Kevin wakes up, handcuffed to the bed and with
Hallucination!Patti telling him Nora has packed and left. Kevin goes into denial
while Patti repeatedly insist that Nora has left him. He tries to get Jill to
fetch tools to open the cuffs and she finds a note instead – and when Kevin
refuses to tell her anything she opens it. The note says that Nora has left
with the baby but not why
Jill is furious and storms out.
Kevin keeps calling Nora, insisting “he’s not crazy”
while Patti offers reassurance. He goes to a locksmith to have the cuff removed
but has problems because it’s police issue (and, therefore, the locksmith is
leery of helping a felon) and because he keeps talking to (swearing at) Patti.
She continues to troll and annoy Kevin – especially when he demands to know why
she’s following him (turns out she doesn’t know either).
Jill goes to tell Michael all about how her dad is
fucking up her family and he objects to her swearing in a church – so she
screams “fuck” over and over. Because she is five. And, to be fair, with her
knew family going through unpleasantness, has bigger things to worry about than
whether an angry deity’s precious ears will be offended by the naught words.
She tells him about her dad “losing his mind” and hearing voices. Michael asks
how sure she is the voices are not there since he does.
This is not reassuring – she’s also quick to leap topics
and take a stab at him refusing to have sex with her but still “fool around”
because Jesus and then yelling at god for not talking to her. But Michael has a
very sensible reason for not having sex – he doesn’t want to, they don’t know
each other well enough yet.
Michael decides to join Kevin and reveal that he knows
who Kevin is seeing because his grandfather told him (and he describes Patti).
He wants to help Kevin de-Patti himself and off they go to see his grandfather
(the man his mother hates), Virgil.
Apparently Kevin has been to Virgil’s house (a trailer in
the park) when he sleep walked – he also talks about Patti as if he can see
her. He recaps how Kevin came to visit him before (they had a whole
conversation when Kevin was asleep – and it seems Kevin told him all about
Patti).
Apparently the way to fight off Patti is to die – hence the
whole trying to drown himself. Virgil thinks that the lake draining just as
Kevin tried to kill himself is proof he has an awesome champion – or a powerful
adversary; something he himself had which “made him do terrible things.”
Time for some revelation: John shot Virgil (his dad),
repeatedly and nearly killed him (which is why John went to prison) and Virgil
defeated his adversary came back and was a better man – he talks about how he “hurt”
John and the fact he refers to his genitals as “infernal machinery” implies
what that means. Now he wants to temporarily kill Kevin for his own good
Kevin says no. Shocking, really.
Kevin goes to confront Patti because Patti never
mentioned going to Virgil. To which Patti’s response is:
“what would you have said if I’d told you the solution to
all your problems is a magical Black man on the end of town. That’s borderline
racist, that is.”
She then smacks him when he implies she’s afraid of the
solution that will get rid of her – because she’s all ready to battle with him,
oh yes. I want to say now that I’ve got twenty on Patti.
To complete Kevin’s day, Laurie appears at the visitor’s
centre asking to see Kevin. She can’t be let in because Miracle is the special
place of extreme rules that requires him to speak to her through a chain link
fence. And yes, to his surprise, she talks. And she wants to speak to Tommy – revealing
that she spoke to Nora because Kevin tells her he hasn’t seen or heard from
Tommy. Of course he also learns that
Tommy was with Laurie and he’s in touch with Jill. Kevin is sufficiently on
edge to worry Laurie. She leaves while he rants after her.
Kevin goes to see John for help removing the handcuff
(more comfortable on passing it off as a sex game with John than he was in the locksmith)
though he’s on edge because they are taking palm prints of volunteers to match
with the palm print found on his car where Evie disappeared. Kevin’s palm
print. Of course he can’t say no to offering his own print. And he doesn’t even
get a his cuff removed
In another low point, Patti twists the knife a little
more.
He goes home to Jill who wants to know how he will fix
their family. He has no answers. Instead he goes to see Laurie and he tells her
about the hallucination Patti. Laurie is much more patient as they talk smoking
and what Patti wants him to do – she also makes the point that Patti never
appears around Laurie because Laurie could prove she wasn’t real. Since Laurie
knew Patti when she was alive, she could demand Patti tell Kevin things only
she knew.
