Evil - October 31

Discussing Ep. 1.5

This was a really fun episode. All three storylines had me invested, although the exorcism was probably the weakest storyline but their homage to The Exorcist movie was really great! So I'll break each one down.

I loved this storyline. Although there wasn't a lot of meat to it, I loved that they essentially separated Ben from David and Kristen to focus on his own thing and doing what he loves to do, which is to debunk supernatural occurrences.

The ghost hunting show itself was funny because it depicted quite accurately how these shows operate and how they're produced, attempting to create basically a paranormal haunting out of a single thumping sound emanating from the wall! I loved Ben's initial comments, saying how such shows are ridiculous by using fictitious equipment like an EVP recorder (electronic voice phenomena, which records sounds made by ghosts and other supernatural phenomenon). He found a kindred spirit on the team with Vanessa and, while I'm not big on romance angles, I did like this one.

I had relegated Ben to side-kick status and while he essentially still remains that, I liked how they gave him a love interest here which I'm hoping will develop further into the series. Since Vanessa essentially thinks the way he does and has experienced things she cannot explain, I think they would really make a kick-ass team and it would help Ben and David and Kristen to solve those things that they cannot explain.

What I also liked was that Ben referenced the ghost video from Ep. 2. I had made that criticism in my last review, that they weren't going back and tying up those loose ends. While they're still not necessarily tying them up, I can accept that they acknowledge that they are there and they essentially remain a mystery.

As is the modus operandi of this show, Ben and Vanessa were hit with what seemed to be a legitimate supernatural occurrence. Even I felt that was a bit much, that the two sceptics should be the only ones to see that apparition in the hallway while everyone else was gone. Then, when Vanessa and the other team members started spontaneously bleeding from the nose, it seemed like a legit paranormal occurrence. Of course, by the end, Ben was able to debunk the whole thing explaining it all as the use of a highly sophisticated illusion software and a powder that Vanessa and the others were allergic to that caused their nosebleeds. I liked how he debunked it all and essentially sealed the deal in getting Vanessa's respect and admiration....and getting her phone number too! Benessa....I'm shipping it!

This episode saw the return of Townsend in a role that I had predicted (though never expressed on this blog) he would attempt to go down. I had never really touched on Kristen's mom, Sheryl, because she had made such infrequent appearances, but this episode focused heavily on her was refreshing. From the get-go, I had always wondered why they wrote Sheryl the way they did, as being this unorthodox, free-spirited, hard-living mother who seemingly never grew out of her 20's and seems like a glorified rock n' roll groupie. It's a weird character since Kristen doesn't seem to embody any of the character traits that embody Sheryl. So she's definitely not her mother's daughter, as they say.

But I figured that Townsend was going to get to Kristen through her family, and while I entertained the idea that he might try and do it through Sheryl, I didn't really envision her having any romantic interest in him. Mainly because...well....look at him! He dresses like some stuffy librarian or an uptight accountant. It's quite the contrast with the way Sheryl dresses. However, it was his personality and unorthodox point of views that seemed to intrigue her. I liked this interaction because it was what I thought Townsend should be written as: this unassuming, seemingly harmless person who displays little quirks here and there, either through speech or mannerisms, that betray the harmless facade. It's clear that Townsend's philosophy and eccentric points of view regarding no longer being a people-pleaser appealed to Sheryl. Also, his seeming spontaneity appealed to her free-spirited nature.

This move both surprised me and yet, it didn't. I could see a woman like Sheryl falling for a guy with the personality of Townsend. Obviously, this is going to create some major tension with Kristen and even David once they find out that Sheryl is dating Townsend. But what I also liked was the apparent connection between Townsend and the Brenda storyline. I'll touch on that later.

The exorcism storyline was sort of par for the course in terms of elements when it comes to exorcisms on TV and movies. The priest and David both believe that the woman is possessed, while Kristen and her therapist, Dr. Kurt Boggs, believe that she is suffering from schizophrenia and that the exorcism is actually enabling the schizophrenic episode rather than eliminating it. First, I'll tackle the elements that I thought were iffy.

Them all wearing sunglasses as though they were the Men In Black or detectives or something was just funny. The idea that they had to wear sunglasses so as to avoid making eye contact with the possessed is the first I've ever heard of such a thing. It was funny because the priest wasn't wearing them but everyone else was. And even when Dr. Boggs entered the room later on, he wasn't required to wear them either so I don't understand why they added that element.

Also, an exorcism taking four days is not unusual. I guess in movies and TV shows, exorcisms are depicted as taking a couple of days or something like that, but I've heard of exorcisms taking months if not years, depending on the severity. But they negate the length and severity of the exorcism by having David tell the possessed "tell him to leave" when she says that "he" is coming for David. The priest spent four days trying to liberate this woman and with one phrase from David, she's freed from possession? I suppose what David did was redirect the The Sixty, as the demons were called, away from the woman and towards him. Like other elements in the episode, David essentially did what Father Kerris in The Exorcist did when he tells the demon "Take me!"

Speaking of which, I loved the various nods to The Exorcist film. This particular shot was both brilliant and ironic. It was practically a perfect replication of The Exorcist scene, right down to the potted plants!

