Well I’m back from vacation and that means I was in more of note-taking position this week. Oddly enough there doesn’t seem to be a big change in recap length if I take a couple pages of notes or only jot down a few words.
Tonight’s episode begins with Sheriff Underlay holding a news conference. He mentions the possibility of a quarantine and Mariel backs him up. The mayor quickly jumps in and assures everyone that no quarantine has been authorized yet. In this scene we also learn that hundreds of people are still missing, presumably in the same way that Mariel and the priest were missing.
During the press conference we cut to Rose and Jesse watching it on TV. Rose says that she misses her mother and Jesse asks how she can miss their mother when she’s right there on TV. Rose says that she’s not there.
Meanwhile Russell is taking the skeleton to his lab to try and figure out what the spikes jabbed into the skeleton are all about. When he gets there however he finds a man in a wetsuit, covered with a plastic sheet. The man is clearly in bad shape so Russell takes him to the hospital. When the man’s suit is cut off, Russell is shocked to see puncture marks, just like the one Dave got last week, along both sides of the man’s body.
When Russell shares his findings with Dave, Dave is convinced that it must have been the work of EBEs (Extraterrestrial Biological Entities). Russel is still not willing to accept that anything unfamiliar is alien but he is definitely suspicious.
We then see Mariel speaking with her husband, Tom (the Sheriff). She is concerned because her wedding ring is missing and she thinks she may have lost it during the hurricane. We also see Mariel speaking with a lady who had been found in the swamp. The woman asks if Mariel went through the same thing and Mariel says that she did and they must be good swimmers. The woman responds by saying the funny thing is that she does not know how to swim.
Later we see Mariel examining the man who Russell found. She notices that there is another puncture that was partially covered by his hair. She realizes that something is in the puncture and she pulls out it out. The object (which looked a bit like a tiny tentacle with something attached to it) flaps around for a few seconds and then is still.
Jack, Rose and Kira are home alone. Rose is unhappy because Mariel has not called them. Apparently she always calls, no matter how late she is out.
The following morning Russell comes home to greet Larkin. He tells her that the man was apparently in the air force (he found a pair of dog tags) but he has been unable to find out any information about him or get in touch with the man’s family. Larkin tells him she will see if she can find anything. She also tells him he stinks.
To clean themselves up, Larkin and Russell decide to have an outdoor shower. Of course, this ends up getting interrupted by the arrival of Jack and Rose before things get too TV-14. Rose is upset that her mother did not call or come home last night. Sheriff Underlay called and said that Mariel was just busy but Rose is still not happy. Russell calms her down fairly quickly however.
While all this is going on, Dave (who is still in the hospital), decides he is going to get a closer look at Paxton and his wounds. Paxton himself is still unconscious but Dave is able to remove one of the bandages and snaps a picture of one of the punctures. At this point Paxton wakes up and mumbles something about not letting them in. Before Dave can find out anymore however, the sheriff shows up.
Mariel is looking at the sample she pulled from Paxton when Russell enters the room. Mariel quickly hides the sample before Russell can see it. Russell asks about Paxton and she tells him he still hasn’t woken up. He asks if there is anything else and after a moment’s hesitation Mariel shows him the sample. She say she pulled it from Paxton peculates it may have come from some kind of lamprey or jellyfish. She asks Russell to try and determine what it is.
Russell questions Mariel about not coming home the previous night and says that Rose was upset that Mariel never called home. Mariel is quite upset about this and later speaks with her husband. She says that it’s not just that she didn’t call the kids but that she didn’t even think about calling the kids. She feels quite confused as if something is trying to pull her away from everything.
Larkin, keeping with what she told Russell earlier, finds out where Paxton’s wife lives. Larkin decides to drive there but she is stopped by a roadblock. A deputy confirms that there has been no quarantine but that they’ve placed a 5 mile ‘safety-circle’ around the town (presumably on the sheriff’s orders). Larkin, not one to be easily stopped, appears to turn around but then simply takes an off-road approach.
As Larkin begins her cross-country adventure, Russell and Dave return to further examine their mysterious skeleton. Their examination is cut short however when they find the trunk is empty with no trace of the body left behind.
When Larkin gets to the Paxtons’ the wife says that her husband is overseas on a mission. When Larkin tells her that her husband is actually at a nearby hospital she gets upset and refuses to believe her.
Back in Florida City the sheriff and the priest are talking over the body of Paxton. The priest seems worried about what Paxton might say if he wakes up but the sheriff tells him that the doctor assured him that Paxton would be dead by morning. The priest, apparently satisfied, then begins to say a blessing over the man.
When Russell returns home it is to find that Mariel and Tom have come to pick up the kids. Russell wants them to stay with him as Mariel left them home all alone and upset Rose but Rose says she wants to go home because she misses Carlita.
Larkin returns to Florida City and is anxious to get to work on her story. It turns out that her boss, Val, is the same lady who couldn’t swim earlier in the episode. When she hears what Larkin’s story she says that Paxton is dead and that she has no interest in such a story. Instead, she wants them to focus on positive, rebuilding the town, stories.
Russell and Dave return to the car to search the trunk. They are hoping to find something to test for a match with the sample Mariel gave them. Instead they find a ring. On closer inspection it appears to be Mariel’s wedding ring.
Fortunately for Mariel, her husband gives her a new ring (complete with a down on one knee marriage proposal). She is quite happy with her new ring but has to go tend to Rose.
As Mariel tucks Rose into bed she apologizes for not calling and says she’ll do her best to make sure it doesn’t happen again Rose says that she has a secret to tell Mariel but Tom comes in with a call from the hospital before she can tell Mariel. Tom asks Rose if he can hear the secret and, after a moment’s deliberation, she agrees. She tells her stepfather that she saw pretty lights falling from the sky the night of the hurricane and that the lights landed in the swamp and swam a way. The sheriff asks if she can keep a secret and when she nods he says that he saw them too.
This was a good episode tonight. There was a really nice little scene where Rose and Russell were talking about plants. It wasn’t really important to the plot but it was the first time we really got a good sense that Russell and Rose were father and daughter.
We are also definitely seeing the groundwork set for an ‘invasion’. The aliens now control (or at least have sway over) the media, the law enforcement and the priest. There is also a quarantine in effect (even if it’s not an official one) which pretty much seals the town and prevents outsiders from interfering with whatever is going to happen.
We still do not really know if the aliens are implanting something in the people they kidnap or outright replacing them. If they are replacing them, they are doing it in such a way that the victim’s memory is replicated (to the point they aren’t even aware they are aliens. At least not initially).
There were a few minor quibbles with this week’s episode. For one, Dave snuck in to Paxton’s hospital room to take pictures of the wounds with a disposable camera. Yet earlier in the episode, Russell showed him a picture of the wound he had taken with his cellphone. Seemed a bit needless for Dave to take a chance like that. Then again, Dave doesn’t seem like he’s necessarily the most logical guy out there.
Also I would have liked to have seen how the mayor reacted to the safety circle. He didn’t seem like he was behind a quarantine and presumably he wouldn’t be happy about the sheriff going ahead and imposing one anyway. Maybe that’ll be shown next week.
