 8 Review: A Tense (and Romantic?) Season Finale

On Patience Season 2 Episode 8, “Hostage,” we launch straight into said hostage situation, which has come to a full boil in just 90 minutes.

Nicola says she’s spent fifteen years in prison for the murder of her sponsor, having fallen into addiction after her young son, Noah, was killed by a hit and run driver. She demands that Patience and Frankie find out who the real culprit is.

While tension develops inside and out thanks to Callum Banks, Monroe’s corrupt former boss and now a corrupt hostage negotiator, Jake and Will are able to get information that changes Nicola’s true aims. She actually wants to find Noah’s killer.

Banks’s men charge in, but Nicola flees and leaves our heroines on the hook for “letting” her in. Patience reaches out to Elliot and he provides evidence that the same man killed both Noah and the sponsor, framing Nicola for the latter crime.

She chases him into a roof in a climax that gets Frankie shot, though non-fatally. Monroe recovers in time to see Banks’s attempt to skewer her fall apart. Though they are reprimanded for their actions, neither she nor Patience is fired.

Later, Patience and Elliot finally communicate, and it helps them get back together. He’s with her at a wedding when a foreshadowed plot twist drops: the woman who told Patience of her mother’s death now introduces herself as her sister.

After a slow build for Patience and Frankie’s trust in each other over most of the season, their dynamic is pushed to finally reach its peak in these high-pressure circumstances. It says a lot that they both step up to the plate so quickly.

I still would have liked to see more of the growth on screen, but at least we know it’s now there when it counts. On top of that, Patience has proved that she can step beyond the limits of her diagnosis even when completely overwhelmed and terrified.

As much as we empathize with Nicola, it stretches belief a littles that she winds up facing so few consequences for her actions, especially considering the frankly absurd obsession with punishing Monroe and Patience for handling things so well.

That’s only one of the reasons Callum Banks might be the single most irritating antagonist we’ve had on the show—and he hasn’t even killed anyone. Somehow both smug and incompetent, it’s a relief when his comeuppance finally plays out.

Yet as much as we’re happy for our two main characters, it’s even more fulfilling to see Patience and Elliot mend their own gaps when the chips are down. Let’s just hope they keep communicating so this romantic reunion can actually last.

With season 3 already confirmed, we’ll get the chance both to see where they go from here and to handle the fallout that’s sure to come with the latest shocking news for Patience to face. I just hope she finds more good in it than bad.

How would you like to see Patience’s sister affect her life? What more do you want to see from her new, strengthening, and rekindled personal relationships? Sound off on your hopes and your feelings on the whole of season two below!

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Patience airs Sundays at 8/7c on PBS.

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