It was ironic because while in The Exorcist, Father Merrin arrives and it's sort of a symbolic moment, with him coming to face off against an old enemy and arriving to finish an exorcism, Dr. Boggs is coming to essentially put an end to an exorcism by declaring the patient as merely being schizophrenic. I thought it was a really nice touch. In addition to what David did, Kristen did what Father Kerris in The Exorcist did, exchanging blessed holy water with regular tap water. Again, the irony was that with Father Kerris, he was trying to determine whether Reagan was legitimately possessed, while Kristen was sort of doing it to prove that the patient was not possessed at all but suffering from a psychological problem. In both cases, the patient reacted to the tap water as though it was holy water. I didn't like the priest's explanation for why that happened, as he explained it away as the demon's reaction was based on his (the priest's) own belief of whether or not the tap water was blessed. In the end, it was there to cast doubt on whether or not the woman was possessed or not, and in both The Exorcist film and here, she was.

What this also does is it now casts doubt on Kristen and David's future together. Up until now, they were relatively on the same page with both of them respecting the other's beliefs and opinions. This was the first time that they were opposed to each other and it seemed like a gulf neither of them could close. Based on what the possessed woman said about David's visions, he determined that the exorcism needed to continue. Kristen was convinced the woman needed to be in a hospital with professional medical personnel treating her for schizophrenia. It's apparent that both of them are going down different roads that seemingly don't run parallel to each other. So it's going to be interesting to see where they go.

The other path that will be interesting to see is David's vision. The Sixty claimed that his visions were from Hell, not Heaven, even referencing the three stars that David saw. I could actually see this being the case given David's visions were induced through hallucinogenics, not through some meditation or something like that. He essentially got high and started seeing some freaky shit so who is to say that demons didn't influence those visions somehow? So I am interested to see what those three stars mean and if they are indeed from heaven or from hell.

By far, my favourite storyline of this episode was Brenda. Right off the bat, you kind of knew that "Brenda" was going to cause some kind of havoc, just by how the girls were describing her as someone they didn't know very well and seemingly didn't like. I was half expecting her to look like Rose 390 from the previous episode. But she was blonde instead of brunette and wore a mask the whole time.

I loved this. Right away, she asserted herself and took over the agenda for the night, telling the girls a story about these parents who locked away their daughter in a room and then set fire to her room....a story which she doesn't finish until later on. Then she goes and asks the girls how they would go about killing their mother, hypothetically speaking of course, and what would they do with the body. When she finally leads them to the cemetery and she takes her mask off while finishing her earlier story, I loved that we never got to see what her face looked like. It's implied that she looks burnt and hideous, so hideous that she actually scared a couple of trick-or-treaters at the end just by looking at them!

I liked the parallel that they did with the last episode, with the girls being lured into "Brenda's" games as though they were innocent to begin with, only to realize that there was something truly sinister about everything at the end. And in essence, "Brenda" did what Rose 390 did, which was tap into the dark side of the girls. When she asked how they would kill their mother, Laura (I misheard her name in the last episode and called her Mara but it's Laura), the youngest daughter, replies "with kisses," clearly trying to steer the moment back to the realm of innocence. "Brenda" isn't having it and pushes them more, and then one of the other sisters replies "with rat poison" and "Brenda" approves and you could tell that the dark seeds were being planted.

Also, there seems to be some foreshadowing involved. At the beginning of the episode, Kristen is being told by the doctor that Laura's condition, which Laura has a 50/50 chance of surviving before she turns 20, isn't going as planned. Kristen starts to break down before she gets the call from David to help out with the exorcism. What was interesting about it was that Laura was the one who laid in the open grave at the cemetery! I couldn't understand why "Brenda" asked Laura to do it unless they're somehow foreshadowing her early death. If so, that's both eerie and depressing!

Of course, the real surprise was that "Brenda" wasn't the Brenda who was supposed to show up and who the girls were talking about at the beginning of the episode. So who, or what, was she? If she was just some kid, how did she know to show up at the house and assume the name of Brenda? I loved this scene at the end, after she scares the trick-or-treaters and starts laughing as she's walking down the road. Her laugh wasn't demonic or monstrous or necessarily anything scary....but it wasn't child-like either. The only way that I could describe it is like a child who laughs like a teenager or an adult. It was incompatible with the image of a young girl but worked so well for what her role in this episode was and for retaining the mystery as to what she actually is. It was a brilliant touch that finished everything off nicely.

Where I think everything ties together is how the possessed woman warned Kristen during the exorcism that her children were essentially going to die that night. And when the mother of the real Brenda called to let Kristen know that Brenda wasn't going to make it to the party, Sheryl was on the phone with Townsend who insisted she not answer the call. Had she not done so, who knows what "Brenda" would have done. So it seemed like "Brenda" was working in tandem with Townsend and The Sixty that possessed the woman. Will we ever find out who or what she was, I think not. But that's a mystery I'm willing to live with.

Overall, I liked the episode a lot. I will point out something else that I've noticed thus far about the titles of the episodes. With the exception of the pilot episode, each episode has a number in it: 177 Minutes; Rose 390: October 31. Even the next episode, 790, is just a number. So I'm curious to know if that has any significance at all.

That'd be really cool if it did!