Has anyone gotten a chance to catch The Colbert Report yet? Given that Stephen Colbert is one funny guy and given the awesomeness that is the Daily Show I can’t imagine the show being anything but great. Sadly up here in the sunny beaches of Canada, our equivalent of Comedy Central has yet to reach a decision about picking up the series. Anyway, on to the recap.
We open this week’s episode with Rose playing down by the swamp, apparently building a rather flimsy looking fort. Something is in the water watching her and, while we cannot see what it is, it comes up to the edge of the water as Rose looks on.
A short distance away at Russ’ house, everyone is working on household repairs. Larkin tells Russ she is thinking on visiting an ex-boyfriend who is now in the Air Force to see if he can give her any answers when Rose runs in. She tells everyone that one of the lights is in the water and they all run down to check it out. When they get to the water’s edge the light is, not surprisingly, no longer around.
Up until this point Larkin had not been told anything about the lights and so when she finds out that both kids saw a light in the water and that Dave was attacked by one of those lights and yet nobody told her she was none too pleased. She asks Russell how he could keep that from her when he knew she has been working to uncover what the Air Force has been up to. She surmises that there is a good chance that whatever fell from the sky has some connection to that (though she doesn’t seem to buy Dave’s alien entity theory).
Russell is trying to apologize when Karl stops by. He tells Russ that he is really having some problems with Lucy and asks if he can meet Russ for lunch so that they can talk about it. Before Russ can give Karl a decision, Larkin storms outside and says she is going to visit the Air Force base. Russ is trying to get her not to leave when Jesse also starts to leave. Russ tells Jesse he wants to talk to him and Jesse agrees to stay but with all the distractions, Russ kind of blows Karl off. Russ tells Karl he may be able to meet him for lunch but that he will definitely see him tomorrow.
On a more grocery related note, Mariel is doing some grocery shopping when she runs into Father Scanlon. He tells her about a hurricane survivor group that meets at his church and invites Mariel to go. She does not seem too thrilled about the idea and says she’ll have to talk to her husband first. Father Scanlon responds that Tom not only supports the idea, but he was the one who suggested she be invited.
We then cut to a deputy outside of boarded up store. He tells the sheriff they have a looter and that when they tried to arrest him, the mystery looter demanded that he talk to Sheriff Underlay alone. The sheriff, without hesitation, goes into the store only to find, to the surprise of dozens, Karl is the looter. Karl is also playing with a gun.
When Karl demands to know what is going on, Tom responds by saying that, obviously, Karl is looting. Seemingly, that was not the answer Karl was looking for as he reacts rather pooly. Karl turns toward the sheriff, raising his gun and shouting, “You could have helped me! Why didn’t you help me?”. Sheriff Underlay quickly answers the question with his gun.
Back to the Varon household we go, as Russ has a discussion with Jesse. Russ wants to apologize to Jesse for not letting him know he knew about the lights. Russ says he did not want to scare anyone but Jesse said he would have been interested, not scared. Jesse then asks to stay at Russ’ for the night. When Russ points out that it is Mariel’s night Jesse says that she has hardly ever been home since the hurricane anyway and even when she is home, she isn’t there mentally.
After discussing things with his son, Russell drives into to town where he meets up with Sheriff Underlay. The sheriff tells Russell about the shooting and asks if he knew why Karl might have done what he did. Russell is stunned and has no explanation for what happened. The sheriff says he is also baffled by Karl’s actions.
A short while later Mariel comes home and talk with Kira. The shooting is all over the news so both already knew about what had happened. Kira knows Karl’s son and she is not sure what she is going to say to him.
Larkin, presumably after circumventing the safety circle again, shows up at the Air Force base. She meets up with Vince there who immediately comes off as a harmless goof. He proceeds to start showing her around the base.
At this point Jesse enters the house and, when questioned, tells Mariel he is just there to pick up a few things. He heard about what happened and know he is even more determined to stay at his father’s for the night. Mariel thinks that they should be together as a family but Jesse is not swayed. Kira says hello to Jesse and he just storms out of the house. Mariel tries to go after Jesse but Kira says she will talk to him.
Russel, feeling guilty about what happened, goes to visit with Karl’s family. Lucy’s demeanor changes greatly when Russ lets her know that Karl had came to see him that morning and mentioned the two of them were having problems. Lucy tells Russ that ever since the hurricane Karl had been drunken, depressed and abusive. She surmises that he was stealing the gun from the shop in order to shoot her as she had asked for a divorce the night before. She claims things got pretty ugly when she told him that and that it was only a visit from Sheriff Underlay that stopped the situation from getting worse.
Meanwhile, Jesse and Kira are walking. Kira is having a hard time keeping up and asks for Jesse to wait up. He snips at her, saying that he waited all night for her. She asks if that is why he has not wanted to stay at her house lately and assures him that nothing happened with Derek. Jesse obviously doubts Kira’s claim and also says that he’s upset because his mom has been acting strangely. Kira responds by playing that ‘at least you have a mom’ card which pretty much forces Jesse to stop being an ass. Kira then asks Jesse to go see Karl’s son, Gage, with her. Jesse says that he would not know what to say to him and Kira admits she does not know either. Jesse then agrees to accompany her.
Not content to stay in one place for more than a scene at at time, Russ is now visiting with Mariel. They have a brief discussion about the shooting and Mariel says that Tom is not home yet. Immediately after that Tom shows up. Mariel is anxious to talk to Tom but he blows her off so he can talk to Russell instead. And in case we didn’t catch that the sheriff made a bad call here, we get some ominous music to underline the poorness of his decision.
