For those of you who may not be aware, there’s a Canadian election coming up on January 23rd. It obviously doesn’t have the same level of world-wide impact as the American elections but I urge my fellow Canadians to get out and vote. Unless you are planning on voting Conservative, in which case I urge you to stay the hell away from the polls.
The scary thing is it’s starting to look quite possible that not only will the Conservatives win, they (and Stephen Harper) will end up with a majority government. And nobody wants that (well nobody I respect wants that anyway). I don’t care if you vote Liberal, Bloq, NDP, Green or one of the smaller parties (if you live in Canada you probably haven’t heard much about most of them but we actually have a number of parties in Canada that can win a good number of seats. The problem is that all but the Conservatives are more or on the left, dividing the sane people vote (and even though the Bloq and the NDP can get 15%-25% of the vote, it’s still really between the Liberals and the Conservatives. For now at least)) as long as you get out there and vote.
Anyway, enough political stuff from me (at least till next week when I’ll probably have to bitch about the Conservative victory), let’s get on with the recap.
Christina, last seen killing her mother-in-law and saying lots of crazy stuff to Tom, is being transported somewhere by a couple police officers. They say she should have let things go when she lost her baby and that she went too far when she killed her mother-in-law. They then take her for a little boat ride and, without removing her handcuffs, they throw her in the middle of a lake.
Mariel and Russ, meanwhile, are still busy reacting to the Tom taking the kids incident. Mariel and Russ argue for a bit about whether or not Russ trusts her and Russ says that no matter what has happened to Mariel, she is still Rose and Jesse’s mother. Mariel wants to make sure that nobody takes her kids away so she makes Russ promise not to tell anyone about her new condition.
Russ and Mariel go outside to investigate why the power suddenly came back on (and for some reason, even though they had a generator running until Tom left, pretty much every device in the house is turned on) and it seems like the Underlay home is the only one with power.
While outside Russ and Mariel hear a phone ringing, which is a surprise because the phones have been out since the hurricane. For some reason they only have one phone (outside of Tom’s office) in a large, two-story house and it takes Mariel and Russ a hell of a long time to actually find the phone. And of course, the person hangs up just as it is answered.
Russ decides to call Larkin to see if his phone is working. He tells her where he is and that there is nothing to worry about; he’ll be home soon. Larkin seems rather suspicious after she hangs up the phone but she does not saying anything about it to Russ.
Russ tells Mariel that he doesn’t want to lie to his wife. Mariel fears that as a reporter Larkin will feel obligated to tell others and she doesn’t want what happened to jeopardize her relationship with Rose and Jesse. She asks him to keep things secret until she can find some answers. Russ seems to go along with this but clearly does not like it.
The discussion is interrupted by another phone call. This time we get a strange voice saying “Where’s your husband? You’ve poisoned my house, you’ve poisoned my house” and then hanging up.
Mariel and Russ decide to go into Tom’s office to see if the radio is in there. It turns out that it is there, but about two seconds after trying to radio Tom, the phone rings and Tom is on the other end. He tells Mariel the kids are okay and that they will call later. He tells Mariel she needs time to decide what is really important in her life.
Tom goes upstairs and let’s the kids into the cabin. He seems unusually cheerful and promises the kids a combination of hotdogs, s’mores, movies and Karaoke.
True to his word, Tom begins barbecuing a short while later. Jesse goes outside to talk to him for a while. He then asks Tom while they are really there. He noticed how quickly Tom rushed them out of the house and Jesse suspects something is up.
Tom attempts to allay Jesse’s suspicion by telling him that the aftermath of the hurricane has been really hard on Jesse’s mother and he thought they would just give her a little break. And, in response to a follow-up question of Jesse’s, Tom says the cabin belongs to a developer friend of his. Tom doesn’t really have an answer when Jesse asks why there is a sheriff department boat at the cabin of a developer.
Back at the Underlay house, Mariel insists that Tom would not hurt the kids. She says the he is only mad at her, and not the kids. Russ points out that he is using the kids to get to her so he is less certain about Tom’s inability to hurt the kids.
The phone rings again and this time Dave is on the line. He tells Russ that Larkin is suspicious about all the time Mariel is spending with Russ. He urges Russ to tell her the truth so she knows why he blew her off when she was waiting for him in bed to go hang out with Mariel.
While talking to Dave, Russ sees someone lurking outside of the house so he throws down the phone and runs outside. He manages to catch the lurker and after a brief scuttle he seems to be getting the upper-hand. A second lurker shows up and Russ ends up getting severely beaten. And kicked a lot.
At the cabin, Jesse is doing his patented mope while everyone else is being cheerful and enjoying their meal. Tom notes that he forgot the sodas in the car so he goes out to the vehicle to get them. While he’s doing so, Jesse looks out the window and sees Tom dragging a rather large and heavy black duffel bag into the house.
Russ, meanwhile, has dragged himself back to Mariel’s house and he’s looking rather beaten. She goes to get a towel for him and the phone rings. Russ is busy lying on the floor so Mariel answers it. Dave is the caller once more and he really wants to talk to Russ about something important. Mariel tells Dave that Russ will call him back and hangs up, cutting Dave off mid-protest.
Mariel fusses over Russ while he tells her what happened. The two look like maybe they are about to kiss again when, to the surprise of roughly 3 viewers Larkin shows up (really the only suspense was whether she would turn up just before or during a Russ/Mariel kiss).
