Time to catch up with Meg – apparently taking cocaine. I
don’t know if this is Guilt Remnant behaviour or not, but it may not be
relevant as it appears to be a flashback to before the Departure and when she
still planned to get married. There’s a definite sense that Meg – and her
mother – are both driven women when they have a cause. At least her mother was
before her heart attack over lunch. That’s just rude (and an extreme way to
dodge the bill!). She died a day before the Departure.
Meg went to visit Miracle with her fiancé – before the
Guilty Remnant and the town was, even then, turning into a highly restricted
police state. They go on the tour which includes some of the more eccentric
members of the town. She also seems to have a habit of visiting psychics –
including the hand-print
psychic Isaac who quickly grasps exactly what Meg’s issues are.
Meg wants to know what her mother wanted to tell her
before she died – but Isaac wisely points out that her mother didn’t know she
was dying, the chances are that whatever she didn’t have chance to say would be
so very mundane and irrelevant – and ultimately will not help Meg. Meg
dismisses Isaac as a fraud since she’s sure the words must be so significant –
and Isaac reveals he knew what her mother was eating at the café
See, this is one of those moments when my whole
“everything about this show could be woo-woo or could be part of the problems
and hysteria of the characters” pushes me much closer to the woo-woo side.
He tells her whatever it was – and she returns to her
husband claiming he was fake. She sits and cries on a park bench and is met by
Evie who comforts her with carrots, bad jokes and the sad claim that no-one
finds what they’re looking for in Miracle.
And now Meg is and her Guilty Remnant re throwing
grenades onto school buses – fake but still way out of line. Even her fellow GR
are not happy about that – especially since Meg starts talking. Meg has gone so
far they (GR bigwigs?) talk back to her. They claim they fear authority
backlash – but Meg doesn’t buy it, especially since they’re willing to “stone
each other to death” (which puts a very different spin on the death of Gladys).
She’s also not buying the cryptic nonsense – nor does she think the GR is achieving
it’s goal of preventing people from forgetting. People are moving on and
healing. She wants a more violent approach – and is buying bombs and setting up
her own little inner-cult.
Meg’s house is also losing members to
Tom Garvey and his hugging therapy. So she’s off to pay him a visit –and it
looks a lot less like Tom using a cult to undermine the GR so much as him
actually setting up his own cult. Which leads to Tom offering his rapist, Meg,
a healing hug and she is all menacing about it.
This is when Laurie was still with Tom and she had lots
of excuses for why they’re not running a cult, honest while Tom has all kinds
of doubts. She hits him with some very harsh but very real truths – and she
hits him. He turns and leaves, sleeping on a bench instead and hitting the
booze. Because that’s not nearly subtle enough, we also see an abandoned dog
Tom drunkenly rampages through the GR house, screaming
for Meg which eventually gets him brutally beaten and Meg appears. He says he
wants his pain to go away and wants to join the GR – but Meg knows it’s not
what he wants and is far more interested in where Tom’s family moved to. She’s
off to Miracle looking oh so very scary in doing it.
She does decide to bring Tom on her little road trip. And
Tom wants to talk about his rape – only he says “why did you fuck me” instead
because we’re still denying that it was rape it seems and downplaying it as
they drink and talk family history
And kissing. Yes, they’re going romantic with the man and
his rapist.
They go to another enclave of apparent Guilty Remnant
(they’re silent – which Meg has no patience for) and smoke – but don’t wear
white. There they’re hiding something important – important enough for Meg to
stone someone to death who may have seen it. She plans to leave Tom there –
with a rock to throw.
Megan goes on to Miracle – ominously looking at the bridge
– and runs into Matt who assumes she is free from the GR and he’s all friendly
and welcoming. He does realise there’s more to what Megan’s planning than
merely escaping the GR and there’s something ominous about how she describes
Miracle as the safe place, the only people who are not hurting.
She asks what they’re all waiting for and ominously
answers her own question: “you’re waiting for me.”
Tom goes nosying to see what Meg is hiding and finds
three members of the GR – including Evie. Yes, Evie,
we-thought-she-was-departed-Murphy.
I do think that people considering Meg “lucky” have an
interesting and pointed viewpoint. She knows that her mother died – but this is
a point we covered before. She knows why her mother died. A heart attack is an
explainable thing, it’s even a thing we have some degree of control over. We
even saw one of the waitresses trying to resuscitate her. She knew what
happened, people tried to stop it happening, people knew what to do to try to
do that (even if they failed). It doesn’t make it any less tragic – but it
makes it understandable and less frightening.
Of course, Isaac has another take on how absolutely no-one would be sympathetic to the recently bereaved Meg in a world that is so wracked with even scarier grief. This also raises a question about people in the world in general – with the exception of people like Nora (who have lost multiple people and become almost icons and minor celebrities of a fetishised, obsessive grief) did anyone have a chance to mourn? Not just because the lack of certainty (and having to do things, as Nora did, like divorce Departed spouses) but because of a lack of the usual support structures we have for grief – when everyone is grieving, shocked and terrified, who can spare comfort and sympathy for the mourning?
Evie... well that was unexpected
So we have the road trip of angst and bonding with the
man and his rapist? Really? Dancing? Drinking? Kissing? What is this, a
rape-denial context with Grimm?!