Russ confronts Tom about his visit to Karl and Lucy the night before. He asks Tom why he did not do more if he knew things were so bad between Karl and Lucy. Tom says that everyone is stressed out because of the hurricane aftermath and that if he arrested everyone who looked like they were about to snap, he’d have to arrest half the town. The sheriff says he made a judgment call and that it turned out to be the wrong decision. Russ is not satisfied with that answer but takes his leave anyway.
Back at the Air Force base Larkin tries to pump Vince for information but he either does not know anything or is quite good at playing an idiot. He then points out an OSI facility that is restricted. He says that he can’t take Larking there but he can show her the weather center.
Mariel is not happy with Tom’s actions and she starts to leave the house. When questioned, she tells Tom she is going to the church. Mariel says she has been worrying about Tom all day and then he just ignored her. She then asks Tom why he is not more upset. Tom says he is upset but he is not as upset as he should be because from the moment he entered the building he knew the looter was going to die. He says he just knew it like he sometimes knows things. Mariel asks Tom if he knows how his wife is feeling and when he doesn’t answer she says, “alone,” and walks out.
Mariel, true to her word, goes to the church. Father Scanlon is there and he tells Mariel the meeting is not for several hours. Mariel claims that she was in the neighborhood. When the priest asks her what is wrong, Mariel tells him that she is worried about her family. Ever since the hurricane she has been distracted and she feels she is not as attentive as she once was. She goes on to say that she is worried that Jesse does not want to live with her anymore and that Tom is so hard to read that she seldom knows what is going on with him. Father Scanlon tells Mariel that sometimes you have to let your family have a little more freedom and that if she allows Jesse to move in with his father then he will probably start to appreciate Mariel more. Mariel follows up by asking, “And Tom?” to which the priest replies, in a rather creepy fashion, “You’re never going to lose him. Ever.”
At the Air Force base Larkin and Vince have made it to the weather center. Vince has to go for a couple of minutes and tells her that she has to stay there. Of course, the moment nobody is watching Larkin runs for the OSI building. For a restricted area, security is pretty lax as Larkin manages to find an unsecured sliding door without a whole lot of trouble.
Once inside the building Larkin, sees a few boxes being handled and some flashing, welding-like light. A guard seems to spot her in her hiding space so she rushes out of the building. The guard does not pursue but merely says something into his radio.
Back in town, Russ runs into Gage. Gage tells Russ that what Lucy told him earlier in the day was completely untrue. Gage says it was his mom that has changed since she was pulled from the water in the hurricane aftermath and that she was abusing Karl. Gage speculates that Karl was probably getting a gun to protect himself.
Russ then goes to see Lucy at her home but runs into Gage again. Lucy is off to the church and the hurricane survivor’s group. Gage says they are Lucy’s new family and that she does not want him around anymore than she wanted Karl around. Gage tells Russ that he is going to move to his uncle’s house.
Russ, apparently still searching for Lucy, drives to the church where he spots Lucy hugging the sheriff. When Tom sees Russ he asks him if he’s an “official ranger detective” now. Russ is not amused by the comment and demands to know what happened to Lucy. He thinks something happened to all of the people at the church and he wants Tom to tell him what.
Russ is horrified to see Mariel entering the church with the other survivors. He tells Tom that Mariel should not be there but Tom says that she belongs there.
We see the Air Force Base for one last time as Larkin is being escorted out by Vince. Apparently either Larkin made a good excuse for her prolonged absence when she was supposed to stay put or Vince is even stupider than he previously seemed as there is no discussion of where she disappeared to.
As she gets into her vehicle and drives off we see another car following her.
And we close the episode with the much-anticipated Hurricane Survivors meeting. There is a pretty good sized crowd of a few dozen people, presumably all of whom have ended up in the water at some point.
The first speaker for the evening is Sheriff Underlay. He tells everyone that while he did not undergo an ordeal during the hurricane that back in 1996 he had been on a plane trip to Atlanta with his first wife. The plane had engine troubles and crashed from 6000 feet into the Everglades. The search parties had no hope for survivors but 19 hours later they pulled his body out of the water. He was the sole survivor. Tom goes on to say that while he does not know why he survived, he emerged stronger and with a clearer purpose in life. He had been given a second chance and that is the same chance that all of the hurricane survivors have been given.
While the sheriff gave his speech at the church, they kept cutting to shots of Russ climbing a tree house that Dave and Rose had built. He never said or did anything other than climb the tree house so apparently he was just climbing the tree house so he could get a better view of lightning strikes. I guess risking electrocution was worth the cool view.
I really enjoyed the first three quarters of tonight’s episode. The pace seemed a bit quicker this week and there was a real sense that things were happening (something has been lacking from some of the previous episodes).
Then after Russ confronted the sheriff outside of the church, it seemed like the episode was heading towards a huge anti-climax. There was still ten minutes of show left and not a whole lot for anyone to do. I was pleasantly surprised when we got the Sheriff’s speech at the end of the episode which answered several questions, particularly concerning the fate of the sheriff’s dead wife, while raising some new ones.
My only problem with the episode is that there were a number of people who seemed to be acting oddly. Jesse has never really been portrayed as all that close to his mom, so you would think that he would not have been upset at her not being home in the evenings all that often (though they gave enough ambiguity to his actions that it could have just been a cover for avoiding Kira after the Derek incident).
Vince also seemed to act in an unexpected fashion given that he seemingly never questioned Larkin’s absence at the Air Force base. In this case it is possible Larkin gave him some sort of excuse off-screen that he readily accepted but we have no way of knowing for sure.
The only totally inexcusable one was Russell’s tree adventure. The only explanation I can think of for Russell to climb the tree house is that it made for a cool shot. Russell’s not a moron so he should know better than to climb a tree in a lightning storm. If anyone can give me a valid reason for Russ to be up in that tree when he was, please let me know.
