We open with a naked man roaring like an animal and
driving shop owners from their store – sometimes you just get the munchies.
Duke and Audrey are trying to convinced me the metaplot
is actually going to last this season as Duke does a summation of how things
stand – 27 years ago, Audrey and Lucy wrote a message in the Colorado Kid’s
grave, calling on them to find him before the hunter. Audrey throws in her own
exposition – with the man who kidnapped Audrey claiming she loved the Colorado Kid.
Now Audrey thinks the CK’s alive and on the run. Nathan shows up so he and Duke
can do their mandatory antler-clashing, before police work calls.
Audrey tries to approach the bestial naked man with a coat, noting by the loose chain that the man had been tethered at some point. But the irate shop owner gets even more irate and crowds the man, causing him to leap on him, bite his neck then rush off through a window.
At the police station Audrey gets to meet Dr. Claire Callahan
– for Audrey. After being kidnapped it’s required for any civil employee with a
gun in the town to have therapy – so insists their insurance. Audrey is,
predictably, not exactly open to the idea even while Dr. Callahan acknowledges
what Audrey does for the town and how that makes it even more likely she needs
therapy.
Next case leads them to a barn with some ripped up
animals – and a whole nest of naked, dirty people sleeping. Duke at another location
finds another big naked man eating raw fish – Audrey asks him to restrain him –
which he happily passes on to Dwight (who isn’t Duke’s biggest fan after the
little dust-up they had when Duke’s super-powers kicked in).
While they have their naked bestial men contained in the
barn, a kid decides to sneak in, forcing Audrey and Nathan to sneak in as well
to rescue him – where we see the men fighting over clothes and getting dressed.
During the sneaking, evading and tasering aggressive beast-men, Nathan shoots
one in the leg and the rest manage to escape the barn and flee to the woods.
And Audrey finds one who isn’t aggressive, though no more capable of communication.
Back at the police station they get him clothes and food and Audrey continues
to be hostile to the psychiatrist.
They get a call out to Dwight and Duke where they have
another naked man restrained in Dwight’s truck, Dr. Callahan tags along to
observe Audrey. They get too close to the cab and he breaks the window –
spilling blood on Duke. Everyone waits for Duke’s Trouble to kick in – but it
doesn’t. Duke starts celebrating but Nathan points out the naked man may not be
Troubled. Dr. Callahan gets a message back from the hospital – the naked people
aren’t Troubled, they’re severely drugged on a drug that is used to euthanise animals.
It’s too powerful even for her to prescribe and causes “instant labotomies.”
They go to the animal control and find the place wrecked –
including a naked man crammed into a tiny cage, with a broken neck. They also
find part of the chains that were used to restrain the first bestial man.
Nathan thinks the dog catcher has been treating these people like dogs – but Audrey
points out there’s no way a man could have got in the cage. She thinks the men
were dogs turned into men by a Trouble. Because Audrey just has to out-weird
everyone.
They find the dog catcher – he’s dead, beaten to death
with a hammer (so not his Trouble). The people may have been dogs, but they now
have human brains and are beginning to use tools. And since they’re from the
pound, they’re likely feral and aggressive. Following the trail of attacks they
connect that the shop was a place feral dogs used to scrounge food – and that
the owner of the barn had dropped his own dog off at the pound to be euthanised.
They go to check on him to see if it’s his Trouble.
The find the man owns a disused farm with no animals
since his grandparents time – which Audrey thinks is because of his Trouble, if
he tries to kill animals they become human. He points out he had to put the dog
down because it had rabies.
And Liam, his son, is missing – they think Jesse, his dog, came back for him and took him away to protect him – but he’s rabid. The father (Tor), Audrey, Nathan and Dr. Callahan search the woods and find a pack of dog-men all with weapons. Dr. Callahan theories that it’s because of Tor’s guilt over having the dog put down when he couldn’t afford medicine instead. If Tor treats the dog with humanity it should return to a dog, since it became human when he treated it like a disposable beast. Thus proving that Dr. Callahan has even bigger leaps of logic than even Audrey manages. They urge him to bond with Jessie, show kindness and to touch him (y’know, even if he wasn’t a man with a gun, he’s a rabid dog. I don’t think “touch him” is good advice for how to deal with any rabid animal). All of the man-beasts turn into dogs and… are no longer aggressive and run away (if they were going to attack with weapons as humans, why not with teeth as dogs?) they find Liam by using the docile dog Audrey took in to the prison to track him down.
More Dr. Callahan pushing Audrey to therapy, pointing out
she already provides therapy to all the Troubled people Audrey has helped.
Audrey helps them through the crisis, then she steps in and councils them how
to deal with and manage their Trouble. Because of that, she thinks Audrey needs
therapy because she spends so much time helping other people’s issues she has
no time for her own – and she pushes her towards Nathan as well. Audrey decides
to keep the dog.
Meanwhile with my favourite characters, Vince and Dave,
Vince has gone to the morgue and “borrowed” the autopsy report on the dead Rosalind,
who Audrey’s kidnapper killed last week. She was killed with a bolt gun to the
head, which perturbs them somewhat.
Dwight and Duke also check in with the brothers – Dwight happier
with Duke after seeing how much Duke is unhappy with his Trouble – to find out
more about the “hunter” mentioned in the grave note. Vince and Dave start
stonewalling, trying to give nothing away. Duke does find a reference to a “hunter
meteor storm” in an old edition of the paper.
Dave is angry at Vince for letting Duke find the
information but Vince thinks they may need Duke and Dwight’s help – since Audrey’s
kidnapper already knows about them – and their cupboard has been ransacked by
someone using a bolt gun to break the lock.
Duke tells Audrey about the “hunter” being a meteor storm
that hits every 27 years. The night of the storm is when Audrey disappeared
when she was Sarah and when she was Lucy – and she only has 2 months until the
next one. In light of this, she gives Cookie, the dog, to Tor, since she only
has 2 months left. All while sad music plays and she avoids telling Nathan the
truth.
I’m sensing a similar pattern – Audrey and Nathan are
doing their own thing and it’s falling to Duke to do the actual meta research
in the background. Just like last season only now he has Dwight instead of
Evie. I’d like to see Audrey more involved in her own story – otherwise the
meta is going to get pushed well onto the back burner.
But there was meta this episode – please please please maintain it.
Dr. Callahan looks like she could be a regular character,
which will be interesting in a show that has only one main female character – I
just hope the relationship between her and Audrey doesn’t remain so rocky.