Larkin says she was worried about Russ and wants to know what is going on. Mariel is about to tend to Russ with the towel when she realizes Larkin is there and defers to her.
Back at the cabin, Rose is karaoking it up while Tom quasi-sings along. Jesse takes advantage of the musical distraction and asks Kira to meet him downstairs as he wants to talk to her.
Russ, now hobbling around, tells Larkin that he was worried about the kids because Tom and Mariel had a fight. Larkin wants to know if the fight was because Mariel had been spending so much time with Russ.
While they are talking, the phone rings. Larkin answers it but then they switch to speaker phone so everyone can hear. It seems to be our mystery caller again; this time he says something about betrayal and how he knows “what you two are doing”. Larkin thinks this has something to do with Russ and Mariel having an affair and storms out.
At this point Russ decides to tell his wife everything about Mariel and Tom. Larkin seems like she may actually believe his claims about the not human thing but she still seems to think there is something going on between Mariel and Russ so she still leaves anyway.
Jesse and Kira have met downstairs. Apparently Jesse was slow to talk or else Kira got there before him or something because she is watching an old movie while Jesse talks to her. Jesse tells Kira about seeing Tom dragging a heavy black duffel bag and the sheriff’s boat thing but Kira seems skeptical. When Jesse presses her, she says that she doesn’t get a chance to spend time with her dad much and she’s really happy that he has taken them on an outing like this.
Jesse, realizing he’s not going to get any help from Kira, quickly switches to his default, moping emotion. He starts to trudge upstairs when he decides he would rather check the room Tom stored the duffel bag in. He starts to unzip said bag but Tom enters the room. Jesse tries to beg off and Tom says “Now you’ve ruined the surprise” while some overly ominous music plays.
Jesse tries to explain to Tom why he was in the room but the questions stop as Kira and Rose wander into the room. Tom says he didn’t want to do this yet but that he has no choice now and urges the kids to open the bag while some more ominous music plays as the show seems to desperately try to make you think something bad might actually be in the bag.
It turns out, of course, there’s nothing bad in the bag; it’s actually full of presents for the kids. Rose gets an old copy of Robin Hood that Tom’s mom use to read to him, Kira gets a locket that used to belong to her mother and Jesse gets an old gun. Everyone is really touched by the gifts and on their way out Jesse stops to apologize to Tom.
Once the kids leave, Tom looks outside the room to confirm they are gone. He then goes under the bed and lugs out a second black duffel bag.
After switching the bags, Tom calls Mariel again. He asks to talk to Mariel alone and Russ, at Mariel’s urging, goes to answer the door. There are two deputies at the door; they are there to take Russ’ report about his attack. The deputies seem to be quite unfriendly and one of them has a nasty gash on his nose, almost as if he was in a scuffle. When asked if he’d like to make a report, Russ says that he thinks the sheriff knows everything he needs to know already and the deputies leave.
Mariel comes out of Tom’s office as the deputies depart. She tells Russ that Tom will be bringing the kids back in the morning. Russ wants to know what she said to get him to agree to that but all she will say is that she told Tom she loved him. There is clearly more she said, but she refuses to give Russ any more information.
Tom, his phone call duties taken care of, lugs the second black duffel bag back outside. He opts to take the really stealthy route by lugging it past the sleeping kids; fortunately, for Tom, they don’t wake up. He then takes the boat out on the lake and throws the duffel bag into the water.
The next morning Tom arrives back at the Underlay household with the kids in tow. There are lots of hugs all around. Tom has a bit of fun by thanking Russ for letting him steal the kids for a while. Once the kids go inside, Tom says that he and Mariel have decided to let Russ look after the kids for a while and that it would be best for everyone if they stayed with Russ. Russ suspects this has to do with Mariel’s phone call last night but there is not a whole lot he can do.
Mariel goes inside and tries to let the kids know about staying with their father but she gets choked up and she only ends up kind of telling them that they will be staying with Russ. We then get a phone call again and Mariel tells Tom to answer it.
And on an unknown key off the Florida coast, the duffel bag last seen being dumped from Tom’s boat is being hauled ashore. There are all kinds of people on the island, including Derek and Christina.
They load the bag onto the back of a truck and unzip it. It turns out the bag is full of police uniforms, guns and other goodies. Christina asks Derek about it. He tells her that once they go through basic training they will be coming back with a vengeance.
I’ve got mixed feelings about this week’s episode. On one hand, there were all kinds of interesting developments (most notably the introduction of the people the Sheriff is working with(or possibly ruling)). One wonders whether the people of the hurricane survivor group are affiliated with them or if they are not even aware of their existence.
On the other hand there were a lot of predictable ‘surprises’ to be had this week as well as a few plot holes. The only glaring one is Tom and the duffel bags. Given the fact he had to drag the duffel bag, the one Jesse saw Tom take out of the truck had to have been the bag with all the weapons and gear (the present bag shouldn’t have weighed more than 5-10 pounds given the presents within). So either A) Tom dragged TWO bags into the cabin on the off chance someone saw him dragging a bag into the cabin or B) Tom just happened to have a bag of presents for the kids already at the cabin (and given the fact that two of the presents were family heirlooms, that seems pretty unlikely). And even ignoring the double-bag thing, there is the question of why he would bother dragging the bag into the cabin (meaning he later had to drag it within a few feet of all three kids) when it presumably would have been safer to leave it tucked away in his truck.