We’re also reminded that Laurie was a therapist before
all this happened – and that she used to be Patti’s therapist (and broke client
confidentiality – which Kevin forgot – which is why Patti can tell Kevin all
about hr messy break up). She also tells him the pitfall of belief when
uncertain and traumatised (which pretty much encompasses the whole world after
the Departure) – and how she and Tommy were using this to imitate Wayne (which
eventually drove Tommy away). It’s why she joined a cult and it’s why Kevin
hallucinates Patti – looking for a way to turn off all the guilt and fear and
pain. She advises him to seek help
And Kevin asks her to come into town with him – since she
still has his surname. This is such a bad idea. Jill is not going to be happy
about this.
He gets home and Nora calls him – to tell him not to call
her any more. He desperately tells her he loves her and wants to get rid of
Patti and will. He just needs to know she’ll believe him when he says she’s
gone. She says she’d believe him – and come back.
While he’s talking, Jill comes home. She’s not happy… but Kevin has left, driving off to see Virgil for his quick-fix suicide-with-guide cure.
Michael leaves as he arrives (looking upset). So they
prepare to poison Kevin and bring him back and Patti speaks up, overtly
labelling Virgil as a paedophile. When Kevin challenges her, she says she wants
him to do it. And when he drinks the poison she yells at him to stop… too late
Kevin collapses, seizing until he goes still. Virgil does nothing, pouring away the epinephrine he was supposed to use to revive him – then shooting himself in the head. Ooooookay. Not according to plan.
Which is when Michael comes in and drags Kevin out
While I can understand Kevin trying to win Nora back,
what is the point of telling Nora you have a problem and then calling and saying
“you’re not crazy”? No, far better is “yes, I am clearly having mental health
issues I want to seek help with.” That is the point of disclosure I would have
hoped
And while I can understand Kevin, the man with said
mental health issues (or possibly being haunted because it’s Leftovers and who the hell knows?!)
having problems and even being tormented – but I think the episode kind of
expects us to agree with the idea that Nora is perfectly reasonable shunning
him (while she was quite happy to swallow the whole kidnapping + watching Patti
commit suicide honest, totally what happened thing) and taking the baby with
him. Jill accepts that, even Kevin. There is no push back from this. There’s a
denial of mental illness, not “yes, I am mentally ill. Yes I need help. No,
that doesn’t mean I’m dangerous.”
What I do love is Laurie’s simple break down of him
needing help in very sensible, rational, reasonable terms.
There’s still a good chance that she’s woo-woo related
Or not – because we’re getting a secondary theme rising over and over: people are so desperate and lost and confused and frightened after the Departure that they’ll believe anything, cling to anything. Especially in Miracle, the town that was “spared.” There we have seen all kinds of desperate, odd behaviours and Laurie really nicely underlined it this episode with Laurie’s comment’s on belief. When faced with something so extreme and unknowable, people are desperately reaching for any explanation or foundation. Whether that’s overt religiosity, random goat sacrifices, wearing a wedding dress every day- or hallucinating dead Guilty Remnant members. And haven't we seen this in history? Look at the extreme acts people have turned to when faced with then unknowable horrors like plague?
So how much is true? How much is real? How much of the
potential woo-woo is just various characters desperately trying to find
meaning/connection/explanation/power from anything around them? From that we
have John’s own crusade – and what underpins it? Does he see a town drowning in
nonsense and goat blood and people on towers and a line of desperate tourists
that have reduced his home into an armed police state that he wants to save? Is
it an elaborate distraction for him? Is he actually afraid that one of them may
be right?
In some ways this may be the first Mystery show to use the eternal Mystery in the correct way - the whole point of the show is NOT KNOWING, not EVER KNOWING
It is interesting and even forward thinking to have
Michael say he doesn’t want sex simply because he doesn’t want to have sex. But
then we have Virgil and Michael spending time together, and Virgil’s history
and… I think they’re going to develop that storyline to bad places
The “borderline racist” magic Black man comment was an on
point statement – but it remains to be seen if Virgil is exactly what she
called out
